Team Development and Leadership ConsultingWithin a Turbulent and Hypercompetitive Environment

A Master’s Thesis Field Project

Submitted to

Bastyr University

And

The Leadership Institute of Seattle

In partial fulfillment

Of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts in Applied Behavioral Science

By

DEBORAH HENDRICKSON

September 2003

Abstract

This master’s thesis project occurred with the User Research group at Gryffindor

Technology. A world leader in the development of software, Gryffindor Technology

existed within, and itself embodied, a turbulent and hypercompetitive environment. The

User Research Group was a new internal service group, and the leader was a recently

promoted manager whose goal was to develop the group into a collaborative team. After

a series of critical incidents, she abandoned this goal mid-way through the project and

replaced it with a new goal to develop her leadership skills through individual coaching

sessions. The leader’s belief that some growth had occurred for her was agreed upon as

measurement of achievement of the goal. The leader indicated at the conclusion of the

project that she believed growth had occurred, and so the project was determined to be a

success.

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Table of Contents

Abstract................................................................................................................................2Chapter 1: Introduction........................................................................................................5

The Client System............................................................................................................5The Client Group.............................................................................................................6Client Group Leadership.................................................................................................8My Role as a Change Agent.............................................................................................9The Evolution of Project Goals.....................................................................................11

Chapter 2: Literature Review.............................................................................................15Client System.................................................................................................................15Client Group..................................................................................................................17

Developmental stage..................................................................................................17Socialization..............................................................................................................18Characteristics...........................................................................................................20Leadership.................................................................................................................21

Content...........................................................................................................................22The initial project goal: Creating a collaborative team............................................22The final project goal: Leadership development.......................................................25Effective leadership...................................................................................................26

Methodology..................................................................................................................30Contracting................................................................................................................30Leadership coaching..................................................................................................32Action research: History and descriptive analysis....................................................34The action research process......................................................................................36Sponsor-agent-target-advocate model.......................................................................38

Chapter 3: Intervention......................................................................................................41Chronological Overview................................................................................................41Sponsor-Agent Relationship Development: January 2002............................................42A First Critical Incident.................................................................................................44Contracting: January 2002............................................................................................45Diagnosis and Analysis: February-March 2002...........................................................46A Second Critical Incident.............................................................................................49Analysis: March 2002....................................................................................................51A Third Critical Incident...............................................................................................52Feedback: April 2002....................................................................................................53Action Step: April 2002.................................................................................................56A Fourth Critical Incident.............................................................................................57Diagnosis, Analysis, and Contracting: May 2002.........................................................60

Chapter 4: Results..............................................................................................................66Scientific and Statistical Measurements........................................................................66Goal: Leadership Development.....................................................................................66

Numerical data..........................................................................................................67Client observations....................................................................................................67Consultant Observations...........................................................................................67

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Chapter 5: Personal Impact................................................................................................68Family of Origin............................................................................................................68Culture of Origin...........................................................................................................71Learning Style................................................................................................................72Interpersonal Behavior Tendencies...............................................................................73Conflict Handling..........................................................................................................75Personality Type............................................................................................................76Personal Authority.........................................................................................................77Feedback from Sponsor and Client Group....................................................................79

Chapter 6: Summary and Conclusions..............................................................................80Project Summary...........................................................................................................80Lessons Learned: Theory...............................................................................................83Lessons Learned: Experience........................................................................................85

References..........................................................................................................................87Appendix A........................................................................................................................90Appendix B........................................................................................................................92

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Chapter 1

Introduction

This chapter offers an introduction to my master’s thesis field project. I introduce

the client system, client group, client group leadership, my role as a change agent, and the

evolution of project goals. I describe the impact of the sponsor’s unwillingness to go

through with the action step I believed to be necessary to accomplish the project’s initial

goal and the resultant change in project goals. I introduce my responsibility for the

project’s turn of events as well as insights I learned during this experience.

The Client System

My client system, Gryffindor Technology*, is a world leader in the development

and manufacturing of consumer and business software. Most high technology business

observers agree that Gryffindor Technology established its prominence through

innovative product development along with insightful business practices.

Gryffindor Technology is a company that frequently reorganizes its internal

structures and processes. For example, top company leadership reorganizes at least once

annually. Gryffindor Technology frequently appoints new executives and reassigns

established executives. Both events require entire divisions under these executives to

realign under new organizational matrices. The business environment in which

Gryffindor Technology exists demands this level of change in response to highly

competitive and rapidly changing market conditions.

The frequency and scale of reorganizations within Gryffindor Technology have

both external and internal ramifications. Externally, technology analysts view the

* All names have been changed in order to provide confidentiality for the company, its groups, and its employees.

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company as capable of delivering relatively quick product adaptations in spite of its size,

resulting in a distinct marketplace advantage. Internally, according to several journal

articles, individuals and teams experience a corporate culture that mirrors the high

technology marketplace in which only the most agile and competitive employees thrive.

Numerous news accounts and profiles report that Gryffindor Technology employees at all

levels compete vigorously with their internal colleagues for recognition and new

opportunities. I am not citing these sources in order to protect the client’s confidentiality.

The Client Group

My client group, known as “User Research,” formed in early December 2001, one

month before my introduction to this system as a consultant. The purpose of the User

Research group is to observe how customers use Gryffindor Technology products. These

observational research findings influence future product design enhancements. Group

members conducting this research are referred to as engineers.

The group’s creation resulted from one of Gryffindor Technology’s broad

reorganizations. Before the reorganization, individual engineers were dispersed across a

large division of the company, with each engineer reporting directly to a manager within

a discrete product team. With the creation of User Research, these engineers merged into

one service unit. While they continued to service many different product teams, the new

User Research group members now reported into one newly appointed User Research

group manager, Abigail, my project’s sponsor.

Eleven members, including Abigail, comprised the group, (see Figure 1). Seven

members were male; four members were female. Members appeared to range in age from

their 20s to their 50s, with the majority (seven) appearing to be in their 30s. I did not

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inquire explicitly into team members’ ethnicity; upon observation, only two team

members appeared to be non-Caucasian. I chose not to conduct a closer examination of

the gender, age, ethnic, and other diversity aspects of this group as a research aspect of

this project. While these areas could lead to interesting topics of study, they exceeded the

project’s time and focus constraints, and did not appear to me to pose a direct impact

upon the project’s goals or eventual outcome.

Throughout this project, my study indicated that User Research members

demonstrated little familiarity with each other’s work and lacked any meaningful cross-

group personal connections beyond direct reporting relationships. It seemed to me that

the single point of meaningful connection for the User Research group was its manager

and this project’s sponsor, Abigail. The User Research group seemed to enjoy only rare

visual or verbal contact between members because member offices resided in separate

buildings.

During the second month after the team’s formation, I began working with the

User Research group. At this time, User Research members had experienced only one

opportunity to meet as a group. Abigail communicated to her team that attendance at this

event was optional; as a result, not all group members showed up. I believe that the low

priority given to this event set an early precedent for the User Research group’s view of

themselves as individuals loosely connected through a reporting relationship rather than

as a group united behind a common purpose.

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Figure 1. User Research’s organizational hierarchy.

Client Group Leadership

Leadership of the group represented a promotion for Abigail, who had held a

supervisory position prior to User Research’s formation. Abigail developed her

professional career in the usability discipline without benefit of formal education beyond

high school. Many group members held doctoral degrees and some even held multiple

doctoral degrees. Despite the discipline’s emphasis on academic credentials and stated

requirement that Gryffindor usability engineers hold at least a masters degree in a

psychology-related field, Abigail had achieved success and visibility within the User

Research area at Gryffindor Technology. Abigail’s lack of formal education did not

surface as an issue during the course of this project.

I found Abigail’s personal demeanor informal and inviting. Consistent with

Gryffindor Technology’s corporate culture, Abigail dressed casually, usually in jeans.

She exhibited a relaxed, conversational tone in most of her interactions with me and in all

of the interactions that I observed her having with others. Abigail demonstrated friendly

approachability, an engaging sense of humor, and what seemed to me to be an earnest

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sincerity. I intuitively sensed in Abigail tenacity and toughness that I perceived to mean

that she was not afraid to engage in heated dialogue or conflict with others at Gryffindor

Technology. Her managerial position and years with the company virtually assured her

competence in this regard. However, I never personally observed Abigail exhibit

anything other than friendly behavior toward others.

It became apparent to me, based on data gathered in an initial group survey as

well as my own observations, that Abigail placed herself as the central hub of User

Research. Members seemed to direct their energy toward and through her, sometimes via

their supervisors as intermediaries, rather than share any significant interaction with each

other. I will talk more about how this affected the group in Chapter 3.

My Role as a Change Agent

A fellow student at the Leadership Institute of Seattle (LIOS), Sandy, introduced

me to Abigail. Sandy, a recent graduate of LIOS and a member of the User Research

group, reported directly to Abigail.

Sandy and I had remained in touch since her graduation, and she knew that I

wanted a master’s thesis field project (MTFP) opportunity in the business sector. Sandy

also knew of my background and interest in the high technology industry. Sandy spoke to

Abigail to determine her interest in doing organizational work and in sponsoring my

MTFP project. Abigail responded positively to Sandy’s inquiry.

I met Abigail in January 2002. During our first meeting, Abigail expressed

enthusiasm about conducting organization development work within her team and

demonstrated a high level of energy when discussing the potential benefits. Abigail

expressed that her primary goal was to solidify User Research into a collaborative team.

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Abigail stated that she wanted to start by assessing and fixing any trouble spots in the

group.

Abigail responded quickly to my follow-up communications and proactively

contacted me with questions and suggestions. Given these indicators, I concluded that

Abigail possessed the necessary commitment to be an effective sponsor. Combined with

my interest in finding just such a project, the foundation for a successful collaborative

partnership appeared to me to be in place.

A key learning for me occurred later, while writing this paper. I realized that early

in the project, Abigail failed to express a clear vision for success, and I failed to probe

adequately for one. I define a clear vision for success as an explicit articulation of what

would be different because of the change project and exactly how that change would

positively influence specific business goals as well as individuals or groups. I realized

later that I needed to look past my own excitement and relief in securing what seemed to

be a premier thesis project to assess more completely the contract’s potential for success.

In my enthusiasm, I failed to anticipate Abigail’s eventual disinclination to advance

beyond the diagnosis, analysis, and feedback stages of our project to the action stage in

order to accomplish her original goal. I will describe this failure to assess accurately the

project’s potential in detail in Chapter 3. In retrospect, I believe I could have more

effectively explored the potential for a failed outcome either before or during the

contracting phase by asking Abigail to describe her definition of success for our project. I

believe Abigail’s reticence to take action might have been apparent in this description,

and I could have predicted the failure of the first attempted action stage of our project.

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Instead, I mistook Abigail’s passion and enthusiasm for data gathering and analysis as her

strategic vision.

The Evolution of Project Goals

As we discussed the details of the project contract, Abigail reconfirmed for me

that she desired to create a cohesive, interdependent team. This desire became our

primary project goal: to transform User Research from a collection of individuals into a

collaborative team.

We also defined a secondary project goal: to resolve four concerns held by

Abigail. Abigail’s first concern was that team members lacked trust in Gryffindor

Technology and in the new User Research team. Abigail attributed this apparent lack of

trust to poor communication during the most recent reorganization. Abigail’s second

concern was potential underperformance by some team members caused by competency

gaps. Abigail’s third concern was that she had not set clear performance expectations for

the group. Abigail’s fourth concern was that the lack of integration with team members’

respective product teams might result in User Research’s underperformance in its internal

service role.

After development of her initial primary and secondary goals, Abigail and I

agreed that she needed to communicate her intent to undertake this project to the rest of

her group and ask for its members’ interest and support. I possess a background in

employee communications so I volunteered to create a draft email for Abigail to

personalize and send out to her group members. Abigail agreed, and after a few minor

edits to the draft I offered, she sent the email to User Research (see Appendix 1).

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With guidance from my adjunct faculty supervisor, I developed a list of anecdotal

interview questions, which Abigail approved. I then met individually with each User

Research group member and used a spreadsheet software program to compile and sort all

of the data and identify themes. A key theme from the data that Abigail and I agreed to

focus on had to do with the lack of group-wide goals and standards. Abigail shared with

me what she thought those goals and standards should be, and we agreed to use the

group-wide data feedback meeting as a means for communicating her view to the group.

As I worked with Abigail to develop content for the group-wide data feedback

meeting, I made a choice to deviate from the action research process at this point. Rather

than presenting the survey data to the group and asking its members for their

interpretation of the data followed by collaborative development of any necessary action

step, I took this responsibility upon myself as the project’s change agent. I determined the

data analysis and action step. By trying to control all of the data in the meeting and

leaving nothing open for dialogue and discovery, I prevented group members from

engaging fully and collaboratively into the process. In retrospect, I believe this deviation

from the action research process virtually assured the failure of this project. I will discuss

this further in Chapter 3.

The week after the data feedback meeting with the team I suggested to Abigail

that we advance toward fulfilling of our planned action step. Abigail declined to move

forward with our intended action. I was surprised and confused by Abigail’s

unwillingness to proceed. I surmised that this project had suddenly moved to the

periphery of Abigail’s priority list, and my reaction was one of surprise and even anger. It

was not until much later that I came to understand how my own actions and choices in

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this project had contributed to Abigail’s unwillingness to persevere. I will discuss all of

this later in the paper.

In my next meeting with Abigail, I shared with her my recommendation that we

end the project based on its stalling at the action step and its inability to accomplish her

originally contracted goal. Abigail appeared to be very surprised at my suggestion and

suggested that our work had offered much meaningful data to her and she did not want it

to end at this point. She asked whether we could use another survey as a means of

gathering more data about whether her original goal to build a collaborative team as

actually the right goal, and whether the action we had agreed upon was, indeed, the right

action to take. Abigail’s insistence convinced me to proceed with another survey and

postpone my decision about the future of the project until after the tabulation of results.

Abigail and I developed an online survey to send out to the group. The data collected

supported data gathered in the first round of interviews. I told Abigail that I believed we

should either re-commit to her original goal, or else end the project. Abigail surprised me

once again by suggesting that instead of ending our work, we re-contract for a new goal

of leadership development for her. We had discussed leadership development as an

aspect of our work together early in our contracting discussions, and Abigail had even

mentioned it specifically in her sponsorship statement to the User Research group.

Despite a growing sense on my part that Abigail was no longer interested in

bringing about change within her group, Abigail and I agreed to contract for a new

project goal of leadership development with a focus on increasing Abigail’s self-

awareness regarding her own strengths and challenges. We negotiated that this work

toward a new goal would take the form of four coaching sessions over a period of three

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months. We agreed that these coaching sessions would be conversational in tone and that

the measurement of success would be Abigail’s own sense that they had added some

value to her.

My conclusion is these coaching sessions did not make a significant difference in

Abigail’s immediate way of thinking, although my belief is that we did plant a few seeds

that given the right opportunities could take root, grow, and eventually blossom as

Abigail realizes her leadership potential – if she chooses to do so. I discuss this potential

impact in Chapter 3.

At the conclusion of our work together, Abigail told me she believed our project

to be a success. She found the data gathering particularly helpful and she said that she

learned a lot about her leadership in the process. Consistent with my interactions with

Abigail throughout the project, she seemed positive, appreciative, and cheerful as we

concluded our work together.

In the following chapters, I examine the entire project in depth, beginning with

the theoretical basis for events experienced and lessons learned as outlined next in

Chapter 2.

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Chapter 2

Literature Review

This chapter outlines the theory that supports and explains my master’s thesis

field project. I explore theory regarding my client system, my client group, the initial as

well as final project goal, and project methodology.

Client System

The high technology industry in which Gryffindor Technology exists is the type

of organizational environment Emery and Trist (1965) referred to as “turbulent field.”

They described four environments, citing a turbulent field environment as the most

dynamic and complex. The other three environments they described were: (a) “placid,

randomized,” which they considered non-dynamic and the least complex, with relatively

low levels of uncertainty and little adjustment to the surrounding environment required;

(b) “placid, clustered,” which they also considered non-dynamic, with some adjustment

to the environment required; and (c) “disturbed-reactive,” which they considered

dynamic and more complex because flexible adaptability must be demonstrated with

regard to environmental forces. By comparison, Emory and Trist said that turbulent field

environments experience rapid change resulting in major shifts in organizational

circumstances and demand swift responsiveness and increasingly agile flexibility on the

part of the organization.

A second way of describing turbulent field environments such as Gryffindor

Technology’s high technology industry is by the term “hypercompetitive” (D’Aveni,

1999). Benning and Edelman (1999) suggested that hypercompetitive environments

include the following qualities: extremely short product design and life cycles; markets

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experiencing high entry, repositioning, and exit rates; industry player activity becoming

increasingly aggressive and frequent; and constant disequilibrium and change. As an

example, Gryffindor Technology frequently revises its product offerings, regularly

introduces new state-of-the-art technology developments, and has a reputation among

industry analysts for aggressively competitive behavior.

According to Adams, Eby, Gaby, and Russell (2000), the constant change

associated with turbulent field and hypercompetitive environments reflects health in

complex systems. They stated that a constant state of flux is an indicator of health

because these environments are comprised of multiple systems and subsystems that are

constantly flexing, changing, and adapting due to the never-ending chain of action and

reaction within those systems. At Gryffindor Technology, this adaptation takes the form

of constant and frequent internal reorganizations in addition to its product revisions and

technological innovations.

In order for organizations such as Gryffindor Technology to thrive in their

turbulent field and hypercompetitive environments, Ashmos and Nathan (2002) proposed

that argument, dialogue, and conflict surfacing are necessary skills for members. These

skills help the organization develop healthy interdependence in response to high and

rapid rates of change and help to guard against disembodying fracturing. Gryffindor

Technology had a reputation for argument and conflict surfacing as described in

numerous news accounts and profiles. However, I did not observe the User Research

team to demonstrate any of these argument, dialogue, or conflict-surfacing skills on a

group-wide level. I believe that one of the reasons User Research failed to develop these

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Gryffindor Technology cultural practices was the fact that User Research spent very little

time together interfacing as a group.

Client Group

When this project began in January 2002, the User Research group had been in

existence for four weeks. There had been little group activity since its formation, and

members focused upon their own individual work and experienced little group interaction

and explicit group-wide direction from the Abigail. No clearly outlined standards, norms,

or historical precedents existed for behavior, performance, or group-wide results. I have

identified four dimensions useful to understanding User Research. These dimensions are:

(a) developmental stage, (b) socialization, (c) group characteristics, and (d) leadership.

Developmental stage. I believed the development stage of my client group to be

“forming” according to Jensen and Tuckman’s (1977) forming-storming-norming-

performing model of group development. According to Taraschi (1998), during the

forming stage, members are chiefly concerned with whether they want to be included in

the group. Robbins (1991) suggested that the individual behavior of group members in

this stage could indicate uncertainty about the group’s collective purpose and structure. I

observed what I believed to be uncertainty in User Research during qualitative interviews

with each of the members. In these interviews, each person seemed clear regarding his or

her individual accountabilities but much less certain about group-wide accountabilities.

Baker, McMillen and White (2001) stated that strong boundaries could exist

between individuals within the group during the forming stage. It was evident to me that

User Research members focused upon their individual work with little group interaction.

Bilotta, Deeney, and McGrew (1999) proposed that challenging these boundaries and

17

orienting members to one another or their collective tasks helps groups move beyond this

stage. I did not observe within User Research, or hear from any of its members during the

data gathering process, that any attempts to challenge these boundaries or orient members

to each other or collective tasks had taken place before my introduction to the group.

Even after I became involved as a change agent, this did not occur. I describe in Chapter

3 the emergence of what appeared to be an ideal opportunity for the group to collaborate

on group-wide goals and standards. Unfortunately, I failed to understand the significance

of this organization development intervention opportunity, and, therefore, I did not

encourage Abigail and the group to act on this opportunity at the time. I discuss this in

detail in Chapter 3.

Another aspect of the forming stage, according to Taraschi (1998), is that

members look to leaders for direction in a way that can lead to dependency. This

appeared to be the case for User Research. In the qualitative interview process, I observed

that many members made statements that indicated close and exclusive work with their

direct supervisors on goal direction and performance validation, rather than any sort of

collective reasoning within the broader group. This is consistent with Baker, McMillen,

and White’s (2001) contention that group members in the forming stage can appear to be

dependent upon their supervisors with little connection to other group members.

Socialization. According to Anakwe and Greenhaus (1999), organizational

socialization is the process through which an organization creates and perpetuates its

culture. They stated that organizational socialization is important because it represents the

transference of knowledge regarding appropriate roles and behaviors for successful group

membership, which can lead the group to achieve desired results. They also proposed that

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a positive proportional relationship exists between increased formal organizational

socialization and increased job satisfaction, commitment, and overall higher attitudinal

outcomes. An example of formal organizational socialization might be an orientation

session for new group members to introduce the leader’s vision, the group’s mission, and

established best practices.

Since the creation of User Research, there had been no formal socialization

process other than the introductory and optional social function. According to Abigail,

even though this was a new group (and so virtually all members, arguably, were new

initiates), there had been no discussion of appropriate roles and behaviors for successful

group membership.

In writing about organizational socialization, Anakwe and Greenhaus (1999)

stated that the availability of experienced colleagues within the group to support a

socialization process for more junior members directly affects overall group socialization

success. Specifically, these experienced colleagues represent an important source of

information that influences more junior members’ abilities to successfully join and

perform. Given the fact that all members were new to User Research and the emphasis on

individual work and lack of cross-team collaboration in User Research as described

during qualitative interviews with group members, my belief was that very little, if any,

of this type of cross-team mentorship existed beyond supervisor-employee reporting

relationships.

Given the significance of organizational socialization and its absence within my

client group, it is important to note that User Research is not unique in its industry.

According to Bilotta, Deeney, and McGrew (1999), few software development groups

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support the necessary apprenticeship or sense of initiation that goes along with successful

organizational socialization. I believe that this is likely due to the high rate and scope of

organizational change and the fact that few groups in turbulent field and

hypercompetitive environments are together long enough to develop or see the benefits of

an effective socialization program.

Characteristics. Following the conclusion of my project, I researched group

characteristics to develop a more complete retrospective view of User Research. I believe

Hackman’s (1990) definition of what he termed a “coactive group” accurately defines

User Research. According to Hackman, members in a coactive group perform parallel

tasks requiring little interdependence or interaction with other group members. An

example of this is a bank of telemarketers working side-by-side with little, if any,

interaction.

I believe this notion of parallel independent task performance was a key

characteristic of User Research. That is, members performed similar tasks that did not

require interdependence or interaction with other group members for the successful

accomplishment of those tasks. In retrospect, I believe that this confirms my opinion that

Abigail’s originally stated project goal to build a collaborative team was actually a poor

fit for this group. The group did not need interdependence in order to meet successfully

its individually-based performance expectations and success metrics.

In his definition of coactive groups, Hackman (1990) also stated that individual

role expectations in a coactive group are more important than the group expectations,

with coactive groups not requiring the same level of group commitment, sense of

membership, or group identity that are required by task-interdependent work teams.

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Coactive group members focus on what they need to do with very little consideration for

the group and its organizational context. I observed this focus on individual tasks at the

expense of the group to be true in User Research, and it was supported by data gathered

from members in qualitative and quantitative research in which virtually all members

expressed a focus on individual goals and performance and little, if any, necessary regard

for the group.

Referring to coactive groups as working groups, Katzenbach and Smith (1993),

proposed that such groups distinguish themselves by their lack of common purpose,

performance goals, and work style for which all members hold accountability. They

stated that coactive or working groups evaluate themselves upon individual performance.

In contrast, interdependent groups or teams define themselves by collective work

products in concert with individual performance. This emphasis on individual

performance as well as the lack of mutually accountable purpose, goals and style was

consistent with my observations of User Research.

Leadership. There are many available definitions and descriptors for types of

leadership. I believe the most accurate fit for what I observed from Abigail was the

command and control model (Ashmos & Nathan 2002). This model relies upon

rationality, predictability and the reduction of uncertainty.

I believe Abigail’s eagerness to gather data exemplified her need for rationality,

predictability and reduction of uncertainty. Abigail expressed a hearty appetite for both

qualitative and quantitative data during this project. It became increasingly clear to me

over the course of the project that Abigail was more interested in gathering and viewing

21

data than she was in acting upon it. It is my belief that Abigail preferred the rationality of

data to the unpredictability of action.

According to Ashmos and Nathan (2002), in highly turbulent systems such as

high tech environments, command-and-control leaders often believe that it is the leader’s

job to know all of the answers, and they are often uncomfortable with the collective

inquiry that goes along with building an effective interdependent team. This is, again,

consistent with my observations of Abigail’s eagerness to gather data about the team and

her lack of interest in involving the team in the data analysis or action planning.

Content

In this section, I describe theory supporting Abigail’s original project goal to

build a cohesive team as well as theory supporting the final project goal of leadership

development.

The initial project goal: Creating a collaborative team. There is substantial theory

to support the desirability of Abigail’s initial goal of building a collaborative team. I

acknowledge that this theory lacks a direct and obvious influence on the achievement of

the final project goal of leadership development agreed upon by Abigail and me. Yet, I

choose to include it here because I believe it to be important to understanding this

complicated project. In hindsight, I can see that the absence of key conditions cited in

team building theory made the chance of success with this project remote if not

impossible – even if no other derailing factors had arisen (which I detail in Chapter 3).

This comprised important learning for me in my post-project research, and I share it here

hoping that others will benefit from the lessons I learned.

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Regarding the desirability of the original goal, Katzenbach and Smith (1994) and

Hackman (1990) said that effective teams create a performance context in which

individuals are often able to accomplish more than they could as single contributors.

Katzenbach et al went on to suggest that effective teams offer a forum for members to

question and challenge their ideas, assumptions, and perceptions, which results in shared

meanings. Baker, McMillen, and White (2002) stated that the resultant shared meanings

can promote synergy and ultimately can result in an enhanced outcome reflecting the

talents of all of the team members. Although Abigail and I did not discuss these

motivations for building a team specifically, I believe now that this theory supports our

general sense that building a collaborative team was a good idea.

According to Katzenbach and Smith (1994), in addition to a direct link to

improved performance, teams are also more likely to produce a climate favorable to

individual behavioral changes because teams that share a collective commitment find

change less threatening than individuals who lack that support. Given the frequency and

magnitude of change in a turbulent field and hypercompetitive environment such as

Gryffindor Technology, this establishes a team as a potentially ideal configuration in this

type of environment.

Katzenbach and Smith (1994) also put forth that teams offer more opportunity for

individual growth and change than groups because of teams’ flexibility and willingness to

consider a broader range of solutions. This also makes a team scenario ideal in an

environment such as Gryffindor Technology.

According to Katzenbach and Smith (1994), members care about creating an

interdependent team when faced with a demanding performance challenge for which they

23

are held collectively as well as individually responsible. Katzenbach and Smith stated

that members respond to the challenge by shaping a common purpose and working

approach, as well as agreeing upon clear, specific, and actionable group-wide and

individual performance goals and standards. They went on to say that, members also

begin to develop complementary skills in order to work interdependently. None of this

took place within User Research because the demanding performance challenges required

individual member focus rather than group focus. I view this as a critical reason why

Abigail’s original project goal possessed little, if any, chance of success.

Additionally, Katzenbach and Smith (1994) stated that overcoming barriers that

stand in the way of collective performance helps real teams to develop. Surmounting

obstacles results in trust-building and mutual confidence. This reinforces team purpose as

a priority above individual or functional agendas. Because User Research lacked a need

for collective performance, there were no threatening barriers to overcome. As a result,

intra-group trust and confidence-building failed to occur, and individual priorities

continued to prevail over group agendas.

Further, according to Katzenbach and Smith (1994), the best teams spend a great

deal of time shaping and paying attention to their shared working approach as an

extension of their shared sense of purpose. This involves effective communication as well

as constructive responses to conflict, risk taking, and support. It was my observation that

User Research spent very little time together as a group and did not focus on shared

working approaches. In addition, I believe that increasing any group time or placing more

emphasis on shared working approaches offered no clear positive potential for increased

performance or outcome for this team.

24

All of this data, and much more not detailed here, supports the idealism of

Abigail’s original goal as well as why I believe it would have been almost impossible to

achieve it within the User Research context..

The final project goal: Leadership development. While the absence of a

compelling reason to unite as a team around a demanding collective performance

challenge negatively affected the achievability of Abigail’s original goal to build a

collaborative team, this only became clear in retrospect, as part of my learning during my

post-project research. It did not play a direct or explicit role in the changing of goals in

the fourth month of this project. The decision to change project goals resulted from

Abigail’s determination not to undertake the necessary intervention step indicated by our

data gathering. I will discuss this in more detail in Chapter 3.

Abigail said that she realized that while she was not ready to take the original

action step, she was ready to take a step in that direction by focusing on her leadership.

Abigail and I agreed upon a new project goal of leadership development with a focus on

increasing Abigail’s self-awareness regarding her own strengths and challenges. We

negotiated that this would take the form of four coaching sessions over a period of three

months. We agreed that these coaching sessions would be conversational in tone and that

the measurement of success would be Abigail’s own sense that they added some value to

her. According to Flaherty (1999), “the potential client may simply recognize a need for

assistance and may ask for it without quite knowing what assistance she needs” (page

41). To me, this was true of Abigail at this point in the project.

Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee (2002) stated that self-aware leaders are “attuned

to their inner signals, recognizing how their feelings affect them and their job

25

performance. They are attuned to their guiding values and can often intuit the best course

of action, seeing the big picture in a complex situation” (page 30). Goleman et al. added

that self-aware leaders know their strengths and limitations, know where to focus their

own growth and development, and know when to ask for help. Knowing all of this allows

these leaders to play to their strengths as well as exude a sense of self-assurance that

helps them to build leadership presence. Goleman et al. suggested that these qualities are

all learned abilities, which suggests to me that they can be acquired through effective

leadership coaching such as agreed upon by Abigail and me.

A key benefit of leadership coaching with regard to self-awareness, according to

O’Neill (2000), is that a coach can help clients to identify the patterns in which they are

immersed. Further, effective coaching can lead to clients being able to self-assess when

they are doing well and when they are not and over time begin to make any needed

course corrections on their own (Flaherty, 1999). Additionally, Senge (1990) suggested,

“skills of reflection concern slowing down our own thinking processes so that we can

become more aware of how we form our mental models and the ways they influence our

actions” (page 191).

This notion of achieving Abigail’s final project goal of leadership development by

building her self-awareness meant helping Abigail to take the time to think about her

perspectives and behaviors as a leader.

Effective leadership. When working with Abigail on developing her leadership, as

well as reflecting upon and learning from the experience, I relied on three major

influences that contribute to my definition of effective leadership. These influences

helped to form in my mind an ideal; this ideal shaped the coaching I offered to Abigail as

26

an organization intervention as well as helped me to understand in hindsight how it might

have been even more effective.

One major influence was the set of four emotional intelligence leadership

competencies articulated by Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee (2002). According to them,

emotional intelligence is “how leaders handle themselves and their relationships” (p. 6).

The first of their four leadership competencies within this emotional intelligence realm is

self-awareness. Self-awareness includes emotional self-awareness, accurate self-

assessment, and self-confidence. The second competency is self-management, which

includes self-control, transparency, adaptability, achievement, initiative, and optimism.

The third leadership competency is social awareness, and it includes empathy,

organizational awareness, and service. The fourth and final leadership competency is

relationship management. It includes inspiration, influence, development of others,

facilitation of change, conflict management, and teamwork and collaboration. The first

competency of self-awareness was the competency most explicitly articulated within this

project because it was the basis of the leadership development Abigail and I agreed upon

as the project’s final goal. The other three competencies, although less explicit, were also

important to the project. Along with self-awareness, they served as a basis for

development of questions in the group’s quantitative survey in the second data-gathering

phase.

Another major influence was a set of five leadership principles laid out by Ronald

A. Heifetz (1994). Heifetz described these principles in terms of succeeding over what he

called adaptive challenges. Heifetz defined adaptive challenges as gaps between

27

aspiration and reality that require innovation and learning for resolution. Heifetz’s (1994)

five strategic principles of leadership principles are as follows:

1. Identify the adaptive challenge. Diagnose the situation in light of the values at

stake, and unbundled the issues that come with it.

2. Keep the level of distress within a tolerable range for doing adaptive work. To

use the pressure cooker analogy, keep the heat up without blowing up the

vessel.

3. Focus attention on ripening issues and not on stress-reducing distractions.

Identify which issues can currently engage attention; and while directing

attention to them, counteract work avoidance mechanisms like denial,

scapegoating, externalizing the enemy, pretending the problem is technical, or

attacking individuals rather than issues.

4. Given the work back to people, but at a rate they can stand. Place and develop

responsibility by putting the pressure on the people with the problem.

5. Protect voices of leadership without authority. Give cover to those who raise

hard questions and generate distress – people who point to the internal

contradictions of the society. These individuals often will have latitude to

provoke rethinking that authorities do not have. (p. 128)

Heifetz’s (1994) five strategic principles were most important as I analyzed the

project retrospectively while writing this paper. For example, I now believe one reason

for the project’s failure was that the project ultimately exceeded Abigail’s tolerance for

doing adaptive work, as evidenced by Abigail’s unwillingness to persevere after the data

feedback stage. Also, I now believe the project might have resulted in greater group-wide

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impact had the voices of dissent – specifically, the three supervisors in conflict – been

given the necessary equal protection needed to provoke new thinking and catalyze

change.

A third major influence on my leadership coaching with Abigail, as well as my

learning from that experience, was an array of feminine leadership values I uncovered in

my research both during and after the project. Primary among these was the notion that a

feminine style of leadership relies upon authority created from strong interconnections

within an organization that are web-like rather than hierarchical (Helgesen, 1990).

Helgesen wrote that “women, when describing their roles in their organizations, usually

referred to themselves as being in the middle of things. Not at the top, but in the center,

not reaching down, but reaching out” (p. 45-46). This reaching out reinforces a sense of

interdependence, collaboration, and mutuality. Other qualities of feminine leadership

include an emphasis on intense, thoughtful and attentive listening, as well as a strong

value of responsibility. It is my belief that viewing this project retrospectively through a

lens of understanding regarding feminine leadership values offers another way of seeing

warning signs that the project was headed toward failure. For example, Abigail stated that

her goal was to build a collaborative team; collaboration is a feminine leadership trait.

Yet Gryffindor Technology’s organizational culture is deeply rooted in individualism, in

my mind a distinctly non-feminine characteristic. Thinking about it this way, it is now

clear to me that the initial project goal ran counter to Gryffindor culture, and the sponsor

and I did not acknowledge or plan for the huge challenge in that.

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Emotional intelligence competencies, strategic leadership principles, and feminine

styles of leadership all combine, in my mind, toward a composite sense of effective

leadership.

Methodology

In this section, I offer organization development theories to support and explain

my overall approach to this project. I begin with a theoretical basis for effective project

contracting, followed by a perspective on effective leadership coaching methodologies. I

then describe my application of the action research model, as well as the Sponsor-Agent-

Target-Advocate model I used in my project.

Contracting. Contracting as defined by Block (2000) is “an explicit agreement of

what the consultant and client expect from each other and how they are going to work

together” (p. 54). Block suggested that the word “contract” is useful to organization

development practitioners for two reasons. First, it calls attention to the need for specific

and clear expectations between client and practitioner. Second, like a legal contract, it

implies mutual consent of both parties to do the work, as well as valid consideration,

which Block defines as the reciprocal exchange of value between parties – for example,

compensation for services rendered.

O’Neill (2000) asserted that contracting is an opportunity for the leader to get

specific about her issues. “Executives often speak in global terms and have little patience

for details,” stated O’Neill (p. 94). She goes on to say that in contracting conversations:

You are not asking details for details’ sake. You are inviting the leader to describe

actual behaviors and circumstances so he can see what he really means by his

global terms. A lot of leaders articulate global dissatisfaction, but it gets them

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nowhere. By pushing for specificity, you are doing an enormous favor for the

organization, because leaders are often not clear with their staffs about their

expectations. (p. 94)

Lippitt and Lippitt (1986) said, “It is not enough to just to agree that there is a

problem or that a change is desirable. In clarifying a potential working relationship, it is

important to explore what kinds of outcomes are possible and desirable if the working

relationship is successful” (p. 20). In the case of User Research, Abigail failed to

articulate a clear and specific vision for success early in our contracting conversations,

and I failed to probe for one. I believe this lack of specificity in the contracting phase of

our project led to my failure to anticipate Abigail’s eventual disinclination to advance

beyond the diagnosis, analysis, and feedback stages of our project to the action stage in

order to accomplish her original goal.

Another point regarding contracting raised by Block (2000) was that the

consultant should test for weakness in contracts. Block contended that weakness can

occur because the client feels coerced into the contract, however subtlety and indirectly,

or the client senses a loss of control. Looking back on this project, I believe that because

one of Abigail’s group members (Sandy) introduced me to Abigail, this may have led to

Abigail experiencing subtle coercion due to her sense of obligation to Sandy. I now

suspect that Abigail may not have thought she could say no to working with me after we

were introduced by Sandy – thinking that this might negatively affect her relationship

with Sandy. As a result, I believe it is possible that Abigail lacked her own motivations

for undertaking this work and was instead influenced by what Block called “subtle

coercion.” I explore the ramifications of this in Chapter 3.

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Leadership coaching. After agreeing to abandon Abigail’s original goal of

creating a collaborative team, Abigail and I agreed to contract for a new project goal of

leadership development with a focus on increasing Abigail’s self-awareness regarding her

own strengths and challenges. We negotiated that this would take the form of four

coaching sessions over a period of three months. We agreed that these coaching sessions

would be conversational in tone and that the measurement of success would be Abigail’s

own sense that they had added some value to her.

O’Neill (2000) suggested that the three necessary conditions for a successful

coaching relationship are the willingness of the leader to see herself honestly, take

ownership in her part of the patterns at work, and be receptive to immediate feedback.

My belief at the time was that my relationship with Abigail possessed these conditions,

although looking back now, I question whether they were truly in place.

My coaching role with Abigail took the form of what Lippitt and Lippitt (1986)

called an “objective observer.” Lippitt and Lippitt described objective observation as “a

series of consultant activities directed at stimulating the client toward some insights into

growth, a discovery of more effective methods, a look at long-range change, and greater

independence” (p. 70). They called this the most non-directive of possible consulting

roles because the client holds responsibility for the direction and outcome of the work.

Coghlan (2002) advocated this type of non-directive, or person-centered, coaching

approach because it allows the client to choose her own goals and to be psychologically

independent from the judgments of the coach about those goals.

This idea of client-centered coaching is also supported by the co-active coaching

model (Kimsey-House, Sandahl, and Whitworth 1998), which states that the essence of a

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successful coaching relationship is the alliance of coach and client as two equals focused

on meeting the client’s needs. According to this model, “the relationship is entirely

focused on getting the results the clients want. They set the agenda” (p. 4). It goes on to

state that “the coach’s job is to help clients articulate their dreams, desires, and

aspirations, help them clarify their mission, purpose, and goals, and help them achieve

that outcome” (p. 4).

According to Bell and French (1999), coaching opportunities frequently result

from team-building and inter-group interventions such as the attempts made by Abigail

and me within User Research. Bell and French suggested that it is common for an

individual to seek some attentive listening away from the group as a way to get help in

considering behaviors that are more effective. Consistent with the idea of a non-directive

approach, they stated that the coach must insist that the client must be the one to decide

upon any changes in behavior.

Pinchot and Pinchot (2000) asserted:

Every coach’s most important task is to be a good listener, for the obvious reason

that there is a gap to be bridged between the reality held by the client and what we

hear through our inevitable filters. If we listen sensitively, we can begin to piece

together how our client constructs him or herself and his or her world. (p. 58)

I believe active listening was an essential part of my coaching relationship with

Abigail and a vital factor in its modest success. Abigail said it was the first time she had

shared with anyone many of the perspectives and ideas she shared with me and she found

the process supportive and validating.

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Action research: History and descriptive analysis. The primary model in my

intervention was action research, which is commonly defined as a combination of

theoretical research and practical application of that research in the field. According to

social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1997), action research is an important way to link

scientific research with the work of practitioners in the field. Lewin proposed that the

action research process forces scientific research to be relevant and applicable, while

offering a standard by which to measure the impact of fieldwork upon client groups and

determine what is effective. Lewin said:

In a field that lacks objective standards of achievement, no learning can take

place. If we cannot judge whether an action has led forward or backward, if we

have no criteria for evaluating the relation between effort and achievement, there

is nothing to prevent us from making the wrong conclusions and to encourage the

wrong work habits. Realistic fact-finding and evaluation is a prerequisite for any

learning. Social research should be one of the top priorities for the practical job of

improving inter-group relations. (p. 144)

According to Bell and French (1999), the father of action research was John

Collier, the commissioner of U.S. Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1945. Bell and French said

the basis of Collier’s innovative action research model grew as a necessity out of the

extremely challenging race relations responsibility he held. In Collier’s work, he

discovered that researchers needed to work collaboratively with field practitioners as well

as clients in order to develop effective solutions to practical problems. Bell and French

asserted that Collier discovered that integrating the perspectives of research,

administration, and client offered a greater chance of developing effective and relevant

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solutions and programs. Bell and French (1999) said that Lewin applied Collier’s action

research idea to his own work with social agencies in the mid 1940’s and early 1950’s.

According to Dickens and Watkins (1999), the type of action research practiced

by Lewin addresses organizational issues and needs through recurring cycles of action

and reflection. Dickens and Watkins also asserted that, although this action research

shares a common goal with traditional science - the creation of knowledge, distinct

differences exist between the two disciplines. For example, they stated that research in

traditional science begins with a body of knowledge and seeks precision in its

measurement of cause and effect. The goal of traditional scientific research is to end with

a point of discovery. They compared this with action research, which begins with

minimal knowledge of the situation at hand and uses a collaborative process to observe,

understand, and influence that situation while simultaneously considering the impact of

the action research. According to Dickens and Watkins, rather than stopping at the point

of discovery, action research uses new information to guide new behavior and action

researchers seek to apply their discoveries to practical problems.

Dickens and Watkins (1999) believed that there was a level of risk in using action

research in turbulent field and hypercompetitive organizational environments such as

Gryffindor Technology. They stated that in these environments, projects often close

prematurely at the diagnosis of the problem or development of a single solution or

strategy and as a result, the necessary recurrent cycles of action and reflection fail to

occur. They attribute this early termination of the process to the challenge of a rapidly

changing client system in which the very problems addressed are changing during the

process so that the time needed for meaningful research and reflection does not keep up

35

with the needs of the organization. I believe this may have been an indirect contributor to

the many challenges I encountered in my work with Abigail’s User Research Group at

Gryffindor Technology. In fact, I believe that had I followed a shorter timeline of two

months or less, I might have worked with Abigail to develop more effective goals and

realized more quickly when the project was off track. As it was, I believe that my

decision to adhere to the recommended academic timeline for my project over the course

of many months indirectly impaired my effectiveness as a consultant.

Despite the challenges faced by action researchers in a turbulent field

environment, Robbins (1991) proposed two distinct benefits of action research in any

organization. He stated the first benefit is that the change emphasis remains problem-

focused rather than solution-centered so the emphasis remains on the client and its

problem rather than the consultant with his or her intended intervention. Robbins went on

to explain that the objective discovery of problems and their typology determines the type

of change action remedy rather than a process that favors particular solutions. Robbins

proposed that, as a second benefit, action research reduces the generalized change

resistance due to its reliance upon the involvement of organizational members. He stated

that member participation leads to process momentum from within a system rather than

having to impose it from without. Both of these were exemplified in my project due to a

choice I made to deviate from the action research process. As a result, the project shifted

from a problem-focus to a solution focus. I explore this in detail in Chapter 3.

The action research process. Robbins (1991) stated that the recurrent cycles of

action and reflection in action research include five steps: diagnosis, analysis, feedback,

action, and evaluation. Dickens and Watkins (1999) said that these steps do not

36

necessarily occur in sequential order and can repeat and follow any direction to, from,

and through other steps.

According to Robbins (1991), in the diagnosis stage the change agent gathers data

within the system regarding the problems, concerns, and needed changes. Despite action

research’s possible free-flowing form, the analysis stage generally occurs near the

diagnosis stage, in which examination occurs within the diagnostic data for primary

concerns, problem areas, patterns, and possible actions. In my project, I used a team

qualitative survey as part of the diagnosis and analysis phases. This survey consisted of a

series of one-hour interviews conducted by me with each of the 10 group members.

In addition to the survey’s action research merits, Adams, Eby, Gaby and Russell

(2000) suggested that a comprehensive needs assessment builds employee confidence in

any change process. Baker, McMillen and White (2001) proposed that the process of

listening, as was done in each qualitative interview I conducted, serves as an important

means of achieving relatedness and connection within a group. In addition, Baker et. al.

also suggested that the process helps leaders understand the needs of those for whom they

hold responsibility, thus helping to build effective leadership. This was one of the reasons

Abigail and I agreed upon the importance of this data-gathering step.

Robbins (1991) also suggested that the feedback stage requires involvement of the

change targets. In this stage, the group hears the data gathered in the diagnosis and

analysis stages and determines the focus of the change effort. As part of my project's

feedback stage, a group-wide meeting introduced the team to the data gathered and

analyzed in the qualitative survey process.

37

The action stage, according to Robbins (1991), takes form as the change targets

and change agent collaborate to correct the identified problems through an agreed upon

course of action. In my project, I deviated from this action research step because, prior to

the group feedback meeting, I made a specific intervention recommendation to Abigail. I.

She agreed with my recommendation and then presented it to her team as the planned

next step. Although Abigail invited suggestions and comments from User Research

members about the action plan, I believe the group members saw it as already decided

and therefore not truly open to dialogue. There was no group-wide collaboration or even

discussion of how to address the issues identified in the data. In retrospect, my failure to

engage the entire group in solving its problem and choosing instead to work directly with

Abigail on determining the intervention, served to reinforce what I saw to be her

command-and-control leadership style and undermined our efforts toward group-wide

collaboration. It also made it easy for Abigail to refuse later to undertake the intervention

step since she held sole responsibility for it; there were no other stakeholders who

participated in developing it or had a clear investment in its use.

According to Robbins (1991), in the evaluation stage, the change agent evaluates

the effectiveness of the action taken by comparing the results against the initial data

gathered for any differences. At the end of our leadership coaching, Abigail and I agreed

to end our project without further data gathering. Therefore, I lack the post-intervention

data to compare against the qualitative and quantitative pre-intervention data. I discuss

this further in Chapters 3 and 4.

Sponsor-agent-target-advocate model. In my project, I relied upon Conner’s

(1993) Sponsor-Agent-Target-Advocate (S-A-T-A) model for organizational change.

38

This model states that the chances for a successful change effort are enhanced by the

effective filling of four key roles and by the effective management of the relationships

between those roles. The first role is that of “sponsor,” which is the individual or group

with the authority to initiate, oversee, or take responsibility for the change. In the case of

my project, Abigail played the role of sponsor. The role of “agent” is the individual or

group who holds responsibility for carrying out the change. I played this role. The

“target” is the individual or group who must undergo the change. In my project, this

initially was the User Research group members and ultimately became Abigail. The

“advocate” is the individual or group who has some interest in having the change occur

but lacks the sponsor’s authority to sanction it. In my project, no one held the advocate

role.

According to Conner (1993), sponsorship commitment is integral to the success of

the S-A-T-A model, and this commitment manifests in a visible dedication on the part of

the sponsor of the necessary knowledge, time, and financial resources toward the change

effort. Conner also stated that successful sponsorship manifests in reward and

consequence structures for those involved in making the change happen. According to

Conner, a committed sponsor shows clear interest in the progress of the change project

and willingly sacrifices other attractive opportunities if they threaten to derail the original

change goal. Conner went on to state that in order to be a successful sponsor, the

individual or group must have a number of qualities in place. These include

organizational power, vision, resources, and tenacity directed toward the goal.

It is my assessment that Abigail failed to fulfill Conner’s requirements of

effective sponsorship and that I failed to fulfill Conner’s requirements for an effective

39

agent. This combination resulted in the ultimate overall failure of this project. I will

discuss this in more detail in Chapter 3.

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Chapter 3

Intervention

In this chapter, I discuss the life cycle of this master’s thesis field project. I begin

with a chronological overview of the project’s main events. Then I describe the

experience beginning with my first meeting with my sponsor, Abigail, following through

to the conclusion of our work seven months later.

Chronological Overview

The project spanned a seven-month period from January to August 2002. The

project’s main events occurred in the following timeline:

January:

Introductory and contracting meetings with Abigail

February:

Primary and secondary goals and measures finalized

Abigail’s sponsorship statement e-mailed to User Research

Meeting with Abigail to determine qualitative interview questions

March:

Qualitative interviews with User Research team members completed

Data from qualitative interviews presented to Abigail

Action step recommendations presented to Abigail

Collaboration with Abigail in preparation for the data feedback meeting

with her User Research group

April:

User Research data feedback meeting

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Action step declined by Abigail

Discussion with Abigail whether to terminate project or re-contract with a

new goal

Agreement reached with Abigail to send out quantitative survey to team

for additional data gathering

May:

Quantitative survey introduced to User Research group

Results from quantitative survey presented to Abigail

Re-contracting for new leadership development goal

June:

Three leadership coaching sessions with Abigail

July:

No project work due to summer vacation schedules

August:

Leadership coaching session with Abigail

Conclusion of project; evaluation feedback received from Abigail

Sponsor-Agent Relationship Development: January 2002

Abigail is the manager of a recently formed User Research Group at Gryffindor

Technology. A mutual acquaintance introduced me to her, suggesting that my search for

an organization development project might be a good fit for Abigail’s desire to enhance

the performance of her new group. Abigail and I got off to what I believed to be a great

start in terms of joining and relationship building. After a quick exchange of scheduling

e-mails, we met for the first time at the Belltown Pub in downtown Seattle where we

42

discussed her potential project. Abigail’s casual style and approachability appealed to me.

Abigail seemed very open to sharing information and answering my questions about her

User Research group. Abigail asked questions about my graduate program. Abigail

expressed admiration for the intensity of graduate work requirements, which I found

personally affirming.

I believe my work in the high technology industry allowed us to establish

common ground rather quickly. Abigail was familiar with my employer, a high tech

company in which I worked as a senior operations manager, because of its status as a

long-time Gryffindor Technology vendor. We shared a common vernacular and general

industry awareness that accelerated our joining as potential sponsor and consulting

change agent.

Abigail expressed enthusiasm for her recent promotion and opportunity to lead a

new group. She also expressed enthusiasm about conducting organization development

work within her team and demonstrated what I considered a high level of energy when

discussing the potential benefits of an organization development project. Abigail

expressed that her primary goal was to solidify User Research into a collaborative team.

Abigail stated that she wanted to start by assessing and fixing any trouble spots in the

group.

Abigail’s enthusiasm excited me. I considered myself fortunate to encounter an

opportunity in a premiere company such as Gryffindor Technology, and I felt proud that

Abigail seemed eager to work with me. I enjoyed the sense of status that came with a

professional association with Gryffindor Technology. I also experienced relief that I had

identified a project in time to meet a looming deadline: to secure a thesis client by mid-

43

February. Meeting this deadline would allow me to graduate with the rest of my class

later in the year.

Although I had started the client search process early the previous year, I ended

up deciding to decline my first opportunity in December 2001. The search for a more

appropriate client quickly created some pressure for me. I happily believed Abigail’s

User Research team at Gryffindor Technology to be the right client group for my project.

Abigail responded quickly to my follow-up communications and proactively

contacted me with questions and suggestions. Based upon her responsiveness, I

concluded that Abigail possessed the necessary commitment and would be an effective

sponsor. Combined with my interest in finding just such a project, the foundation for a

successful collaborative partnership appeared to be in place.

A First Critical Incident

It was during these pre-contracting discussions with Abigail that the first of what

Cohen and Smith (1976) called a “critical incident” occurred in my project. Cohen and

Smith described a critical incident as an event within a group that demands some kind of

response from a group member, consultant, or leader. The response, in turn, directly

influences the direction of that group.

In my project, the first critical incident occurred when I failed to question Abigail

about what seemed to be her lack of a clearly defined vision for success. I define a clear

vision for success as an explicit articulation of what would be different because of the

change project and exactly how that would positively impact specific business goals as

well as individuals or groups. A key learning occurred for me later, while writing this

paper. I realized that I needed to look past my own excitement and relief in securing what

44

seemed to be a premier thesis project to notice the warning signs about the contract’s

potential for failure. In my enthusiasm, I failed to notice those warning signs and

therefore I was surprised by Abigail’s eventual disinclination to advance beyond the

diagnosis, analysis, and feedback stages of our project to the action stage in order to

accomplish her original goal. In retrospect, I believe I could have effectively explored

this either before or during the contracting phase by asking Abigail to describe her

definition of success for our project. I believe Abigail’s reticence to take action might

have been apparent in this description, and I could have predicted the failure of the first

attempted action stage of our project. Instead, I mistook Abigail’s passion and enthusiasm

for data gathering and analysis as her strategic vision. The project’s lack of a clearly

defined vision for success and the absence of response to this condition by me led to the

eventual failure to effect change. Abigail and I defined a contract for our work without

first defining her vision for success. I later came to believe the absence of this vision was

a clear warning sign that the potential outcome for the project was limited.

Contracting: January 2002

As we discussed the details of the project contract, Abigail reconfirmed for me

that she desired to create a cohesive, interdependent team. This became our primary

contract goal: to transform User Research from a collection of individuals into a

collaborative team.

We also defined a secondary project goal: to resolve four concerns held by

Abigail. Abigail’s first concern was that team members lacked trust in Gryffindor

Technology and in the new User Research team. Abigail attributed this apparent lack of

trust to poor communication during the most recent reorganization. Abigail’s second

45

concern was the potential underperformance by some team members caused by

competency gaps. Abigail’s third concern was that she had not set clear performance

expectations for the group. Abigail’s fourth concern was that the lack of integration with

team members’ respective product teams might result in User Research’s

underperformance in its internal service role.

Diagnosis and Analysis: February-March 2002

Our contract agreement finalized, I suggested to Abigail that she send a

sponsorship statement to her User Research team, letting them know about the project

and alerting them to the data gathering process in which we needed the team’s

involvement and support.

Given my professional experience in employee communications, I offered to

create a first draft message that Abigail could edit and send to her team. Abigail agreed

and after a few minor edits to the draft I offered, she sent the email to User Research

(Appendix A). In her message, Abigail introduced me to the group members stating that

we would be working together to “explore ways in which we can make group

improvements in order to optimize our deliverables and our experience.” Abigail also

told the team that I would be helping her “build better leadership skills” so group

members could get more from her as their manager. In her email, Abigail also alerted

group members that we would begin work right away by conducting an individual

interview with each group member; she asked them to get an interview with me

scheduled on each of their calendars.

I worked with my adjunct faculty to create a first draft list of qualitative survey

questions to present for Abigail’s approval. Although I had created a number of employee

46

surveys in my career, I experienced some insecurity developing this User Research

survey. I wanted to be certain it satisfied the requirements of action research as well as

the academic requirements for my thesis project. I also wanted to make a good

impression upon Abigail and demonstrate my professional competence.

My adjunct and I agreed that the survey should be brief and focus on gathering

anecdotal data. With some guidance from him, I designed the survey questions to explore

Abigail’s concerns regarding lingering trust issues, competence, clarity regarding group

expectations, and barriers to integration with product teams. Based upon guidance from

my faculty adjunct, I came to believe that the ability to achieve Abigail’s primary goal

depended upon the ability to validate and then resolve these four issues. I confidently

presented a recommended survey to Abigail, and she accepted the list without making

any changes. I enjoyed this as affirmation of my competence. The survey questions are

listed in Appendix B.

For the actual interviews, I met individually with each User Research group

member in a private office or conference room. Each interview lasted approximately one

hour, and I recorded individual responses on my laptop computer. My reactions to the

interviews varied with each meeting. I experienced most User Research members as open

to the process and willing to offer what seemed to me to be earnest responses. In virtually

all of these meetings, I felt confident and optimistic.

A few interviews stood out as exceptionally positive in that I sensed immediate

rapport with a few group members. I found myself enjoying the process immensely and

enjoying my growing knowledge and understanding regarding User Research.

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After I completed the individual interviews, I used a spreadsheet software

program to sort the data and identify themes. I began by tracking recurrent themes within

the first interview. I then sorted the rest of the interviews by these themes, tracking the

frequency of their mention and adding new ones to my list when they occurred. The final

analysis contained a list of themes with the ones recurring most frequently listed as the

most significant. These included:

members enjoyed the autonomy of working directly with product teams

access to other knowledge and talent within the team did not exist

the work itself was compelling

supervisory relationships were generally positive

building a greater sense of community appealed to many team members

group-wide performance goals and standards were unclear

a desire for increased appreciation of this internal service discipline within

Gryffindor Technology existed throughout the team

Four of these themes emerged as especially important in my mind, given the

project goals I had established with Abigail. First, group members enjoyed and

appreciated their autonomy. This raised questions in my mind regarding the extent to

which User Research members really wanted to unify and collaborate, which was the

primary project goal. Second, comments regarding lack of knowledge of or access to

other team members required me to return to the data to look for additional clues. A

deeper understanding of the employee comments indicated that conflict between the

group’s supervisors might be causing a silo effect between sub-groups. It appeared to me

that team members received no encouragement from the team supervisors to interact or

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collaborate with one another. Third, the theme expressing the desire of most group

members to build a greater sense of community among themselves stood in contrast with

other comments within the data. This included expressions from members wondering

about the lasting benefit of team interactions and expressions of reluctance to commit to

the group given that another reorganization might occur soon. Additionally, team

members expressed apprehension about the additional workload demands required by

teambuilding efforts. Some expressions of fear were associated with bringing conflict out

into the open. Fourth, concerns regarding the lack of clear group-wide performance goals

or standards were notable to me, given the importance of these to organizational

effectiveness.

Themes regarding Abigail’s leadership included: (a) respect for Abigail’s

reputation; (b) appreciation for the autonomy extended to group members; (c) a

perception of high performance expectations; (d) support for group member learning; and

(e) uncertainty about what Abigail did, how her leadership benefited the team, and how to

leverage her leadership for individual success. It was at this point that a second critical

incident emerged.

A Second Critical Incident

As an outcome of the initial survey and the resultant analysis, a second critical

incident surfaced in this project. The data gathering process revealed concern about a lack

of group-wide performance goals or standards. This appeared to be an opportunity for an

organization development intervention. As I discussed this with Abigail, she responded

by telling me two compelling reasons for team unity and collaboration. First, she said that

the group needed to define and ensure service level consistency for its members. Second,

49

Abigail said that the group needed to ensure that each of its members had adequate and

comparable access to their respective product teams. I responded by accepting Abigail’s

response virtually without question and suggesting that we focus our efforts in the group-

wide data feedback meeting on communicating these to the group.

A key lesson occurred for me later as I realized that I needed to probe the group to

see whether these goals and standards held the potential to improve significantly the

output of the group at least enough to matter to its members as well as its internal

customers and other stakeholders. If they did, I needed to probe for whether the best way

to achieve them was through group or individual performance management. In my

enthusiasm, I pushed ahead in an effort to communicate the data without taking the time

to explore the data with all group members collaboratively to expose any undiscovered

strengths or vulnerabilities. Looking back, I can now see that by missing an opportunity

to involve the group as a group, I also mirrored the systemic pattern of individualism by

acting on my own. I did this without realizing it at the time.

Because I failed to probe within the group, I did not understand that, while the

goals held the potential for making some improvement in the group’s performance, the

potential was not significant and was not in demand by the group’s customers or its

stakeholders. Further, I now believe that the best way to achieve these goals within

Abigail’s User Research group, given my belief that this was a coactive group (as

discussed in Chapter 2), was through individual rather than group performance

management. I now believe that by probing within the group, I might have realized this

sooner.

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As a result of deciding to accept Abigail’s definition of group goals and standards

without seeking any group input, the project continued on the course recommended by

me and agreed upon by Abigail.

Analysis: March 2002

The next step in the project entailed preparing to present the results of the

interviews back to the User Research group. Throughout this preparation, I sought

coaching and support from one of my LIOS faculty members. During this time, I

experienced some nervousness about following the action research model accurately and

about my ability to make a good impression on Abigail and the User Research team as I

worked to employ a model I had only just learned. I very much wanted my client group

and supervising faculty to perceive me as an effective and successful consultant. While I

had no reason to suspect that faculty would not see me as competent, their perceptions of

my performance fed directly into my sense of professional and even personal self-worth

and, as a result, mattered a great deal to me. My faculty mentor helped me to think

through the process and plan a strategy. This reduced some of my anxiety. He also

offered encouragement and support for me as a practitioner and a learner. My confidence

increased a bit because of his interventions.

During this time, I also worked with Abigail to develop content for the upcoming

group-wide data feedback meeting. Abigail looked to me for direction on what to do next.

I experienced this trust as exciting and validating, but also anxiety-producing because I

did not always feel completely confident that I knew what to do next. I was learning as I

was doing while sensing Abigail’s reliance on me to guide the process effectively. I was

also worried because I was not sure what to expect from the data feedback meeting. I

51

could not predict exactly what reaction the group would have to the data, or what they

might suggest as an appropriate action. These two aspects would determine the remaining

course of the project. My inability to control them was deeply frustrating for me, and my

anxiety increased once again. What happened next was a third critical incident within this

project.

A Third Critical Incident

Because of my anxiety, I made a choice to deviate from the action research

process at this point. Rather than presenting the survey data to the group and asking its

members for their interpretation of the data followed by collaborative development of any

necessary action step, I took this responsibility upon myself as the project’s change agent.

In our preparations for the data feedback meeting, I proposed to Abigail what I thought

the data revealed as well as what I thought the group should do about it. I told Abigail

that the most important feature in the data was the apparent conflict between her three

supervisors, because if they were unable to collaborate, it was unrealistic to expect the

rest of the team to collaborate. I said that I viewed this lack of collaboration between her

supervisors as the first and most important barrier to achieving her project goal of

building a collaborative team. I took this a step further by proposing to Abigail that the

group’s action step needed to be conflict resolution and team building within that

supervisors group. Abigail said that she agreed with my analysis.

Sharing my opinions with Abigail seems to me to be within the scope of action

research. My deviation from the action research discipline occurred when I took this a

step further and next encouraged Abigail to use the data feedback meeting to impose

these opinions upon the group instead of asking it to hear the data and offer up group

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members’ own ideas about it. When Abigail said that she agreed with my analysis,

diagnosis, and even my proposed action step, I experienced this as evidence that I was

right and, as a result, I felt my anxiety begin to diminish significantly. I experienced

Abigail’s agreement with me as validating approval. I virtually eliminated the uncertainty

inherent in this stage of the project by asserting my own control of the data interpretation

as well development of the action step. Because of all of this, I felt confident. .

A key learning occurred for me later when I realized that while this offered

immediate relief to my anxiety at the time, which I experienced very positively, it also

prevented group members from engaging fully in the process. It became my data, my

analysis, and my action step instead of theirs. In retrospect, I believe this virtually assured

the failure of this project. I believe I could have avoided this derailment by sticking to

action research’s group dialogic and collaborative process in spite of the anxiety its

uncertainty created for me, and finding other ways to manage my anxiety.

Feedback: April 2002

All but two members of the group attended the data feedback meeting; the two

missing members were traveling on business at the time. Abigail had expressed some

nervousness about speaking in front of the group, and I responded by offering her some

preparatory coaching, even though our initial contract did not include this level of

participation.

Abigail presented the majority of the content after I explained the action research

approach and answered questions about the organization development process. We

agreed in advance that it was important for the group to see Abigail as the primary

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speaker in this meeting in order to keep the focus on the group rather than on me as a

change agent.

Abigail presented the data from the survey and told group members that because

of the data analysis, we would be focusing our attention on working with the three group

supervisors to build greater collaboration between them, which they could then extend

throughout the team.

I recognized a low level of energy in the room during the data feedback meeting.

At the time, I attributed the low energy to Abigail’s laid-back presentation style. Even

though we had discussed Abigail’s need to demonstrate enthusiasm during the meeting,

she spoke in her usual conversational tone and leaned back in her chair while talking. I

attributed Abigail reverting to her customary low-key style as an indication of her

nervousness.

Despite my concerns regarding the low energy level in the room, I still believed

that Abigail needed to be the primary presenter, and I did not want to overshadow her by

suddenly becoming more energetic myself in an attempt to change the dynamic. I worried

that Abigail could experience a change in the presentation style she expected from me as

a surprise and potentially undermining and unsupportive. I worried that this might

actually increase her nervousness. Therefore, I decided to adhere to our meeting plan and

sat throughout the meeting struggling with my tension and unease. Looking back now, I

can see that contracting for live action coaching in advance of the meeting might have

allowed me to intervene to attempt to turn the meeting around without surprising Abigail

or making her feel put on the spot.

54

Following the meeting, I asked Abigail why she did not show more passion or

energy during the presentation. Abigail stated that nervousness overcame her. When it

came time for her to speak, Abigail lost her confidence and reverted to her familiar style.

Although Abigail’s presentation style undoubtedly had some impact, I now

believe the low level of energy was more directly a result of the lack of engagement of

User Research members in the content of the meeting. The approach I had recommended

to Abigail had resulted in a lack of group-wide dialogue regarding the data and a lack of

opportunity for collective discovery and problem solving regarding the action step.

Looking back, I now believe I experienced and expressed a high need for control

when preparing for the meeting and, therefore, negatively influenced the meeting’s

effectiveness. My need for control first showed up in my extensive preparation for the

meeting – preparation to the extent of drafting the presentation and presenting it to

Abigail for input. I chose this approach instead of collaborating more equally with

Abigail. This may also explain Abigail’s low-key presentation style in that she did not

experience strong ownership of the content. A similar indication of my need for control

was my willingness to accept Abigail’s two assumptions regarding User Research’s

demanding performance challenges. Instead of encouraging Abigail to open the topic for

a User Research group discussion, I chose to accept her interpretation of the data. A third

sign of my high need for control took the form of working with Abigail in advance of the

meeting to determine the action step instead of using the data feedback meeting as an

opportunity to open up the question to User Research for group-wide discovery and

agreement.

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In retrospect, I experienced nervousness about a successful data feedback

meeting. I was nervous because I wanted Abigail, my faculty, and the User Research

group to perceive me as effective and competent. I chose to respond to my nervousness

by ensuring that the entire meeting was carefully prepared. As a result, I left little room

for the emergent dialogue pivotal to this process. Predictably then, the User Research

group became a passive audience during the presentation. The group members sat and

listened instead of interacting with each other or us. The group never had a real chance to

discuss and own the data.

Looking back, I believe this meeting further reinforced their individualism. The

meeting did little to encourage team interdependence and collaboration. Given the chance

to do it again, I would recognize my need for control and work to manage it more

effectively. I would focus on creating more interactive energy in the room between group

members rather than relying upon Abigail and myself to present the data and the

recommended action step. I will discuss this further in Chapter 5.

Given the highly controlled tone of the meeting and the statement of our already-

determined action step, group members offered little input. As a result, Abigail and I

proceeded to the next phase of our project.

Action Step: April 2002

The week after the data feedback meeting with the team, I suggested to Abigail

that we schedule a planning meeting with the supervisors to begin to address their

conflict. We could work on their collaboration skills and advance toward fulfillment of

our planned action step. Abigail declined to move forward with our intended action

because one of the User Research supervisors had come to her, expressed strong

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resistance to the idea, and refused to participate in the action step. Abigail told me that

she would not force him to take the action step nor would she impose any consequences

for his unwillingness to do so. This became another critical incident in the project.

A Fourth Critical Incident

The project’s fourth critical incident occurred when Abigail made a choice not to

take action due to the reluctance of one of her supervisors. Abigail stated that she

believed the problems resided with the other two supervisors, who, in her words,

“bullied” the resistant supervisor. Abigail said that to confront this conflict directly would

be too intimidating for the third supervisor. Abigail said she preferred to work directly

with this supervisor to try to build his confidence and protect him as much as possible

from the other supervisors, making sure that his work did not overlap with theirs. Abigail

declined to work directly with the other two supervisors, saying that she heard they were

looking for other jobs and that she preferred to wait it out with the hope that they would

leave the team and the problem would go away.

I first responded with surprise and confusion to Abigail’s unwillingness to move

ahead with our planned action step. I queried her, trying to understand why she did not

want to proceed. I challenged Abigail to reconsider and to look for the source of her own

resistance. Abigail reiterated that she would not force this supervisor to do something he

was unwilling to do. The firmness of Abigail’s response also surprised me. Abigail

seemed completely closed to my input, and suddenly I experienced a great deal of

distance from her. For the first time, I felt like an outsider rather than a partner to Abigail.

In what seemed to be a flash, I understood that this project had moved to the periphery of

Abigail’s priority list.

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I strongly encouraged Abigail to reconsider her position given the possibility that

the supervisors would not find other jobs and the problem would not go away, or the

likelihood that even if they left the team, the damage caused in the interim by supervisor

conflict could have lasting negative effects for the remaining team members. I

encouraged Abigail to take a more direct approach and confront the issues on her team.

Abigail told me that she knew I was giving the right counsel and that she knew she

should be more direct, but she was still making a choice to take no action.

I continued to struggle with many emotions. I felt angry with Abigail based on my

judgment that she lacked resolve to accomplish her goal. It was not until much later, upon

writing this paper, that I came to understand how my own actions and choices in this

project (described earlier in this chapter) had contributed to Abigail’s unwillingness to

persevere. I also experienced disappointment with my own failure to predict this turn of

events and a sense of insecurity about my ability to determine what to do next. I worried

that my project had just fallen completely and irrevocably apart, and as a result, I would

not be able to meet the academic requirements to graduate on time. I also wondered about

my own abilities as an organization development practitioner. I felt anxious and

somewhat depressed.

I consulted with faculty members in my program to seek their advice. I also

consulted other students in my program to hear their opinions. After more discussion and

much soul searching, I decided to tell Abigail that I wanted to end our project. I felt we

had reached a dead-end, and I did not see a way to salvage Abigail’s initial goal if she

was unwilling to take what seemed to me to be the necessary action. My belief at the time

was that Abigail had lost interest and resolve, and I did not believe I could resurrect that

58

in her. I still lacked the benefit of seeing my own role in this clearly and understanding

how I had helped to create this response in Abigail. I wanted to cut my losses and move

on to either write up the project or seek out a new project.

For me, ending this project meant that I needed to convince my academic faculty

that I had done sufficient work, albeit an incomplete or failed project, in order to graduate

with my class. Alternatively, I would need to find another project opportunity and start

over, causing a significant delay for my graduation. I continued to experience some

nervousness and unease about these potential ramifications although these emotions had

abated. I believed that I was making a tough choice but the right choice. Despite a small

amount of lingering anxiety and unease, I felt at peace. I believed my decision to end the

project to be the choice with the most integrity.

In my next meeting with Abigail, I shared with her my recommendation that we

end the project based on its stalling at the action step and the inability to accomplish her

originally contracted goal. Abigail surprised me with her own surprise at this suggestion.

Abigail stated that our work together had offered much meaningful data to her, and she

did not want it to end at this point. Abigail said that she was still committed to achieving

positive results and asked whether we could use a quantitative survey as a means of

gathering more data about whether her original goal to build a collaborative team was

actually the right goal and whether the action we had agreed upon for the supervisors

was, indeed, the right action to take.

I worried that Abigail’s stated desire to continue working together was actually a

form of conflict avoidance on her part. In the same way that Abigail did not want to

confront her supervisors’ conflict directly, I wondered if she also did not want to confront

59

an unsuccessful end to her project with me – which I considered a form of conflict. I

raised this question with Abigail, and she insisted that this was not the case. Abigail’s

insistence on proceeding with a quantitative survey to gather more data convinced me to

postpone any decision about the future of the project until after the tabulation of results.

In retrospect, I believe that I expressed some conflict avoidance of my own by agreeing

to proceed. I felt uneasy about choosing to continue because I believed that we were

delaying the inevitable. However, I also experienced curiosity about what would happen

next. After all, Abigail had surprised me more than once in this project, and I wondered

whether another surprise might await me – hopefully, more positive and encouraging this

time. In addition, I continued to view this project as a learning opportunity because I was,

after all, a student. I believed there was nothing to be lost in allowing the project to

continue at least through another data-gathering phase to see what might surface.

Diagnosis, Analysis, and Re-contracting: May 2002

Abigail and I developed a quantitative online survey to send out to the group. We

agreed to focus primarily on Abigail and her supervisors’ leadership as perceived and

experienced by User Research members. The earlier qualitative survey had included only

12 questions, each asked in a personal interview and answered in some detail. This

quantitative survey included more than 75 questions in a web-based format utilizing a

Likert scale.

The data I collected in the quantitative survey supported data gathered in the

earlier qualitative survey. Four key themes once again stood out: (a) group member

appreciation of individual autonomy; (b) lack of knowledge or access to other team

members reinforced by lack of collaboration between supervisors; (c) desire to build a

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greater sense of community countered by reluctance to commit given the high potential

for another Gryffindor Technology reorganization, fear of additional workload demands,

and fear of conflict; and (d) Lack of clear group-wide performance goals or standards.

Leadership themes also emerged consistent with the qualitative survey. These

included (a) respect for Abigail’s reputation; (b) appreciation for the autonomy extended

to group members, (c) a perception of high performance expectations; (d) her support for

group member learning; and (e) uncertainty about Abigail’s work, how her leadership

benefited the team, and how to leverage her leadership for enhanced individual success.

Abigail’s comment in response to seeing the quantitative data was, ‘There’s

nothing new here.” I agreed. At this point, I believed the quantitative survey had been an

unnecessary delay of the inevitable due to Abigail’s, as well as my own, conflict avoiding

behavior. I told Abigail that I believed we should either re-commit to her original goal,

beginning by addressing the conflict within the supervisory group or else end the project.

I felt deeply sad and once again frustrated because, for the second time in this project, I

believed our work had come to its conclusion while falling short of successful

accomplishment of its original goals.

Abigail surprised me once again by suggesting that instead of ending our work,

we re-contract for a new goal of leadership development for her. Abigail seemed cheerful

but firm in her desire to focus on leadership development for herself and to continue to

work with me. I found her enthusiasm personally affirming. Still, I again pressed Abigail

to consider the possibility of her own conflict avoidance, both in refusing to stick to her

original goal and in her apparent unwillingness to end our project. She responded that

conflict avoidance was the not the impetus for her suggestion of a new project goal. She

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said that she realized that while she was not ready to take the original action step, she was

ready to take a step in that direction by focusing on her leadership. We had discussed

leadership development as an aspect of our work together early in our contracting

discussions and Abigail had even mentioned it specifically in her sponsorship statement

to the User Research group. Abigail’s suggestion of leadership development seemed

within the scope of the potential work we had discussed in our initial contracting

discussions.

Despite our positive conversation, I was developing a growing sense that Abigail

was no longer interested in bringing about any change within her group. I based this on

several observations. Abigail had a cheerful but rather dispassionate tone of voice and

style of expression when speaking with me, which seemed different from her earlier

enthusiasm when we initially contracted. She seemed engaged but not excited as she had

in previous conversations. She also seemed more aware than ever of the time when we

met and was careful not to allow our meeting to run long. I took all of these signs to mean

that Abigail’s priorities had shifted and this project was no longer a top priority for her.

I worried that Abigail was selecting the least aggressive goal possible – her own

leadership development – in order to help me complete this project successfully at the

lowest possible risk to herself or her group. Intuitively, I was coming to sense that

Abigail saw this project more as a way to help a student (me) than do solve a real group

problem. I struggled with a nagging inner voice telling me to pay attention to this

possibility. I brought this up with Abigail, but I did so in a rather passive way. I was

quick to accept her reassurances that there was no basis for my concerns and that her

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desire to achieve some level of meaningful change within the User Research group was

genuine.

Looking back, I believe that there are several reasons for my quickness to accept

Abigail’s reassurances. One is that I told myself that I was just being insecure and to

ignore this growing sense of Abigail’s lack of interest. Another was that I wanted so

much for this project to succeed that I allowed myself the luxury of denial that it had

failed. Yet another was the challenge of having to assume my full personal authority by

confronting Abigail vigorously up front with my suspicions. Looking back, I suspect that

all of these contributed to my desire to terminate the project.

Despite my misgivings, Abigail and I agreed to contract for a new project goal of

leadership development with a focus on increasing Abigail’s self-awareness regarding her

own strengths and challenges. We negotiated that this would take the form of four

coaching sessions over a period of three months. We agreed that these coaching sessions

would be conversational in tone and that the measurement of success would be Abigail’s

own sense that they had added some value to her.

Action and Evaluation: June-August 2002

Abigail and I met for three leadership coaching sessions in June and a final

coaching session in August. We elected not to meet during the month of July due to our

conflicting summer vacation schedules.

We shared some provocative and enlightening conversations about Abigail’s

leadership strengths and challenges, as well as her aspirations. Abigail had shared with

me when we first met back in January that she aspired to be Gryffindor’s first vice

president from the usability discipline. No other usability manager had achieved the level

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of vice president before. Abigail revealed in our coaching sessions that she no longer held

this aspiration and, in fact, was now considering an early retirement – very possibly in the

near future. The pace of her work was increasingly frenetic, and she said that she was no

longer feeling capable of managing it in a healthy way, which had diminished her desire

for a long career within Gryffindor.

I facilitated a non-directive, person-centered coaching approach (Coghlan, 2002),

allowing Abigail to be psychologically independent from my judgment about what she

shared with me. I processed many emotions during this time. Internally, I continued to

struggle with some resentment of Abigail’s unwillingness to go through with our original

action step. I challenged myself to believe she did the best she could under the

circumstances in order to view her without judging her negatively. I struggled with my

own defeated sense of perfectionism and control, wishing my project had been more

successful according to the standards stated within my academic program. Although I

still faced the possibility that my academic faculty would consider my project with

Abigail, User Research, and Gryffindor Technology incomplete and require me to start a

new project all over again and delay my graduation, I also possessed a surprising sense of

calm about what lay ahead. Perhaps because I had already twice faced this possibility, I

had already worked through the sense of disappointment and potential failure.

My conclusion was that these coaching sessions resulted in some increased self-

awareness for Abigail regarding her leadership. I base this on Abigail’s feedback to me

that she had learned about her leadership style through our conversations – specifically,

she realized that her reluctance to confront conflict directly was an issue on which she

needed to focus and improve if she wanted to assume greater levels of responsibility. My

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belief is that we planted a few seeds that, given the right opportunities, could take root,

grow, and eventually blossom as Abigail realizes her leadership potential – if she chooses

to do so. Abigail did not mention any regret about not making significant progress on her

initial stated goal of increased group collaboration. Consistent with my interactions with

Abigail throughout the project, she seemed positive, appreciative, and cheerful as we

concluded our work together.

I agree that this project had many successful elements. I believe that learning

occurred on all sides. I have developed a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the

action research process. I have developed many new skills, which I detail in Chapter 6. I

also have renewed confidence that I will be an effective organization development

practitioner. I have found personal meaning and value in the application of organization

development theory in the workplace. I recognize the value of understanding my own

needs and working to prevent these needs from interfering with my role as change agent.

I will discuss this learning further in Chapter 6.

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Chapter 4

Results

This chapter offers an analysis of the results of my master’s thesis field project. It

begins with an explanation of why there is a lack of scientific and statistical

measurements, followed by a description of the data I collected for the project goal.

Scientific and Statistical Measurements

In spite of having two opportunities to gather and compare empirical data, I did

not complete scientific and statistical measurements in support of this master’s thesis

field project. In the first opportunity, I elected not to complete the comparison loop. In

the second opportunity, I decided not to pursue numerical measurement of my work.

The first opportunity occurred at the beginning of the project, when Abigail

established her goal of building a collaborative team. While I had collected anecdotal

data from individual interviews with each of the User Research group members, I did not

collect comparison data at the end of the project because an intervention failed to take

place, the project goal evolved, and there was no change impact to measure.

The second opportunity occurred when Abigail and I re-contracted for the

leadership development goal. At that time, we could have developed a quantitative

measurement tool to study empirical data related to the new goal; however, because

Abigail and I agreed that her own assessment would be our measure of success, I opted

not to pursue numerical measurement of our work.

Goal: Leadership Development

Abigail and I contracted for a new primary project goal in the area of leadership

development. The goal was to increase Abigail’s self-awareness regarding her own

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strengths and challenges. We negotiated that this would take the form of four coaching

sessions over a period of three months. We agreed that these coaching sessions would be

conversational in tone and that the measurement of success would be Abigail’s own sense

that they had added some value to her.

Numerical data. Because I did not create the scientific or statistical measurements

necessary for evaluation purposes, the only data points I have are subjective.

Client observations. Abigail told me that she believed our project to be a success.

She said that she found the data gathering particularly helpful and she said that she

learned a lot about her leadership in the process. Consistent with my interactions with

Abigail throughout the project, she her tone when describing our work together at its

conclusions was positive, appreciative, and cheerful.

Consultant observations. My conclusion was that these coaching sessions resulted

in some increased self-awareness for Abigail regarding her leadership. I base this on

Abigail’s feedback to me that she had learned about her leadership style through our

conversations – specifically, she realized that her reluctance to confront conflict directly

was an issue on which she needed to focus and improve if she wanted to assume greater

levels of responsibility. My belief is that we planted a few seeds that, given the right

opportunities, could take root, grow, and eventually blossom as Abigail realizes her

leadership potential – if she chooses to do so. Abigail did not mention any regret about

not making significant progress on her initial stated goal of increased group

collaboration.

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Chapter 5

Personal Impact

In this chapter, I describe my family and culture of origin, as well as how my

learning style, interpersonal behavior tendencies, conflict handling, and personality type

influenced my work as a practitioner within the client system, Gryffindor Technology. In

this analysis, I utilize scores from the following instruments: (a) Kolb’s Learning Style

Inventory (LSI), (b) Schutz’s Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation-Behavior

(FIRO-B), (c) the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument regarding conflict, and (d)

the Myers-Briggs indicator. I also touch on how my personal authority affected this

project and address sponsor and client group feedback within this project.

Family of Origin

My immediate family of origin consists of my father, mother, my younger brother

and myself. My father held the authority in our family and ruled with absolute power

while I was growing up. I witnessed very little sharing of authority or decision-making

between my father and mother, or between my father and the rest of our family. My

father made all of the decisions with little, if any, input from anyone else. My mother

supported and upheld his decisions with no voice of her own that I recall hearing.

The primary rules in our house for my brother and me were “children are seen and

not heard” and “if you put your feet under my table, you will do as I say.” I recall a mix

of emotions in reaction to these family policies. I feared my father and knew that his

reaction to any insubordination would be swift and harshly critical. I recall that my father

was never shy about delivering withering criticism or a hand to my bottom in front of

others – something that aroused shame and resentment in me. I believe this has resulted

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in my development of a keen sensitivity to judgment in front of others, which likely

influenced my hesitancy to intervene during the data feedback meeting – fearing public

shame if my intervention should fail.

I also respected my father because he held so much power over my mother, my

brother, and me. I interpreted his absolute authority as an expression of the rightness of

his position and as a sort of protective umbrella over our family. His certainty and power

felt, at times, like a protective shield against any harm from the outside world. I

considered my dad to be smart, as well as a man of character and integrity. Few men in

our community, besides teachers in the local school system and some of the local clergy,

were college graduates. I felt immense pride that my father was a college graduate.

I deeply desired my father’s approval; I wanted to be like him, even though I

feared him. I felt loved by him even if I was not always certain how to connect

emotionally with him.

I grew up perceiving my mother as loving but passive in my father’s shadow. I do

not recall my mom ever expressing a strong opinion about anything. I recall her as a

caring and benign figure in my childhood. In times of family turmoil, my mother either

expressed positive emotions or showed an absence of emotion. I have virtually no

recollection of her being sad, frustrated or even angry. I recall that even when she

punished my brother and me, we would giggle because we did not take her punishments

seriously.

My brother, who is 19 months younger than me, was the more compliant and

passive of us two siblings, in my opinion. I believe that my family perceived me as the

more rebellious of the two children. Looking back, I consider any of my challenges to my

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father’s authority to be small in scale and without any intention of truly confronting his

power. I pushed at boundaries but rarely disregarded or broke through them.

I recall my role in my family of origin as primarily compensating for what I

consider to be my mother’s under-functioning in our family system. While not my

father’s peer or even anywhere near to holding his level of power, I became the louder of

the two female voices in the family and second to my father in the staunchness of my

positions. I was most likely to express feminine perspectives of inclusion and connection

within our small group. I also became the most likely target of any tension within the

family. I have a sense of often being blamed for things that went wrong and, looking

back, I recall carrying with me a deep sense of responsibility for whatever happened to

our family – even things obviously out of my control as a child, such as family finances

or my father’s career decisions.

My family of origin has had several influences upon me. I believe that my

tendency to over-function as an adult has grown out of my over-functioning role as a

child. An example of this over-functioning in my project was my eagerness to offer to

Abigail a potential sponsorship statement to send to her team instead of relying on her to

do that for herself. Another influence from my family of origin is that I did not see open

or healthy handling of conflict as a child, and as a result, I have struggled as an adult to

develop a repertoire of effective responses to conflict. This showed up in my project

when I passively confronted Abigail with my concerns regarding this project becoming a

lower priority for her – virtually avoiding conflict – instead of confronting those concerns

more aggressively. Another influence is that I grew up with the pattern of an older male

holding absolute authority over me, with me feeling powerless and often inadequate as a

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result. I believe this was a factor in my reluctance to intervene directly in the data

feedback meeting when it was clear that it was ineffective. In retrospect, I believe that,

without realizing it, I deferred to Abigail’s authority in the meeting as the group leader

instead of relying on my own power and authority and speaking out when I needed to.

Culture of Origin

My culture of origin is one of a lower middle-class, mid-western white family.

The closest ties my family has to any sort of ethnic roots are its Irish heritage on my

mother’s side. My maternal great-great-grandparents emigrated from Cork County,

Ireland. The rest of my family lineage is a mix of Northern European origin and not

aligned with any particular country or tradition.

Although my family lived in a variety of places in my early youth while my father

was in the U.S. Navy and then as he was following various career leads, I consider

myself as having grown up in the Midwest. My hometown had fewer than 2,500 citizens,

whose economic well-being depended on local farms, the Santa Fe railroad and a modest

local yearbook publishing industry. I do not recall any female authority figures as I was

growing up. In my immediate culture of origin, the individuals who held the power and

influence in our community were men. There was also very little ethnic diversity in my

hometown. Other than one black family and a Vietnamese family, everyone else as far as

I knew was white and Christian. All of my schoolmates, friends, and their families were

white and Christian.

Most of my extended family lived in Chicago. I considered my aunts, uncles and

cousins to be well educated and financially stable, even advantaged. Growing up, I felt a

dramatic contrast between my immediate family’s status and the financial and social

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status of most of the rest of our extended family. I sometimes felt caught between two

worlds – the small-town life I experienced firsthand and what I perceived as a more

sophisticated life experienced by my extended family.

It is only as an adult that I have been able to broaden my range of understanding

and interest in cultures other than my own. As a child, I was isolated and insulated from

these influences. Now I enjoy and even seek out cultural diversity, but find that at times I

do not know how to handle myself in the presence of diversity as a source of conflict. I

am working to expand my range and abilities in this regard. This did not show up

explicitly in my project because cultural issues were not a primary issue.

Learning Style

Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory (1999) is an assessment tool that identifies

preferred learning styles for individuals. According to my scores on this instrument, I

favor active experimentation and I possess a “converger” learning style. This means that I

typically learn best by doing and that I am inclined to take risks and influence people and

events through action. This also implies that I have an ability to get things done and that I

am best at finding practical uses for ideas and theories with an ability to solve problems

and make decisions based on finding solutions to questions or problems. All of this

suggests that action research methodologies are a good match for my learning preferences

given its emphasis on solving real problems with practical application of theory.

According to Kolb (1999), a converger can have a tendency to prefer technical

tasks and problems rather than social and interpersonal issues. I believe that this tendency

in me created a two-fold impact upon my work with User Research. I shared the team’s

aptitude with regard to technical tasks and problems, which allowed me to be a good

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cultural fit. However, this tendency could have contributed to the project’s second critical

incident. This was the point at which I accepted Abigail’s opinion regarding the group’s

performance goals virtually without question and suggested that we focus our efforts in

the group-wide data feedback meeting on communicating these to the group instead of

asking group members first for their discussion of the question. In retrospect, I believe

that I moved too quickly toward trying to solve a problem. This was at the expense of

using the social and interpersonal resources within the group to fully understand the

problem and solve it meaningfully.

Another example of the influence of my tendency to gravitate toward the

technical over the social and interpersonal was in the project’s third critical incident in

which I made a choice to deviate from the action research process in order to reduce my

anxiety surrounding the uncertainty of the experience. Rather than presenting the survey

data to the group and asking its members for their interpretation of the data followed by

collaborative development of any necessary action step, I took this responsibility upon

myself as the project’s change agent. In our preparations for the data feedback meeting, I

proposed to Abigail what I thought the data revealed as well as what I thought the group

should do about it. Once again, this meant looking to solve a problem quickly instead of

engaging social and interpersonal aspects for deeper understanding and a better long-term

solution.

Interpersonal Behavior Tendencies

The FIRO-B (Consulting Psychologists Press, 1996) instrument measures a

person in three areas – inclusion, affection, and control – and the extent to which a person

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wants to be the recipient of these from others, as well as his or her desire to express them

toward others.

According to my FIRO-B scores, I want more inclusion and affection than I

typically express. This can affect my ability to join with others, who may sometimes

perceive me as more detached and aloof than I want to be, and it is something to which I

now pay attention. I did not sense that this perception showed up in my work with

Abigail and User Research.

My desire for, and expression of, control are both mid-range scores; however, I

believe that I actually possess a high need for control. This has become clear to me as a

result of some of my experiences within this project, as well as the introspective work I

have been undergoing over the past several years.

I believe that my high need for control showed up at several points in this project.

One example of this was demonstrated in the project’s second critical incident, when data

revealed a lack of group-wide performance goals or standards. Abigail shared with me

what she believed the group’s goals and standards to be, and I accepted her opinion

virtually without question. I then suggested that we focus our efforts in the group-wide

data feedback meeting on communicating these to the group instead of asking group

members for their own opinions. Looking back now, I believe that this was an expression

of control on my part. If I had opened up the question to the group, I would not be in

control of the response. However, by accepting Abigail’s assertion virtually without

question, I could go into the data feedback meeting in control of the data.

Another example of my high need for control showed up in the project’s third

critical incident. Rather than presenting interview findings gathered from the data

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gathering process to the group and asking its members for their interpretation followed by

collaborative development of any necessary action step, I took this responsibility upon

myself as the project’s change agent. In our preparations for the data feedback meeting, I

proposed to Abigail what I thought the data revealed as well as what I thought the group

should do about it. Sharing my opinions with Abigail seems to me to be within the scope

of action research. My deviation from the action research discipline occurred when I took

this a step further and encouraged Abigail to use the data feedback meeting to impose

these opinions upon the group instead of asking them to hear the data and offer up their

own ideas about it. I virtually eliminated the uncertainty inherent in this stage of the

project by asserting my own control of the data interpretation as well as development of

the action step.

Clearly, the challenge for me in a collaborative relationship is that I can find it

difficult to release control to others and to trust in the outcome others will create.

Looking back, I believe my need for control further reinforced the team’s individualism

and blocked the opportunity for building team interdependence and collaboration. This

had a direct influence upon the outcome of the project.

Conflict Handling

The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (Kilmann and Thomas, 1974)

offers data regarding an individual’s preferred responses to conflict. According to this

instrument, I demonstrate a compromising style when dealing with conflict. This means

that I tend to find some expedient, mutually acceptable solution in a conflict situation. A

benefit of a compromising style is that it can be less disruptive than other styles; it arrives

quickly at solutions when under time pressure, and can offer temporary settlements to

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complex issues. The downside of a compromising style is that it may prioritize

practicalities over larger issues such as principles, values, and long-term objectives.

I believe that my tendency to respond to conflict with compromise influenced my

project greatly, as evidenced by two of my project’s four critical incidents.

For example, in my project’s second critical incident, I accepted, without

challenge, Abigail’s assumptions regarding her group’s collective performance

challenges. I chose not to follow the action research process by asking User Research

members to collectively work together to develop opinions on this topic. My decision to

seek an expedient solution (typical of the compromising style) regarding a unifying

challenge for the team resulted in what I consider a missed opportunity for User Research

group members to work collaboratively together.

Another impact of my compromising style in response to conflict appeared in the

fourth critical incident. When Abigail declined to proceed to the action stage of our

project, I recommended to Abigail that we end the project and declare that we had not

achieved Abigail’s original contract goal. Once again, this was seeking the expedient

resolution of a problem that is typical of a compromising style. It could also be argued

that this was closer to conflict avoidance since I failed to aggressively confront or

challenge Abigail’s choice.

Personality Type

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Myers and Myers, 1994) offers data regarding

personality type. My Myers-Briggs score is an “ENTJ” which implies several things

about my personality. First, it implies that I prefer to focus on the world around me rather

than introspectively considering ideas and impressions. Second, it means that I tend to

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focus on the future, instead of the present, and think in terms of patterns and possibilities,

as opposed to whatever data is currently collected. Third, it means that in my decision-

making, I use logic, rather than values, and objective cause-and-effect analysis, rather

than subjective evaluation. Fourth, it means that I typically prefer a planned and

organized approach, as opposed to a flexible and spontaneous style.

My ENTJ score also implies several things about my impact within this client

system. Some of the positive points were that my extroverted tendencies allowed me to

function effectively within this competitive environment. My ability to see patterns and

possibilities was helpful to the diagnosis and analysis phases of the action research

process. My use of logic likely enhanced my ability to join with a client group whose

members rely extensively on logic when performing their jobs. In addition, my planned

and organized approach helped me stay on course with the project.

A drawback of my ENTJ personality type includes a possible hesitancy on my

part to pause and sufficiently consider potentially course-changing data in the moment.

This relates specifically to all four critical incidents described in Chapter 3. Another

possible drawback is that I may have been more alike than different from the members of

this client system, potentially affecting my ability to see the situations objectively and

offer new perspectives. Yet another drawback is the ENTJ type’s high need for control,

which I clearly demonstrated throughout this project and which I have already discussed.

Personal Authority

According to Williamson (1991), personal authority is the balance between personal

differentiation and intimacy that allows for both individuality as well as the conscious

building of attachments with parents and other members of the immediate family.

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Williamson stated that a healthy personal authority balance within the family system

allows a healthy personal authority balance in other relationships. For an organization

development practitioner, this includes relationships with sponsor, client group, and

client system.

I have engaged in a significant amount of personal authority work over the past two

years as a student at the Leadership Institute of Seattle. The focus of this work has been

within my family system, particularly on my relationships with my parents. The results of

this have been rich and have led to significantly increased self-awareness regarding my

own behavior and choices that I make in relationships.

In my personal authority work, I have learned that I have a talent for bringing people

together and creating a sense of community. I often have an intuitive sense of who feels

left out and what the issues are. As a result, I believe that I am often able to address

isolation issues very effectively and enhance overall group inclusion. I credit my role as

connector within my immediate family of origin as the source of this talent and consider

it a strong benefit, even a gift, as an organization development practitioner.

I can also be very sensitive to the expressed thinking and emotions of others – to the

point of over-focusing on their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. I link this back to my

father’s strong power and influence in my family of origin and my need to ensure my

actions and behaviors were aligned with his expectations as well as avoid or compromise

around any conflict. My challenge is to hold this sensitivity in balance with my own

thoughts, feelings, and experiences so one does not override the other.

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Another point of impact is my strong need for, and expression of, control. Clearly this

was highly influential within my project and its ultimate outcome. I associate my control

with my exaggerated childhood sense of responsibility within my family system.

Feedback from Sponsor and Client Group

The feedback I received from my sponsor was consistently very positive. She said

that she believed we had a very effective working relationship and that she enjoyed our

collaboration.

Although there were some very positive aspects of our relationship, and I believe

we had some effective chemistry, I do not perceive the sponsor’s feedback as completely

accurate and see it as an extension of Abigail’s unwillingness to confront conflict. I

consistently sought Abigail’s input on how things were going. I took care to identify

areas in which the project or our working relationship appeared to be sub-optimal. In

return, Abigail seemed to be quick to paint the experience in a positive light. My sense is

that there was no compelling reason for Abigail to risk conflict with me by giving

potentially alienating feedback. I view this as consistent with Abigail’s unwillingness to

confront conflict with her supervisors.

I did not formally request or receive feedback from the client group. At the time, I

believed that our abandonment of the original project goal would make it difficult for

them to share meaningful perspectives, since they had only experienced an incomplete

portion of my work. Looking back, I regret not asking at least for their opinions on how

they experienced me in general as a consultant. I believe the data could have been

enlightening for me and meaningful to my learning.

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Chapter 6

Summary and Conclusions

In this final chapter, I provide a summary of my master’s thesis field project along

with a synopsis of lessons learned from both theory and from project experience.

Project Summary

My client system, Gryffindor Technology, is a world leader in the development

and manufacture of consumer and business software. Most high technology business

observers agree that Gryffindor Technology established its prominence through

innovative product developments as well as insightful business practices. Industry

analysts recognize Gryffindor Technology as a company that frequently reorganizes its

internal structures and processes. The frequency and scale of reorganizations within

Gryffindor Technology have both external and internal ramifications. Externally,

technology analysts view the company as capable of delivering relatively quick product

adaptations in spite of its size, resulting in a distinct marketplace advantage. Internally,

observers say that company individuals and groups experience a corporate culture that

mirrors the high technology marketplace in which only the most agile and competitive

employees thrive.

My sponsor, Abigail, leads a User Research group formed in December 2001 –

one month before my introduction to it as a consultant. Its creation resulted from one of

Gryffindor Technology’s reorganizations. Newly promoted to a leadership position,

Abigail’s goal was to build a cohesive, interdependent team. This became our first project

goal: to transform User Research from a collection of individuals into a collaborative

team. We also defined a secondary project goal: to resolve four concerns held by Abigail.

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Abigail’s first concern was that team members lacked trust in Gryffindor Technology and

the new User Research team. Abigail attributed this apparent lack of trust to poor

communication during the most recent reorganization. Abigail’s second concern was

potential underperformance by some team members caused by competency gaps.

Abigail’s third concern was that she had not set clear performance expectations for the

group. Abigail’s fourth concern was that the lack of integration with team member’s

respective product teams might result in User Research’s underperformance in its internal

service role.

During the course of this project, several critical incidents occurred which

influenced the evolution of the project’s goals and its overall outcome. The first critical

incident was my failure to probe when Abigail did not appear to have a clearly defined

vision for success. As a result, I did not notice warning signs of Abigail’s eventual

disinclination to advance beyond the diagnosis, analysis, and feedback stages of our

project. The second critical incident occurred when I deferred to Abigail’s definition of

group-wide performance goals and standards without probing within the group for its

opinions and input. This resulted in my failure to actively engage the group as a whole,

my inability to foresee that Abigail’s goals and standards were not in demand by the

group’s customers or its stakeholders, and my failure to perceive early in the process that

Abigail could achieve her goals through individual rather than group performance

management. The third critical incident occurred when I pre-determined an analysis of

data gathered within the group along with a recommended action step instead of helping

the group to do this collectively on its own. This resulted in a shift in the project’s sense

of ownership and interest from group members to me – it became my data, my analysis,

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and my action step instead of theirs. The fourth critical incident occurred when Abigail

refused to undertake the project’s first proposed action step based on her project goal. It

was at this point that the project stalled and faced possible early termination. Abigail and

I eventually re-contracted for a new project goal of leadership development through

individual coaching sessions with me to enhance her own self-awareness. We established

Abigail as the determiner of goal success, based on whether she believed she gained

anything from the sessions.

My conclusion was that these coaching sessions resulted in some increased self-

awareness for Abigail regarding her leadership. I base this on Abigail’s feedback to me

that she had learned about her leadership style through our conversations – specifically,

she realized that her reluctance to directly confront conflict was an issue on which she

needed to focus and improve if she wanted to assume greater levels of responsibility. My

belief is that we planted a few seeds that, given the right opportunities, could take root,

grow, and eventually blossom as Abigail realizes her leadership potential – if she chooses

to do so. Abigail did not mention any regret about not making significant progress on her

initial stated goal of increased group collaboration. Consistent with my interactions with

Abigail throughout the project, she seemed positive, appreciative, and cheerful as we

concluded our work together.

I agree that this project had many successful elements. I believe that learning

occurred on all sides. I have developed a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the

action research process. I have developed many new skills. I also have renewed

confidence that I will be an effective organization development practitioner. I have found

personal meaning and value in the application of organization development theory in the

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workplace. I recognize the value of understanding my own needs and working to prevent

these needs from interfering with my role as change agent.

Lessons Learned: Theory

I learned a great deal from my master’s thesis project. This is a primary reason

why I consider my project to be a solid success. It was an opportunity for me to develop

and enhance my skills as an organization development practitioner through actual field

experience. When I reflect back on my learning, I think of it in two categories: theory and

actual experience.

In terms of theory, most of my learning occurred post-project. Although I

conducted research during the course of my project to inform my recommendations and

actions, it was not until I had post-project clarity that themes within this research

resonated most powerfully with me. An exception to this is what I learned regarding

Emery and Trist’s (1965) theories about types of organizational environments. I studied

this early in my project and found it helpful to my understanding of User Research, as

well as Gryffindor Technology, as I entered those systems.

An example of learning that occurred after the project’s completion is my keener

understanding of group dynamics. This includes recognizing the facets of a group’s

forming stage and acknowledging the importance of formal organizational socialization

for the creation of a positive group culture.

What I learned about teams fascinates me, specifically the work by Katzenbach

and Smith (1993). Their assertion that a compelling collective performance challenge is

needed to create and enhance teams seems so fundamental and yet I suspect that it often

lacks the attention it deserves, much as it did in my project.

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Another example of post-project learning is how clearly I now understand the

importance of effectively filling the roles of sponsor and agent. In my project, these roles

were not effectively filled for the many reasons I list throughout this paper, and this

resulted in the ultimate failure of the project. For example, I learned the importance of a

project sponsor articulating a vision for success as part of his or her role. This indicates

not only his or her own clarity regarding expectations, but also indicates a willingness to

do whatever it takes to achieve the goal. I also learned the importance of my role as a

change agent to draw this out of the sponsor or at least verify that it does not exist. In the

future, I will aggressively ask questions and probe for this vision and ensure that the

sponsor and I share a common understanding of what it is, what will be different as a

result, and how it affects the bottom line and stakeholders.

I also learned much about leadership skills, including ways to enhance the

potential for leadership performance through non-directive coaching. Looking back now,

I would establish clear and measurable metrics for success regarding Abigail’s leadership

development goal. I can now see that by allowing the measurement to be Abigail’s own

definition for success, and given Abigail’s tendency to focus only on the positive, I

virtually assured no critical or constructive measurement.

Finally, I was surprised at how much I learned about action research by studying

this model following the completion of my project. I did this as a way to understand what

had gone wrong and why my project had failed. My project did include the suggested

action research steps of problem diagnosis, data analysis, feedback to the client group,

development of an action step, and final evaluation of the project. However, I learned

later that I had not followed these steps in the way that I now believe they are intended to

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be implemented according to action research. Notably, I failed to engage fully the client

group throughout each of these steps. I diagnosed the problem instead of helping the

client group to do that for itself. I analyzed the data and presented it to Abigail who

presented it to the client group, instead of letting Abigail and the rest of her group wrestle

with its own opinions and ideas. I recommended what I thought the client group should

do instead of letting Abigail’s User Research group determine its own action step. At the

time, I believed I was following action research because diagnosis, analysis, feedback,

action, and evaluation did occur. However, now I see that because each of these steps was

incomplete without the engagement of the group, the entire process was incomplete. It

was the equivalent of a batter stepping up to plate to hit the ball, but not following

through the entire swing.

Lessons Learned: Experience

In terms of actual experience, my learning occurred both during my project and

following its completion.

For example, I learned that over-reliance on the sponsor and agent roles can lead

to under-engagement of the client group or client system in which it may become

indifferent to the process and the outcome. I now keenly understand the value of

involving the client group in data analysis and development as well as deployment of the

action step. I learned that an important byproduct of working with the entire client group

is that it also develops members’ collaborative skills. In the future, I will find ways to

manage my own anxiety that arises from the need for control as well as my discomfort

with uncertainty so that I can facilitate a collaborative process.

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I dramatically increased my own self-awareness regarding my behaviors and

tendencies. For example, I learned the importance of recognizing my own need for

control and balancing that need with openness to having the process emerge naturally and

spontaneously to develop its own course. This project experience also reinforced my need

to be aware of my tendency to compromise in response to conflict and the consequences

this creates.

Finally, this project reinforced for me the importance of anticipating probabilities

whenever possible – such as Abigail’s unwillingness to go through with the action stage –

or at least maintaining resilience in order to be nimble in the face of change.

Looking back, I experience deep pride at not only completing this project, but at

emerging with many important practical lessons that can only be won through hardships

in the field. In its most challenging moments, my work with Abigail and User Research

brought me to question my very commitment to the organization development field. I

survived these trials and emerged, I believe, a more thoughtful, experienced, and even

more committed practitioner as a result.

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Appendix A

Abigail’s sponsorship e-mail to the User Research group

From: Abigail@gryffindortechnology.com

Sent: Monday, February 18, 2002 12:28 PM

To: User Research

Cc: Deborah Hendrickson

Subject: Sponsoring a research project

Hi All,

Over the next couple of months, I am sponsoring a graduate student to do some team

development work with us and I am asking you to help support this effort. Specifically,

Deborah Hendrickson is working with me to explore ways in which we can make group

improvements in order to optimize our deliverables and our experience. She will also be

helping me to build better leadership skills so you all can get more out of me as your

manager. I have a strong commitment to the success of this team and to the individual

success of each team member. I believe this team development work will help us get on

the best possible track for success.

As part of an initial data-gathering process, Deborah needs to meet with each member

of our team individually for an hour to ask a few basic questions about what it's like to be

on this team. We are targeting the week of February 25th to do this. I am asking each of

you to make this a priority—in other words, this is a required meeting. Should you have

any concerns or questions about this, let me know and we can work something out. 

Please reply directly to Deborah's email with the following info:

1)  Your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices for dates to do your interview (February 25-March 1).

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2)  Your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices for timeslots on each of your preferred dates (any 1-hr

timeslots between 9am and 5pm - except the afternoon of 2/28 which is unavailable)

Deborah will follow-up with each of you individually to confirm a date/time for your

interview - which will take place either in your office (if you have a private office) or in a

nearby conference room here.

As a little background on Deborah ... she is currently pursuing a Masters degree in

Organizational Coaching and Consulting from the Leadership Institute of Seattle

(affiliated with Bastyr University). Some of you may recall that this is the program from

which Sandy recently graduated. Deborah's work with our team constitutes her masters

thesis project. Deborah is very familiar with Gryffindor Technology, having worked at

one of our primary vendors for the past 11+ years in a variety of roles ranging from

Corporate Communications Manager to her current position of Senior Operations

Manager. I know that Deb is really open to answering any questions you may have re: her

work with our team so I encourage you to address those directly with her.

Thanks-

Abigail

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Appendix B

Questions for Anecdotal Data-Gathering

1. Do you have questions about the work I am doing with Abigail?

2. What do you think of the team development work underway?

3. What are the one or two areas you hope this team development work will

address?

4. What is it like to work in this group?

5. Is that true for the rest of Gryffindor Technology - is there a difference

between what happens on this team and what happens in general around Gryffindor

Technology?

6. What are the un-discussables around here - things that are true that never get

talked about?

7. What are the most important collective goals of this team?

8. Do your individual goals support those collective goals?

9. Do others see it that way?

10. Describe your relationship with your supervisor.

11. What is it like to work with your product team(s)?

12. What gets in the way of success with your product teams?

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