Page 152 - Make Work Great

Growing Your Crystal

Culture Building with Diffi cult People

• For the most difficult, focus elsewhere and allow your cultural
crystal to wrap around them slowly.

• For the moderately difficult, prepare yourself first, using overtness
about task and clarity about relationship.

• During the discussion, separate the five building blocks of reality
(information, situation, interpretation, approach, and beliefs) and
address each separately.

model for handling diffi cult interactions. We’ve also discussed wrap-
ping your crystal around the most problematic individuals. Only one
topic remains as we conclude the section on growing your crystal:
preparing yourself for life on the boundary.
At the beginning, you saw a better way to work before anyone
else did. You had to encourage yourself to “choose to choose” in the
face of so much contrary role-modeling. That was diffi cult enough.
But now you’re in an even more complex situation. You’re practicing
better patterns of working with some of your coworkers, while others
are unwilling to go there with you.
That is life on the boundary, and it’s your new normal. As a culture
builder, you will spend your work life connected with some people
according to your new patterns of overtness and clarity, and with oth-
ers according to the old patterns that existed before (perhaps feeling as
though you’re role-modeling to a brick wall). You will be the one who
most strongly feels the pull between the two ways of working. The
dichotomy will exist in your work life every day and every hour. If you
don’t see this as a natural part of your role, it can be quite stressful.
Make no mistake: the dichotomy is a natural part of your role.
As the culture builder, you will always be pulled forward toward the
change you’re trying to make and backward toward the way things

140