Reframing Escalation
Sometimes, managing and leading a team can feel like being a professional therapist, consistently asking open-ended questions. For example, a few weeks ago, I asked a direct report, “Why are you so afraid of escalation?” The question popped out, unfiltered, as my brain had an aha moment regarding some situations I’d experienced with the team. There is a better way, perhaps, to ask this question.
In the span of one week, my colleague, Alice, and a senior leader raised a couple of issues regarding two people in my team. Both problems were the same and my colleague had escalated to her boss. When discussing this with one of my direct reports, the response was akin to, “why didn’t they come to me, why the need to go her boss and then to you?” I said, “because she felt like you left her no choice, but I’d like to hear from you, your assessment of the situation.”
There are a few other scenarios, too long to describe. However, I decided to have an informal discussion with my direct reports about escalation under the following umbrellas - fear, emotional intelligence, communication, and setting boundaries.
Fear - somewhere along the way of having a job, we’ve all come to associate escalation with fear, and that escalation is a bad thing. It symbolizes failure and places you at the mercy of your boss. Continued escalation, however, highlights serious issues that should be addressed. In the case where an employee is fearful of this perceived failure, that employee is missing out on the learnings of and benefitting from their manager’s breadth of experience.
Emotional intelligence - I don’t believe that people spend enough time observing and getting to know their colleagues and stakeholders. When starting a new role, I always advise finding and befriending the person in the company/team/department who has been there the longest. This person knows where all the skeletons are and, most importantly, knows the people well. They can give insight into your team and stakeholders. About escalation, it can highlight not knowing that person well, i.e., not having or investing enough EQ in getting to know the people you work alongisde.
Communication - viewing escalation through the lens of unmet expectations in communication. When an issue is escalated, someone has often felt that a task et al. is not being done on time, or it simply hasn’t been done. In the latter, it almost always highlights a lack of timely communication when investigated.
Setting boundaries - I’ve observed diligent junior staff, afraid of senior leaders escalating issues to their boss, working inefficiently to stave off any possibility of escalation. They ignore the urgent vs important assessment and fail to set boundaries. The scenario where a junior is consistently responding to the requests of a senior stakeholder leading to spending extra hours trying to complete other tasks is unknown and may exist in your team. Going through the urgent vs. important exercise and empowering her to set boundaries and escalate requests upwards changed how she worked. At the start of your career, it's essential to learn to manage upwards and set boundaries.
To bring this all together using the initial example, I reframed the fear of escalation by being open with my team and stating that things are escalated all the time. My role as their manager is to interpret and assess. I have to decide whether its
personal - i.e. someone with an axe to grind,
someone blowing off steam or throwing their toys out of the pram, or
a legitimate complaint.
That means that you won’t hear about all things that come to me.
I asked what they knew about Alice - she’s understaffed, working on a big project with inputs from the entire department, and most importantly, she loves information. Had they communicated effectively and timely with Alice, chances are she wouldn’t have escalated. They have no idea how the task fits into Alice’s overall plans. A delay on our end could have a tangible negative knock-on effect, putting further stress on her plate. Effective communication with Alice via feedback and updates would have alleviated her concerns. Investing in and exercising emotional intelligence in the office is a trait I suggested they cultivate.
A sage piece of advice received a few years ago – who gets there first, controls the narrative. Keeping your boss in the loop is imperative when dealing with particularly challenging stakeholders. Then, the escalation will be better received with your narrative at the forefront when it inevitably arrives.
*originally published February 4th.