After some digging, we find that this is not an isolated incident at all.

In fact, back in January members that United Healthcare insures in New York got similar notices relating to the services they might wish to procure from the Continuum Health Partners, a consortium of five well known New York hospitals. The standoff ended in March and no New Yorkers had to find new medical facilities after all. United Healthcare was quick to point out in a statement that, “Not a single person will lose healthcare coverage because of the Continuum contract termination, although some people will have to change hospitals or physicians.” Right now, Tenet is in similar negotiations with Blue Cross and thousands of insured employees could be affected if they can’t work it out.

But they’ll probably work it out so there’s no need to worry. Right?

This is the question your employees ask every time they sense the threat of change.

Change Threat Kicks Off Coping Cycle

If you aren’t yet familiar with the Coping Cycle, now would be a great time to take your team through a training class on the subject. Coping is a sequential process, starting with something called a “cognitive disturbance” in which the person recognizes that something is out of balance. When employees learn they may have to change physicians or hospitals, it’s a cognitive disturbance. Off everyone goes on personal coping journeys, moving through the steps in the cycle.

If you don’t understanding the effect of coping skills on motivation and productivity, how can you possibly manage your people effectively? Though you are not licensed therapists, your managers should be able to recognize when employee behaviors are being motivated by problems in coping. Targeted interventions can be planned to help move employees through the coping cycle successfully, though some employees may eventually need a referral to outside assistance.

Minimize the Uncertainty with Information

You probably don’t have a direct influence on how the insurer/provider negotiations work out and you may not influence the outcomes of other change threats your teams face. However, one of the things you can do next time your team notices the threat of change is to provide as much information as possible as often as possible. During times of change, your messages will not be understood the first time. Send a memo with details and then follow that with an e-mail, a webinar and a voice mail.

Consider the varying needs of your stakeholders – customers, employees, suppliers, investors – and craft change communications documents to address those specific questions. Above all, try to reduce the uncertainty for your organization as much as possible but stop short of promising that nothing will change. Instead, express your confidence in the coping skills of those you work with; tell them that you know they will be able to manage the change successfully.

Jean Houston Shore works with organizations that want their people to work together better. She can be reached at 770-643-9724, by email at jean@thinkbusiness.com or through her website at www.working-together-better.com. Ask for your free copy of her book Working Together Better.

Copyright © 2010, Jean Houston Shore, Business Resource Group. All Rights Reserved Internationally. No portion may be reprinted or used without prior written permission.

Your workplace may be sending danger signals to you, too. Sometimes coping problems come from personal situations and affect only one or two team members. When that’s the case you should coach the employees individually. But sometimes, thanks to a more widespread disturbance like a merger or industry meltdown, coping challenges saturate your whole work unit.

Here are twelve signs your workplace may face a coping crisis:

Fretting: In normal times, moaning, whining and moping are not appreciated or tolerated. If fretting behavior becomes so widespread that it begins to seem normal, it’s time to intervene.

Forgetting: Let’s say normally punctual employees start arriving late or give you blank stares when you remind them of deadlines they said they’d meet. Obviously, their minds are no longer focused on the job. If this happens frequently, poor coping could be the cause.

Catastrophizing (Assuming the Worst Possible Outcome): You might notice that usually level-headed employees have lost their ability to think rationally, seeing the worst possible outcome as if it is most likely. This is a painful sign of a person in coping crisis. You should step in.

Exaggerating the Threat: While catastrophizing exaggerates the likelihood of a negative outcome, another symptom of poor coping is exaggerating the size of the threat itself. For example, if a 10% staff cut is looming, the non-coping person may talk of losing the whole department. They may even exaggerate what you’ve said to them, making the situation worse for everyone.

Short Tempers: Someone with a short fuse is never welcome at work, but usually you already know if you have one of these in your work group. When Sally-Smiles-Alot begins losing her cool too, its a coping crisis signal.

Vacillating: In a coping crisis you’ll notice that people have a hard time choosing between alternative courses of action. Group decision making is one of your most critical functions. If your team members begin to seesaw between yes and no for no good reason, a coping crisis could be the culprit.

Fault-finding: Part of the difficulty of dealing with a crisis is our perception that we’ve lost control. Finding fault with others can help those who are not coping well feel better about themselves – temporarily. If finger-pointing has increased, your group’s coping skills may need attention.

Increase in Risky Behaviors: Drinking/driving, drug use, inappropriate use of the internet, staying out late, getting behind on the bills – all of these are risky behaviors that can lead to big trouble. While employees’ personal lives are not in your purview, any indication of an increase in the level of risk your employees are assuming should give you cause for concern.

Putting Too Much on the Line: When employees are coping successfully they don’t bet the farm, they only bet what is reasonable. If you have employees storming out of meetings, issuing ultimatums or threatening to go over your head, it’s a sure sign they aren’t coping well. Talk them down and help them see things from a less dangerous vantage point.

Disengaging/Putting On a False Front: “No, everything is fine. Nothing’s wrong, I promise.” Most of us have heard these assertions from family members or friends and have known instinctively that their words were far from truthful. Whether its our sixth sense, their body language or something even more difficult to explain, sometimes we just know. If your employees’ statements don’t ring true, trust your gut and realize that, though they are putting on a brave front, they may not be coping well at all.

Ruminating Endlessly: (This one might be harder to notice in your employees but you can definitely notice it in yourself.) Ruminating is thinking the same thoughts over and over, letting negative thoughts haunt you. When you ruminate you never actually work through the thoughts, you just think them over and over. If the cause for the coping crisis is known (for instance, a merger or production cutback) you can help your team get through this by simply encouraging them to share their thoughts, with you or with the group. A more private solution is to ask them to journal those troubling thoughts then shred them. The next time the same thoughts come back, journal and shred again. Either way, all of us need to get those troubling thoughts out and stop the ruminating.

Numbing Out: Say your work group has gone from one crisis to another with little time to recover. Know this – your team can only take so much. If your company, industry or community has been buffeted by month after month of “red alert” status, some – maybe most – of your people are not only bummed out, they’re “numbed out.” To get them ready to reengage they’ll need a safe place and a span of time to recuperate. In some situations, the space they need may be time alone, away from other group members. Silence can help us gain perspective.

Leading effectively means giving feedback to your team members when they are having trouble coping. To do your job as a coping coach and mentor, you can’t afford to ignore the signals they may be sending.

Jean Houston Shore works with organizations that want their people to work together better. She can be reached at 770-643-9724, by email at jean@thinkbusiness.com or through her website at www.thinkbusiness.com.

Copyright © 2009, Jean Houston Shore, Business Resource Group. All Rights Reserved Internationally. No portion may be reprinted or used without prior written permission.

The reason it is coming up again is a simple one – Georgia wants water from the Tennessee River. But unraveling a boundary problem that is almost 200 years old will be tough. Families bought and sold what they believed was Tennessee land. Children were educated in Tennessee schools. Taxes were collected by the Tennessee government. It’s a mess that could have been largely avoided if the problem had been corrected in 1826 when Camak first acknowledged his error.

Unless you want a similar mess, you’ve got to monitor and maintain your workgroup boundaries carefully. In business, boundaries are simply borders between areas of responsibility. For example, most companies have a business unit charged with customer service; if the task has to do with keeping the customer satisfied, it’s supposed to be happening here. Similarly, companies usually have a department charged with managing finances; decisions about how money is spent or invested are supposed to be happening here.

In recent years though, poor communication between areas of responsibility has in effect created “silos,” tall, rigid communication patterns that hamper teamwork. As a result, some organizations have intentionally blurred boundaries, creating slogans like “Customer service is everyone’s responsibility.” Others have attempted to right the problem by creating cross-functional teams where representatives from each function work together as one unit. No matter what your structure or philosophy, maintaining a mutual agreement about where your responsibility starts and ends increases productivity. Here are some boundary problems that could hurt you:

• Expanding Your Boundaries When You Shouldn’t: Well-meaning managers often take on more than their fair share of responsibility “just to get the job done.” This usually occurs when a sister department is behind schedule, unwilling to cooperate or unable to do the job to your satisfaction. Frustrated, you take on more work than you should because it seems easier to do the job yourself than to fix the problem with the sister department. Temporarily doing someone else’s job may be necessary, but take care that you are not permanently compensating for someone else’s poor performance.

• Leaving Part of the Process Uncovered: If either work group misunderstands who is responsible for what, some parts of the process may go undone. This is a dangerous situation, especially when dependencies affect quality or timeliness. When negotiating what tasks your team will take on, move your thinking ahead in the process and get verbal commitment that the next department will be ready when you toss the ball to them.

• Duplicating Others’ Effort: What a waste of time and energy to do something that has already been done (or will be done) by someone else! Examples of duplication and unnecessary work include reformatting data given to you by others because what you received was not in the format you specified, rechecking calculations because you are not sure the other department did the job correctly and rehashing the rationale behind decisions that have already been made. Work to establish excellent, efficient hand-offs between the departments that connect with you in the process and you’ll save loads of time.

• Letting Your Ego Get In The Way: Boundary negotiations are one thing, but battles where leaders let their egos drive can get ugly. Yes, you might be gaining or losing responsibility but this doesn’t have to affect your self-esteem. In either case, realize that you’ve just encountered a cognitive disturbance (a situation where your environment has been altered in ways you interpret as negative) and now it’s your turn to use your best coping skills. Understand that the way you handle this situation could have a major impact on your career. Think through your actions and proceed with caution and maturity.

It turns out that Georgia may not win it’s boundary battle after all, thanks to a legal principle known as “adverse possession.” In essence, this law suggests that if you knew something should be fixed and you didn’t take steps to fix it, then you’ve lost your claim by “implicitly complying” with the situation. Take care that any boundary issues you encounter stay on the front burner in your mind. While you might allow them to remain unsettled for a time, by actively renegotiating you can keep the problem from becoming water under the bridge.

Typically, a custodian oversees all phases of an assets life cycle: construction, acquisition, usage and maintenance. Here’s how the four phases connect with your role as a human asset custodian.

Construction: Just as a building requires quality raw materials, your employee requires quality training as well as on the job skills practice. Assure that your work group has skills that are current, not hopelessly outdated. See that they get the chance to use the new skills they learn in training classes; one idea is to have the employee who attended a training class give a presentation about what they learned. Also be sure to give regular feedback to your employees so that they understand what they are doing well and what they should work to improve.

Acquisition: Even if you don’t need to hire someone now you should still be in “asset acquisition” mode. While recruiters certainly play a role, you can assure that your organization has a list of ready candidates by making sure that you make your company’s presence known in your community and professional groups. Ask for logo merchandise to donate to events around town; volunteer to speak at community meetings on topics of interest to potential candidates. Connect with local colleges so that graduates understand what your company does and how they could benefit from being a part of it. Above all, keep thoughts you might have about problems within your company inside company walls, honoring your commitment to confidentiality. Loose lips sink ships.

Usage: The bulk of your asset management tasks fall within this part of the life cycle – the months and years when your employees are “used.” Your goal as custodian is to see that they are used well, but not used up. Ask yourself these questions: Are my employees doing work that should be done by someone else’s department? Are they spending time correcting the mistakes of others – and how could I make that stop? Are my employees getting enough credit for the work they do? Keeping your employees motivated means that you manage every part of their work experience, from the assignments they get, to the deadlines they must meet, to the resources they used to get the job done. Do what it takes to position them for success and by all means, get out of their way.

Maintenance: Most complex equipment comes with a list of scheduled maintenance activities or maybe even a service contract with an outside vendor. Equipment owners know that changing out worn parts before they break saves money in the long run. In the same way, there may be employees in your work group who need some downtime to recharge. Stress takes its toll on people and if your department has been working on high alert status for a long time, your employees may be feeling the strain. Learn what you can about problem-focused and emotion-focused coping skills, then make a plan for helping those employees who may not be coping well.

While you may never carry around a hundred keys, you are still a custodian. By carefully managing the construction, acquisition, usage and maintenance of your company’s most important resource, you’ll hold the key to your company’s success – and yours.

As I’ve written before, when there is a cognitive disturbance (when something alters our environment in ways we interpret as negative) we humans work tirelessly to try to restore equilibrium. In the case of the Dominic and his family, a pediatrician’s diagnosis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), placing the infant in the 97th percentile of severity, was quite a disturbance. (For Dominic, the ventricular septum of his heart muscle was already three times larger than it should have been. Though he might be expected to live up to five years with this heart, the only treatment for Dominic’s HCM is a heart transplant.)

The Dominic’s Day website chronicles how family members and friends rallied over the next weeks and months, all convinced that they just had to “do something.” Indeed, the site, which has been equipped to accept donations from the public into the 501(c)3 foundation that has been formed in Dominic’s name, explains, “We will NOT stand idly by, waiting for something to happen . . . WE ARE MAKING IT HAPPEN.”

This is exactly how problem-focused coping works. The reason it works is that taking action focused on the problem gives us back something the disturbance stole from us – our belief that we are in control. The very worst thing about experiencing a crisis is the possibility that we may not be able to control the outcome of the situation. Nothing takes away our motivation faster than thinking our actions may not make a difference.

But, if we can believe something we can do might make things better, we become energized and creative. So far, enthusiastic supporters of Dominic’s Day have raised more than $13,000 through various fundraising efforts. And they are just getting started.

If your organization is facing some sort of disturbance, you can help your people cope by leading the way to problem-focused coping behaviors. Here are some suggestions:

• Ask employees to list the pros and cons of the situation or to make schedules to show what might happen when.
• Set an example of problem focus by verbalizing the things you can do rather than those you can’t.
• Rally the troops by sharing the load. Pull together a team to focus on particular parts of solving the problem at hand. Being involved in crafting a response to the disturbance helps each person who contributes.
• Discuss the “bigger picture” impacts of the situation you face. Lead people to think about what happens in the longer-term and make plans to impact the future in the most positive way possible.
• Leave room for emotion-focused coping, too. Though this article describes the positive result of problem-focused coping skills, your people will eventually need to talk about their feelings too.

Former President Harry Truman is credited with saying, “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” In the case of Dominic’s Day, as in your situation, making the vision larger than just one person’s crisis situation is the key to lasting impact. As you lead and as you cope, miss no opportunity to enlarge the vision and express your confidence in those who are contributing. Only then you will make your cause theirs.

My friend reached out to me, as he had to others. He was using us for emotion-focused coping. This was a normal – and healthy – thing to do after having experienced a loss.

In the workplace, however, emotion-focused coping can definitely cause problems. We know from earlier articles that there are generally three types of behaviors that take place as people cope with crisis in their lives: problem-focused behaviors, emotion-focused behaviors and avoidance behaviors. For the most part, mentally healthy adults exhibit both problem-focused behaviors (such as list making, planning and scenario-analysis) and emotion-focused behaviors (talking with friends, taking comfort in religion and trying to find the good in the situation) in the weeks and months after a disturbance. The trouble starts when a person ignores emotions completely or when they focus only on emotions without taking steps to focus on more logical actions. (People who exhibit avoidance behaviors only, such as drinking too much, refusing to acknowledge the situation or putting more on the line than is appropriate, are at great risk and should be advised to seek professional help.)

Here are ideas you can use to help those in your workplace who are exhibiting excessive emotion-focused coping behaviors:

1) Offer your condolences if appropriate and state that you know some time may be needed for them to regain their equilibrium given what they have experienced.

2) Express your confidence that they will be able to cope successfully.

3) Explain available options for outside assistance; confidential counseling offered through an employee assistance program is ideal. Resources are also often available through community groups or religious organizations.

4) Be careful not to share personal information about one employee with another. If the employee wishes to share with other employees that is one thing; you should maintain the employee’s confidence.

5) Should the emotion-focused coping go on for too long or begin to disrupt team effectiveness, you must confront the employee and offer constructive feedback about how the emotion-focused coping behavior is impacting the workplace. Be sensitive as you offer your guidance, but do not cross the line and become your employee’s psychotherapist. You are not qualified to offer such advice, even if your intentions are pure.

6) Continue to offer your encouragement to the employee while pushing them to maintain a high standard of professional behavior at work.

7) Do not be surprised, should the employee fail to cope successfully, if you are eventually required to terminate them for cause. While this is a worst case scenario, it is a possibility you cannot afford to ignore.

Each of us may face moments, even months or years, of crises in our lives. If we learn to recognize successful coping strategies, we will be well positioned to help our colleagues as they face theirs.

• Leadership (When Leaders Fail to Lead)
• Coping Skills (How Those Who Fail To Cope Affect All of Us)
• Feedback (The Magic of Making Teams Work)
• Performance Measures (Why Measuring the Right Things May Not Be Easy)
• Motivation (How to Engage Employees So They Are Productive and Happy)
• Reward and Recognition (How Handling These Things Poorly Wastes Everyone’s Time)

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