Eyeworld

90 | EYEWORLD | SEPTEMBER 2021 P RACTICE MANAGEMENT by Ellen Stodola Editorial Co-Director T he Monday General Session at the ASOA Annual Meeting featured Joe Mull presenting "No More Team Dra- ma: Ending Gossip, Cliques, & Other Crap That Damage Workplace Teams." Mr. Mull said you can't completely eliminate team drama from the workplace. "The biggest reason for that is because … people." Mr. Mull said when he's discussing "no more team drama," he's not promising that it won't show itself again; rather, he means no more team drama at the level where it causes harm and drives away talent. When asking the audience who has expe- rienced team drama, almost everyone in the room raised their hand. What is team drama? Mr. Mull agreed with various examples proposed from the audience: gossip, jealousy, picking favorites, and bullies. "Every one of these fits the bill," he said. Mr. Mull said that even after writing a book on team drama, he still struggles to capture it in a single-sentence definition. The definition he has come up with is "actions and reactions that harm morale, relationships, and culture in the workplace." Mr. Mull said that if you can move the nee- dle a bit and reduce how often team drama hap- pens at work, people are happier, performance is higher, and outcomes are better. Asking the audience to say, "True or false," Mr. Mull made the statement that team drama is often born from people reacting to perceptions on how they're being treated by someone else. The audience responded, "True." The reason it's true is because each day, our brains take a series of short cuts to operate more efficiently, and this results in bias, he said. The bias is your brain operating against anyone who's not you. Mr. Mull discussed two sets of rules. The first, illusory superiority bias, tells you that you're a good person doing the best you can. We tend to overestimate ourselves in a variety of ways, he said, including in terms of talent, ef- fort, and circumstances. We tend to perceive our capabilities at a higher level than they truly are. The second, fundamental attribution error, is when you see someone do something you don't agree with and don't understand; you believe the reason is because of who they are at their core. Mr. Mull highlighted four things teams have to get good at to overcome bias: 1. Courtesy 2. Camaraderie 3. Conflict 4. Cause Initially, when we talk about courtesy and respect, we start thinking about other people, he said. "We must build a culture of courtesy that is defined and personalized," he said. Camaraderie is another important factor. It helps to mute the fundamental attribution fac- ASOA Annual Meeting attendees learn how to eliminate team drama Mr. Mull presents "No More Team Drama: Ending Gossip, Cliques, & Other Crap That Damage Workplace Teams" at the ASOA Annual Meeting. Source: ASCRS

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