January, 2012
The Trustees of the Securities Industry Institute have invited Paul Paese, of PMC, to teach in SII’s 2012 program. SII is the leading executive development program for professionals in the securities industry. The Institute is held each March at The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania. The Institute’s mission is to provide practical knowledge and insights that securities professionals can apply directly to their work. Paul will be teaching a session entitled “The Leader’s Impact in Group Discussions.” This session will equip participants with knowledge and skills enabling them to leverage disagreement, garner commitment, and maximize the effectiveness of the teams they lead.

December, 2011
As 2011 draws to close, we would like to thank the many clients, colleagues, and partners who played a part in the continued success of Paese Management Consulting over the past year. Despite the weak economy, it’s been an excellent year at PMC, and we know our continued success will depend as much as ever on the relationships we have built and the creative possibilities that arise through partnership and collaboration. Wishing you the happiest of holidays and all the best in 2012!

November, 2011
We’ve noticed a pervasive problem with how people show understanding in difficult workplace conversations. To convey understanding, most people simply say “I understand,” “I appreciate that,” or the like. Few go so far as to summarize in their own words what the other person is saying and ask if their summary is on target. Why bother with the extra effort? Well, maybe you think you understand, but in reality you don’t fully grasp what the other person is saying. Or maybe the other person can’t find the right words and could use your help finding them. By summarizing what you think the other person is saying, asking him or her if you’ve got it right, repeating these first two steps if necessary, and ultimately getting an affirmative response, you’re showing that you understand. This practice is particularly important when others have been talking for a while, and especially if they’ve been repeating themselves. While it may seem unnecessary to check your understanding when others have been repeating themselves (“Hey, dude, I get it!”), this is exactly when checking may be the most helpful. Why? Because repetition is often a signal that the other person doesn’t feel heard, or believes you’re missing the point. Paraphrasing and getting confirmation usually ends the repetition because now you’ve shown that you understand, and the other person sees that further repetition isn’t needed. So our recommendation is simple: If the conversation is important and your goal is to understand others and have them feel understood, show that you understand first. Don’t just say that you do.

October, 2011
This month we share a noteworthy quote from renowned writer and management theorist, Mary Parker Follett: “Instead of condemning conflict, we should set it to work for us. Why not? The friction between the driving wheel of the locomotive and the track is necessary to haul the train. All polishing is done by friction. The music of the violin we get by friction… So in business too we have to know when to try to eliminate friction and when to capitalize on it.” We ran across this quote in a book we highly recommend, Discussing the Undiscussable, by William Noonan. Follett’s words, originally published in 1924, stand the test of time and capture a basic premise of our work at PMC.

September, 2011
Why is real change so difficult? Why do counterproductive patterns of behavior persist even in the face of deliberate efforts to change them? In his new book, Organizational Traps, Chris Agyris shows that the answer to these questions is rooted in a simple yet hard truth: to protect our sense of self or self-worth, we avoid conversations that would help us learn how our own actions may be impeding the very changes the organization seeks to make. Put another way, our ego defenses blind us to ways we may be contributing to the organization’s problems, and lead us to believe others need to change more than we do ourselves. Because virtually everyone in the organization thinks this way, most change programs produce very little real change and the biggest problems persist. At PMC, our intellectual debt to Argyris and his colleagues cannot be overstated. In our view, Organizational Traps is his most accessible work for managers (especially the first half of the book and the Conclusion), and we give it our highest recommendation.

August, 2011
The leaders we work with at PMC often ask for advice on how to get more “buy-in” from those they lead. Almost all of these leaders believe buy-in is obtained through personal qualities such persuasiveness, passion, intelligence, charisma, and so on. Important as these qualities are for any leader, they’re secondary when it comes to getting buy-in. The primary source of buy-in is choice. That is, in order to truly buy into a course of action, those from whom buy-in is sought must be given some choice about whether, or how, they will carry out the action. Think about it. If you have no choice in what you do or how you go about doing it, how will you feel? If you’re like most people, your natural response will be to feel as though you don’t really own your actions. It’s human nature. Ownership and commitment go hand in hand, so a lack of felt ownership almost always diminishes the commitment we would have – or at least could have – if we were given some choice in the matter. So, if you’re not getting the buy-in you’d like from those you lead, consider the possibility that you may be constraining their choices too much. The more willing and able you are to let them choose (or at least influence) their own path, the more you will get their buy-in. To be precise, you won’t be “getting them” to buy in. Rather, to the extent they step up and make the choices you’re offering them, they will buy in as a result of their own choice-making.