Constructive Confrontation & The Bestsellers

Regardless of the Bestseller in Your Briefcase,
Confrontation Reduces Conflict

John Hoover, PhD (How to Work for an Idiot, Career Press 2003, How to Live with an Idiot, Career 2004, Unleashing Leadership, Career 2005) recently teamed up with Athlon Sports Publishing CEO, Roger DiSilvestro, a 30-year veteran of the corporate battlefield and leading expert in process leadership, to release The Art of Constructive Confrontation: How to Increase Accountability and Decrease Conflict (John Wiley and Sons 2005).

Amazon.com has a marketing ploy that suggests that this book is a good companion to that book and suggests that you “buy them together.” The self interest in such a suggestion is obvious. But, Amazon makes a good point. There is a thread of continuity that runs through all major business books. After awhile, accounts of those things that make businesses and organizations more productive and profitable over time starts to sound similar. With good reason, say Roger DiSilvestro and John Hoover.

When you’re in the business of building a business, your first, middle, and last responsibility is to build the people who build businesses. The authors of The Art of Constructive Confrontation have identified the basics of effective, people-building leadership and created a process they call constructive confrontation, which could also be called leadership in a box. It’s all inside. All a new or experienced executive, manager, or supervisor needs to do is invoke Nike’s slogan and “Just do it.” The rest will take care of itself. By creating the fundamental platform for effective leadership behavior, The Art of Constructive Confrontation truly does go well with any other book on effective leadership technique and methodology.

The notion that confrontation can be constructive is news to many leaders and their direct reports who, based on extensive experience, equate confrontation with conflict. According to DiSilvestro and Hoover, conflict is confused with confrontation when the latter is used reactively instead of proactively to assign guilt rather than to recognize and reward responsibility. When expectations are made clear and continuously reinforced, people are more likely to stay on task. Correspondingly, confusion and ambiguity become less likely to contaminate team leader/team member relationships.

Calling confrontation, “the weakest link in executive leadership,” the authors explain that confrontation is not synonymous with conflict, although it is frequently mistaken for the tantrums of supervisors, managers, and executives who reach the end of their ropes and blow up at those around or below them on the organizational food chain—pointing fingers, making accusations, and assigning blame. In stark contrast to this pejorative definition of confrontation, constructive confrontation is the intentional, deliberate, and systematic use of confrontation as:

• A facilitated dialogue that establishes a specific course
• A guidance system to maintain that course
• A monitoring method to make course corrections as necessary

Action is the Key

DiSilvestro and Hoover insist that the pro-active, constructive approach to confrontation they teach prevents the aforementioned tantrums from ever happening in the first place by exposing and eliminating the assumptions and ambiguities that act like landmines hidden beneath the workplace landscape. The “weakest link” accusation further exposes confrontation for what it is; a misunderstood and thereby mostly ignored business concept that is not studied or properly taught in business school curriculums or management seminars.

The authors operate under the premise that action accomplishes more than thinking alone. The circle of confrontation (or cycle of success as the authors sometimes refer to it) is anchored in the fact that the right actions drive right thinking, not the other way around. “Constructive confrontation is an easy-to-follow, three-step cycle that takes the guesswork out of leadership,” DiSilvestro contends, “and it’s all based on action.”

Dr. Hoover cites experience predating Deming that proves that consistently doing the right things improves personal productivity, organizational performance, and produces positive attitudes more than sitting in the Yoga position and contemplating positive thoughts. “Just thinking positively,” he laments, “won’t make things happen. In most organizations, leadership success is measured in the ability to get results.” Like the old saying goes, there’s a big difference between just doing things and getting things done.

Simple concepts are not always easy. Constructive confrontation is not a practice reserved for leaders to apply to subordinates. Anyone, at any level, can and should be encouraged to engage in constructive confrontation. Although the conditions are simple: (1) A commitment covenant between the parties outlines expectations, methods, and measures, (2) All parties to the covenant regularly confront one another on a predetermined schedule in a constructive way to ensure progress and performance are what they should be.

This means team leader-to-team member confrontation as well as team member-to-team leader confrontation. The rules and principles are the same for everybody; the only difference being range of institutional responsibility. (3) All parties to the covenant must celebrate the successful completion of each designated step in the process. Something so simple is still hard for those who fear pushback to their leadership efforts. The easy-to-follow circle of confrontation makes those formerly spooky conversations easy to script and, thus, easier to deliver effectively.

Confrontation Makes Everything Better

Training, education, hype, and/or fear-mongering won’t produce high-performance over time. Even when hype, false promises, and fear-mongering are eliminated in favor of positive practices like training and education, the active follow-through of constructive confrontation is still vital to genuine performance enhancement. Once the three-steps of constructive confrontation are understood, the necessary instruction and encouragement can be applied and measured evenly across the organization. In short, every good practice is enhanced by an intentional, deliberate, effort to commit, confront, and celebrate the things team members do best and organizations need most. Consider ten of the top selling business books in the context of constructive confrontation:

In Winning, author Jack Welch discusses management techniques an in the context of cultural values such as candor, differentiation among employees, and inclusion of all voices in decision-making. These values are exactly what DiSilvestro and Hoover preach with the exception that The Art of Constructive Confrontation includes an easy-to-follow template that accounts for all voices in decision-making and keeps them involved in the process from beginning to end; through crisis and celebration alike. The constructive confrontation process honors each employee’s individuality and unique contributions to the overall organization effort. The process is so fundamental and well laid out that you could say that DiSilvestro and Hoover’s The Art of Constructive Confrontation captures leadership in a bottle.

In The Tipping Point, author Malcolm Gladwell says that messages and behaviors spread through organizations like viruses. It’s not uncommon to receive an email containing information that dozens of other people have seen before it reached you. In a world of word-of-mouth epidemics, Gladwell expands on the notion that the stickiness of ideas and population size have a tremendous impact on the influence of information; intentionally or unintentionally transmitted. DiSilvestro and Hoover find Gladwell’s reasoning sound as well. In The Art of Constructive Confrontation, they explain why direct, written covenants, with regularly-scheduled confrontations and predetermined celebrations are the most effective methods and techniques to consciously engineer information dispersal in a way that promotes maximum productivity, increases accountability, and reduces conflict in the process. Cooperative and coordinated efforts, no matter how small, can lead to big results.

In Now, Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Cifton focus on enhancing people’s strengths rather than eliminating their weaknesses. This is a fundamental tenet underpinning The Art of Constructive Confrontation. Seeking out an employee’s emotional purpose for working and then aligning that personal drive with the organization’s needs depends almost entirely on recognition of who that person is and how he or she can contribute best. It’s the opposite of the cookie cutter approach of attempting to force conformity from the entire organizational population. The covenant, confrontation, and celebration stages of DiSilvestro and Hoover’s circle of confrontation all recognize the individual’s strengths and establish a platform upon which to build on those strengths.

In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A leadership Fable, Patrick Lencioni points out how teamwork can elude even the most dedicated workers without effective leadership. The Art of Constructive Confrontation is a blueprint for effective leadership. Even an inexperienced individual in a position of authority can become effective if he or she simply follows the plan. Nothing is left to chance as information is captured, chronicled, and confronted consistently. The absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results that Lencioni laments are all remedied by DiSilvestro and Hoover’s straight-forward formula that increases communication and accountability while decreasing confusion and conflict.

In Who Moved My Cheese, Spencer Johnson, PhD deals through parable with fear of change. The types of belief systems that Johnson claims hold people back from growth and development are the substance of the continuing conversations between team members and team leaders in DiSilvestro’s and Hoover’s constructive confrontation process. The versatility that Johnson preaches in the form of alertness to changes in the cheese and finding new sources of cheese is part and parcel of what DiSilvestro and Hoover have built into the “living document” nature of the covenant. Every time a regularly scheduled and even ad hoc confrontation takes place, the reality of the situation is revisited and course corrections are made. Relax Dr. Johnson, The Art of Constructive Confrontation provides a roadmap to new cheese.

In Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan claim that the ultimate difference between a company and its primary competitor is the ability to execute. They go so far as to say the biggest obstacle to success in business is the absence of execution. Once again, DiSilvestro and Hoover’s The Art of Constructive Confrontation is specifically targeted at eliminating the confusion, conflict, ambiguity, animosity, and inertia that block execution. More to the point, the commitment, confrontation, and celebration in the circle of confrontation all increase individual functionality and enhance individual and organizational execution. Bossidy’s and Charan’s points about having the right people in the right jobs, the discipline to learn, and the right leadership behaviors all resonate with the purpose and practice of constructive confrontation.

In Good to Great, author Jim Collins and his staff of researchers vigorously searched through a list of 1,435 companies en route to finally settling upon 11 which had substantially improved their performance over time. At the core of each stellar corporate performance was a culture that identified and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. The step-by-step model of continuous conversation, covenant construction, regularly-scheduled constructive confrontation, and celebration of successes large and small contained in The Art of Constructive Confrontation provides exactly the type of disciplined behavior that Collins, Bossidy, and Charan are heralding. Moreover, because DiSilvestro and Hoover’s constructive confrontation is a prescribed and structured process, it can be replicated enterprise-wide and at every level of the organization. The kind of enhanced execution that constructive confrontation provides will turn help any company move from good to great by tapping the emotional purposes and natural motivations of its team members.

In Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes are High, Kerry Patterson deals with the difficult subject of emotionally, psychologically, and legally charged conversations—the very type of conversations that most people presume will be confrontational, which is to say “conflictual.” Patterson is certainly correct that most executives, managers, and supervisors run for the hills rather than engage the conversations that matter most. The good news DiSilvestro and Hoover bring to the table is that, if confrontation is used pro-actively, early and often enough, most conflict can be avoided. Patterson describes the benefits of lowering defenses, creating mutual respect and understanding, increasing emotional safety, and encouraging freedom of expression—every one of which is included in the ongoing constructive confrontation conversations. Patterson would agree that The Art of Constructive Confrontation is about confronting constructively now or facing the conflict later. Constructive confrontation removes the “dread” from the thought of conversation.

In The mentor’s Guide: Facilitating Effective Learning Relationships, Lois J. Zachary talks about creating a workplace climate that encourages employees to continue learning and growing. Zachary’s book is a self-proclaimed mentoring resource that ensures personnel at all levels of the organization will teach and learn from each other. The Art of Constructive Confrontation is, of course, the template for doing exactly that; not on a catch-as-catch can basis, which depends on individual appetite for engaging others productively, but in a deliberate and well-structured manner. Zachary appeals, as do DiSilvestro and Hoover, to anyone who wants to embed mentoring within their organization. Once again, the basics of constructive confrontation make mentoring and other-focused leadership practices inevitable wherever the basics are applied. You could say that The Art of Constructive Confrontation is “mentoring and more.”

In Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity, author David Allen recognizes that time management is useless the minute your schedule is interrupted. Setting priorities, he goes on to point out, isn't relevant when your email is down. Even procrastination solutions won't help if your goals aren't clear. Allen's premise is simple: our ability to be productive is directly proportional to our ability to relax. Only when our minds are clear and our thoughts are organized can we achieve stress-free productivity and unleash our creative potential. In The Art of Constructive Confrontation, DiSilvestro and Hoover take that tune even further by pointing out that nothing contributes to stress and tension more than confusion, cluelessness, and ambiguity. It’s not knowing what is expected of us that causes our imaginations to run wild and blood pressure to climb. The conversation that leads to commitment, the commitment that forms the basis for covenant, the covenant that is confronted early and often, and finally the celebration that puts an exclamation point on all that’s good about the effort removes all anxiety-producing doubt. Constructive confrontation can spell the difference between just doing things and getting things done. As such it is the perfect companion for any book on business theory or practice intent on building the people who build businesses.

The commitment, confrontation, celebration process is also the training ground for succession. The greatest fulfillment in the cycle of success is to pass on the learning to others, and prepare them to move up. When the team member begins to mentor other team members, the way he or she has been mentored, the cycle of success becomes and upward spiral. If the leader keeps his or her promise to confront team members in a positive, constructive, and consistent manner, more skilled leaders will emerge. Not new leaders with natural charisma, but leaders who know, understand, and respect the system that made them successful. That’s a legacy an organization can build on. Constructive confrontation is the gospel of growing the organization through the marriage of human capital and organizational needs. Books are great. Application is better.