Hard Case
Email Privacy
One of your employees reports that the computer in the work area next to her is receiving offensive material, including pornographic pictures, and wants you to monitor the offending employee’s messages.
Which of the following is the most correct?
a. You may always read your employees’ messages because the company provides the computers to the employees.
b. You may read any messages only if the company provides the email system.
c. You may never read an employee’s email.
Choice b ⫽Most Appropriate, advance three spaces.
(If messages are maintained on a system provided by the employer.)*
Choice a ⫽Second Most Appropriate, advance one space.
(If employee has a separate email, the rights of the employer are more limited.)*
Choice c ⫽Least Appropriate, stay put.
(This approach could create a liability for the company. Company may want to advise employees that it maintains the right to monitor the system, which should discourage misuse.)*
Games That Boost Performance. Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Reproduced by permission of Pfeiffer, an Imprint of Wiley. www.pfeiffer.com
*Federal Employee Communications Privacy Act.
Having a Bad Hair Day
• PURPOSE
• To surface common annoyances in a team setting and negotiate protocols to avoid these annoyances.
• To identify aspects of organizational culture that commonly get in the way of optimum team performance.
• To creatively discuss how to diffuse stress in the workplace.
• GAME OBJECTIVE
To collect the most team points.
• PLAYERS
Nine or more.
• TIME
Fifteen to thirty minutes.
• SUPPLIES
• One sheet of flip chart paper and felt-tipped markers for each team.
• Newsprint flip chart and felt-tipped markers to track the voting.
• An overhead projector (if using transparencies).
• One index card per player.
• Paper and pencils.
• Masking tape.
• Timer (optional).
• Noisemaker (optional).
• GAME PLAY
1. Divide participants into three or more teams of three to seven players per team.
2. Distribute paper and pencils to each player.
3. Have each player record one or two annoying events he or she experienced in the past week. (Remind players not to identify specific people.) Provide some examples from the List of Annoying Events if you choose.
4. Call time after 1 minute.
5. Distribute one sheet of flip chart paper and felt-tipped markers to each team.
6. Have players join their teams and share their annoying events.
7. Have each team . . .
(a) Select its most common or top-ranking annoyance and
(b) Produce a list of creative responses to avoid, eliminate, or mitigate this annoyance.
8. Call time after 7 minutes.
Then give each team another 3 minutes select the five most creative ways of dealing with the annoying event.
Team Presentations
1. Have each team present its event and the five most creative ways for dealing with it and then post its chart paper on the wall.
2. Distribute one index card to each player.
3. Have each player select his or her favorite creative response from any OTHER team’s list.
Scoring
1. After 3 minutes, call time and collect the ballots.
2. Award 1 point for each selected response.
3. The team’s response that receives the most votes wins.
• POST-GAME DEBRIEFING
Having a Bad Hair Day is also an opportunity to introduce the “Question Behind the Question”—that is, when we ask “who, “when, or “why” questions, what we are really asking is permission to play the victim. When we ask “Who is responsi- ble?” we are getting into the blame game rather than focusing on “What can we do about this situation to fix it?” When we ask, “When is this going to be resolved?”
we are avoiding the question, “How can I act to do something about it right now?”
When we ask “Why me? Why us? Why is this horrible thing happening?” what we are really asking is “How long shall we continue to wallow in glorious self-pity?”
There are really only two responsible questions:
• “What can I do to help?”
• “How can I make a difference right now?”
For Facilitators with Advanced Group Skills.Have groups develop responses to one or more annoying experiences that are specific to this group. Use the discussion to
“clear the air” of some underlying issues or logistical problems facing the group.
Having a Bad Hair Day is one way to shine a light on the choices we make about assuming personal responsibility and accountability for doing what needs to be done and our thinking process about how to make a difference in a particular situ- ation. Here are some questions to stir up that conversation:
• When you encounter an annoyance, how many of you typically decide to Ignore it?
Call the problem to someone else’s attention?
Write a complaint?
Call to complain?
Deal directly with the person causing the annoyance?
What are the pros and cons of each of these choices?
• When you are annoyed at someone else, are you more likely to Blame it on him or her?
Blame it on the system?
Wonder whether it is just a matter of miscommunication?
Blame it on yourself?
Take it on yourself to straighten this person out?
What are the pros and cons of each of these choices?
• Annoyances are, for the most part, a function of not getting what we expected to get. To what extent do you find that your colleagues:
Have a good grasp of each other’s responsibilities?
Understand what gets in the way of satisfying others?
Take time to negotiate expectations?
Capture (in writing) what each person is supposed to do?
• As you compared your reactions with those of others on your team, would you say that you typically:
Underreact to the situation?
Overreact to the situation?
Act appropriately, given the provocation?
• What we choose to do in any given situation is a function of what we see as being within our control, within our influence, or outside our control or influence.
What situations did you see as being within your control?
What situations did you see as being within your sphere or influence?
What situations did you see as being outside your control or influence?
What are your strategies for dealing with situations you neither control nor influence?
• GENERAL COMMENTS
• Having a Bad Hair Day is an excellent way for intact work teams to uncover petty annoyances and to deal with them in an open and humorous way. As you debrief the game, you can focus the group on identifying practical solu- tions to these petty annoyances. By generating a basic list of annoyances—
“pet peeves” if you will—groups can create protocols to avoid annoying each other unnecessarily as they go about their tasks.
• Having a Bad Hair Day can be used to explore the “hidden elephant” aspects of organizational culture that annoy many people, but which they feel power- less to change. A hidden elephant is a problem that is apparent to everyone, but which everyone is reluctant to discuss. For example, an organization that considers itself “prudent” may, in fact, be pathologically averse to risk in any form whatsoever. An organization that prides itself on being “flexible” may, in fact, be incapable of following through on any given plan and strongly resist sustained commitment in any form.
• Introduce some perspective on the relative importance of some annoyances by building on humorous and creative responses to underscore that perhaps, just perhaps, we may overact to petty annoyances. For example, one participant responded to “being cut off in traffic” by “calling in an air strike.” The group savored this moment and then concluded that traffic headaches, while annoy- ing, were petty compared to other real-world problems.