How to help someone who doesn't want your help (Transcript)

Please note the following transcript may not exactly match the final audio, as minor edits or adjustments could be made during production.

Anne Morriss: Here at Fixable, we love hearing from you, our listeners, our Fixers, and we get so many great messages. We love hearing from you when you have questions, and we also love hearing from you when we don't get it exactly right. So please keep sharing your comments too. Sometimes these messages help inspire future episodes, so send us your thoughts by email [email protected] or call us at 234-FIXABLE. That's 234-349-2253. Now onto the show.

You are listening to Fixable, a podcast from TED. It's hosted by me, Anne Morriss. 

Frances Frei: And me, Frances Frei. 

Anne Morriss: Every week we explore solutions to different workplace problems, and today we are so delighted to directly help out one of our listeners. 

Frances Frei: We're talking to a Fixer!

Anne Morriss: Yes, we're gonna call this Fixer Jason. He's having a tough time building trust with a new team. He also has the additional challenge of being remote and far from a team that works together locally. Let's listen to his voicemail. 

Jason: About six months ago, I was hired to be an outside advisor to a group of six employees and a manager. In the past, the advisors were rude or lacked experience. In other words, these groups don't have a lot of trust in us. When I try to help the manager, I notice that he is not open to my help, and he's sometimes defensive. I want our relationship to be open and free from any fear. I would love your advice on how to gain their trust.

Frances Frei: Well, in many ways this is a classic challenge. You've stepped into a situation not of your making, and so you're gonna make up for the sins of the past.

Anne Morriss: Some trust debt. 

Frances Frei: Some trust debt. Thank you. I'm super optimistic that we can solve it. It's a very classic situation, but it is when do I walk into trust debt of someone else and I have to be even better behaved than I would if I was just walking in cold?

Anne Morriss: Yeah, and I think there's another structural variable here, which is that he is an outside advisor, and so has less freedom of movement than when you are a full-time, in the trenches member of the team. So I think there's some interesting stuff here. Turns out that challenge is something that you and I have been thinking about and doing for decades now. So this is one of the reasons we were excited to talk about this caller. Alright, let's bring him in and see if we can help.

Jason, welcome to Fixable. 

Jason: Hi, Anne. 

Anne Morriss: We are so excited to have you on the show. Let's talk a little bit about the kind of work that you do. You are part of a service business, is that right? 

Jason: Yes. 

Anne Morriss: And what do you like about this work? 

Jason: It's pretty fulfilling. We do have a impact on society and on the economy.

The people that I support, they're great. As far as myself, I do enjoy helping people be better at what they do, be successful. 

Anne Morriss: Yeah. I love it. And what's frustrating about the work right now? 

Jason: The frustration, I think, is being able to integrate myself with some people that don't really understand where we fit in. It's a fairly new concept of being able to go in and provide support to them to solve any kind of complicated issues that they may not be aware of. Because of my background, I'm able to come in and maybe provide some insight to them. 

Anne Morriss: Do you have diagnosis on why trust is breaking down on this team? And trust in you in particular?

Jason: There's definitely an authenticity issue. The way it was implemented came across as we didn't really understand who you are, and so we just forced our way into it. I think they have a hard time believing that we are able to do our job well. 

Anne Morriss: Do you mean that this was imposed top down and the teams were at best ambivalent about this kind of support and so that's the situation you're walking into? Is that a fair summary? 

Jason: Yeah, it's pretty accurate. That type of structure occurred about two years ago. And we're just trying to recover from that today. 

Anne Morriss: Can you give us an example of a mistake you inherited? 

Jason: Some of the people that attempted to help the groups, it was obvious that they didn't know what to do, but yet they were responsible of helping them. And I think at the very end, everybody felt it was somewhat of a waste of everybody's time. 

Anne Morriss: Time wasters. 

Jason: Time wasters. Right. You know, they're all very intelligent people that are doing a good job, and here you have people coming in trying to, you know, you need to listen to me. 

Anne Morriss: Yeah. Got it. What have you tried so far to improve your relationship with this team?

Jason: Well, I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning, and so I've learned what not to do. But I think one of the things that I've learned since then is to be able to not rush into making any corrections, into making any suggestions. So listening more, being more involved than just by being available. I'm not able to travel out there to visit them face to face, so I'm trying to have as many opportunities to get to know them in different ways. 

Anne Morriss: Nice. Have you seen any improvement since you've made some of those behavior changes? 

Jason: Um, not so much. The manager that's part of the group, he's a great person, but it's very difficult for me to break through into his employees because there's a wall there that he doesn't feel that he wants to let go of. 

Anne Morriss: That makes sense. If an anthropologist were to show up and describe the culture of this team, what do you think would stand out? 

Jason: They're very motivated. I think they enjoy their job. The manager has a good cadence of kind of what he wants to do during the year. And so he is gonna try to keep to that, and the employees love him. He does a good job encouraging them to do what they need to do to get the job done. 

Anne Morriss: Beautiful. Frances, what other questions do you have before we start? 

Frances Frei: Yeah, so I was struck by a couple of things you said. One is that they love their manager, their employee satisfaction score, things like that are probably good. What we usually think of is achievement and sentiment. So it sounds like they're feeling good. What grade would they get for their objective performance, like their report card on their achievement? 

Jason: There can be some things that they can do better as far as the speed of what they do. There needs to be some improvement in their quality of their writing assessments and written skills. 

Frances Frei: Great. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. Are they aware that they need improvement? 

Jason: I don't think they are. 

Frances Frei: Okay. So this is an example of how do you help a, a coherent, intact team that likes each other and isn't sure they need help?

It is very difficult to solve a problem that people don't understand is a problem. It's also difficult to be the messenger of "you have a problem." And so I'm craving your ability to just get the team to dream about how much better things can be, and by the team, I might mean the manager, might not even mean everyone else. This is a tricky puzzle, but I do believe we'll be able to be helpful.

Anne Morriss: Jason, you are on the other side of what one of Frances' colleagues used to call kidney stone management, which is if you just wait long enough and stall long enough, this too shall pass. This manager is concluding that I can just wait out. I can just wait this guy out. 

Frances Frei: So you have to signal that you can genuinely be helpful on objective measures that he cares about. And so for example, those performance measures, that speed or things like that, being like, oh my gosh, when you know, whatever the aspirational story is, I want you to get in touch with that for them, 'cause we need the manager to be looking up in order to accept help. So that's I think the first thing, is making it visible how much better things can be without being the grim reaper.

Jason: Right.

Frances Frei: So for example, let's say that the written skills part aren't as good. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Frances Frei: I could imagine you, you know, you saying your work is great, here are some suggestions, and then you do an edit that's a pretty substantial edit, 'cause we just want them to get a glimpse of what it's like with you and what it's like without you.

So spending time getting to know them, I can understand where it came from. Usually it doesn't help very much. It's what we wanna do is be like Thomas the train useful engines. We wanna really demonstratively show, not tell, how we can be helpful, which involves our doing something for them that they care about.

Jason: Right.

Anne Morriss: I wanna underscore what Frances said, and then Jason, we'd love to get your reaction, but at this point I wouldn't worry about the rest of the team at all. This is a conversation with the manager. And figuring out how to have a conversation about the dimensions of performance that this manager cares the most about.

So if he is being measured on speed of case resolution, quality of output, whatever it is, and I assume this affects things that he cares about, so maybe it's compensation, maybe it's the size of his empire. Maybe it's the number, but it finding out what he cares about, how he's being evaluated, and then showing up at a, in a conversation with him, with a point of view, how you can help him, how you can be, partner with him to achieve those objectives. Now, this is about like real politik, how can you be helpful to this guy and him getting what he wants? 

Jason: I think that's very smart. Um, identifying those needs may be a little bit tricky for me, but I think that's definitely doable. 

Frances Frei: I can imagine, Jason, you're coming in and saying, I don't feel like I've been as helpful as I might. So I wanna take another tact on this, which is what are the things that matter most to you and where would an extra pair of hands be helpful to you? My success is your success. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Frances Frei: And then that's the way you earn your right into then being more helpful and more helpful. 

Jason: Right.

Anne Morriss: One way in is, first of all, take full responsibility for the fact that the partnership has not worked over the last six months. And this is a reset. And I'd like to start by being an extension of your team. And then where you and the manager are gonna build trust is by solving problems together. And so I wanna get you, like sleeves up, actually showing, not telling that this is what you're here to do as step one in rebuilding that relationship.

Jason: Right. 

Frances Frei: Your sweet spot is anywhere on your needs improvement report card that happens to be your area of expertise. Anytime a thread like that dangles, snatch it. 

Anne Morriss: And you could come into the conversation and say, I have three ideas. 

Frances Frei: Yeah. 

Anne Morriss: Because you're also setting the tone in this conversation. This is not a two hour retreat you're having, this is a 30 minute conversation. 

Jason: Right. 

Anne Morriss: Right? You're gonna signal a, a sense of speed and urgency here. I have three ideas for where I might be helpful. But I'm most interested in where you think...

Frances Frei: Beautiful language.

Anne Morriss: I could fit in here. 

Jason: Yeah, that was not the approach that they had a year ago.

Frances Frei: In my experience, as someone who has needed help writing, when people come in and are helpful in writing, it's like a gift from the heavens. Because for those of us that need help writing, it's not that if we spend two times as long, it gets that much better. There's actually a different level of expertise that can come in, so I'm really rooting for that being one of the threads you have the opportunity to pull on.

Anne Morriss: And so, let's start over. And I'm gonna judge myself on my usefulness to you and your team, and I have only one fucking job right now. I insert a little bit of emotion into this because I kind of want you to bring some of that into this conversation. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Anne Morriss: To signal, this really is a new day, and so I wanna have a conversation about a different approach here, and I have a couple ideas, but I'm most interested in hearing from you where you think I could really be of value in this moment.

Jason: Right. Yeah, I like that. 

Anne Morriss: And I want you to have like a pulse in this conversation. I want you to reveal your investment in this shift. 

Frances Frei: May I try something unusual right now? Jason, let's assume that Anne is the manager and you have reached out to have a meeting with Anne. Why don't you take for a test drive some of the language you're gonna use?

Jason: Okay. 

Anne Morriss: Oh, Jason. Hey, how's it going? 

Jason: I'm doing great. How are you doing? 

Anne Morriss: I'm good. It's busy. What's up? 

Jason: I'm so glad that we are able to work together again today, and I'm excited to see what we can get done. My job is to be here to help you and to do anything that I can to make things better for you and your team.

What's going on with you today, and is there anything that needs to be done? 

Frances Frei: Wonderful. 

Anne Morriss: Jason, I appreciate the question. I think we're good. Thank you for the offer, but maybe, maybe next week we can check in and, and see if there's some place you can help. 

Jason: That's absolutely fine. I'm glad that we had the conversation and I'll check in with you next week. I just wanted to let you know that I am here to give you, and I'm excited to be part of your team. 

Anne Morriss: So I just tried one tactic to, to brush you off. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Frances Frei: Uh, I might have add a little bit of formality to the conversation, saying, I don't feel like I've been as helpful to your team as possible, and I'd like to initiate a reset. As part of that reset, I want us to find ways where I can be most helpful. I'd love to hear your ideas about that. 

So you notice I'm not asking how he's doing and letting him go off. I'm bringing up the topic. I'm serving it up, and I'm gonna keep us talking about that topic. 

Anne Morriss: One way to do that, Frances, that's where my head went as well. I would actually start with an email knowing that I had total control of the medium of writing, and wherever this person is emotionally isn't gonna throw me off. But start with an email and saying, Anne, I'd love to set up 30 minutes next week to have a conversation about how this collaboration can work better.

And let me give you some framing, and I think Frances' framing was beautiful. It might allow you to get past some of those deflection methods, because at this point this manager has had six months of training on how to brush you off. Right? So if it's a spontaneous phone call, I'm just gonna throw everything that I know works, which is, "yeah, let's talk again soon. Oh my God. Thank you so much." You know, what, whatever it is. And so what do you think of, what do you think of that? Adding some formality, either verbally or in writing to really get into this kind of a conversation? 

Jason: I think that would be better. He is pretty busy. He has a lot, a lot on his schedule, and I think that would make sense to me also because it gives me an opportunity to prepare, for him to prepare for any type of immediate conversation about this.

Frances Frei: Yeah. Jason, perhaps make the email about you, not about them. "I'd like to talk to you about how I can be more helpful to your team. And my efforts so far haven't been as successful as I'd like. I'm really anxious to be helpful. Here are a couple of areas that come to mind," in whatever your needs improvement list is without telling 'em it's their needs improvement, "but I'm so open to other ones."

Jason: Yeah. 

Anne Morriss: The other thing I might consider is going on a little bit of a learning tour or a listening tour with other people who are playing your role in the organization. 

Jason: Okay. 

Anne Morriss: And getting their advice for how they have solved this problem and built good relationships and learned from the relationships that haven't worked. 'Cause you're in this, you're in this very specific environment, a very specific role. 

Frances Frei: Great idea. 

Anne Morriss: And I bet there is good learning around you that would be useful to you. 

Jason: I have, um, reached out to other people in the same situation and they're all having the same obstacles right now. And so I think we're all trying to figure this out together.

Anne Morriss: Great. So maybe there's an opportunity for a subset of people who are really interested in solving this problem to come together on a regular basis and workshop issues and learn from each other. We've seen that kind of model work really well. Now we are systems level problem solvers, so the other place my mind is going is I don't think this structure is going to work very well for this organization. I think this structure is definitely gonna evolve over time. And because you are a problem solver, I'm also curious about whether there are opportunities to take this tension to your boss or whoever would be appropriate in the organization and collect the data of all the other people who are struggling with this and see if you can't accelerate that kind of change and evolution and saying, listen, from the front lines, I can tell you this isn't working. This isn't working. And we can have a longer conversation about that, like how that becomes a campaign, but I want you to learn as much as possible from this very awkward position you've been put in, where I think you could be a very credible messenger to the people above you, and you are experiencing the excruciating pain of this structural failure on, I suspect a daily basis.

Jason: Yeah. 

Anne Morriss: Even just from a career standpoint, that's a pretty interesting position to be in in an organization, and you might be able to transform some of this frustration into being a productive agent of change. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Anne Morriss: What do you think of that idea, Jason? 

Jason: To me, it's being able to look at the situation as a opportunity to come together to fix something that needs to be fixed.

Frances Frei: I have one suggestion, which is in general, these things tend to work better as pull, not push. And what I mean by that is if you said to all of these teams, call for an advisor when you need help, versus that's pulling for an advisor when you need help. Versus pushing advisors onto people. I can tell you which system is gonna work better.

The pull is gonna work better than the push. Now the way to get that to work is to make sure the teams know how well they're performing, make sure they know their current report card. So the message is, you don't like your report card? Pull for an advisor. It's like getting a PEZ dispenser. 

Jason: Yeah, I like that.

Anne Morriss: We'll give you an example from research from our colleague Ryan Buell, where they were studying performance inside emergency rooms, and they really wanted to drive the improvement curve. And the kind of natural mentorship they were hoping was gonna happen inside the group wasn't really happening. And so one of the metrics they really cared about was speed of resolving cases. That's a hugely important metric in the emergency room. They made it very transparent where the different doctors were on this mission critical metric of speed, and they published it to the group, right? So people knew... 

Frances Frei: Visibility matters. 

Anne Morriss: ...where they were. And naturally, Jason, it was magical. The people at the bottom of the list started reaching out to the people on the top of the list for tips and tricks and advice on how they could speed up the resolution of cases without the quality dropping, 'cause that's the tension. If we're just solving for speed, you're not fixing anybody's problem in the emergency room, so how can we speed it up, but maintain the quality? And so whoever architected this system that then you got dropped into, their intentions were very good. They understood that there were pockets of expertise and they wanted to get 'em out to the front lines so that they could be useful to the teams.

But the incentive structure, along with other levers is not working, and we have two years of data and six months of you slamming your head against the wall of this structure to know with confidence that the system needs improving. But there are cheap, fast ways to do this so that all of these levers and incentives come into alignment.

Jason: Right. Well, that's awesome. We're not only able to address the issue of not being able to help one another, but at the very end, the manager that I'm trying to help is involved in part of the success, and I think that's incredible. 

Anne Morriss: Did we achieve the objectives of this call, Jason? 

Jason: Very much so, yes. 

Anne Morriss: Well, it's an honor to work with you.

You're pretty awesome. 

Jason: Thank you.

Anne Morriss: Frances, one thing I'm thinking about is the power of channeling frustration into improving an environment. Doesn't always work, but even the attempt can help to metabolize those emotions and get us into a more productive problem solving place. It was really fun to watch Jason go on that ride in this conversation. 

Frances Frei: And there is so much dignity in wanting to be helpful and so much frustration in failing to be helpful. What I appreciated about Jason is that he's tried a bunch of things and they didn't work, which makes him very open. And then also for him to learn, the system might not be ideal. And I'm glad you didn't start there. I'm glad you brought that to him at the end so that he could really wrestle with within the system, 'cause he might be able to make some progress there. But for the super varsity points, let's switch it to a system that might be, you know, pull, not push or whatever the other attributes of it are. 

Anne Morriss: And Frances, let's go back to that super tactical place where, where you brought us in having that difficult conversation with this manager who he's trying to partner with.

Where does your mind go for listeners out there who are thinking about having a similar conversation with someone that they don't directly have the decision rights over in terms of their behavior or choices in the workplace? What advice do you have for going into that conversation, for phrases we can use in that conversation?

Frances Frei: I think it's a, a benefit that you don't have decision rights over them, because we are sometimes clumsy when we have decision rights. 

Anne Morriss: Mm-hmm. 

Frances Frei: We sometimes get away with stuff we shouldn't. So I would begin with saying, I'm grateful for this conversation. I wanted to acknowledge that I have not been as helpful as I'd like to be. So part of this conversation is selfish. I wanna figure out how to be more helpful to your team. Your team is awesome. It's got amazing sentiment. And the institution brought me here to be helpful. And so I want us to make sure we have looked under every rock to see is there a way that I can be helpful. As a reminder, here are some of the things that I can typically be helpful with, but I want you to know I'm ready to gnaw off a limb to do it in another way. It'd be that kind of sentiment that I would want to begin with. It's disarming, it's direct, it's truthful. 

Anne Morriss: We sometimes call this narration leadership, and it's a variant of "discuss the undiscussable," because most of what you're revealing are things that are really positive and really powerful to hear.

My mandate is to be helpful to you. This is why I'm excited about working with you. This is what we might be able to achieve together. This is what I'm trying to do, this is what I'm trying to not do. Get in your way, right, or take up too much of your time. But just putting those, those assumptions out there, we don't know.

This is the thing that blew my mind with improv the first time when I started doing this, is this insight that if we don't tell people how we're feeling or otherwise reveal it, they don't know. 

Frances Frei: They don't know. 

Anne Morriss: Which, what blew my little waspy mind the first time someone told me that. Like the people, we're not mind readers. And we walk around assuming that people know what our intentions are, that people know what we think about them, that people know that we're trying to get something right. In fact they don't. And there is so much power, even if they might know some of those things, there's so much power in saying them out loud.

Frances Frei: Let's discuss the discussable. 

Anne Morriss: And then let's go solve some problems. 

Frances Frei: Yeah. 

Anne Morriss: One thread we didn't pull was the moment in the conversation, Frances, where Jason said he made a lot of mistakes. 

Frances Frei: No, but our hearts soar there. 

Anne Morriss: Yeah. And I have to say, we didn't pull on the thread in service of this not being an hour long Fixable episode. But the signal that sent us in that moment is this is a person with the emotional resilience to go and solve problems, not just on this team, but be part of solutions at the level of the organization as well. 

Frances Frei: If you're gonna be a Fixer, we can guarantee you, you're gonna get very little right the first time. We can round it off to zero. You're never gonna get it right the first time. So the DNA of a Fixer is someone who tries, fails, tries, fails, tries, fails, tries, fails, gets it. It's the pivoting and learning, and they're better attempts each time, but it's the, it's that learning along the way and getting energized that each time something doesn't work, you've just narrowed the solution space a little bit more. So it's actually enormous progress, but Fixers have a very different emotional reaction to what other people look at as failure. 

Anne Morriss: And we all have a Fixer inside us. And so what we wanna invite you to do is really get in touch with that part of you, that resilient progress making part of you.

Frances Frei: I love it.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Your participation helps us make great episodes just like this one. So please keep reaching out directly. If you wanna figure out any questions about your workplace problem together, send us a message, email call, text [email protected] or 234-FIXABLE.

That's 234-349-2253.

Anne Morriss: Fixable is a podcast from TED. It's hosted by me, Anne Morriss.

Frances Frei: And me, Frances Frei. 

Anne Morriss: This episode was produced by Rahima Nasa from Pushkin Industries. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Cheng, Daniella Balarezo and Roxanne Hai Lash. 

Frances Frei: And our show was mixed by Louis at Story Yard.