Eliminating Mini-Fears For Effective Teaming

Are we a team in the business world? All of us? What about “in tech”? Are we trying to solve problems and advance? Are we having a common goal to grow and achieve more? How safe are we to do so? Is there any Psychological Safety at the level of the larger business team context?

Probably not and you’d be justified not to see why there should be one. When we think of teams we tend to believe they ought to be immediate, close to us, tightly knit, small. The size, the connection, the proximity, this is what gives them much of the foundations of their team dynamic. They’ve normed, stormed and performed as per Lencioni at a natural pace. Established, known, existent and well defined teams, they have tested boundaries and established what’s safe to trust and they have a certain level of Psychological Safety reflected in positive behaviours that they can -ideally work on-.?

But what of the teams that are not that but instead, products of “teaming” - a term coined by Prof Dr Amy Edmondson in “Teaming: How Organisations Learn, Innovate and Compete in the Knowledge Economy” and then brilliantly taken further by Heidi Hefland in “Dynamic Reteaming” - people who have come together momentarily around a certain immediate purpose - instant, un-labelled, informal groups irrespective of size (2 people putting their heads together to solve a common issue can be a team as can 200 in a conference room working around a joint challenge) how can they be safe and open? And should they??

Of course, just as their counterparts, the well-established teams, they need Psychological Safety as much as everyone else to be open. Then the question becomes -should we be consciously teaming and think of every interaction in our business lives as an opportunity to do so? I put it to us that they absolutely should.?

Excepting the evident exclusions where we should be proprietary, closed off and protective for competitive reasons, we are all teaming at all times whether we acknowledge it or not.?

We come together and have to solve things in common for a shared purpose. That requires us to work together as a team. Be it for specific projects, moments of time or even interactions, we all dip in and out of various teams over our work week be it with team mates from other departments or even external suppliers and partners. To do anything at all together, we must be a team and one that even less affords to be grappling with the paralysing effect of any fearful behaviours. This is why, the people that are genuinely completely honest and unafraid are most able to accomplish things fast. Because they are better equipped to do a version of this instinctive and instant teaming that takes courage. Are they also necessarily popular in a world that has come to value the opposite closed-off behaviour and sees truth as brash, unpolished, politically incorrect, eerie and ultimately frightening? Also no.?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about courage and fear and how, unfortunately, it’s never clear cut and evident when we take one road versus another. Most of our interactions in the work space are a collection of moments when we stand at a cross roads - we could go right and be 110% honest and open, or we can go left and either stay silent or, quite frankly, lie through our teeth. The reasons and motivations are many but they all trace back to whether or not we felt unsafe and fearful at the time when this occurred.?

In a sense, the common language of business is a cloak that protects us from having to take the road on the right. So used are we to the vocabulary of so called professionalism and corseted decorum that we may not even consciously perceive the opportunity of taking the honest road as being open to us.?

It becomes simply what we perceive we “have to” do. Hold our tongues. At least this is how the world of work was for most of us for many many years. Dissent in any form was shunned. Complete honesty - discouraged. Unambiguous, direct, every day vocabulary that makes most intense sense to us - often seen as unacceptable.?

What this means is that this pathway of micro-dishonesties is now ingrained in the way we work. We don’t call spade- spades and think that’s a point of pride. We speak “corporate” languages that often aren’t too far off skits and jokes about Office Space and think it’s a plus. We are forced on a path where being a skilled “politician” in the workplace is seen as a positive. And where does this all come from? Fear.?

Fear in all its forms. In teams - impression management. In wider context - impostor syndrome and a fear of repercussion. In day-to-day interactions, even when absolutely not needed and when there’s nothing to objectively be afraid of - power of habit.?

As young professionals we may strive to “sound” a certain way. We think the more we deliver our messages wrapped in words that we have heard a million times before, the more they are successful. We quickly emulate the cultural environment we are plunged in and it already consists of a micro-cosmos of mini-fears that cause people to speak and act a certain way. And then, as we grow personally and professionally, we start seeing how this is unhelpful and how truth and honesty even if often uncomfortable would be much more preferable and would amount to extreme amounts of progress in comparison but bringing them out would be in complete defiance of the line we feel we have to tow. So we don’t. We carry on using the same wooden language and remaining silent when we should speak up.?

We sigh heavily, we roll our eyes, we label people in our minds and lose hope and interest in them but we don’t say what we think. Not what we really do. If we as much as hint at it or jokingly snide it’s an act of extreme courage and while the adrenaline rush may be fun, the risk to our livelihood is perceived too great.?

Most if not all of us go through our work lives doing our absolute very best. No one ever wants to do bad work. No one.?

We may not be able to always access the passion and motivation that propels us to throw our best selves into every problem and moment with gusto at all times and we may at times be saddled with the weight of the HumanDebt instances that were thrust upon us so we can not be bothered to feel enthused or empathic, but at the very core, we all want to be our best versions and we all want to produce exceptional outcomes and we all, beyond a shadow of a doubt know that takes a lot of bravery. It shouldn’t really, should it? But it does.?

Perhaps, if we learn to recognise the collection of mini-fears that stops us from fully engaging in the teaming exercise in front of us as we interact with others, perhaps is we examine every instance of "corporatatis" and wooden language, if we learn to spot when we stopped ourselves from speaking up, if we see where those micro-cowering moments happen for us all on a daily basis, perhaps we can start to catch ourselves and stop doing it.?

While yes, being unafraid is a privilege, that many of us ought to be grateful for, we are perpetuating its exclusive nature by not encouraging everyone to demonstrate courage with every breath.

So if you’re “senior” - please, try to check your mini-fears catalogue every day - have you refrained? Have you tried really hard to “sound business-like” and left things unclear? Have you not chimed in, not pointed at naked emperors, not offered any opinion? Not admitted, not called out something, not taken a stance? Accepted the status quo. Challenged nothing. Taken the quiet and "safe" road. If so, don't, we need each other not to do so anymore so we can team. And beyond that, try and find ways to show courage is not fatal to those more “junior” around you. Mentor them towards honesty. Firstly by example and then by teaching them to recognise the triggers that make them fearful and unsafe and showing them that, should they train themselves with small bravery gestures at first and bigger courage streaks after a while, in time, they’ll find the feathers they fear they’ll ruffle and the imaginary dragons they think they’d have to fight will be less and less likely to exist everywhere around them.?

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