I just finished listening to the audio version of “The 3rd Alternative” by Steven Covey – I would definitely suggest picking it up and work on implementing the things he speaks about. The overall gist is that we usually view things as having two alternatives: we either do this or we do that. If there’s a compromise of the two, no one is satisfied.

Come up with a 3rd alternative. Something that hasn’t even been thought of yet.

Try to get the team together and really listen to each other. Let each person speak without interruptions. There is no blaming, criticizing, or making fun. Just everyone getting to really understand how everyone feels about it. This is emphatic listening (a step or two beyond active listening).

Try to do the same thing with the management team. Bring the two sides together to come up with a solution that can benefit everyone. It’ll probably take some time to do all this, and it will be difficult because it goes against the social norm.

This can be a real challenge. I always say that it starts with me. How is my attitude towards a situation? Am I providing suggestions AND action towards positive change? Until I can answer these questions positively, I’m challenged to think that my team will change.

As a manager, it’s important to listen to our team, but there are times where we may not always hear what needs to be heard in the rumblings of a department. I would encourage the Lone Ranger to speak up. Talk to the manager of the department. If this doesn’t work, take it a step higher.

I would absolutely push you to read “Tribal Leadership” by Dave Logan. Why? It does an excellent job of summarizing the cultures of the work place into these categories:

1. Life sucks
2. MY life sucks
3. My life is great (because yours is not)
4. We are great
5. We can change the world.

The overwhelming majority of workplaces are in Stage 2 or 3, and frequently go back and forth between them. From the wording, it sounds like your department / company is in Stage 2 and you are in Stage 3 but dragged back down to 2. If you seriously want to go further, you have to bring your team along. The finer details of the book go over the ways to bring people along each stage, but they include more depth about two items Chris talked about:

- Understanding what to expect from the tribe at each stage
- Changing the language of the tribe to change the tribe (the collective wisdom part)

Beyond that book, I would suggest that you are a leader whether you call yourself one or not, because it sounds like others may look to you when you stick your neck out and direct change. Leaders, even ones without titles, need to have mastery of both the facts and faith (something I learned from Rabbi Lapin). You seem to have a keen awareness of the sad facts, so I hope you can also embrace the present realities with faith of what the future may look like for your organization, with your contribution. Faith is contagious. If you spread your vision of the future through your faith, it is bound to spread.

I say all this with absolute confidence because I’m pretty sure I could have wrote exactly what you (Lone Ranger) wrote. I run a marketing department of five. We do an awesome job. All of my team members are at least 10 years older than me and 3 are from other countries. We do such a good job, the company literally cast us all out to a second building across the street. We’re often forgotten, the other 30 people in our company often despise the culture we have, but we have stuck together and made a difference.

So I feel like I can speak with authority that you absolutely must read the Tribal Leadership book. And good luck! The people here will always be glad to help, so you are definitely not alone.