The Cost of Teams That Implode

Following on from my previous blogg on conflict I wanted to write briefly about the cost of serious conflict within teams, in particular, teams that daily work together.

There are 2 specific categories of costs to teams. They are tangible and intangible costs. Let's start with the intangable.

Intangable Costs:

It is difficult to put a dollar figure on how much this costs a business in loss of productivity. I am talking about the emotional distress, headaches, ulcers, psych-somatic disorders that are directly related to the bitching, backstabbing and badmouthing that are symptomatic of a team that is imploding. Of the 2 costs mentioned my guess-timate is that the intangable elements cost an organisation far more in company dollars than the tangable & measurable costs of conflict.

The hurt and grief staff can carry around daily brought on by those they work with and the cascading effect passed onto other staff, not directly linked to the problem, create a compounding impact on the organisation as a whole.

All this stemming from 1 instance of continuing, unchastened, & poorly managed conflcit between team members. One common result is the decision of staff directly involved to limit their descretionary work effort to a minimal level, if existant at all. A loss of attitude among staff to "go the extra mile". Resulting in a minimalist approach to work, and the effort required to meet KPI's and deadlines.

Tangable Costs

These are the measureable costs. To the Financial Controller or the Line Manager, it's these costs they understand. They are able to currently monitor the direct loss of productivity or draw on the past cost of what unaddressed team conflict can cause to the business, literally in dollars.

Tangables like stress leave, absenteeisim, personal grievances, drop in productivity, loss of contracts due to poor service, health & safety. How much will you lose in dollars if you do not address the issues staff are having? Grab your calculator and add it all up and then add an additional 50% of that cost again, and still you will fall short of the actual cost of not effectively dealing with team conflict, bullying, bad-mouthing and backstabbing amongst team members.

The Solution

The combined cost of staff conflict is unacceptable to an organisation who wants to be a high performing entity. The combined loss of dollars and staff is well in excess of an accountants ability to move the decimal point further & further to the left followed by ever growing zero's. The solution will cost you dollars - but a small fraction of what the long term cost would be if you had not chosen to right the wrongs within a team.

The solution requires the following 4 steps, assuming you want to truely right the problem:

1. Individual Scoping & Team Diagnosis


2. Team Awareness of the Current Health Status & Committing to the Way Ahead


3. Individual 1:1 Coaching to Team Commitment


4. Team Review and Update of Future Agreement for Continued Synergy

This approach will take as many as 5-7 days spread over a 4-6 week period. Consistantly this approach resolves longterm conflict. Conflict that has been ingrained and fed a negative culture for years, has been resolved consistantly using this approach. Few Organisations in my opinion are truely committed to righting the inter-personal conflict that occurs in some teams and surrender to a quick-fix money saving approach rather than a "tried & proven approach" that gives lasting results.

If that's what you're looking for and you truely want a lasting approach to resolving a teams sabotaging behaviours then lets talk.

Factors For Team Conflict

Just as a Doctor is able to diagnose whether a person is healthy or not, based on an examination and a few strategic questions of the patient. I also, am able to identify the health of a team or determine the degree to which it is unhealthy, and what is required to bring it back to good health and high performance.

If you've ever wondered what you could expect to see in a team that is unhealthy. How they interact with each other at work, or in a sporting arena? I've listed only a dozen examples I've learnt over many years of successfully identifying the negative characteristics of Team low performance and how to effectively bring them back, to a new level of performance, team synergy & productivity.

The 12 Unhealthy Team Symptoms are:

• Blame Culture


• Meeting Avoidance


• Lack of Peer to Peer Respect


• Undermining Chain of Command


• Rumor Mongering


• Confrontational Communication


• Resistance to Change


• High Staff Attrition Rate


• High Staff Stress Leave


• Patch Protection


• "Us & Them" Culture


• Lack of Contribution to Team Problem Solving

...and, just for added values sake, here's another 3 for you...

• A "Me" rather than a "We" attitude


• Sabotaging of Previous Attempts to Correct the Team Problem


• Yelling at Each Other in Staff Meetings

Now... put all these pieces together, add people, stir for awhile (oh, they'll do that anyway!) allow nothing to be done to correct this till the late stages of "...I've had enough of this!" develops & sets in, and you have the perfect recipe for a team to successfully - self destruct!

Awesome how we can do this to each other and even sadder how common this is in the business world. Can it be rectified? Is it possible to recover from this? Can people heal their wounds and rise above the history they have between each other?

The answer is a resounding - YES!

Sure, it takes a special process and skill sets to successful bring the team through the difficulties they have with one another. It also takes a level of commitment from those in care of the team to be willing to commit to a long term solution and not a "quick-fix" which is so often the case.

If you recognise the symptoms as being present in your team, then the best thing to do is contact me, assuming you want positive change. In fact, to save you time, don't contact me unless you are committed to wanting the situation righted! The reason why I say that is because I am not willing to be another failed attempt that can be added to the teams list of "...we've tried this before!"

The diagnosis is this. The team can regain perfect health and back to working productively quickly and effectively. The question I have for you is "...are you willing to do what is necessary for the team to regain good health?"

I guess that is the question all General Practitioners ask of their patients "...are you willing to do what's necessary to recover from your ill health?" If you are - contact me.

email: col@ignition.org.nz

The Difference Between NS & NLP

The above title pretty much addresses what this section is about. It's a question that I am asked often by those who have heard about or been trained in NLP.

The question is: "What is the difference between Neuro Semantics and NLP?..." or a similar question asked of me "...Isn't NS & NLP the same thing?..."I'm going to outline some my response in brief.

This response is in no way a definitive and comprehensive reply, nor is my answer necessarily aligned with that of the International Society of Neuro Semantics (ISNS). This is specifically "my" reply to the question - "What's the difference between NS & NLP?"I'll assume that you are familiar with Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) or have been introduced to Neuro Semantics (NS).

If you have not been introduced to NS then email me and I'll send you the dates of our New Zealand, NS Trainings or contact details of NS Trainers who are delivering training in your part of the world.

The Differences.
Firstly, if the question is about differences then it wouldn't make sense I reply with the similarities between the 2 models. So I will focus on the differences, after all it is the differences that truly can make the difference!

1: NLP was founded in the mid 1970's by Richard Bandler & John Grinder of the USA. NS was founded in 1994 by Dr. Michael L. Hall and Bob Bodenhammer from the USA and has continued to grow from there.

2: NLP does not have the Meta-States model which is the 4th Meta domain.

3: NLP does not have or make reference to the key principle of the Meta-States model which is "Self-Reflexive Consciousness". This is a major difference that makes a substantial difference.

4: NLP has liner modelling processes. While having linear modelling capability NS also has systemic and recursive modelling process of one's subjective reality, which NLP does not.

5: NS has the following models: Meta-States, The 7 Matrices, Mindlines, The extended Meta-Model, Extended Meta-Programs, Self Actualising Psychology, Axis of Change, Behavioural Benchmarking, Meta-Coach Framework. NLP does not.

6: NS was originally formed from integrating the field of General Semantics and NLP which resulted in having neither of these 2 fields but a new gestalt now known as Neuro Semantics.

7: NS has taken from NLP what works and left behind what does not, and has done this with numerous other models like:

Cybernetics, Family therapy, Sports Coaching, Systems thinking, Cognitive behavioural psychology, Social Psychology, REMT and Transactional Therapy, Gestalt therapy, Linguistics, Social & Emotional Intelligence, Accelerated Learning and the Human Potential Movement etc...

From these and many others, NS has integrated and remodelled them to create new or updated models for achieving personal excellence that do not exist in NLP

8: NS has a single Global Community (ISNS) and NS Institutes on all Continents of the planet. NS is overseen by an NS Guardian Group which supports the NS mission & vision and its future direction globally. Whereas NLP has a number of splintered organisations globally and lacks a single unified voice for it's affiliates.

9: NS has patterns (NLP known as interventions) that can be mixed and matched in many ways to create an unlimited resource of strategies to generate personal change that do not exist in NLP.

10: Finally, for those with some knowledge of NLP, the Meta-Sates model is not "...simply a collapsing anchors technique..." Meta-states is more than collapsing a state with a state. There are 2 other parts that need to be understood. Coalescing of states and the emergent gestalt state needs to be understood as defining the Meta-States model from the NLP technique of collapsing anchors.

It's these and subtle, yet critical components that I've briefly outlined that contributes to making the difference that sets NS distinctly apart from the earlier field of NLP.

Within the NS Community there are those who have merged the 2 fields as 1 (NS-NLP). There are also those, like myself that consider NS as a distant relative of NLP (as NS is of many other modalities) but distinctly a field unto itself. (As I mentioned these are my own thoughts only)

My apologies to those of you who wanted a more specific & detailed writing on this topic.

You can download thousands of pages from the ISNS website : http://www.runyourownbrain.com/ or visit http://www.ignition.org.nz/ to read articles written by my friend and college Dr. Michael Hall. I'm sure, if you are wanting more background and detail, there is plenty there to flick through.

If you want to know more about NS and how it can enhance you business, career, sporting performance, coaching & training. Email me: col@ignition.org.nz - bye for now.

The Golden Rule

When asked to assist in realigning a team that has either minor or a major conflict within it, one of the most common requests is for those in the team to be willing to apply the "Golden Rule". This is one of the key rules of engagement that they wish to use as a guiding principle to begin to be more engaged positively with one another and get back to being a team, achieving the primary purpose they were formed for. This could be to win a national title, as in a sports team or to maximise their productivity, as a corporate team.

The golden rule (GR) is the rule that states, and in my own words, "...to treat others as you would like to be treated yourself...". This rule appears in one form or another across numerous cultures and religions on our planet. It has been around for many thousands of years, and in my own opinion, is as relevant today, as it was way back then.

In working with this rule as a facilitator, I have found the GR requires a number of considerations that need to be present to make it work effectively resolving how a team will use it to modify the way they interact with each other in a new and more empowering way, hopefully!

For the GR to work these are a few of the principles that I use to integrate it successfully:

The assumption the the GR has is, we assume that we both would like to be treated in the same manner. What I have found is no 2 people wish to be treated necessarily the same way as each other in the same situation. Nor do 2 or more people have an understanding of how each of them wish to be treated, at least not without prior agreement.

Initially for the GR to work we need to have a clear understanding of how each of us like to be treated. Otherwise we are at best, guessing for the other person and impossing our own model of the world on them. If you wish to avoid this, and make the GR stick, use these 3 stages to begin the realignment of the team to begin honoring the GR

Stage 1: Understand: Initially what I suggest is a slight change to the GR, which would read "...let me understand how you would like to be treated so I can begin to treat you that way..." This will require you to each share specifics on how you wish to be treated. It requires you to get to know one another. For some in the corporate sector, suprisingly, getting to know each other is a new concept! But know each other we must for the GR to begin to work.

Stage 2: Empathy: Develop and grow empathy towards the other person. Once we begin to get to know the person we can then begin to get a sense of, and an understanding of, what they like and do not like. This allows us to bridge the gap between what I like and they like. This is the ME - YOU model of relationship building. (more about that model in later writings).

While developing empathy for how others think & feel you can also draw into focus a touch of acceptance and allow that to grow also. Begin to accept that others are different from you, and may not wish to be treated in the "same" way as you do. Once you have a description and agreement between each of those involved you can then monitor progress and adapt as required to fine tune the GR's effectiveness for the team.

Stage 3: Contrast Analysis: Ask the question "How do I like to be treated and how do they like to be treated?" Notice the differences between the 2 mindsets (ME & YOU) and meet them with their needs not yours in a specific context you face together.

Example: The GR can go astray in this instance. When I have a different way of wanting to be treated than you. i.e. I like to be confronted face to face if any of my team members has a problem with me, and I will confront others who I have a problem with be, face to face!

This may work well for the one who likes to confront the other and do exactly the opposite for the person who prefers to take time and discuss the problem with others or thinks that a face to face meeting, when a problem arises, without a mediator present, is a highly confrontational situation and will further escalate the problem between the 2 team members!

Hopefully you get my point. The GR requires some intermediary stages before a team can take on the original meaning of "...to treat others as you would like to treated..." to do this successfully requires a close realtionship with many components present to make it a truley Golden Rule.

To know more about how to facilitate conflict between team members and apply the golden rule with a team setting, contact me directly.

email: col@ignition.org.nz

Late Beginnings

I woke up this morning & decided it was time to begin what has been a late start for me, to write for and begin this blogg. A place where I'll share my thoughts and life's happenings on a regular basis. I'll cover everything from my professional world as a Trainer, Presenter, Keynote Speaker, Performance Coach & Neuro Semantic Master Trainer.

I intend on writing about those thoughts that somehow have remained stuck in my mind at the end of the day or woke me up early in the morning, as is often the case. Those thoughts that have in some way, moved me enough to present it here in this forum.

If you have met me in a professional context, then this will be the place where I hope you'll get to know the personal side of the presenters persona. The face that you don't really meet when our paths cross in the business world. This will be challenging for me. It'll require me to be more conscious of what I want to share with you and what I have, that I believe, will positively contribute to those who read this blogg.


Who Will Benefit From Reading and Visiting this Blogg?

Well... if you are wanting to know success principles and are a wanna-be-success magnet at heart, a business leader, trainer, coach and presenter, and have a real interest in personal development in every aspect of your life. You'll do well here at this Blogg!

Over the years, and having meet thousands of people through many presentations and trainings. I have been asked "How did you get to be where you are now?" ... or... "What are you currently reading or exploring now to enhance your professional career?" I'll answer these queries on a regular basis and also invite you to ask more of me in the hope that I can provide an adequate answer for you. In doing so, your feedback or questions will bring real value to this blogg and it's readership.

Save this Blogg in your web browser. Visit often, and drop me a line when you can.

It's been a late beginning, but a beginning all the same to get this Blogg underway. I look forward to sharing the journey with you. Let's begin. . .