INTERVIEW FINDIGNS

to: Professor Scott derue & Professor Maxim sytch

from: Caroline Gaudreault

subject: LEADING PEOPLE AND TEAMs CAPSTONE

INTERVIEWEE: Vice-President, Environment and Climate Change (major Pulp and paper company)

The interview focused on two areas of the "Leading People and Teams" course that are team diversity, and influence.

Team Structure and Dynamics

On the strategies used to build her team, the interviewee responded that she would consider two main aspects: the technical expertise and the personality and/or people "soft" skills. For instance, some tasks require less technical expertise but really needs the team leader and/or members to be able to communicate with the different stakeholders. She also puts significant efforts in assembling a team of people that can work together. She would select people that like teamwork and express interest in collaborating in projects.

In her selecting her last addition to her team, she selected a man because she was having a team that was almost strictly made up women. This addition was also of younger age than the average on her team. What she also tries to do is bring in people from other industries. She feels diversity is useful to team work. Also, although younger people have less experience, they can be trained and bring a different perspective to projects. The same applies to people from other industries. Having people that all think the same way, prevent the team from progressing. Diversity in her team does not generate conflicts but, in her opinion it has a lot to do with the personalities of her team members that are very open-minded. Diversity causes some challenges regarding the perceived credibility of the team. For instance, team members that come from within the industry are often assumed to know the answer to a given problem while those from other industry are often considered less credible. So, in brief, she believes that surface-level diversity (e.g., gender, age, educational background, etc) is ensuring the progress of the team in general. This is consistent with the material of the course that underlines that teams with diverse functional areas of expertise are typically more innovative. As for deep-level diversity (e.g., personality, values), she tries to find personalities that go together to maintain the good functioning of the team. This is consistent with the material of the course on the cons of diversity i.e., increased probability of conflict.

Team members are evaluated based on their contribution to the team. There is no "team-based" performance evaluation. According to the course material, teams with team-based evaluation perform better. In general, she does not see that individual performance evaluations impact negatively the dynamic of the team. However, what is having an impact on team dynamics is when some team members have low self-confidence and see a threat from other people taking the benefits from their actions.

Influence

The Different Bases of Power and Influence

In the course, we saw the different bases of power in influencing people. We distinguished between the personal bases of power (expertise, referent, information), the structural bases of power (legitimate, reward, coercion) and the cognitive bases of power (priming and beliefs). She uses her formal authority very carefully, at least she is not using it directly by using sentences such as "I am the boss". Instead, she relies on confidence she built with her team and her experience. In her opinion, direct use of legitimate power does not work on her and does not work on her team either. In the course we saw that coercion should be avoided due to a lack of long-term return. Her discourse was a little bit more nuanced on this. In their performance review, team members are expected to work in collaboration and are marked on this with the risk of losing their job is they are disruptive to the team and this is very clear to the employees. She does not believe in instant "favors, benefits or support" as a form of power to influence people. Instead, she thinks that that a long-term sustainable relation of give and take with people is more effective. She is continually working to establish and maintain these. On the "information" base of power, she does not make significant effort to become a "go to" person but when people come to her she always tries to be as useful as possible although this may be outside the scope of her work. She do relies on expertise (being her own or that of people she surrounds herself with) as a way to influence people but would not necessarily "publicize" this expertise, as presented in the course as a way to build one's personal base of power. She is employing some strategies to persuade people that consist mainly of communicating in a confident manner. Speaking loudly and with authority. This also relates to cognitive power where she will look more powerful by applying these strategies. In that, she relies on authority as a form of influence. She is using strategies such as wearing the right business attire and use the support of her boss to influence others. For example, when a decision has the potential of being controversial, mainly outside the team, she is making sure she has the support of her boss.

Social Proof

She did not mention using social proof as an influence strategies but when facing a difficult issue she will avoid discussing it right away with the full team but rather discuss the topic one on one with selected team members seeking supporters and looking for people that will probably have the most influence on others.

Cognitive Biases and Influence

In the course, we discussed the availability bias i.e., the fact that people are particularly influenced by vivid, salient, and readily available information. I did not discuss this directly with my interviewee but it seems that she would rely more on long-established relationships than on short-term instant strategies. We discussed framing. Interestingly, she said she always tries to portray issues as opportunities versus costs or losses. In the course, we saw people become more risk-adverse when you frame issues as losses versus gains. In her opinion, framing issues as opportunities rather increased the motivation of her team and of other stakeholders of a given decision. She believes anchoring, as an influence strategy, should be used carefully, at least in the field she is working in. Being two aggressive with targets is at risk of lost credibility. Anchoring might be a good strategy for some businesses (sales?), however. She uses some of the liking, scarcity and reciprocity strategies. For instance, she does not believe in engaging a dialogue before making a request. As mentioned elsewhere, "just before making a request" is too late. She is rather a proponent of long-term established relationships. Also, she will engage on a personal dialogue with people only if her interest is real. She does use the reciprocity strategy, but as for the liking strategies more in the context of a long-established relationship. She will try for instance, to always be useful to people when they come to her rather than just before asking for something. Also, she always tries to identify who will be affected by a certain decision and communicate with these people beforehand, which takes time and is difficult. This can probably be classified under liking (or avoided disliking).

Message, Speech and Influence

We touch very little on this topic. However, in the course we saw that message that sticks are simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional and story-telling. She will adjust how she discusses about a given issue to her audience, making sure she is focusing on the audience specific interests and she will make people care about her ideas. Credibility is also something she feels is highly important.

Non-Verbal Influence

In the course we discussed the importance of non-verbal influence. We discussed that open body postures not only are perceived as more powerful but increase testosterone and thus how powerful a person feels. She is very conscious of the importance of body language and appearance in trying to influence others. For instance, talking loudly and with authority and stand straight has high impact on her perceived credibility. She did not mention other strategies such as eye-contact that according to the course content increases likeability and credibility, and mirroring behaviors that lead people to be perceived as more confident and persuasive. However, she believes that be perceived as confident is critical in influencing others.

Network and Power

The main challenge in influencing others, according to her experience, is not so much in influencing people in her team but people outside the team, hence the importance of networking. In influence these people, being present is key. She encourages direct contact versus e-mails or phone calls. She believes her network is critical to her work. Another influence strategy she uses relates to maintaining her network. She has an alarm each Monday morning in her calendar that says "Who am I going to talk to this week?". This forces her to have regular discussions with people she would not have had otherwise. She takes particular care of having discussion with people she might not see right away as being useful to her network.

Protocol

Theme 1: Team Structure and Dynamics

  1. How do you build your teams for specific tasks (how big, who is on the team, responsibilities)?
  2. Do you believe diversity (demographic, expertise, values, etc.) in teams is important?
  3. In terms of performance management, do you give your employees both personal and team-related objectives? What is the benefits of doing so?
  4. What strategies do you use to make sure everyone inputs is considered in your teams? Do you think brainstorming is effective?
  5. Do you have strategies to manage conflicts?

Theme 2: Influencing Others

  1. In your experience, what are the most effective technique(s) to influence others in a positive manner?
  2. Do you see a difference between influence and manipulation?
  3. Do you apply different strategies to influence from the top-down (your team) versus the bottom-up (your boss)?
  4. Do you see that different form of power (e.g., expertise vs. legitimate) affects team functioning?
  5. What strategies do you use to influence your team without relying on your formal authority?
  6. What tools do you use to improve your personal basis of influence (i.e., persuasion, charisma)? Do you think body language is important here? Do you have examples?
  7. What strategies do you use to build your legitimate power?
  8. Do you think that how you apply your legitimate power affects the behaviour of your team members?
  9. What strategies would you recommend to develop and diversify your network? To make yourself difficult to replace?
  10. What strategies do you use to protect yourself from unwanted influence?
  11. Finally, do you think that being a woman changes how you need to influence others to be successful and how others try to influence yourself.