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.

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?

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.

Socks and Psychological Safety

One of the most embarrassing moments I’ve had as an adult happened a number of years ago when I bought some new socks (that wasn’t the embarrassing bit). I left them sitting on our kitchen bench for many days. One day, I was short of socks, so I went to the bench to find them. They weren’t there. I assumed my dear wife had cleared them up and put them somewhere. I asked her where they were and she said she had no idea. Then it got embarrassing - I got cranky and started asking her how the hell she could forget where she had put them when she had clearly moved them. It wasn’t my finest hour, and at the time I found it really hard to let it go. Some time later it got even more embarrassing when I found the socks and discovered that it was me who had moved them, and me who had forgotten where. It took a while to repair our relationship after I had acted so poorly.

I was thinking of this incident recently when working with a team who have some fractures in their team culture right now because people aren’t behaving at their best. Like me back then, they have been treating each other in less than ideal ways. It’s pretty human to want to avoid admitting and taking responsibility when we haven’t behaved at our best. It’s also pretty human to want to fire back, rather than extend grace and forgiveness when people treat you poorly (even more so if there’s zero justification for it). It can take a team quickly in a downward spiral where defensiveness, blame, and sniping become the new norm. It gets in the way of both productive effectiveness and team cohesiveness.

One simple principle is “Play the problem, not the person.”

Delegation for Capacity

Imagine a high performance foiling Yacht sailing the Americas Cup. They have 11 crew, all with highly specific roles on board. When they are working well, the boats are poised on a knife edge of F1 like performance. It’s a great example of effective delegation for capacity.

The skipper may well have the skill to fill all the roles on board, but if they tried to sail the boat single handed it would never reach anywhere near its full potential. To make the most of the boat and the team, the skipper has to delegate.

Workplaces are like that too. Without effective delegation Capacity is severely compromised at every level:

Overall Performance - Capacity is reduced because of do-overs, lack of clarity, inappropriate workloads, ineffective use of the total capability of the team.

Leaders Performance - Capacity is reduced as leaders are likely overloaded with micromanagement, having to solve all the problems/provide all the answers, frustration that the team is not working as it should (BTW this is often a leadership problem, rather than a team member problem)

Team Member Performance - Capacity is reduced due to overlapping roles, lack of clarity, waiting for ‘permission’ and missed opportunities to develop greater capability.

As a leader, one of the highest return on investment skills you can develop is Delegation. How do you shape up?

The way things are done around here

Most sectors are experiencing higher than normal turn over at the moment. Coupled with already high workloads for many, this adds load and fatigue. Under those circumstances it can be challenging to welcome new team members and set them up for success. A couple of clients have intentionally paused to plan beyond the formal induction process. Together we have explored creating a really warm welcome for their new team members, giving the best chance of rapidly reaching high performance together.

If you are in a similar situation here are some elements you might like to consider:

• How your team works together - What holds the team together, creates momentum and cohesion?

• What is important to the team? - Are there values, targets, standards, expectations or priorities that set/maintain direction?

• Are there significant things to know about the organisation and its status right now?

Are there significant things to know about the organisation and its status right now?

Also consider whether there are any challenges for people that have been on the team for a while. For example, they may be feeling disappointed at the loss of previous team members, or a ‘bit over’ inducting yet another person. Ideally, the team doesn't want these ‘past facing’ issues rubbing off on new staff.

It can be challenging carving the time out to make sure people are welcomed well. It’s more essential than ever in the current market.

Effective Action

We were 5 days into a serious desert survival exercise. We had run short of water because we had assumed that the springs we saw in the first few days would continue. Up until that moment, no one had really spoken candidly. As with any team in the early stages of coming together, we were inclined to defer, accommodate and agree. That all changed when someone suggested a 7km backtrack to the last large body of clean water we had seen. Given our 20km daily target, this would have almost doubled our work rate for the day, and added risk. We were standing beside a small flowing stream, but it was smelly and had algae covering the water.

The effort of the suggested backtrack flipped the group into a candid conversation about the effort, reward, risks and other factors involved in the decision. While the conversation was difficult, our decision to filter and boil the lower quality water and keep moving forward was a good one. We all focused on the problem, rather than the people. Suggestions were made and debated vigorously.

In a workplace this is one of the key benefits of psychological safety. Candid conversations get us to better decisions, less unnecessary effort, less do-overs, less frustration. It’s commercially astute.

On top of creating the environment for frank conversations, there also has to be effective action. The two most common reasons people have for not speaking up:

• Fear - looking stupid, ridicule, losing your job, retaliation, retribution or isolation have people weighing whether it’s worth the risk.

• Nothing Changes - If people do speak up, but nothing changes, it feels pointless and people will stop doing it.

Candour in our survival group required action on both fronts. People’s input was welcome and respected (after all, we would all have to live with the consequences of the final decision). Once discussed, a firm decision was made and the group immediately took action.

Which of these 2 reasons for not speaking up is more prevalent in your workplace? Why? What could you do personally and today to move forward?

Breathing Space

When was the last time what you said was misinterpreted? What was the impact?

A coaching client told a member of his team months ago that he didn’t have time right now to look at something for them. He was overloaded. His intent was to have the person bring it to him later in the day. He was mortified to find that months later the team member thought he meant, “I don’t care about your problems or workload - deal with them yourself.” He wasn’t aware of the impact until he had to intervene in a problem that couldn’t be solved by the team member alone.

It’s a great example of how easily psychological safety can be damaged. Even though he and the team member have discussed it and reset, it will take a while before she feels entirely comfortable bringing problems forward. A lot is riding on his reactions to the first few.

In my latest book (Un)shakeable, one of the leaders I interviewed passed on a lesson from a mentor who was head of MI5 in the Middle East during a significant conflict. The essence of the advice was:

“You always have at least a minute to think (if not, it’s probably a ‘duck for cover’ situation). A minute may not seem like enough, but run a stopwatch. 60 seconds is a decent amount of time to think if it’s used well. And the minute you spend thinking will have a greater impact on the outcome than taking immediate action.”

Creating breathing space like that, especially when you and your team are under serious pressure, is a great way to reduce actions that damage the psychological safety of the team.

How can you create breathing space in your day?

Leading like a Vending Machine

Do your staff keep expecting you to have all the answers and solve all the problems? Do you wish they would show a bit more initiative and try to solve their own problems? Does the constant flow of requests from your team add to your daily pressure and work load? If you answered yes to any of those questions, perhaps you are leading like a vending machine. Over the years I have  coached many leaders who experience this issue. I coined the phrase "Vending Machine Manager". 

Staff come to the Vending Machine Manager and punch in a request "B4". The machine shakes and rattles a bit. There's a couple of clunking sounds. Out of the flap pops the perfect answer or solution to their problem. It's cool and it's sweet. Next time they have a problem, they remember how easy it was. How cool and sweet it was. Back they come. They punch in "A9", and walk away satisfied. Before long, the Vending Machine Manager has a constant flow of traffic wearing out the floor in front of their work station. "D7", Clunk, WooHoo. "F2" Clunk, WooHoo. "B6"Clunk, WooHoo. On and on it goes - and your workload continues to grow.

From a survival point of view, humans are designed to find the easiest return for energy expended. The Vending Machine Manager plays straight into the hands of that design. To change the dynamic you need to move from dispensing answers to building capacity. Work with your team to build their own knowledge and skill. Make them experts in their own right. If you keep vending, they'll keep coming. Change the game!

When the game is over move on

I was talking to a colleague who has a rapidly growing business in entertainment. They manage artists, bring shows to Perth and create venues for great content. She's a great leader with a clear vision for her business. Her team are excited about creating it with her. With growth come several inevitable challenges for leaders. Systems have to move and evolve to keep up with where you want to get to. As the team grows, vision and leadership become more important, and simultaneously more diluted - Getting good and consistent messaging to staff and the market about what you are doing is critical. Growth also means that there may be times when staff who were a good fit when you were a different size, no longer are.

My colleague was describing a couple of conversations she had with staff who had been with her a while. In the early days, they had been awesome - Productive, switched on and enthusiastic. But that had waned.  She had spent considerable time with them attempting to recreate how it had been but nothing seemed to be working. Motivation continued to drop and they were starting to get in the way of progress.

She decided to have a straight conversation about the expectations they each had for the business and the role to see if that would lead anywhere productive. End result, the person left and was relieved. The staff member had been feeling obliged to stay with the business - feeling she would let the owner down if she left. She'd been excited about it when she first joined and had been a big part of creating the success. The rapid expansion was hard for her though, and she really liked smaller teams than this one was now. She found the constant evolution and growth stressful and wearing.

When they had an open conversation about what the owner needed from staff, and how her staff felt about the environment, it became clear to them both that it was time to move on. For the business it has been like taking a foot off the brake. A new person has joined with skill and enthusiasm for the current business, rather than what it once was. No doubt the person who left is also feeling relieved.

Situations like this are often stressful for everyone involved. It's easy to become victim to unspoken expectations and assumptions. Our perspective gets bent out of shape, and sometimes that results in conversations like this one becoming adversarial when there was no need for that.

Actions we can take:

Employers/Leaders/Managers - Set up clear expectations for people and roles early, and check in with them often. Use as many opportunities as you can to deepen you/your teams understanding of the expectations. Create an environment where conversations about what we expect and whether those expectations are being met are safe and regular. Don't let things fester. If there is tension, friction or conflict do something about it as soon as possible - most big problems start out a small ones.

If you work for someone else - Be bold about asking for clarification of what the business expects from you. If your ecxpectations are not being met, raise the issue and explore it. Don't let things fester. If there is tension, friction or conflict do something about it as soon as possible - most big problems start out a small ones.

For both - If it's time to move on - do it.

Banking for the Future

What's it like being on the team you are on? The experience can be dynamic and productive. A great team performs well, exceeding the results that any one member could achieve. Other teams get in their own way. When the objectives are not clear and people are not pulling their weight, a team can add work and confusion. 2017 has been dominated with discussions about teams for me. Leaders and team members have been tackling the ingredients for high performance and also dysfunction. Over the next few weeks I'll share a series of insights about teams from both sides.

"You have to bank for the future and trust that will get you through the challenges"

Picture this:

The sector you are in is facing the largest change it has seen in 40 years. There's widespread optimism about the change, but also lots of confusion. The big picture looks compelling but for some individual staff and customers it's not great. People are looking for answers and they are not always available - not because anyone is trying to mislead - simply because many things are still on the drawing board. The nature of jobs is changing. Employees are dealing with their own uncertainty while facing a barrage of customer uncertainty and angst. 

One leader reflected on the unofficial nature of some of the teams he is leading. Groups of people who are held together more by relationships and common ground, than because they are an actual team. He spoke of "banking" trust and reliability. Doing the right thing consistently. Following through on promises. 

In an environment that is totally relationship based these are the only tools available to make the team perform. They are powerful tools and in a more formal team setting they often get overlooked.

How do you build trust within your team? I reckon the most powerful way to influence trust is to consistently do what you say you will do. Regardless of whether you are a leader, or a team member, backing yourself in this way creates a sense of certainty and reliability around you. "Banking" credit in relationships will help when the team faces challenges. 

Rude = Expensive

I looked across the track at the small collection of gear I had packed for this advanced survival exercise. It was nearly dark and I was being patted down to ensure I had nothing other than a pocket sized survival kit on me. I glanced nervously at my eight companions as our gear was thrown into the back of a vehicle. We were handed an envelope and our instructors drove into the gathering darkness, leaving us alone. We opened the envelope and read our instructions, "You are somewhere on one of your 3 maps ... ".

In hindsight the next three days were characterised by hasty decisions and poor communication as we struggled to come to terms with our circumstances. We also lashed out at each other - verbal sparring as we vented frustration about our external circumstances on each other.

Over the 20 years I worked as a survival instructor it never ceased to amaze me how easily individuals and groups could be made to feel they were at threat. In that state, people are more reactive than normal and results definitely suffer. It's amazing how rarely people pause to consider the best course of action.

In the modern work context a sense of threat is not unusual either. Most workplaces experience some level of uncertainty. Mostly it's from circumstances beyond our direct control. One possible reaction is rudeness to the people around us. I can certainly think of more than one occasion when my conduct was not as good as it could have been.

Rudeness in itself is enough to make people feel at threat. It damages psychological safety (How safe people feel). And it doesn't have to be extreme (or deliberate) to have an impact.

• Raised voices
• Harsh words
• Intimidating body language
• Slammed doors
• Banter and sarcasm
• Side conversations and excluding people
• Disregard for people's time
• Sending emails, taking calls, checking watches while you should be listening to someone
• Not following through on things you said you would do

Over the last two decades, Christine Porath and colleagues have researched rudeness in the workplace. They clearly identify many impacts on individuals, teams and bottom line. A recent article in HBR summarises their findings and others in the field. If you want the detail you can find it at hbr.org/2017/01/how-rudeness-stops-people-from-working-together

How we treat each other is largely a choice. We can choose to be civil, even in the most demanding environments. It's one of the few things that we have direct control over which has a massive and positive impact on our team environment. It's an easy way to directly impact cohesion, trust, productivity and engagement. It also takes effort and attention.

All of us have moments where we crack or fray and resort to rudeness out of frustration. Perfect politeness is not the goal. But in situations when we accept rudeness from ourselves and others it gets worse, not better. Increasing levels of incivility become the norm of 'how things are done around here'. Looking at Porath's research, it's way too expensive on almost every measure to allow that. And it's on the rise.

Reflect on how you, your team and your business conduct themselves when some of these common stressors occur:

• Giving or receiving feedback about performance
• A new deadline, or urgent of piece of work
• A customer complaint
• The photocopier crapping out in the middle of an urgent print run
• An interruption when you are in the flow of work
• New (and probably onerous) requirements from an external regulator, customer or market
• A long day to meet a deadline
• Scope creep
• A financial loss
• Personal pressures from outside work like a puking kid, unexpected bill, or relationship problems
• Something not going to plan

Here are four things you can do to influence how cohesive and effective your team is. A single individual can influence others by paying attention to these things. It's even more effective when whole teams (or organisations) decide to remove rudeness from their environment.

1.  Aim - to treat each other well in spite of the pressures you face. Work on respect and integrity. Even when there are hard messages to deliver or receive, do it politely.  
2. Recognise - the kinds of situations that tend to push your personal buttons. What about the team? Start spotting rudeness and noticing its impact. Also recognise that different people have different levels of skill around rudeness. It's much easier to avoid if you have had lots of examples through life of people who handle adversity without getting rude. 
3. Clarify - the kinds of behaviour that you want to see, and the ones to avoid. Also the situations that may trigger rudeness. Be as specific as you can. Discuss it politely away from heated moments. Talk about what you will do when you see, experience or perpetrate rudeness. Discuss how you might raise the bar and hold each other to account. Explore where the line is between healthy banter and rudeness for your team. When people do something you consider rude, give a clear example of both the behaviour and its impact on you.
4. Apologise - when you notice something you did or said had a negative impact on others. Do it whenever you know you have crossed the line, however small the crossing might be. Accept other people's apologies with grace. Remember it is unlikely to be perfect, cut each other some slack.

Why take your team outside?

I had an interesting conversation with a corporate client last week about Outdoor Team Building. We were reminiscing about the late '80's and early '90's when adventure based activities were popular as a company team building event. People in their droves swapped suits for bush clothes and paddled, climbed, swung, paint balled and built their way to team success.

Most activities like this have a similar formula - a problem that can only be solved/overcome by a team who can innovate, communicate and cooperate. It's a solid formula. Most workplaces are attempting to create teams that do just that. So why did these programs all but disappear?

• One size fits all - Despite being highly flexible about activities and locations, the vast majority of operators ran the same program, regardless of the client. The place and activities might change, but how and why it was done remained much the same.
• No connection - The potential links between activities and the people doing them were poorly explored. It was fun but didn't relate to the "real world".
• Missed opportunities - Most programs were staffed by technically skilled young people who knew the activities inside out. Some had leadership experience, but mostly in the outdoors. Few had business experience. Activities were often debriefed in very superficial ways. Canned debriefs included sweeping, generalised statements like "So you see, communication is really important". Participants were given opportunities to reflect on behaviour, but few tools for any significant change. In the worst of programs, teams were actually worse off. They had seen and confronted ineffective team behaviour, and left the program aware, disgruntled and unsupported.

NOTE: These are generalisations. There were and are a few excellent companies providing such activities that do an awesome job of all the above.

So why do I recommend companies take their teams outside?

“I just wanted to pass on my gratitude and appreciation for the planning, facilitation, insights, activities, catering and all the other experiences and knowledge created over the 2-day bush retreat. I’m sure I’m not the only one who gained a lot from it including how to use a compass correctly!

The additional resources you gave us are perfect. I set up meetings with each Area manager to work on improving my unit’s service and delivery to them. I am confident that the questions and guidance you provided will assist in us understanding our customer needs and focusing our resources correctly.”

— Senior Manager - Bush Retreat

• Different environment - Stepping out of the familiar work setting changes everything. Hierarchy seems less important. The pace naturally slows. Corporate language and formality drop away. Habitual ways of relating to each other are reset. Communication improves. Silo walls get torn down.
• Perception expands - Physically people's eyes move from short intense focus to broad soft focus. As teams renegotiate their way of being together, previously unspoken assumptions about "the way things are done around here" get some conscious air time. Collective and self awareness rises. 
• It's restorative - A growing body of research shows attention, cognitive function and productivity all rise as a result of being outside. Stress, mental fatigue, depression and anxiety all reduce. Almost every company I have worked with is attempting to address one or more of these issues continuously in the workplace.

The bush is no magic bullet, but a well thought out and delivered outdoors program can have massive and lasting effects. If you would like to discuss how you might use some outdoor time this financial year, feel free to be in touch.