Firebrand Consulting

Enhancing Team Communication with Kantor’s 4 Player Model

In today’s complex and fast-paced work environments, effective communication with teams is paramount for success. When your team understands the communication dynamics occurring during team meetings and even in ad hoc conversations, psychological safety can substantially increase. This in turn facilitates other desired team conditions and behaviors like productive conflict, team learning, and innovation, which all enable better team performance. A useful framework for understanding what’s going on during team conversations and for ensuring everyone’s voice is heard is David Kantor’s Four Player Model. Kantor’s model describes 4 roles or “stances” that people in conversations naturally fall into. Eventually, as your team members become more adept at assuming different roles, they can adopt a stance they thinks is necessary in the moment to move the conversation forward productively. In this way, Kantor’s framework gives powerful context to any conversation by helping to decode communication dynamics and by fostering clearer communication.

Kantor’s 4 Players

So, let’s break down the dynamics that typically show up in conversations by looking at each player or stance individually. Mover. When you initiate an idea or action, drive progress, or set goals or aspirations for the conversation or your team, you are stepping into the role of “Mover”. Without someone in the role of Mover, the conversation will lack direction and there likely won’t be actionable follow through on items discussed. Follower. In the stance of Follower, you typically lend your support to the idea proposed by the Mover. You can do this by aligning yourself with stated goals, adding or expanding on the Mover’s idea, and contributing your ideas and effort to make the Mover's idea successful.  Without a someone in this role, others may not complete or follow through on the proposed or adopted idea. Opposer. When adopting the Opposer stance, you question assumptions, challenge ideas, and ensure critical thinking within the team. In these ways, the Opposer serves to shape a Mover’s proposed idea or course of action, so it will work or align better with team values, resources, and priorities. No one wants others to poke holes into their ideas. But without the Opposer, the team doesn't explore alternatives or correct flaws in ideas under discussion. Bystander. Acting as Bystander, you observe the conversational content and dynamics during the conversation. You remain relatively neutral and take a broader perspective of what’s happening in the conversation. In this way you can provide valuable feedback and insight. For example, when in this role, you may comment on the interplay of dynamics between the various players or on areas of agreement that other team members might miss. You might also add historical information about the topic. Without a Bystander, there is there no perspective on the conversation.

What’s Happening in Your Team?

Think about your team meetings. Are you able to place team members in these roles based on how everyone usually naturally participates? Is there a role from the model that no one on your team usually assumes? Having each of Kantor’s four players show up in your conversations is vital to having productive conversations. When you team understands and values the purposes of each of these four stances, conversations become richer. Also, , your team will increase psychological safety because team members will understand what’s happening in the conversation. They will understand the roles others are playing, instead of taking offense, tuning out, or being critical of how others are participating. In short, when your team understands Kantor’s four roles or stances and their importance, team members can participate in discussions more effectively and leverage the strengths in the viewpoints of each participant. You’ll find that while individuals tend to naturally gravitate to one or two roles. It’s also possible that team members will shift and play multiple roles during the same conversation. Eventually though, each of you can learn to fulfill any one of the four stances. This will ensure that your team will discuss topics more thoroughly and include various perspectives, using direction, support, questioning, and insight. By using Kantor’s 4 Player Model as a framework, you’ll unlocking the power of your team’s communication. Team conversations will become more dynamic, inclusive, and productive with greater participation, creativity, and success.

How Well Do You Handle Power? Leadership of Entitlement Vs. Responsibility

What’s more important to you — the status you get from being in a leadership position or the responsibility to serve others? The quality of your leadership is shaped by whether you emphasize the status and privilege that you get from being in a leadership position versus the responsibility you have toward others.

The Importance of Initiation for Leadership

In traditional cultures throughout time, you would have undergone initiations to mark important transitions and stages in life to acknowledge reaching a new level of maturity or ability. For example, an initiation could indicate whether you were ready to become an elder or a leader in the group. Initiation can also reveal your life purpose and unique talents to yourself and the community. Through initiatory processes, a group learns to trust individuals to be in positions of power like being a chief or an elder in a tribe. With each successive initiation, you would examine some aspect of yourself for the purpose of letting go of qualities or behaviors that won’t work for them going forward. The idea is that you would grow into your unique self over time and to become a better person and bring your unique gifts to the community.

An African Tale About Initiation & Leadership

There is a traditional African story that illustrates the importance of initiation in terms of leadership. It involves a brother and sister, whose father had passed away. One day after his passing, the father appeared to the siblings and waved them over to follow after him. They follow him even though they can’t believe their eyes. He led them to down through a hole in the ground, and underneath the ground, they see an entire village. The father led the children to the center of what appeared to be a deserted village and motioned to them to hide in some nearby bushes, where they could silently watch what happened. After a while, a crowd of people come to the center of the village, followed shortly by someone who looked like an important person. The boy and girl saw one side of this person was covered in maggots. The people of the village gathered around and started picking away the maggots and cleansing this side of this high-status person. After they had done that , it was getting dark so everyone, including the important chief or elder, left. The brother and sister stayed hiding until dawn the next morning, when the people again returned, followed the important person. This time, the children saw their other side, which was covered in gold. Again, the people of the village gathered around and began anointing this golden side the chief with oil and polished it until it gleamed brightly. When the ritual was complete everyone departed. Now this story points out a couple of important things about leadership:

• Even as a leader, you have both wonderful qualities that support your work with others (gold) and some not-so-wonderful qualities that block your ability to express your unique wisdom and talents (maggots). With intention and the help of those around you, you can cleanse what is wounded and unwanted, like the maggot side, and polish your noble aspects, like the gold side.

The Wisdom Missed for Today's Leaders

Today, you are probably not as aware of the initiations you go through in life — even if you go through a ceremony — but they still happen. Unfortunately, it’s likely you miss the wisdom you could get out of them. As a result, instead of consciously designing and debriefing initiations that prepare you psychologically for the responsibility of leadership, today’s culture focuses more on the outer material things you can achieve as you climb in status. Thus, it’s likely that you were not adequately centered in knowing yourself and were unprepared to assume your first (and maybe subsequent) leadership position. It’s likely you hadn’t determined and detonated your emotional triggers or defined their own unique purpose and contribution in life. In other words, you probably weren’t fully aware of or worked to heal your own maggots. And you probably hadn’t fully embraced and polished your unique gifts and talents to use for the benefit of others.

The Recurring Mistake Organizations Make with Leadership

Also in my experience, most companies are not very good at creating structures to support individuals to be ready for positions of greater responsibility leading and supervising others. Instead, the assumption organizations often make is that if you are good at a job due to your technical skills, you’ll be able to lead others effectively. When that assumption is proven false, in some cases, the company calls someone like me to help polish the leader’s “gold” and become aware of and cleanse the “maggots” through coaching. All this to say, our society bases its definition of success on outward appearances.  To this end, most companies’ repeatedly fail to prepare prospective leaders for the level of self-awareness and emotional maturity required to be effective . This leads to an over-emphasis on the outward status and the material perks of leadership by many of those in leadership positions. This superficial emphasis on the outward trappings of occupying an elevated position are a false signal of worthiness and competence and only serve to reinforce the Ego. In all likelihood, you will focus on what’s in it for you if you haven’t done the work on yourself (been initiated). This means, your presence and leadership will not be as beneficial to others as it could be. Any inability to handle yourself appropriately impacts your ability to handle power and authority appropriately. Thus, any “maggots” will be painfully evident to everyone around you – others will clearly see your wounds and your shadow qualities even if you don’t see them yourself. Accordingly, most organization do not prepare or initiate new leaders for the psychological and interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence required to lead others effectively. So, instead of focusing on the status and the perks of leadership (which are often really nice and you should enjoy them), a mindset shift is necessary: with leadership comes greater responsibility to others, which means the process of becoming a leader is a great opportunity for you to grow as a human being. In fact, weirdly, situations will come up (sometimes repeatedly) that require you to face aspects of yourself that you may need to question, reinforce, or even transform. These situations will seem specifically tailored  for you. Situations will repeatedly reflect old patterns and beliefs until you increase your emotional intelligence and take your responsibility to others more seriously. To conclude, leadership is more about being mindful and humble about your responsibility to others, and that requires you to get in good emotional and psychological shape. It’s less about any entitlement to elevated status and perks. Understanding this allows you to focus on your own development into the type of person who is ready to lead others (and help them grow too). After all, when you attend to your “maggots”, you allow your healed and polished authentic self to impact your team, your community, and the world in the most positive way possible.

Empathy and Emotional Intelligence: The Influence of the Feminine in the Workplace

In today’s business world, your ability to access your empathy and emotional intelligence is a must. Increasingly, the modern workplace has changed, morphing from a bastion of masculine qualities and values to giving greater value to these and other feminine qualities. Consequently, your effectiveness as a leader is no longer simply about making decisions or delegating tasks; rather, your leadership effectiveness is about understanding and connecting with your team on a deeper level.

Empathy

First, look at the growing importance of one feminine quality, empathy. Empathy is about stepping into someone else’s shoes and seeing the world from their perspective. As a leader, it is crucial to recognize that each employee has their own challenges, strengths, and aspirations. In the old masculine-dominated paradigm, showing empathy by being interested in your employees’ challenges and perspectives would have been seen as weak because employees were mostly seen as cogs in the machine. Their job was simply to show up and “do” without allowing their individuality to get in the way. Caring about them would just get in the way of getting the work done.

The Research on Empathy

But more and more, companies see empathy as important. In a recent study, 98% of employees surveyed, considered empathy an important factor in the workplace, even though only 40% of them agreed that their employers were empathetic. To add weight to the importance of empathy, roughly 45% of consumers say they’ll purchase more from a company if it shows empathy. Additionally, research on empathy shows:

• leaders with empathy increase the satisfaction of their employees by 50%. Indeed, 83% of employees are more likely to stay with a company that is empathetic;
• 70 - 80% of virtual workers state that high empathy is important for successful remote work;
• a lack of empathy contributes to 60% of incidents in the workplace;
• 80% of CEOs report a direct correlation between empathy and the financial performance of their business, which might be because approximately 77% of workers would be willing to work more hours in a more empathetic workplace; and finally,
• empathy can reduce racism by up to 50%.

Showing Empathy

How do you show empathy at work? It’s as simple as asking employees how they’re feeling about their current work --whether it’s the same-old, same-old or a new project -- then offering support and guidance as required. As a leader, you can show empathy by recognizing the interpersonal dynamics going on your team and taking time to talk about or check in with team members to enable them to support one another better.

Having Emotional Intelligence

Empathy goes with another increasingly valued feminine quality: emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is about being aware of your own emotions and how they impact others, as well as being able to regulate your emotions effectively. Leaders who possess emotional intelligence can navigate challenging situations with grace and composure, instead of becoming reactive and allowing the fight-or-flight response get the better of them. By demonstrating your own emotional intelligence, you will inspire your team to do the same.

The Research on Emotional Intelligence

Research shows that supervisors who act in emotionally intelligent ways create a more positive work climate, have employees who are able to grow into their jobs, and are generally more effective. To these ends, emotional intelligence is what helps you successfully coach teams, manage stress, deliver feedback, and collaborate with others. With emotional intelligence, you can achieve two important business goals: create an environment that supports employee well-being, and build greater team cohesion and focus - which allow teams to deliver results aligned with company and stakeholder objectives. In fact, some research suggests that you can increase productivity by as much as 20% if your employees increase their emotional intelligence, too. This is probably because with high emotional intelligence, your team is more likely to stay calm under pressure, resolve conflicts effectively, and respond to each other  with empathy.

Final Thoughts on Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

Whether it’s offering support during difficult times, fostering a culture of open communication, or providing constructive feedback, your ability to harness the power of the feminine qualities of empathy and emotional intelligence is in demand. It’s not just about what you do. It’s about how you make your team and others around you feel. When you foster an environment where emotions are acknowledged and valued, you can create a culture of trust, collaboration, and psychological safety. It's important to lead others to do the work to achieve company goals, but it's the teams who develop good working relationships with each other and their stakeholders who perform above the rest. To that end, empathy and emotional intelligence are qualities that everyone on your team can and should cultivate because in the end, it’s the feminine value of creating human connection that drives success in the workplace today.

As a Supervisor, Are You Leading or Bullying?

(This is an updated version of a post I did in October 2012.) “I feel like you’re intimidating and bullying me.”  These are the words of a female employee during a meeting with her male supervisor, who intended to set expectations with her. Taken aback, the supervisor started to question his behavior. With stories of children being bullied at school and with differences between generations at work, it makes you stop and think about bullying in the workplace. As a supervisor, how do you know whether you are leading or bullying? At work, a few employees will attempt to deflect responsibility and attention away from themselves, especially when a supervisor addresses a work issue. One thing an employee may say, whether they really believe it or not, is that you are bullying” them. It seems for some employees, no one – not even their supervisor – has a right to set or clarify expectations for their conduct or performance at work. Also, some employees may use the word “intimidation” when describing what it felt like when they were called into their supervisor’s office to discuss a performance issue. Well, sure, it can be intimidating, especially for those who know deep down they’ve failed in their work commitment.  But that doesn’t mean the boss was indeed intimidating, purposefully or not, and it doesn’t mean they are a bully. What it does mean is that the use and misuse of power and authority by supervisors is often at the heart of perceptions of bullying.

 Correlations Between Bullying Behavior and Leadership Style and Traits

 Your leadership style and other personality traits can make it more likely an employee will perceive they are bullied, even if your manner or behavior doesn’t cross a line (usually set by the organization’s standards of conduct). One study found that bullying correlated with all four leadership styles measured and that:

• An autocratic leadership style was the strongest predictor of bullying observed by others;
• A laissez-faire leadership style emerged as a predictor of self-reported as well as observed bullying; and
• An unpredictable style of leadership, where punishment is meted out or delivered on leaders' own terms, independent of the target employee’s behavior was the strongest predictor of self-perceived bullying.

(Hoel, et al, 2009) In contrast to the autocratic leadership style, a more recent study found that a more democratic and communal leadership orientation may lead to fewer perceptions of bullying in the workplace. (Houghton et al, 2021).

 Distinguishing  Bullying and Supervisory Behavior

 According to the Workplace Bullying Institute, bullying is “repeated, health-harming mistreatment by one or more employees of an employee: abusive conduct that takes the form of verbal abuse; or behaviors perceived as threatening, intimidating, or humiliating; work sabotage” or a combination of these. It is often a “systematic campaign of interpersonal destruction” that causes harm such as health issues, adverse employment actions, (i.e., demotion, termination, reprimand, failure to promote, etc.), or even constructive discharge. Bullying behavior can include ostracizing or isolating, being aggressive or intrusive, minimizing, intimidating, criticizing, or spreading gossip about the target of their bullying. Often, a peer or supervisor will bully another employee due to professional jealousy, being seen as a threat to the bully’s social status to their ability to be in control, or being insecure or having low self-esteem. To check your behavior as a supervisor, use the chart below to clarify bullying versus appropriate supervisory behaviors:

Bullying	Leading as a Supervisor
During a performance review, the supervisor is intentionally biased or gives inaccurate feedback because they don’t like the employee even though the employee is a good performer.	During a performance review, the supervisor shares honest, substantiated feedback with the employee, whether or not they like the employee as a person.
The supervisor deliberately excludes an employee from workplace meetings and activities for no good reason or for a concocted reason while other employees on the same team or in the same job classification are invited to attend.	The supervisor includes an employee in workplace meetings and activities that other employees on the same team or in the same job classification attend, whether or not the supervisor like the employee and even if the employee is not the best performer.
The supervisor instigates, encourages, or fails to stop others from spreading malicious gossip, jokes, or rumors about an employee.	The supervisor refrains from joking about, gossiping or spreading rumors about any employees, and addresses such behavior with other employees who engage in it. Instead of listening to gossip and rumors, the supervisors ignores it, or if warranted, follows up with the employee directly and privately, giving them an opportunity to give their version of the situation.
The supervisor pesters, spies, or stalks the employee with no business reason for doing so.	The supervisor monitors all employees’ whereabouts and productivity if there is a business reason for doing so, and documents and addresses any issues of attendance or productivity privately with an employee, giving them an opportunity to give their version of the situation.
The supervisor criticizes or belittles the employee persistently or allows others to do so without saying anything.	The supervisor speaks privately with the employee if there are documented conduct or performance issues, and gets the employee’s explanation during the conversation.
The supervisor applies undeserved or unwarranted corrective action or discipline to an employee.	The supervisor addresses only work-related issues, supported by relevant information regarding a situation, including the employee’s version of events, before deciding whether or not to discipline an employee for workplace misconduct.
The supervisor consistently gives a good performer assignments that are beneath their position to create a feeling of uselessness.	The supervisor holds all employees accountable to job performance standards and documents/addresses sub-standard performance with interventions such as re-training, job shadowing, or a performance plan.

Regardless of how you show up, the authority inherent in your position will automatically intimidate some. Still, as a supervisor, everything you do and say will be magnified 1000 times by that authority. That’s why it’s a good idea to become aware your own insecurities and the way you react when stressed. Your insecurity and reactive behavior could be sending unintended messages that employees interpret as bullying. Also, work with your human resources department to know how to address workplace issues with employees with professionalism and respect. Want to plan out a tough conversation you need to have with an employee?  Download my Conversation Planner