I was recently watching The Good Wife, which is a legal and political TV series mainly about Alicia Florrick’s career in law, after a public sex and political corruption scandal that have put her husband in prison. Lockhart, Agos & Lee is the law firm Alicia used to work for, and it is the main law firm involved in the entire series. In Season 7, there was a conflict when Diane Lockhart, David Lee, and Cary Agos came to a contentious hiring decision.
They were planning to hire three new associates and disagreements arouse among the three name partners after interviewing the candidates. There were 5 candidates being interviewed, 4 white males and 1 black female. Diane favors the black girl Monica, Cary advocates for the three guy from top law schools, while Davis votes for the one with the highest LSAT score. They each had their own reasons and disagreed with each other’s opinion. Diane believed that their firm needs diversity and some new talents, she feels that they are always hiring the same kind of people. Monica is the kind of attorney that she sees in their future. Cary believed their future is in new law, so he values candidates with experiences in the tech industry. The candidates he preferred also the ones in top of their classes. While, David, always practical and rational, wanted to hire the 3 most qualified candidates based on their scores/school rank.
Diane blamed Cary that he is just looking for candidates that is similar with himself, accused David that he is holding bias towards Monica, and concluded they were hiring 3 white males again (actually they were sued and experienced discriminatory hiring investigation later in the show). Cary and David see Monica as an easy pass because she didn’t have a very high LSAT score and was not from a top tier law school. David disagreed putting their future in new laws related to technology and despised Cary’s opinion. No one agreed with each other. Diane actually tried to act as the conflict resolver and offered to make a concession that could satisfy everyone. Many guidelines discussed in B&D Chap8 when facing interpersonal conflict in groups, and also the guidelines in Model II was applied by Diane. She communicated her thoughts, expressed her understanding of Cary and David’s perspective, conceded by picking one candidate from both Cary and David’s list, but asked them to support Monica. However, Model I discussed in the B&D book was exactly the way how Cary and David acted. They believed their decisions by themselves are the right one, and assumed others are the wrong ones that should change. David despised other people’s voices and refused to listen, always being in a defense mode.
In the end, they ended up hiring two candidates from Cary’s list and one from David’s list. But the conflict did not end, they soon faced troubles. The new associates betrayed the firm and went to their competitor’s firm in the middle of an important technical case right before a filing deadline, because they were unsatisfied with the culture of the firm and the lack of upward mobility. When problems emerged, the name partners did not see the hiring decision as a team decision, they blamed each other instead of taking the responsibility together. I think it is because they did not really agree with each other when they were making the final decision, if they could be more open, they might have taken it as a group responsibility when problems appear. They blamed Cary because the two candidates favored by Cary was among the associates who betrayed them, but Cary argued this was a team decision and also blamed Diane and David for the culture of the firm, which caused the associates to leave. Cary was asked to solve the problem. In the end, fortunately, Cary used a strategy to bring the new associates back, fired them, and solved all the problems. Seeing Cary solving all the problems, Diane and David was satisfied and the tension eased off.
However, even if this hiring problem was well solved in the end, they faced all kinds of other issues throughout the seasons. Issues have not been solved at root. The values of the three name partners are quite different, and I think the most fundamental problem is that they are not open to each other’s thoughts and feelings. According to Argyris and Schon’s Model II, they are having high advocacy and low inquiry, therefore leading to passive decisions. Diane as the only female partner, was the one who puts most effort in balancing everyone’s opinions, and she was also the one who compromised most of the times, David was the most stubborn one who alnost never make a concession, while Carry being somewhere in the middle. I think teams works the best when everyone has a good incentive in mind with the willingness to collaborate with diverse individuals, being aware of one’s fallibility, and respecting the judgment of others. But how to deal with members like David that do not have these awareness in mind? It’s just too difficult for me to provide a good answer. I think this kind of problem is where a good leader could be identified.
Let us note first that disagreement is different from conflict. The expression goes - reasonably people can disagree. When that happens, they work through their disagreements. The relationship endures and may even be strengthened by that. In contrast, conflict typically festers and makes everyone miserable. The relationship deteriorates. Ultimately it may fracture.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't clear from your story how much of this was mere disagreement and what part of it was really conflict. Perhaps the show benefits from that sort of ambiguity. Also, so we are clear on this, TV shows tend to be melodramatic because audiences like that. The heightened tension is part of good story telling. But whether it tells us much, if anything, about reality is a different matter.
Finally I should add that my wife was a fan of this show, at least for a while, but I've never watched it. So I am writing based purely on reading what you've written and not at all on my own experiences as a viewer.
I agree that disagreement is different from conflict. But I chose this scene and see it as a conflict because it was not merely disagreement among the three partners. These three partners are acting emotionally, attacking each other, and making judgements on each other’s characters. Diane was angry with Cary and David during the hiring decision meeting. When problem arise, David rushed into the meeting room and yelled to Cary “can we talk about the idiots you hired?”, and also many other sarcastic words both during the decision process and after the decision when problem arose. Obviously they did not work very well through their disagreements. Their relationship endured only because Cary resolved the issue very well. If Cary did not solve the problem very well, their relationship will become even worse since everyone’s interest is involved. So I still believe conflict arose from the disagreement. Although the conflict wasn’t that intense.
DeleteI agree that TV shows tend to be melodramatic, but I also think that TV shows comes from real life. Even if it is not exactly how reality works, we are still able to learn something and learn how to deal with different situations from these TV shows. Although it wouldn’t be the best sources to learn.
The disagreement between the three partners seems to have led to a much bigger problem later on. The conflict situation you described reminded me of something I learned in an i-Program through the Illinois Leadership Center. The program, Innovation, was about creative thinking and creative problem-solving. The facilitators told us that there are two problems to solve in any group situation:
ReplyDelete1. the problem or challenge that the group originally set out to solve; this is the reason the group formed. For example, they might have formed to bring about social change, solve an issue, or bring a new product to life
2. The challenge the group faces in getting along. How will they communicate, get things done effectively, and make sure everyone gets heard? How will they handle it when conflict comes up?
The facilitators explained that the groups which only address the first problem end up succeeding much less often than the groups who pay attention to both problems.
From what you've explained, I think that the lawyers in your example did a bad job addressing both problems. Not only did they disagree on the problem of who to hire, their approach in working together was very fractured. Do you think if they had a better leader, they could have addressed both of these problems in a more successful way?
It’s very interesting that the two problems you mentioned that needs to be solved in any group situation from the Leadership Center is very similar with what B&D discussed in Chap 8. They stated that any group will always operate at two levels: task and process, which corresponds to problem 1 and problem 2 you wrote. At the process level, groups will need to deal with informal roles, group norms, interpersonal conflict, and leadership, which includes all the issues you stated in problem 2.
DeleteThe three partners are actually at the same level, so they are actually three leaders working together instead of one leader leading the team. So for your question, to be honest, I don’t know. Among the three partners, I think the person that is most difficult to deal with is David. So to make the team work better, I think one effective way to solve it (as included in Model II in B&D Chap 8) would be experiment. It would be very difficult to change a person, so the other guidelines (develop skills, doubt your infallibility, treat differences as a group responsibility) provided in the book might not work for David. Experiment might be the most effective way to prove who is the best candidate. Actually Diane’s concession is almost an analogue of experiment, but David refused. However, later in the show after the associates’ betrayal Diane hired Monica, and Monica proved that she is a good candidate. I guess this might have changed David’s view on the issue, and he might be more open in the future. Finally, I agree with prof Arvan’s point that TV show is melodramatic and unrealistic, so the reference value is limited.
From my experiences, differences in opinion regarding recruiting usually come from different interpretations of the company/branch's objective. However, depending on a company's structure, a person's opinion on what is helpful and what is not may depend on their position. In this I am assuming that someone who directly oversees an employee would like to do as little work as possible, so they may be looking for someone like themselves. Alternately, the person above the person who directly oversees the new hire may just want to see results, regardless of whether they are like their boss or not.
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