How Managers Confront Us/them-thinking and Win
Us/them-thinking comes naturally to everyone, even children.
Imagine giving blue shirts to one group of children and yellow to another. Us/them-thinking will animate perception quickly. Children think my group is better than your group. One researcher proved this.
“Kids started to think the blue was different from the yellow,” Rebecca Bigler Ph.D., says. “What comes very quickly after that is, ‘the blues are better than the yellows.’”
Us/them-thinking in life:
I worked in a group that was housed separate from the main division. I felt our group worked hard and delivered better results than the rest of the division. I lost the luxury of superiority when we were brought under the same roof. Those ‘bad’ people were actually talented hard-working colleagues.
We’re prone to illogical bias.
I asked a VP of Apple what people saw in him. Among other things, he said, “It doesn’t hurt that I’m 6’5”.” Research shows that, “… people hold implicit biases against short people.” Tall people are more likely than short people to be hired and promoted.
Us/them-thinking in organizations:
Us/them-thinking permeates organizational life. ‘Them’ tends to be bad. ‘Us’ tends to be good.
- Boss/employee.
- Corporate/local.
- Inexperience/experience.
- Old/young.
- Men/women.
- Government/citizens.
- Republican/Democrat.
- Parents/teachers.
- White/black.
- Tall/short.
- Union/management.
- My team/your team.
Denying the reality of us/them-thinking propagates irrational decisions.
Leaders are suffocated by us/them-thinking every day. Suppose you’re charged to integrate two teams, for example. ‘Them’ is the enemy. ‘Us’ is the good people.
How managers confront us/them-thinking and win:
- Acknowledge us/them thinking is unfair, irrational, and adversarial.
- Agree on shared meaningful goals. Work for mutual benefit.
- Establish cross-functional leadership. When one loses, we all lose.
- Embrace ‘we’-talk. Words are rudders.
- Institute cross-dependencies that require ‘we’ behaviors to win.
- Promote people who practice ‘we’ behaviors.
- Have leaders from one team honor members of the other team.
‘We’ cultures win. Us/them cultures rot from within.
Where do you see us/them-thinking in your organization?
How might leaders confront us/them-thinking and win?
Added resources:
5 Essentials of Culture Building
Thanks for the wisdom here Dan! Us/them thinking seems to be increasing in prevalence in the US. Do you happen to have any suggestions on how to do this in a community organization (i.e. church) on matters of COVID precautions and vaccination disagreements?
Good morning, Steve. Thanks for the good word. I’ve noticed very strong feelings on this issue. I wish I could say, just let it go. In this case there are so many levels of disagreement. For some it’s about safety. But for others it’s about rights. I wish I had an answer. I’ll thinking about it, but I doubt that I can helpful.
If it’s church-world, the question is how to love people, but even that doesn’t give us a clear answer.
Us/Them seems to be a common side effect of organizations who mistakenly foster a structure of departments that function as individual silos instead of ones that are more collaborative (and ultimately more productive) in nature.
Thanks Drew. My experience is silos are natural. If an organization is working well together, someone is working to make that happen. Or, many people are working to make it happen.
Values seem to play an important role. Values inform behaviors. When we value working together we adopt behaviors to make it happen.
Most organisations accept that us/them is adversarial. That isn’t new. Indeed it’s an integral part of the directed orders approach to management and leadership. “Do as you’re told, or else” is innately adversarial. “We talk” works well there is a “we”. When “We are going to do XYZ” is actually “You lot are going to do XYZ, or else”, not so much.
I don’t think there would be much enthusiasm for the cross dependency idea – if your success is dependent on others, if they fail, you go down with them, irrespective of how well you held up your end. In places where failure is punished (it isn’t seen as a golden opportunity to grow everywhere, not by any means), why would you sign up to collective punishment?
Thanks Mitch. You’ve articulated the approach that some leaders adopt (perhaps many). And, we’ve all encountered it.
“We talk” requires trust. The thing that I learned about trust is that it’s given, not earned. Yes, it can be unearned. But in order to get the trust-wheel spinning someone has to extend it first. I find this personally challenging. Perhaps it’s one reason that us/them-thinking continues to propagate.
I use to see these examples:
Management—union
Hi po’s——-everyone else
Faculty——administration
Senior leaders need to build an organizational team where everyone focuses on a common vision, shared set of goals, and values.
Thanks Paul. The importance and power of shared vision, goals, and values can’t be overstated. Cheers
My absolute favorite example of this was when our company was split between the old, seasoned veterans in leadership and the young, super smart, first professional job people in development. The segregation was clear but we treated it as normal. You employee, me leader.
I didn’t realize, though, how entrenched the segregation was until one of the developers said, “Yea, well all of the adults, blah, blah.”
We all paused for a moment. The developer in question had a PhD, must have been in his early 30s, was married — in other words, was clearly an adult. Somewhere along the way, though, he had internalized the idea that adults were “other.” Maybe too many years of running around in an age cohort and not participating in multi-generational events? Who knows but I’ll never forget the look on his face as he realized what he’d said.
Sometimes over-identifying with your own group, hinders your own development.
We see us/them thinking among the oldest democracy/largest democracy