The Repertory Grid Interview as Part of a Process - Sweet and Simple Approach #3

 

Differentiating Between Good Managers And Poor Managers

The example about redesigning a performance appraisal system shows how we built in openness, aimed for management buy-in, and involved the personnel team in analysing the data. The example about conflict resolution shows Grid as the starting-point for a dialogue which the participants will almost certainly manage for themselves with very little facilitation once you have started the process. An underpinning value is that it’s not a good idea to have one’s feedback rendered useless by the fact that the listeners don’t understand the underlying analysis and either do, or don’t, say so. The only thing worse, in my experience, is the person who is adamant that you should have used cable stitch instead of left-hand twists to do your correlations. Anyway, here’s one more example of how to use Grid simply, low-tech, and effectively (and by the way, if any reader has examples of their own they would like to contribute, please send them in for publication).

This project was undertaken for an organisation which contained a great many techno-freaks (that’s a polite was of describing them, believe me) and a number of managers who were trying to manage them. Turnover amongst the techno-freaks was unacceptably high; they couldn’t see or didn’t value the contribution managers made (which meant that a number of them were dreadful managers themselves); political correctness ran rampant; anything coming from the personnel department was automatically suspect; and so on. Into this maelstrom, for good reasons, the Chief Executive wanted to introduce parallel managerial and technical career paths, pay for performance, career development by means other than resignation, and so on.

One of the first research tasks was to clarify some boundaries. Imagine a 2 x 2 matrix in which the four boxes read: good techno-freak, poor techno-freak, good manager, and poor manager. We needed to know the contents of each of those boxes, but crucially we needed to know about the boundaries and overlaps. Was it the case, for example, that a poor techno-freak could be a good manager? Did all good techno-freaks turn into bad managers automatically, as the folklore had it, and was there anything anyone could do about it? Anecdote abounded, but as Einstein said (and these folk would quote) ‘For Instance is not proof.’

It ought to be said, too, that I was highly suspect. A Ph.D. in psychology and the odd visiting professorship didn’t count for much in the eyes of the techno-freaks. There would be nothing they’d like more than to take someone from a really soggy discipline like psychology and tear her analysis to pieces over morning coffee – and as you know, if you win that sort of battle you’ve lost the war.

One thing they did have, though, was lots of money. So we would have no problem with sample size and we let it be known that anyone who wanted to contribute to the study was welcome. (So that nobody could claim that they hadn’t been consulted, of course).

One of the most useful pieces of equipment was a Lazy Susan – that’s one of those circular revolving tables which you get at Chinese restaurants – and a great many circular cardboard cake-stands, one per interviewee. The particular ‘twist’ to Repertory Grid was that for each interviewee I divided his/her cake-stand into four quartiles, labeling each with a polite translation of each of the four boxes above. Then, working with each interviewee individually I asked for examples of three staff members (anonymous, of course) for each box: that is, three very effective managers, three less effective managers, three very effective analysts, and three less effective analysts. Then, instead of the usual Grid practice of taking elements at random, I deliberately took two from one box and one from another, so we always knew which boundary we were exploring. Then I asked the magic question `How are these two similar and different from the other. (The Lazy Susan made it easy to swivel around and change points of view so that we could easily find similar and contrast elements we could work with.). I was completely open about the note-taking and worked with six pieces of paper for my notes – one for each contrast (Four boxes provides six contrasts). Fortunately they were the kind of people who liked to try for precision with words and we did not often have to wait for one another. At the end of each session I put everything carefully into a plastic bag and popped it in the filing cabinet.

Bearing in mind that I was dealing almost exclusively with introverts, who like time to process, I made it clear that anyone was welcome to come back, ask for their session, and do some more work on it. I also asked them not to talk to one another about it, because there would be plenty of opportunity for feedback and discussion later.

The analysis was fascinating - we did indeed manage to identify the characteristics which differentiated good managers from poor ones, good analysts from good managers, etc, and in the process also found that some deeply-held superstitions about the differences had little or no empirical basis. But this isn’t the place to talk about it. It formed the basis of a thorough action plan which covered recruitment, career management, performance management, training, etc., which was what you would expect from a reasonably good study; I was particularly pleased that the feedback sessions helped to bridge some of the gaps between the two classes – especially increasing the respect which the techno-freaks had for the managers.

In terms of Grid technique, the most important message is that you don’t always have to put your elements in random triads. If it suits your purpose, you can arrange them. For example, one of my colleagues had a counselling contract to explore someone’s discomfort with selection interviewing, which played an important part in his job, and she used one element THE IDEAL INTERVIEW which was present in every triad. As long as you’ve got a good rationale, you can alter the format until it fits your needs.

Prepared by Dr Valerie Stewart

Sweet and Simple #1 - Performance Appraisal

Sweet and Simple #2 - Conflict Resolution

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