Examples Of How To Use CPS In The Workplace

A number of people I met with at the National Council conference in San Diego asked me for examples of how to use CPS in the workplace. They are provided below.


Step 1: Empathize with staff’s view of the situation and define the problem from their point of view. This step is complete when the manager has received explicit confirmation from staff that they have been heard.  


Here are are some examples of an opening neutral observation. Readers will be following the manger’s discussions with Mary, and Jim for the remainder of this article.

§         Mary, the next thing I’d like to talk about in supervision is an interaction we had last week. When we started talking about your sales targets for next year it seemed like you had a reaction to what I said. Could you fill me in a bit on how this conversation went for you?  <STOP. Let your staff member speak.>

§         Jim, I've noticed that you rarely drop by my office my office anymore to catch me up on what you are working on or to ask for my advice.  . <STOP. Let your staff member speak.  >

The technique of reflective listening was developed by Carl Rogers (1951, 1961), who established an evidence-based approach to counseling that was based called “person centered psychotherapy”. A core requirement of his counseling approach was for the counselor to demonstrate what he called “accurate empathy” through “reflective listening.” The examples below illustrate reflective listening in action in the context of work-related conflict.

§         Mary, I want to make sure I am understanding you correctly. What I hear you saying is that over the past two months I have been putting a lot of pressure on you to increase your sales and that my taking out the weekly sales figures to look at each time we get together is just making you anxious. It is not helping you figure out how to meet your sales targets. Is that accurate? <STOP. Listen.>

§         Jim, let me know if I’ve got this right. It seems that my promoting Bill surprised you and led to your feeling devalued and angry. You expected to be the one to move into the new position. You feel that my decision did not take into account all the hard work you have done for the department and that I play favorites. Is that a good summary of what you just said? <STOP. Listen.

Simple phrases, accompanied by eye contact and a slight lean forward, easily communicate reassurance:

§         Thanks, that’s helpful to know.

§         I’m not quite sure I’m understanding what you are saying accurately yet, so I’d like to ask you another question.

§         Ah, I think I’m beginning to understand.

§         I appreciate your restating that again for me. Thanks

Step 2: Define the problem from your point of view and wait to hear a validating response.

Here are some examples of Step 2, which build on the examples provided above.

§         Mary, my concern is that our department’s sales figures have not been meeting target for the past two quarters, yours included. I want to be helpful to you in figuring out what you can do to turn things around. During supervision I take out your sales figures so that we can monitor how our efforts are working. Having this data in front of me when I talk with my boss is useful to me and to her, but perhaps you are not finding this to be the case. <WAIT AND LISTEN FOR A VALIDATING RESPONSE.>

If the manager thought Mary could benefit from more direction, a couple of alternatives to the illustration above could have been “Is this making sense to you?” or “Could you feed back to me what you hear me saying? It is important to me to know that I have been communicating my viewpoint clearly.”

§         Jim, I am aware of all the time you put in on evenings and weekends to get the job done. I am also aware that you have been working here longer than Bill. I value your commitment to our company, our department, and to me. Deciding who this position should go to was a tough choice for me to make and I do believe you could have done the job. This was a situation where there were two qualified people and I had to chose the person I thought could do the job best at this point in time with the particular challenges we are facing today. I am concerned that the choice I made leaves you feeling devalued and that it seems to have hurt our relationship. I am used to us both feeling comfortable when we are working together. It does not feel that way to me now and that concerns me.

It would have been tempting for the manager to say, “you seem to be angry and upset” or “I am responding to your discomfort with me.” Both would be “you statements” as opposed to “I statements.” The problem with “you statements” is that they put the speaker in the position of telling the other person what he or she is feeling. The manager cannot know that. No one likes other people telling them what they are feeling. When they do that, we pull away from them and disengage from communication.

Step 3: Invite staff to work together on solving a jointly defined problem. Obtain agreement.

If a manager and staff have successfully completed the preceding steps, they are now ready to create an agreement that forms the basis for solving a problem, one that they jointly define. Step 3 is commonly initiated by a statement like this:

I think you have a good understanding of my point of view and I believe I now have a pretty good understanding of yours. We both have concerns. Yours are <restate staff members concerns> and mine are <restate the managers concerns>. How bout we put our heads together and find a solution for these concerns that works for both of us?

Note: stating the last sentence in the form of a question provides staff an opportunity to let the manager know whether or not they feel that they are ready to begin problem solving. Alternative wording, using the examples from above would be:

§         Mary, it seems that you and I view these reviews of your sales numbers quite differently. I would suggest we see if there isn’t some way to modify what we are currently doing, or find another way altogether to get to the same end goal of improving sales. Shall we do that?

§         Jim, it seems we have some repair work to do here. Do you agree?

Step 4: Negotiation And Problem Solving

There is not a stepwise road map to follow for this phase of CPS. Phase 2 does not lend itself to that kind of approach. The process is more circular than linear. The variations are endless. However, there are some general principles for you to follow.

1. Base your negotiation and problem solving activities on the specifics learned during Phase One.
2. Create an opportunity for your staff and/or you to develop or enhance interpersonal and other skills. Brainstorming potential solutions together represents a learning opportunity for both of you.
3. The solution should provide an opportunity for incremental learning. We generally learn new skills best when they are broken into bite size pieces.
4. Keep your solution(s) in your back pocket. Give your staff the first opportunity to propose a solution. Ideally,  the solution will be one that is arrived at collaboratively and does not “belong” to either individual.
5. Resist turning negotiation and problem solving into a process of determining who is at fault. The natural tendency in such dialogues is to drift towards assigning blame. Neither you nor your staff are immune from this tendency.
6. To the extent it is possible, frame your discussion of the problem at hand in such a way that the solutions you both arrive at and the problem solving skills your staff develops can be generalized to other situations.

Here are some examples of how negotiation and problem solving might go following these principles. The dialogue picks up where it left off, above. The manager has proposed

Mary: Yes, I’m really worn out by what we’ve been doing. I dread supervision and our endless discussion of my sales figures. To tell you the truth, I’ve been thinking about working somewhere else and have updated my resume. I’d rather not leave if I don’t have to. Until my sales took a nose dive, I liked working here and I liked working with you.

Manager: Then lets see if we can find an approach that is helpful to you. I want you to succeed. I’ve heard your concerns about the pressure you feel  from our weekly review of sales figures and you have heard my concerns about meeting our sales targets. What are your thoughts about how we can solve our dilemma?

Mary: Isn’t that your job to figure out?

Manager: No. It’s our job.

Mary: <Silence>

Manager: <Silence>

Mary: Hmmm. Well, maybe if I got the most recent sales figure before I came to supervision that would be helpful.

Manager: Sure, you could review them before hand. There would be no surprises. I like it,

Mary: And I could do my own analysis ahead of time. I wouldn’t be forced to have an instant answer about how I’m going to get everything fixed.

Manager: If I got the report to you at least two days before our weekly meeting would that work for you?

Mary: Yes.

Manager: And would it work even better for you if we met every other week rather than weekly? I do feel a need to stay on top of this situation, but perhaps I’m making matters worse by meeting with you so often.

Mary: That would be a lot better. Thanks. I had been thinking about that, but thought you’d never go for it. This is a pleasant surprise.

Jim: I’ve been in this position now for four years. The one that you just gave to Bill is the only one I saw as an opportunity for advancement. My wife is in a dead-end job too and we’ve got a second kid coming in March.

Manager: So, I’m hearing that in addition to your feeling devalued by my hiring choice, you’re feeling a lot of pressure to be earning more.

Jim: Yeah, that’s for sure.

Manager: That helps me understand the tension I’m feeling between us. Are you wanting to work on this together or are you thinking that working elsewhere might be a better option for you?

Jim: I’ve thought about that, but I’d rather have this job work out. I basically like working here.

Manager: You like working here, but need to see a path to advancement and increased earning. I had a tough choice to make and made it; I had no intent to devalue your work, though I understand how it felt that way to you.  Should we put our heads together and see what ideas we can come up with that address both of our concerns?

Jim: Hmmmm. I guess so.

Manager: What are you thinking might helpful?

Jim: I need to see a way for me to be making more money. Maybe in the short run it doesn’t have to be a new position. Is there some other way?

Manager: It occurs to me that there might an opportunity for you to do some special projects that are outside the scope of your current position. They could be done on weekends if you are open to that. But come to think of it, we have not reviewed your job description in quite awhile. It seems to me that there is a disconnect between your current level of responsibilities and what your job description says. If that is the case, company policy allows me to adjust your salary. If either of these approaches is possible, does it sound like a solution to you? Would you be feeling differently about working with me?

Jim: Yes and yes. Thanks.

Step 5: Trouble Shooting

When a manager is running into problems with Plan B, there are a number of common errors to consider as their cause. You think you are doing Plan B, but you are really doing Plan A. It is easy to dress up a Plan A approach to look like Plan B. Acting from a position of authority can be done quite subtly, so subtly that managers trick themselves into thinking they have worked the steps of Plan B, particularly the step that involves empathizing with their staff’s view of the situation. Perfunctory empathy is a common mistake, one that leads to a breakdown of the process. When staff have not been heard they simply will not engage in the other steps of Plan B.

Missing Steps or doing the Steps out of order are two additional common mistakes. Some of the scenarios presented above illustrate these problems in action. What managers do when they have figured this out is simple, they go back and work the steps again, this time in the right order.

When managers realizes that they have done the Steps out of order or missed a Steps, it is generally not a good idea to switch to Plan C. However, doing so should not be ruled out entirely. The following are criteria, all of which must be met, for switching to Plan C.

§         The conflict is not significant

§         It would be a lot of work to go back and redo the steps of Plan B

§         The manager has generated some good will through what has been done thus far to resolve the conflict

§         The manager can clearly state a rationale to staff for dropping the issue

§         The issue is not swept under the rug. Before it is dropped, the issue is clearly stated.

§         Staff agrees to dropping the issue for now

§         Dropping the issue does not penalize staff

Another common mistake in executing Plan B is the manager putting solutions on the table instead of concerns during Step 3. Many managers are apt to rush to solutions before hearing the concerns of others or stating their own. Managers are generally good problem solvers and this ability has a seductive tendency to lure managers of both sexes to get to the “good part” quickly. This will backfire. Managers can’t rush the process and expect to succeed. Managers need to be aware that difficult problems will likely require more than one discussion and that the complete Plan B process does not need to be completed in a single sitting. Finally, managers should realize that despite the best laid plans of Plan B, it is frequently an adventure. If the manager does a good job of empathic listening and detective work, additional concerns and issues may surface which may require more immediate attention than what the manager intended to discuss.

When Plan B is not working, the manager should also consider a number of personal factors that are independent of the manager’s execution of Plan B. It could be that either the manager or staff are under severe stress. Perhaps the manager is working with a staff member who is more comfortable with a Plan A approach than a Plan B approach. It is essential for managers to adapt their approach to the individual they are working with. 

Questions About Using CPS In The Workplace

I invite attendees at the National Conference to begin a dialog with me and their colleagues about using CPS in the workplace. Here are some questions that have been asked of me so far, and my responses.

Q: Managers have been dealing with challenging staff forever without CPS, often effectively. Why do we need CPS?  What has been wrong with what we've been doing?

A: The CPS philosophy informs us that the manager’s explanation of a staff’s behavior, attitude, etc. will guide his or her intervention with that staff member. Conventional wisdom tells the manager that staff’s challenging behavior is usually designed to get things or avoid things, such as getting attention or avoiding work. Flowing from a conventional explanation like this, a conventional response to such behavior would be to ignore it or try to motivate more compliant behavior. There certainly is a logic to conventional wisdom and some value to the conventional response if conventional explanations are correct. Staff generally do respond to consistent rewards and punishments and also to being ignored (which is a form of punishment). These approaches can work. They just don’t work as effectively in most situations as a transparent, systematic, and collaborative method of conflict resolution. And they definitely don’t tend to work in the most challenging of circumstances and can in fact be counterproductive.

Q: It sounds like CPS will take a lot of time to do. Is it really worth it?

The short answer is “yes, it is worth it.” There is an investment of time needed to execute Plan B properly, but the investment will pay itself back many times over. Problems that get buried or superficially dealt with keep on recurring. Each time they pop up the manager using a Plan A or Plan C approach may spend less time on them than when using a Plan B approach, but over the long run the time and energy spent on reoccurring problems add up.

Plan B consists of two phases. In the first phase, the manager and staff member form a collaborative relationship. They take turns working towards a mutual definition of their problem. This definition serves as the basis for entering into the second phase, which is negotiation and problem solving. The first phase generally takes a lot longer than the second. It’s a lot like painting a room in a house. To paint well, two-thirds of the time needs to be spent prepping. Only one-third of the time will actually be devoted to applying the paint. The same holds true for two people trying to solve a problem . It is the “prep work” that makes the difference between an effort that lasts and one that just buys a little time until the next conflict. Although the first phase of Plan B is broken into three steps, it is often necessary to go back and forth between steps to complete this prep work. Plan B should be thought of as a process, not a technique.

Q: What is the single most valuable benefit from using CPS?

A.  Step 1: Observe out loud. STOP. Listen. The beauty of Step 1 is that at least 50% of the time I do this step properly I find out that the feelings and perceptions that had led me to believe there was a problem were inaccurate. The work environments we work in are complex and our inner life is complex, so it is common, not rare, that managers will be missing an important piece of information or inaccurately read the intentions or emotions of a coworker. Doing Step 1 properly and finding out there is no problem to work on has saved me on many occasion from looking dumb and saved my staff the time and trouble of working through a conflict with me that would have proven itself to be non-existent.. By making a neutral statement of the situation and then shutting up so staff can speak, this affords the manager the opportunity to gather new information and to abort an unnecessary conflict resolution process before it even starts.

Q: What is the single biggest mistake I can make in putting CPS to use with my staff?

A: CPS may be simple to understand and relatively easy to execute, but there are no shortcuts. If you don’t do each step of Plan B and if you don’t do them in order, you will fail. I understand that you may not believe me when I make this statement. That’s natural. We all love shortcuts. At some point, for any number of reasons, you will take a shortcut and find out for yourself that your efforts are not succeeding. As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous: work the steps. Over the long run, Plan B takes less time than either Plan A or Plan C because it gets the job done. With Plan A or Plan C, it is more likely that the problem will be recurrent.

Q: For what kind of conflictual situations should I use CPS?

A: You are faced with a wide range of employees and a wide range of situations at work. Some staff and some conflictual situations are difficult, others are relatively easy. Even though CPS was designed for the more extreme circumstances, I use CPS almost every week in situations that are relatively tame with staff who are generally pretty easy to work with. If you save your CPS skills for only the most challenging situations and people you won’t get very good doing CPS. It takes a lot of practice. Furthermore, if you use CPS as your standard approach to conflict resolution, when you are faced with a difficult situation, you will be more skilled and prepared to deal with it. Your response pattern will be automatic and effective. 

Q:  Should I always use Plan B?

A: Tacked to the wall next to my office desk are the words to the Kenny Roger’s song, The Gambler:

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away and know when to run
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealing's done

These lyrics remind me that there is no one strategy that works in all situations. In some situations it will be Plan A. It some it may be Plan C.

Q:  Phase II of CPS (negotiation and problem solving ) sounds a little murky to me. Could you be more specific about how to do it?

A: I can not provide an easy to follow, stepwise roadmap for you to follow for this phase of CPS. Phase II does not lend itself to that kind of approach. The process is more circular than linear and the variations are endless. What I can do is provide general principles to follow and a few illustrations.

q     Base your negotiation and problem solving activities on the specifics learned during Phase One.

q     Create an opportunity for your staff and/or you to develop or enhance interpersonal and other skills. The solution represents a learning opportunity for both of you.

q     The solution should provide an opportunity for incremental learning. We generally learn new skills best when they are broken into bite size pieces.

q     Keep your solution(s) in your back pocket. Give your staff the first opportunity to propose a solution. If your staff has a better or equally good solution, go with their solution, not yours.

q     Resist turning negotiation and problem solving into a process of determining who is at fault. Just as gravity pulls fruit downward from the tree when it separates from the limb, the natural tendency in such dialogues is to drift towards assigning blame. Neither you nor your staff are immune from this tendency. The best you can do is to be aware of it, consciously try to avoid it, and when if happens anyway, recognize this has happened and pull out of the dive.

q     A satisfactory solution is any solution that you and your staff agree is both realistic and mutually satisfactory. The test of whether you are ready to conclude that you have arrived at a solution is that what you are ready to agree to meets both of these criteria.

q     To the extent it is possible, frame your discussion of the problem at hand in such a way that the solutions you both arrive at and the new problem solving skills your staff develops can be generalized to other situations.

Upcoming Presentation re: using Collaborative Problem Solving In The Workplace

I will be hosting a poster session in San Diego on the afternoon of Tuesday May 3 at the annual conference of the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare.

Here is an abstract of the presentation.  Note: at this presentation I will be inviting those who have seen the poster or attended the presentation to continue a dialog with me about this subject through this blog.

Resolving Staff – Manager Conflict

Collaborative Problem Solving: An Effective Approach For Managing Conflict In The Workplace

Seth Bernstein, Ph.D.

     

There is no way to avoid conflict. Conflict is inherent to human relationships, whether they are relationships at home, with friends, or on the job. Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) is a method of conflict resolution that was originally developed for working with very difficult children. It was designed to teach parents, teachers, and mental health professionals how to work together with challenging kids to solve problems in mutually satisfactory ways. However, CPS is not just for kids. It can be adapted for use in helping managers to work effectively with their staff when, inevitably, conflict arises. The core of CPS is “Plan B,” a multi-step process for working through conflict. At the end of a successfully executed Plan B a manger can say to him or herself, “we worked it out. We solved the problem…..together.” This poster sessions describes the conceptual underpinnings of CPS and how to execute Plan B. 

What subjects does the "The Psychology of Management" address?

Here is the table of contents as of 2/20/2011:

 1.    Being A Manager

(a)    Introduction

(b)   My Motivation For Writing This Book

(c)    My Background

(d)   The Organization Of This Book

(e)    Writing Conventions

 2.    Key Issues In The Manager’s Relationships With Staff

(a)    Business Relationships vs. Social relationships

(b)   Power and Control

(c)    Secrecy

(d)   Is Friendship Possible?

(e)    Romantic and Sexual Relationships

(f)     Conflict

(g)    Cultural Differences

(h)    The Psychological Meaning Of Work

 3.    The Psychological Meaning Of Work

 4.    Key Psychological Concepts and Theories

(a)    Schemas

(b)   Cognitive Dissonance

(c)    Family Systems

(d)    Unconscious thoughts and feelings

 5.    Transference

(a)    Staff Transference

(b)   Manager Transference

(c)    How To Detect and Respond To Transference

 6.    Managing Conflict

(a)    The CPS Philosophy

(b)   The CPS Approach To Managing Conflict

(c)    Plan B

 7.    Supervision

(a)    Just Listen

(b)   Set Expectations

(c)    Establish A Process

(d)   Mutually Create A Formal Process For Doing Supervision

(e)    Adopt A Style Of Supervision That Is Adapted To The Individual You Are Working With

(f)     Individualized Style Of Supervision

(g)    Provide Feedback and Get Feedback

(h)    Expect Emotion

(i)      Challenging Staff and Bad Apples

(j)     Growth and Limitations

 8.    Facilitating Change

(a)    Readiness principles

(b)    Building on strengths

(c)    Individual change

(d)   Organizational change

 9.    Leadership

(a)    Being Visible

(b)   Being Available

 i.       Access to you

 ii.     Go to them – wander around..to their workspace

 iii.    Provide Ad Hoc Supervision When Needed<To Address Urgent Performance Issues

(c)    Being A Model

(d)   Leadership Style

 10.Mental Illness and Chemical Dependency In The Workplace

(a)    When Your Staff Is Experiencing A Mental Illness

(b)   What Is Mental Illness?

(c)    Have A Philosophy And A Policy

(d)   Having A Conversation

(e)    When Your Staff Are Showing Signs Of Having A Chemical Dependency Problem

 11.The Emotional Challenges Of Being A Manager

 12.Job Satisfaction

Why I created this blog.

I have written a book, still to be published, titled "The Psychology of Management." This blog is a vehicle for discussing the ideas contained in the book with its potential audience prior to publication. My hope is that through this dialog, I will become a better communicator and that the readers of this blog will learn something of value. I anticipate reader feedback leading to improvements in my book prior to publication. I want "The Psychology of Management" to be of practical use to those who read it.