Working Effectively with Challenging Colleagues – Part One

1. What often causes friction between talented colleagues?
2. Recognizing what need can lay the groundwork for harmonious cooperation?
3. How can you prevent friction before it starts?
4. What’s the best way to blunt a personal attack?
5. What can foster continuing good will within a group?

Admissions officers and institutional marketers face plenty of challenges.  Working with their talented colleagues shouldn’t be one of them.  Enrollment managers, college marketing officers, student affairs professionals, faculty and senior administration are all working together to benefit students and their institution. Laudable common goals often unite people.  But according to Creighton University scholars Anne York, Kim McCarthy and Todd Darnold, “General management research …finds that managing diverse work groups is one of the most difficult challenges in today’s organizations and that it is not going smoothly.”

Part of the problem may be that each of these areas is important to achieving the institution’s goal of providing students with a high-quality education.  But research finds that, due to the built-in biases humans use to protect their self-esteem, each tends to feel that his/her area is the most important and that its turf must be defended.

This can cause contention and rivalry to develop when teamwork and camaraderie should be the order of the day.  That may not happen often at your institution, but one fact is inescapable:  The intelligence and expertise that helps people excel as individuals can produce friction when they interact.  What can help to lessen or eliminate friction and assist these partners in education in accomplishing their goals?

Recognize your need

A good starting point is this fundamental truth: Even the most brilliant educator, marketer or enrollment manager needs the good work and input of their colleagues. Bestselling author Dr. Robert Cialdini and coauthors related in Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive that DNA pioneer Dr. James Watson was asked to list the major factors that helped Dr. Francis Crick and him win the race to discover the structure of DNA. One surprising factor he listed was that he and Dr. Crick were not the most intelligent scientists working in this field (no one who read some of Dr. Watson’s more recent controversial comments will debate him on that point!).  Watson related that the most intelligent researcher in the race to discover the double helix had been British scientist Dr. Rosalind Franklin. He went on to say:

Rosalind was so intelligent that she rarely sought advice.  And if you’re the brightest person in the room then you’re in trouble.

Yes! further states that “Behavioral scientist Patrick Laughlin and his colleagues have shown that the approaches and outcomes of groups who cooperate in seeking a solution are not just better than the average member working alone, but are even better than the group’s best problem solver working alone.”

So the first step in working together in a team is to realize that the team needs each one of its members if it is going to reach its goals. If enrollment managers and admissions officers don’t bring in the freshman class, many jobs and the institution itself may be in danger.  If institutional marketers have not positioned the college well, it will be considerably harder to recruit freshmen and transfers.  Without the work of high quality faculty and student affairs professionals it may become difficult to retain students to graduation. And without skilled institutional leadership, the college or university may never reach its goals.  Like the human body, an institution needs the work of all its members to thrive.

The interdependence of administration, faculty and key staff is hardly a new concept.  But despite the clear need to work together, problems sometimes arise.  Hard feelings that originate when sparks fly in a meeting can ignite a smoldering fire that adds contention and stress to an already challenging job.

Research has uncovered effective ways to eliminate friction before it begins. Experts have found ways to neutralize annoying personal comments or even outright verbal attacks.  Educators can take steps to foster universal good will within their ranks. How can you accomplish this?  Stay tuned.

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