Why Are You People Here?
So, we’re starting our standard IOpt debrief session (it’s all about how you process information and “its” impact) with a new client and are presenting to a room full of new faces. Of course we know a little bit about them because we have insight to their individual and group information processing dynamics based upon their survey results. Then it happens, a moment we live for, a challenger surfaces from the sea of faces. The person we’ve identified as our highly committed logical processor (structured and action oriented) asks boldly, “Why are you people here? I just received an email from the big cheese stating that 15% needs to be trimmed from the budget. Why are we paying you to be here?” There was that nervous laughter and secret joy at calling out the interfering outsiders. We first deferred to the manager who quite eloquently explained that the powers that be recognized the need to invest in folks if they were going to need to do things differently (no surprise in our current economy). We further explained that we were providing organizational grease in order to reduce friction. We further invited our challenger and any other person to keep a skeptical yet open mind and then let us have it at the end of the session – the good, the bad and the ugly.
We ask him and the others to bear with us because we think once we go through our presentation he might understand more completely, and he does. They all do.
He realized that the way he was presenting himself to co-workers had a lot to do with their perception of him and that learning how to better adapt to others processing structures, using slightly different language would change others perception of his “poor” attitude and negativity (as evidenced by his earlier rather blunt question.) Upon finishing the presentation our challenger commented, “This was great. I see how I’m part of the problem.” He called a day later to thank us and further explore what he had learned.
