I want to have a healthy team - Where do I start?
This is an excerpt from my book: TRUTH AT THE HEART: How honesty, trust, and teamwork can transform your business . I am sharing it because building trust with your team is everything in leadership, and much of the work in doing it is your own internal work so that you can get out of your own way when you get stuck - and this will develop the capacity to model for/coach others through it. I hope it is thought provoking . . .
Working hard for something we don't care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion. ~ Simon Sinek
If your goal is great performance outcomes and a positive culture with strong relationships, then the steps are clear:
The overall goals of all your Conversations, no matter how short, is speaking and hearing truth.
The enemies of honesty, which you must manage to participate effectively in this Conversations are:
These are the clouds that can settle in on your journey and impact your success along with that of your team. Generally these clouds reduce our ability to listen to each other, create artificial 'immediate' deadlines, and generate stories in our own heads that become reality to us yet are a mystery to everyone around us - because 95% of them are not true.
If speaking the truth becomes code for giving hard feedback, maybe we've missed the point. Speaking the truth can equally be: "That was awesome. That's an incredible success. I really appreciate what you just got done." So speaking truth . . . maybe we need to elevate it. Regardless of whether it's good, bad, or neutral, the purpose of speaking the truth is to serve. If I want to embolden you, give you some positive feedback, speak that truth - the purpose for me to do that is to reinforce or to encourage or to appreciate. If it's something that has to be hard, then speaking the truth is, if it comes from the heart: "I want to help. I want you to be better." ~ Paul Doyle
Let me provide a brief description of each cloud so you can determine if any of them are impacting you or your team right now.
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Cloud #1 - Ego: Ego by itself is neutral and possessed by everyone. The definition of ego is simply the opinion that you have about yourself. However, the higher you climb in an organization, the more pressure there is to become unshakable and to produce results. This can result in an inflated ego, which acts to devalue the opinions of others, funnels energy into looking good, and had the need to always be 'in charge', just to name a few. This undermines every step of the Honest Culture Journey because it blocks the ability of the person with the inflated Ego and everyone around them to speak AND hear truth.
Cloud #2 - Fear: We all worry. If you wrote down the top 10 things you were worried about right now, how many of those things do you think will happen? The number is 5%, so at least nine on your list are just consuming your mental energy. I learned this one firsthand when I was part of an organization that reduced staff every fall for seven years. It was extra damaging because each event had kind of a cumulative effect. I did not really notice the impact until I left the organization and joined an entrepreneurial company where we focused on possibilities and opportunities. When our fears drive our actions, we are only able to hear the truth in bits and pieces, if at all. Most of our energy is focused on processing the honesty of the people sharing and calculating how honest we should be. Ever been there?
In myself and in working with many people, the greatest hesitancy in speaking truth is not valuing truth more than fear. It's: 1) Fear of what others might think. 2) Fear that they don't like me. 3)Fear of the negative consequences that are imagined. Some of them can be real, but often we project the consequences. I find fear to be a great barrier to truth. When it's a truth-telling moment, when it's really important, and when the stakes are really high, one has to have the courage to confront one's own fears, battle them, and wrestle them to the ground. Often times it's not enough to go to it alone. This is where I call on my army of support. ~ Dr. Diana J. Wong, PhD
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. ~ Mark Twain
Cloud #3 - Self-Doubt: Have you ever left a meeting feeling like a fraud because it seemed like everyone had something to add while you just sat there? You wonder how long it will be before someone questions why you are even there. This is a close relative of ego and fear because it is born from a fragile or low ego that is magnified by the presence of fear in our head. All of these push decision-making to the lizard brain (amygdala) where our choices become fight or flight. Flight is most often the answer, restricting our ability to speak truth and hear truth. The net impact is to slow us down so the journey goes on without us or someone has to spend extra effort to carry us.
There are several small parts of your brain near the end of your spinal chord responsible for survival and other wild animal traits. The whole thing is called the basal ganglia, and there are two almond shaped bits in everyone's brain. Scientists call these the amygdala, and this mini-brain apparently takes over whenever you are angry, afraid, aroused, hungry, or in search of revenge. ~Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indespensible? p. 108-109
Cloud #4 - Crisis Thinking: Have you ever rushed to get something done because of a deadline, only to be told that things had changed and you had a couple of hours, days, or maybe even weeks left? Maybe just because it came from your bosses' boss you thought it was needed now. Crisis thinking is just that, and when we are in it decision-making gets faster, collaboration decreases, and we cut corners on things like data, testing, and proofing. Like the other three clouds, crisis thinking acts to impede the speaking and hearing of truth. For a leader, the excuse becomes 'not enough time' to discuss it. Most often, this is a self-generated myth.
For each step in the Honest Culture Journey, I want to have a cloud discussion. It is important for you as the leader to be aware that all these feelings exist within yourself and your team. Your job is to be alert to seeing them when they show up, and to display the courage and vulnerability to name and discuss them.
Courage and be learned if we're willing to put down our armor and pick up the shared language, tools, and skills we need for rumbling with vulnerability, living into our values, braving trust, and learning to rise. ~ Brene Brown, Dare to Lead
About the Author: Scott Patchin is an Expert EOS Implementer, and has a passion for 'maximizing growth and minimizing pain, to help leaders and teams move to and past the tipping point of success.' His book, TRUTH AT THE HEART: How honesty, trust, and teamwork can transform your business , was born out of his passionate pursuit to meet people in those places where he could serve. Learn more about Scott on his website , or his YouTube channel , where he is always adding to his library of 60+ videos.