Recently, a leader I was advising was sorting out why her team’s engagement scores were low. She explained that her organization was going through a lot of change, staffing issues, and resistance to new policies and procedures driven by the parent company.
I sat in on a meeting where she unveiled the results to her team and repeated these “excuses” to her team as a way of deflecting personal responsibility and accountability for the lack of engagement.
I asked: what are the givens that you must work within?
Givens are defined as something taken as being true or factual and used as a starting point for a course of action. Givens represent the reality of the situation.
Her team’s reality: Change is necessary to grow. New policies are in place to help us set a strong foundation for the future. A slowdown in staffing reflects the current marketplace in which we must all pivot and adapt to and be creative with solutions.
As soon as the team began to make their rounds and communicate the engagement survey results to their employees, they did one thing differently. They made the givens clear: “As you absorb these results and together, we look at ways to improve, let’s first all be clear on what our givens are so that we don’t slip into complaining or agonizing over what we can’t control. So, if you are someone ready to collaborate and innovate within our givens – you are in the right place!”
You could feel the shift in the room and when it came time for Q & A, there was very little rehashing or complaining over what they can’t do anything about, and instead the creative juices starting to flow as team members recognized this could be a time to do some of their best work.
As leaders, we sometimes assume, everyone understands the givens – and they don’t always. Make them clear and erase the noise that can come with trying to move an immovable object.
