Which direction and how?

Direction over detail is well and good if you know where you are going. Alice (in Wonderland) asked that cat which way she should go. She didn't care where she would end up. The cat reckoned in that case, direction didn't matter. Quite right!

I facilitated a conversation recently where big changes are afoot for an organisation with a long, proud and effective history. The conversation was about creating an ideal future within the inevitable changes.

The leaders and team did a great job of looking forward. They:

• Acknowledged and celebrated past success.

• Identified aspects of their organisation/work that they did not want to lose or compromise in the change.

• Articulated the likely limits to their future, including considering what is happening for their stakeholders.

• Laid out a high level plan for their future, which adds value and insulates from irrelevance.

• Framed their propositions thoughtfully, highlighting value to stakeholders rather than just making a wish list.

There’s a lot of detail to be added, but in less than 2 hours they have the bones of a solid future.

The risk in such a conversation is people getting stuck in the past rather than looking forward. They could have lamented the situation, complained, pushed back against inevitable shifts and fought over irrelevant detail. They did not. It was a great working example of Direction over Detail.

Clarity is Performance Fuel

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

When it’s clear what you are doing, a solid performance becomes much more likely. The opposite is also true - a lack of clarity makes it very difficult to perform. The Olympics are on at the moment, and we are witnessing amazing feats of human performance by some incredible athletes (Go Aussies! - just sayin’).

These are humans who have dedicated themselves to a very clear outcome and have trained specifically for it for 4 years or more. Great work teams have clarity too. They know what they are working toward, as well as what each person’s role is within the team.

When clarity is missing, commitment rapidly dissolves. People initially attempt to deliver, partly in an attempt to gain clarity. But over time their commitment wanes. Imagine training for the Olympics, but being told regularly that the discipline you will be competing in has been changed. The novelty would appeal for a while, but it would get demotivating pretty quickly.

One of the imperatives of leadership is to add clarity whenever possible. How do you do that in your team?

Conduct: Low Hanging Fruit

Christine Porath has been researching incivility in the workplace for almost 3 decades. She defines it as “...seemingly inconsequential inconsiderate words and deeds that violate accepted norms of workplace conduct…”. It’s the small, slightly rude acts we do and experience - things like eye rolls, sarcasm, harsh words, snappiness. The stuff we can all do especially when we are tired and stressed.

Porath says it’s on the rise. In 1998 she found around 25% of people experienced regular rudeness at work. In 2005 it was almost 50%. By 2022 it was over 75%. An alarming pattern.

I often ask teams about the pattern in their own workplace. 98% say there's some level of rudeness. Over 70% say they do it occasionally when they lose their cool, and that they regret it later. A fair portion of us do it to ourselves with harsh negative criticism and self talk when we disappoint ourselves in some way (I know I do).

So if it's rarely deliberate why is it growing? Rudeness easily provokes a “Tit for tat” dynamic. The more we experience it, the more likely we are to bite back or pay it forward. That adds further to stress, which makes it even more likely that we’ll behave that way.

If you want a high performing team, there’s enormous value in naming this stuff. Talking about where and how it happens, and discussing ways to reduce it. In the same way that rudeness is contagious, so is kindness. It’s an easy, high ROI element of conduct that teams can turn to their advantage.

If you like to know more about how rudeness shows up, its impacts and what to do about it, I’d love to hear from you.

A Tale of Two Teams

I’ve worked in and with a lot of different teams. Each of them had a unique way of operating together. While there were some similarities, none were the same. One of the best ‘team health’ gauges is commitment.

In one team, no one was committed to their teammates. People would actively sabotage work and make each other look bad to gain advantage. It was like an episode of Survivor. Commitment was transitory and only ever for defence or advantage. It was a horrible place to work. Everyone was focussed on who was plotting what.

On another team, commitment was high. We would go out of our way to support each other to get results. Success was celebrated together. People willingly put in extra effort for each other. Everyone was focussed on getting the best outcomes. In both situations the leader was a very active participant in setting the team dynamic and culture, and the team echoed and amplified the standard they set. Both dynamics were also strongly self reinforcing.

Where does commitment lie in your team? If you want optimal performance, there will be tangible commitment to the team (each other), the task (what we are doing?) and the organisation and/or purpose (what are we here for?). Good leaders model and encourage commitment.

Is it contradictory?

Psychological Safety is a slightly misleading term. Many people think it's about being nice for the sake of avoiding conflict - that to be psychologically safe, we should avoid holding ourselves and others to a higher standard of performance. We’ll also avoid difficult conversations and feedback, so people feel safe. A psychologically safe environment is often uncomfortable, precisely because it is safe to do all these things. As a result individuals and teams will push into greater performance.

High psychological safety without a correspondingly high performance standard creates a comfort zone. Comfortable, but highly unlikely to yield high performance, learning or innovation. Over time, those comfort zones crumble into complacency and eventually apathy.

So what can our business owner of last week do to raise both psychological safety and performance:

• Aim for 5x as much affirming feedback as corrective. Tell people when they are doing a great job and why. This is significantly more effective in setting a high performance standard than critical or corrective feedback. And corrective feedback will be more willingly accepted when it is needed. People will want to know how to improve.

• Ask for feedback yourself. Listen and act on it. By doing so you set the standard that feedback is part of how we work.

• Give yourself feedback by reflecting on your work, what went well and what could be improved. Show the way on this and set up opportunities for others to do the same regularly. Many micro versions trump occasional large ones like performance reviews once a year.

• Be specific and clear when giving feedback. Many of us shy away from this in an attempt to be ‘nice’. It misses the mark.

• Get to know your team and what motivates them. When people feel you care about them as people, as well as the results, the results will benefit.

PS if you’d like some great questions to ask for reflection and feedback, send me a message and we’ll send them through.

Work Both Ways

I worked with a team with some of the best scores I have ever seen for psychological safety. It wasn't surprising. The team focusses on it in everything they do. Despite the scores, their biggest opportunity for improvement was feedback. They give and receive plenty. They value it. They care about each other as well as the result. These are all ingredients for a great feedback culture. Almost all of them said the quality of feedback was the challenge.

To give quality feedback work in 2 directions at once. Down into detail and up into context. Specific, actionable detail is feedback gold. If it's not specific enough it's difficult to act on. The master stroke is to link to a bigger contextual frame. Context makes feedback useful across everything you do, rather than just the immediate situation.

I love working with teams to develop great feedback skills. Done well feedback is a superpower for teams. Done poorly it can tear them apart.

How does your team score on feedback?

Order from Chaos - 5 Lessons from a Day with an Elite Response Team

I recently had the privilege of spending the day with a professional emergency response team in their training environment. They are tasked with entering highly dynamic and unpredictable environments, often with minimal information. The situations they face evolve rapidly. One of the stand out aspects of their work was their ability to create order in the midst of chaos. I wondered what lessons could be learned that apply to everyday leadership and business. While the physical risk for most of us is much lower, we certainly face chaotic and unpredictable situations, often with minimal information and evolving dynamics.

Lesson 1 - Inject Clarity

I’m rapidly forming a view that the number one job of leaders in an uncertain world is clarity. The team added clarity in a number of ways. Excellent communication that focussed on what was known and what they were going to do. This included quality questions that highlighted gaps and potential misunderstandings. Ultra clear roles and responsibilities. Everyone knew exactly what they were responsible for. Clear decision making so that when the inevitable decisions on the fly needed to be made the whole team knew where their decision making lines were. Clearly defined start, end, decision, and potential disruption points. Discipline to focus the above on known information or useful speculation. The team stayed well away from the potential rabbit holes of ineffective ‘what if’. 

Lesson 2 - Debrief

After the action stopped, the whole team paused for review. What went well, what could have been improved, what lessons could they adopt for the future? Notable in this process was a strong expectation that people would highlight potential improvement. There was little consideration of position or ego in the process. All input was matter of fact and welcome.

Lesson 3 - BYO Feedback

Part of what made the debrief effective was people providing their own feedback for places they could have done better or had messed something up. They weren’t attempting to blame others or circumstances for anything. And they certainly weren’t waiting to see if someone else noticed. Actively reflecting on your own performance makes it easier and safer for others to give you feedback.

Lesson 4 - Hone your skill

The combination of clarity, practice and debriefing had the team constantly honing their collective skill. Individuals were doing the same. Whatever it is you do, keep practising and refining. Be the best you can be. When chaos lands you know your capability and can deliver without hesitation.

Lesson 5 - Control for Innovation

The team took active control of all elements they could. How they moved, how they communicated, how they decided, who was responsible for what, staying fed/hydrated/rested so they were ready to go, flawless maintenance and front loading, testing systems and gear and much more. The discipline and tight control of elements they could control created a strong core of certainty within chaotic and uncertain environments. It allowed them to quickly adapt and innovate when they needed to.

In what ways can you incorporate these lessons into your work/leadership? What additional insights would you add?

The Missing Link

One of the teams I’ve been working with has a great feedback culture. They ask for it and give it. They clearly valued feedback and made it part of how they work together. They also give lots of positive feedback, and often pause to self-reflect - sometimes giving themselves feedback about something they could improve.

And yet all of them said the same thing. The feedback they received was hard to use.

Actionable detail is the missing link. Feedback is more valuable if it is actionable. The more specific the better.

“You did a great job today” is feedback, but not useful. “You did a great job today. The specialist information you brought to the meeting, and the way you broke it down for non specialists really helped our colleagues understand what was needed. You left them with a clear path for action too. Thank you and keep it up.” is much more useful.

“I need you to step up” is feedback that’s not useful. “When we met on site today, you hung in the background and didn’t raise any of the issues you have previously highlighted. Could you take a more active role in leading the project. Next time could you bring the issues up for discussion and guide the resolution. I can offer support if you need a hand to prep.”

If you’d like a tool for giving more useful feedback, let me know and I’ll send it through.