Facilitating Safe Environments
And Improving Organizational Health
The Situation
Lin Lines is a group, corporate and private transportation company located in Palm Springs, California. During COVID the entire industry was on hold, and 50% of operators went out of business. Those that survived, like Lin Lines, shot out of COVID with high demand due to fewer operators and travel backpressure. This led to some quick hires, role clarity shortcomings and process issues which ultimately created dysfunctional group dynamics among department heads. Symptoms ranged from a wide variety of passive aggressive behaviors to high turnover in the company. The company had hit a ceiling with the issues and had to address and solve the dysfunction in order to continue to grow and gain traction.
Research & Prework
- Understanding of family systems
- Understanding of trauma and how that affects individual and group health
- Neuroscience and what is happening in the brain when we become triggered
- How trauma creates maladaptive coping mechanisms and creates healthy and unhealthy approaches to conflict and problem solving
- Read and learn various openers, exercises and closers
- Join the Authentic Revolution community, and take the “How to have difficult conversations” online training
- Plan a progression of various openers, exercises and closers increasing in engagement over a six-week period
Key Facilitation Solution
Meet :30 to 1 hour ahead of a weekly departmental meeting and engage in a wide variety of facilitative openers, exercises and closers to promote group trust and overall team health.
Examples of Openers & Closers
- 2 Truths & A Lie
- Picture from Childhood
- Best Day Ever
- One Word Feeling (about today)
- Appreciation Cape
Teach
The team was educated on several foundational basics in having difficult conversations and how to find common ground including:
- Interests vs. Positions
- I: You: We
- Same Team Mentality
Exercise 1: Prison Break
In an experiential way, this exercise shows how difficult it is to listen and follow directions in an controlled environment. It translates to greater empathy and understanding in the workplace for others.
Session Set Up
- Purchase a 80-piece Mega-Blok large lego set.
- Set up 2 chairs back to back.
- Split the lego set into 40 and 40, ensuring that each person has identical “pairs” of legos.
- The scenario is that you have just been unfairly sentenced to life in prison, and you need to work with your partner (back to back) through verbal communication to build a “key” to get out.
- One person starts building a structure explaining what legos are going where. The other person listens and attempts to build the same structure.
- Do the exercise first with one-way communication. Meaning, the other person can not ask any questions.
- Once done, reveal the structures to see if they are exact or how close they are to being exact.
- Process the experience with the group facilitating a discussion around how this applies to what and what we do on a day-to-day at work.
- Repeat the exercise with 2 new people, and allow for two-way communication in building the key.
- Process the experience with the group facilitating leading a discussion around how this applies to business and the difference between one way and two-way communication.
Key Insights
The team really saw and understood how when one person thought they were communicating clearly, the “data” wasn’t necessarily being understood in the same way. What was common sense to one, was potentially confusing to another. The second time around is always better, and the two-way communication always helps. It exemplifies the need to be more intentional in how we communicate with team members, and created greater understanding and empathy for others.
Exercise 2: Paid Consultant
Department heads had the need to have an open, honest and difficult about one of the departments with the head of that department in the room.
To get a little distance and objectivity from the content and emotions of the situation, we viewed the issues as “Consultants” not employees of the company.
Session Set-Up:
- Purchase inexpensive birthday hats
- Arrived early, set up the room, and had music playing - creating some atmosphere.
- Prior to the session, I created and listed the following pop-up rules on the whiteboard:
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- We are consultants, not employees for the company:
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- Be intentional in how you show up today
- We are the same team, consider all perspectives and be intentional how we use I, you and we statements.
- Watch for triggers, stuck thinking
- Be tough on issues, not people
- Be open and honest
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- We “De-role-ed” members individually as employees and “role-ed” then as consultants by putting on the hat. The hats were a fun way to make light of the situation and not take ourselves so seriously.
- We brainstormed and identified about 30 issues. Did a keep, kill or combine sweep and got down to about 20 issues, then started discussing and solving them and assigning to-dos. We knocked out 25% of them, and will do another 2 hour block next week for the remaining.
- At the end, we “de-role-ed” as consultants and “re-role-ed” as employees.
- As a closer, we did an “Appreciation Cape” on a large sticky for the department head of the department we were discussing and read it to her. She actually cried with appreciation.
Key Insights
The exercise fully met our primary objective of having a really hard conversation in a positive and constructive manner. It also provided multiple perspectives to issues, insight on how issues affect other departments, and everyone cared for each other really well. Trust and health within the group was substantially raised.
Results
In as little as four weekly sessions, trust, empathy and group health was was substantially improved. Team members also had greater understanding and awareness of healthy and unhealthy group dynamics and how it was effecting the team. Group productivity and collaboration is an all time high.
Competencies
IAF Checklist
A, B, C, D, E, F
Bonus Blessing
The employees on the team now have greater opportunity within the organization to advance and have been provided a path to greater leadership opportunities, income and accountability. The enhance team performance will lead to greater profits for the company.
