by Roger Fisher
TABLE 10
COMMON TEMPORARY ROLES
Talker Victim
Listener Aggressor
Devil’s advocate Problem solver
Collaborator Colleague
Competitor Informal mediator
Accommodator Facilitator
Compromiser Host
“Joker” Guest
Learner Evaluator
Brainstormer Option generator
Advocate Advisor
In this situation, Nancy and Jim have a different expectation about the temporary role Jim should play. Nancy wants him to play the role of listener, whereas he automatically falls into the role of problem solver. While no role is inherently “wrong,” some are generally more fulfilling than others.
As Nancy becomes aware of their conflicting expectations, she might suggest that Jim play a more helpful role. In a supportive tone, she might say, “I appreciate your wanting to make sure that I’m okay at work. Right now, I think I really need you as a listener. Would you be willing to do that for a few minutes, and then I’d love to get your advice on how to deal with this situation?”
Or Jim might note that Nancy is getting upset and realize that his role as problem solver does not suit Nancy’s needs right now. He adopts the role of listener. It matches his desire to support her. To change roles, he demonstrates to Nancy and himself that he is now a listener: “Tell me more about your day. It sounds frustrating.” She talks. He listens. Within a minute, the emotional tone of their conversation lightens. They now can support one another rather than needlessly fight.
As with Jim and Nancy, you might find it helpful to consider temporary roles that you habitually play at work and at home. Are they helpful? It takes years of education to legitimately assume the role of surgeon or lawyer, but you can adopt helpful temporary roles starting right now.
Appreciate the Temporary Roles That Others Play
At any given moment, we may fail to appreciate how another person views his or her temporary role. This lack of appreciation can generate frustration and confusion. Dan remembers such an instance in which views about roles were badly misaligned.
“Jane,” a student of mine, arrived late for a job interview with a consulting firm. She was rarely late. Today was an exception, and she worried about how to explain her tardiness to her interviewer. Upon arriving at the firm, she was directed by a secretary to a conference room and hurried down the hallway.
She was happily surprised to discover that “Melissa,” the interviewer, was a former graduate school classmate with whom she had worked on several school assignments.
Jane said with a laugh, “Melissa! It’s so good to see you! Sorry I’m late. You know how crazy things can be this time of year!”
Melissa’s response was distant and professional: “Let’s get started.”
Jane was startled by the coldness of the response. Was Melissa upset at her tardiness? What should she say now? Should she apologize again? Would that make her seem obsequious and unassertive? Thoughts barraged her mind, and for the remainder of the interview she struggled to concentrate.
Jane was not surprised when, two days later, she received an e-mail message from Melissa turning her down for the job.
Jane’s fatal faux pas was in treating Melissa as a friend and fellow classmate, while Melissa expected to be treated as an impartial evaluator. Each acted on a differing assumption about Melissa’s role. In fact, a few weeks after her interview, Jane learned from a friend at the consulting firm that her initial comments were looked upon as an informality to which she was not entitled. That perceived disrespect cost her a job offer.
Jane would have been wise to consider how Melissa saw her own role. From Melissa’s point of view, she was an interviewer, and Jane’s primary role was applicant for a job, not fellow classmate or friend. To avoid appearing presumptuous, Jane might have recognized the merit in Melissa’s perspective:
First, thank you for scheduling an interview. I am sorry to be late. My flight from Boston arrived more than an hour after the scheduled time, and the traffic was terrible. I am ready to start, and I will try to do as well as I can in whatever time is available now. Or, if you prefer, we could meet at another time.
Rather than having Jane assume that she would get special treatment as a friend, she could have initiated dialogue demonstrating her appreciation of Melissa’s formal role, saying, “Given the circumstances, I will gladly follow your lead on how formal you want this interview to be.” If Jane initially overstepped her role, she could have apologized and then recognized Melissa’s formal role.
The moral of this story is to appreciate how the other person sees his or her role. This is especially important if you share multiple roles with someone. Otherwise, you may surprise the other by saying or doing something that fails to meet his or her expectations.
Suggest a Temporary Role for Them
Formal roles can handicap our ability to speak openly. By suggesting that we interact on an “informal basis,” we can expand our freedom to share ideas and change the level of trust between us. This is a lesson learned in an important set of negotiations forged by Lord Caradon, the British Ambassador to the United Nations.
In 1967, Lord Caradon was working to persuade the fifteen member countries of the Security Council to support UN Resolution 242. This resolution offered a framework to settle many of the big issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He calculated that if the vote were to be taken immediately, many of the Security Council members would approve the resolution. But in order for the resolution to have the best practical chance of being implemented, he needed a yes from one of the main nonsupporters: the Soviet Union.
Soon before the vote on Resolution 242, the Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Kuznetsov met in a private room with Lord Caradon. He requested that Caradon postpone the vote on the British resolution for two days. Caradon hesitated, fearing that the Soviet Union might use that time to its advantage to revive a competing resolution.
But then Kuznetsov surprised Lord Caradon. He made it clear that the request was not coming from his government, but from himself personally: “I am not sure that you fully understood what I was saying to you. I am personally asking you for two days.”
This unusual request changed the decision facing Lord Caradon. He knew Kuznetsov, respected him, and trusted that he would do nothing that would hurt their relationship. He also realized that Kuznetsov might personally like more time to try to persuade the Soviet government to change their opinion. Caradon simply said, “Thank you. The two days are yours.” He walked back to the Council chamber and announced a two-day postponement on the vote.
Two days later, the Resolution came up for a vote. The first hand raised in support of Resolution 242 was that of Deputy Foreign Minister Kuznetzov of the Soviet Union. Applause broke out in the crowded gallery of the UN chamber as the resolution was unanimously adopted.
Kuznetsov’s personal request to Lord Caradon established a more fulfilling role for each of them. Kuznetsov recognized that in the circumstances then existing, it could be difficult for a British Ambassador, on behalf of the British government, to speak candidly to an official representative of the Soviet government—a government that was opposed to Resolution 242. By shifting their roles from “advocates” of their own country to informal, trusted “colleagues,” it became easier to talk freely and to work side by side.
The shift to informal roles also allowed the two men to benefit from their personal trust for one another. By taking on the role of friend and colleague, Kuznetsov implied that he would use the additional time not to damage Lord Caradon or the prospects of Resolution 242, but rather to attempt to persuade his own government. Lor
d Caradon’s acceptance of the personal request indicated his faith in Kuznetsov’s intentions. The actions these two diplomats took in their informal capacity facilitated the successful vote on the UN resolution.
A CAVEAT: ROLES ARE NOT JUST “THEIR PROBLEM”
The big message of this chapter is that you have great freedom to shape a fulfilling role for yourself and others. Yet most of us do not use that freedom to the extent we could. Sometimes, we simply fail to take the initiative to expand our role. At other times, anger may jumble our thinking and cause us to play a role that serves little purpose for us or others.
Roger remembers such a time when a co-pilot’s own anger jumbled his ability to act effectively in his role. Roger was a second lieutenant meteorologist in the U.S. Army Air Corps flying as a weather reconnaissance observer from Goose Bay, Labrador, to Meeks Field, Iceland. One winter day, their four engine B-17 plane, with plenty of gas aboard, was flying at about 10,000 feet. The weather was remarkably clear without a cloud in the sky, and the pilot was bored:
To provide the crew with a little excitement, he quietly cut off the number one engine (the far left) and feathered the propeller. While the B-17 could easily fly on three engines, we were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The nearest airfield, in Greenland, was closed with low clouds, and Iceland was hours away.
The fear among the crew on seeing one dead engine was so satisfying to our hotshot pilot that, just for a lark, he cut off and feathered the other three engines. There was total silence in the plane as it started to glide toward the icy North Atlantic.
Having scared the wits out of the crew, the pilot turned on some switches and pressed buttons to unfeather the propellers and start the engines. Nothing happened. Only then did the pilot and co-pilot remember that to unfeather the propellers and start an engine, the plane had to have electric power. And it now had none. The whole plane was dead. Even at an airport on the ground, external power is required to start a plane’s engines.
On our long glide toward the ice-cold ocean, we heard the copilot tell the pilot, “Boy oh boy. Have you got a problem!”
Here, we see that the co-pilot likely felt conflicting roles (and a lot of frustration). As co-pilot, he had a responsibility to ensure the safety of the plane and passengers. As victim of a practical joke, he knew the pilot had created the problem and assumed it was the pilot’s job to fix it. As human being, he had an interest in survival. In anger, he reacted automatically and played the role of victim. If it were not for a young sergeant on board who expanded his own role, Roger might not have lived to tell the story:
We had on board a flight engineer, a sergeant who was to do some work on the plane when we got to Iceland. Fortunately, he remembered that we had a “putt-putt generator” on board that we could use to start the engines if we ever had to land on an emergency airstrip in Northern Greenland where there was no airbase or ground power.
Nothing made it the sergeant’s job to do anything on the plane when it was flying. But he remembered the generator. Ran back. Found it. Wrapped a rope around the flywheel and pulled it several times. Fiddled with the carburetor. Wrapped the rope again and pulled it hard, this time starting the putt-putt generator. He connected the wires to the plane’s system, and we had power. We had fallen only about a mile toward the ocean when the pilot got one engine going, and then all four.
We arrived in Iceland alive, relieved, and shaking our heads in disbelief at the pilot’s conduct.
Unlike the co-pilot, who clearly thought it was the pilot’s job to solve the problem, the flight engineer took the initiative and got electric power to the pilot, who could then restart the engines. Nowhere was it written in the flight engineer’s conventional role that he was supposed to work on the plane while it was in the air. But he did.
REVISITING THE PERFORMANCE REVIEW
In this final section of the chapter, we revisit Ryan, the employee who consulted Dan about his upcoming performance review. What follows is a rough version of Dan’s advice to Ryan. Because the core concern for a fulfilling role often intertwines with the other core concerns, we discuss advice to deal with each of the five concerns:
Role
Let’s start by thinking about advice to improve Ryan’s conventional role and his temporary roles.
Conventional role. He takes his conventional role in the organization as a given. He passively accepts the expectations of his current job such as to write memos, to work with clients, and to stay late to finish projects. He enjoys many parts of his job, but it is not as fulfilling as he would like it to be. He wants to gain leadership experience within the organization. He wants to spend more time with his family. And he also enjoys sports, but finds little time to play them because of his many commitments.
Rather than passively accepting his conventional role, Ryan might try to incorporate new activities into it. He could discuss with his boss ways to improve his role to make it more meaningful for him and for the organization. He might say, “One of my long-term goals is to be a high-level manager in this organization. Do you have any advice on activities I might try this year to gain this kind of managerial experience? Maybe there are some tasks that I could help you with?”
As for his desire to spend time with his family, he might say, “My spouse gets home from work early on Tuesdays to take care of the kids. Could I stay later than usual on Tuesdays so I can spend more time with my kids on Wednesdays?” And with regard to his desire to pursue sports, he might discuss with his boss ways to schedule a couple of “working hours” each week coaching after-school sports at the local community center. His organization could benefit from good public relations and a more motivated employee; he gets a more fulfilling role for himself.
Temporary roles. Before he steps into the meeting, he could recognize his tendency to play the temporary role of victim awaiting punishment from his boss. In the past, he paid little attention to the areas in which his boss praised him. Rather, he waited for his boss to criticize his performance, and then he came to life and defended his actions. These roles of victim and defender did not fulfill him; nor did they foster collaboration.
Ryan might review the list of temporary roles that he could play in the meeting. Which might he adopt to advance the discussion? He might decide to play the role of listener, allowing his boss to express observations without interruption. Then Ryan could play the role of brainstormer, working with his boss to nominate ideas that could improve his performance and address his concerns.
Appreciation
As Ryan walked into the room, he tried to assess whether his boss was in a good or bad mood. He let the current mood of his boss dictate the tone of the meeting. A better approach for establishing rapport could be to set a tone conducive to appreciation. It’s a lot harder for his boss to criticize him when he is sincerely praising his boss’s hard work.
Appreciation has to be authentic and sincere. If Ryan flatters his boss with flowery praise, his boss may see that as manipulative behavior and take offense. Before the evaluation meeting, Ryan might prepare a list of two or three ways in which he honestly appreciates his boss and the organization. He could start the meeting by sharing one of the items on the list: “Did you know that a major reason that I’ve stayed with this organization for the past six years has been because of the tone that you and the other managers have set? It is direct and efficient. It has allowed me to learn how to express my interests more clearly and have the opportunity to hone my skills.”
By the same token, Ryan cannot bargain for sincere appreciation from his boss: “I’ll give you two sentences of understanding if you’ll give me four words of praise.” Nor can he force his boss to appreciate him: “Give me empathy three times daily or else I’m leaving the company.” If the boss expresses appreciation because it was asked for, Ryan will probably wonder whether the boss is being sincere or is just trying to please him.
While Ryan cannot
force appreciation from his boss, he can model the behavior he wants. For example, he felt upset that his boss did not appreciate the effort he put into getting memos together in a timely fashion. Yet he failed to appreciate the time and effort his boss expended in compiling an evaluation of him. And Ryan failed to listen actively to his boss’s positive appraisal of his work. Whether Ryan agreed with the appraisal or not, he could have listened and tried to understand how his boss saw things. Once the boss feels that his message is sincerely “heard,” he is more likely to listen to Ryan.
After Ryan’s meeting, he could have followed up with a short letter or e-mail to the boss letting him know what he learned from the meeting, how helpful his suggestions were, and how he will be trying to change his behavior accordingly. He might also have asked if his boss might be able to give more frequent feedback sessions. This might improve his job performance and his relationship with the boss since it would make the boss feel appreciated for his opinion.
Affiliation
Ryan and his boss interacted as adversaries. Ryan walked into the meeting on guard for an emotional “beating” from his boss. His psychological defenses were up, and he was ready to counter any “attack” his boss might make on him or his performance. The boss appeared equally protective as he told Ryan about the problems with his performance and refused to acknowledge Ryan’s point of view. The behavior on both sides was more of a precursor to war than a learning conversation aimed at building a positive relationship.
A different approach could have been to set a collegial tone in which Ryan and his boss jointly faced the same challenge of making their organization work more effectively. Each of them has an interest in furthering the mission of the company. Rather than rejecting any negative feedback from his boss, Ryan might reframe the feedback in a way that builds affiliation between the two of them. After the boss tells Ryan that he needs better follow through with memos, Ryan might say: