The Art of Constructive Confrontation

Building the People who Build your Business

The memoirs of successful men and women in business, education, medicine, science, sports, and public service are filled with tributes to their coaches, mentors, teachers, and trusted advisors—the people who saw more potential in them than they saw in themselves. In looking back upon their lives and careers, people whose names have become household words, and whose accomplishments have become legendary, don’t attribute their achievements to luck or being well-connected. They invariably give credit to the people who encouraged them and, more importantly, patiently taught them the processes and disciplines that made extraordinary achievements possible. In short, they pay tribute to those who cared enough to confront them.

Sometimes controversial and always irreverent organizational leadership author, lecturer, and consultant, John Hoover, PhD (How to Work for an Idiot, Career Press 2003 & Unleashing Leadership, Career Press 2005), has teamed up with Athlon Sports Publishing CEO, Roger DiSilvestro, a 30-year veteran of the corporate battlefield and leading expert in process leadership, to issue the toughest in your face challenge to executives in years:

“Do you have what it takes to hold people accountable
for the performance they’re paid to deliver?”

If they’re not held accountable Hoover and DiSilvestro say that leadership is failing every member of the team and the organizational mothership that takes care of everyone. The good news is that courage has nothing to do with it. “People cower at the thought of confrontation,” Hoover says, “because they believe effective leaders must be strong like bulls and as courageous as lions.” The notion that effective leadership requires unbridled boldness is the first of many myths Hoover and DiSilvestro explode in their new book, The Art of Constructive Confrontation: How to Increase Accountability and Decrease Conflict (John Wiley and Sons 2005).

According to DiSilvestro and Hoover, most supervisors, managers, and executives have been instructed or taught by example that chewing out a subordinate after a missed deadline or failed project is an act of courage. The authors say not. “Chewing people out is an act of cowardice,” DiSilvestro explains. “It means that the supervisor, manager, or executive is afraid to accept responsibility for not effectively confronting issues and team members early and often enough to have positively affected the outcome.”

“People might comply with policy and/or step up production for fear of their livelihoods,” adds Hoover. “But the increases will be temporary and the cost and consequences of forcing compliance with threats and intimidation increase with each negative experience.”

Although using confrontation as a constructive building block in workplace accountability and performance doesn’t require the courage of a lion, holding people accountable for what they are paid to do and decreasing conflict in the process does require the resolve to faithfully follow a specific procedure such as the “circle of confrontation” the authors outline in their book. “Acts that appear to be courageous might be theatrical,” says Hoover, “and may appear to save the day in dramatic moments. But, the success of an enterprise and the internal and external people the enterprise serves is measured in performance over time. For that, consistent process trumps drama.”

In addition to resolve, the consistent process that is constructive confrontation also requires surrender to systematic behaviors that bring about successful outcomes. It’s not about beating direct reports into submission to the leader’s will, regardless of how vaguely he or she expresses his or her will. It’s about securing commitment to the entire circle of confrontation.

Confrontation’s Bad Reputation

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

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.

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 dating back to Deming proving 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.

Confront or Suffer the Consequences

The case the authors make for constructive confrontation as an intentional and deliberate leadership technique is partially based on the inevitability of some kind of confrontation. Leaders will either constructively confront their people about expectations at the beginning of and throughout a project or they’ll be compelled to confront them in a negative manner later when expectations are not met. Like fire and water, which can save life or kill, confrontation will improve morale and organizational performance or drive both into the ground—depending on how it is applied. Applying confrontation constructively is a willful act.

The lack of attention paid to confrontation during conventional leadership development is surprising given that avoiding confrontation inevitably leads to conflict that is manifest as outward hostility or repressed-but-deadly resentment—neither one of which are healthy for the people who build businesses or those whose quality of life depends upon healthy providers of goods and services.

DiSilvestro and Hoover’s constructive confrontation is a structured, systematic approach that they claim decreases conflict and increases accountability by connecting the dots between what people want and what organizations need. They call it, “emotional purpose.” Constructive confrontation is an example of displacement theory at work. It reduces conflict in the same way it increases accountability through clear and well-articulated expectations, follow-up, and recognition. These qualities force the alternatives—confused and ambiguous expectations, lack of follow up, and unrecognized accomplishments—out of the organization along with their negative consequences.

Circle of Confrontation

The circle of confrontation continuous cycle begins with a conversation between a team leader and team member that leads to a mutual commitment, including a written covenant. The covenant is then constructively confronted on a predetermined, regular basis, in a specific manner as agreed to in the commitment stage. The third stage of the circle of confrontation is celebration. Everything positive that happens is celebrated, from a mere thumbs up for compliance with the plan to a vacation in the Bahamas as reward for executing a wildly successful (and profitable) project. Celebration, like commitment and confrontation, needs to be appropriate to the accomplishment. Because expectations need to be developed realistically and kept realistic, because conversation needs to be continuous, and confrontation needs to be consistent and constructive…the circle of confrontation never ends.

Constructive confrontation, as the cornerstone of a leadership system, is an individual and organizational guidance system. Without it, proper course corrections will be coincidental at best. Together with commitment and celebration, constructive confrontation is a premeditated, methodical, and systematic approach to leveling the leadership playing field.

Constructive confrontation could be called leadership engineering. It’s a process that can be easily learned and applied across the organization. When targets are not hit and goals are not reached, the leader and the team member suffer, although not necessarily in that order. Constructive confrontation is a well-engineered process that breaks down what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, and how often it needs to be done in order to produce higher-profile results.

Commitment

The Conversation

Leadership is a two-way street. Long gone are the days when leaders could merely invoke their institutional authority to command obedience out of their direct reports. Compliance can be commanded through intimidation, threats, and bribery. But the compliance only lasts as long as the last threat or bribe and the quality of the work will always be suspect. Despite the shift toward a kinder, gentler management style, the conversation between the career-building leader and the person whose career is being built isn’t apologetic. The dialogue merely shifts to the most essential issue in professional development: the emotional purpose that drives work.

Nothing engenders a sense of ownership and propriety more than a personal and professional commitment to the cycle of success, based upon a sense of purpose. The sense of purpose revealed in the team leader/team member conversation is not couched in terms of material possessions, but in achievements that bring meaning to the achiever’s life. Material possessions are, nonetheless, important rewards that are strengthened when considered in the context of the joy and happiness they will bring to the achiever’s family and significant others.

On a higher level, commitment involves recognition of and submission to the guiding principles of the organization and its mission. Surrender is a term that most people in Western Civilization are socialized to avoid. It implies loss of freedom. However, career success that results from surrender to a successful process of achievement provides the greatest opportunity for personal and professional satisfaction and fulfillment.

The conversation follows a simple who, what, when, where, why, and how script to establish the context and conditions for commitment from the team member to the organization and the organization to the team member. The team leader is the conduit for the organization’s end of the bargain.

If the commitment to action isn’t cleansed of all ambiguity, the entire agenda is likely to be derailed. Objectives must be specific, concrete components individual team members can complete in a measurable manner. Using the cycle of success, each team member commits to the required actions, in real time, to achieve real results. The commitment between team member and team leader must be realistic, complete, and meaningful before it can be enforceable.

The Covenant

It’s the leader’s responsibility to identify and engineer the connection between the individual’s emotional purpose and the resources, rewards, and realities of the job. Each team member’s wants and needs need to be merged with the organization’s wants and needs. Once that merger is defined and agreed to, it needs to be written down in a covenant and signed off on by the team member and the leader on behalf of the organization.

This is much more than a goal-setting session. The covenant is used to translate principles into practice. The covenant is the basis for the meat of the process to follow. Goals are broken down into tasks, and tasks are plotted on a time-line. The covenant covers what is to be accomplished, and when—all in the context of the team member’s emotional purpose and the organization’s overriding mission and strategic agenda. Purposeful goals are broken down into the habits, skills, and activities necessary to complete the cycle of success and bring it back to the point where the cycle starts anew.

The who, what, when, where, why, and how script is straight forward. But, simple doesn’t always mean easy. It’s simple to talk a good game and then begin losing pieces of the covenant as time passes and circumstances change. Constructive confrontation is a dynamic process. The who, what, when, where, why, and how are discussed and then written down, hopefully in an online format that can be sent back and forth between the team leader and the team member. That way the document can be revisited and revised as often as necessary to keep the team member firing on all cylinders and operating at maximum efficiency and effectiveness.

Confrontation

If enterprise leadership lacks a spine about anything, it’s the resolve to confront. A well-crafted covenant between team leaders and team members is only as good as the team leader’s commitment to support each team member through consistent and constructive confrontation. To give executives, managers, and supervisors the benefit of the doubt, no one probably taught them how badly they are cheating themselves, their direct reports, and their organizations as a whole, when they fail to confront in a thoughtful, methodical, systematic, and strategic manner.

The craft of constructive confrontation is so rare that few have seen enough of it to adopt it through imitation. Typically, once goals and objectives are set in most organizations, team members and team leaders fly off in different directions, aware at some level that there will be no follow through. Constructive confrontation is the consistent revisiting of the skills, habits, and activities agreed to in the commitment stage. If team leaders fail to shoulder this responsibility, team members not only have the opportunity to disconnect from their commitments, they have a person to blame—the leader.

Consistent and constructive confrontation is not a burden to be endured by the leader or the team member. It’s an obligation each has to the other. It’s also an opportunity to propel things forward and build enthusiasm. The leader owes it to the team member to make daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly assessments of the team member’s performance, just as the team member is obligated to exert the daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly efforts set forth in the covenant.

Constructive confrontation is about holding team members accountable for the habits, skills, and activities they need to engage in to fulfill their covenant. The who, what, when, where, why, and how covenant needs to be confronted frequently so that the conversation and commitment it is based on remain clearly defined and free of ambiguity. When the time comes to deal with adherence, and that time comes at regular, pre-defined intervals, there’s no reason not to couch the confrontation in positive terms of staying on track to fulfill the emotional purpose agreed to in the beginning.

Once-per-year performance reviews aren’t nearly enough. Daily, weekly, and monthly constructive, confrontation is a team leader’s most fundamental responsibility to him- or herself, team members, and the well-being of the entire organization. Confrontation, in the form of coaching, encouragement, and accountability is an essential tool in a team leader’s skill set.

A crack in the leader’s commitment can cause a dam break on the part of the team member’s commitment, and rightly so. It’s as important for the leader to be consistent as it is important for the leader to stay positive. The bond between team members and the team leader is cemented by trust. Nothing builds and sustains trust more than consistent behavior over time. A major element of the initial conversation, commitment, and covenant is the promise made by the leader, on behalf of the organization, to each team member. Placing a high priority on following through on that promise is imperative to build and sustain trust.

Celebration

One common mistake made in business is taking small accomplishments for granted. Another mistake is celebrating only extraordinary achievements. The commitment, confrontation, celebration process involves celebrating the devotion to daily effort as quantified in the covenant. When loyalty and adherence to the process are sufficiently encouraged, the major results will happen. If the deliberate, daily activities required to achieve larger results are not encouraged, and dwindle as a result, the larger outcomes will not be realized, except by coincidence.

Celebrations, large and small, must be meaningful if they’re to support and encourage ongoing loyalty to the cycle of success. As previously mentioned, the rewards must be appropriate and resonate with the emotional purpose upon which the team member’s personal and professional agendas are based. Cycles of success vary, depending on the depth and scope of the achievements being sought. Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual celebrations are based on successful adherence to the disciplines required to remain consistent with the covenant.

Without celebration, commitment and confrontation are meaningless. But, what should be celebrated? The cycle of success is predicated on the achievement and acquisition of the things team members have identified as the possessions, moments, and memories they seek most in their lives. Yet, celebration starts with the smallest achievements upon which the larger accomplishments are built. If commitment and constructive confrontation result in successful completion of the covenant, celebration is essential to renew the cycle.

For all but the rarest individual, completely meeting a challenge is a new experience for which he or she is not fully prepared. Armed with recognition for the team members’ successes, the team leader consistently and constructively confronts each team member as she or he guides the team member’s personal and professional growth—all of which were included in the original covenant with an eye toward reaching and exceeding personal and organizational objectives.

From celebration comes increased confidence and renewed commitment as the cycle begins anew. Each new cycle of success begins with a newly energized person as a result of how well the team leader facilitated the team member’s growth and development through the celebration stage. The ultimate cycle is fulfilled when the team member is able to step up and lead another person through the process of commitment, confrontation, and celebration.

Celebration, with its resonant rewards and recognitions, brings the cycle of success full circle and begins the cycle anew. The place and time to determine which rewards are most appropriate for the team member’s success are the same time and place to determine cycle schedules—the initial conversation, commitment, covenant stage.

Summarizing the Enterprise-Wide Solution

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. 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 in a constructive way to ensure progress and performance are what they should be. This means peer-to-peer 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.

One of the core concepts supervisors, managers, and executives need to learn is that appropriate action drives right thinking, not the other way around. Training, education, hype, and/or fear-mongering won’t produce high-performance over time. Even when eliminating hype, false promises, and fear-mongering 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.

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.