No Joy in Mudville
If you live in the greater Boston area and you’re a Red Sox fan, perhaps you know there’s been a kerfuffle involving the team’s marquee player, Rafel Devers.
Devers is a three-time All-Star third baseman with a ten-year, $313 million contract. During the offseason team management (with a new head of baseball operations), was under pressure to build a more competitive roster. They acquired a much-needed slugger in Alex Bregman, who also happens to play third base. Devers was asked to switch to designated hitter, even though third base has been his career position. After a lot of sulking, he begrudgingly accepted the move to DH but made it clear he won’t switch positions again.
This situation mirrors that in many kinds of businesses where a talented individual refuses to accept a new assignment or accommodate unexpected changes in their work environment (RTO comes to mind).
If Devers were your direct report, what would you do?
We don’t always handle it well. We might try to avoid the whole thing, working back-channels to find an alternate solution while anger or disappointment simmers below the surface. Or we may forcibly and vocally make our demands known from our managerial perch.
If we believe our team members are hard to replace and/or are inextricably linked to reaching our business goals, then neither avoidance nor aggression is the way to go. A more collaborative approach is needed – here’s how (not) to do it:
Connect: The Red Sox eroded a good deal of trust by not informing Devers of their hiring plans in the first place. If you want your team to actually feel like they’re part of a team (and set expectations for their behavior accordingly) clear, consistent, and direct communication is the way to go. To repair the relationship with Devers and make their case for his move, the Sox ultimately had to fly the team owner out to meet with him.
Frame: Once the tension between the parties has been dialed down, they can focus on the true source of the friction – the actual problem to be solved. I sense the Sox got this wrong as well by remaining focused on how to appease a whining Devers. Instead, they should recognize that the fundamental problem to solve is motivating a group of talented and sometimes egoistic individual contributors to operate effectively as part of a much larger system that needs to remain agile in the face of unexpected changes such as injuries.
Explore: A good problem frame de-personalizes the issue so that both parties can participate creatively in imagining the options, and should involve brainstorming a wide range of possibilities. It’s unlikely that this happened, as the Sox were seeking a specific outcome – Devers as DH.
Commit: The ultimate goal in conflict resolution is to reach an agreement that all parties can live with – but always with a reality check (i.e. “what haven’t we thought of that might undermine this agreement?”). Devers remains at DH, but Bregman is now injured and third base is open. The Sox are honoring their commitment to keep Devers where he is for now, even as their team performance this season has reached an all time low.