How to Deescalate in an Escalation Environment

Let’s say you’re responsible for achieving an important business goal, which requires support from several other groups in your organization. One group, distracted by work unrelated to yours, is not meeting their commitments and jeopardizing the whole initiative. You’ve tried to reason with them but to no avail. 

Now, you’ve run out of time. There’s no choice but to escalate the situation to your bosses.

You’ve learned that involving senior leaders to help resolve impediments can be highly effective. Their knowledge and authority can quickly eliminate uncertainty around goals and realign priorities to get everyone appropriately focused. However, when escalation becomes the operational norm, dysfunction often emerges.

Now, how might you proceed before pulling the trigger on that escalation?

Escalations tend to happen in organizations where people lack the knowledge, alignment, or capacity to solve shared challenges, amicably, with their peers. Different situations can contribute to these deficiencies, but one common example is when there is too much to get done – and the priority of how the work is done is not clearly understood. Escalations become the proxy for clear priorities. In the organization I’m working with, one leader shared, “For my team, if an initiative didn’t have an escalation driving it, it wasn’t a priority.” 

Another cause identified by this team was that their organization’s strong “Go!” culture prioritized short-term over long-term results. They were constantly fighting fires instead of preventing them. This overriding sense of urgency justified the quick result of an escalated decision versus a slower-to-reach collaborative decision.

The team also recognized that most escalations occurred across functional boundaries (like the scenario we began this article with). In addition, a plethora of performance metrics, solely achievable by one functional group, led to a more competitive than cooperative environment. Groups felt siloed from each other and were more willing to escalate to get what they needed.

Finally – and this is something I’ve seen plague other large global organizations – groups are comprised of many busy individuals spread across many locations, and have limited time zone overlap. They simply don’t get to know each other. This makes it difficult to problem-solve together and trust that others share our goals. Without that foundation of trust, motives are unknown, making them seem nefarious, and triggering a quicker escalation.

The Trouble With Frequent Escalation

Escalation is the nuclear option for solving a problem. It’s decisive and powerful but can come with collateral damage. 

One troubling outcome of escalations is that individuals begin to believe they don’t have the authority or responsibility to try solving problems themselves. When they routinely see senior leaders step in and provide more tactical decisions, they’ll just wait for the leader-approved direction or resolution before acting themselves. Ironically, many individuals who wait for a leader to decide are also frustrated that the leader is micromanaging them.

Constantly handling escalations is hard on leaders too. Resolving squabbles is not why many of us became leaders. One leader I met with agreed, and said, “I just wish my team could make more decisions on their own.” More importantly, however, dealing with escalations can distract leaders from the more impactful and rewarding work toward reaching the organization’s strategic goals. 

Moving From Escalation to Mitigation

Our leaders knew it was time to address these bad organizational habits. They collaborated on several approaches that would – hopefully – limit the number of escalations. 

First, senior leaders committed to not immediately accepting and solving all the problems that had been escalated to them. Instead, they would help managers clarify goals and encourage the individuals closest to the problem to reassess how best to achieve that goal. This, along with improving communication around high-level business goals, would ultimately bring groups together to problem-solve, instead of driving them apart.

If managers and teams lack the knowledge or skills to solve a challenge, their leaders must help them develop those skills – teaching them to fish, instead of giving them a fish, if you will. And if the capability to solve a challenge was present but not used, then the leaders must identify where there might be a lack of empowerment or psychological safety.

Lastly – leaders should lead by example and offer positive reinforcement to others in the hopes that these behaviors would build trust and encourage more collaborative problem-solving.

While it’s still too early to tell if the work this organization is trying will break its cycle of escalations, there is optimism in the air. There is more awareness of the negative impact of constant escalations, executives report that their senior leaders are demonstrating more catalyst behaviors, and serious discussions are being had about empowerment with more decision-making authority being given deeper in the organization. 

The door to change has been opened and time will tell.