The Game of Teams (Tara Nolan)

Introduction: I interviewed Micheal O Driscoll, Managing Director at FDC, Financial Services LTD. FDC is the Farm Development Co-op headquartered in Cork Ireland. It employs 300 people over 30 locations in Ireland.

 

Podcast episode summary: This episode was recorded as Ireland was moving out of lockdown as a result of Covid-19. Micheal shared how he and his team responded by being early adopters of technology and deciding early on that it was business as usual. We discussed what distinguishes FDC as a Financial Services service provider from some of the bigger players and how culture is so important to inculcate in the business. In addition, Micheal shared his passion for Epic Cycling, Triathlons and the fact that he has completed 5 full Iron man distance races.

 

Points made through the episode:

• Micheal joined FDC 25 years ago after a thorough grounding in Financial Services in London working for Grand met and Pall Mall Wealth Management.
• He joined FDC when it already had a well -established Agricultural consultancy business, started in 1973 by Jack Murphy. His role was to build out the financial Services business.
• He impressed on me that unlike other Financial Services businesses FDC supports the sustainability of inter-generational wealth management.
• Relationship Management is paramount to enduring relations.
• Give a service and Repeat-Repeat-Repeat
• Impact of Covid-19 on portfolio of clients was significant. FDC was quick to make sure it stayed in contact with everyone.
• Learnt how to navigate online quickly and FDC was lucky it had already moved to purchase technology to support all staff
• Communication was a challenge -FDC needed to learn how to communicate with each other internally first. A huge learning and it served to bust some myths about remote teamwork.
• Working from home in a structured way is possible even with the demands of home life.
• FDC learnt that capability of staff is such that staff can be trusted to work without supervision and deliver.
• FDC made material adjustments to its business and will continue to operate a blend of remote working and in office working post Covid-19
• Other benefits included getting a deeper insight into his own staff that ordinarily might not have proved possible.
• People will hide in plain sight and that is true whether you are working in or out of an office.
• FDC realised that they can meet future challenges with the talent of staff they possess.
• The digital journey for FDC and their clients has simply been accelerated and many myths and biases have been blown away.
• Magic Intimacy is what FDC aims for with its clients -The fintech of the world will always be a threat which underscores importance of a trustworthy brand and the service it provides.
• Management by control, order and exactness only goes so far and is insufficient if a company wants to grow.
• Micheal accepts that his earlier management style was too controlling, and he needed to learn how to trust and empower others
• Sport helped. He learnt quickly on some of his Epic cycling journeys to know when he had done enough and when he could allow someone else to take over the reigns
• He also learnt that a race across America is simply a large project broken down into portion sized segments. That meant everything was possible
• Self -doubt is a momentary faze.
• The race totalled 7 days, 2 hours and 70 mins or 24/7hr shifts
• Important to always remember to be in a learning environment -human behaviour is universal so key is to look out and observe trends and biases.
• FDC supports learning and is building an Academy in Cork – A centre for Graduate Training
• Micheal looks to industry for inspiration -he looks at the behavioural sciences and heuristics.
• He recommended “Nudge” as a simple text worth reading.
• FDC will continue to explore the digital world and AI for future trends.
• Important to stay relevant not only for your clients but for your employees as well.

 

• Resources: the following include the resources I alluded to in this episode

 

1. fdc.ie
2. Richard, H.Thaler Nudge Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness

 

Introduction

 

Gary A. DePaul is an accomplished speaker, with over 100 talks, workshops, and seminars. He is an author, and his books include Nine practices of 21st Leadership, What the heck is Leadership and why should I care & several books on HR and Talent Development. Gary is a performance consultant using analysis, instructional design, knowledge management and performance support interventions. He is also a researcher on subjects such as Leadership, DEIB and allyship, HRBP development and performance improvement. Gary is an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina, and he is also a podcast host. His show is called The Unlabelled Leadership Podcast 

 

Podcast Episode Summary

 

Leadership is misunderstood. Gary is passionate that in the 21st century we get clear on the distinctions between Management and Leadership, and we immerse ourselves in the practices that can yield qualitatively different experiences of Leadership. In this podcast Gary’s latest book, What the heck is Leadership and why should I care is explored and one vignette an audio clip Gary shares illuminates the difference between management and leadership in nano seconds. 

Points made across the podcast episode 

 

• Leadership started for Gary after being laid off from a company called Lowes and after a meeting with a gentleman by the name of Jim Hill who is a performance consultant. He encouraged Gary to “Think Big” 

• You never know the impact of your comments to another but in this instance, Gary took to heart the encouragement to think big and he decided to write a book.

• When you have enough people practising Leadership in an organisation it gives you a clear competitive advantage. 

• The challenge for 21st Leaders is the often-held belief of traditional leadership thinking. Our thinking about leadership has not evolved 

• Leadership is not the domain of the person at the top, wisdom or the second version of leadership says anyone can practice leadership 

• There is a famous definition by Mary Parker Follett, that says management is the art of getting stuff done through people. It is often considered a definition of Leadership

• Management is a role Leadership is not. 

• Leadership is not a role, but it is something you apply to a role. 

• Gary provides a technical definition for Leadership which is to help people mature, mentally and morally 

• David Marquett says Leadership is not about you but other people it’s about creating a work environment in which people can be at their best and Ron Karr from the Velocity Project says Leadership is about making people succeed beyond their wildest dreams. So Leadership is really about helping others build character that is revolutionary from Traditional views of Leadership 

• Gary shares an audio clip that illuminates the difference between doing managerial tasks and practicing leadership. Michael Junior is the compare. 

• The first clip sees a person asked to perform a task and he willingly obliges. The second practices leadership through a managerial task by encouraging the person to sing from his history, context where meaning is infused in the piece. The result is transformational 

• Gary shares an example of firing someone, where in one instance the manager can slave a script and execute the task perfectly or he can choose leadership and simultaneously give the person a “why” for the termination, help that person learn from the experience and grow. 

• The important thing to take from Gary’s 7 principles of Leadership is that it is not about you. They appear so simple, like for example the first principle “believe in others”, yet putting that principle into practice is beguiling challenging. 

• An executive for example believe that a person on joining an organisation must prove themselves before he believes in them. This is counter intuitive and can have the opposite affect that a person doesn’t perform. 

• It is so easy on a team to have in-groups and out-groups when you have people that might be a little different from you and you inadvertently exclude their opinions etc. 

• In a workforce reduction project, an executive warns against unwittingly firing minority groups and it turns out that is what happened. Further investigation proved that managers were reluctant to give Black people feedback and so their performance suffered, and they then suffered termination. Another example in Gary’s books showcases making assessments of people without due diligence to see if anything else might have been contributing to the workers seemingly being “lazy” So believing in others might sound simple but it is often much more nuanced. You have to dig deeper to understand what is driving people to behave as they do and your job as a manager is to remove those barriers. 

• Learning & Leadership go hand in hand. To practice the 7 principles outlined in Gary’s book, What the Heck is Leadership and Why should I Care, involves practice. 

• The Seven Principles include: Believe in others, Connect, Put Others First & Sacrifice Ego, give up Control, Encourage Change, Collaborate, Practice. 

• Gary studied 16 books academic books written on Leadership in the 21st century and from his analysis he derived the 7 principles from the patterns he saw repeat. He then wrote a book called the 9 practices of Leadership which showcases how to do Leadership. 

• Gary illuminates one of the 9 practices called Facing the Lion which incorporates listening and feedback. He shares that we comprehend so much faster than for example what we can read out loud and so when it comes to listening to another person the brain is nearly always focusing on how to respond rather than carefully listening and enquiring into what is being said for meaning. 

• Giving up or ceding control and sacrificing ego is a tough challenge for Leaders especially those new to Leadership. 

• Often employees feel they must ask for permission from line managers or leaders and the way to cede control is to ask for example “well how would you do it” very quickly initiative and learning can flourish. 

• Psychological safety, play and purpose are the wholly trinity on teams. If you as a member on a team believe that the Leader is not allowing for psychological safety to be the outcome necessary for great work, then you can initiate psychological safety by admitting “I wish I could do this better” or “I made a mistake” it is uncanny how quickly people row in behind you. 

• It be being vulnerable and allowing vulnerability it encourages others to do the same. 

• In response to phenomenon observed on teams Gary explains the “Fundamental attribution error” You need to study this idea, learn from examples, and not assume you know it. 

• We get in our own way. We assume as Leaders that we are the authority on so much and we fail to recognise the brilliance of others. 

• When you can recognise that you need the contribution of others, like those closest to the customer and you can contribute by way of your managerial experience then you can accomplish great things together 

• Gary explains group thinking and the importance of contribution and different contribution by team members. 

• Gary quotes Jack Zinger who says that “we take too long to train our leaders” and Gary adds to that by saying when we come into management, we do not express enough interest in Leadership we are all about the doing. Instead of taking more than 10 years to assume a Leadership mindset combine Leadership training with management training in combination. 

• A good practice for people coming into roles is to assign them a mentor and a better practice is to do that from outside of their discipline 

• Important to exercise our emotional and social intelligence in addition the exercise we already devote to our intellectual intelligence. 

• Gary would love to see a de-emphasise on technical functional skills, more emphasis on trying to avoid outgroups, championing ideas and enquiry. He wishes organisations were more attentive to biases, to championing leadership not just with executives but with many more across an organisation. 

• Gary would like to see organisations model values that are around Leadership to allow for innovation, creativity, and improved performance. 

• At the end of our conversation, I ask Gary for a Leadership hack and he offers his 4-step process to Leadership -material from Marshall Goldsmith 

 

• Foundation: You must read about leadership & acquire knowledge about leadership 

• Feedback: How am I doing? - what are two ideas to help me be a better listener for you? 

• Let people know about your blind spots 

• Follow up. Am I doing what I said I would?

Resources shared: 

 

Books written by Gary A. De Paul- 

• What the Heck is Leadership and Why Should I Care
• The Nine Practices of 21st Century Leadership

Introduction: Nadjeschda (Nadja) Taranczewski has a Master of Psychology accreditation, is a Master Certified Coach and works as a coach, author and keynote speaker. Nadja is the author of the book Conscious You: Become the hero of your own story and she is currently working on her second book the Conscious Tribe Playbook.

Podcast episode summary: This episode talks about Nadja’s focus in the world to support leaders reinvent their organisations to become conscious tribes. 4 meta competencies infuse her work: Self Reflection, Self -Compassion, Ownership and Deep Dialogue. The conversation on the Game of Teams Podcast spoke predominantly to two of those competencies Self Reflection and Deep Dialogue. Nadja also described her blended learning program, a six-month program that cuts across boundaries and allows for individual and organisation learning simultaneously.

 

Points made through the episode:

• Nadja is fiercely independent and her strong value for freedom has informed how she navigates life and with whom she chooses to connect for meaningful relations. She transports this degree of clarity into her work helping clients become self-aware and conscious of the choices they are making
• Asking questions, reflecting back and listening are the tools to develop deep connection
• Nadja wants to ignite the “flame” buried deep in every individual to become the Heroes of our own narratives.
• She believes the principles of deep dialogue and listening to each other can fuel the flames of potential we have in each of us
• Any place where 2 or more people come together is complex. Relationships are messy and armed with our vulnerabilities we can fight proxy wars that mask what is truly going on for us inside. We need rituals and practices to stop hiding.
• Nadja helps teams by employing four “Meta-Competencies” Self-Reflection, Self-Compassion, Ownership and Deep Dialogue
• Nadja helps teams talk about what matters from a place of compassion, deep listening and co-creation principles
• In a world that can suffer ADD where we are impatient for results Nadja shares that it is important for us to reframe the work. Self-Reflection work takes time. Changing the structure of a team’s operating model or culture takes time. It is not a quick fix.
• Nadja and her company CU offer six -month programs of blended learning to afford individual development and organisational culture change simultaneously
• Deep Dialogue is supported by a principle of buddying, often across functions. Doing so affords immediate psychological safety and an opportunity to learn widely
• The same buddying system can be employed on teams where deep dialogue can support real understanding and removes the need to fix or provide solutions but instead allow team member really to see and hear each other. It is a transformative practice
• Nadja describes deep dialogue as a space where time slows down, where it is not about a destination but a conversation for understanding. She offers scripts to people to help with the practice but largely the advice is not to discuss, not to interrupt but to chew over a question for example and allow 3 mins each side to simply be received by another
• Source Energy: Nadja explains the origin and writer of this concept Peter Kreunig which explodes the myth that purpose is co-created.
• Principle of energy means there is someone who had the original spark for an idea or project and took the first risk. He/she is infused with the import or purpose and values of that same idea. Nadja describes her process in getting at collective buy in and shared understanding for the source energy.
• Leadership according to Nadja has a lot more to do with the willingness and capacity of a leader to do deep inner work more than what used to be regarded as leadership with a focus on technical work.
• Nadja describes her first book Conscious U: Become the here of your own story -How to have a self -authored life, which often entails rewriting an old narrative.
• Her new book that is soon to be released is called the Conscious Tribe Playbook. That book will share ideas about how to reinvent organisations to become a thriving community where people invest their inner work, understand the big picture, invest in deep relations and cultivate conscious rituals.
• Conscious U offers a blended learning coaching program which makes cultural transformation scalable by promoting employee engagement and conscious development across all levels of the organisation
• Covid 19 despite the obvious emotional field of fear, uncertainty and in some cases panic, offers the chance for all of us to adapt to a more digital knowing and appreciation that can allow for greater productivity over time and still allows for connection.

 

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

 

1. conscious-u.com
2. CU*I a blended learning program for organisations
3. Conscious You: Become the Hero of your own Story by Nadjeschda Taranczewski
4. Chapter 4, The Transformation Map:

https://www.conscious-u.com/podcast/CU_Become-the-Hero_C4_The-Transformation-Map.pdf

5. Two free resources: https://www.conscious-u.com/1377-2/

Introduction: Kathryn McEwen is the Global Lead at Working with Resilience. She is CEO and Founder of Resilience at Work (R@W) Toolkit and Team APP. The App is the world’s first team resilience App using tech, scient , real time data and powerful questions to help teams better together in pressure, complexity and uncertainty. Kathryn’s background is an organisational psychologist, coach, leader and mediator. She is also author of three books, Building Team Resilience, Building your own Resilience; how to thrive in a challenging job and the Resilience at Work Toolkit. 

 

Podcast Episode Summary This episode features the work of a Team Coach working at the intersection of social justice, common ground and resilience for teams in trouble using a strengths based approach. Kathryn describes how she understands teams in trouble and the approach she adopts to support teams thrive. She also shares what teams can expect to see by employing her R@W model, toolkit and App. 

 

Points made over the episode

• The red thread that weaves through Kathryn’s life is social justice. This theme shaped Kathryn’s research and approach to work. 
• Kathryn grew up in Wales on a council estate and can remember petitioning with her Mother on issues she was too young to comprehend. 
• At 16 years of age she moved to Australia. 
• She works with teams at the coal face, often teams in trouble, facing very difficult work. 
• Teams in trouble means “stuff has gone down” there is a history on the team that can include bullying & unresolved issues that make it difficult for the team to do meaningful work together. They cannot find a way out without assistance
• The referral source will often indicate the health of a team that can include bullying, stress leave, complaints about the Leader etc..
• Teams in trouble often require a restorative piece of work in advance of what we might traditionally see as team coaching. 
• The first step requires the setting up of a Leadership team that will work alongside the Team in Trouble and one that will take up or assume responsibility for organisational themes that surface
• Education is often required to make clear the multi-faceted and multi-layered plan that needs to be fulfilled. Kathryn is keen to understand all the pieces of work that are taking place to support people such as mediation, stress leave, performance management etc
• The next step is the discovery piece Kathryn conducts 1:1’s with all members of the team and stakeholders. She is careful not to set out a plan prematurely. 
• It is important that the Team Coach is positioned as a resource not an assessor. 
• Buy-In for the Teams work happens when the team believes you are going to work on their concerns and needs and that stuff is happening with the parallel team on some of the process structural pieces. 
• Team Coaches are holding hope for the team. They are definitely not giving a perception that the team is hopeless. It is important to focus on strengths and the idea that strengths can be over played. 
• As a Team Coach don’t advice on anything, instead shore up the themes and offer suggestions for approach but allow the team to self-determine what is important 
• The notion of a Tipping Point is something Kathryn looks out for, that is where people on the fence can be pulled down into a negative space with those that are detractors. Kathryn works to create a space where people who might not normally speak up or who have not been willing to speak up before can call out bad behaviour and begin to help the team course correct. 
• Holding Trust is a vital component of the team coach’s work-holding confidences can be tricky but it is important to be able to do so to see the whole. 
• As practitioners we must not over complicate our work with teams. Learn to dance in the moment, don’t worry about content instead learn to work with people
• Humour is vital especially when life on teams in trouble can be so miserable 
• Kathryn shares a story about a particular team in trouble. It is memorable by way of the ugly behaviours the team members displayed. Team members wore sunglasses in meetings so they did not have to look at the Leader and some confessed that “we eat our own” 
• Kathryn shared that it would be so easy to run down the avenue of performance management and codes of conduct, instead she focused on strengths. This particular team were amazing at advocacy and creativity but they used those same skills against their work system. Kathryn helped the members see how they could influence for change and fight battles where they were particularly passionate. 
• Resilience on Teams looks at the ingredients that enable teams to thrive. Essentially they comprise practices and actions that are a flip of teams in trouble. 
• There are 3 facets to Kathryn’s model. At the individual level a person is held accountable for the way they show up, adapt and be proactive especially with the challenges they face. 
• It is a misnomer to consider that working at the individual level with respect to resilience will mean team resilience. Team Resilience is about alignment. Aligned Purpose, Aligned Values, Aligned Work load. 
• The Leadership facet looks at how a Leader can create a subculture where the team can thrive 
• This is a systemic approach where the model supports what the individuals are doing, with the team and leader to create a mini microcosm of the entire system to be the bests it can be. 
• There are many practical actions involved in the use of this resilience model. Team resilience for example includes a sense of connectedness, care and asks questions like “what does it look like when we care for each other?’ 
• Kathryn is very proud of the Network that has been built out of her work, a network that is global. 
• Kathryn’s parting words included nuggets for team coaches to trust intuition and judgement, to be able to dance in the moment and not overcomplicate things. 

 

Resources shared 

• Building Resilience at Work by Kathryn McEwen
• Building Team Resilience by Kathryn McEwen
• Building Your Resilience: How to thrive in a Challenging Job by Kathryn McEwen
• www.workingwithresilience.com.au
• Whitepaper: resilience at Work A Framework for Coaching and Interventions 

 

 

 

 

Introduction: This show illuminates the conditions that are necessary for Team Effectiveness and discusses the nature of Authority Structures. Ruth Wageman is one of the foremost scholars and practitioners studying and working with teams, mostly senior leadership teams. She is the co-author of the book Senior Leadership Teams, what it takes to make them great. She designed the Team Diagnostic Survey with the late Richard Hackman and Erin Lehman. This is a powerful assessment that measures team effectiveness against the 6 conditions Ruth described on this podcast. Ruth is undoubtedly an authority on the work of teams and I was delighted as a fellow team coach to have her as a guest on my show. 

Podcast episode summary: This conversation started by talking about collaboration and how important and critical it is for teams today. Most members want to collaborate and find they are stymied not by their behaviours, focus on their particular silos and or interpersonal relations but more because of a lack of attention to the structure and design of the team. 

Ruth described 3 essentials and 3 enablers that comprise the critical components for team success. 

• Real Team –The need for the team to be bounded, stable and interdependent
• Compelling Team Purpose- where the purpose is clear, compelling and consequential 
• Right People- with the right mix of capabilities and diverse thinking to deliver on their purpose
• Sound Structure- a small number of people, explicit norms of behaviour and a few critical team tasks that only this team can complete together. 
• Supportive Context- Where the team has the requisite resources, information in an accessible manner and appropriate materials and training to support their endeavour 
• Team Coaching- Someone or some people who manage the process of the team 

Over the course of the conversation, we opined how tough it is to not trip over some real power dynamics or power authority structures that exist on teams. There are often mixed expectations over the extent of responsibility Leader shoulders or team members share. Team Coaches, especially external team coaches can be blind to their beliefs about shared responsibility and risk the very real chance of alienating the team leader or Chief Executive holding authority. 

Ruth discussed her passion for working with teams real self- governing teams, whose power and authority is distributed and who exist to solve complex wicked problems that have real consequence in the world. She described working in systems such as healthcare, business and social services whose purpose it is to transform their ecosystems for societal benefit. 

Quotable quotes: Ruth recommended that teams be mindful to create “norms with bite”. 

Resources: the following includes the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

1. Senior Leadership Teams, what it takes to make them great by Ruth Wageman, Debra A. Nunes, James A. Burrus and J.Richard Hackman
2. The Team Diagnostic Survey by Ruth Wageman, J. Richard Hackman and Erin Lehaman
3. Who’s in charge here? The Team Leadership Implications of Authority Structure, by Ruth Wageman and Colin Fisher
4. An article was written by Ruth Wageman and Krister Lowe on Authority Structures and teams

Introduction: Covid-19 struck like a thunderbolt and has thrown the world upside down. Many are still reeling as we grapple to right side for a new order. All of us have been forced to wake to a new reality, to pause and immediately assume a virtual reality for most of the population. Teams have been beset too. Episode Five is an invitation to look at how we make meaning and how we re-emerge as a collective. I was curious about  what we chose to  embrace and reflect on as we experience Covid-19  & what we can generatively create with grace and gratitude.

Podcast episode summary: To answer these and several more questions I interviewed John Baldoni, John McCusker and Richard Boston. The conversation spoke to the very real uncertainty and grief that exists in society and the huge variability that is evident in terms of how people are responding. The panel spoke about societies polarities, the swift change in orientation to value people and connection and the many assumptions around organisational life that are being questioned. The pause had put a lot into perspective and the panel left the conversation being hopeful that as a resilient species we will figure our way out and hopefully make some meaningful changes to the way we relate to life.

 

Points made through the episode:

• Enormous focus and engagement is evidenced in organisational life
• Witness to huge variability and different phases people are at with respect to Covid-19
• Wide array of emotions from panic initially to overwhelm to expediency and focus to now hope and encouragement
• “Nobody knows anything” a great deal of grief being witnessed in the world-the question is what next?
• The difference between business and life has been collapsed. We are allowed to show up as real humans. This is an incredible time to reflect, do some self-discovery and be inquiring of self and others
• Important that the tone from the top echoes need for compassion and understanding to know that people are in complicated and difficult situations dealing with family life and role expectations of an order that is unprecedented.
• Important that businesses look after the physical and mental needs of their people and the business will follow. This message has been communicated before, but it is now real.
• Huge amount of pressure on employees right now and the imposter syndrome if it existed is now exaggerated. Leaders need to lead with Grace, Generosity, Respect, Action, Compassion and Energy
• Leaders cannot project fear , but they can show concern
• Two strong values are emerging in corporate life include Gratitude and Goodness
• Assumptions about team life and organisational life are being questioned. Can we continue to be more questioning with our assumptions ?
• We need to invent new normal and we do not know how long this pandemic will last creating considerable ambiguity.
• Our mortality is being questioned.
• We are in the process of rehumanising our workplaces putting purpose and empathy centre stage.
• Purpose or our higher level purpose is now front and centre. This crisis has shown teams can operate in a very purposeful and creative manner. In some ways decision making is timelier and team work more expedient. Shines a light on purpose, our humanity and need for empathy.
• We cannot make excuses for not knowing we have never known. Probably only 6/7 possible choices from here. We need to sit down and start planning and same goes for teams.
• Practice anti-fragility
• This pandemic may be a dress rehearsal for future crisis as climate change continues. Are we ready to be with this new reality?
• In any uncertainty be with what you can control to square the circle. Important to act and change if we get things wrong. Perfection is the enemy
• Sad that it has taken Covid-19 for us to appreciate our humanity, our connectedness and our frailty
• The panel hopes that leaders and teams will find a way to collapse societal polarities
• When times are good Profit hides a lot of flaws Covid-19 has shown us the cracks.
• Virtual is Okay. There is an acceptance that video and connection virtually is powerful and can remain
• Virtual does not distract from our connection
• Zoom etc is same as physical and in some ways better, we can focus more and be discerning in how we ask questions and how we relate. A greater sensitivity is called for over virtual.
• Consider Purpose more often and ask about the purpose of organisational life.
• We have been reminded of the beauty of nature can we nurture it?
• The panel left the conversation with a few things they know and can rely on:

1. We are stronger and more resilient than we think
2. Trust your teammates for their support
3. We will get through this-look internally for resource
4. Be mindful of our narrative. Some of the language around Covid-19 is defensive. Can we be in choice about the story of recovery and our identity post Covid-19

Resources: the following include the resources I alluded to in this episode.

• Richard Boston: leader-space.com
• John Baldoni: johnbaldoni.com
• John McCusker: bacardi.com
• Nassim Nicolas Taleb, Antifragile

Introduction:  David Rothauser, MA, MS, PCC, PsyA is an executive coach, coach supervisor, educator and psychoanalyst who has worked in leadership & human development for over 20 years. David brings together expertise in these areas to offer a unique forum for growth and development.  David trained in executive coaching at Columbia University, psychodynamic group leadership at the Centre for Group Studies, psychoanalysis at the Centre for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies and Coaching Supervision at Oxford Brookes University.

David offers individual and group supervision for coaches and is currently the Chair of Coaching Supervision for the Association of Coaching, US region.

On a personal note David lives outside of Philadelphia with his wife and two children.

Podcast episode Summary:  Supervision is explored through the prism of a live case that I brought to David as my Supervisor. David shares his approach and illuminates what can often remain mysterious & behind closed doors. We both opine on the value of Supervision and how it can bring relief and clarity from a place of being stuck as well as significant personal development.

Questions asked & points made throughout the Episode:

 

o    Who are you? And could you share a bit about how you got to where you are today? David reminded us of his professional identities and when encouraged to go further went on to say that he is a husband, a father of toddlers which means it makes up a big part of his learning journey today. David went onto say that he is a patient in his own therapy, in individual and group therapy & a supervisee with multiple supervisors.

o    Supervision has been a vehicle for David, over his career to support his development.

o    The invisible parts of our practice means we do not get to see how we take care of our work.

o    What interests you or intrigues you about a psychoanalytic approach to team and individual coaching? David is a trained psychoanalyst and he used psychoanalysis for his own development for his work as a coach in the professional world. David started coaching in the educational sector.

o    David may not have encountered psychoanalysis if it wasn’t for his sister who was training to be a therapist while David was training to become a school teacher early in his career. Looking across both domains David felt that the field of Psychoanalysis for postgraduate work felt richer and more compelling. David noticed his field was more behaviourally focused whereas his Sisters field was more about people working hard to make meaning. That field was focused on what makes people tick and how can work get done more effectively. David began to dabble and have experiences with psychoanalysis.  He continued & pursued his interest, studied more and at this point is a graduate of two psychoanalytic institutes and has his own psychoanalytic practice. He does not think of his coaching perse as Psychoanalytic.  

o    David is interested in being effective. This work has helped David explore cases where he was stuck, where the reasonable and rationale approaches of other disciplines have not been of help. Psychoanalytic training & supervision provides a space where we can access more parts of self & engage creatively when the counter transference is puzzling, when for example emotions are difficult and we don’t know what to do and where we are stuck. This realm has been a major orientation for David,  where the emotional and relational fields are enhanced with a psychodynamic lens.

o    What do your clients appreciate about your approach and do they even know? What is common about David’s Supervision sessions is that there is a feeling of relief and an opening up for new creative possibilities.

o    David takes an understanding based approach and in a lot of ways David draws on different disciplines, education, sociology, philosophy and psychoanalysis. When we are stuck we don’t understand what is happening. It calls for more meaning making.

o    At this point I re-introduced a case I had brought to David for Supervision. My case is a small team about whom I was stuck. I was curious to see if David, for the sake of my podcast listeners, could help me decode the approach David took, the potency of supervision & how it served me and my client at the time. David wondered too.

o    David shared that there is something about this work where there is a mystique about it. There are many kinds of supervision some for example where there is direct observation of a coach coaching with their client. The supervisor will observe a person actually coaching whereas a psychodynamic approach happens behind closed doors.

o    We decided to try and David asked “how shall we try” Whilst I endeavoured to revisit the case David suggested that “we back up a little” to share how he thinks about the work

o    A unique contribution of coaching & team coaching is offering an opportunity to the client to see themselves in new ways, to access their own creativity so that they can make new choices about what they want to do and how they want to be with others. No matter the discipline or theoretical orientation CBT, positive psychology, a PhD in coaching psychology or whatever the way we relate has a profound impact on the quality & outcomes of the work

o    One area of work that can always be expanded and deepened is the work we do on ourselves. It is a lifelong process to know yourself and to use yourself. The difficulties we experience with clients like fear, hopelessness, anxiety, shame and not having access to our minds is natural

o    Many of us in the helping professions are drawn to this work, either consciously or unconsciously because of the roles we picked up from our family of origin. That was when we were first introduced to our emotional lives. There were things we learnt about our feelings that were going to be acceptable and those we learnt to avoid. Our interpersonal tendencies around openness and avoidance were learnt in our early families.

o    Often the feelings that pose challenges for our clients are feelings that we have learnt to avoid or step around. As a supervisor they are the clients David hears about from his supervisees & the ones he brings to his own supervisor.

o    I shared my experience of working with my client and the feelings that were evoked in me especially the ones, fear of rejection, that I find intolerable. This is the value of talking.

o    Psychoanalysis is the talking cure and coaching is a kind of talking cure too and supervision is too.

o    In supervision with David, we dreamed up my case together. In our collaborative dialogue I was able to speak what might have been unspeakable for the client, to say more and more and more about what was happening. David pays attention to his supervisees and their subjective experience. He works to help supervisees make meaning and understand what is inside of them. David is happy to work & to talk about what to do but he leans more in terms of helping clients reach understanding.

o    Many of us come to supervision to wonder what to do and the question becomes to what end?

o    Looking for ways “to do” can  sometimes be about avoiding  the work of understanding and meaning and sometimes not. Brainstorming things to do or interventions to offer can provide avenues to see a way forward. Using our imaginations for example in a session like “what do I really want to say to this client in a world with no consequences” “what would I tell these people?” Some of those kinds of imagination exercises can be freeing.

o    The unconscious is not a civilised place. It can be unruly. This is how we can get stuck with our cases when some of our more unruly parts get activated & our more professional parts are hard at work to make sure those parts do not get air time. That is why it is important in a supervision space to create a playful open space for any words to be expressed.

o    How to deal with resistance on teams? Resistance is a word that can bring up a lot of resistance. The view of resistance that is helpful is that resistances are defences. They are needed to protect. There is no such thing as a relation without some form of protection. Peoples reluctances tell us something, they communicate something to us to us non-verbally. We will get a feeling that something is afoot or that this is a no go topic. Sometimes resistances show up not just in the non-verbal field but in the behavioural field, coming late to sessions, cancelling sessions etc.. these are all forms of behavioural resistances.

o    Freuds ideas about resistance, the original psychoanalytical conception, or resistance to free association was what he was interested in. He gave instructions to patients to say everything which was of course an impossible task. It was Freuds observation that something would interfere with the patient saying everything and he called that interference the resistance. Each person resisted the task of “saying everything” in a unique way. Freuds idea was that it was the transference or the patients expectations of the authority figure that made up the fuel for the resistance.

o    Freud had a particular method of intervention and there are many others ways of working with resistance today that are supportive, relieving and safety making for clients to find new ways to get the self-protection they need.

o    What are some of those ways of working with Resistance? A coaching client brought a case to David where the client of the supervisee was not doing the work, the reflection work, the work in between sessions and the coach was left with the feeling that they were doing all of the work. The coach had an uneasy feeling that something was not right. It did not feel to the coach that the client had any real skin in the game. David and his client imagined how to join the clients resistance. Just be like the client, not in a tongue in cheek sarcastic way but simply meeting the client where they are. If you have an ambivalent client it is not going to be helpful to be eager with them

o    The coaches mindset – a supervisee who already had the idea that there was resistance with her client enabled David and his client to work on the idea that the client was trying to protect themselves in the coaching process and they were then able to be curious about how and why that was the case. Resistance is important it is serving a protective function is a very different conversation than what can happen in coaching where a diagnosis is made and a conclusion drawn, for example this client is un-coachable

o    Resistance is mysterious because they are hidden or non-verbal in so many cases. So one feature of resistance in this work is that we feel it and it lives in our body before we can put thought or words to it.

o    If as a coach you feel those feelings you may or may not chose to reveal them to your client but you can of course speak to them in supervision. It is case dependent.

o    Winnicott’s idea about the use of an object is an important idea that David takes into his coaching.  For any of us to make use of another is a developmental proposition. David needs to know how a client makes use of him. He wants to know how he is perceived and how what comes from him might be perceived and made use of. David needs to have an imagination about that, a sense that the client will give him and he treads carefully assessing the appetite or motivation a client has for the work. It tends not to go so well in a coaching or other helping profession to give something that the client is not asking for. It is a primary task in the coaching relationship to understand what is wanted.

o    Coaches can be busy “cooking up stuff” to feel useful and of value especially in the face of uncomfortable feelings.

o    The phenomenon of not knowing can be very hard for everyone, being in the mystery of how the client is making use of our work or the work with us can be unnerving especially as each of us has a relationship with not knowing.

o    We explored so many topics across this podcast and David bemused that we did not speak to the unconscious. He chose “to leave it out there” as something we could pick up on another conversation and podcast.

o    David ended the podcast by sharing information about his practice. He occasionally has spaces in supervision groups and individual supervision programs and he is available on LinkedIn and he is happy to talk.

o    Finally after being asked how he wanted to close the conversation David shared how he didn’t want to close the conversation. He really enjoys talking with me about these topics and looks forward to more opportunities like this in the future.  

 

Resources shared across this podcast

1.     https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidrothauser/

2.    Donald Winnicott English paediatrician and psychoanalyst

Introduction:  Janet Harvey, MCC is a coach, author, educator, and speaker who invites people to “be the cause of the life that most matters to you” In 2020 she wrote the Book Invite Change and in 2024 has written the book From Tension to Transformation which is the subject of this conversation today. Janet is also CEO of InviteChange which is described as a success culture building organisation for companies. Janet is an ICF Global Past President, Certified Mentor Coach, and an Accredited Coaching Supervisor.

Podcast episode Summary:  This podcast explores what it means to be human, to navigate life’s complexities acting  from a grounded sense of self, an inner authority, or Generative Wholeness.  Janet help us appreciate the many tensions we live and what it takes to mine our mindset and transform.

Points made across this Episode:

 

Q1. Who are you? I wonder if you can share a bit about how you got to where you are now Janet?

 

o    The who are you question is often challenging to answer because so much of our conditioning shapes an answer that is related to what we do. Instead Janet answers this question as it is meant. She is an alchemical seer, sovereign , radiant love, black pearl beauty, savvy , sassy, generous expression, riding on the wings of joy.

o    Janet shares that her words describe an essence statement.  Janet describes the journey she has been on as a Coach and Coach trainer taking over the company that is now called Invite Change in 2006.

 

Q2. How important is it to you Janet to help Leaders declare their essence?

 

o    Janet explains that there is no there, no goal or destination to reach with an essence statement. Goals are fine and have their place and the question becomes “what are we choosing every moment” This is the intentional self. How are we making decisions about how we show up and interact with others. We do not teach this to people instead of simply expecting they will intuitively get it.

o    Neurodivergent Learning is bringing in the more intuitive instinctive sensory systems and ways of navigating the world, in a world that today often does not meet people where they are. This then creates the importance for understanding our essence.

 

Q3 What motivated you to write this book?

 

o    Janet describes a story at the start of her book where she was often asked by Leaders or CEOs what she was doing because so many reported that “working with Janet makes my head hurt? She heard these refrains repeatedly which led to a qualitative study to determine what was going on.

o    She recognised that most leaders are rewarded for producing results. They are really good at producing results and creating stuff that is really practical. The whole system of business whether you are in a product company or a services company it does not matter. We want someone to purchase our products and services and we want to create these outcomes with excellence.

o    So Janet was curious about what they were struggling with, what were the common themes that Leaders would present in coaching sessions?

o    Janet touches on the four capacities housed in Generative Wholeness, or what it means to operate from an authentic self. The four capacities include To Originate, To Create, To Learn and To Produce. Leaders tend to be great at creating and producing but often lag in the capacities to originate and to learn. To be able to originate new thinking and to learn in a continuous loop were found to be underdeveloped capacities.

 

Q4. How do we lose ourselves so massively?

 

o    Janet was looking for ways to operationalise the authentic self. So many people are writing about authenticity, speaking about the subject but it is still so elusive a concept. It feels like a high spiritual value and it is but it is also very practical.

o    When a person is operating from their full authentic self they are listening to an inner authority. We are so much more than just our personality, our ego and what it takes for us to navigate our world. When we set down our inner authority we get stuck. There is so much more to our wholeness and it is a continuous learning process.

o    Inner authority is looking at a situation and determining what is the best relationship to it for me. This is what we do as Coaches to give people that pathway to the essence of who they are, turning the dial on their decision making rubric and have it come from the inside out.

o    Janet was inspired to write a book that would simplify and make relevant what leaders were experiencing. She wanted to explore the journey from feeling something is not right to transit the form into a new form that works.

 

Q5. What are you asking of Leaders to get the most from this book?

 

o    Janet exhaled deeply and shared “frankly to go slow” She encourages Leaders reading her book to not read it as a text book. She further asks that readers do relevant reading

o    The skill of noticing, ontologically, can be taken a bit more simply. When we are caught in the busyness of life, we barely notice or notice only so much that we forget. We can get very tripped up by this busyness and not realise that things are catching our attention all of the time. We simply go by these things and because our bodies prefer habits as our bodies are  an energy conservation mechanism, yet the thing we want most is right there. It is right at the edge of our awareness.

o    Unless we can break our habits, biases, assumptions and patterns we will not get to our aspirations. It is therefore important to notice, be patient, stay with the tension a minute or longer to  pause, to put in relevance to our lives what we are feeling and noticing. This describes what Janet calls deliberate judgement.

o    Janet suggests that we lean into tension, to let tension be our best friend rather than pushing it way. To allow tension to wake us up to realise that something inside of us is asking us to change.

o    Janet shares an example of introducing a tension into a team that is apathetic wanting to be inspired.

o    As a team coach Janet works with Teams to draw out from them language to describe an experience they are having. Then she will ask them to describe what their imagination is about the experience that could be, if they were feeling highly activated again. Generally apathy shows up in a team that has experienced a real high They are likely transitioning and feeling lost in transit. As a coach, Janet knows if she can help them cast a compelling vision that energy will carry them.

 

Q6. Could you say a little bit more about Generative Wholeness?

 

o    Janet answers by sharing how she really does not like models. She feels models are a little too rear view mirror. The challenge is that people do not fit very well into models. They certainly have a use and can be used as a way in or a gateway to a conversation. Yet when Janet was trying to articulate why she made leaders heads hurt she was really looking to describe the continuous experience that human beings have as they are learning growing and changing which all coaching does. Janet knew about the two capacities To Produce and To Create. She knew also that Leaders were with her To Learn and ultimately to originate new thinking or give voice to their thinking in new ways. Beliefs are constructions and so can be deconstructed.

o    So the model is about adopting the dynamic capacities of originating, to create, to learn and to produce in a continuous cycle of movement always from the authentic self, that = Generative Wholeness.

 

 

Q7 How did you land on the 7 tensions you call out in your book?

 

o    There are four that Janet recognises are common to all human beings and come from her own journey to consciousness. These include Sovereignty -Performance, Intention - Expectations, Inside out - Outside in and Relationship & Person Oriented - Process & Plan oriented.

o    Coaching is about awakening consciousness for each person and everyone they touch in their lives.

o    We were all gifted with a tape in our heads  from our upbringing that taught us how to get along, how to do well in life until some point that tape stops working. We then chose to make a different journey and we start to come back home to self. There is nothing wrong with developing a strong ego and when we overuse something it has a tendency to backfire and that is true for any skill, competence or mindset.

o    How do we find the formula for realising that we really are in charge? Nobody does anything to us that we were not part cause or agent to. That is often a hard pill to swallow. Janet goes on to describe a story about Northface the company who tried to promote an allyship program that ultimately proved exclusory. They were found wanting. They contributed to making exclusion even more visible.

o    As practitioners we are working with Leaders who are trying to move fast in very complex circumstances. It is our responsibility to say slow down. No one person can “know” everything that is occurring.

o    The CTO of Zoom was talking about adoption of technology. He shared that it took 18 years for the iPhone to get 100 million users. It took 3 months for ChatGpt. So that essentially means that the large language model is available to so many people on the planet that there is no possible way that any one person can know all of that human knowledge. Human knowledge is doubling every 12 hours.

o    So as a leader if you think deep expertise is the key to success you are going to be epically wrong. The skills that replace deep expertise is collaboration, asking questions to receive and be a learner. Discernment is the skill of the 21^st century. That is not how we have trained our Leaders so no wonder?

o    Janet asks me if I have ever seen a team cave to a top request and then that teams resistance to relook at a situation or idea, knowing it is going to fail. These teams  then spend the next 18 months or so fixing a mess. Nobody goes back and asks what was the cost or opportunity cost of that period of wasted effort. Janet helps teams to articulate that story. Instead of caving Janet asks a team to articulate a  business case? What must you demonstrate and share about the impact & influence of your work on the business? Etc.. Janet is helping teams engage with Myth Busting, the idea that you can challenge sacred cows.

 

Q8 How did you land on the 7 tensions you call out in your book?

 

o    These 7 tensions were part of the original research & interviews  conducted with Leaders.

o    Janet was curious about the things that Leaders were navigating in their organisations that led them to engage with her business of coaches.

o    She was also curious about what they were learning along the way which produced the Generative Wholeness Model.

o    The tensions were fascinating to Janet because there is goodness on both sides of the tension. Janet had studied paradox and polarities and these tensions were not presenting as either one of these phenomenon.

o    The Leaders were telling about thorny problems they were experiencing.

o    In Janet’s listening she could pull out certain traits that the Leaders had put in opposition to each other. Not as a polarity, not as a duality but a knowing that they needed a bit of both.

o    Knowing and Not knowing for example is a tension. Earlier Janet talked about the adoption of technology and what it means to now know. Not knowing is increasingly important for us to accept and pull into our repertoire most likely from another. Knowing was probably 80% and Not knowing was 20% with an acceptance that we should probably allow for some innovation and creativity. Today that ratio is probably more like 40% not knowing and 60% knowing. The 60% is process knowing and not data knowing, asking how do I go about the process of learning, experimenting, testing, validating and socialising. All of these are important things to do as Leaders and they must be embedded into the process of building something.

o    The Agile industry is fascinating. It is often spoken about in words that say fail fast. Janet asks what if we reframe that to learn fast? What if we allow ourselves to cycle internally first before we go to market. This is what Agile has done in the last decade.

o    This for Janet is a developmental sequence for a team, to take a risk, to trial something before they have everything sewn up.

o    This is a Leaders mindset to say “I do not need to see the perfect solution” What I need to see is that teams have exercised deliberate judgement.

 

Q9. How do you illuminate the power of your promise in your book from Tension to Transformation with Leaders?

 

o    One of the ways that is emergent in the field of coaching is working with the body. Somatic Work.

o    When Janet is working with a client and she starts to hear two things in opposition, where maybe the ratio of the two things in opposition need to shift. She will ask the client to stand up and draw an imaginary line, She asks the client to put one quality at the end of the line and the other on the opposite side. She then invites the client to walk to one end of the line, to describe the situation through the lens of that quality. She asks questions like what are you feeling? What are you sensing? What is your intuition picking up? Once they have responded to those questions she then asks “what happens if this quality is overused? These questions often start to create insight. Then Janet asks the client to shake that experience off and to walk to the other end where she repeats the same questions. Janet is putting clients through a reflection process. The next sequence is to have the client stand in the centre, perfect balance and she then asks “what’s the ratio that works for this particular situation?” Competency 8 in the ICF suite of competencies- Facilitating client growth.

o    Janet often asks a Leader to be curious with their own teams to see if what he or she has determined from this exercise, reflection and insight matches their reality.

o    What do you imagine you can say to the team to help them see more clearly what was stepped over. This is the transformation.

 

Q10 How have the tensions you researched with your leaders been received more broadly?

 

o    Janet encourages people reading her book to find their words for the tensions they experience. Find your terms that are relevant to the situations that you find yourself in.

o    Take the words control and care. Control and Agility is the one that is in the book. Ask what was the care for? He wants his team to feel that they are cared for and he has a responsibility to the organisation to produce results. The question becomes, what in his caring is not fostering autonomy for his team? Operating from his control means he is not allowing enough information to be transmitted or perhaps he is not allowing himself to be more available to his team as a mentor or coach? That would allow people to step into more authority with some confidence that he would have their back. He is controlling because they are not developed yet. He cannot care for them because he is disappointed that they are not delivering for him and he has no time. His choices are creating this tension.

o    As coaches we have an ability to help reveal to a client that they have constructed this situation and it can also be deconstructed.

o    We help clients to look at the habits, preferences and assumptions they are making about their teams.

o    This is why wholeness is such an important idea inside of workplaces. We hired these people because we believed they had the raw material necessary to be successful and then we leave them alone.

o    How do Leaders shift their mindsets to see what is working in their organisations and with the people who have joined these same organisations? How can a Leader be engaged with a colleague or team member to be curious about the opportunity they see for a person if that person choses to step more into their wholeness. That is a generative mindset.

 

Q11. “Your most reliable change strategy is your mindset” Janet Harvey, how would you like to close this conversation between us today?

 

o    Janet picks up the thread about Mindset and calls out the process of mindset mining.

o    The art of reflection is about understanding the mindset we have adopted and being discerning about which ones are uplifting myself and others and which ones don’t.

o    The act of mindset mining comes out of a more sophisticated practice of reflection.

o    Janet wrote her books because she cares about humanity, she cares about dignity & the importance that we recognise that everyone has the right to dignity. It is a birth right of being a human being and it carries a responsibility that each of us are deliberate in the way we approach our relationships personal and professional. Janet writes to bring simple language to very complex and nuanced things to give everyone a way back home to dignity.

 

 

 

Resources

 

1.    Generative Team Coaching, InviteChange

2.    Invite Change by Janet M Harvey

3.    From Tension to Transformation by Janet M. Harvey

4.    www.invitechange.com

 

Introduction: Peter Cosgrove is an expert in the World of Work & Future Trends of work. He is a renowned keynote speaker on topics such as the future of work, the future of skills and talent, recruitment, diversity & inclusion, Artificial Intelligence & the negative effects of the rapid technology acceleration. Peter is also a best -selling author of two books; Fun Unplugged and family Fun Unplugged. These books were designed and written to help families get off screen time and communicate & interact better together. Peter is a board Director on the 30% Club which promotes gender diversity and he is also on the board of Aware. 

 

Podcast episode summary: This episode started with a reflection on our  relationship to work and moved into thinking about our habits and assumptions  about work that often go unexamined for individuals, teams and organisations.  It also spoke to the future of work and how more entrenched companies might have to  learn to pivot to survive. Peter believes that Covid-19 provided an opportunity to really look at our priorities and to re-shape our thinking about remote working, flexibility, talent and how to motivate talent as well as some behavioural concerns such as listening, empathy, and our use of time. This episode was searingly honest and provocative. The importance of critical thinking, dialogue and empathy between all citizens and intergenerationally was emphasised.

 

Points made through the episode:

• Peter grew up in a family of 11 children, four brothers and four sisters
• When people ask Peter what skills or career their child should pursue, he answers with the refrain “just do something” There is a misnomer that people will know or will have a Eureka moment when in fact often work is about finding and figuring things out.
• Peter moved through a few career choices before he himself adopted a freelancer lifestyle.
• We are still not quite comfortable as a nation to understand when people want to do something a bit differently from the 9-5 routine or when they do not subscribe to conventional titles for roles
• Huge positive impact of Covid-19; Speed of Digital acceptance /Innovation and adaptation
• Some people did however learn how to retire early.
• Work is often so much of our identity and we can look to our Culture/Attitudes/Ideas about Achievement and Peer Competition for why it is often a race to the top.
• Peter believes many of us do not question the why of work or our why for work.
• We have not mastered the world of remote working -be smarter about using zoom, shorter time frames/using the phone/making connections and building connections and not just task.
• Trust is a big challenge and continues to be a big challenge for more traditional concerns.
• We have to question some of our assumptions about how work is working in the first place.
• Be wary of employing software and technology that essentially means you are spying on your employees.
• The Leaders Peter’s see in team situations are often not able to let go, see the culture they are creating and to allow for change.
• The team dynamic on many of the teams he observes consists of teams who rarely engage in healthy debate, defer to seniority, do not listen and participate in group think and run with  many errant assumptions.
• Young entrepreneurs and younger generations entering the field of work have many answers regarding culture/technology/ways of working but they do need to be listened to.
• Peter shared some simple practices to encourage innovation at work.
• Some big trends that Peter sees happening include ;
• Change in how real-estate is consumed, Cities are not going to die but they will be consumed differently
• Air Conditioning at work – many bigger concerns may be allowing people to remain remote working because Air Conditioning is proving a big issue in bigger edifices
• Access to Global Talent will mean a further appreciation for remote working but also an increase in competitiveness between talent.
• Decrease in bureaucracy; amazing how the HSE and Lawyers responded with Doc-sign for example
• Employers need to pay attention to burn out and encourage employees to manage boundaries appropriately. Be smart about shorter zoom meetings, zoom mania and the use of time generally.
• Encourage single task focus. Too much multi-tasking masquerading as productivity
• Explore opportunities to give remote workers the same experience as workers working in the office. Be creative.
• Basecamp and Automatic are examples of companies getting it right.
• Important to acknowledge how innovative people can be when they have to be.
• Companies need to look out 5 years from now and begin the work now of helping employees gain skills and experience to keep them relevant in the dawn of AI
• Refocus by tapping into what gives employees energy and see productivity soar. Consider more mentors and budget for ideas and projects.
• Peter’s books were born out of a big bug bear with technology. Technology is fabulous but it can also be addictive. Peter wanted to write a book that would encourage Parents and Children to start communicating together.
• These books are used to support Children learn about the importance of reading, understanding philosophy, what it means to have rapport with another and general life skills. Our over dependence on technology is seeing many of the current generation of children lose important life skills.

 

• Resources: the following include the resources I alluded to in this episode

1. Herminia Ibarra: Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing your Career
2. linkedin.com Peter Cosgrove
3. aware.ie
4. 30%club.org
5. Fun Unplugged and Family Fun Unplugged by Peter Cosgrove

 

 

 

Introduction: Covid-19 struck like a thunderbolt and has thrown the world upside down. Many are still reeling as we grapple to right side for a new order. All of us have been forced to wake to a new reality, to pause and immediately assume a virtual reality for most of the population. Teams have been beset too. Episode Six is an invitation to look at how we re-emerge as a collective, what we chose to  embrace and reflect on what we can generatively create with grace and gratitude.

Podcast episode summary: To answer these and several more questions I interviewed Janet Harvey, Neil Scotton and Alister Scott primarily because of their bold interest in sustainability, climate change and the business of big change. This episode was littered with big existential questions such as what is growth ?and how might we want to think about what it means to have a livelihood. In addition, the panel questioned how we have lived and suffered in the past and what could we do as a species to creatively destruct for the better of all.

 

Points made through the episode:

• What is necessary? How do we let go some of the unconscious habits and get out of our comfort zone? We have lots of cognitive food about Growth mindset and yet we don’t do it.
• There exists an opportunity to come back to self, to know we are not alone, and that 7+billion people are experiencing the same conditions. We have everything available to us to re-imagine our relationship to life
• Our professional and personal lives have never been so merged.
• We have an opportunity to see our humaneness – and we cannot take anything for granted
• Undeniable our interconnectedness. Globalisation has demonstrated some real negatives
• Seems like mother nature has sent us to our rooms to think about the damage we have done to the planet.
• There is a positive to this “lock-down” we are now appreciating the slow, the simple the beauty in our connections and connectedness
• Important that we are mindful of the consequences of ignoring reality
• More permission now to notice what is not working and to say it.
• We will emerge so much stronger and resilient as teams. Teams are like an antibody. Huge capacity to bring forth disparate views to imagine and vision a new reality. Teams have unique advantage of not needing to know it all but as a collective to allow something to emerge -the collective is the engine.
• There is a falling away of old structures, constructs, egos and silos- crystal clear we are in a crisis and we need to contribute. The sense of shared purpose will embolden teams and organisations will find it hard to return to old ways.
• Not all leaders will be suitable for the new forms of teams that will emerge.
• There is a strong desire currently for purpose to sit above profit.
• Some assumptions will need to be busted. Growth for example is questionable the way we currently view growth at all costs.
• We don’t yet understand how to operate a Global Citizenry.
• In order to access a “One team” notion allow people to bring whole selves to work
• Make teams your focus.
• Our vision has formerly been too myopic- we will get back to planning and prioritising
• Heretically nothing has changed. There certainly exists more courage to name what is not working but essentially team life remains the same. We are so swept up in the drama that we need to allow people to pause and feel the grief, the Global Grief.
• Important not to assume that what I am feeling you are too.
• The Zen and Art of Motorcycling says “we grab a handful of sand from the vast plains of awareness around us and we call it reality”
• Growth can happen in many ways not least in terms of learning and developing as human species.
• The panel is hoping that we allow :
  • Creative destruction and cited Joseph Schumpeter
  • We see the wisdom of giving space for reflection and thinking
  • To build a culture of ERA (Encouragement, Recognition and Appreciation) to buld confidence against a very uncertain future
  • The three G’s Generativity, Grace and Gratitude
  • To know and respect that everyone matters.
  • To know we are already enough.
    
    

Resources: the following include the resources I alluded to in this episode.

• Janet Harvey: invitechange.com
• Neil Scotton and Alister Scott: enablingcatalysts.com
• Neil Scotton and Alister Scott: The little book of making big change happen.
• Joseph Schumpeter: The theory of economic development
• Otto Sharmer: www.presencing.org

Introduction: Michelle Brody PhD, is an executive coach & clinical psychologist. She brings 25 years of experience in both corporate and family settings to the challenging problem of interactional conflict. Michelle’s speciality as a coach is to guide teams that have complicated dynamics to help them reach greater levels of collaboration, improve communication and resolve tension. Michelle is the author of two books, Stop the Fight and her latest book Own Your Armour; revolutionary change for workplace culture. Michelle is also a master trainer of psychologists, professional coaches and HR professionals and she is a regular public speaker. 

Podcast Episode Summary This podcast conversation explores the mindset shifts team members, or indeed anyone, have to make to resolve interpersonal conflict and the consequences of negative team dynamics at work. Michelle Brody reminds us that when you think about conflict you are up against biology, we have to understand the threats we perceive, the armour we put on and the impact that armour has on others. Michelle’s book could be considered a graphic novel, its illustrations help cut through the complexity inherent in human dynamics and helps illuminate what’s at play in interactional conflict. 

 

Points made over the episode

• The red thread that weaves throughout this podcast is the idea that conflict is cyclical and unless and until we can recognise our contribution that interactional conflict is not neutral and that armour is a suit and not a characterisation of the person conflict is likely to persist. 

• Michelle started her career after college as an Investment Banker but she realised she was not interested in numbers or financials but in the interactions between people. She was curious why cultures were built on fear. She then pursued Clinical Psychology

• Michelle pivoted into Coaching because she wanted to have a bigger impact in terms of helping others figure out what was happening in the dynamics at work. 

• As a psychologist you learn about the different types of defence mechanisms people employ to keep safe. Michelle became curious about how one person’s defence could trigger another’s and how that then gets locked in as a cycle. 

• Conflict cycles show up everywhere, in communities, in couples, in families at work 

• Michelle then conceptualised these patterns as armour, armour a person puts on to protect. She recognised that armour is a form of self-protection but it is also aggressive.  

• The number one important thing to know about conflict is that it is cyclical and the second thing to know about conflict is that the problem is not difficult people but that armour is put on for a particular reason. 

• There is always a good person and when they suit up you get an evil twin. 

• When we think about conflict you have to remember we are up against biology. The automatic response system to threat is our nervous system. 

• We get ensnared by conflict when we label or judge people. We make attribution errors of others. As soon as we attribute to another we then start to react and put on our own armour and we start the cycle. 

• There is a natural preservation phenomenon at work too we look to keep ourselves innocent. 

• We forget to enquire to try to understand what is happening and instead we label. 

• Often we give feedback erroneously by pointing out a person’s behaviour as a property of them. “Your anger is causing problems on this team” The impact of this feedback is not changed behaviour but more anger. 

• Begin with a description of the person in two ways, how you see them when things are going well  or as a core self and then as the evil twin. Be curious. 

• It is important to separate the person from their armour. 

• A threat can sound like a strong word but threats are what our nervous system respond to. 

• The kinds of threats that show up at work include; a threat to livelihood, a threat to belonging, a threat to fairness, control, authority and reputation or a threat to success

• Our family of origin and past life experiences has an incredibly important input into the kind of threats that grab us. 

• Michelle has an image in her book that encapsulates of Psychology in one page. Our family of origin and all its embedded dynamics create in every human a set of longings and sensitivities which then create our motivations and particular sets of threats. 

• If we can understand our Psychological Map we can have so much more power over our reactivity and understanding of others and their impacts on us. 

• Armour comes in many different forms & Michelle’s book invites self-analysis. How do I feel threatened? How do I react to that threat? What kind of armour do I put on? What are the unintended consequences or impact of my armour? 

• It is easier to work with a team if each person does this analysis first

• The ideal or best possible world is a team where there is 100% trust and everyone can show up as their core selves. Often teams do not show up this way & negative dynamics are instead at play. A Leader will often try to rescue the situation but it takes psychological understanding to really decode what is happening on the team. 

• Michelle works 1:1 with each team member to see how they are threatened, the armour they put on and the unintended impact of their armour. It is difficult for people to notice their threats when the intuitive mindset is to believe that the problem is outside of them. 

• We often do not notice our impact we have to be nudged there. 

• It is important to remember two things: 1. We all wear armour and 2. There is a difference between a person and their armour. 

• A person who seems sceptical is often simply wearing thicker armour. 

• It is wise to give each team member a copy of the book before a team offsite. Self-analysis and a commitment by all to do pre-work lessons the heavy lifting needed on the program. 

•  Teams have a lot of work to sort out between roles, goals, norms, stakeholder expectations etc and the final frontier is team dynamics. A frontier that is often missed 

• There are intractable situations. Certain circumstances defy change. When the threat system around the team is too intense, when a strong willed Leader refuses to acknowledge his own armour are just a few. 

• HR is often employed to make a decision between an employee relations investigation or coaching. You cannot employ both simultaneously. The threat is too large to allow for the openness of coaching. 

• Michelle shares a story between two suits of armour to explain what might be going on if a Leader is demanding more initiative by a team and the Leader is frustrated with the team. Michelle seeks to elicit the “thirst’ by way of  team enquiry. 

• If you find yourself in conflict some great questions to ask include;

• what am I missing?

• What do I know about what is happening here?

• How are you feeling about this situation? 

• We all want Psychological Safety in our workplaces and one of the best ways to get at it is to be vulnerable and to be part of the solution, by recognising that in some maybe small way you might be contributing to the unsafety 

 

Resources shared 

 

• Own Your Armour: revolutionary change for workplace culture by Michelle Brody PhD. 

• Stop the Fight: an illustrated guide for couples by Michelle Brody PhD. 

• www.michellebrody.com 

 

Introduction: Curtis Watkins and Dan Newby are the Co-Authors of the book Field Guide to emotions a practical orientation to 150 essential emotions. Curtis is a Master Certified coach; a Master Somatic Coach and his focus is primarily dedicated to supporting individuals and teams be more connected to a purpose and meaningful work. Dan is an educator, facilitator and Coach and also author of several books on emotions. He is a global champion of emotional literacy working with teams and individuals to leverage a gift available to all as part our human condition

Podcast episode summary: This episode looks at a domain of learning that is often overlooked, Emotional literacy. Over the course of the conversation Dan & Curtis explained the auspices for their book, the usefulness of emotions as a domain for better decision making and congruence for individuals and teams. Dan explained that emotions are energy and they speak up for met or unmet needs in a person. Using personal stories and their own experience in compiling this book Dan & Curtis helped demystify the nature of emotions, the connectedness to our bodies and our mind and shared practical tools and exercises to decode emotions for more aligned choices. 

• Dan & Curtis joined forces to share their respective expertise in Somatic intelligence & emotional literacy to write the book called a field guide to emotions, a practical orientation to 150 essential emotions. 
• The choice to write the book as a field guide seemed appropriate as a tool for discovery because emotions are interpretations and can register differently for different people. 
• Emotions are not discretionary you do not have a choice about having emotions, but you can design to visit more or different emotions more frequently. You can learn and design your life 
• The invitation is to notice, observe how emotions arise in our bodies, watch for the intelligence they share & the possibilities they present and ultimately build a vocabulary of emotional understanding 
• Emotions are invisible to us. The only way we know to know them is by the sensations they create in our bodies or through the thinking we have around them. 
• One reason why you might begin to appreciate their usefulness is to think about the persistent woeful Gallup results produced year on year about engagement at work. 87% of employees are disengaged and 13% of that total are actively disengaged or sabotaging work efforts. The lesson here is that if we are not in touch with our emotional states, we can walk around in a disengaged manner not fully appreciating why. 
• A leaders’ role is to create the context for enthusiasm to be present 
• You can practice and design emotional states to have a better life. 
• We need to bust the myths that emotions are fixed and not learnable or malleable 
• A huge proportion for our emotional state is learnt. 
• Advice to be curious about emotions and to appreciate they are indicators of needs being met or unmet
• Two emotions that the authors visited were Faith and Prudence. In fact, the authors had fun deciding what classified and met the threshold to be a genuine emotion. 
• There are no universal definitions of emotions, the authors had to agree what fit an emotion and they determined emotions had to have 3 characteristics, A story, an impulse and a purpose this then made the field guide a very practical manual for readers to decipher their own emotions 
• Emotions also have a time orientation so we can group emotions in 3 ways, emotions that fit the past, present and future
• In terms of their use with teams Dan and Curtis shared exercises and conversation that they both have with teams where the ultimate goal is to normalise emotions and be in choice about what decisions to take and what direction in which to move. 
• Joy is an emotion that is often absent on teams -there is no regular celebration of moments, achievements or milestones. There tends to be a wait for the seismic moment and the predominant mood or emotion is about being serious. 
• Curtis would love to see more teams be connected to a cause or purpose greater than the individuals concerned. Enthusiasm, or connection to the divine, which is deeply connected to cause or mission for a team. 
• Emotional literacy is not common place although It might make eminent sense. The first trick is to notice, name the sensation or suspected emotion and then build understanding and finally navigate -all of this is a commitment to a process that over time yields emotional literacy. 

Quotable Quotes: “Emotions are non-discretionary” “Everything about emotions is an interpretation” “Emotions are invisible to us “ “Huge proportion of our emotional identity is learnt” Emotions are that which put you in motion or want you to move” 

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

1. Newby, Dan., Watkins, Curtis. (2019) The field guide to emotions a practical orientation to 150 essential emotions. Available on Amazon & Kindle 
2. Newby, Dan. Nunez, Lucy. (2017) The Unopened Gift: A primer in Emotional Literacy
3. Newby, Dan. Nunez, Lucy. (2018) 21 days to Emotional Literacy: A companion workbook to the Unopened Gift. 
4. Marshall Rosenberg founded the centre for non-violent communication 
5. Rosenberg, Marshall B. (2003) Nonviolent Communication: A language of life 
6. Gallup Employee Engagement Survey, www.gallup.com 

Introduction: Jeff Turner is International Director for Facebook working in Dublin, Ireland. He has spent over 20 years in L&D knowing that to be his professional home. He has worked for a number of organisations including Lloyds Bank, BOI, AOL and O2.  He holds a Masters in Performance Management from Leicester University. He has spent the last eight or more years working with Facebook. This conversation illuminated Jeff’s passion for Learning and for making an impact. Facebook’s core philosophy internally is to connect those who have something to teach with those who are ready to learn, making learning Just in time, just enough and right for the receiver.  Jeff discussed Facebook’s values, Focus on impact, Move fast, be open and build social value. These values give freedom and authenticity to team members and leaders. 

Podcast episode summary: This episode describes the role assumed by L&D professionals and their approach to team development at Facebook. It also shares the research conducted by Facebook of 24 Teams across EMEA  showcasing the most pertinent qualities/characteristics of high performing teams. The research team along with the support of Professor David Clutterbuck discovered eight characteristics, which were described in the show. The following bullets highlight the conversation elements of this important episode. 

• Change is a constant, people need to be out of their comfort zones to learn and have an impact- his question “when was the last time you volunteered to go outside of your comfort zone? 
• Teams are complex adaptive systems a pattern illuminated by David Clutterbuck consultant to Facebook. Understanding this concept can help teams be more connected and productive 
• There is a big difference between team facilitation and one off interventions and team development. Jeff and his team focus on the latter to support teams
• There needs to be a modicum of tension for the team to get any real value from an interventionist approach. “the truth lies in the tension” 
• Jeff and his team understand and appreciate that in order to be of any value they need to be willing to be fired to do Team Development. 
• Jeff is cognisant of the degree of change his teams face and is mindful that some team development methodologies are too linear to be meaningful. 
• He sees team development to a process of working with the team over 3-12 months and not a one off workshop or intervention
• Facebook conducted significant research on their HPTs ( High Performing Teams) with the help of Professor David Clutterbuck. He helped Facebook decode the essence of teams and determine their  “secret sauce” He named 8 distinct qualities that support success and performance. 
• He likened the 8 to a wheel with 7 spokes and a leaders confidence at the centre.  The seven spokes include, Hiring the right people, managers and leaders setting goals at the right level, a positive view of failure, working to individual strengths, Trust that teams mean to deliver, change is like breathing, Enjoyment for the work and the people and finally confidence of the leader. 
• Facebook does use a diagnostic for teams focusing on 3components, Purpose, People and Practices. 
• Not all teams can access the service provided by L&D which is why they have developed a sort of self service offering a diagnostic and exercises as well as a repository online
• The L&D team at Facebook have developed their expertise to support teams, they use their weekly meetings as places for supervision and learning together. 

 

Quotable Quotes: “You have to be willing to be fired to do Team Development at FB” 

“The truth lies in the tension” “Change is like breathing” 

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

1. Reinventing Organisations by Frederic Laloux. 

Introduction:  Daniel Wolf is the President of Dewar Sloan, a consultancy group with expertise in strategy & Governance. Daniel advises executives and governance leaders on the direction, integration, oversight and execution of strategy. He is the author Strategic Teams & Development, a field book for People Making Strategy Happen. He is also the author of several other books including, Prepared & Resolved, The Strategic Agenda for Growth, Performance and Change. 

 

Podcast Episode Summary

This episode explores the value of making a clear and practical case for strategy as a team sport, with talent built for the intentions and challenges of the organisation. The raw ingredient or material for Strategic Teams is talent housed in what Daniel terms Talent Blocks and Beams. This podcast takes a deep dive into Daniels book and his wisdom about teams. 

 

Points made over the episode

• Daniel has always enjoyed a curiosity and craving for different experiences in different companies to see him fashion a Strategic & Governance Consultancy Practice called Dewar Sloan. 
• He works best as an organiser & designer of teams, as a Coach co-ordinator of teams and as a Provocateur of teams & Individuals 
• As Provocateur he sees his role as helping others to step up to express their strengths and to engage with others in ways that might seem like conflict but are in fact catalysts for the work. 
• The Gift/Pain trade-off of working with really difficult people is the value they can provide. The challenge is to sit in the discomfort long enough to appreciate the value this person might bring to a project and or to partition this person from the team is he/she is too destructive without having to “off board” them. 
• The Rationale for writing this book came from appreciating what Strategy, Talent and Culture means for an organisation and how these three concepts hang together. 
• Strategy is not something you do once a year or is a form of thinking 
• Strategy is the whole body of thought and behaviour that surrounds the formation of strategy such as the direction, focus and choices a company wants to make, the integration effort this requires including thinking about all of the processes, systems, resources, capital, networks & people that enables a company deliver on its strategy and then to complete the execution or action and impact necessary to deliver. 
• The Constraints and Disconnects with Strategy are many
• Most companies have a strategic plan but it is a rare company where people can explain it. The complexity of all of the moving parts in an integration plan means acceptance of the realisation that there is never being enough. Organisations are dynamic and complex, resources are never complete. 
• Organisations are remarkably blithe about holding people to account for execution. 
• Talent blocks and beams are the raw material for Strategic Teams and Development. Many of us can quickly identify the six intelligences/capacities that comprise the talent blocks, technical, analytic, creative, resource, problem and relational. 
• The beams are, what are often considered the biggest complaints made by organisations of their people, he soft skills they see lacking. 
• Talent Beams include Individual Talent Beams such as self-awareness, contentment, character, self-governance, confidence, moral compass, resilience, motivation and attention 
• Team Beam Development alludes to social intelligence, role awareness, maze sense, influence, perspective, engagement, conflict management and context appreciation 
• These talent blocks and beams ask of an organisation to recognise the details of their talent in the blocks they have available, the significance and context of where the beams need to be developed.
• Culture is two things. It is the companies foundation and principles that guide everyday thought and behaviour and it is the companies expression of these foundations and principles , where people come together to learn, engage, develop and grow and advance together the principles and foundations of the company to deliver on its strategic agenda. 
• The book is about three things; The Strategic Agenda that makes sense to people, the talent blocks and beams that fit with the strategic agenda and the culture built on foundations & principles that are routinely and truly acted out in micro expressions of thought and behaviour daily. 
• This synchronicity is denied by the lack of a leadership mentality. There are four levels of Leadership. Individual, Group or Team, Enterprise and Social or Systemic. 
• What gets in the way of Group or Team Leadership is the old premise that Leadership is housed in one heroic leader. A new form of thinking about leadership would have leadership taken up in different roles, formal and informal by the team. A collective effort is harnessed when everyone assumes leadership for the well-being of the team. 
• Mindsets that could be missing to make this symphony work; one where people forget the dynamic and complexity of organisations today. A mindset that is not ready for change, is not anticipating change or accepting the ubiquitous nature of change. An expectant mindset is needed. Similarly while much is said of resilience, a mindset of resilience is the notion that as a principle we are engaged, steadfast and resolute to persevere & be flexible.
• Organisations have 10 or more needs and two stand out for Daniel in this conversation. One is the need for organisations to have a very active developmental laboratory for talent, individual and collective. The second is the idea that organisations need to think differently about their structure. They should embrace the idea of an eco-system of teams rather than the traditional vertical model of layers and spans of control with white space in between, that is the traditional organisational chart. 
• This latter need suggests that an organisation would have to dissemble the traditional constructs of organisational life, the innovators dilemma, and prize a system comprising talent housed in teams. It would also have to acknowledge and mine three different Leadership temperaments, Compliance, Integrator and Discoverer. 
• This thinking unnerves organisations and it is where opportunity lies. 

 

 

 

Resources shared 

 

 

• www.dewarsloan.com 
• Daniel Wolf; Strategic Teams and Development 
• Prepared and Resolved as well as The Strategic Agenda for Growth, Performance and Change. 
• The Innovators Dilemma, by Clayton. M Christensen
• Mindset by Carol S. Dweck 

Introduction: Andrea Linehan is listed as one of the top 30 most influential Marketeers. She is a regular speaker at conferences and universities on subjects such as Marketing, Branding, Financial Inclusion, Social Entrepreneurship, Fintech start-ups/scale-ups and many more. After 10 years in Oman she returned to Ireland to join, as CMO, a FinTech start-up  called GRID Finance.  After 5 years she joined Currency Fair. Currency Fair Enterprises and Assembly Payments merged in April of 2021 to form the new company called Zai. Andrea holds a BSc(HONS)in Finance and is a Postgraduate of the Chartered Institute of Marketeers. She hold an MBA from Trinity College Dublin and is a Chartered Management Accountant. 

 

Podcast Episode Summary

This episode explores the Merger of two scale-up companies, Currency Fair Enterprises and Assembly Payments, and the work involved in bringing two top teams together. Conscious of the anaemic success rates of merged entities Andrea shares how her company and especially because of her CEO Paul Byrne, committed the time, multiple workshops across a diverse population of representatives to get aligned on the fundamentals: Purpose, Mission, Vision, Attributes and Personality. This work was completed against a backdrop of business as usual, Covid and the regulatory/legal machinations of combining two entities. Much of the work was completed over zoom. 

 

Points made over the episode

• Andrea shares how she started her academic life studying computers but by year three discovered she needed to pivot to Finance and Accounting. 
• Andrea initially figured she would join one of the big four but after exploring what these entities might mean she joined Aer Rianta and a role in the Middle East 
• She moved to Oman without a job and quickly found her footing. She found herself too in Oman. She was shaped as a woman and learnt so much about different cultures 
• Fintech found Andrea. When Andrea returned to Ireland, after 10 Years in the Middle East she was curious to know what direction to take her career. She chose to do an MBA at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. 
• She was fortuitously introduced to the two founders of a FinTech start-up by her Professor, Eoin O Neill of TCD. 
• She joined the FinTech company called GRID Finance and worked there for five  years
• Andrea then shares the story of the merger of FinTech Currency Fair, where she joined as CMO and Assembly Payments, made in part possible by the investment of Standard Chartered Ventures. 
• The Merger was announced in April 2021. 
• Andrea describes how the Merger made two scale-ups slow down when so much else about the company was moving at pace. 
• Two macro forces, The Merger process and Covid meant a lot of moving parts and added complexity. 
• All of this work was happening over zoom 
• The two top teams, the task force and many colleagues had to build trust over zoom
• The success of this process was in large measure down to the willingness of the companies to take the time to form a task group and do the work necessary to peel back the layers to determine what really mattered for each entity in terms of values, mission, visions, attributes &personality 
• The two companies, Currency Fair and Assembly Payments realised they were enormously aligned.  
• A proposal made by Andrea to the Board to look at the Branding for the merged entities made these various conversations meaningful and possible. 
• The process involved bringing the two top teams together along with representatives from both sides of the business from different parts of the business to form a task team. 
• Importantly the two entities did not go at this work alone and instead brought in an independent expert from Human Dynamics to support the work. 
• The new company name emerged as Zai. 
• This first piece of tangible work completed by the two merged entities instilled a lot of confidence for the future. 
• Andrea shares what the work entailed. 
• The work to create a Minimum Viable Brand. Work was completed on creating a value set and company characteristics. The Human Dynamic expert, Adam, helped align the values set with a potential North Star or Purpose for the company. 
• Multiple conversations and workshops were had to iron out inconsistencies, fears, concerns and areas of mistrust.  
• The members had to be willing to refine their work several times over many workshops and this process, where people showed up and were vulnerable sharing their concerns helped people understand each other’s drivers/motivations, personalities and thinking and helped forge a team identity. 
• Laughter was a big factor and contributed to the success of the project on zoom. 
• Time for these workshop was preserved by respecting some non-negotiables included blocking out time, the “Golden Hours” of 7am to 10am in the morning. 
• After two years of working together via Zoom, Travel to Australia served to foster relationships further. 
• The Zai Leadership team met in London last week. Despite the obvious distractions of needing to work on a strategy and road map, the team was disciplined enough to spend the majority of time getting to know each other. 
• The Human Dynamic Expert flew to London to join the team for the week. 
• The team revisited the Mission, Purpose, Values, work of the previous year to assess it for its currency and fit for purpose. 
• The team used Hogan Psychometrics to get to understand each other better, to appreciate the gaps in personalities and needs each person had and to consider what that might mean for the team. 
• Two things stood out as making this work possible. 

1. The CEO Paul Byrne wholly believes in the work of establishing Vision, Mission, Purpose and Values to build a foundation from which to operate. 
2. The team itself was hand-picked by Paul for their commitment, passion and interest in working together as a team. 

• Andrea loves the work of professional development and did not expect to go on a transformational journey of her own. Over the week she was with the top team. she discovered, surprisingly, that she had a trust barrier she did not know existed. 
• Andrea believes the trust factor on teams unlocks so much. Finding a way to be in conversation with your colleagues about Trust is important. 
• Andrea did not envisage she would be so proud of the culture that Zai is creating and she is excited to embark on the next piece of work to bring an Employee Brand to life. 
• The company will certainly be busy in the near future. Zai expects to enter 7/10 new markets. It also expects to develop several new products and to grow its employee base from 200 to 450
• A busy few years ahead. 

Resources shared 

• www.hellozai.com
  

Introduction: Geetu Bharwaney is the founding CEO of Ei World. Geetu’s specialism is the advanced application of emotional intelligence which focuses on the awareness and development of emotional resilience & the associated micro-skills of understanding, managing and switching emotions. Geetu, is recognised as a thought leader & speaker and is a prolific author. Her chapter in The Practitioners handbook of Team Coaching expounds her approach. She is also renowned for her book on Emotional Resilience: how to be agile, adaptable and always perform at our best. Published in 2015. 

Podcast episode Summary: Geetu Bharwaney introduces us to a framework developed by Professor Vanessa Druskat & Dr Steven Wolff, a methodology employed by Ei, that helps teams understand the characteristics of outstanding team performance and the work necessary to cultivate this level of performance through the rules of engagement within a team. She further explores the human dimension of teams and the core emotional & social needs of a team, belonging, shared understanding and control, that have now become primary since Covid-19. Geetu litters the episode with vignettes, words of wisdom, takeaways as well as Ei’s framework that make this episode a must listen. 

Points made throughout the Episode: 

• Geetu’s career was highly influenced by her own struggles with Cancer and her need to explore the intersection between health/emotional wellbeing/life patterns & general lived experiences. 
• Outstanding team performance is first served by getting 3 fundamentals in place, setting clear goals, having effective meetings and clear roles and responsibilities
• Research shows that these 3 fundamentals while critical only amount to average performance. 
• To move the needle, outstanding team performance can be achieved by first understanding and then developing 9 team norms. 
• These 9 team norms sit under 3 categories which include; Team members as individuals with each other, The team as a unit and the Team with its stakeholders 
• We can think of these norms as expectations and when well delivered can achieve outcomes such as Psychological Safety, A strong sense of belonging and an ability for robust dialogue. 
• By managing the emotional dimensions of a team, the team is effectively building a culture with very specific sets of norms. 
• The individual category: Team Understanding, Addressing Unhelpful behaviour on a team (different from individual feedback) and how to demonstrate caring on a team
• The team as a unit: Review the team in terms of its process and achievement of intended outcomes (not outputs), Support expression on the team, Building Optimism and Solving Problems Proactively
• Team with its Stakeholders: Understand Team Context & proactively build external relations. It is important to get at the perspectives held by the team & others in terms of how they are doing against all of these norms. This engages dialogue on the team 
• Everything is VUCA. We are in an accelerated mode and we need to cut through the noise to get at what is meaningful and at the heart of true performance. 
• One practical tool to employ with a team is the idea of exorcising team ghosts, the ghosts of a team’s history, the ghost of the Leader, and all of the ghosts that are in the way of a team being clear about how they want to work with each other
• This exercise normalises the ghosts on teams and makes the undiscussables discussable. 
• Tools like the one above help free and also release the many pent up emotions that exist on teams 
• Ei’s approach with a team starts by getting clear on the business imperative and then moving to the pains experienced by team members. Ei, then moves to educate the team on the Emotional Framework explored above and it helps the team to quickly benchmark itself and then chose the work. 
• A more in depth approach is detailed in Geetu’s chapter in David Clutterbucks book, The Practitioners Guide to Team Coaching. 
• Covid-19 has brought the human dimension of teams to the foreground. 
• What was known about the core emotional and social needs of a team is now centre stage. Three core needs include belonging, shared understanding and control or the autonomy to have a modicum of control in a very uncertain world. 
• If more Leaders can understand this human dimension they will be in better service of a team
• A reset is needed if we are to explore our collective trauma and psyche on teams. 
• It starts with the self. Selfcare, Self-reflection and self-responsibility – means put self -first if we are then to tend to others 
• The ART of self-leadership means building self-awareness, resilience and then my contribution in the team. 
• Geetu, implores us to mine the opportunity 2020 has afforded the planet-don’t act with yesterday’s thinking, instead use the wisdom gleaned in 2020 and the wisdom we already know to rich dialogue. 
• Now is the moment 

Resources 

1. Team Emotional Intelligence Framework https://www.eiworld.org/team-coaching/
2. Geetu’s book “Emotional Resilience: Know what it takes to be agile, adaptable and perform at your best” and Audiobook https://www.eiworld.org/store/
3. Dr. Geetu Bharwaney’s company website, Ei World: https://www.eiworld.org
4. Accreditation in Team Emotional Intelligence framework: https://www.eiworld.org/teams-accreditation/
5. Bharwaney, G, Wolff, S.B. and Druskat, V.U. (2019). Emotion and team performance: team coaching mindsets and practices for team interventions. In Clutterbuck, D., Gannon, J. et. al (Eds). Practitioner’s Handbook of Team Coaching, Chapter 13, pp 192-209. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
6. Bharwaney, G. (2015). Emotional Resilience: Know how to be agile, adaptable and perform at your best. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education.
7. Bharwaney, G. (2009). Coaching for emotional intelligence in international business environments: Challenges and opportunities. In G. Abbott, & M. Moral. (Eds). The Routledge Companion to International Business Coaching.
8. Susan Fiske; Social Cognition: Selected Works of Susan Fiske, 2018  

Introduction: Tony Melville is co-owner of Dialogix with Sarah Hill his business partner.  Dialogix facilitates powerful conversations across boundaries working with top teams globally. Tony Melville is a former Chief Constable of the UK Police Service  where he spent 34 years of his career. In 2010 he was chosen to lead the National Transformational Change Program for the entire UK police service. Tony is skilled  in behavioural change and organisational interventions, hostage negotiation and crisis management.

Podcast episode summary: Tony appreciates the skill inherent in productive conversation and how being unskilful as a Leader working in organisations can lead to harm. This conversation ,by way of understanding Structural dynamics and dialogue , deconstructed & demystified the often-nebulous nature of our conversations to provide a lens for seeing what is or is not taking place. Tony described the first level of structural dynamics and explained dialogue to show that in combination we can have very different conversations on teams. 

 

Points made through the episode: 

• As a hostage negotiator Tony valued the importance of face to face communication and more importantly skilful communication 
• He also realised the harm unskilful communication can have on organisations and the people who inhabit them 
• Important to grasp insight on self, your behavioural repertoire, adopting a mindset that allows for the collective wisdom to shine and the nature of complex systems 
• Structural Dynamics helps a person understand their preferences in communication, what they might avoid and why and where that story started. 
• Structural Dynamics reveals, by way of the four levels David Kantor describes in his theory of communication , the structure of what is happening in a conversation. 
• It is a complex theory, but it is also easy to comprehend. Level one comprises four action stances, Making Moves, Follow, Oppose and Bystand. All four are necessary in a productive conversation and the use of one or two can lead to inaction and worse dysfunction on a team 
• Being able to read the room, decipher what is happening, notice what is missing, see where participants are getting stuck is a fantastic skill for a leader /team member to possess
• Dialogue is a shared enquiry, a way of thinking and reflecting together where people suspend judgements, voice their ideas and respectfully listen. It is infinitely more generative than debate, winning or being preoccupied with solo runs or monologues. 
• Dialogix approach is to conduct behavioural profiles with individuals on teams, interviews and interventions that typically run over a period of time to allow for real behavioural change
• Useful resources to consider as a leader/team member include David Kantor’s book “Reading the room” Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together by William Isaacs and The Tso of Dialogue by Sarah Hill and others just published. 
• Leaders need to unlearn the habitual use of skills and practices that got them to their new role and instead focus on what the organisation needs of them now. Leaders need to develop and grow to fulfil needs of new roles. 
• Tony gave examples of what he had to unlearn, skills that proved very effective as a detective & hostage negotiator were not the same skills required as Chief Constable 
• Important to recognise there is always a hierarchy in systems and organisational life no matter how seemingly flat. 
• In Policing it is often much more evidenced by way of for example the symbol of the police uniform. People can and were extremely deferential. To get at more oppose in the organisation , necessary for the order of change required Tony and his top team needed to change and create a safe place for people to feel OK to challenge. 
• Fear is real in a hierarchical situation and important that fear is addressed, and safety is cultivated 
• Get practiced at noticing conversations, start noticing your own team meetings, who is making moves, who is following, who is doing the oppose and is there anyone offering a bystand? Notice the quality of the conversation when any of these actions are missing. Adust accordingly and notice the results. 
• At its simplest if anyone or everyone could grasp the concept that in any conversation having these four action stances improves the productivity of the conversation in terms of decisions, discussion and alignment. 
• Find the time to pause and slow down to get perspective 

Quotable quotes “Finding the way to bring the stakes down for you & others is likely to lead to better interaction, decision making & productive conversations”  

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

 

1. Kantor, David. Reading the Room: Group Dynamics for Coaches and Leaders 
2. Isaacs, William. Dialogue and the art of thinking together 
3. Hill, Sarah ,Lawrence, Paul. The Tao of Dialogue 
4. https://dialogix.co.uk 

Introduction: Amy Edmondson is a renowned expert in the field of Leadership and Management.  She is the Novartis Professor of Leadership & Management at Harvard Business School where she teaches courses on Leadership, Organisational Learnings and Operations Management on the MBA and Executive Education Programs. She is a rigorous researcher and prolific writer. Her books on Teaming:  how organisations learn innovate and compete in a knowledge economy, Extreme Teaming: teaming where you are exploring teaming in dynamic organisational environments and her latest book the fearless organisation: creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning innovation and growth are all must reads. 

 

Podcast episode summary:  Amy’s latest book The Fearless Organisation: Creating Psychological Safety in the workplace for learning, innovation and growth is the focus for this podcast episode. Amy expertly guides us to understand what  Psychological Safety is, why it matters and what it takes to build in organisations. She shares that Psychological Safety is an enabler and affords organisations a real competitive advantage in a knowledge economy . She also shares that it is incredibly rare. Amy explains why and discusses some of the organisational learnings she writes about in her book. 

 

Noteworthy points of discussion

 

 

• Amy started by sharing her real interest in workplace learning. She stumbled on teaming and psychological safety in her field -based research

• Psychological Safety describes a climate, technically an interpersonal one where we size up our environment and assess whether it is safe enough to speak up on work relevant content at all times. 

• Psychological Safety matters because we are engaged in knowledge- based work that relies on our interdependence, creativity where we have to use our brains to think and co-ordinate together

• The messy and constantly changing nature of work means that it is necessary to speak up or the work will suffer

• “Excellence rests on our willingness to come forward” 

• We have two jobs at work, our job and then the job of looking good

• At some unconscious level all of us are deeply afraid we will be found to be inadequate. The fear may be trivial and unfounded if we were to pursue its logic but as humans we don’t -we act as if we could be fired. 

• Psychological Safety whilst a competitive advantage in organisations is missing because it is hard. Our default state for humans is to be a little afraid and to hold back for fear we will be judged

• The research shows that it is easier to find places and organisations where Psychological Safety does not exist than ones where it is healthy. 

• NASA is an example shared in her book where an engineer had a supposition that something was not quite right with the shuttle but felt he could not speak up because he could not substantiate his findings. The result was a fatal tragedy. 

• In another example Amy shares how, Pixar cultivated a rich culture of psychological safety. It took a dedicated institution of processes, structures and norms to make speaking up easier. 

• Leaders behaviours and attitudes often erode Psychological Safety; the belief you are supposed to know and its cousin, you have to be right making  it difficult for others to want to participate. 

• Amy describes some antidotes and practices for Leaders

 

-Be explicit about the nature of the work, the inherent uncertainly and the need for ingenuity and teamwork 

-Create explicit structures and norms 

-Enquire more, ask genuinely curious questions 

-Respond productively in other words be conscious your response has implications for the future participation of your colleagues. 

 

• Amy advises leaders and members of teams to keep mindful of what is at stake -consider why your work matters. She also suggests that Leaders force themselves to be curious because if you adopt a curious mindset you will ask questions, you will learn, especially if you listen. 

 

Resources mentioned on the show

 

1. Amy C. Edmondson, Teaming: How Organisations Learn, Innovate and Compete in the Knowledge Economy
2. Amy C. Edmondson, Extreme Teaming: Lessons in Complex, Cross Sector Leadership
3. Amy C. Edmondson, The Fearless Organisation: Creating Psychological Safety in the workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth. 

Introduction: Marsha Acker is a professional facilitator and executive coach with 25 years of experience. She is the founder and CEO of TeamCatapult, where she uses systems thinking, structural dynamics, dialogue, and agility to help teams collaborate and align with  greater clarity, purpose, and vision. Marsha is also the author for an upcoming book called; the Art & Science of Facilitation. Marsha lives in the USA and works globally.

 

Podcast episode summary:  In this episode Marsha shared how she bridges the use of Systems Thinking, Structural Dynamics, Dialogue and Agility in her work with teams. We explored her thinking on Facilitation and the 5 core beliefs she holds about Facilitation that comprise her stance. We talked about collaboration theatre and the work it takes to get a true collaboration. Marsha is a huge advocate for Facilitation and Team Coaching and she shared her definition between both disciplines. She left our conversation reminding us of the art of conversation & how like Margaret Wheatly the art is often undervalued for real & lasting change.

 

Points made through the episode:

• Marsha has two degrees in software engineering and she has made her own journey from the very technical world to the world of Leadership
• She is still conscious about building the gap between developers and users of content and that informs her work with teams in a systemic context
• Systems Thinking. Dialogue, Structural Dynamics and Agile is the thinking she uses to inform her approach to client engagements
• Dialogue and Structural Dynamics enable to movement towards wanting agile and systems sight.
• Many teams that she works with notice the ground hog or mini groundhog conversations with which they are engaged. Dialogue principles and structural dynamics often provide the gateway to true collaboration
• Many ways that Leaders unwittingly sabotage collaboration. She calls this collaboration theatre. Wanting difference but acting in similar ways.
• Oppose for example is one of the moves you can make in structural dynamics and is part of healthy dialogue. Many teams avoid the discomfort of oppose or are primed not to use it. This makes for lopsided conversations and often poorly thought through conversations or ideas for decision making.
• Marsha’s book is really about the stance Facilitators take in the room. There are five beliefs that Marsha explains & expands in her book.
• So much of facilitation is an inside game. A good facilitator gets very familiar and comfortable with the 5 beliefs inherent in facilitation
• Marsha claims that 21st century leaders need to become artful facilitators and coaches of teams
• Our distributed nature of work, the networked societies in which we live mean there is a lot more complexity of which to make sense. Facilitation by leaders allows for differing voices, inquiry, innovation and collaboration
• We have to disrupt the narrative about what it means to be a leader. Leadership of course still has a value it is just operated in a different way.
• Marsha is invited into team systems when teams want to “up their game”, are high performing and want to continue on the same trajectory, have a stuck challenge, are having ground hog day conversation and require support to shift their patterns and where organisations are moving to an approach where more facilitation and coaching is required of Leaders
• Marsha shared her distinction between Team Coaching and Facilitation.
• Team Coaches can often get tripped up between the use of both or either.
• Marsha stressed the importance of upfront conversations with teams, speaking to all of the voices or members of the team and contracting well.
• Supervision is important to be able to unravel the complexity often met on teams
• Team Coaches can have their own blind spots/agendas/preferences and biases that can get in the way of pure team coaching
• Marsha now values the notion of emergence & innovation in the moment where previously she might have preferred neat team designed approaches. Important to be able to rely on support mechanisms for the many issues that can present on teams
• Important to remember that teams are generative, creative and resourceful and even in the greatest of perturbance can find their own answers. Teams have what they need already.
• Marsha reminded us of Margaret Wheatleys work and her book “Turning towards each other. Like Margaret, Marsha believes that human conversation as an ancient art has the power to cultivate change.
• We can as leaders come back to the beauty of connection, to value collaboration and authenticity as well as vulnerability and still be leaderful.
• Being vulnerable and Leaderful are not mutually exclusive concepts.

 

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

 

1. teamcatapult.com
2. M,2020, The Art of Facilitation: How to lead effective collaborations with Agile Teams. First Edition, Free 1st chapter can be downloaded on Marsh’s website
3. M. 2002, Turning to One Another
4. B; Transforming System Blindness into system sight U-tube clip
5. F. 2014, Reinventing Organisations

 

Introduction: Covid-19 struck like a thunderbolt and has thrown the world upside down. Many are still reeling as we grapple to right side for a new order. All of us have been forced to wake to a new reality, to pause and immediately assume a virtual reality for most of the population. Teams have been beset too. I noticed my immediate reaction was to want to support. I got into a frenetic productivity race with myself to convert my programs to be available online, to support teams think and be virtually minded, to reach out to my many clients to offer help. I was simultaneously feeling the underbelly of anxiety of worry. Would my small business survive? I only stopped when I read a very compelling article in the Chronicle of Higher Education written by Aisha Ahmed, an assistant professor at Toronto University. On reading I exhaled. I realised I too has succumbed to a  maladaptive response of delusion and denial to the enormous change I was battling. I stopped my frenetic productivity goals and stepped back. Instead I chose to do something I knew I could and decided to put out a series of podcasts dedicated to teams going through this unimaginable period of change.

Podcast episode summary: This introduction episode is my introduction to a special series of podcasts for a limited period to support teams through Covid-19. I intend to interview 18 guests I have already interviewed on the Game of Teams Podcast but this time they will gather in a panel format. I will host 6 conversations to be published over six weeks starting on the 1st of May. I will interview 3 guests to comprise my panel. I intend to follow the schema introduced to me by Aisha in her article.  The six episodes will be chunked down into 3 segments. 

 

1. EP1 will speak to  our current situation and the challenges teams are facing through Covid-19. I intend to interview Dr Krister Lowe, Dr Melissa Hughes and Alexander Caillet as my guests for this episode. 
2. EP2 will speak to the emotional overwhelm & communication issues we as humans have and continue to experience by virtue of Covid-19 and what this means for teams. In this episode I will interview Dan Newby, Dr Paul Lawrence and Sue McDonnell
3. EP3: This episode will discuss the mental models or mindsets teams need to adopt to thrive. I will interview Fin Gould, Dr Sari Van Poelje and Jennifer Britton. 
4. EP4: As we shift to accept our new normal what are some of the Leadership challenges this crisis poses and how can adapt or practice for difference? I will interview Dr Ruth Wageman, Dr Simon Western and Connor Brennan 
5. EP5 will consider how we begin to embrace our new condition. What does this mean for teams and Leaders? How will business respond? In this episode I will talk to John Baldoni, Richard Boston and John McCusker
6. EP6: Bringing it all together. What is the one team response? How do we embrace our new normal? What is the opportunity exactly and how can teams move forward? 

 

Points made through the episode: 

• It is normal to feel so discombobulated. This is a seismic shift. 
• We are moving on the change curve of a magnitude many of us have never experienced. 
• Aisha Ashmad helped me stop and catch myself succumbing to the seduction of productivity as an antidote to denial and delusion.
• We are going to go through 3 stages which requires of us to 1. Find Security, 2. Find new mental models and 3. Embrace the opportunity for creativity & innovation that this change provides 
• The six panel interviews are my offer to the world vis a vie teams and Covid-19 

 

Resources: the following include the resources I alluded to in this episode. 

1. “Why you should ignore all that Coronavirus inspired productivity pressure” Aisha Ahmad, Associate Professor Toronto University -The Chronicle of Higher Education March 27th 2020 

Introduction Craig Lemasters former CEO of a $5bln Fortune 500 subsidiary Assurant Solutions, is an author, entrepreneur, investor and board member with more than two decades of success in executive leadership positions. He is now CEO of GXG an advisory company dedicated to helping other senior leaders get unstuck on the major growth challenges to their businesses 

 

Podcast Episode Summary

This episode illuminates what it means for organisations and in particular top teams to get unstuck with respect to the major business challenges they face. Craig shares his deceptively simple formula and steps to help others get unstuck. Wisdom is a combination of Knowledge and Experience and when businesses face into growth outside of what is core they often fall short of critical wisdom Craig helps readers and clients appreciate there is an alternative to being stuck. The first step on the journey is humility. This conversation explores not only the methodology but the many themes about Leadership, Biases, Stereotypes and Patterns that keep us stuck. The book is littered with gems of wisdom, models, knowledge sources and references to critical and timely research. The book is 108 pages long and while seemingly short is anything but.  

 

Points made over the episode

• Craig Lemasters now runs a company called GXG, an advisory boutique to help organisations get unstuck on the major growth challenges to their businesses. 
• He started his company 6 years ago and after working with several clients it was suggested he write his methodology in a book. This book is called Unstuck, how to unlock and activate the wisdom of others 
• Craig defines wisdom as a combination of Knowledge and Experience 
• He shares that it is OK to be stuck but we have to be willing to admit it to ourselves and have the humility to ask for help. 
• The circle of stuck is an example of the many activities people identify with at work where busy, like the many meetings we have and the many voices we copy in emails etc… is confused with momentum and activity. 
• Leaders have to pick a destination. Strategy is not the destination and not the end game it is only the beginning. 
• By putting B in the middle of a flip chart we can begin the work of identifying wisdom gaps. 
• Craig walks us through the digital transformation challenge he faced at Assurant and describes the process he engaged to breakthrough his self-imposed stuck. 
• It is extraordinary how often people in business at the start of this process deny their current reality. -Humility is key
• These first few steps raise awareness about the number of wisdom gaps a team might face in pursuing a particular growth strategy. 
• Leaders need to address the wisdom gap and very often that wisdom is housed in personas outside of the business and often in unrelated industry’s.
• The importance of humility and being able to hold the truth are some of the lessons Craig shares from his experience working with organisations willing to explore his methodology. 
• Leaders still suffer many biases and stereotypes that keep them away from considering this methodology. 

• The belief “ I should know”
• Not realising that the job of Leadership is to make choices and create a culture that lifts people up
• An over identification with self interest
• A capacity deficit to dialogue 

 

• GXG source and locate advisory boards full of people who have the necessary wisdom to advice boards. This is a critical part of his methodology and it works because these people do not have an agenda but have the credibility and knowledge to impart. 
• There needs to be an instance of candid conversations, conversations without internal wrangling and agendas for his process to be a success. 
• Boards were originally conceived to support Leaders with operational issues they now assume a far greater governance role. Some of Craig’s clients are now developing shadow boards to get at the required wisdom necessary to compete in a VUCA world. 
• The last chapter of Unstuck focuses on the idea of accessing Joy at work. Craig Lemasters sees no reason why we cannot be happy and lead dignified lives at work. 
• Covid-19 has taught Craig a few things that we would like to see continued. 

• Know people more than just knowing about them. 
• More priorities does not mean better. As Leaders we need to de-stress people by making better and tighter choices so that fewer priorities are appropriate 
• Flexible working is a paradigm that has been shattered and proven to work 
• Let’s stop the game of 10 year plans and instead focus closer in and execute. 

 

Resources shared 

1. Lemasters, Craig. Unstuck: How to Unlock and Activate the Wisdom of Others, Front Edge Publishing, 2020 
2. Collins, James C. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap & Others Don’t. New York: Harper Collins 2001
3. Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. Think Outside the Building: How Advanced Leaders can Change the World One Smart Innovation at a Time. New York: Viking 2013
4. GXG. www.gxg.co

Introduction: Alison Maitland is a writer, speaker, advisor and coach. She is the co-author of two previous books, Future Work and Why Women mean business. She is also a co-author of the book we illuminate here on this show called Indivisible: Radically rethinking inclusion for sustainable business results.

Rebekah Steele is a business strategist, innovator and speaker with deep expertise in Diversity and Inclusion. Rebekah spent two decades in the corporate world including as a senior leader in Fortune 500 Companies. Rebekah launched her consultancy focussed on the intersection of diversity, inclusion, and human centred design thinking. Rebekah employs her signature D&I innovation labs and distinctive ecosystem design process to support leaders bring progressive strategies to life. Rebekah is also a speaker, a senior Fellow and Council Director with the Conference Board.

Podcast Episode Summary

This episode put simply explores the idea of radically rethinking inclusion for sustainable business results. Alison and Rebekah make the case that inclusion is a business driver and offers so much more to organisations who can connect the demands of a widening  stakeholder base as well as in advancing solutions to the many systemic challenges society faces.

Points made over the episode

• The question how can organisations do better with respect to Inclusion, motivated Rebekah and Alison to bring their collective wisdom, their research and knowledge to write their book called Indivisible: How to radically rethink inclusion for sustainable business results
• Leaders are not questioning why inclusion matters but they are frustrated by not knowing how to define Inclusion, how to cultivate it and how to measure its impact
• Alison and Rebekah developed a whole new approach, an eco-system approach that they describe in their book to help leaders address the gap between the promise of inclusion and the practice.
• Radically rethinking inclusion means that organisations need to be much more ambitious in their approach to building inclusion at work. The challenges organisations are facing made more pronounced by virtue of the War in Ukraine, Climate Change, The Pandemic, The systemic inequities highlighted by Black Lives Matter, have amplified the need for a much more ambitious approach to inclusion.
• Where do organisations start? First off organisations must recognise that Diversity and Inclusion are distinct, are two different concepts that are complimentary
• Diversity is about the vast mix of different individuals, their experiences, talents, perspectives and the ways you harness this collective superpower is through inclusion
• Conventional approaches to inclusion are too narrow to harness the potential of this collective superpower.
• An expanded view of inclusion is about employing a strategic eco-system that you could liken to a traffic management system such as a roundabout to ensure safety outcomes. That system is much more than how drivers feel or behave but includes road signage, signals, licensing, penalties and maintenance.
• Many myths prevail about inclusion and some include the idea that results can be achieved by using piecemeal approaches. Others include the replication of best practices used by other organisations that in fact fail. An example of such is implicit bias awareness training
• Organisation set up inclusion practices as optional if Inclusion is not indivisibly linked to business outcomes, profitable growth and business decisions
• Simple solutions to inclusion like asking for a silver bullet do not work, instead a rigorous and practical eco-system is required.
• Overcoming conventional approaches is critical especially when ever widening stakeholders are demanding resolutions to societies inequities.
• Unless Leaders can break through ineffective piecemeal initiatives where inclusion is glossed over and is disconnected from the heart of the business then organisations will never reap the benefits inclusion provides as evidenced in the research.
• Businesses are facing huge challenges such as Artificial Intelligence, Climate Change and now War. To find sustainable innovative solutions requires more thinking and from a greater pool of heads.
• Indivisible talks about 3 P’s – Performance, Preparedness and Purpose to get at inclusion and an inclusive work environment.
• Organisations can fail to recognise market opportunities as evidenced by an example of a tech company whose design failed to consider left handed people and people with smaller extremities, mostly women.
• A whole approach works. Alison and Rebekah describe their eco-system model and approach used in organisations.
• Integration looks like people being rewarded for inclusive behaviour, behaviour that helps fulfil business goals. Employees are really astute at including alternative perspectives and calling in others views. It is important to paint a picture of what an inclusive environment looks like.
• Schiphol airport is an example of an integrated inclusion eco-system at work described in the book.
• There are many unintended and often invisible systemic biases at work in organisations, organisations who might ordinarily consider themselves inclusive. Consider the case of Carla a case described in the book.
• The book was written for all functions in the organisation and often it is the case that particular functions, such as procurement, are delighted to know that they can consider inclusion in decisions and thinking
• Teams can start by creating a really safe environment to discuss what might be being excluded on their teams. Important for teams to be really present so that they can readily start to notice the ways they are invisible to excluding people, ideas etc.
• Create Psychological Safety through the practice of crafting team agreements and expectations of each member. Discuss how inclusion and inclusive practices could achieve the teams purpose and goals.
• The 10 enablers of inclusion housed in three clusters; connection, common cause and opportunity goes down well in organisations
• The team can look across these 10 enablers to see what they are currently doing well and what gaps could be managed to create a consistent culture of inclusion
• Practices such as listening without interruption,  collaboration equity such as that provided by a company called Powernoodle and using or instituting a role for a person to notice barriers to inclusion on a team are all ways to further the dialogue on inclusion.
• One of the main points of the book is that inclusion is about everyone and everyone is responsible for making inclusion happen.
• There are many useful resources provided in the book to help people navigate this important topic. They include; the Inclusive Eco-System, 50 practical actions stakeholders can take, innovation metrics and a questionnaire as well as a free guide for Indivisible readers to create action circles and further their knowledge and insights on the creation of an inclusive workplace.

 

Resources shared

https://indivisible-book.com

Indivisible: Radically rethinking inclusion for sustainable business results by Alison Maitland and Rebekah Steele.

 

 

Introduction: This show illuminates the challenges facing leaders and teams as they move further into the 21^st century. The challenge becomes how do we work with the future and how to we work in systems. Professor Peter Hawkins shares his research and argues the case for a revolution in how we think about teams, how we think about Leadership and how we operate as Team Coaches. Professor Peter Hawkins is a professor of leadership at Henley Business School, Visiting Professor University of Bath, and the University of Oxford Brookes and Chairman of Renewal Associates.  He is a leading consultant, coach, writer and researcher in organisational strategy, leadership, Culture change and team and board development. He is a prolific writer and author of many best selling books and papers in the fields of Board and Team Coaching, Leadership and Change. His books include Leadership team Coaching (3^rd Edition), Leadership Team Coaching in Practice and Coaching, Mentoring, and Organisational Consultancy a book he co-authored with Nick Smith.  

 

Podcast episode summary: This conversation started by talking about eldership, beyond leadership and how we enable others. He spoke about how important and critical it is for teams to think in terms of collective leadership. He opined that Leadership development is still stuck in the 20th-century building 20th-century leaders rather than 21^st century Leadership. Heroic Leadership is dead long live the team is one of the many articles we discussed to shape a conversation around the need for collective leadership. 

 

Noteworthy points of discussion

• The days of the CEO being the only point of contact with the various interfaces of the organisation are over –it is a collective job
• In the next five years, organisations are going to be employing fewer people, but the number of people they are partnering with will increase – how to get at collective leadership across boundaries? 
• Increasingly leadership is moving away from how to lead “my team”, “my function”, “My organisation” and more about how to partner well
• Brexit is an example of doing it wrong- How PM May spent two years in a win/lose framed argument asking the wrong question
• MIndset  change required to think in terms of living on multiple teams simultaneously 100% of the time
• All challenges lie in the connections between interfaces and not in the parts
• The Pace of Change is such that strategizing and managing changes is a perpetual process
• It is the purpose that creates a team and not the team creating a purpose
• Teams must ask “what can we uniquely do that the world of tomorrow needs?”

 

Peter described his model: The 5 Disciplines of successful Team Practice

• Discipline One –Co-Missioning: Ensuring a clear commission for the team and contracting on what it must deliver-The WHY
• Discipline Two- Clarity: What can the team do together that is added value in service of the declared purpose. Here the team articulates clear team KPI’s, Objectives & Roles –The WHAT
• Discipline Three-Co-creating: - How the team will be together, team agreements, norms etc. 
• Discipline Four- Connecting: Engaging with all stakeholders
• Discipline Five- Core Learning: Building individual and collective capacity to be future fit. 

 

Several case studies and clients were referenced in this episode where Professor Peter Hawkins described his approach to working with Executive Teams and Boards and their nested systems.  

 

There needs to be a revolution in coaching and as team coaches, we need to “get out of the closet” and stop thinking with the boundaries of the team. 

 

Resources: the following includes the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

1. Hawkins,P. (2017) Leadership Team Coaching, Developing Collective Transformational Leadership Kogan Page 
2. https://www.henley.fi/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Research_Report_-_Tomorrow_s_Leadership_and_the_Necessary_Revolution_in_Today_s_Leadership_Development.pdf
3. Hawlins,P. Leadership Team Coaching in Practice 2^nd edition, Kogan Page
4. Hawkins,P., & Smith,N. (2013) Coaching, Mentoring and Organisational Consultancy; Maidenhead, Open Press University
5. Hawkins,P. Creating a Coaching Culture. Maindenhead, Open Press University
6. Youtube video about  the Five Disciplines
7. Systemic Team Coach Training Diploma Training Program with the AoEC:  http://www.aoec.com/individiual/courses/systemicteamcoachingdiploma/ 
8. Hawkins,P. Beyond the heroic CEO, an article written for Henley Business School, www.henley.ac.uk/people/person/professor-peter-hawkins/ 
9. https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-hawkins-b27177/
10. https://www.renewalassociates.co.uk 

Neil Scotton is an award winning Coach, Writer and Consultant and also a co-author of the acclaimed book “The little book of making big change happen” Neil is a Chartered Engineer, A fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, FRSA, an NLP Master Practitioner and a Professional Certified Coach (PCC with the ICF) In 2011 he founded the One Leadership Project with Dr. Alister Scott, an organisation that enables teams untangle complexity, unlock innovation, bring people together,  clarify strategy, provide structure, strengthen self belief by unleashing passion. They do this in a very real way.

 

This particular episode spoke to the human condition that craves connection and the need in people to connect with their world, communities, organisations or work places and themselves in a meaningful sense of oneness. Neil shared his own philosophy, his passion for human transformation and the conditions necessary to make big change happen. He shared that catalysts are those who make big change happen often greater than their job title says they should  because they surround themselves with 3 teams, a work team the doers, a support team often comprised of family and friends and a team of influencers. This episode is packed full of ideas, questions and Neil’s model the 5+1 for teams as well as a parting challenge. Listen and be inspired.

 

Noteworthy points of discussion

• Neil made the journey from Chartered engineer working on building large Cryogenic plants and pressure systems to working on human transformational change. He described how his own epiphany on Leadership happened as a works engineer
• Great leadership is not about being great but bringing the greatness out of others. We know this we simply forget.
• Important to ask the right question not look for the solution
• The one Leadership Project where big change happens focuses on cultivating a one-team mentality in a one organisation serving a one planet.
• Important for Leaders to be at one with themselves. Part of the human condition is to be in pieces. Neil and Alister work at the relational level with all members of the team both as a collective & on an individual level.
• Catalysts very often surround themselves by 3 teams, a doing team, a support team and an influencers team
• Importance of engagement on teams. Often by asking the question “What do you stand for?” can yield energy and passion for the work. Organisations have to ask if there is anything standing in the way of people being able to think for themselves to enable the leader with-in
• 5+1 model for team leadership means 1. Having a Purpose that is clear and compelling, and is connected to the teams everyday meetings, 2. How the team works together. Think about the John Adair Venn Diagram. How much time is focused on task, the team or the individual? 3. How are you engaging with others, your stakeholders? 4. Culture and how do we embody work? And 5. Results, are the  results the team is making connected to their stated purpose
• More appreciation needed on teams to evoke flow and forward momentum. Think in terms of working beyond self. When teams can think beyond self great stuff happens
• Important to reveal the team to itself, the dynamics but also the stuff that is going on. “What’s going on here” is a great question to help the team see their reality and get out of the trance of everyday stuff.
• Neil shared practices that he and Alister routinely do on teams, pair work, reflective practices, ERA, Encouragement, Recognition and Reward helping people get good at giving and receiving appreciation.
• Neil described the ways learning does not happen well in organisation and how their approach is integrative and often light touch.
• Neil is impacted by our ecology and the world in which we live. He is keen to help share his thoughts on the systemic issues we are facing. His thought leadership piece for Coaching at Work will be headed Earthquake, Chasm and Puzzle.
• Finally by way of an anecdote Neil shared how we are all human, wanting to be heard, to be safe and to give back. When you meet people in a human way everything changes.

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

1. https://enablingcatalysts.com
2. The One Leadership Project
3. Scotton, Neil and Scot, Dr. Alister, (2017) The little book of making big change happen
4. https://www.linkedin.com/in/neil-scotton-4667018/
5. https://coaching-at-work.com

 

Introduction: Sue McDonnell is an Irishwoman working in Sydney Australia. She is an Executive Coach, Team Coach, Facilitator and Energy alignment practitioner. Sue holds a degree in Sociology from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, a Postgraduate diploma in Business from University College Dublin, Ireland and she is also a qualified psychotherapist. 

 

Podcast episode summary: This episode is a fascinating listen into the life of a Practitioner who is able to be vulnerable and open and as a consequence raise the consciousness of her clients. Sue McDonnell shares her approach to team work, speaks to real issue of trauma on teams and how she helps teams heal. She discusses dialogue and how she helps teams connect their being with their doing. Sue is honest about subjects like feedback, real conversations and our capacity to be truly honest with each other. This episode is packed with stories, anecdotes and practices that are practicable. A very real conversation I hope you enjoy

 

Show highlights:

 

 

• Sue shares how she was a naturally sensitive child and was almost born into facilitation 

• She has an amazing manager in Eircom in the guise of Yvonne McWey who helped Sue really hone her passion for OD and Leadership Development 

• Sue decided to pursue a course in psychotherapy in a guest to really understand why for her she could not work with just anyone. 

• Journey from Head to Heart is often the longest one

• Sue suffered from Chronic fatigue and in her healing discovered that she was living in indecision which was tearing her. Teams often live the same way

• In Australia there is a cultural need to be mates. Teams often chose harmony over conflict with the shadow being that often team members are not able to have the robust and necessary conversations for change. 

• In Australia she finds that there exists a hierarchical and deferential with respect to power in culture s

• Sue employs the Adaptive Leadership Approach to her team work and approach she learnt from Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linksy in the US. 

• Their approach is to give the work back to the team and this message is essential as often teams project onto facilitators their need to be led. 

• Sue often starts a team engagement by simply asking “where do we begin?” 

• Upfront part of contracting is vital, and Sue conducts it with every member of the team. She is looking for the members appetite for the work, their measure of accountability and also a relationship so the work can start on a sound footing 

• Often our work as Coaches is to raise the heat on teams so that the team can see their stuck patterns and or have the conversations that are necessary

• Sue is very conscious that as facilitators and as coaches we need to do the work on ourselves first. 

• Team often have a vague idea of why they need support but often that comes by doing the work as is often the case with individual coaching 

• Sue used to work with teams where it was not prudent or wise to call what she was doing as mindfulness or meditation, now both of those terms are ubiquitous. Today she is seeing trauma in evidence on teams and in the work place and she imagines that in 5 years’ time that word will be commonplace too. Stress/Redundancies/ Fear/ are creating the conditions for the ego to be live. Competition between members is often acute. 

• Sue works on an individual basis with team members when she is doing team coaching and as part of that work, she helps members understand their biases/beliefs/behaviours in terms of their story of origin. This then helps more mature conversations on the team. 

• Biggest problem people have is believing their thoughts. She helps team members reframe, get curious, be conscious and she does that through skilful questioning. 

• Sue shared some of her work on energy alignment and the practices she employs to help teams operate from a more open space. 

• She spoke to the continuum between selfless to selfish and how she encourages members to become self-full 

• Our work as coaches is to help team’s step back, reflect and pause which can often be counterintuitive in a fast -paced world. 

 

• Sue questions the veracity of feedback when she opines, we are not very self -aware or emotionally intelligent. She is keen to read a recent HBR article called feedback is flawed. 
• Much of our work is about disruption today. She was working with a team whose purpose it was to help other organisations disrupt themselves but curiously that same team had a very high score in “pleasing” the message is clear we need to be conscious of our own drivers/biases and patterns before we can help others. 
• Sue does use tools and she respects that many tools serve a useful purpose and for her are gateways to more powerful conversations. She uses Lominger, the Leadership Circle and Kantors dialogue model. She explained how she helps teams get confortable in the use of her models and tools 
• What she particularly loves about Kantor’s model is that for her it is practical, easy to teach and an approach that is non-judgemental but enormously helpful for teams to see their communication patterns and preferences. Often by its use Teams get comfortable in their increased appreciation for difference and the consequence is not only behavioural change but a growth in psychological safety. 

 

Quotable Quotes: “Journey from the head to the heart is often the  longest” “Our role as facilitators is to first wake up” “working with teams from success to significance” “95% of people come to work to do a good job” “often our biggest problem is believing our thoughts” “there is nothing more protecting that an open heart” 

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

 

1. The practice of Adaptive Leadership, Tools and tactics for changing your organisation and the world by Ronald A, Heifetz, Marty Linksky and Alexander Grahsow 
2. The Leadership Circle, a profiling tool for Leadership Development www.leadershipcircle.com 
3. Lominger Assessment Instruments and the Lominger Competency Model 
4. Kantor Institute www.kantorinstiute.com 

Introduction: Sarah Hill is the co-owner of Dialogix and she describes herself as a dialogue facilitator and behavioural dynamics interventionist. The focus of her work is on tackling some of the toughest and most demanding behavioural challenges. She works with CEOs and senior leaders from a range of different cultures and countries.  She designs & delivers accredited training programs on structural dynamics, generative dialogue and childhood story. Sarah is the Author of “Where did you learn to behave like that? A coaching guide for working with Leaders. She has also co-authored the book The Tao of Dialogue. Sarah holds a PhD and has published articles on collaborative research working with invisible realities & issues of integrity through the lens of Structural Dynamics. Sarah’s ambition as a thought leader is to help Leaders recognise that their unresolved childhood stories not only adversely impact themselves but the teams and whole systems of which they are a part. 

 

Podcast episode summary: This episode explores the methodology of Structural Dynamics and Childhood Story. Sarah explained how the behavioural components of structural dynamics can help a team understand their communication patterns and resolve some stuck patterns. She distinguished between the 4 levels of structural dynamics and how practical a model it can be for teams. She also explored the very real invisible realities of childhood story and how shadow behaviours in high stake situations can impede constructive dialogue. Between us we shared our own childhood stories and the work it takes to re-narrate internal narratives. 

 

Noteworthy points of discussion

• Sarah ‘s interest and passion for change and generative dialogue came after a chance meeting with an organisation called Prison Dialogue. There she witnessed the power of these processes to exercise change even in tough cultures. 
• Exposed to the work of David Kantor and her PhD “Separate Lives silenced voices” is a theme through all of her work 
• Sarah referenced the podcast I had with Dr. Paul Lawrence, episode 13 where he explored Structural Dynamics with me 
• Sarah illuminated the 4 different levels of Structural Dynamics

 

• Level Four: relates to your childhood story that is often invisible

• If I were to self-assess using this model, I might consider that I am naturally inclined towards Move/Random/Meaning/

• Sarah shared her story about being uncomfortable with oppose having been in a family dynamic where oppose was used and where for Sarah as a child it was dangerous to oppose or be opposed. That was her internal narrative 

• In high stakes we can react in ways that are embarrassing & shaming. Often something else is playing out behind the shadow behaviour, a fear or old narrative that is now not helpful

• The work involves understanding what happens in high stakes, what are the triggers that induce shadow behaviour? what are the themes or fears that lie behind our behaviour in high stakes? what are some of our formative experiences? The work is not to dwell on the story but to recraft a new narrative, knowing that the story does not change

• Structural Dynamics helps to make the invisible visible. It provides a way to understand what might be appearing in conversation and why often there exist model clashes between individuals on teams or in organisations 

• Structural Dynamics is very proactive. It equips teams to change the nature of their discourses by having a common language to explore together. 

• Sarah is of the mind that the work of Structural Dynamics and the associated behavioural change work necessary is still not central enough on teams 

• Sarah appreciates that to do the work teams need to slow down to speed up. 

 

 

1.  Website:www.dialogix.co.uk
2. The Tao of Dialogue by Paul Lawrence and Sarah Hill 
3. Reading the Room by David Kantor 
4.  Dialogue the art of thinking together by William Isaacs 
5. Where did you learn to behave like that? A coaching guide for working with Leaders by Sarah Hill 
6. Where did you learn to behave like that Podcast series on itunes 

Introduction

 

• Marva Sadler is the COO of Coaching.Com and has a reputation for her extensive expertise in strategy creation, leadership development and executive coaching.  She is an experienced business executive and consultant with over 25 years leading strategic and operational growth programs for small to mid-sized organizations
• Marva has also served in the nonprofit sector as Program Director for People Helping People, an employment success program for low-income women, and as a Board Member and strategic advisor for No More Homeless Pets of Utah. 
• Ms. Sadler is a certified Theory of Constraints Jonah.

Podcast Episode Summary

 

• This episode shares wisdom about Leading a team and the kinds of principles that help teams be great together. Applying Civil Discourse, being human and kinder with each other in our interconnected world are themes that feature across his conversation. 

 

Points made across the podcast episode 

 

• Important to remember that Marva, in addition to the career highlights shared, is also the mother of five adult children 
• Biggest lesson Marva learnt from her own family is that a Leader is not without honour except in her own family. 
• Marva recognised that her children saw her as a parent or “just my Mum” and that kept her grounded, maybe humble but with a sense of perspective. 
•  In a previous role, as owner for a small historic woollen blankets manufacturer, reproduction Civil War & Revolutionary War Blankets, Marva was invited to lobby Senators and Congressman. The lobbyist she was with was surprised that Marva could “hold her own” Marva makes the point that they are human too. 
• Her attitude in communication even in the face of authority is to treat people with respect. 
• Marva was doing very well in her previous role in a Tech Strategy Consulting firm and one of the main reasons she moved to WBECS to become CEO for a coaching company was because she believed there was a serious deterioration in civil discourse. 
• She asked the question, “who are the people most likely to change the way we speak to each other”? not politicians because they are part of the problem and not the religious because they have lost influence. Her answer was businesspeople and all of the people they touch. 
• The people most likely to influence businesspeople are coaches. The vast majority of coaches believe in and practice civil discourse. 
• The reason Marva got back into coaching was the desire that more/all people speak to each other more kindly. 
• WBECS firmly believe in the value of Team Coaching. It is a significant trend in the industry and the next step in the evolution for coaches. 
• Coaches are needed to help Leaders; businesspeople think about how to do things together. We can multiply our impact when we work with teams. 
• Teams are the building blocks for how organisations get their work done. 
• There are many approaches to team coaching not all of them coming out of coaching perse, for example agile principles housed in agile development and agile management of teams. 
• The project management institute or PMI are doing a lot of work around how to make teams more effective. 
• Important to remember that team coaching is not coaching more people at the same time. It is not about coaching individuals on a team but the team itself, the interactions between team members and the spaces between. 
• There are skills to be developed in working with interactions on the team and the spaces between that require skill development. 
• Marva has always been convinced in the efficacy and productivity of teams. She has always worked to help individuals on her teams to work collaboratively, use the collective wisdom on teams to be more creative
• The process of collaboration on teams gives you answers that were not even visible to individuals on teams. 
• There are techniques and methods that team coaches teach teams that help teams illuminate how they are showing up as collective. 
• Marva shares a story from her own history and family system that demonstrates the power of team. She regales a story about her own daughter and how in one year, participating on a soccer team, the team went from success to demise based on the different approaches of two different coaches, one believing in individualism and stardom and the other believing in the wisdom of collective endeavour. The individualist approach meant the girls were pitted against each other and the result was failure. 
• The question is then what does the team and or team of teams accomplish together by being willing to put their egos aside. 
• The most important techniques include the systematic view of the ecosystem in which the team resides. 
• Objectives come from discerning a balanced set of objectives in appreciation of stakeholder needs. 
• Marva has witnessed a shift in strategic focus from maximising shareholder value, or managing future cash flow, to maximising stakeholder value in a balanced manner. 
• The former approach was in humane. It did not value the environment or employees for example. Marva goes on to question the value of this former approach and she makes the case for Team Coaches, whom she believes take a broader more balanced and systemic approach to team and team of team value creation in terms of the balanced outcomes they help teams create. 
• Marva has empathy and sympathy for Leaders who preference 1:1 management of their team members. It is not however the most effective approach a Leader can take such as encouraging interaction among team members, encouraging collaboration and innovation across team divides is critical to team leadership. Getting people not just to row in the same direction but in creating new directions in which they can row together. 
• Marva is a big believer in rewarding the outcome and the people who contributed to the success of the outcome, she is also a big proponent of letting the group recognise individuals if that is important. 
• The Team Leaders job is to recognise the group or team and the productive behaviours they display. 
• Culture is critical to create the conditions where conversations can be had “in the team room” with such psychological safety that team members can disagree, including disagreeing with the team leader. To do this we need to transcend our individual egos. 
• We can sometimes believe in our own publicity and Marva refers to Marshall Goldsmiths book “What got you there won’t get you here” using behaviours that when overused become weaknesses.
• Most leaders suffer from ego fragility. Do team leaders really mean it when it comes to disagreeing with them? 
• One of the best things we can do as Team Leaders is to model the behaviours that support radical candour. How do we admit our mistakes, apologise in front of team members when we have lost our equanimity. etc.
• It is a hard principle to model vulnerability when often admitting you are wrong can be seen as career limiting. 
• The construct that you have to be “on” that you are performing, managing everybody’s expectations, is exhausting. 
• If we can give people permission to put down that holographic image, they are projecting to just being real would be so liberating. This directs energy to the right things instead of reputation management, image management or ego management. 
• Social media is a place where we curate our images.
• Marva helps her teams focus on the business outcomes they need to achieve together. It is also important to spend time and energy on working out what are we trying to achieve as human beings with each other. 
• Marva spends time working on the team by asking questions like “how did we do in this meeting?” 
• The ROI of establishing relations with team members and between team members, understanding each other, cultivating commonalities and strengths within teams is almost infinite because it gives people the opportunity to navigate the concerns they are dealing with. 
• WBECS was already remote and had learnt a lot of techniques about operating teams remotely. It believed in the principle of providing support and care for individuals and so it was able to double down on the kinds of supports needed during the pandemic. Marva shares a story of where this principle came to life with a colleague suffering Covid-19 with her daughter at home. 
• The pandemic taught us many great new norms, caring for each other, considering ourselves as whole persons not just professional suits etc. Some of the threads of these new norms have been loosened. Some people continue to compartmentalise their lives. 
• Marva believes that some coaches are prone to a form of compartmentalising too. We are taught Civil Discourse in our profession as coaches but sometimes we forget those same principles in other domains of our lives. 
• Marva shares a story “on herself” to honour the title of this podcast called confessions from the field of Team Leadership, where she was not happy with the way she behaved and how she caught herself and ultimately responded. 
• Marva shares the labyrinth involved in communication between complaint and solution, pausing & reflecting on experience and evidence, choosing how to respond, managing the space between stimulus and response.  Victor Frankl. 
• The marriage of WBECS and Coaching.Com means greater access by coaches to technology and the use of a coaching management system and greater access to coaches by enterprises. In the middle Coaching.com hopes to offer a marketplace not just for coaching learning programs but products and services that coaches and companies can use. Principles U is an example of such a product being developed by Coaching.com 
• Coaching.com is building a responsive and dynamic eco-system, with a desire to raise the global standard of coaching by exposing more people to the value of coaching by lifting the quality of coaching and by bringing all things coaching into one space. 
• Coaching.com is coaching methodology agnostic. It is an open platform where all kind of coaching, coach training and affiliations are welcomed. 

 

Resources shared: 

Website: www.coaching.com 

Introduction: I interviewed Karin Hurt a Leadership consultant and CEO of Let’s Grow Leaders,  author &  Inc Magazines list of great leadership speakers and David Dye, President of Let’s Grow Leaders, author and speaker. Together they have written 5 books the latest of which is called Courageous Cultures: How to build teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers and Customer Advocates.

 

Podcast episode summary: This episode was recorded against a backdrop of racial tension and the very real & ongoing threat of Covid-19 across the Globe.  This episode felt extraordinarily timely as the  need for Courage and a Courageous Culture seems even more important  today when society and organisations need to think creatively and innovatively in terms of how to emerge for a new world. Karin and David shared the auspices of their work and book and shared many great insights & practical suggestions for igniting a culture of courage. 

 

Points made through the episode:

• The mood in Maryland is mixed with many feeling, angry, tired and sad
• Hope is also present as people consider what is important and what needs to change
• David and Karin shared their story and how a mutual interest in Leadership and thought leadership brought them together over work to collaborate on a book which led to them marrying and producing 3 children together.
• We moved then to the work that produced the book Courageous Cultures, to be released on the 28th of July but available now to pre-order.
• The difference between the work conducted by Amy Edmondson in her book The Fearless Organisation and the work that produced Courageous Culture was explored. They really are two sides of the same coin.
• David shared the research conducted by the University of Colorado56% of people will not speak up because they are not credited for their ideas
• 49% shared that they are not asked for their ideas
• “this is the way we always do it” is an answer that prevents 75% of people sharing ideas
• 50% of team members will not share ideas because they are not confident, they will be seen through
• This is the prevalent mindset in many organisations. What is needed is Clarity combined with Curiosity-Clarity that people know the strategic direction in which the team or organisastion is moving and that you really want peoples’ ideas and Curiosity in the way you ask-humble and specific
• An example of a courageous questions might look something like: “what is one thing that is really ticking off our customers?”
• We are often wired to focus on inputs rather than outputs. What is the most important thing here?
• Start with a focus on outputs. What best practices are employees currently using for example that we can scale?
• Remember right now there are all kinds of micro-innovations going on as people try to do the best they can in an environment where remote working might be new, minding and teaching children must be done simultaneously and or caring for elderly and sick is happening in the same household.
• David suggested that people are realising that the crisis may last for some time and change is inevitable. Start asking your teams some questions for innovation like; What is one thing that is working?
• What is one thing that never needs to come back once we re-emerge?
• What are we capturing ?and can we convene to capture ideas like this every 4-6 weeks?
• Karin shared the concept of Workaround workshops- convening a meeting to explore ways people are having to work-around stuff when the ideas of doing so are absent or fuzzy- the premise is you declare amnesty and openly discuss work arounds to glean creative ideas that could be scaled or improved
• Why Courageous Cultures? How do you become effective in the middle of a crisis where people are working remotely with all kinds of concomitant pressures? How do you create psychological safety and humility so that people can connect and share?
• What Leadership is working in this crisis? One that shows vulnerability, understands that no-one really knows but together there has to be some answers on which we can draw. Leaders need to; Get real with their own narrative, being open and comfortable being vulnerable and authentic
• Leaders need to show up with curiosity
• Canned messages and over scripted answers will not curry a human response
• David shared some guidelines that support the building of a courageous culture
• Navigate the narrative
• Dance between Clarity and Curiosity
• Respond with regard
• Practice the principle
• Galvanise the genius
• Starting from a mindset of Gratitude is often tough in a world of urgency and distractedness, how do Leaders learn to pause and notice the human in front of them?
• Equally for ideas to spawn it is important that they are well curated. Sometimes idea generators can be clumsy in the communication of their ideas. David and Karin teach the building & the positioning of ideas in their Leadership Program. I-Ideas must be interesting and align with the strategic intent of the organisation
• D- ideas need to be doable.
• E-Ideas need to be engaging-consider how others might respond?
• A- action what are a couple of starters for possible action?
• What most surprised David & Karin in the research of their book was the fact that 56% of people withhold their ideas because they will not get credit for them-
• In closing Karin and David shared that it is important that organisations be judicious about squashing Courageous Crushers, people who bully etc..
• Leadership does not need to be lonely. Find a few people who share your ideas and build a community of practice.
• Build a Culture oasis- people will notice

 

 

 

Resources: the following include the resources I alluded to in this episode.

1. courageousculturesbook.com
2. letsgrowleaders.com
3. Courageous Cultures: How to build teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem solvers and customer advocates by Karin Hurt and David Dye available now to pre-order and on Amazon on the 28th of July
4. Fearless Organisations by Amy Edmondson
5. Winning Well: A managers guide to getting results without losing your soul by Karin Hurt and David Dye.  

 

Introduction:  Alan McFarlane is a Scotsman now living in Barcelona. A native of Paisley, near Glasgow, he studied law in Edinburgh before becoming a commercial litigation partner of a Top-10 Scottish law firm. His interest in business development took him in 1991 to Barcelona where he gained his bi-lingual MBA from IESE Business School before embarking on a long, global multinational career which saw him lead the design and implementation of major strategic initiatives, living and working around the world in places like France, Brazil (where he served on the Latam regional exec.) and Hungary.  Alan is a published author of two books, a book on Egypt post-revolution and the seven moments of coaching published by IESE. Alan collaborates with IESE, Timoney Leadership Institute in Ireland and Human Content, the cutting edge of understanding personality in the workplace. This is the focus of our conversation today. 

 

Podcast episode Summary:  Human Content is at the cutting edge of understanding personality in the workplace. Alan McFarlane works with Human Content and over the course of our conversation across this podcast he brings to life the potential, the human potential, housed in this body of work, a potential that often goes untapped. Alan illuminates what the instrument, B5+ aims to measure, why it is different from other more commonly known instruments and what can be achieved when this human potential is activated. 

Points made throughout the Episode: 

 

• The fundamental drivers for Alan include Freedom & exploration for creativity. 

• As part of his journey into this work Alan shares a story from his past. As a then 16 year old in Paisley Grammar School, Alan won a competition, having come from “the back of the field”, for writing, The Reed Prize for English.

• Alan explains that because there was a large element of creative writing in the challenge he won over the more scholarly classmates. 

• It was well known at the time that Alan was going to study law but after winning this prize no one reflected or guided Alan differently. 

• Studying Law in Edinburgh University proved to be a complete mismatch. He shares that by his second year of study he was down or depressed and the saving grace for him was a membership to the film society at University. This membership allowed him to consume 8/9 films a week and that was his creative escape. 

• He graduated after 5 years and went on to pursue his apprenticeship and again there was no guidance or self-reflection to wonder if that was the right thing to do. 

• Another “saving grace” for Alan, in an ill-fitting career,  proved to be his involvement with the marketing committee at his then law firm. KPMG were brought in to help the firm with a reorganisation and strategy and they challenged Alan on his personal goals and he realised he did not want to be a practicing lawyer anymore. 

• That decision back in 1991,took Alan to Spain where he applied to IESE Business school to undertake an MBA- his best subjects proving to be organisational behaviour, Leadership Communication and Business Strategy. Alan self-confesses to have been blind to the activation in him by of his strength in these subjects and joined an Insurance Company in Spain after his MBA. 

• Alan is not ordered structured or planful notwithstanding the career choices he made in his career 

• Tomas Lovenskiold, the CEO of Human Content advised Alan to leave his employ when his role was being redirected. He told him to “get out” take the check this is not you. Despite this advice Alan stayed. 

• A terminal disease for Alan’s father in law proved to be the lucky break Alan needed. The silver lining from this episode in Alan’s life proved to be liberation. Alan used the back In Scotland to write his first book and to get in touch with his fundamental drivers. 

• Various collaborations later and a meeting with bureau chief of Africa, based in Cairo, of the NYT, Declan Walsh meant that for Alan he finally got in touch with his own fundamental drivers

• Meeting Declan meant that Alan met someone who probably held his ideal role, creative writing exploration and freedom to live and write in many countries. Alan recognised this role could have been for him if he had known or if he had been guided differently. It took 35 years before Alan was matched to his ideal career.

• Alan is now passionate to expand the knowledge of the Body of Knowledge that is Human Content so that people can be activated to pursue their true potential. 

• Alan would like to see a way where people, at 18 or earlier could be given a way to understand their fundamental drivers. The problem is that these drivers, consider them rocks on the ocean floor, are often masked by the expectations of others, situations, social norms, peer  groups or job approximations. You need some way to clear the waves and see the fundamental drivers. 

• Human Content is a complete fit with Alan’s drivers. Human Content is the evolution of the Big Five Factor Model. Alan describes the evolution from the Big Five Factor Analysis 

• Alan names the modern labels for the Five Factors, two which relate to People factors 1 & 2, one where people draw energy from either their inner world or outer world and the other which measures how much people are naturally more compassionate and caring for people or more fact focused & outcome focused, making sure stuff is done at the right time. The next two factors, 3 & 5, style of work area, these include preferences on how we do things and preferences on how we think about things. The final factor measures factor number four measures emotional energy, where people are more present or absent. 

• Human Content is strident to say both side of any factor need to be regarded in equal light. There is no right or wrong way to be. The earlier use of the Big Five Factor model was biased in terms of the right hand side of the factor scales and  measures. 

• To be fully activated means a person’s needs to find a role or career which aligns with the picture created the B5-PLUS  instrument (Given the context in which a person sits) 

• Knowing your fundamental drivers opens up the possibility for a person to tactically manage themselves at work. 

• The scientific approach adopted by Human Content makes it significantly different from other better known instruments such as MYERS BRIGGS, DiSC and Insights. This scientific analysis recognises the uniqueness of each human being. Other instruments are too simple. People are extraordinarily complex and Human Content endeavours to recognise the difference. 

• Personality Research is a largely underdeveloped area and the legacy instruments served a genuine purpose to raise awareness about the differences between people. They did not go far enough in Alan’s opinion and he explains why. 

• Human Content is a well-kept secret because the legacy tools are well established and well publicised. 

• The precision of the outcome that is possible with B5-PLUS makes it attractive for organisational performance. It can drive employee engagement, You can clearly see the fundamental drivers for an individual. The fully explored factor analysis against a normed grouping gives much more exactness for role matching etc. 

• Growth Potential, Employee Engagement, Motivation and Understanding are some of the benefits that come from using B5+ as an instrument of choice. 

• The B5+-PLUS Instrument can be used to support team ambitions, understanding the needed fundamental drivers to succeed. 

• By taking the B5+-PLUS instrument a team discovers not only their individual fundamental drivers but also the nuances between them and the combination effects which means that they will have certain implications for how they are in the work place. This will have implications for what they enjoy doing and what they do well together and how they will interact together, smoothly or roughly. 

• Alan illustrates the impact of the B5-PLUS  instrument by way of a case study. B5-PLUS was used for 450 employees after a CEO decided to do a comprehensive role analysis and reformation. The employees were allowed to self-select their roles as a consequence of the rewrite using the analysis from the B5+ instrument. Customer Satisfaction as a key indicator for this firm went from 53% to 86%

• In another example this time from Norway, Alan shares a story about a hospital where the sickness rate was at 26%- 26% of all levels of the employee base at any one time were not available. The B5-PLUS  was deployed. People were allowed to be re-matched, where jobs or at a minimum tasks were readjusted or where people were reallocated to different departments. In four months after this work was completed the sickness rate fell to 2%

• Societal prejudice can blind us to the potential as expressed in certain kinds of personality or expressions of them. There is bias to seeing certain aspects of the personality spectrum as favourable. 

• Alan advocates that we take the B5-PLUS instrument and then acknowledge what is found. He asks that people acknowledge their fundamental drivers, embrace them and then exploit them for greater satisfaction in life. 

• Alan adeptly answers my question regarding the need often for people to wear multiple hats, say for example in a gig economy. 

• He also helped me be curious about a particular client of mine using the terminology of the B5-PLUS instrument and asked a couple of very pertinent questions that I can now explore with her at a future date. 

• The B5-PLUS is distinctive because of its precision as a instrument. It measures 5 personality factors and the facets that accompanies them in a manner that no other instrument does. There is a fully explored factorial analysis of the factors and facets, an order of analysis on personality that has never been done before. 

• The factor analysis, the design and process involved in B5+ makes it an instrument that is unique and helps others see their uniqueness too. 

• Alan uses his formula or 3 word frame, Acknowledge, Embrace and Exploit to encourage others to become aware of the contents of their individual B5+ report and to act on It. 

• The precision of this instrument allows you to confidently predict performance in the way that other instruments do not. Again this instrument can be used for recruitment and promotion that other legacy instruments advise cannot. 

• Alan used the last few minutes of this podcast to wish that individuals and teams at work could have their uniqueness recognised, and through that recognition for employers to make a conscious effort to match that persons uniqueness to their roles to make people, happy, satisfied fulfilled motivated & fully activated & for the employer to reap fantastic performance and growth. 

Resources mentioned across this podcast 

 

• B5-PLUS Product from Human Content

• B5-PLUS personality assessment from Human Content

• www.web.humancontent.com 

• Linkedin.com/in/alan-mcfarlane-ob546b13

• Novaturia Global SL, alan.mcfarlane@novaturia.com

• www.iese.edu

• The Seven Moments of Coaching by Alan McFarlane 

• Egypt’s Thousand Days of Revolution by Alexander Murray (my pen name)

 

Introduction: Covid-19 struck like a thunderbolt and has thrown the world upside down. Many are still reeling as we grapple to right side for a new order. All of us have been forced to wake to a new reality, to pause and immediately assume a virtual reality for most of the population. Teams have been beset too. Episode one is an invitation to look at how teams can use this big pause to be with what the environment and threat is forcing upon us and to rethink our ways of working.

Podcast episode summary: I spoke with Krister Lowe, Melissa Hughes and Alexander Caillet to hear their thoughts and ideas to support teams through Covid-19. Essentially the panel echoed the sentiments expressed by so many in different systems .We are all experiencing extraordinary levels of uncertainty and anxiety, oscillating between polarities simultaneously. Teams are no different. The panel suggested that teams  need to take stock, to reform & re-norm to  delight in the fact that our current levels of kindness & humaneness is not impacting productivity. There was an  acknowledgement that it took something like Covid-19 to stop 8bln people on a runaway train of 80+ hours of work, an erosion of the planet and consumption and travel at unstainable levels.  The gift of Covid-19 is the opportunity to transform.

 

Points made through the episode:

• It is normal to feel so discombobulated. There is huge variability in our state of minds, oscillating between despair and hope, action and rest, reflection and analysis. Mindfulness practices and centring practices can bring these polarities closer.
• Melissa suggested the book title “Permission to feel” and instead of beating ourselves up or feeling guilty about lack or gaps in productivity to instead get creative about stuff that is good for us right now.
• Remember from our evolutionary psychology that emotions are good for us. They serve, so it is important that we don’t resist what they are sharing as information hits & be with what is needed.
• There is a huge creative force being unleashed -The world is poised and pregnant with possibility. Krister, reminded us of a quote from Laozi- “Our highest virtue does nothing, yet nothing needs to be done, the lowest virtue does everything and much remains to be done”
• By doing nothing right now or very little by staying at home we are actually helping beat Covid-19 and similarly at work or virtually with our teams we can use this pause to think about what needs changing rather than trying to get into endless activity.
• Alexander pointed out that Teams need to first get familiar with the technology of working virtually, then consider the security and viability of various options as well as the ergonomics for remote working. Then teams need to consider ways of working given virtual , the nature of teaming and for a new identity
• There are silver linings to be had from this this extraordinary change, including our appreciation of humanity, the dynamic between task and relationships with a rebalancing of both- it is also challenging some previously unquestioned assumptions like working from home and what that can do for the planet, commercial real estate and a rebalancing of our personal needs
• One norm that is being appreciated by the panel that they wish not to be lost is the idea of slow is fast. How do we relish more with less? Forever forgetting the runaway train of relentless productivity and consumerism to which we were all attached.
• Danger that we will consume zoom like we used to consume meetings. Advice to be judicious with the forms of meetings we chose, to consider phone, email, IM along with zoom. To allow for a default for 15 minute meetings with an option to extend, or to consider ending zoom meetings at 25 mins or 50 to allow the brain to rest.
• Consider Agile practices like Kan-ban and options like Mural for team meetings.
• The panel shared some tips for teams including limiting number of things you attempt to get accomplished in a day, having four hours -worth of meetings in a day for example. Consider boundaries. Consider all the many informal ways people used to connect and approximate them in the virtual space.
• Replicate the physical space in a virtual reality with some obvious adjustments. Balance task and relationship orientation and consider getting support with conversation facilitation.
• Important to keep in mind the huge suffering happening in the world. Many of us with work are lucky.
• We are experiencing a VUCA world on steroids.
• The brain is less able to cope with uncertainty than it is with predicable threats. Aim to bring some structure and control into your daily rhythms
• We are in-between two ports. We continue to need to get stuff done and we have the opportunity to reflect and change. Encourage your teams to get innovative.
• The panel concluded by sharing some wisdom and hope for teams. We will emerge and we will figure this out. We are a creative species so allow for creativity. Teams are the unit of analysis so find a team. Get skilled in conversational facilitation, an imperative to navigate virtual teaming.

 

       Quotable Quote: “the highest virtue does nothing, Yet nothing needs to be done. The Lowest virtue does everything. Yet much remains to be done” Laozi

 

Resources: the following include the resources I alluded to in this episode.

1. “Why you should ignore all that Coronavirus inspired productivity pressure” Aisha Ahmad, Associate Professor Toronto University -The Chronicle of Higher Education March 27th 2020
2. Permission to feel: The power of Emotional Intelligence to achieve well -being and success.

 

Introduction:  Costas Andriopoulos is Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Bayes Business School (City University of London) He is founder of Bayes X, the Cnentre for Innovation and Disruption. He is also the Director of Avyssos Advisors Ltd. an Innovation management consultancy.

Costas was born in Athens, Greece. He was educated in Greece and the UK & prior to joining Bayes Business School, City University of London in 2014, he held posts at Cardiff, Strathclyde, Aberdeen and Brunel universities.

Costas researched New Product Design Consultancies and tech companies in Silicon Valley and was a visiting professor at Said Business School (University of Oxford)

Costas is also an author and his book, Purposeful Curiosity  is the subject of this podcast.

Costas now lives in West London with his wife and daughter.

Podcast episode Summary:  In this episode Costas shares his Curiosity Journey and the work he undertook to understand what it takes to employ Curiosity in a meaningful fashion. We discuss what it takes to be purposeful, the distractions we must refuse, and the permission needed to nurture the “Itch” within us all to follow our passions and execute our dreams. As Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think again shares, Costas’s book “Nails the difference between idle curiosity and a productive drive to discover”. 

Points made throughout the Episode:

 

o    What more can you say about you the person? Costas shares that since we was a child he was a very curious person. He took things apart and his friend was his screw driver. He is very grateful that his parents encouraged this fascination with how things worked, with his curiosity as a child. This same curiosity has taken him to different parts of the world to study and work and by way of it he has met incredibly interesting people.

o    When you show interest in what others do it leads you to some very interesting answers.

o    Costas wanted to become an Architect. Whilst his parents at that time discouraged that path it is not surprising to Costas that his PhD and research focuses on Creative & Innovative organisations, some of whom were design studios and others of whom where Architectural firms. There is something we are passionate about, sometimes we are steered away from pursuing these passions but if you like something so much it will always come back.

o    Costas encourages people to do something about which you are passionate and good. We can follow many topics and we need to understand these topics. Costas became curious about Curiosity and he wanted to nurture that passion and understand what it takes to pursue curiosity purposefully.

o    Because Costas knows Creativity, Innovation and Curiosity are closely linked or brothers he found researching Curiosity to be within his gift.

o    He makes the point that if he wanted to research Rockets he would find it very difficult because he wasn’t very good at physics or related disciplines and most probably he would not be interested in any case.

o    We have to care about something, we have to be passionate and we have to understand the subject to pursue purposeful curiosity.

o    Notwithstanding the fact that Costas has studied Innovation and Creativity when he first mentioned his interest in studying Curiosity everyone he spoke with thought he was crazy.

o    The external voices were really projecting their fears onto Costas about the potential pitfalls and opportunity cost of his project. When we embark on something new, and Curiosity is a new field for Costas, people are going to project their fears.

o    People who surround us normally care for us. They want to protect us from failing and still if we are passionate about something we have to learn to silence these external voices to follow our path.

o    Costas is not encouraging blind faith or reckless pursuits he is taking about projects where you prepare and surround yourself with professionals or people who know something about what you are trying to achieve.

o    To illustrate his point Costas tells us about his new interest in Kite Surfing and how he approached becoming skilful when initially it seemed daunting. In the same way as before external voices tried to dissuade him. He was told of all of the dangers associated with Kite surfing and as before he noticed people were simply projecting their fears.

o    Costas chose a good instructor, he went online to read up as much as he could about safety, essentially saying he did not go to his first lesson unprepared.

o    Being curious about something means you go to your first meeting being prepared.

o    Costas’s motivation to write his book was to research Curiosity and it became his purpose.

o    Purposeful Curiosity is about translating our curiosity into something. We can be curious about stuff, satiate our curiosity somewhat and move to the next thing. Doing this means nothing happens, no processes get better or the community doesn’t benefit etc. It is a bit of a selfish act.

o    Costas noticed he was doing this, his colleagues and others were too.

o    He was curious to understand if there were people who followed their curiosity and executed change, translating their curiosity into a service, a product or a start-up

o    For his research Costas interviewed 60 people from different walks of life, different geographical locations from Japan to California.

o    What Costas noticed was that the people he studied stayed with their curiosity longer. Too often when we are curious and something doesn’t work out we drop it. What Costas found was the opposite with those who were Curious and executed. If something did not work out they became even more curious.

o    Costas describes how when he began his research and project he got so curious his world disappeared and it became like a movement to him.

o    Costas was curious to know how we can help people be more curious, to execute their curiosity and to improve life, communities, solve problems and provide solutions to life questions.

o    It was important for Costas to address the subject of fear in his book Purposeful Curiosity. He admits himself that when he starts something new he feels fear. He is not fearless. Instead however he uses his curiosity to overcome his fears.

o    When he started Kite Surfing in the Summer of 22, he saw Kite Surfers jumping 5 or 6 metres and he was afraid. By being curious he tried to figure out what could go wrong. He developed a list of mitigating solutions. He used his curiosity and questions about his fear to help him move closer to his goals. Fear doesn’t necessarily go away but you can make it become second nature to you.

o    Costas uses his failure to learn, to ask for feedback and to course correct.

o    Costas wrote this book during Covid. It was bemusing to Costas that he chose to do something so creative in isolation because he is a person who enjoys company.

o    Costas explains making fear second nature by saying that the more we do something the more it becomes like skin. We get used to it. He uses the example of writhing his own book to explain this phenomenon.

o    Writing a book is a big endeavour. Writing 300 pages in a year and a half takes commitment, it takes time and over time writing  & pursuing this project of writing a book about Purposeful Curiosity became second nature to him.

o    Costas admits that writing is not something that comes naturally to him, in fact it makes him a bit uncomfortable, because for Costas it is about disseminating his thoughts onto paper for others to read.

o    You have to be comfortable with discomfort.

o    When Costas started writing he was very uncomfortable, it was taking him more time than he thought it should, he was stressed and he was beset with his inner critic asking “will he get it?” but curiously the more Costas wrote, the more time he took he started to get comfortable with his discomfort to the point that he began to enjoy it.

o    Costas never felt paralysed by his fear, he felt energised. He studiously worked to bring down his fear by doing more research, reading books that were close to the kind of book he wanted to write, talking to people etc.

o    To execute Curiosity you have to first give yourself permission to go on the Journey. Do not wait for others to give you the green light.

o    Curiosity leads us to be relevant.

o    All of us have to be lifelong learners.

o    Costas encourages us to figure out “our itch” to take ownership for our particular Curiosity Project. If you have a passion, a curiosity, open a folder, take notes, do your research, have boundaries, don’t be seduced by the internet, there are a lot of smart resources like Udemy etc give yourself permission become a bit of an expert.

o    Costas also notes that when you are starting out, following your itch and learning about your passion or topic you need  to find a Tribe.

o    Ask “who is your tribe” go to meetings, participate & talk to discover.

o    Don’t be afraid. The important thing is to continue learning, to continue asking questions to surround yourself with a Tribe, people who are passionate, different, open and open to being surprised and can add meaning to your project.

o    Costas expands on his acronym Curiosity which neatly describes the qualities of a good team and in this case Tribe.

o    Assembling a dream Tribe/Team is about hiring curious people. People who are Collaborative, Unabashedly passionate about the subject, Resilient, Iconoclastic, Open to outside interests, Urgent and Surprise seeking.

o    What Costas admires in his field and in his career or on his teams are the people who bring you questions. They are not waiting for him to solve for everything.

o    Costas mentions the wise adage “never meet  your heroes or heroines” He did not meet this problem when he was interviewing his 60 subjects or innovators for his research. He was surprised by their willingness to share things. People confided in him which for Costas meant that there was trust. Costas was struck by their degree of interest in his subject, their willingness to ask him questions and to take notes. There was a real dialogue with naturally humble subjects.

o    Curiosity means you have to be able to actively listen. If your tribe tells you, you are not ready you have to be prepared to listen.

o    Curious people can listen, they are present and they are humble.

o    No matter his interviewees were very successful, often monetarily they were also humble. There is always something further to learn. There is always another itch they want to scratch and they know this.

o    Costas reminds us that it is important to listen and to digest the information we are getting. We have to be patient & willing to take our time if we want to reach our goals.

o    We need to be willing to do the hard work. We live in an era where there is instant gratification, from food, to education to romance. Everything is on our Smart Phone and curiously then people complain. The book is not a pill, serving instant gratification & guaranteeing results. It is a guide that invites the reader to put in the hard work, to embrace discomfort and to learn. This work requires commitment, time, enthusiasm and effort. 

o    One of the nuggets Costas shares in his nine essential and practical lessons is the idea of “disciplined serendipity” which he explains using his own example of script writing.

o    When he started his pursuit of script writing he went through the exact process he illuminates in his book. He met fear, his imposter syndrome and all the many ways his mind told him he should not pursue this path-he knew nobody in this field- he did not have a ready-made tribe, he knew he was not professionally trained etc.. Still he prevailed. He put the lessons from his own book to work.

o    Costas put all of his concerns to one side and he started. He bought a notebook and he started to write. He soon got into “flow” a state of immersion where his world fell away. In flow you forget about time and place. It happened to him when he was researching and again when he started to write.

o    Disciplined Serendipity means we can move from one thing to something else and by applying the nine lessons from his book we can become better.

o    Costas has now found his tribe, he has identified an award winning script writer at the University where he works and he is getting the support he requires. In a way Costas developed his own curriculum & applied the lessons from his own book to become better at script writing.

o    Curiously for Costas script writing has helped him in his teaching. In his classes he is helping budding entrepreneurs start their own businesses. An important feature of start-ups is Storytelling. He uses the art of storytelling from script writing in his lectures to help his students tell better and more compelling stories.

o    Nothing is wasted. The time and effort Costas has spent learning how to become a better script writer has translated in him using this learning in his lectures. Many people refuse to start because they fear wasting time, using resources etc. Nothing is wasted you simply have to think about repurposing your efforts, combining your skills and knowledge. There is always something to be gained from curiosity projects 

o    In response to the question “who did you become by writing this book” Costas replied “his younger self” the 10 year old boy living in Athens with his friend the screwdriver.

o    The element of surprise that accompanies us on Curiosity Journeys is very fulfilling, especially as we live in an era where we do not know how stuff works.

o    Whilst I promised Costas that I would use his book to discover my next personal & professional itch he told me that he believes I already have it, coaching and doing this podcast. He is partially correct and I know there is more. His book is worth a reread.

 

Resources shared across this podcast & ways to get in touch

1.     Costas Andriopoulos is the author of Purposeful Curiosity, How asking the right questions can change your life.

2.     https://www.bayes.city.ac.uk/

3.     https://www.linkedin.com/in/costasandriopoulos/?originalSubdomain=uk

Introduction: Dr Alister Scott is the co-founder along with Neil Scotton of a company called The One Leadership Project. The one Leadership Project is a strategy and Leadership firm that supports those making big change happen. Alister and Neil have also co-authored a book called “The Little Book of Making Big Change Happen” This is a book aimed at teams and leaders to inspire catalytic leadership. Alister is also Chair of Cuckmere Community Solar, is a certified coach and holds a Doctorate in Science and Technology policy.

Podcast episode summary: This episode seeks to explore the subject of change and in particular organisational change as teams and organisations face into the  worlds new PAID reality (Pressurised, Attention-deficit, Information Overload ,Distracted) Alister shares how he and Neil help teams make big change happen. Alister shares many gems and useful concepts for Leaders and teams to practice.

 

Points made through the episode:

• The Human race has to adapt we are growing exponentially and pretty soon we will be housing more than 9/10 billion people on the planet.
• How does the human race build its capacity to be in partnership with nature?
• Alister’s mission is to be useful in the realm of big change
• Teams are the unit of currency supporting organisations make big change happen.
• Organisations are being compressed by huge forces of change like technology change, social media, resource depletion, policy change, immigration, globalisation and they find themselves stuck in the middle between these forces for change and their clients and stakeholders wanting them to respond appropriately.
• Big change is upon us, change or be changed. In order to do that Leaders ‘need to be on the front foot, to think, be more purposeful and engaging to inspire and retain the best talent
• Important that teams create and live a shared purpose that is inspiring and beyond self.
• A purpose needs to be clear and the team needs to stay connected to its meaning and let it pull out of the team the required answers to questions, dilemmas conflict that inevitably occur
• Alister describes the model that he and Neil use working with teams in organisations wanting to make big change happen.
• The model comprises six dimensions for making big change and these include

1. Purpose-a clear shared, inspiring purpose
2. Team- a cohesive, committed team with a range of capabilities
3. Engagement- how well are you engaging your key stakeholders
4. Culture-you need a culture that matches the scale of your inspiring purpose
5. Results- you need to be clear about the results you want
6. Inner Journey – you will go on an inner journey that matches your outer journey

• Alister shared how in his work big change requires a big commitment of a team of approximately a year or longer.
• His program involves a diagnostic, 3/4 big team events plus ongoing individual coaching
• Teams are drowning in task; they are not taking the time to think together, and they are not aware of the degree to which they are not focused on team or on the individual.
• Alister described John Adair’s work sharing that teams need to pay attention to task, team and the individual in an evenly distributed fashion
• Alister introduced a valuable concept called ERA, Encouragement, Recognition and Appreciation. Leaders would do well if they build a solid foundation of ERA
• Alister shared some pertinent advice for listeners, especially leaders of teams wanting to change
• Embrace big change, best around big change is through
• Face up to the radical reality we are in
• Build leadership courage
• Notice your fear-based behaviours
• Aim as a leader to inspire and delight

 

Quotable quotes “Thinking something about someone and not sharing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it”

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

 

1. Scott, Alister. Scotton, Neil. (2017) The little book of making big change happen. Available on Amazon & Kindle
2. Kline, Nancy. More time to Think (2009)
3. The One Leadership Project, enablingcatalysts.com
4. Action Centred Leadership by John Adair

 

Introduction:  Oscar Trimboli is an award-winning Author, host of the Apple award-winning podcast Deep Listening and a sought-after Keynote Speaker.

·         Oscar’s third book, How to listen-discover the hidden key to better communication is the most comprehensive book about listening in the work place. Along with the Deep Listening Ambassador Community, Oscar is on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the workplace.

·         Oscar works with Chairs, Boards of Directory and Executive Teams.

 

Podcast episode Summary:  In this episode Oscar shares what he means by the transformational impact of listening, often beyond words, in the workplace. He provides numerous examples of what it means to listen and how. We reference his book across the conversation to illuminate the richness of his research and to expand on the idea that listening is a skill, a strategy, and a practice – a way to balance how you communicate.  

Points made throughout the Episode:

 

o    Who are you? Oscar responded by saying he is really a confused human. He plays many different roles, the role of Grandfather, the role of carer for his Father and someone who loves to hike in the bushlands around Sydney.

o    What motivated you to get into this particular domain, that is listening? Oscar shared 3 stories to answer this question. The first is that as a teenager Oscar required years of orthodontic work and he did not want to draw attention to his features so he became very skilled at asking others questions. The second is that Oscar went to a school with over 23 different nationalities and whilst playing cards teams would tend to form around their own nationalities. Oscar became adept at reading body language. The third story speaks to a seminal moment in Oscar’s career in 2008 at his employer Microsoft. He was part of a larger meeting involved in budget meeting. There were 18 people at the meeting. At the 20 minute mark in this budget meeting Oscar’s boss, Tracy, says “Oscar we need to talk immediately after this meeting” This statement caused Oscar to stop paying attention and to question how he was going to communicate to those that mattered he was about to get fired. Instead the comment altered the trajectory of Oscar’s career and he has dedicated his research and work to decoding the elements of Listening. Essentially his boss said “Oscar if you could code how you listen, you could change the world”

o    That profound insight resulted a body of work where Oscar has coded how to listen and that body comprises 3 books, a quiz a jigsaw game and a playing card game that he runs in many organisations today.

o    The difference between hearing and listening is taking action and Oscar believes he had made a dent in the business of decoding how to listen.

o    What did you have to unearth or discover to know how to code listening? In the moment Oscar had no clue & about 2 weeks later he was asked to audit another budget meeting hosted by the then CFO, Brian. Despite the fact that the meeting proved almost incomprehensible with few people actually speaking, where when Brian spoke people asked clarifying questions, Oscar noticed he was taking a tally of this phenomena and then realised that he as actually beginning  to decode listening.

o    Tracy asked Oscar to code how he listened in order to change the world and what he has used since then to decode how to listen  is the research of deep listening institute, the academic literature and interviews with diverse workplace workers.

o    In all of this work Oscar is trying to make sense of what it takes to help  a person’s listening  move from  simply nodding and muttering to listening to what is not said.

o    Oscar cautions listeners not to try and use a tip they might hear over this podcast on someone that is significant to them to ward against unintended consequences and to make his point he shares a story about his friend Mick.

o    What are the salient features that describe the code of listening?

o    The maths or neuroscience of listening helps people understand why people are not good listeners. The math is as follows;

 

1.     People speak at the rate of 125 words per minute

2.     People can listen at the rate of 400 words per minute

3.     People think at the rate of 900 words per minute.

 

o    What this means is that people can stay in the conversation. Jump ahead and solve or go ahead and judge and anticipate, while they are waiting for the speaker to catch up.

o    Oscar analyses the math and helps us understand that what the speaker shares is 14% of what the speaker thinks and means. Good listeners listen to what is said, Great listeners & deep listeners notice what is not said in the 86%

o    Most of us are dialoguing using the 14% each way and we can get frustrated. If instead a listener remembers that what a speaker says is only 14% of what they think and mean then the listener can move towards helping the speaker elucidate what is in the 86%

o    In teams if you are not taking the time to fully listen this frustration is N squared by the number of people in the room.

o    In the workplace as a listener your job is not to make sense of what is being spoken or thought but to help the speaker express what they think and mean. 

o    As a nugget Oscar shares a framework which he refers to as a listening compass. First he shares that most of us are coded through our educational systems, to listen for similarities. Pattern matching. Pattern matching trains us to listen for similarities and what is divergent.

o    The first question to ask in the compass system is directional to help the speaker say more from their original draft thinking. The question is asked with empathy and genuine curiosity “Say more about that?” This helps the speaker share more about what they are thinking and meaning.

o    The second question works to explore the divergent to help illuminate what else might be considered, different perspectives for example. The question is “what else”

o    The third question is exquisite silence. Silence and listen share identical letters. Silence is like a magnet to draw the speakers meaning to the fore.

o    Silence is a sign of respect, wisdom and authority. A leader can shape the presence of the group or team to listen to each other and not just the active speaker.

o    People can immediately complain that this form of listening will take time when in fact it saves time over time.

o    What are all the ways we assume we listen and we don’t?

o    Listening happens before, during and after the conversation and it is important that as a listener you learn how to listen to yourself.

o    Many of us are not conscious of our own state, the state necessary to be able to listen.

o    Many people are stuck at level one listening, listening to yourself. Level two is listening to the content, level three is listening for the context, level four is listening to what is not said and level five is listening for meaning.

o    91% of workplace listeners are paying attention to a notification that is electronic, some of which are getting closer to our bodies such as our digital watches. We are distracted. We do not know the difference between paying attention and giving attention. We have so many browser tabs open in our mind, we are over flooded and what we want to do is shut them down so that we can give attention and listen.

o    The best tip Oscar can give to those who host meetings it to set the time for the meeting 5 mins past the hour and to run the meeting for 50 minutes, to let people decompress from their previous meeting and be on time for the next.

o    Most people are physically present when they arrive at a meeting but mentally present about 5 minutes after.

o    You can change your state by changing your calendar appointments by 5 mins each side of an hour, by drinking a glass or water and by noticing your breathing and by listening to music before a meeting or conference call

o    Oscar explains why he uses the negative in some of his questioning like asking people to wonder in an exercise “what am I not listening to in  myself” most people are used to listening to the noise so it takes a certain stillness to appreciate what wants to be heard.

o    What are the villains of listening? Oscar, in response to a request from a CEO who wanted to help more in his organisation appreciate the value of listening, did some research to generate a quiz that organisational listeners could take. They based their survey on a few very simple questions like;

 

1.     “what’s the other person doing when they are not listening?”

2.     “What do you struggle with when it comes to listening?”

3.     How do you rate yourself as a listener? And how would you rate others that listen to you?

 

o    It proved interesting that people were able to describe in much greater detail and length what others were doing when they were not listening compared to what they personally struggled with as a listener.

o    Similarly there was a massive differential between a raters self-rating and their rating of others

o    74% of people rated themselves well above or above average for listening and when asked the other way only 12% of people who listened to them rated well or above average. From this analysis the research company were able to build like cohorts which became the Villains of listening. 4 Archetypes emerged.

 

 

1.     People who were unproductively using emotion- they were getting hooked into the story

2.     People who were time or productivity obsessed – they tend to interrupt a lot

3.     People who came across as vague, disinterested or distracted-people who are given the label of lost

4.     A problem solver -they are kind of listening but really they are trying to fix someone -often labelled as shrewd.

 

o    These archetypes are useful to identify the listening behaviours and not used to label the individual

o    Some of the villains are related such as the shrewd and the interrupter they are both time and productivity hungry.

o    Oscar began to talk about a process question in team or group meetings that is often missed. If asked the team and group have permission to check/interrupt respectfully through the course of the meeting to see if they are on track and to adjust as necessary.

o    The question is “what would make this a great conversation” The question is NOT what would make this a great question for you Tara? The reason why Oscar and his team do not add “for you” is because of an understanding about dialogue. In a 1:1 there are always 3 present, the two people concerned and the relationship they co-create between them. Oscar describes it is the speaker, the listener and the dialogue. The question is designed to ask where are we taking the dialogue.

o    In teams it is important to ask this question at the start of the meeting. It is also helpful to ask everyone to jot their answer down on a piece of paper and to indicate a process for sharing as opposed to cold calling on people.

o    This round of asks is not done for the purposes of the host but for every member of the team. There will be times when people drift off, get distracted lose themselves in the meeting and this process can be called up by remembering one or two of the desired outcomes.

o    A good host will notice who is speaking and who is not in a meeting, He or she will determine what role they assume across the meeting. Perhaps roles such as time keeping or note keeping can be shared to increase the listening attention of the group.

o    A potent question to ask during the meeting, not at the end and don’t ask for feedback at the end either because there is not an opportunity to change, is “What is one thing we can we amplify & one thing we can  adjust for the balance of our meeting”

o    This is a technique to get people to listen to each other in a different way.

o    The antidote described above for the person who gets lost is equally valid for any of the four villains

o    Oscar describes what it might sound like for a person who prescribes to the archetype of the drama or emotional listener. They listen for the drama and pull the spotlight over to themselves often to show empathy or connection – if you are this villain ask “where is the spotlight in the dialogue” Is it on the speaker, the listener or on the dialogue. Too much on the listener and it needs to shift, think instead about a third, a third, a third.

o    What happens when the conversations go awry and descends into conflict? In conversation start to notice when people begin to use absolute language such as, “always, never , absolutely, precisely, exactly etc..” This language indicates & showcases the limits of our mental models Oscar shares another story from his experience.

o    Two groups a Finance & Actuarial Group and  sales and marketing Group were trying to agree a pricing structure for their insurance company. The two groups could not agree and began to defend their respective positions based on their understanding of the  organisational structure, incentives, lived experience, educational experience etc.. They could not agree a way forward. Oscars construct is based on the idea that “every model is wrong and some are useful” That is a George Box quote, a statistician.

o    The two groups were coming from very different orientations. In both cases everybody could only see why there model or world view was right.

o    To unpick what was not said, Oscar asked each side to argue for the arguments and rationale of the other. He divided the groups into pairs, where one person from Finance and Actuarial talked with one person form Sales and Marketing

o    The dialogue that ensued was much more energetic and engaged. People were reminded to put up stickies on the wall for information and understanding gleaned in the new conversations. After about 25 minutes into an exercise designed to last longer a person from finance stopped the entire conversation. He told the group that they all had to listen to what had been discovered. Essentially a piece of information assumed by Sales & Marketing to be part of the thinking held by Finance & Actuarial was absent.  

o    The meeting ended early with agreement by both sides. Up until then there had been no attempt to listen for what was unsaid. This is where a group listens for difference rather than similarity as is customary.

o    Many organisations live in conversations and dialogue where they speak from vested interests which has nothing to do with progressing the outcomes of the dialogue.

o    I asked a question that was a version of a level four question to ask how to listen to what is not said so far. I was clumsy and asked a question that was not quite the question I had intended. I really wanted to know if there was anything I had not yet asked Oscar that would be missed by my listeners,  Oscar shared a question that might have served better. He asked “I sense there might be something really useful you could share with the audience that I have not asked into yet?” By introducing the audience we are listening from a different perspective

o    The point here is that for leaders it is important to be conscious of the quality of dialogue, use of words and the intention behind questions.

o    Oscar shared that the two different questions would yield two very different answers one more serving of the podcast listeners than the other.

o    Oscar shared a final story to reveal the power of listening to all the voices in a room . The story of Elaine. This is a story of a team, a top team, working the issue of their growth figures compared to those of their peers. Oscar asked the group to think about two questions;

1.     What animal is our business?

2.     and what are the characteristics of those animals.

o    Most people described the business as some fast moving bird or animal something that was fast and killed. Everybody has spoken except for the CFO, Elaine. The tension in the room was palpable as the CEO was anxious, angry to get to lunch.

o    Oscar invited Elaine to speak with a gesture, an extended arm. She responded by saying. “I thought it was obvious” and she stopped.

o    Again after a few moments and even more tension, Elaine came back and said “I thought it was obvious, I thought we are a snake”

o    The animal, The Snake has negative implications in the west and very different associations in the East.  Elaine explained her reasoning for choosing a snake. She told the group that the business had failed to shed their poor practices & bad systems from the past & that was holding them back from serving their  customers

o    The tension in the room evaporated and a massive dialogue ensued.

o    The CEO admitted they never listened to Elaine. A few months later it was obvious that Elaine had found her voice and she had become a key member and astute commercial leader

o    Oscar ended by asking the audience of the GOT Podcast- what is the cost to the business when you don’t listen to Elaine and or you don’t listen to all the voices in a conversation.

 

Resources shared across this podcast

1.     How to listen- discover the hidden key to better communication by Oscar Trimboli

2.     www.oscartrimboli.com

3.     https://www.oscartrimboli.com/ambassadors/

Introduction: Richard Boston is an Author, Coach & Advisor: Leadership and Team Performance. Richard has written The Boss Factor, ARC Leadership and his latest book Upgrade which he has co-authored with Karen Ellis. Richard has also contributed a chapter to the Practitioners Handbook on Team Coaching. Richard is well respected as a psychologist. He is the MD of Leaderspace and a faculty member of Henley. To my mind he also has a wonderful if not wicked sense of humour.

 

Podcast episode summary:  In this episode Richard shares the key messages from each of his books and spends a generous portion of the episode illuminating the components of his Systems Wheel a tool he has generated to support individuals, teams and organisations deal with systems thinking.  The focus in exploring the systems wheel concerned teams.

 

Points made through the episode:

• Team are complex & Richard is interested in looking at the many patterns often common patterns you see on teams
• Teams are evolving less than we think-as Homeo Sapiens we have not evolved that much
• The book ARC is about Authenticity, Responsibility and Courageousness essential ingredients for Leaders and members of teams, The Boss factor is about your manager, but it is as much about managing adult to adult relationships. Similarly, Teams often fall into unhelpful Parent Child dynamic rather than adult/adult pattern . Upgrade speaks to our respective operating systems and how to upgrade using 4 key capacities, Sense-Making, Perspective shifting, Self-relating and Opposable Thinking
• The Systems Wheel is a good that generates lots of useful questions to help teams make sense of the systems in which they operate.
• The centre comprises 3 concentric triangles. The smallest in the middle is “SELF”, surrounded by “Team” and then Organisation
• The corners of these triangles are marked by 3 core capacities , Direction, Commitment and Capacity- essentials for Teams
• The first ring comprises the 3 disciplines described in ARC, Authentic, Responsible and Courageous- these need to work in concert

The next ring names habits, needs and mindset which can act as enablers or inhibitors on a team

• Needs can encompass a whole range of things from the more prosaic like budget to the more profound, an example of a team that was stuck because it needed to grieve a bereavement on the team.
• One useful tool to explore needs is a psychometric called FIRO-B
• FIRO-B explores 3 needs, Significance, Control and Openness
• Mindset includes Beliefs, Assumptions and Expectations and provide a useful terrain to explore for teams for example “What is this team assuming that limits our flexibility around the direction we are going to take?
• The idea behind the wheel is that you can spin the wheel in any direction and link up the different components on different rings and string a sentence or question such as “what needs do we have to meet to secure the commitment of our board with respect to the direction we want to take?”
• Important for teams to be able to put themselves in the shoes of their stakeholders including the members of the team as many team members are also members of other
• Sometimes it is difficult for team members to admit their real needs – you have to build trust and build healthy conflict to get at the order of commitment that allows for a needs conversation.
• Richard shared an exercise he did with a team in Romania, where the team leader wasn’t a Romanian, but the members were. Each team member shared pictures from each decade of their lives and the stories that impacted them. A profound and very meaningful exchange that helped the team see itself as a collection of humans rather than task completers.
• The outer ring focuses on the macro forces at play on a team, Time, Pace and Exchange. All teams are in flow of time. They have a history a present and a future. All members occupy a place on a team and Richard explored place through the lens of Barry Oshry’s work -what does it say about a team member needs or mindset when he/she is a middle? Exchange is an important concept. What is the give and take between teams for example that limits the commitment each shows?
• Richard shared a number of examples of teams he has worked with sharing some failures as well as one he is very proud of and it cited in the Chapter, he wrote for The Practitioners Handbook on Team Coaching- Southampton FC.
• Finally ,Richard shared his own personal commitment to manage the polarity between contentment and fulfilment. His work now is to thrive more and strive less.

 

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

 

 

 

1. Leader-space.com
2. Boston, R. ARC Leadership :From Surviving to Thriving in a Complex World
3. Boston, R. The Boss Factor: 10 Reasons in managing up for mutual gain
4. Boston, R. Ellis, K. Upgrade: Building your capacity for complexity
5. Clutterbuck, D. The Practitioners Handbook of Team Coaching
6. Reinventing Organisations by Fredric Laloux
7. Oshry,B. Seeing Systems
8. The Systems Wheel: Turning the magic of systems thinking into a practical tool for team coaching, a chapter written for the Practitioners Handbook on Team Coaching by David Clutterbuck and a host of contributors.

 

Introduction Peter Bluckert is the founder of Courage & Spark, pioneers & thought leaders in the Gestalt approach to Leadership Development. He is also the founder and has led and grown four successful coaching & Leadership Development consultancies. Peter is a prolific writer. He is the author of several books & articles including; Psychological Dimensions of Executive Coaching, Gestalt Coaching-Right Here Right Now and Gestalt Coaching: Distinctive Features. He also co-founded the European Mentoring & Coaching Council (EMCC). Peter’s other passion is music and for this episode, he asked the acoustic musician Ed Boyd, band member of Lunasa and Flook to compose an outro to simulate team coaching. I sincerely hope you enjoy both the conversation and this music piece. 

 

Podcast Episode Summary

This episode illuminates what is involved in a transformational team development journey. Peter explores the role of a Team Coach and shares some important distinctions & capacities that Team Coaches need to possess to support team development. The episode is littered with gems, words of wisdom and stories that bring to life Peter’s approach and the value of his offer. I particularly enjoyed his football story at the end of this episode where Peter demonstrates his skill in genuinely helping a team transform. 

 

Points made over the episode

• The reason for entitling this episode as The Amazing Journey is explained 
• Peter Bluckert’s model and approach often takes anywhere between 18 months to 4 years with a team. 
• It is not uncommon that a team will approach this work with some order of anxiety and trepidation even resistance. 
• Team Coaches can have influence and impact with a team.  They can improve the quality of conversation, help the team offer deep levels of sharing, disrupt dysfunctional patterns, improve team mood, spirit and belief & accelerate personal and leadership development. 
• Important that a team coach has the ability to create conditions of deep trust and psychological safety. 
• Openness, Trust and Safety are critical success factors in team development 
• Often Team Coaches meet their own anxiety by over structuring events and relying too heavily on content. 
• Our role is to create enough space for the Team to do their work 
• Team Coaches need to possess a holding presence, they need to grade their experiments and not go too fast. They need to invite team members to stand in the metaphorical swimming pool and take a dip
• Context is such that we have to manage our own anxiety and help the team see that slowing things down is the work to reflect, to notice self to notice self in relation to others -all requires a different pace
• As Team Coaches we have to hold the tension and not react to a client by giving them an approximation of their world. 
• Process versus Content is an important distinction Peter learnt early on in his career. Most of us have only a partial awareness of this important distinction. 
• By being overly focused on content we miss each other, we miss communication issues, we miss team dynamics and relationship issues. We miss a lot. 
• Peter shares how he introduces a team to group process work. 
• He then described his model and approach to team development. He shared it is a combination of individual work and team work as well as a focus on the Leader. 
• He invites the team to declare their current reality and to determine what it needs to learn and change to deliver its stated mission. He determines if the team has a clear and compelling Purpose, Values and Team Behaviours as well as Group Norms that team members will buy into. 
• In addition he will afford the team skill development as well as teaching moments, including the ability to self -reflect, build awareness, take personal responsibility  & regulate emotions. He works to uncover team dynamics and finally he supports a team consider their immunity to change using the work of Kegan & Lahey. 
• The work Peter does with a team could be described as Truth Telling. 
• He helps the team develop their capacity to dialogue, to notice their own patterns, bias’s and habits. 
• Team Coaching is complex and  as an external intervener we never know all that is going on in a system. We can get lost, blind- sided by a team and in those moments we have to be patient to allow the fog to clear and gently see what might be figural. We have to be careful how we share and put into the team. It is wise to   offer stuff lightly with humility. 
• Working with teams Peter will check for the kind of support that is available for team coaching and the level of real commitment for the work 
• Peter closed the episode by sharing a piece of pivotal work he did with a football team in Ireland that was in danger of being relegated. In this we hear his approach and success with the team. 
• Finally Peter shared the reason for the change in outro that listeners will experience by listening to the end of the episode
• The Outro has been composed by Ed Boyd an Irish acoustic musician who play for two bands Lunasa and Flook. This piece was created to approximate team life. A beautiful composition. 

 

Resources shared 

• www.courageandspark.com 
• Bluckert P. Psychological Dimensions of Executive Coaching, 2006, Open University Press
• Bluckert P. Gestalt Coaching; Right Here, Right Now. 2015, Open University Press
• Bluckert P. Gestalt Coaching-Distinctive Features, 2021, Routledge
• Ed Boyd, member of the Lunasa band, a traditional Irish Music Group named after Lughnasadh an ancient harvest festival, provided the Outro music to this episode. 

Introduction: Covid-19 struck like a thunderbolt and has thrown the world upside down. Many are still reeling as we grapple to right side for a new order. All of us have been forced to wake to a new reality, to pause and immediately assume a virtual reality for most of the population. Teams have been beset too. Episode three is an invitation to look at how teams can use this big pause to disrupt our patterns of thinking & working, the use of time and space,  real-estate and technology to innovate and to build structures to support social cohesion through eco-systems.

Podcast episode summary: I spoke with Sari Van Poelje, Jennifer Britton and Fin Goulding. We spoke about what it means to be virtual, how to adjust for a new “abnormal” and the mindset shifts required to remerge on a yet uncertain  other side. All of the speakers spoke about possibility and the opportunity this pause affords us. Many questions were posed and answered in a rich conversation that spoke to some meta concepts and some practical takeaways for teams. The question became how we can let go the old, grieve appropriately and embrace the new. This has ramifications for Leadership, how we live and work and how we connect across boundaries and how we think of work. This pause like many other conversations is reminding people of our humanity and of what is important.

 

Points made through the episode:

• In answer to the question “how are you feeling” the guests almost equivocally responded positively sharing that in their worlds they have been operating virtually and using agile for years. The physical threat of Covid-19 is for sure scary
• All have welcomed the time out to pause, reflect and to consider their purpose.
• The crisis has brought many people together in a knowing like none other
• Remote does not mean disconnected. Technology allows for us to be connected.
• Virtual is imperative. Hopefully people can continue to get comfortable in their home lives to rework how they work- we are living a paradigm shift.
• Covid-19 has asked us to acknowledge our interdependence. Need to remember to bring in the human dimension to our conversations on zoom etc. Sari shared her ideas on bringing Yoga and DJs to punctuate her trainings. Other ways of socially engaging were shared
• Curiously meeting online has some positive benefits. People are more pointed, judicious with their time and careful to listen. There is a skill to facilitating and convening online.
• Use the technology creatively and strike a balance between the visual, auditory and full meeting space to breakout rooms.
• Leaders are not coping well in this transition. An old model of leading is being imposed on a new platform. The Leader as coach is required. We as coaches have to support leaders to lean into this way of working
• Similarly, we need to support leaders to deal in the emotional realm & to understand the usefulness of emotional expression over technology.
• People are ready for agile. Much confusion abounds about Agile it is often seen as belonging to the world of tech. Sari explained that it is not a mindset but a way of structuring business.
• We are experiencing various shifts simultaneously, from the physical boundaries to the virtual unbounded, from the global to local, from hierarchical to the eco-system.
• Leadership is needed with Agile. Leadership needs to embrace interdependence and accept the accountability for stuff is often deeper in the organisation.
• Businesses need to invest to reconsider the Leadership imperative, to strategize ,maybe not for the long term but for the immediate term and to learn how to pivot.
• Leaders need to comfortable being disruptors.
• Collaboration is a word that is easy to say much less easy to practice. We as coaches have a role to play to help leaders and teams collaborate, thinking differently and accepting trade -offs.
• The work/home dynamic needs to be re-evaluated and supported. Time and the use of space will be re-imagined.
• Perhaps things have to be conceived of much more simply and equitably. We have to be able to cope on an individua/family/community level as we share our humanity and our new landscape
• Conversations around Brexit for example have stopped. How will Europe look when we re-emerge?
• The panel shared some practical tips to close the podcast.
  • Leverage the tools available to allow relations as well as focus
  • Practice and get practiced having efficient meetings this is a learnt skill
  • Take time to pause, reset and consider what is working and what can be let go
  • Honesty, integrity and a degree of psychological safety will be needed to speak up and voice what is not working
  • Learn new skills online
  • A team is a musical instrument, it needs to be played and tuned. The need for retrospectives is even more pronounced
  • People need to establish new routines -and be allowed to do so
  • Every crisis brings opportunity -use this one to go for new possibility
  • Consider this new reality and ask yourself the question -what can I offer
  • Focus on what is important and how you can contribute to mankind
  • Have the varying and various conversations the path will reveal itself.
  • Be willing to reinvent yourself.

 

       Quotable Quote: “There is the past and there is the future we have only two choices, Vanilla or Chocolate- the future, as chocolate holds possibility” Sari Van Poelje

“A team is like a musical instrument; it has to be played and tuned” Fin Goulding

“rapid experimentation and learning needed right now”Jennifer Britton

 

Resources: the following include the resources I alluded to in this episode.

• Jennifer Britton: Effective Virtual Conversations
• Jennifer Britton: Remote Pathways Podcast
• Jennifer Britton: potentialsrealized.com
• Fin Goulding: Flow, 12 steps to Flow
• Fin Goulding: flow-academy.org
• Sari Van Poelje: Back to basics Executive Coaching Series-
• Soon to be published: Agile Innovation Business & Design

Sari Van Poelje: www.intactacademy.com

Introduction: Aidan Mc Cullen is best described as a Transformation Consultant. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Trinity College Dublin where he runs a module called Emerging Trends & Technologies and the host of the Global Innovation Show Podcast. Last year he emerged as must read  Author publishing his book called Undisruputable. Aidan exemplifies the very mindset he describes in his book that of permanent reinvention. He is a former International Rugby Player, turned Innovator in the space of digital media before reinventing himself again as a transformational consultant, business advisor and board member. He studied French & German at Trinity College Dublin. He lives in Dublin, is married with two boys, whom he mentions a few times in his book. 

Podcast Episode Summary

This episode put simply explores the idea of permanent reinvention for individuals, organisations and life in general. Aidan’s book uses Mental Models, Analogies, Nature and Stories of exemplars who perhaps defied logic to answer two important questions:

 1. How do we navigate a world that is changing at breakneck speed, as business leaders and as individuals? 

 2. What can we do to minimise the impact of disruption on our careers in our organisations and in our lives. 

Hopefully this podcast will go some way to bring Aidan’s book to life and to tease this same questions. 

 

Points made over the episode

• The red thread that weaves through Aidan’s life is one of transformation. Aidan starts by describing his experiences, the experiences that resulted in life lessons, lessons that informed his book -he makes the case for why we must reinvent ourselves in the face of continuous change 
• As humans we can fall prey to what is known as The Spotlight Bias, a belief that others are paying more attention to us than what is true. Two emotions in particular Fear and Shame can be the consequence of this bias and stymy progress in life. 
• Life is too short and if you find you are not satisfied don’t sit there=that is the big message Aidan communicates throughout this podcast and in his book. 
• Too often we achieve stuff in life and become seduced by the Success Trap. With achievement we often move to employ a defensive mindset-in our brain chemistry alters and we miss new information that could serve to enlighten
• A disposition towards continuous learning and a dash of humility are two conditions that feed a mindset of permanent reinvention 
• Aidan shares stories from his rugby career that bring the above points to life. 
• The book Undisrubtable was born out of Aidan’s life experiences, the many books he read and reads, he reads a book a week for his podcast show as well as his keen interest in Innovation.
• He describes a mental model as a pair of lens, like the ones you put on in an Optometrist’s office – as humans, which to Aidan negates the permanent reinvention mindset, we often forget to clean our lens, to purge them when they become redundant or even to clean them when they are smudged. 
• The book starts by sharing how we resist change, a natural phenomenon. The book shares how to reframe resistance and fear as milestones rather than millstones. In these few chapters & across the book we learn about the biases we succumb to that block change 
• The book then moves to describe different mental models we can adopt to endure the change we are experiencing at breakneck speed- Aidan uses analogies, stories from Nature and real life exemplars of change to disrupt the reader. 
• Kintsugi thinking for example  is a mental model that we could employ to allow for the full range of our human experiences. Kintsugi is a form of Japanese art . The premise being that mistakes or flaws are celebrated by painting the cracks with Gold Lacquer. 
• The  author believes that bad experiences we have in life can be reframed to mean that certain things were not meant for us. Aidan encourages us to think of our less than positive experiences as the minds way of employing a lightning rod, determining what is useful and what can be let go. 
• Entrepreneurs often think in terms of failing fast but really the lesson could be to learn fast and learn safely
• The first act in permanent reinvention is awareness, you have to be able to catch yourself in the act to learn. You have to question your choices. Sometimes you might even notice you have picked up a lens or mental model that is not yours
• Become a Master of your own vision. This means customising your own lens instead of following a script
• The book describes a set of repeatable actions,  housed in a simple framework that maps change, learning, products & services a framework called the S curve. He then describes the infinity curve as a more accurate lens from which to deal with continuous change.  
• Do not drink poison and wish the other dead – A snake bite will not kill you but rather the poison you hold onto. 
• Aidan describes the meaning of an S curve, as an heuristic that is a short cut for the cycle of productivity, learning etc..
• He then goes on to share how he landed on the concept of permanent reinvention through the discovery of an Ouroboros in a dream. An Ouroboros is a snake eating itself. 
• With the speed of change as we know it, often described in terms such as VUCA, there is no safe harbour for an individual, a business model or an organisation. We have to be able to look out and respond to change and live with the inevitable uncertainty change at breakneck speed generates.  
• Aidan uses mental models and the rich source of stories from nature to build his case for permanent reinvention. His book is littered with research and evidence based facts to ground his many ideas and ways to be with change.  He closes the book by sharing many example of real life heroes, people and companies we can all recognise. The Story of Arnold “S”chwarzeneggar typifies the many lessons Aidan has shared throughout the book. 
• Aidan ends the podcast  by sharing the Coconut Trap Story. Essentially unless we are able to let go of the past, let go of our many resentments, let go of tightly held accolades we will not become the change that is possible. 

 

Resources shared 

• Undisruptable by Aidan McCullen

Introduction: Petra Velzeboer is a renowned mental health expert, TEDx speaker and CEO of Mental Health Consultancy, PVL. Petra was born and raised in the infamous Children of God cult, conditioned to believe she was born to save the world. Having escaped that world, she now talks to audiences about her ultimate rock bottom and her subsequent transformation leading her to found a flourishing mental health business. Petra is a psychotherapist with an MSc in Psychodynamics of human development and is a qualified ORSC & CTI Certified Coach. Petra lives by her values of lightness, bravery and responsibility    Podcast Episode Summary This episode explores the value of Mental Health at Work. Petra shares what it takes to build an environment where Mental Health is valued and discussed. She shares her vision of a world where every organisation can be the rising tide that lifts and sustains mental health for every employee. Bizarrely the Pandemic has helped shift the awareness & importance of this topic and also helped bust the misconception that by talking about Mental Health the floodgates will be opened and work will suffer. The opposite is true.    Points made over the episode

• Petra shares her journey starting with her birth in a cult, her escape and demise into addiction and battle with depression and her subsequent transformation leading her to found a flourishing mental health business. 
• Many people, including this host, held the view that Mental Health was really a misnomer for Mental illness. Petra shares the Mental Health Continuum where Mental Health, thriving and excelling is at one end of the Spectrum and crisis and struggle is at the other with surviving in the middle. 
• Thriving and excelling is informed by positive psychology. 
• Sean Achor talks about organisations falling into the trap of providing Mental Health weeks where only illness is discussed. We can however develop a whole other narrative where Mental Wellness, meaning thriving and excelling is discussed. 
• The environment where mental health can thrive is one which is open, where emotions are acknowledged and welcomed, creating a space where we can talk about our mental health openly. 
• Leaders need additional training and skills to deal with the whole person, not just the tasks necessary to succeed. 
• Evidence suggests that paying attention to this topic will support talent retention 
• Leaders could employ classic skills like empathy and active listening. 
• They could do well by modelling. 
• Leaders could be so much more compelling if they talked about how they safeguard their own mental health rather than simply telling others to manage their boundaries. 
• Can we get comfortable asking leaders how they protect their mental health and how they share this information with others. 
• This provides a bridge for people where they can feel they have permission to invest in their mental health. 
• A powerful approach is storytelling.
• Intent evolves over time. Education, experience and the space for people to be fully themselves helps cultivate an environment of Mental Wellness. 
• Petra sees a lot of fear on teams. The fight or flight reaction on teams is prevalent especially after the Pandemic. It is hard to be empathetic if we are in survival mode. 
• Petra also sees conflict and polarisation on teams. There is a nervousness to be open and to share feelings, believing erroneously that a pandoras box will be opened. 
• It is important to name fears. 
• The conflict in Ukraine is activating a myriad of emotions and often leaving us feeling bereft and hopeless. Important to check your news intake. Have a conscious relationship with the news. 
• Remember Victor Frankl and his book Man’s Search for Meaning, that despite the horrendous conditions he endured in the Holocaust and the things that were denied to him he lamented that his captors could not take away his ability to respond and the attitude he adopted with respect to his situation. 
• This wisdom sounds incredibly simple but it takes practice. 
• The Pandemic has opened minds about mental health even if some teams are still cynical and believe this discourse is a tick box exercise to complete. 
• Asia and parts of Europe are now where the UK was 10 years ago in appreciating the value of Mental Health at work. 
• Petra shares a client story about implementing an integrated approach to Mental Health across an entire global concern. 
• “Mental Health is everything” and research says so. Thriving at Work report by the UK, Business in the Community and the WHO workplace recommendations all point to the crucial links between mental health and business success. 
• There is lots of passion at the top for this work. 1/4 people have experiences of this topic -much more work to be done. 
• Psychological Safety on Teams, research by Google (Project Aristotle in 2014) is one of the top principles supporting success on teams 
• Petra shares several ways she incorporates Psychological Safety in her teams 
• Lightness and fun are key elements supporting Mental health
• We need to normalise Mental Health and our vulnerabilities. 
• We could consider a few practices to shift our relationship with Mental Health including practices to complete the stress cycle such as a 20 second hug, connecting with our somatic selves instead of only relying on our thinking brains. 
• Consider for example having a walking meeting. 
• Remember language creates meaning so be careful the language we use. Instead of pathologizing people recommend brave acts. We can use language that is too intellectual making it elitist and alien to many. 
• A lot of trauma research shares that trauma sits in our body
• 3 Tips to conclude 
• Knowledge is important around mental health and work can be a protective sanctuary. How can we create work environments where people want to show up and thrive. Have conversations on teams about how we work and not just about the work 
• Create space to connect, use check ins, downtime in chunks of time and walking meetings 
• Positive Accountability ask “how will you complete your stress cycle” 

 

Resources shared 

• www.petravelzeboer.com 
• Viktor Frankl: Man’s search for Meaning 
• Thriving at Work: a review of mental health and employers -GOV.UK
• What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team(published 2016)www.nytimes.com 
• www.who.int 

Introduction: James O Callaghan is the Performance Director for the Irish Sailing Association a role he has held for over 14 years. In that time ,he has seen Irish sailing secure World Champion Medals, European Titles and of course an Olympic Silver Medal. 

Podcast episode summary: This episode reveals the indomitable spirit, resilience and mental toughness required  by Irish Sailors to perform at World Class Sailing regattas and to qualify to participate at the Olympics. James O Callaghan shares his experience of being the performance director for the Irish Sailing Association, the role he has played in building the structure for ISA and in facilitating a performance environment in which the athletes can thrive. Lessons on learning, teaming, managing the mind, energy management, perspective making, priorities, decision making and the importance of self- awareness litter this very engaging conversation. 

 

Points made through the episode: 

• James’ project at Trinity College Dublin –“how to manage peoples Olympic campaigns was instrumental in positioning him as a burgeoning entrepreneur. He set up Sail Coach straight out of college-where he coached two Olympic sailors from South Africa and the Seychelles -this project was hugely successful from a performance point of view and enabled James to learn loads-Joined ISA (Irish Sailing Association) as their Head Coach and quickly assumed role of full time Performance Director. 
• Tokyo 2020 will be James’s sixth Olympics 
• At the start Role was about defining Vision for ISA and building the structure to support the development of World Class Athletes. His role now is about guiding their strategy and challenging assumptions made in the  past. James also instrumental in guiding the associations foundation to raise ongoing funds for the sport. 
• Team has won 27 international medals, two of which comprise Olympic medals for Annalise Murphy, 4th at 2012 Olympics and 2nd at Rio in 2016
• In sport you cannot look back or rest on your laurels “you are only as good as your last race” 
• Metrics vital to objectively assess how athletes are doing against the benchmarks generated 
• The dream goal is a medal, but Athletes do not go to work every day talking about medal making instead they follow a precise pathway to build performance 
• Sailing cycle is relentless 
• Organisation comprises ever increasing circles, the core team an athlete and coach, surrounded by head coach, the performance director and then the many stakeholders like Sport Ireland and the Olympic Federation 
• James is buffer between the sport and the agencies; he has to strike a keen balance between allowing athletes train and helping them promote their own disciplines on a PR train. 
• James described the Performance Pathways the athletes enter at a very young age, helping talented sailors understand what it means to be a performance athlete
• Talent is of course a key requirement but not a distinguisher -attitude is essential 
• The Performance Pathway teaches resilience, responsibility and self -responsibility 
• Important for James and his colleagues who are supporting the athletes to be match fit. Olympics and the preparation required is an intense experience 
• Energy management is vital. You can do a good job but don’t leave all of your energy at work 
• The inner voice & self-awareness is that 5% that has to be trained. 
• Olympics for sure is a pressure cooker environment but important to remember it is not predictable, that is not reality. 
• Those who respond best to variability are the ones who will end up being an Olympian Champion 
• An athletes success will depend on their level of self -awareness, self -regulation, how they decide to react to situations and control the controllable. 
• James described the big decision Annalise made recently to quit the 49erFX category , a new campaign for ISA and to attempt to return to the discipline for which she won a medal. His message; if you have to make a decision make it and don’t expend energy pondering. 
• Some significant life lessons shaped & continue to influence James O Callaghan. The death of his father, a drowning accident while he was sailing, has helped James deal with adversity and has shifted his perspective on setback and failures 
• The courage shown by his Mum has inspired James and has shaped a lot of his views on life-family is extraordinarily important to James -talking about the “real” stuff
• With Tokyo looming James is busy working with athletes but also with the Foundation and the Olympic Steering Group. 
• James described the auspices of the OSG and the setting up of the Foundation. 
• Earlier this year with funding ISA was able to build its first ever Performance HQ in Dunlaoighre and that has been a game changer for the Association. Athletes are now housed together and not flung across the globe, Coaches live close to the HQ, Coaches can now share ideas across the teams and a performance culture is now evident 
• The 3 containers that comprise the HQ are a very efficient use of money and the time. They are of course mobile and will be shipped to Tokyo for that “Home from Home” purpose important to the team. 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

 

1. Irish Sailing Association www.sailing.ie 
2. Sport Ireland www.sportireland.ie 
3. Olympic Federation of Ireland 

Introduction: Dr. Ajit Menon is a business psychologist and consultant and co-founder of Blacklight Advisory a specialist organisational consultancy to a diverse range of clients. Ajit is also faculty of the London School of Economics, Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. He is also co-author with Trevor Hough of the book this podcast showcases; What lies beneath how organisations really work. 

Trevor Hough is a clinical psychologist, executive coach, and organisational development consultant. Trevor is a self-confessed nomad, living all over the World furthering his interest in diverse cultural experiences. Trevor works with Ajit as a Principal Consultant at Blacklight Advisory outside of his own consultancy practice. Trevor’s great interest is in the outdoors especially the African Bush where he has recently trained as a field and trails guide.  

Podcast Episode Summary

Eight crafted stories about Organisational Life are illuminated in the book What Lies Beneath: How organisations really work, by the authors Trevor Hough and Ajit Menon. They show how problems of Culture, Succession, Transition & Leadership Team Alignment are often masked by underlying and often unconscious emotions of fear, anxiety, envy, uncertainty and abandonment. The resulting defences of denial, blame, splitting, pairing and collusion blur the view of the “real” problem which needs to be solved by the client. Ajit and Trevor share how tricky this terrain can be in the eight stories they share in their book. The work of organisational development is complex and it serves a Coach/Consultant to not only be paired in the work but also to have regular supervision.  

Points made over the episode

• Ajit and Trevor share an interest & history that could be described as nomadic 
• Important to appreciate difference in the many cultural contexts the work entails. 
• As an organisational consultant, working in and out of organisations all of the time it behoves the consultant to be able to sit “at the edge of the system” & not collude by a desire to belong. 
• Ajit shares that one of the first question he & Trevor often ask clients is “what else?” or What else is going on?  so as to resist the temptation to prematurely rush to solution 
• Clients are very rarely completely right and it takes considered contracting to scope a solution or potential solution to a presenting issue. 
• Problems lie at a human level even though we would like to think they are all technical
• Working with a client system is never just about the client alone,  it is about the consultant as well. What you bring, your views, the lens by which you see the world etc. are all played out. 
• The book while a slim product is full of depth in how it explores what lies beneath in an organisation and by what it evokes in the reader. 
• How can we as coaches and consultants impact and influence the system? Ajit and Trevor responded by saying often the coach has to be willing to use self as instrument and notice what is being evoked. The story about the client in the fashion house in Paris, explored later, is an example of such. 
• Question what draws you to do the work-looking beneath can often mean an uncomfortable enquiry. 
• A big part of the work is about understanding our own process. Awareness is key. 
• Peer supervision is not to be feared it is a different type of workout. 
• Supervision is about doing work on the work 
• The yearning by coaches to be liked is dangerous. Often Clients do not like what we have to say. That’s OK 
• Our role is asocial -we have to think about what is good for the client and not our ego. 
• Ajit & Trevor are called into client systems to consider topics like, A CEO in Transition, Culture Change, Succession, Leadership Team Alignment and they are both apt to ask “If that is the answer why is coaching the solution? If team building is the solution what is the problem it can help address” 
• Inquiry is a positive intervention and can serve to illuminate some of the complexity up front. 
• Example of the story of Hong Kong where two founders purported to want to leave but in reality that was not the case and they returned 
• The work is tricky & not easy to spot but with supervision and dialogue without attachment we can begin to see patterns, themes, dynamics -often you require the lens of an outsider to help you see how you might be colluding. 
• Another story with a private bank in London shows how speaking up and being straight with a client can still backfire. 
• The unsaid remains under the surface and it takes courage to speak the unsaid. 
• Trevor explores how at the end of an assignment the client was disappointed the client felt they had done all of the work. If you are injured by that as a consultant you are in danger. Clients often want to give you the “ball of fire” the problem for you to solve. 
• Our work is to encourage the client to put the “ball of fire” on the table and through inquiry be able to piece out what is going on. 
• The Drama Triangle is a useful concept to keep in mind when doing organisational consultancy and why supervision is important 
• Trevor explained repetition compulsion and how often it occurs. He told of a client in HR who kept moving between organisations and kept ending up working for Narcissists – “what is your story of origin?” “What are you trying to solve?” What are you thinking is going to be different this time?” are just some of the questions he asked instead of trying to solve the problem of working with Narcissists 
• The idea of helping a client build a great team might simply be feeding the fantasy a team is the ultimate concept. Question why you want or need a team. Teams are often an overvalued concept when a peer group set up might equally serve or do better
• Do we really appreciate what it is to get into a communal mindset? The story of Nairobi highlights these tensions. 
• What needs to be illuminated at the contracting stage to aid the work? Question why a client has chosen you. How you get into relationship will often predict how you will be in that system -what does the client desire?
• In order to have a clear focus of where the work really is,  it helps to ask; What is the problem you want to solve? What have you done so far? What keeps getting in the way? 
• The case in Paris resulted in Ajit and Trevor acting out the very dynamic being experienced by the client- strong presence and awareness coupled with peer supervision helped them see what was happening and how they needed to be with the client to explore their findings. 
• This example exemplifies the danger of working alone in a system. Meta perspective is crucial. 
• Important to start as  you mean to go on and to forever be authentic. 

Resources shared 

• What Lies Beneath: How organisations really work by Ajit Menon & Trevor Hough. 

Introduction:  Margaret Molloy is the Global Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Business Development for Siegel & Gale. Siegel and Gale is a brand, strategy, design and experience firm headquartered in NYC. Siegel and Gale believe in the power of simplicity and essentially believe Simple is Smart. 

 

Podcast Episode Summary

This episode explores the Power of Marketing and the Power of Inclusive Story telling for Organisations, Teams and Brands. Margaret eloquently shares her wisdom leading teams, building brands and the journey she has been on to break down and unlearn some of the myths & biases she may have unwittingly absorbed from her background and training. She also shares the values and experiences that have shaped her and have grounded her ability to be open, influential and inclusive. Her last story epitomises her work and her ability to navigate the tensions across two countries, two countries she loves and calls her home. 

 

Points made over the episode

• Margaret grew up in County Offaly, Ireland on a diary farm. She was the eldest of six siblings. She enjoyed values of hard work, community, respect and dignity for others. She studied Business & Spanish in Coleraine in Northern Ireland and attributes that time as being formative, shaping her appreciation for cultural differences.  
• Enterprise Ireland sent her to NYC for her first role with them and Margaret has never looked back. She loves the energy and chaos of NYC. Margaret lives in the Middle of Manhattan, NYC with her two teenage boys and her husband.
• As a lover of two countries USA and Ireland, Margaret recognises that everyone has an identity and it can be multidimensional. Sometimes we are too quick to label people and put them in boxes. Margaret identifies equally as both American and Irish and she use the image of Janus, the God of all beginnings,  to explain her thinking. 
• Inclusive Story Telling is best explained in a story. Margaret shares receiving feedback from a guest after a Panel Interview she held in Boston, an event she thought went well but to the writer failed to show case inclusivity.  Margaret’s focus had been on gender diversity but she learnt that she was exhibiting colour blindness. The feedback she received turned out to be Margaret’s inclusive awareness moment. 
• Space for Reflection is an important consideration. Every strength for example has its shadow. Good to think about using time to reflect and to apply questions or frameworks to get at learning. Important too to remember to upgrade our mental models. Margaret has learnt from her own experiences to be colour brave as opposed to colour blind. 
• Curiosity and Judgement are two phenomena that cannot co-exist. Margaret shares how she unlearnt the supposed criticism that to be nosey was wrong. For Margaret one of the greatest gift you can give someone is to ask a generous question
• Simple is smart is a principle Siegel and Gale adopt. Being a simplifier pays. The worlds smartest brands understand the power of simplicity, whether that is through visuals, plain language or their promised experience. Research has shown that the customer will pay more for simplicity and will pay brands with loyalty. The Capital markets reward brand simplicity too. 
• Simplicity is the intersection of Clarity and Surprise. Clarity in the use of plain language, easily understood messages, smart visuals and the surprise component is the antithesis of dull, that ahah moment when a customer appreciates “this is exactly how I would have wanted it”  
• Siegel and Gale search for simplifiers. The beauty of simplifiers is that they know what to strip away and what to leave behind, such that a customer is clear on a brands intention and has a frictionless experience. 
• Management is a privilege & a responsibility. Siegel and Gale are extremely thoughtful about the entire employee life cycle and how it carries through on its promises. Onboarding for example comes with robust mentoring. 
• Psychological Safety is an important construct and Margaret pays attention to the culture she develops by encouraging people to speak in draft form, have constructive input and provide feedback. Margaret creates process, questions and frameworks to encourage psychological safety. 
• We cannot confuse Psychological safety with group hugs. Group hugs are great and humane but Psychological safety is about business, inspiring people is a precursor to profitability.  
• Getting at Psychological Safety is a journey. Many of us have been trained in ways that have encouraged command and control and hierarchical structures. We have been taught to value efficiency and much of the language used in corporate life is machine like. 
• Homogenous teams are a recipe for blind spots, especially for marketeers trying to communicate with audiences that have not had the same experiences as us. Our mental models need to adjust. We need to think in terms of our impact as well as the outputs we are generating. 
• Margaret shares how she cultivates Psychological Safety on her teams. After a project is completed she will ask what people liked and what they would wish for differently. This thinking framework evokes less defensiveness. She also uses affirmation with her team members-giving affirmation that is sincere, succinct and specific. As humans we are starved of affirmation.  
• Criticism is an oft used tactic. Our propensity to offer criticism is grounded in our quest for efficiency. We want to fix things. The culprit is often time. We need to prioritise ruthlessly. 
• In marketing things are changing so rapidly, there are so many new tools and processes for doing things. It is easy to get caught up in shiny new objects as opposed to being curious about what matters and impact. 
• Simple rules for teams include; Preparing rigorously, contributing wholeheartedly and safeguarding your own trustworthiness. 
• Important to mind your reputation and be curious to understand what people say about you when you are not in the room. 
• Margaret shares a few more thoughts on Leadership & Teams- consider the old practice of apprenticeships. Margaret hires for attitude and builds for aptitude. 
• Infuse Purpose, as leaders we can be quick to tell people how and what to do but sometimes we neglect the why for their work. 
• The purpose for meetings is a topic that is often overlooked. Consider the meetings purpose, manage the context, type of meeting, how you dress the room and the theatre of meetings. Consider the roles people have in meetings such as facilitator, moderator, scribe, equal colleague etc…We should think about meets as strategic devices not as something you have to show up at. The Pre-read and Post-read should be considered as part of the meeting. 
• In closing Margaret shares a story, a story that showcases the power of inclusive story telling. She shares how her passion for fashion and aesthetics and her love of her two countries served as an idea to create an event in 2019 to show case 10 Irish (unknown fashion designers) in NYC.  

 

Resources shared 

 

• How CMOs Commit Podcast with Margaret Molloy-
• Future of Branding CMO panel series 
• www.siegelgale.com
• Twitter: @margaretmolloy @siegelgale
• Instagram: wearingirish Margaret Molloy
  

Introduction: Dr. Melissa Hughes is the Founder & President of the Andrick Group. She is also the author of happy hour by Einstein, Happier hour by Einstein and the Happier Hour with Einstein companion journal on Gratitude. Melissa holds a Phd in Curriculum and instruction and she is a self-confessed Neuroscience Geek. Melissa delivers keynote speeches and workshops geared to help organisations and individuals work smarter.

Podcast episode summary:  Melissa shared her passion for understanding how the brain works and what we can do to support greater cognitive functioning. In this episode we focused on two particular topics for optimum brain functioning on teams,  stress as an inhibitor to great thinking and cognitive bias as a way of shut-cutting excellence.

 

Points made through the episode:

• The overproduction of Cortisol weakens our brain cells, eventually erodes them and makes us more stupid
• Jaak Panksepp conducted some seminal research to understanding brain functioning and his subjects were rats, because the construct of their brains is similar to the human brain
• He found that when a cat hair is thrown into a rat play area the rats stop playing (read learning) immediately and worryingly sometimes for days
• Every team has a cat hair, maybe an unconscious bias that gets in the way of team performance
• Psychological safety and emotional intelligence & personal awareness help us get better at sharing and educating the collective
• A companies culture can unwittingly erode great thinking. A genius mindset for example can prevent people from being vulnerable because of the competitive nature of winning and showing brilliance
• A Growth Mindset as espoused by Carol Dweck helps us all by adopting an open sharing mindset full of learning -collective intelligence can grow
• Make mistakes normal and not secrets to be ashamed of
• Our number one emotional need as humans is acceptance
• Our number one emotional fear as humans is rejection
• Pay attention to what you pay attention to because the brain looks for confirming patterns
• Neuro Plasticity is a real phenomenon -intense, prolonged and repeated experiences chemically and physically change the brain- in other words we can continue to grow our brains
• The brain works on the principle of use it or lose it.
• Our inner critic needs an alternative voice if we do not want to cultivate a vicious cycle of activity.
• Gratitude gives the giver a bigger does of neurochemicals then the receiver so on a down day remember to genuinely thank someone
• We pay insufficient attention to cognitive bias -we all biased and much more than we think
• There are in excess of 200 biases available to the human brain. Melissa shared a few and paid particular attention to group think. Group think erodes critical thinking and challenge. We need challenge to surface the best ideas
• Work to play with the Neurological seesaw. Instead of focusing on reducing Cortisol or worrying about stress look instead to increasing Oxytocin, Serotonin and Dopamine

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

1. andrickgroup.com
2. com/in/melissahughesphd
3. Jaak Panksepp Affective Neuroscience
4. Happy Hour with Einstein: Dr Melissa Hughes
5. melissahughes.rocks

 

The Thin Book of Trust an Essential Primer for Building Trust at Work 

Introduction: Charles Feltman is the founder of Insight Coaching based in California where his work concentrates on two main areas: Coaching Individuals and Teams and developing Leadership Team & Leadership Development Programs. Charles completed his coach training program with Newfield in Colorado. He holds a BA in Psychology from U.C. Santa Barbara and a Master’s in organisation development & communication from the University of Southern California. Charles is also an author. He has written a book on Trust called The Thin Book of Trust ; an essential primer for building trust at work. 

 

 

 

Podcast Episode Summary

Charles Feltman illuminates the four distinctions of Trust that comprises his framework, working with Leaders, Teams and Individuals. The episode discusses how trust is eroded, the many strategies that are deployed on teams and in organisations when trust is absent and how to rebuild trust effectively. 

Points made over the episode

• Charles discovered the subject of Trust early on in his college years when he was often asked to mediate issues on campus
• So many issues he entertained at work had something to do with Trust. 
• When he launched his own Consulting and Coaching Business clients often came with issues where trust was often problematic. 
• His coach training program at Newfield introduced him to 3 distinctions of Trust; Sincerity, Reliability and Competence and even then he felt something was missing
• Charles stumbled on the academic literature pertaining to trust and there he found the term “benevolence” He added Care as his final distinction for his framework on Trust 
• People often fail to understand that Trust is an assessment related to our standards with respect to behaviour. 
• People often fail to communicate their standards for behaviour and immediately assume the other as untrustworthy. Communication is missing 
• We tend to operate with an on/off switch when it comes to determining whether someone is trustworthy. 
• Sometimes we are in the land of gradation with Trust and we are suspicious of its absence. Then we tend to look for all the ways our suspicion can be confirmed. This is called confirmation bias 
• “Trust is defined as choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions” Charles Feltman
• Trust is behaviour laden. The Academic World had a very complicated definition that Charles made more accessible 
• “We are never so vulnerable then when we trust someone and paradoxically if we cannot trust neither can we find love or Joy”  Walter Anderson 
• Love and Joy should be part of everyone’s work life and it is the reason Charles works in the arena of Trust 
• Often the work of Coaching is helping a client be vulnerable to themselves 
• Wise Trust is choosing to make a wise risk assessment to trust – knowing that an on/off switch does not hold much wisdom

 

The Four Distinctions of Trust 

• Care: Is the assessment you have my interest at heart or at the very least we have shared interests and when we care like this we are free to work easily with each other. The most important behaviour associated with care is listening. 
• Sincerity: Is the assessment you are honest and integral in your actions. Every interaction is an opportunity to build or damage trust. The assessment of sincerity is that I trust your intentions and know that you are open and honest with me not simply in terms of your logic but emotionally as well
• Reliability: Is the assessment that I can trust your commitments. I can trust the strength of your commitment. Reliability is the domain that is often most problematic on teams 
• Competence: Is the assessment that you have the capacity, skill and knowledge to do what you say you will do. This domain has a lot to do with standards and getting really clear on our respective standards often limits the speed by which we race to mistrust. 

 

• We often collapse the four distinctions of trust and simply rush to mistrust. 
• Whilst there is a huge degree of interdependence between the four distinctions it is helpful to take them apart first to really become familiar with the distinctions
• Distrust is often talked about more on teams than trust. Teams need to have the conversations about trust 
• If teams engage in trust conversations to understand the difference between assessments and assertions mileage can be made 
• If the Leader is deemed the person who is creating distrust on the Team, Charles will coach the leader before he works with the team 
• Trust is a precondition for Psychological safety and for belonging. 
• Working through a complex issue requires of teams to be uncomfortable but if the team doesn’t feel safe it will likely not show up fully and engage in strategies for protection, strategies like resistance, avoiding, arguing, ignoring or direct attack 
• As a Leader and member on a team is important to become aware. Notice if we are engaging in confirmation bias. 
• Distrust uses the same brain structure, circuitry, biochemistry associated with the Fight/Flight/Freeze patterns. As human we have to learn to manage our knee Jerk reactive patterns 
• Curiously both networks, The Trust Network and Distrust Network in the brain can operate simultaneously. By paying attention we can deploy wise trust 
• Remember Trust is a two way street. It is not an off/on switch. It can be built and rebuilt through intentional conversations.   

The Resources shared 

• The Thin Book of Trust: an essential primer for building trust at work available at www.landtoninfo.co.uk 

Introduction: Pedro Angulo is the Head of Leadership Development at AIB where he leads the design & implementation of enterprise wide Leadership Development initiatives. He is also a Program Director of the Diploma in Strategic HRM for the Irish Management Institute, Board Member of Green Sod Ireland and Past President and Chairman of the EMCC in Ireland. A graduate from Minnesota State University (USA) and holder of an MBS in Management and Organisational Studies from University College Dublin. He is a prolific writer and much sought-after motivational speaker. 

Podcast episode Summary: How to put attention on the Team as an important if not the most important unit of currency in Organisational Life. This episode speaks to the organisational lag in recognising the need to put attention on team life and teaming skills. Too often organisations assume you can put a bunch of talented people together and they will become a team, the reality is often very different. Listen to the many tips Pedro litters throughout this episode, emphasising attention, energy, clarity and measurement. 

Points made throughout the Episode: 

• Pedro opens the conversation by sharing his “Why” He is passionate about people and genuinely interested in helping people be at their best 
• He immediately illuminates the gaps that exist with respect to teams and teaming in organisations of which he is apart 
• Little real attention given to team effectiveness. Much is spent of team development and confusion exists about what it takes to make teams great. 
• Organisations tend to invest at the Individual level and on the enterprise level but pay scant attention to teams. 
• They often assume that by putting bright people together they will work it out. Invariably that is not the case and the result is a group
• Team effectiveness is working out why the team exists, what is its purpose, how to collaborate, solve for conflict and make decisions as well as working on its dynamic to get at flow. 
• People are often promoted because of their individual contribution and not for their teaming skills 
• To address the gap we have to put attention on teams. Help Leaders create the conditions that allow teams thrive. Call it and or get external help if the capacity for teaming is weak or poor. 
• Develop a standard framework or model of team effectiveness that can be scaled and measured. Great at illuminating landscape data from which development can be a resource. 
• Organisations have individual sophistication when it comes to psychometrics and coaching but less so when it comes to Team Development 
• Pedro has experienced Irish teams as very collegial but often that collegiality can stand in the way of constructive dialogue. As well there is too much focus on the now and not enough on Horizon level 3 thinking 
• Too much “vanilla” exists on Irish teams not enough or sufficient diversity especially in terms of diversity of thought risking a maintenance of the Status Quo.
• Pedro would love to see more inclusivity, much greater challenge on teams, innovation and psychological safety. 
• To help a team think team a Leader needs to believe he needs a team and ask for a  team. Too often a Leader is focused on his stalk of work or on individual concerns to promote a team culture. 
• We continue to promote people on individual performance and to wit we often tie that performance to individual goals. 
• Leadership Pathways are often constructed in a way that misses the opportunity to provide real transitional leadership development 
• Enterprise Leadership thinking and skills are bereft. 
• “Values are like posters” we could do better to nurture what is important to an Individual and speak those to the teams of which they are apart to appreciate what could be supportive and what could detract from the team’s performance 
• Covid-19 imposed a strict regime of virtual working and by and large the Bank fared well. More is required to really support Leaders in this domain. The Bank has provided guidebooks, toolkits to support leaders get at continued engagement, motivation and clarity in a virtual way. Pedro is not convinced they are doing enough. 
• In a context such as the Pandemic Clarity, Check-ins and Energy is what is required. Energy means showing you care & are interested in helping others manage their energy. 
• Funny that people are suffering from Zoom fatigue. Maybe they are but maybe the right level of energy and psychological safety is missing 
• Leaders often assume they create high levels of psychological safety but do they? 
• It is sad that we have to hire external consultants to point out what we are seeing already every day. 
• Leaders need to take ownership for their part in the creation of the culture where people are afraid to speak up. 
• Pedro shared examples of where a Leader could disrupt high levels of agreement when really disagreement could be valued. 
• Organisations keep rewarding A when they are asking for B
• We keep rewarding individual performance when we are looking for team collaboration 
• We need to stop promoting people for their technical competence and solo runs
• We need to change the definition of what it means to be promoted in organisations.
• We have to focus on the team as an entity and work on incremental team norms of performance 
• Everybody contributes to the team dynamic important to discuss what it is
• Role of Leader to up the teams performance norm. 
• Net Promoter Score is a valuable measurement often used with  Customers. It could easily be used in teams as well 
• Important for a team to think about its own context and to share a purpose that is relevant to the team. Pedro asks teams to think about their legacy and what they want to be known for and how they would like to be seen. How are you going to be different? 
• Pedro’s closing remarks were really a call to action. 
• Be ruthless with measurement
• Go to where the team is at 
• Teams work in context of an organisation alignment is key
• Teams evolve and are often fluid
• Don’t forget the complexity inherent on teams 
• Too easy to think about changing the structure – look at the practices get close to teams 

Resources shared 

• Simon Sinek: Together is better

Introduction:  Brendan Lenihan is a professional non-executive director, a management consultant, a chartered accountant, and an accredited mediator.  Previously he was a Partner with Andersen (with whom he worked in Dublin and New York)

Through his consultancy, Navigo Consulting, he provides strategic, financial and governance advice to clients in Ireland and the UK as well as having a non-executive director portfolio in private companies, public bodies and charities. His is currently;

• Chair of Irish International Trading Corporation Cork plc which is 103 years in business and turns over in excess of €80m per annum,
• as well as Chairing the Advisory Board of Regan Wall, a business law firm specialising in mergers and acquisitions.     
• Chair of Good Shepherd Cork, a sizeable charity providing emergency accommodation and services to homeless and vulnerable families.

 

Podcast episode Summary:  This podcast explores the nature of Boards, our understanding of the role of Boards, and whether we can consider boards are Teams. In addition, Brendan illuminates the constraints on boards and the potential that exists to support boards be more effective.

Points made throughout the Episode:

 

o    Brendan has led a portfolio career to date. An accountant by nature but he is more than that. His eclectic portfolio and experience has meant that he has learnt how to sell, navigate & supervise professional service bodies.

o    Brendan doesn’t rush towards fires but he has noticed that he ends up in the thick of things. Around the time of the crash in 2008 in NYC he was involved in the Enron Scandal and as Finance Director for a Property Company he was instrumental in supporting them through the crash. Similarly he was involved with the HSE for 4 years through Covid 19- where he put his consultancy experience where it was most needed.

o    10 years ago as the President of the Chartered Institute of Ireland it became clear to Brendan that accountants do 3 things,  they measure, communicate and decide. Brendan observed that if someone like him, even with his vast experience, were to survive he needed to move up the value chain to where decision making and governance happened. Decision making is the business Brendan is now in.

o    The Myths of Boards: The great man myth and the myth of omnipotence of boards is very much alive.  The myth that the CEO is the eternal fountain of all knowledge and the organisation pivots around him/her is similarly active. The truth is that the health and direction of a company cannot revolve around one person, especially as CEOs come and go. There is also a great myth that board work is easy, you turn up, listen and go away. That is not the case.

o    There is a grain of truth in the idea that the smartest group of people are the executives and the wise comprise the board. The smart and wise sit down together and generally the wise people approve everything the smart people have to say, although it is not always the case. The smartest and wisest is the relationship between the Chair and the CEO. There is some grain of truth to all of this but it should not be how people think for a heathy, dynamic and growing organisation to operate.

o    A lot of people end up on boards because of their success in role and the because of their functional expertise but often they do not know what the role of a board member is.

o    A healthy board is one that has a very clear sense of its role & its purpose. Many boards have an impoverished view of what their role is as a Board. Often  they encapsulate their role as their function to support management. That definition is too simplistic and too narrow a definition.

o    A healthy Board is one you cannot assess on paper. As well as a board appreciating their role & purpose it is also crucial that Board members understand each other as people. A healthy board is one where the relationships are really strong, where people can deal with conflict and differences of style etc.

o    What defines Governance? This is the starting conversation with new boards or new board members. Two central elements to Governance (based off an OECD definition) The first element is the notion that Governance is a network of relationships. The relations within the entity such as staff, the board and the executive management team as well as the relations outside of the entity such as shareholders, funders, regulators, customer as well as suppliers. The first role of a Board is to understand and add to the strength and functioning of these relationships. The second element is about the setting of objectives. What objectives is the entitiy trying to achieve, how are the objectives set and then how  are they managed and monitored.

o    The degree to which this network of relations is worked governs the degree to  which the entity achieves its objectives. That is the role of Governance.

o    Two further dimensions have to be considered. One, the compliance perspective to understand and appreciate the rules of the road with respect to this network of relations and two, a performance dimension to understand what travels over and between the network of relations. Brendan makes the point that too often people assume governance is simply about compliance and not about the management of ideas & the performance of objectives across this network of relations.

o    Management has a governance role as well but this podcast is focused on the top level of the organisation, the Board.

o    If you are sitting on a board you should be focused on the strength and productivity of the network of relations described above. In addition a Board needs to question what objectives are being set and whether they are being achieved.

o    For the person in the street the subject of Governance comes down to the simple question, who is in charge?

o    The interrelation between the work of the board and management is often confused and ambiguous. The biggest problem Brendan sees in his work is that folks on boards devolve everything to management.

o    The Board should in fact be setting objectives, be providing Leadership and operating with an amount of oversight where the board asks whether the organisation is on plan, getting close to its objectives etc.

o    Many board members especially new board members do not realise the many functions of boards and the many mindsets involved. 3 different mindsets prevail on Boards. The first deals with Leadership the second the entity strategy and the third oversight & compliance. Compliance for example requires an evidential focus. Strategy involves a creative process, a heavily laden communication process and psychological process. Oversight is where you are asked to form an opinion and decision based on the question “are we there yet?”

o    Boards mix those 3 roles into one combined headset.

o    Too often too, a board may be comprised of formerly successful executives you end up Micro Managing senior executives and end up squashing capability.

o    In the absence of understanding of the many headsets required of boards duplication, frustration and missed opportunities are inevitable.

o    The same is true of teams where there is lack of resources and lack of role clarity. This absence drives conflict and dissent and is especially evident at the interface between senior executives and the board.

o    Board members end up on Boards because of their industry expertise, functional expertise and not because they know much about Governance & especially corporate governance.

o    The rise of concern about Culture and the question about who is responsible for Culture in an organisation has contributed to the confusion that abounds. The idea that the Board is in fact responsible has really stretched and challenged boards.

o    It is not clear what the headset needs to be with respect to the role of Culture setting  but it is clear from Corporate Governance that the responsibility lies with the Board.

o    Making the interventions that shape Culture is the honours question that boards are struggling with today.

o    The board is responsible for there being a well-defined strategy and it is also responsible for the culture of the organisation that is appropriate for its environment and strategic objectives.

o    Boards are decision factories with very limited opening hours

o    Consider for example the Public Broadcaster here in Ireland which has just faced a critical Corporate Governance crisis this year.  Its board would have met about 9 times in the year which is incredibly limited opening hours to get through an enormous remit.

o    There is a real paucity of time that drives a lot of the dynamics of boards.

o    Brendan works with boards to become as efficient as is possible with oversight and monitoring as a role to free up time to spend on Strategy, Culture and Leadership conversations.

o    There are ways at releasing time and working smartly as a board but a week Chair and a board that does not appreciate its full role will fudge and burn time ineffectively leading to frustration and embarrassment as  likely possible negative outcomes.

o    Brendan works with Boards by sharing simple ideas to support the various roles they play. Leadership for example is about two simple ideas, having a plan and doing the right things. So Leadership from the Board perspective is about making sure there is a plan and challenging the board and executive to be curious about the right things to discuss.

o    Too often the senior management team is preoccupied with being busy 60-70 hours a week and they do not often get the opportunity to see the big things on the fringe about which they need to discuss.

o    There is so much value a board can bring in terms of ideas, opportunities and even concerns that the executive team might miss. To be a good leader you have to be in the dance of the work but you also need to be on the balcony & able to scan the horizon and outside world.

o    Boards can disempower themselves by not understanding their role, similarly they can also disempower their role by handing all power over to management and they can be disenfranchised by the lack of time, ability to meet and the resources at their disposal such as a budget to support Board training.

o    Brendan gets asked to assist boards where Governance has gone off the rails and the criticism is made that the board was asleep at the wheel. Often the board has chosen a minimum level of participation or hibernation, which often surprises people.

o    The lack of opening hours or time a Board spends together often means that the requisite reflection and quality control of their work is missing. The simple and evocative questions like “what worked” “what could we do differently next time” often do not happen.

o    The Titular Monarchy Position is often witnessed on Boards. Every week the Prime Minister of the UK visits the Monarch. The Monarch has 3 rights, the right to be consulted, the right to be supportive of the Government and the right to warn if necessary. That is it. Many Boards operate the same way as a Titular Monarchy where they expect to be consulted, offer support to the executive team and are a bit avuncular when they are concerned about something. This is a recipe for disaster for a Board, because all power has been handed to management 

o    A contemporary example here in Ireland includes the FAI (Football association of Ireland) who became a puppet board to management. The CEO had all power.

o    The list of matters reserved is the list of decisions that only the board can make. Brendan will often ask boards whether they know these decision rights and he knows a weak board will not know what is on this list whereas a strong board will.

o    A lot of basic structures that comprise sound principles and conditions for success for Boards are missing.

o    There is a huge opportunity for Boards to benefit from some of the ideas housed in Team Coaching.

o    It is not conclusive that a Board is a team but its performance could benefit if it thought more about teaming.

o    The role of the Chair is absolutely vital.

o    Boards are by their nature a collective and the Chair is first amongst equals. When boards break down it is almost always about the people and relationship issues. A good Chair is equipped to bring people insight, an understanding of styles and an ability to mediate if necessary, to support the effective running of the board.

o    If the Chair is open to improvement in what Brendan calls the decision making factory then lots can happen.

o    Brendan does not enter a board to discuss what he calls the plumbing or Compliance etc. His value is in helping a board get clear about the decisions they have to make, the headsets they have to be in and also the norms they have to exhibit.

o    Brendan usually engages with Boards around practical decision dilemmas. He also employs a model to share 10 behaviours that he would expect every board member to display. The 10 behaviours from this model include Power, Dogmatism, Emotion, Decisiveness, Verbal Contribution, Civility, Preparedness, Knowledge, Trust & Director Tenure. With each of these behaviours there is a golden mean.

o    If any of these 10 behaviours are out of whack the social system will be out of balance. For example if the Board has too much trust in the Management Team it will be gullible.

o    Oftentimes these behaviours are out of balance and they remain unchallenged or unaddressed until there is a big car crash, a claim or other disaster.

o    Brendan would like to see greater understanding and clarity about the  role of Boards. He would like the difference that can be seen on boards between board members to be empowered. He would also like to see a greater awareness of bias & to see more professional scepticism on Boards.

o    The big problem with Boards, with biases present is over confidence.  Brendan recalls the Financial Crisis of 2008 where many boards, filled with good people,  simply grew over confident.

o    Brendan wishes that Boards would allow Professional consultants, Coaches to better serve them than they do currently, to get that team working as a Board to work better together at a human level, on a decision making level and on a structural level so that organisations can achieve their objectives more quickly and efficiently.

o    There exist a lot of obstacles to these desires as Brendan sees it. Often there exists a lack of openness, to examine Board performance and  to take advice or to think differently. Brendan opines the lack of diversity on boards, the range of people entering boards is still, he believes too narrow. The gender balance is better but it is still not where it could be and could be if boards had better advice, tools and more openness to improvement.

o    Brendan shares two case studies, boards he worked with where governance had gone off the rails. Brendan through his work helped both to work out their roles, to define a clear strategy and to understand the interdepended nature between the board and management teams. He shared structure and processes over time to improve the decision making and relations on the Board and between the Management teams.

o    Boards cover 3 things; Strategy, Finance and People. Strategy is often misunderstood,  Finance is often exceedingly well covered and the people piece is the lease attended.

o    Since the Global Financial Crisis a number of tools have evolved to do what is known as a cultural audit. Boards are often shocked that people like Brendan can hold up a mirror and identify what the culture is at an organisation.

o    Brendan shares his definition of what comprises Culture. Visible behaviours, behaviours people will see, the group dynamic and then the mindsets that drive these behaviours. There are tools used to hold to hold up a mirror and share what Mindset ideas are being operated. Brendan shares the example of the police force here in Ireland, An Garda Siochana. Its culture was audited and it revealed the high minded ideas that were housed in the annual report with the actual mindset that actually prevailed. The gap proved to be staggering.

o    You have to ask what is going on in the narrative of an organisation, the psychology of an organisation, the group dynamic to shape its culture? It is important to tap into these dimensions to shape an appropriate culture, appropriate to the market and context in which an entity lives & it has to be attuned to what the organisation says it wants to achieve in terms of its objectives and plan.

o    This is the role of Boards and the value they can provide.

o    Brendan makes the distinction between Boards who operate answering the Pass Questions in an Irish Leaving Certificate and a Board that addresses the Honours questions, Culture, Leadership, Strategy and Oversight.

o    The Board is a team and it is also a Team with the Executive Directors & staff managing the many relations that comprise the social system in a bid to achieve its goals.

o    Brendan would love to see more conversation of this nature to increase awareness & understanding of Boards and board effectiveness and to show case the many tools and techniques that have evolved to support teams and boards to overcome bias in decision making.

 

 

Resources mentioned across this podcast

 

·         www.navigo.ie

Introduction

 

Aidan James Higgins is the CEO of ADEO Consulting. He is a Leadership Consultant, Emotional intelligence & Teamwork specialist and is passionate about getting people to be at their best. He is the author of the book Lead From You, which launched at the end of 2021 and is now in 7 countries. 

 

Podcast Episode Summary

 

This episode speaks to three concepts, awareness, authenticity & emotional intelligence. Aidan employs the psychometric The Enneagram to support leaders understand themselves and others better and to Lead from You. 

Points made across the podcast episode 

 

• Fish Slap story explored and why it resonated with Aidan. He was woken up at a Management Training Program where he realised, he was living from one world view. The training had shocked Aidan that the world he had been inhabiting was only one point of view.  
• Most of us are asleep. We are working on our programming without interrogating it to improve our self- awareness. 
• Aidan wrote the book Lead From You because of the appreciation clients & friends held for the work and their interest in learning more. 
• Feedback from the book suggests readers are appreciating the importance of self-awareness and how it is contributing to clarity of decision making, trust building, empathy & compassion 
• Aidan points out that we must have self-compassion to appreciate we have grown up to be & do in a particular way and until we come to be aware we think it is the only way. 
• Aidan has attempted to author a book that helps a person be a more complete person, to be happier and to lead. 
• Aware, emotionally intelligent & authentic Leadership is what is needed in the 21st century 
• People & Leaders need to wake up and pull back what is referred to as the veil of illusion. 
• To become self-aware, to be authentic and emotionally intelligent requires of a leader or team member to wake up. Once people wake up, they generally become curious to learn more. 
• Resistance is often present in this work, too many of us are trained to avoid emotion, being soft and being empathetic or compassionate. 
• People do not realise they are unaware. Aidan shares a story from Anthony de Mello to help explain what he means by being self-aware. 
• Tich Na Han says “people will not change until they are sick of suffering”
• We are subject to a programming that was brought into us early on in our lives. We make all kinds of assumptions about the way we are to lead or act. Example: Must remain in control. 
• Benefits of becoming self-aware & other awareness means clearer decisions, clearer emotional awareness and therefore information, access to creativity and innovation. 
• We evolve a view of the world until we see it from where it has come and how useful it is to remain. For example, the child who learns to please people to get attention or a person who is ignored if they do not win can be programs that thwart successful leadership in the future. 
• Becoming self-aware is not a thing you do it is about understanding. Knowing what water is doesn’t make you wet. 
• Aidan helps clients become aware by first creating a safe space to be together and then by sharing how people are likely to have come up through the world. He shares his framework and gives people space to reflect on their beliefs, habits and patterns, ways that have informed up until now. 
• Aidan shares another example where he asks a client how is feeling when he is not working. The client responded “trapped” and felt the rise of anxiety when he wasn’t doing anything. This client then became aware that underneath is drive to get things done, there was an anxiety driving this way of being. 
• Understanding changes behaviour not a set of things to do. 
• Sometimes you ask someone how they feel, and they do not have the words or language to tell you. It can often be about giving clients words.  
• According to a Harvard Business Review, improved self-awareness on teams doubles decision making capability & doubles the ability of a team to deal with conflict. 
• The Enneagram is a system that has been around for years. Authored by the Greeks who divined that there were 9 ways to look at the world. These world views begin around the time of a child where object constancy is understood. It is similar but deeper than MYERS BRIGGS type indicator. 
• The Enneagram employed on teams helps team members understand each other better. Understanding in turn leads to emotional intelligence. 
• Working with a team, Aidan will start by building the self-awareness of the members of the team, often by using the Enneagram tool. Then he moves to create awareness of the other members of the team, which often brings a team to compassion and fuller sharing. 
• Team Emotional Intelligence explores nine norms. 3 Team Fundamental Norms: Roles and Responsibilities, Meetings and Goals & Objectives. 3 Individual Norms: Understanding Team Members, Demonstrating Care, Addressing undesirable behaviours, 4 Team Norms, Review the team, Support Expression, Build Productivity Proactively and Build Optimism, 2 External Norms; Build external relationships & Understand Team Context. These nine norms lead to three outcomes: Psychological Safety, Team Identity and Constructive Dialogue. 
• Aidan is amazed at how often the team fundamentals have not been worked. In an example Aidan shares how a Team Leader confused sending a team memo about the purpose of the team and their roles meant that they had been communicated with and would therefore understand. 
• Other examples of where teams get stuck include conflict avoidance believing “we are too nice” can mean bringing new ideas is risky. 
• Addressing team norms early on can mean a team becomes more effective early on and can in many instances take on bigger projects.
• Team resistance comes from being too quick with the change and not allowing buy-in over time, not explaining the “why” for change & not taking care to identity willing enthusiasts who could tip the team into working with the change. 
• With some teams all you can expect to get to is professional respect. Personal conflicts can mean enmity for years. 
• Resistance can also present from a formed organisational culture. 
• Teams need to remember that changing the composition of a team means that previous shared understanding is temporality lost, requires a period of mourning and then a willingness to induct new members. Teams must move back to Norm and storm where they had originally moved through all the four phases of team development: forming, norming, storming and performing. 
• Aidan explains that understanding is a holistic phenomenon. 
• Team Emotional Intelligence requires that a team deals with emotions, and we deal with them as they arise. Some people are terrified of emotions, or some of the 9 types are terrified especially in a high-pressured business that needs to get things done. There is fear that emotional expression will slow the team down. Instead, the team needs to generate appropriate boundaries, self-regulate and self-correct.
• The evolutionary mind suggests that teams are tribal, require a purpose and a Leader is appointed by way of certain needed tasks. 
• Notwithstanding that Aidan has already littered this conversation with anecdotes and stories he was asked to share a story of a team that illuminates his work. He chose a large team that was asked to go through extraordinary change, to cut costs while simultaneously improving productivity. This team was not provided all the information available, and they were not allowed to communicate the required change to those on the ground. Luckily the team were already self-aware, were IQ, EQ savvy and had each taken the Enneagram survey. Aidan had been working with the same team for two years. The situation demanded an understanding on the self of ambiguity, the impact of mindsets they needed to influence and the impact of culture. 
• That project was about teaching the team to focus on Purpose, decision making, trust and resilience but also about their own personal issues with control & trying & failing that needed to be managed.  
• Organisations today need to think in terms of Teams of Teams to be able to deal with the pressures & demands of today’s business. Complexity and expertise at the edges makes the case for this way of thinking.
• Teams need to be agile and have a peer structure where everybody contributes and where the Leader is a servant or at a minimum a supporter of the team. 
• Positive conflict is encouraged along diversity of opinion & an appetite emotional discourse within boundaries. 
• Finally, teams need time to reflect & improve. 

 

Resources shared: 

 

Books: Aidan James Higgins: Lead from You

Website: www.adeo.ie

Janet M. Harvey, MCC, is a visionary, writer, speaker and coach. She is an  early adopter of a coach centred approach in the workplace. Janet works with global organisations and teams of Leaders to establish a generative, resilient and high performing culture. Janet Harvey brings her executive and entrepreneurial experience as CEO of InviteChange, Leaders in sustainable excellence through a signature generative coaching and learning process, The Generative Wholeness Way. As an ICF Master Certified Coach, Certified Mentor Coach, Accredited Coach Supervisor and ICF Global past president customers and audiences around the globe speak of Janet as a bold curious, provocative and compassionate Leader.

*Exclusively for listeners, you can download a sample chapter of Janet's new book, Invite Change, from the Game of Teams website, right here

Podcast episode summary:  In this episode Janet illuminates the potency of Team Coaching for teams. She shares her wisdom in creating the groundwork for teams to deepen the learning with each other before they dive into action. Often teams and organisations get seduced by the task of things  & the reactive nature of daily requests but forget to focus on the day to day experience of teaming, understanding the work they have been authored to do and take responsibility for and of being together. Team agreements are an essential component of a team’s success.  By missing this vital consideration teams often fall into politics and drama and get stuck. In addition ,Janet discusses the role of a team coach, the role of a sponsor with their team and the work it takes to help teams become self-sustaining.  Every sentence Janet speaks is loaded with juicy questions and thought-provoking ideas. As a Leader or Coach, I dare you not to listen.

 

Points made through the episode:

• Coaching and Team Coaching is not a “job” for Janet but an opportunity to live her bliss everyday
• In her early career working with a large financial institution Charles Schwab Janet first experienced what it meant to team across a whole organisation
• She impresses that we often lose sight of the brilliance of our team colleagues -we must see our team members as more than the moment we are in and ask instead how is the climate that has been created contributing to the inability for a team member to show up?
• Creating the climate for people to shine is the Leaders job.
• Important to figure out what is in the “collective field” of a team, perhaps keeping its team members from full authorship
• Team members are rarely asked or get to declare how they wish to contribute and what their value is to the team’s endeavour.
• There are several important steps in a team engagement. In fact a number of steps that in Janet’s words comprise the anatomy of a team engagement.
• Consider the Sponsor relationship – as a coach ask what the meaningful work is that the team is here to accomplish?
• Dialogue with the Sponsor about their role, what they have granted authority to the team. Understand what they are examining is the evidence that the team is performing. Consider too how the team is being resourced and supported.
• Then there is the important same engagement with each member of the team to understand their understanding of their remit. How do the team members negotiate for their work with the sponsor and the system for what they need?
• Important for coach to not over work but to allow the team to reveal itself to itself
• Janet employs a process at InviteChange when working with teams that she calls Team Sovereignty -It ask 4 seemingly simple questions

1. What brought you here?
2. What is the team expected to deliver?
3. What agreements are necessary for you to accept responsibility?
4. How would you like to approach delivering the expectation while honouring the agreements made between us?

• Janet explored an experience I had with a team around the first question and suggested as a coach I had missed the opportunity to coach a team member. I could have asked in the vignette shared:

1. What makes being on this team important to you?
2. What is it you want your team members to know about you that is satisfying to you about your contribution?
3. What are you really frustrated about in terms of what you know you can bring to this team, why you are here that if the team knew would bring you satisfaction ?

• Janet encourages us as Leaders and Coaches to find compassion for the behaviour we are witnessing. How we have been together and the conversations we have missed is revealed in how a person shows up.
• Team members often enter a team in full protection mode. It is palpable when you enter a team or group of people. Anxiety is high. Important for us as team coaches not to solidify this protection and amp anxiety by the creation of “ground rules” but rather we need to work to create team agreements.
• We can unwittingly fall into Parent-Child dynamics when what is required are courageous conversations about how we will work together to accomplish what is often complex, challenging and consequential work.
• Janet employs metaphors a lot on teams to help distance the often emotional tension that can exist with this work.
• Team agreements when worked through in a reasonable fashion, conscious of the body of work a team has to do can build confidence between team members for the times when things get tricky.
• Every member of the team is account-able for the team agreements.
• The work of a coach is to monitor the collective field of interactions on a team when you are present.
• Leaders need to be clear. Have they been clear about the level of authority they have granted the team? Of their role? Of the boundary between?
• Leaders can often fall foul of the Request/Promise distinction and collapse the beauty of a request with the idea of delegation. Often information is missing.
• We have to vigilant of the assumptions we are making on teams
• Important to ask if the sponsor has skin in the game and similarly does the team have skin in the game for this work?
• Clarity is important -what are the organisational outcomes expected of this team, what are the conditions of satisfaction by which this team will be measured, how has the team been authored to complete its mission, how has the team been set up? What is the productivity and positivity you are evidencing on the team? Where are the team agreements?
• Janet reminds us that too often organisational life is about revering, competence, analytics and objectives by being great stewards of resources all of which requires astute acumen but what we forget is our consciousness and humanness in our endeavour.
• We forget to ask how we are experiencing the system of which we are a part and we fall prey to politics and drama.
• To conclude Janet shares her own experience of team with her team at Invite Change and how she radically altered the nature of questions she asks team members to get at their commitment.

 

 

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

1. invitechange.com
2. Professional Coaching Principles and Practice edited by Susan English, Janet Sabatine & Philippe Brownell.
3. The fearless organisation by Amy Edmondson
4. Generative Team Coaching, InviteChange

 

Introduction: Cara Farrelly leads the Vodafone Supply Chain Operations teams across New Zealand, Portugal, Ireland, Greece Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Albania, Malta and London. She is credited as a highly committed leader with an inherent ability to establish highly respected relationships with both internal and external stakeholders.  This episode demonstrates her attention and care. She is passionate about people and about cultivating inclusive cultures and connected communities that support and challenge each other to achieve exceptional results. She is also a soccer Mum. Her son Gavin Bazunu aged 17 has been signed to Manchester City from Shamrock Rovers here in Ireland. She is extremely proud of Gavin and Todd her sons who mean the world to her. 

Podcast episode summary: This episode is about Leadership and team leadership. Cara spoke about her career trajectory and how certain people had an incredible influence on her ability to lead. She learnt early on that “vulnerability can be your strength”. She cites the importance of trust on teams but also a leaders ability to be vulnerable. She wishes she could have been braver sooner to allow herself to show up and lean into her various roles.  

• Sports teams can help organisational teams think about team spirit and the importance of understanding each other for strengths. 
• Trust is essential and trust between members augers well for future performance 
• Cara’s role is as leader as coach she believes it important to give people space & bandwidth to allow team members to learn and innovate. 
• Some leadership myths we can bust: Leaders do not need to know all the answers, coaching is probably better than telling, Organisations are not looking for a particular type, you can be yourself at work
• The best way to control is to give it away!
• Launch well. Cara’s team of 10 countries came together to divine a collective purpose and to work out how to work together. This launch ignited their passion to work together
• In addition they have weekly huddles where everyone is visible, present and engaged. 
• Care & Kindness are two qualities Cara believes to be important. Listening is an important skill to allow people to really show up –it also supports mental well being when people can talk to their concerns. 
• AAR, after action reviews which is a process from the US army, really helps the teams to learn together
• Not everyone can survive on a team and it is important to help people be with their limitations and not let them suffer in silence. Important too to call out early what is not working 
• Dysfunction on teams is partly to do with not knowing how to work together. Competition and suspicion can erode a team’s confidence. Having a collective or common goal and building trust are just two ways of mitigating dysfunction. 
• Teams at Vodafone are being asked to work in an agile way, to work across boundaries and to partner over the entire ecosystem. This means teaming well. 
• Cara and her team have invested time to get experiential and learn together in ways that are not usual but allow the team to see each other away from the day to day or the office. 
• Cara’s own coach training is supporting her learn the need for structure and also the importance of climate in a coaching relationship. For her coaching is about forwarding the action and deepening the learning. 
• Cara ended by reminding others and me that her purpose is to help others. 

Quotable Quotes: “Vulnerability is your strength” “best way to control is to give it away” “Care & Kindness is important for leaders” “Competition is not inside the team” “forward the action and deepen the learning” 

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

• www.tcmp.ie a coach training course run by June Duffy 

Introduction: Josh MacKenzie, believes in personal growth, equal opportunity and business as a force for good. He is the founder of Development Beyond Learning (DBL)-an award winning organisation using behavioural science to future proof businesses and careers. Josh also spends time to support the growing 100% Human at Work Initiative; a collective of organisations creating a better future of work for humanity. It is now a movement of more than 500 organisations including Unilever, Accenture and EY. Josh is an Australian raising a family in the UK. He considers himself a global citizen, is a proud father of 3 and a mad U2 fan. 

 

Podcast Episode Summary This episode speaks to the important need to equip young people make the transition,  perhaps the biggest transition they make in life, from education to work through the development of human skills. 

 

Points made over the episode

• U2 The band inspired Josh MacKenzie in terms of having a purpose and giving meaning to what you do. 
• Josh first became interested in leadership and development at University in Australia where he was part of a student leadership body. It taught him that as individuals we have a lot more to learn than education alone affords
• When Josh joined the Corporate world he soon realised that there was a whole world dedicated to leadership & development, personal development and talent development – that prompted Josh to set up Development Beyond Learning.
• He noticed that the transition from education to the working world was probably the most difficult transition a young person can make. It is often underfunded and unsupported. 
• The Game of Corporate life is different with different rules. 
• For many young graduates there is a realisation that everyone around them is as smart as they  are and often with wisdom in years. 
• DBL is founded on 3 core principles. 

1. Personal Growth: The idea we can learn the skills and beliefs we need to have the careers we want
2. Opportunity: talent is everywhere but opportunity is not. 
3. Career: To use your career as a force for good. 

• The future is human and it is human skills that make a person effective
• DBL make it possible to collapse the time it takes to realise that these human skills are important 
• Most young people will not get exposed to the idea that EQ, SQ are as important as IQ
• A lot of the problems we see in the world today are solvable with technical skills but require human skills as well in terms of critical thinking, self-awareness, negotiation and communication skills 
• The Good news is that more and more employers are investing in human development such as pre-boarding, on-boarding, 6-12 month development programs 
• Context is king. There is a difference between teaching a young person on a trading floor of an investment bank how to relate to his/her manager than a person sitting in a technology centre in India for example 
• Psychology and behavioural science is baked into the development programs 
• The DBL approach is comprehensive it involves a blend of virtual training and in person training teaching subjects like self-awareness, growth mindset, critical thinking, social intelligence and personal brand. 
• Young graduates can be sceptical and it is healthy to be sceptical not arrogant. 
• Evidence based research is vital, especially to connect with participants left brain 
• You can engage the right brain with high quality experiences, stories, relationships and engaging exercises but it is also important to have high quality content backed up by research
• Self-awareness can be perceived as a fluffy topic for investment bankers until they are shown the research that says 1,000 top executives cited self-awareness as the number one skill that helped these leaders become successful. 
• DBL are confident that 5 key behaviours will set graduates, interns and young people apart from others over the first 3-7years of their careers. Skills like self-awareness, building connections, having resilience & grit, growth mindset and mental wellbeing. 
• Mental Wellness is a topic that is now being addressed in graduate cohorts 
• Arguably young people have suffered the most by way of the pandemic & least resourced & supported over the many lockdowns
• Belonging & wellbeing are now important topics 
• DBL wrote a white paper, available on their website, which researched the topic of wellbeing 
• Young people joining organisations today have completed their studies virtually, have been hired virtually and are now often still working virtually. 
• The Pandemic coupled with the earlier work to attract diverse graduate pools has created the perfect storm. More than ever programs need to address belonging and mental wellness. 
• Organisations are also seeing the wisdom of putting some of the budgeted spend for graduates into management training for managers who have graduates on their teams. 
• Josh hopes that organisations do not swing back to how things used to be before the pandemic. Virtual does work. Hybrid working does work and can achieve more by providing a level playing field for all learners.
• Josh would argue that base line training is delivered virtually and augmented by premium in person training when it is warranted. 
• Investment in the future work force is going to mean more human development not less. In terms of our ever changing world it is important to bring graduates and interns through the organisation with human skills fit for purpose and value creation
• The 100% human initiative will support young talent emerge through the workforce with the skills to help navigate complex issues, work together really well, have humility help organisations be human. 

Resources shared 

 

• https://www.developmentbeyondlearning.com
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-mackenzie-92795710/

Introduction:  Author, Thought leader and Entrepreneur in the world of performance, learning and coaching 

• Myles Downey is a thought-leader and entrepreneur in the world of performance, learning and coaching. He was the founder of The School of Coaching, for many years a much- respected provider of coach training and executive coaching in the UK and Europe. Myles is the author of ‘Effective Modern Coaching’, ‘Effective Coaching’ and ‘Enabling Genius – a mindset for success in the 21st Century’. 

• Myles is one of the leading business performance coaches in Europe with extensive, global experience spanning thirty years. He has worked with CEO’s, COO’s and MD’s in the most prestigious organisations from Banking and Financial Services, to Manufacturing and Oil and Gas to Professional Services and in the Public Sector. 

Podcast episode Summary:  In this episode Myles Downey shares his passion for his work, his writing work, and the work he does to support leaders and organisations express themselves fruitfully and joyously for the benefit of the organisation and each other. There is a focus on his new book, The enabling Manager where Myles decodes the distinctions between Lead, Manage and Coach. 

Points made throughout the Episode: 

 

• How did you get into this domain called Coaching? Myles started back in the days when the word “coaching” as we know it today was barely understood. Myles was a good tennis player and enjoying playing and competing and he came upon a book called “The inner game of Tennis” Myles was a professional architect at the time and after reading this book within 6 months began to explore the ideas housed in the Inner Game 

The book title effectively divides the world into two, the inner world and the outer world where most of the focus for coaching was applied -such as how you placed your foot etc as opposed to the inner world the stuff between our ears. That was the start of Myles journey into coaching. 

• Myles set up his practice first in Dublin and then in London where he set up probably the first Coaching School called The Alexander Corporation in 1987

• Was the world of sport ahead of The world of Coaching by way of that book The inner Game of Tennis? No like Coaching it was very mechanistic and focused on knowledge and how to rather than what was happening interiorly for a person or player. 

• What did you appreciate when you first heard about the Inner Game? Gallwey the author made a critical distinction between what he called Self One and Self Two. 

• Self-One is that part of you that is in fear, in doubt, in worry and Self-Two is that part of you that is in flow. Teaching tends to put people into self-one. They start to emulate the teacher and they “try” and trying cripples people. Operating from Self Two comes self-reliance and autonomy.  

• Timothy Gallwey used to employ a formula which Myles calls out and explains. Performance = Potential – Interference where interference is about doubt, fear, thinking about winning or not losing instead of being present. If you can reduce the interference for people then they can perform. 

• How did Sir John Whitmore and Graham Alexander influence your work? These two gentlemen had the rights to the Inner Game in Europe. Myles joined them as they both moved into the world of Coaching in Business. 

• What made the work of Sir John Whitmore so impactful in the World of Business? Time & Place provided a rich landscape from which John’s work took hold. There was an openness in the mid 80s to alternatives. Sir John Whitmore was the first person to write a book on Coaching devoid of content such as tennis for example. His book was very simple and very readable. Sir John Whitmore was a man of humility and that meant his ego did not get in the way in his communication with others. 

• Myles does not subscribe to the Leader as Hero model. He shares his work with the English Rugby team and their take on Leadership housed in three capacities, Lead, Manage, Coach. 

• We often make the erroneous assumption that Leaders need to be omnipotent and be skilled in all three capacities. “Leaders are not perfect” and Myles loves that quote from Graham Alexander. 

• As an Author what motivated you to write? One of Myles greatest strengths is his ability to make intellectual distinctions that he can communicate.  Because Myles set up the school of Coaching he had to teach a lot and that motivated him to write too. Orian Publishing asked Myles to write a book and he felt he got “permission” to go ahead and write the book. Myles first book, a book on Coaching has been in publication since 1999. 

• What are the compelling messages you would like to share with the Listeners from your latest book? 

• Command & Control a model of Leadership that has been around for a long time does not work. Think engagement surveys, performance levels and a study that shared the 10 things people do not like about work. No. 10 was their manager. 

• Myles scanned the world to find what did work. The Military was one such place. Start-ups was the other place. In both there is an emerging practice that you could call an entrepreneurial mindset. 

• The US Army are exponents of what they call Mission Command. The thing they talk about most is Trust. 2 things prevail. People have to trust and they have to understand their mission. Entrepreneurial mindset is similar because everyone should know the primary objective of the new business. 

• Both places allowed for and encouraged people to be liberated to perform. 

• When Myles extrapolates these practices into his work he get to three doing words-nouns Lead-Manage-Coach. 

• Lead is about the Why. That is back to Mission Command-understanding the future direction and where the company is going. 

• Manage: describes the part a person will play in the game. Role, Goals, Projects, Tasks, Standards, Protocols etc. 

• Coach: once the person understands why something is important and their role in achieving it then you get into a conversation about “how” they might do it. 

• The authority shifts between the first two and the third. In the Coaching part the authority shifts to the person who is going to do the work. “Tell me how you are going to go about it?” 

• This shift in authority is one of the greatest difficulties for Leaders and managers alike. A lot of the time it is because they do not have the distinctions as described above. 

• The Leadership model moves from Command and Control to Align and Enable. 

• What inspired you Myles to encapsulate your model with the Noun Relate. A robust relationship based on trust will allow for these kinds of conversations to happen. 

• Relationships before results is a Mantra I use and Myles agrees it is so fundamental to work and for him before he does any team work he will indulge some time to build relations between members. 

• When people build relations and build trust they have the difficult conversations so quickly. 

• What eludes managers and leaders to apply these four nouns? A lack of understanding. So many companies try to build a coaching culture for example. Myles says “stop” stop right now. You do not want a coaching culture you want a performance culture. You have to be able to hold people to account. 

• Psycho Synthesis is a body of work built up by Roberto Assagioli in the last century. One of his ideas concerned Love and Will. There are two fundamental drives, one is love the other is will. Love is a feminine energy based on trust, based on nurturing, about letting things happen and is somewhat non-judgemental. Will is a more masculine energy, is founded in control, rigid and structured. Assagioli made the point that whilst love sounds like a good thing it has its shadow. If you are overly nurturing as a parent you rob the child of their opportunity to grow. Similarly Will might not seem appealing but if a child does not have boundaries that is not useful. Myles equates the love piece with Coaching and the good Will with managing and you have to have both. 

• Assagioli shared his idea that that any time you have two ideas, such as  Will and Love that naturally form a spectrum you need to get above both to see what is going on and for him that formed a tringle and the word he chose was Presence. 

• Presence, Will and Love underpin Myles model Lead, Manage and Coach. His model is underpinned by Relation. 

• Relationship and Intent or the fundamental understanding of intent allow for the application of Will and direct communication. 

• What does it take to be able to adeptly move between these domain, Lead, Manage and Coach? Myles answers by referring to some research that supported his book enabling genius. The research was looking at answer the question; Across those people who have displayed “Greatness” what did they have in common? The research unearthed a few things. 1. Identity was important- people understand who they are in a particular domain and how they uniquely express themselves. 2. Will was another and 3. Mindset was the third and 4. The importance of continuing to learn and grow

• Most people when given a new job to lead people are giving no training. In the UK 71% of people who are given responsibility for people are not given any training. 

• Most people when they get into a leadership position do not know who shows up. It’s a potpourri of the things they have had done to them, the expectations of the company etch. Rarely it is about that persons own authority what comes from within. 

• Myles works with Leaders to help them understand who they are as leaders. Myles has developed over time a process that starts by asking a few set questions followed by a visualisation exercise and then a few more questions to pull the analysis together. Some of the questions sound like the following;

1. As a Leader what are you great at?

2. What do people come to you for? 

3. What are you becoming?

• The visualisation exercise produces a symbol that represents a Leaders presence/essence and genius. 

• The exercise ends with the question what would you say is your unique identity as a Leader. 

• Mindset is not a given it is something that you unconsciously develop over time and knowing that you can start to develop it consciously over time. 

• Myles shares his own approach critical to informing his mindset. He uses six post cards that characterise his desired mindset. This is something you can create and guide your behaviour every day. 

• FTSOW (For The Sake of What) is this mindset important. You need to contextualise a mindset. 

• Somewhere in that mindset has to be other people and how you influence and lead other people & there also has to be something in there about how a leader maintains a clarity of context and a vision that is further than the crippling short termism that is so often evident. 

• To bring your book to life is there an example of a team you would be willing to share?  

• An example includes a case from a TV production company and Myles is quick to point out, not the BBC. One of his 1:1 clients, a C-Suite executive was determined to increase the performance of his unit. The work started with conversations with him as a leader and what that looked like and how he brought on and supported the performance of others. The leader formulated an idea that if he could up his own performance it would create a vacuum for his team to fill. As they moved through the work the leader appreciated he needed to improve his capacity to coach as did his leadership team. 

• Myles supported this leader and team through five workshops where they went through the domains of Lead, Manage and Coach. These were very practical workshops where Coaching was emphasised. On the fifth workshop Myles shared his workshop notes and together the team practiced the elements of the program to get the feel of the work. The team worked in pairs and delivered the content to their teams together, thereby learning from each other and with people. 

• The work proved to be transformational. The pairs were asked to have the work delivered across and down several layers of the organisation. 

• Unlike other Manager as Coach programs which often do not gain traction this one did by way of the commitment of the team, the clarity of the Leader about what needed to happen & unequivocal will to make it happen. The Leader was incredibly compassionate with his people & supported them to integrate the material in a digestible fashion. 

• Myles ended this podcast by sharing his wish for the future of work. Human beings should find ways to express in the world, a genuine, authentic expression of you, me, they in the world. Myles plays tennis not because he is competitive but because he loves expressing himself on a tennis court. Myles wishes that our workplaces should be places where people can express at least parts of themselves, fruitfully and joyously. 

Resources shared across this podcast 

1. Myles Downing is the author of ‘Effective Modern Coaching’, ‘Effective Coaching’ and ‘Enabling Genius – a mindset for success in the 21st Century’. He is also the author of The Enabling Manager, how to get the best out of your own team. 

2. https://mylesdowney.com/

3. www.performanceconsultants.com

 

 

Introduction: Bernard Desmidt is an accomplished Coach, Facilitator, Speaker and Author. His first book is called; Inside Out Leadership: How to master the 4 Principles of Effective Leadership and become the Leader that others will follow. His second book is called: Team Better Together and is the subject of the Podcast. Bernard was born in South Africa and he lived there until he was 38 and then he emigrated to Australia where he now lives with his wife and children.

 

Podcast Episode Summary To flourish as a team is a choice. It takes discipline and in this episode Bernard Desmidt helps us appreciate the 5 disciplines teams can apply to get at impactful results & meaningful relationships. In addition Bernard litters this episode with nuggets of wisdom and incites to help understand the work of teaming better together.

 

Points made over the episode

• Bernard starts this podcast by sharing a story of his background that he has only recently shared publicly.
• 3 African expressions inform his way of being and working today
• Sibona -a Zulu word for hello, which means “I see you and by seeing you, I bring you into being. By seeing each other is this way we hold each other with respect, dignity and legitimacy
• Ubuntu- Means to affirm an others humanity, by recognising their uniqueness and their differences. This expression acknowledges our interconnectedness
• Hambi Gashi – means “Go well, gently in peace and carefully.
• Bernard spent 20 years in corporate life with companies like ICI and Goodyear in South Africa where he recognised the considerable waste of time on teams and the inherent dysfunction that often resides with teams
• After an outburst on an executive team, where Bernard was a member, the team engaged in Team Coaching. That was where Bernard met Peter Stephenson, a pioneer in team coaching in Australia at the time. Bernard recognised that he had found the work he was meant to do in the world and joined Peter’s company.
• The motivation to write Teams Better Together was born out of Bernard’s experience working with teams.
• The Paradox -The 80-60-20 heuristic shares that 80% of Leaders spend 60% or their organisational life on teams and only 20% of those teams flourish.
• High performing teams are elusive because Teams rise and fall by the quality of their relationships and until this is understood it is unlikely teams will co-ordinate wall and relate well together to get impactful results.
• It is important to invite teams to share their lived experience on teams to assess the quality of lived relationships – do team members hold each other with the same respect as they wish for themselves? Are they open to learning together? Is there sufficient trust and safety to speak concerns openly and honestly? These are some of the questions that can be asked to determine the quality of relations on teams
• Bernard administers an assessment against 5 disciplines. Two indicators in the fifth discipline score the lowest
• Team Behaviour & shared ways of working have been identified & consistently upheld
• Team members are open to receiving & giving feedback to each other on performance and behaviours
• The practice of observing a team in action whilst sitting in the corner of a room can often be the best form of due diligence of the effectiveness of a team.
• To flourish as a team is a choice. A High Performing Team is like an elite athlete, they employ rigorous discipline
• Teams are living systems that need to evolve, learn and adapt.
• Teams need to be able and willing to open themselves up to new ways of thinking, being and doing
• Teams need to acknowledge their interdepended nature, to know that relationships matter and have to be cultivated and will impact the impact of their results.
• 4 Team Types are distinguishable with discernment.
• Two dysfunctional teams reveal themselves as combative or competitive
• Two functional teams can be identified as Cohesive and Collaborative or Flourishing.
• There exists a subtle distinctions worth prising apart for our understanding.
• Cohesive Teams converge thinking similarly, they enjoy harmony often cordial hypocrisy, they often avoid speaking the truth or sharing their real concerns. Cohesive teams have a dysfunctional relationship with Conflict, Challenge and Critic.
• A Collaborative Team seeks divergence in thinking They are more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. Collaborative teams dance with conflict. Collaborative teams have a positive relationship with Conflict, Challenge and Criticism. Care underpins their search for the best results and best thinking.
• The work starts with an inordinate and unashamedly strong focus on the analysis phase. Bernard is keen to establish real commitment for the work of Teaming better together. He will do this in a few ways, by conducting in depth 1:1 conversations with each member of the team and by administering his own questionnaire against the 5 disciplines. The result is a discussion with the team that informs the work.
• Team Building is about forming. Where a team gets to know each other. Team Development is about informing where a team learns about decision making, processes for team co-ordination etc.. Team Coaching is about transformation where a team shift their mindset, ways of being and doing, the assessments they make & how they show up for each other.
• Team Coaching, or a typical program of work is about 7-8 months long.
• The work involves the assessment phase, contracting, 5 day long workshops, peer coaching and individual coaching of the CEO and others on the team
• The Five Disciplines can be described as follows;

1. Discipline One- The Mandate. Often the mandate is assumed. Here the team discovers how their stakeholders appreciate the team, what they need more from the team and what they find difficult.
2. Discipline Two- A Teams Purpose. Teams exist for a reason, they serve a cause and have a clear, compelling and challenging “WHY”
3. Discipline Three – The team design This is where the team designs its culture, the ways of working, the health of team relations and the bulk of time is spent in this discipline. The work of Gloria Kelly is introduced here. Gloria Kelly is an eminent sociologist and determined 8 elements to support effective relations. Bernard has employed her work and tweaked her model to include 5 elements to support ways of being and 3 elements to support ways of doing together. Trust, Respect, Concerns, Moods & Appreciation comprise the 5 being elements and Co-ordination, Conversations & Alignment comprise the 3 doing elements.
4. Discipline Four- This is the discipline to deliver. What are the collective performance goals that can only be delivered by the team working interpedently? In this discipline the work of Michael Bungay Steiner is employed where a team discerns between Bad Work, Good Work and Great Work
5. Discipline Five- Team Learning & Development. This discipline involves the team giving each other feedback on performance and behaviours, reflecting on work together and developing skills and knowledge to support the teams results. This discipline has the highest predictive validity that the team will flourish.

• An exercise for Appreciation: Here the team sits in a round and for two minutes each team member is afforded a piece of appreciation from the other team members
• The Sequence of Learning for a team follows the 5 disciplines over time. Discipline 5 and 3 are being weaved from the beginning.
• The gift of 1’s and 5’s is offered at the start of the assignment where Bernard encourages team members to be firm giving 1’s for development and 5’s for excellence where 3 is considered cowardly.
• Bernard concludes the Podcast conversation by sharing a story of a client in retail who by following the rhythm of the 5 disciplines managed to move from floundering to flourishing through Covid.
• The Podcast ends on a hopeful note & Bernard wishes that teams who chose to flourish can enjoy the results of wonderful relationships and impactful results.

 

Resources shared

 

• bernarddesmidt.com
• Team Better Together by Bernard Desmidt
• Inside Out Leadership: How to Master the 4 Principles of Effective Leadership and become the Leader others chose to follow
• Do more Great work by Michael Bungay Stanier

 

Introduction: Joe Jacobi is an Olympic Gold Medallist, winner of America’s first ever Olympic Gold Medal in Whitewater Canoe Slalom in Barcelona in 1992. Joe is also a performance coach with Valor Performance Inc. helping Leaders & Teams perform at their best without compromising their lives. Joe writes and has a blog called Sunday Morning Joe where he shares his wisdom, insights and lessons learnt from the river in a post every week. 

Podcast episode Summary: How to transfer ideas learnt on the river operating as a high performance athlete to Leaders, teams and organisations looking to improve performance. Joe uses the River as a metaphor either on the river in rafts or in a conference room or both to build better performance, to encourage the adoption of better mindsets, strategies and ultimately cultures of excellence. Joe often employs unconventional paths to learning, counterintuitive frameworks for rethinking approaches in a manner that is easily transferable. 

Points made throughout the Episode: 

 

• Joe opens the conversation by sharing that he is currently writing on a very particular theme and will do so for the next six months. The theme is “The Pursuit of contentment on the River of Uncertainty” 
• Joe shared his knack for being able to check-in with himself to wonder about his performance in the pursuit of objectives from a very early age. 
• Joe was fortuitous enough to have grown up in Washington DC, the home of top performance culture for Whitewater River Slalom Canoeing on the Patomic River
• He grew up surrounded by top performers and coaches. 
• He was never attracted to the Olympics in fact the sport was only reinstated as an Olympic sport in 1989. That allowed him experience the river with a focus on being the best he could be along with friends who were interested in paddling against the backdrop of the amazing culture on the Patomic River. 
• Today the sport is very attached to the Olympics and the values of winning and results. 
• Joe enjoyed a long career in his chosen sport and returned to the Olympics in 2004 when he was aged 34. He also ran a Gold Medal Kayak Camp that allowed him grow as a teacher and coach, giving voice to the River in a meaningful way. 
• In 2008 he was the Olympic commentator for the sport for NBC, a position that kept him connected to the sport and to the many top performing athletes. He was the Global story teller for the sport. 
• The River,  Joe shares has been his best life coach and his C2 partner (Scott) his best relationship coach. He learnt how to communicate, mostly non-verbally, how to respect difference and leverage their combined difference with respect to other Olympic teams. The work was often hard and testing and they did rely on a sports psychologist.
• Today Joe talks about Rocks as the challenges we face in Corporate life and the counterintuitive task of befriending them. 
• This lesson is not just philosophical but grounded in an understanding of Maths, Science and Hydrology. 
• Another idea or lesson is the use of the “paddle” Joe explains that it is important to assess where you can draw energy without overusing the power of the paddle and shares how that approximates in corporate life in the patience, posture, understanding of physiology and mindset. 
• Teams often want to be synchronised and that means going slower, certainly initially to see “the paddle strokes” Not an easy lesson to practice. 
• By paddling slowly and together teams can respond to uncertainty appropriately. 
• Teams have to understand how they operate at lower cadence and at higher cadence when needed but importantly not to always operate at one speed. 
• Teams therefore have to get honest with each other and figure out how to navigate the “River” of their businesses effectively. 
• Important to appreciate how to rest, how to use down time and to manage energy. 
• Joe would like to see workplaces be more compassionate, to allow people to be vulnerable to share what is going on outside of the hours of work so as to manage their energy over time. 
• How do Leaders encourage people to have the confidence and trust to say when they are “off” to nurture reciprocal kindness. 
• Love, safety and belonging are basic human needs on teams. Yet many Leaders practice Fear, Control and Duality thinking. 
• Leaders need to be congruent between what they espouse and how they act. 
• River Mapping is an exercise that Joe employs to provide a powerful way to explore a team’s approach to business objectives. The River allows for a different language and way to communicate that is often more open and honest. 
• Covid-19 saw Joe lose a parent, his Father died in May of 2020 and Joe had to manage that loss from afar. It also saw him work with a group of High Performing Surgeons 
• Joe reminds us of the need to see the human in front of us and to remember the lost art of connection and communication. 
• Covid has meant remote working and zoom life for many of us and that has often blurred the buffers we used to rely on. In parting Joe shares some simple tips to manage energy while using zoom and to find ways to create buffers for energy restoration 

Resources shared 

1. www.5withJoe.com 
2.  http://joejacobi.com/sign-up-for-sunday-morning-joe/
3. www.valorperform.com 

Introduction: Fiona Carney is a Senior Director of Business Operations for Asia at Microsoft. Her background is in Consulting, where she worked with KPMG and Accenture in Business Strategy and Change Management for over 10 years. In 2007, Fiona joined Microsoft and has worked in numerous roles and led functions of the business- including Customer Experience, Sales, Operations and Account Management. She has worked with Microsoft partners for her entire career at Microsoft in EMEA and globally. Currently, she leads a large cross-functional organization supporting the business in Asia. Fiona sits on the Diversity & Inclusion Council for APAC and is passionate about the development of people and ensuring a diverse workforce.

Podcast episode summary: This episode covers Fiona’s passion for teams, for people development, technology and the impact it can make on society as a whole. Fiona discussed her recent Master's program where she researched resilience and the impact of group coaching on resilience. In addition, she shared her insights on what it takes to get at team performance citing the importance of leveraging peoples strengths, giving and being clear about purpose and mission, listening and looking for bright spots, having a shared context that is understood and remembering that behaviours are contagious. The following comprise the summarised bullet s of our conversation

 

• Resilience is important in a world that is global, challenging, ambiguous and ever-changing
• In terms of building, teams start with strengths-Microsoft use Strengths Finder –leaders need to be able to look under the “Iceberg” and understand what motivates their people
• Not everything is governed by processes encourage people to seek clarity & link that back to your team's purpose 
• Encourage your team's effort to look for “bright spots” places where best practice is exhibited
• Shared context is essential-what are we trying to achieve together, how do our roles need to adapt, how can we make each other succeed in that effort
• Psychological safety is important to get at the trust and to enable risk-taking and learning. Simple to say hard to make happen
• Role modelling is an important component of Leadership-model the behaviours you seek to see happen
• Understand people and their cultural differences –Fiona describes her best team experience where a team of global experts were thrown together on a critical issue with wide stakeholder impact.  Their success was predicated on investing in time together, forming quickly and relinquishing the need to be right or precious, size of team was small and the mindset they adopted allowed for trade-offs to be made easily
• Microsoft has been going through its own cultural transformation and a lot of work has gone on to make their three values come to life, Energy, Passion and Success. A big focus is on having a growth mindset – where people can fail fast, learn and be empowered
• Fiona is very interested in learning more about psychodynamics or the currents that flow beneath a team. She is reading books by Manfred Kets De Vries. 
• Artificial Intelligence is really big and Fiona’s interest is in helping people be with that change and be relevant 
• Fiona summarised by saying that Leaders of teams need to listen, provide a shared context, break things down into manageable meaningful goals, help people to look for “bright spots” and remember that behaviours are contagious. 

 

Quotable Quotes: “shared context is important” “safety, belonging and mattering” “Energy, Clarity and Success- 3 Microsoft values easy to grasp, easy to remember and easy to role model” 

 

Resources: the following includes the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

1. Strengths Finder by Gallup 
2. Psychological Safety and Amy Edmonson 
3. The hedgehog affect and The Leadership Mystique by Mandfred Kets De Vries 

Introduction: Dr Simon Western is CEO of Analytic Network Coaching, Adjunct Professor University College Dublin and President International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations. Simon has international experience as an academic, leadership coach and strategic consultant. He delivers numerous keynotes on the topic of “New Leadership for new Times” He has authored 3 acclaimed books, Global Leadership Perspectives with Eric-Jean Gautier, Leadership a critical text (3rd Edition), and Coaching and Mentoring a Critical text, 2nd edition. Simon challenges conventional wisdom and offers insights into how leadership is changing in light of the digital age

 

Podcast episode summary: In this episode Simon speaks to the need for a more humanitarian approach to leadership remembering to put the Human at the heart of any project. He shares his analysis of Leadership and in particular the 4 discourses of leadership encountered over the last 100 years. The Eco-Leadership is necessary for our digitised and networked society and to address the many complex challenges we face today, such as Climate Change.

 

Noteworthy points of discussion

• Simon adopts a very practical approach to his work. He considers himself an anthropologist in organisations looking and listening for what needs to emerge.
• He adopts a critical questioning approach, informed by his understanding of Critical Theory, Networked Theory, Social Movement theory and Psychoanalysis.
• Because of the frenetic pace of work and the demands made of us many people are struggling to find their authentic selves.
• Simon supports clients to really “experience their experience” and his methodology can be described as a process of journeying through 5 Frames of analysis: The Depth Frame, The Relationship Frame, The Leadership Frame, The Networked Frame and finally the Strategic Frame. This approach disrupts people’s conventional way of doing things, too often rational, linear and flat.
• Simon shared the evolution of leadership over the course of the last 100 years to comprise Four distinct discourses. These discourses include, The Controller Leadership discourse, which often dehumanises the workplace, the Therapist Leadership discourse, making work more democratic and looking at what motivates people to the Messiah Leadership discourse as a way of leading that asks for a transformational leader, someone who is visionary and can signal a purpose for the entity, that others follow to finally the last discourse called the ECO Leadership discourse. This discourse is a Meta theory, which is about getting the other three discourses in balance in an organisation.
• Progressive leaders and organisations see the need for understanding Eco Leadership, they appreciate we are living in an Eco-System, a networked society but making the transition from the other leadership discourses is not easy. It is a mindset shift.
• Often pressures on teams’ forces people inexorably back to the controller leadership discourse of the comfort of the Messiah and Therapist discourse. Important to hold the tension, to pause, reflect, question and look awry
• We are not taught in a way to appreciate systems, to think spatially and to question. Our education system encourages individualism and siloed thinking.
• We are experiencing a paradigm shift forced on us by digitisation and it is important for us to adapt, for Simon this means people need to put themselves into the world and not retreat, to “experience the experience “and to be real.
• Curiosity is key.

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

1. analyticnetwork.com
2. Leadership a Critical Text (3rd Edition) 2018, by Western, Simon
3. Coaching and Mentoring, a Critical Text (2nd Edition) by Western, Simon
4. Global Leadership Perspectives, Western, Simon and Gautier, Eric-Jean, 2018

Introduction: Irvin Nugent is a recognised Executive Coach, Internationally recognised Trainer in Emotional Intelligence and Top-rated speaker. He is also the Author of the book Leadership Lessons from the Pub: Harnessing the Power of Emotional Intelligence to Build a Fully Engaged Workplace. Irvine earned his PhD in Management from Capella University where his thesis focused on Leadership in times of crisis. He is a former Catholic Priest and CEO. 

 

Podcast Episode Summary

This podcast episode showcases the work Irvine does in the world to make Emotional Intelligence accessible and to make Emotional Literacy more common place. In our discussion we explore the many lessons for Leaders, Irvine brings to life in book, lesson like how to build bridges instead of walls, how to create the space to allow others excel, how to set the tone and to utilise the skill of storytelling. The episode is replete with anecdotes and practical suggestions to bring emotional intelligence alive. 

 

Points made over the episode

• Irvine Nugent was born in Northern Ireland and grew up in a period known as “the troubles” He lived with a question “can life be better” and this question saw him move first into Priesthood and then into the world of Teaching and Coaching to support others live richer lives 
• Becoming a Priest was the way he could express his inner desire to help others heal
• Leaving the Priesthood was one of the hardest decisions he has ever had to make but it became a question of Authenticity for Irvine -the confinements of the Church no longer suited him
• The book was borne out of the many armchair encounters Irvine has had with Leaders trying to wrestle with questions such as “how do I lead a team?” “How can I create a workspace where people can be themselves?” 
• The Space of The Pub is fascinating and whilst it has not been the subject of Sociological research it is a place where people feel comfortable to share their troubles to build community and to feel included
• Leaders similarly need to be able to build community to allow the diversity of workplaces to commune, to allow for tough decisions to be made in service of the whole. 
• Lessons from the book are often overlooked by Leaders. One such lesson is the potential to influence the mood of an organisation or team. Moods and Emotions are contagious-be careful with yours. 
• It is important for Leaders to be self-aware, to reflect and make choices about the Presence they wish to convey. 
• Our VUCA world often makes unconscious as Leaders. We have to be intentional with our practices. 
• Ideas like a 7 second reset are useful to be able to self-regulate 
• The Pandemic has resulted in a lot of teams suffering from Anxiety. An emotion that is craving clarity. The role of the Leaders becomes even more important in these time to offer the role of a “step-down Transformer” Calm and assuredness is required 
• When people lack clarity it is very hard to commit to action 
• It is important to find our Trigger Print. To become knowledgeable about what triggers us, the patterns we fall into etc.. So we can course correct. 
• When we are triggered we lose our capacity to be curious to be humble we rush to seek solutions which can often result in poor decision making 
• It is often hard to be instantaneously aware of our triggers we are simply transparent to them. We need to investigate their source. History often shares information about where these prints were laid down. 
• One way of moving out of being triggered or re-triggered is to get physically moving. 
• Our bodies are vital to our knowledge base on emotions and the body will signal to us our concerns and worries; get curious about our somatic discourse 
• Emotions provide information which gives us choice
• The sacredness of silence is often misunderstood. By giving people our full attention in silence we can create a space for real and generative thinking and alter the space between people 
• Silence is also a gift to ourselves 
• Creating a “Thin Space” is about connecting to that inside of us that is bigger than ourselves and is a way of expressing what Presence is really about 
• Irvine’s work see him be invited into a variety of groups and Leadership settings. He is currently working with Police Officer in the United States helping them access their emotional intelligence when often they are triggered. 
• There is always the space to learn with emotions and by using emotional intelligence 
• Build the capacity to cultivate two particular mindsets; one of Curiosity and Humility
• People express emotions very differently but it is important to recognise that we do have range. Irvin is often very curious when he hears people use a limited range of words to describe emotions. 
• The more people can name their emotions, the depth and range they experience the more they are able to enjoy interpersonal relations & connection 
• People have a rich deposit, richer than Gold in the range of emotions they have by which to navigate their circumstances. 
• Emotions are messages. They tell us what is happening in our lives, what concerns we might be having and what is not in play. 

Resources Shared 

• www.irvinenugent.com 

Introduction: Nigel Vanderlinden is the CEO and Board Member of Powernoodle, a structured collaboration platform for remote and hybrid teams. Nigel is a seasoned business leader with 20 plus years in the tech industry. Prior to joining Powernoodle, Nigel was Chief Revenue Officer for Plum and has held senior roles for StarTech.Com and Blackberry. Nigel Currently lives in Waterloo, Ontario Canada with his wife and two children.  

 

Podcast Episode Summary

This episode explores the meaning of Collaboration Equity, why it makes sense for the new world of work and how timely Powernoodle and the technology it provides is to support drive the motive for collaboration equity across different forms of teams and knowledge based entities. Powernoodle and the technology it provides enables distributed team work, allows collaboration to operate at scale and institutionalises and sustains equitable collaboration. 

 

Points made over the episode

• Nigel believes he was destined to be an entrepreneur and in the business of start-ups focused on technology.  “He got the bug”
• He particularly enjoys the freedom, scope for direction setting and not knowing that this environment provides 
• He is particularly pleased that Powernoodle is of a time where his company can help solve a complex problem that is facing the world of work, a combination of remote and hybrid teams 
• The Paradigm of the past working world is broken
• Remote and Hybrid working requires new ways of working and new tools to support people collaborate equitably
• Collaboration is much more than an exercise of itself for its own ends but a means to get a better business outcomes 
• Collaboration is often seen in two narrow of a focus. 
• Some of the traps teams fall into with respect to collaboration comprise being too adhoc, and or failing to align on a purpose for the collaboration need. The worst decisions are those you did not know you made. 
• Teams need to declare the decision need, be intentional about their purpose and engage a design that allows for inclusive participation, evaluation and then execution
• Nigel likes the Bain & Co. framework called R.A.P.I.D to which Powernoodle adds impact and proximity 
• Collaboration Equity was a term coined by companies such as Google, Microsoft & Cisco. Powernoodle uses this term for their product vision and purpose. Essentially Powernoodle enables individuals, teams and others to contribute inclusive of all the ways that make them different including, gender, race, age, seniority, tech savvy or not, work preferences and work styles, language etc. Powernoodle sees it role to remove the barriers to collaboration and provide a landscape at work that is meaningful & equitable 
• This involves five distinct categories or steps. 

1. Create a purpose for collaboration and design a process
2. Engage diverse perspectives 
3. Design for inclusion -considering Psychological Safety
4. Work to mitigate bias 
5. Create Information Equity. 

• 3 things to consider when understanding technology and its use; People/Process and Workplace Tools 
• The Role of Powernoodle and the technology it employs is threefold

1. Powernoodle is an enabler of Collaboration 
2. It allows for a scaling process
3. It sustains good practice

• Resistance often presents in ways that are familiar to many change endeavours. The need to preserve the Status Quo. Change Fatigue. Change requires energy and fatigue is very real, especially after the Pandemic. Power, power comes in many guises such as HPPO (Highest paid performers in an organisation) assertive personalities, loudest voices in the room. These kinds of players often exert a disproportionate influence on the outcome of a decision 
• DE&I & Collaboration Equity are two signs of the same coin. Collaboration Equity is often considered more focused and specific to an activity of collaboration and the organisation of people/process and technology to achieve a business outcome 
• Nigel has read the book Indivisible by Rebekah Steele and Alison Maitland and he was stuck by how similar the two themes are. 
• An Ideal Customer Profile for Powernoodle includes large organisations who house knowledge workers, who contain critical information often missing information that can be employed for better business outcomes. In practice this looks like organisation in Insurance, Financial Services, Energy Utilities, Government Agencies etc..
• Nigel wishes that teams and organisations seize the opportunity, a critical moment in work history, to rethink how work is conducted together in the new paradigm that has emerged since the Pandemic. He hopes people will not be too quick to rush back to the office centric habits of the past. 

 

Resources shared 

• www.powernoodle.com 
• INdivisble: Radically rethinking inclusion for sustainable business results by Rebekah Steele and Alison Maitland.
  

Introduction: Donal Courtney has married an incredibly successful commercial /corporate as an Executive and now Independent NED career with an equally impressive career in Rugby refereeing.  Donal started his career as a Chartered Accountant, was practice Manager for Author Anderson, held various CFO/Executive board positions for companies like Airbus, Orix and GMAC Bank. He is an independent Non-Executive Director for Dell Bank, IPUT, Uni Credit and Permanent TSB. His is a former International Rugby referee and Head of European refereeing and he is now World Rugby disciplinary panel member. 

 

Podcast episode summary: This particular episode shared Donal’s insight working/leading and managing teams both on the pitch and off the pitch in corporate life. Donal peppered this conversation with numerous examples & lessons we can learn from the world of sport.  As many of my guests have shared & Donal agreed the demands on people at work are increasing, regulation has increased, governance is tougher, there is a greater focus on culture in a good way, pace & the speed of change is relentless. We are living in an increasingly digitised and networked society and this ask for new Leadership and a collective approach to solve some of our more wicked problems. Much can be learnt from the world of sport. 

 

Noteworthy points of discussion

• Whether you are leading a 2-man team or a 10 -man team, Leadership is critical. Leaders need to think in terms of not just the resources available to the team but about the right skills, the right balance & mix of people making sure people feel safe to contribute and be part of a collective 
• Regular check-points and feedback is required -Seagull management is a misnomer 
• Continuous discussion and a process to surface issues, escalate concerns and have the conversations that matter. This means more agile ways of working.
• World is more complex, Brexit for example creating uncertainty, banking change and regulation has heightened, Culture and creating a culture that allows for Diversity and Inclusion is important -belonging matters 
• Everyone one is different, and people need to feel OK to bring themselves to work 
• Huge opportunity for innovation and learning but that requires a willingness to adapt & learn
• In sport players are encouraged to look at videos to see their play and their patterns we spoke about how this approach is akin to coaching effectively in organisations 
• Donal’s approach at the Irish Rugby Union is coach like-he asks questions because he knows he is not close to the action the players are. 
• People have to move away from the idea of failure and embrace continuous learning and experimentation -a lot of it comes down how you communicate and the values you model
• Best team in Donal’s opinion as an example of great team work is the All Blacks. He shares how the All Blacks stay on the pitch after a match to practice their routine. They have about 7-8 different Hakas that they need to perform. They demonstrate togetherness, organisation, shared or distributed leadership, clear purpose, co-ordination and an ethos of belonging to a bigger cause. It is all about the Jersey. 
• Joe Schmitt brought that ethos to the Irish Team-Joe is committed to practice, planning and clarity of play. 
• Donal loves the Adidas logo “Impossible is nothing” and he shared many examples of teams who came from obscurity to becoming winners by virtue of their belief & commitment, witness Japan versus South Africa in the last world cup, Leicester City a few years ago, The Europeans in 2012 at Medina in the US. 
• TEAM acronym to mean Togetherness, Empathy, Attitude and Management 
• His lesson from his transition from Executive to INED is to know your role and understand you are working on a team and not as a sole trader.
• Things will go wrong on teams but it is how you deal with the fallout that is important 
• Golf is often thought of as a very singular sport but Donal commented on the very important role the team plays in a professional golfers career. The relationship between caddy and player is vital. 

Introduction: Anneloes Raes is Professor in the Department of Managing People in Organisations and holder of the PUIG Chair of Global Leadership Development as IESE. She holds a PhD in Organisational Behaviour from Maastricht University and an MA in Psychology at the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.  Anneloes’s research has been published in academic journals such as the Academy of Management Review, The Journal of Applied Psychology, Human Relations and Small Group Work. Her research has also featured in press outlets such as the Financial Times and La Vanguardia. Anneloes lives in Barcelona with her Husband and two young boys. 

 

Podcast Episode Summary Teamness at the Top is not as prevalent as one might expect. Only 21-30% of teams across the globe can satisfy the elements that describe a real team.   The world of today and tomorrow asks that organisations can solve complex and wicked problems. That becomes possible if teams are able to mine the collective wisdom of teams, collaborate and share information so the best strategic decisions can be made. Anneloes illuminates what needs to shift to make this phenomenon a reality for top teams. 

 

Points made over the episode

• Anneloes started this podcast by describing her journey into this field of work. Her interest in this field started by way of her research for her PhD at Maastricht. Her formative studies in Psychology meant she was already interested in the interpersonal dynamics between people. Very early on she got the opportunity as part of her studies to sit in on the discussions of a board. 

• That experience shaped her thinking about top management teams. The reality of top teams making strategic decisions, sharing information together and collaborating well together is often far from what you might expect. These teams like others comprise human beings with all of their flaws and differing perspectives. 

• Team Based Leadership at the top is as crucial as it is the requirement for effective teams across the organisation, even when often people wonder if it is feasible or possible. When we look at organisational life we appreciate that so much of its success is dependent on teams and collaboration.  It is true too that we accept that we can achieve more together by way of the diversity and also the complementarity of team members, knowing that and especially where the work is too complex to do by an individual the default is team. 

• The work at the top is particularly complex with a high volume of task and uncertainty. 

• It is almost hard to understand that top teams would not work as a team. 

• We expect our leaders to be role models and we expect everyone in the organisation to be team players, how is it then that a top team can get away with not being a team? 

• Real opportunity for the top team to exemplify real team work, given the need to solve complex problems and model behaviour for the rest of the organisation. 

• Why then does it not prevail? There are many different versions of team work that top teams  aspire or desire. It is not as binary as either or dilemma. There are degrees of teamness. There is also the real possibility that members of the team have very different perspectives of the order of teamwork required. 

• Anneloes work takes an evidence based approach. In her research she found 3 significant reasons why a Top Team might choose better teamness

 

1. Strategic Decision Making at the Top; The Executive take better decisions by combining more and diverse perspectives. It is important to have a good process in place to combine these perspectives. 
2. Organisation Stability & Executive Sustainability -Being at the top of an organisation is a very demanding job. Operating in a truly functioning team can provide a lot of support. We say for a reason “its lonely at the top”  sharing the load of responsibility and creating a system of social support can mitigate this felt loneliness. It also makes sense when you consider the current focus on mental health and wellness and the increased openness to expressing vulnerability and concerns by employees in general.  The great man theory of Leadership is the oldest perspective on Leadership and one that is slowly being overturned for greater and greater degrees of peer executives teams. True teamness doesn’t come from scratch it requires effort even with the most benign of Leaders who welcome a strong leadership team around them. Time together & the maintenance of a well-functioning team needs investment. 
3. Setting the Tone at the Top. What are the implications for others in the organisation by way of the behaviours exhibited by the top team? The outcomes, decisions and types of conversation held at the top, how the team interacts their style, the unity they do or do not espouse all has an impact on others in the organisation. Anneloes took a real interest in this area and the relationship between the tone set from the top and the organisational climate. She expanded on this research to wonder about the implications this same tone had on employee wellness. 

There is a powerful cascading affect between the behaviour at the top and how it trickles down into the rest of the organisation. Empirical studies show strong connections and can refute the natural scepticism that might prevail to wonder if boardroom conversations behind closed doors can impact individuals who never come into contact with those same leaders. The tide is turning and in favour of this focus, where employees are now considered an incredibly important stakeholder about whom the top team needs to be responsible. 

• Top Management cannot assume that their conversations behind closed doors remain just that, behind closed doors. The conversation leaks out and has an impact on employees. 

• Teamness at the top  needs a variety of support and structuring in terms of time , relationship management and task completion as well as external professional help. 

• 8 hours together in terms of relationship equity is a good start and top teams need to be able to manage the distractions that could impose on or collapse the time focused on building relations even when teams do not have the vocabulary, comfort etc.. 

• We could collapses the notion of what it means to work and appreciate the importance of collaboration and relations and it does not have to be so difficult. Teams do not have to get too worked up about how “it should be” and run the risk of being discouraged because they cannot achieve relationship excellence. 

• Don Hambrick has designed an assessment for Management Teams that can be used to assess the Teamness of Top Teams. This assessment tool has a series of questions in three dimensions; Joint Decision Making, Information Exchange and Collaborative Behaviour. It is a very practical check list that top teams can use for conversation and contracting. It is also a very useful tool by which a team can explore different perspectives held on the team

• Anneloes refers back to the team she observed while she was researching for her PhD. She recalls how ably the team were to align their calendars and offer support to each other. 

• Teamness at the top is often stymied or hampered by the mindset that is held by the members of the top team. The idea of a strong one Captain on a ship notion gets in the way of real teamness. The real fear that the people on the team will get into conflict if they try to become a real team. Similarly the fear that the team will take forever to make decisions or does not have the accountability to do so are other reasons why top teams might stay shy of becoming a real team. 

• These fears are often valid as Team Work is not necessarily easy or even in all cases a good thing. Group think for example is a risk or trap teams fall into when they do not want conflict. On balance these concerns are held in the minds of Leaders but don’t necessarily play out in reality. Good process management for teams can prevent some of these perceived risks. 

• Being explicit about the teams mindset, their level of awareness, the common goals they want to achieve are ways that invite dialogue and help teams get into action as a team. 

• Having a common purpose, a why, can put the need for team into perspective and help the Top Team navigate what might initially be awkward conversations, fears etc. 

• Anneloes’ suggests a team can start by creating a common understanding of where the team is and where it wants to go. She uses the checklist mentioned above with the three dimensions, Joint Decision Marking, Information Exchange and Collaboration to discover with the team where they might against each dimension. It helps to have a common vocabulary. Anneloes is fully aware that of course there are so many more dimensions by which to asses a team for example in terms of interpersonal relations etc. but this check list serves as a starting point.

• Facilitating discussions, putting in place learning mindsets and creating the conditions for a safe space to express perspectives always in service of the collective goal are some of the processes Anneloes employs with Top Teams. 

• Having a discussion to really bottom out & understand what is the Tops Teams collective goal and what the strategic priorities is an important & relevant discussion. 

• Having the “What” we are here to do and the “How” we are going to get there along with a learning mindset, appreciating there will be hurdles along the way and it is a journey,  can advance the Top Team on a good level of Teamness. 

• The future of work would be better served in Anneloes’s opinion if teams and individuals alike had a better mindset around collaboration. The idea of a One Man Leader is very limiting to address the complexities of our world.  

 

Resources Mentioned Across this Episode

 

1. IESE Business School www.iese.edu
2. The “Teamness” of Top Teams based on Hambrick, 1994, Simesek et al., 2005 and Raes et al., 2013
3. “Many Leaders, however are ambivalent about teams. They fear overt conflict, tunnel vision, lack of accountability and indifference to the interests of the organisation as a whole” ….their fear of delegating -losing control-reinforces the stereotype of the heroic leader who handles it all.”

Manfred Kets De Vries, 2020  

 

Introduction: Irial O Farrell is the owner of her own company called Evolution Consulting which will soon merge with a company called Pebble, an Irish Consulting company. Irial is an accredited Master in Change Management and distinguished in other disciplines such as Learning and Development, Emotional Intelligence, Organisational Design and Executive Coaching. She is also the author of two books; Values; Not just the office Wall Plaque and SMART Objective setting for managers, a roadmap.  

Podcast episode Summary: The book, SMART objective setting for managers: A roadmap, unpacks many of the conundrums faced by managers in managing others. This episode explores the content and relevance for SMART objectives on teams. Irial helps us understand why SMART objectives are often outsourced, overlooked & misunderstood. The book is a roadmap to substantially improve the design and setting of effective objectives including behavioural objectives to really drive increased performance.

Points made throughout the Episode:

 

• Performance & our behaviours at work is a consequence of the systems we are apart that are often unconscious or blind to us.
• Part of the work of performance management is making those systems clear and aligned.
• Building better business is primarily about clarity, clarity of design and alignment of many parts of the business, including Purpose, Vision, Strategy, Plans & Processes as well as the human capabilities needed to execute against these design initiatives.
• The interface between system sight and capabilities is where things often go wrong
• Performance management is the subject matter about which Irial choses to write.
• Her first book was born in 2011. Values only made sense to Irial after a coaching course she attended in 2006.
• Understanding the role & purpose of values can provide enormous relief and avoid the potential for conflict and emotional turmoil. The same is true for teams organisations
• In 2019 the book SMART objective setting for managers was written to help managers have meaningful conversations with others around performance
• Objective setting is often seen as something important to HR and not as a sacrosanct Manager tool- as such the potency and richness of dialogue is lost
• The tasks involved in a managers role are often misplaced. More definition and clarity is required.
• SMART is a framework that has endured and it is especially potent as an individual tool. When it is brought forward in a 1:1 capacity or with a team it is the communication that is critical and often lost. We have to be careful about our unspoken expectations and assumptions in order to have meaningful dialogue
• SMART objectives can enhance team behavioural norms. Some of the letters in the anacronym are particularly useful especially if things do not go to plan. The A in smart is helpful to course or chart alternative strategies for example in Covid.
• Some of the traps that managers and teams fall prey to include work being done at the wrong level, managers afraid to let go some of the more tangible tasks about which they are comfortable to engage in less tangible conversations -management conversations like feedback, development conversations, coaching conversations.
• Covid-19 has for sure thrown teams into a virtual reality that works for those who know their roles but for others it is problematic. New hires for example need to be onboarded.
• Important that managers actively think about the conversation they might need to have with people who ordinarily used informal channels to seek out information. Not as easy today.

 

Resources

 

1. https://www.linkedin.com/in/irialofarrell/
2. Irial,O Farrell. Smart Objective Setting For Managers: A Roadmap
3. Irial,O Farrell. Values- Not just for the office Wall Plaque-How personal and company values interect
4. Ram Charan; Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company
5. The Arbinger Institute, Leadership and Self Deception

Introduction: Alan O Neill is a Consultant, Author and Keynote Speaker specialising in Change Management,  Organisational Culture & Customer Experience. He is a visiting Professor with ESA Beirut and for more than 30 years he was worked with some of the most iconic brands from around the world. His latest book, Culture Matter, The Four Values to Supercharge your Business makes an overwhelming case for a carefully designed Culture. 

Podcast Episode Summary

This episode explores the importance of calling out values for Organisational health and success. Alan helps me and I hope the listeners get crystal clear on why Culture Matters and what you can do to further improve business success. In particular he explains why he chose the four values he describes in his book, Customer Centricity, Respect, Accountability and Agility. 

 

Points made over the episode

• Alan O Neill started his career in Retail and at the age of 24 opened his first jewellery store. After a change in the business climate he moved into training 
• He built Harvest a well-known training company here in Ireland 
• He recognised that training is only one subject of change and he wanted to add more value to clients across the entire supply chain. He started his own company Kara 23 years ago offering Organisational Change, Culture Change and Customer Experience Programs 
• Every Organisation has a culture and only a very few actually work hard to define theirs. 
• Culture is articulated by repetitive behaviours, often ones that were never envisaged. 
• Culture is always being nibbled at and it is important to recognise that Culture shapes strategy and not the other way around. 
• Important that Leaders are brought on a journey to understand the impact of their culture. 
• Alan identified the 4 values he calls out in his book after 30 years in business and by noticing the ones that were consistently absent. 
• Customer Centricity is important today given our global connectivity and the speed/visibility by which customers can accept or reject product. Customer Experience is the leveller. It is the new battle ground not Product Differentiation of old. 
• Respect is the second values Alan cites. He remarked on how wonderful it was that Joe Biden called out respect as a value he wanted to see in the Whitehouse as a way of delineating the significant difference from the previous administration
• Accountability is the third. This is a value that helps people take “real” responsibility and ownership for their roles. 
• Agile is an almost must have in business today to support the frenetic pace we are living
• Companies very often have values, they are on their websites and are on the walls. They are very often not lived. Good practice is to check, design a survey, conduct a focus group or 1:1 to see what is living in the minds of an organisations people 
• Values are often unseen, even unconscious but they are part of our DNA and instinctively will guide our behaviours. That is why it is important to call out the values you want to see lived. 
• Calling out particular values will set the tone, provide an organisational framework for Leadership, Processes and the way things will get done. 
• Alan does not agree that people are resistant to change he believes they are more resistant to coercion. Culture Change requires time and it is important to be contextual share the “Why” for a culture refresh
• The risk that employing Alan’s 4 values will mean that companies are cooky cutters of each other is a nonsense. Values are interpreted differently by different companies and Alan shares the example of Selfridges and Primark where both would call out Customer Centricity as being a core value. Their approach and interpretation of Customer Centricity is entirely different 
• Teams need to live the values set by the organisation and as a practice they should regularly reflect on how they are living those values and how they are behaving with each other. 
• Top Teams need to role model Organisational Values and the CEO is responsible for this activity. 
• Alan describes how he would support an organisation do a Culture Refresh and it boils down to three phases-Discovery-Launch-Roll Out. 
• The Launch is incredibly important as it creates an iconic memory in the minds of the people working in the company and makes a cascade of values that much easier. 
• Culture is a well-known phenomenon but Alan would love if more people understood the impact a current culture is having on an Organisation. He encourages business owners and Leaders to get their hands around Culture and call out the required behaviours otherwise they will be assumed. 
• He also warned that if Companies and Organisations have a set of values and they know they are not living them then they should gently take them down because they are doing more harm than good. 
• His book is a lovely and memorable read 

Resources shared 

• O’Neill. Alan: Culture Matters: The Four “Must-Have” Values to Supercharge Your Business. Open Press 
• www.kara.ie 

Introduction: Paul is a significant contributor in the fields of coaching, supervision, team coaching, systemic thinking and research. He has written 3 books and numerous articles and blogs. He lectures on the Masters of Business Coaching Program at Sydney Business School and presents regularly at conferences, workshops and webinars.  In 2018 he founded the Centre for Coaching in Organisations. In his spare time Paul writes “rather gory historical fiction”

 

Podcast episode summary: This particular episode with Dr Paul Lawrence illuminates the complexity and dynamic nature of teams and how teams are part of a nested system. Paul shared his wisdom and work with teams. He spoke about the importance of Dialogue and how dialogue is fundamental to change. Similarly he spoke about structural dynamics and how this thinking can be taught with teams to help the team see their engrained patters and importantly their stuck patterns. Team Coaching is still in its infancy and not to be confused with Team Building, Team facilitation or Consulting. Team coaches need to be robust enough and able to contain their own anxiety and help the team learn from the creative tension that is almost always present. This show was very honest and real where Paul communicated his passion and excitement for his work with teams.

 

Noteworthy points of discussion

• Coaching as a discipline is still nascent and Team Coaching is in its infancy. Much confusion about around what it entails and how to distinguish it from Team Building/Team Facilitation and Team Consulting
• Dialogue between practitioners is helpful to share what is most useful for teams
• Dialogue is central to change and is at the heart of sustainable change. Change requires leaders adopt a mental model that is curious, respectful and without agenda-that is often challenging
• Dialogue is simple to articulate more difficult to practice because it asks of Leaders to suspend judgment, be open to understanding others and to be hugely aware of their own internal biases.
• Dialogue is not just about listening it is also about saying what needs to be shared in an open, honest and respectful manner and that is often tougher especially as you go higher up the organisation where power dynamics are at play.
• Team Coaching is a tough gig. Team coaches need to be robust, able to hold anxiety and able to look for tension on the team. Tension is always there and if mined can provide real insight and learning
• Structural Dynamics is a methodology that can empower the team to manage its own dynamics and stuck patterns. The 4 player model is described and demonstrates what is necessary in vital conversation but what is often missing
• Contracting with the team and the team leader is imperative and will help understand what the real work is for a team.

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

1. Lawrence, P. (2014) Leading Change how successful leaders approach change management. Kogan Page. UK
2. Lawrence, P. & Moore, A. (2018). Coaching in three dimensions. Meeting the challenges of a complex world. Routeledge .UK
3. Lawrence, P. Hill, S. Priestland, A. Forrestal, C. Rommerts, F. Hyslop,L. & Manning,M. (2019), The Tao of Dialogue, Routeledge. UK
4. Lawrence, P. Whyte, A. What do experienced team coaches do?
5. kantorinstitute.com
6. Hawkins,P. Leadership Team Coaching and the five disciplines model
7. Bohm, D. On Dialogue (1990), Amazon
8. Kantor,D. Reading The Room, Amazon

Introduction: Paul Glover is a C-suite Performance Coach with 20 years’ experience as a Federal Court Tral Lawyer. Paul is a passionate story teller who believes in the power of narrative to influence and educate in business, personal life and even in court rooms. He is now a recovering Federal Trial Lawyer having spent 7 years in a United States prison for felony charges. In prison he chose to transform his narcissistic patterns and on release he chose to become a business coach. Paul is a member of Forbes Council and author of the book “WorKQuake” This is a playbook for Leaders, Leaders who want to navigate the future of work beyond traditional command and control models of leadership to a more inclusive, engaging work environment. 

 

Podcast Episode Summary This episode chronicles the professional and personal life of Paul Glover, the mistakes he made and the choices he assumed to transform. He explores his approach, the books he has written and life after prison as well as his contention that everyone needs a fool in their lives. 

 

Points made over the episode

• Paul is a no bullshit performance coach

• He starts the podcast by sharing his own story, a different story from the bio that was shared. 

• Paul was incarcerated in a Federal Prison for 7 years for committing 33 counts of bribery, kickbacks and for tampering with Government witnesses, while he was a practicing attorney in the city of Chicago. 

• He was sentenced to 7 years but managed to get out in 5 for good behaviour 

• For the first two years of his sentence Paul spent his time consumed by “revenge fantasies” 

• For those two years he could not accept responsibility for his crimes 

• The mere fact of entering Prison was insufficient to activate Pauls desire for personal change. He was a committed narcissist. 

• The shock of seeing prisoners, white collar prisoners be resentenced was the shock Paul needed to commit to change. 

• Recidivism or the tendency for a convicted criminal to reoffend is 80% in US prison systems

• Paul started to self-reflect and quickly appreciated that self-reflection alone was insufficient to help him transform. He needed more. He needed people to tell him the truth about him. 

• He asked anyone visiting him to be willing to share a difficult truth about him. 

• By year 3, Paul announced to his wife that he was committed to change

• Paul admits that the commitment to change is hard-  it has to be necessary

• The people who respond to the kind of coaching Paul offers are those you have failed and are committed to change. 

• People fear success as much as they fear failure. Sometimes being successful is a curse as it blocks us & stymies our potential for future growth. 

• Time in prison afforded Paul the chance to reform. It shocked him to realise how much of an “asshole” he was before prison. He adopted a professional persona, a hard, mean and cruel persona that permeated his personal domain. He believed that rules did not apply to him, there were no boundaries and he would take any short cut he needed to meet his ends. 

• He transformed from being a committed narcissist to becoming an empathetic listener, more interested in the people around him. 

• He had a captive audience in the 300 inmates who surrounded him in Prison. They were drawn to Paul because they thought he could help them with their cases and he was able to practice being perpetually curious. He ultimately turned to service and volunteered to be a trainer for a qualification called GED or a General Education Diploma

• He activated the prisoners interest and attention by developing his own anti-recidivism program & he made sure every class attendee succeeded in getting the GED. 

• Paul could never practice Law again and he decided to use the skills he had as a practicing lawyer and his newly acquired skills in prison to become a no-bullshit performance coach. 

• He translated his acumen for critical thinking and storytelling from his days as a lawyer to help leaders become more effective. 

• He has developed a Leadership Coaching Program that requires considerable commitment from his C-Suite clients. 

• He employs the concept of the “fool” in his approach in that he is willing to share tough feedback and be tough as an accountability buddy for his clients. 

• Paul uses the arc of Joseph Campbells Heroes’ Journey to explain his approach. 

• Leaders need to become good story tellers and they need to be authentic. They also need to be willing to be vulnerable and to admit what they do not know. They then need to commit to find out. 

• The world knows a lot about engagement and still the figures for engagement languish at a miserly 33% with two thirds of the workforce remaining disillusioned.

• This phenomena has now become the “Big resignation” post the pandemic. Employees are not identifying with the purpose of businesses

• Leaders need to share adversary. They have to prepare people for adversary. 

• Little red riding hood would be a story about a walk in the woods if it wasn’t for the Wolf. 

• As a trial Lawyer Paul developed a finely honed skill for detecting bullshit. Clients do not tell the truth, as much as coaching clients rarely tell the whole truth. 

• Paul wrote the book “WorkQuake” ten years ago and it is still as relevant today. He calls it a classic. The messages inherent is his book include the following;

• Apply Self-Care- Leaders need to get the requisite sleep, exercise and work patterns to lead. 

• Eliminate Command and Control. 

• Stop paying for hours and instead pay for outcomes. We are assuming an industrial mindset instead of a knowledge centred mindset

• Believe in the concept of reciprocity 

• Apply 3 As’-Attraction-Attention and Appreciation -employees crave attention give it. 

• Stop being a professional & instead be personal 

 

• Paul summarises the need for everyone to have a fool in their lives. People create self-images that are often flawed.  The opportunity to recognise the need for a fool in your life is self-awareness. If you believe you are finished or have all the answers you are a narcissist. 
• People willing to have your back, people whom you respect and trust can apply for the fool role. 
• Paul surrounded himself with co-conspirators who did not have his back. They used and manipulated his blind spots. His need to belong overrode his need at the time to be discerning. You need a fool to hold you to account. Self-accountability is hard.  
• Paul shares a story of his own sentencing where he was offered a reduced sentence if he admitted his crimes. He refused. 
• It is often difficult for fools to rise up within an organization because of the power differential. Paul makes the case for an external objective person such as a coach to assume the role of the fool. 

 

Resources shared across this podcast 

• www.paulglovercoaching.com 
• WorkQuake by Paul Glover 
• The Heroes’ Journey; Joseph Campbell 

 

Introduction: Tom Goodell is  the President and Founder of Linden Leadership. His company offers Executive, Management and Team Coaching as well as Leadership Development and Culture Programs for a wide variety of Organisations. Tom is an author and has written several books including, Linden’s Leadership Cycles of Leadership, Three Practices of Collective Performance, Six Practices of Personal Performance and most recently The Four Fields of Leadership. 

 

Goodell received his CPPM certification in ontological coaching from the Newfield Network, inc, in Boulder Colorado. He also studied somatic coaching with Richard Strozzi Heckler, founder and director of Strozzi Institute in Petaluma, California. 

 

Podcast Episode Summary

This episode explores the impetus for Tom’s latest work The Four Fields of Leadership. John Baldoni puts it well when he says of Tom’s book “Leadership is an ageless proposition. What has changed over the millennia is context. Goodell places Leadership with the context of our times in ways that make it accessible and actionable” The podcast underscores the importance of understanding self in a quest to be with another, others and to thrive in organisations. Tom shares how he combines his many, seemingly disparate, interests in an intelligible whole to understand human systems. 

 

Points made over the episode

• Tom’s story began for him when he as 5 years of age and he can remember playing the game called Go. It is a game that challenges a player to cultivate his whole brain because of the amount of possibilities -Chance is not involved but a person is minded to develop intuition, form & aesthetics as well as logic and analytics 
• Tom’s early interest in Eastern thinking, spirituality has been an integral part of this own thinking. 
• His early experience in organisational life taught him that no matter how elegant the enterprise architecture if human beings were not getting along the organisation was impacted. 
• Tom’s interest in human systems saw him study with Newfield in Colorado and with Richard Strozzi Heckler at the Strozzi Institute in California to become a Coach and Facilitator
• Declarations are an important constituent part of the training at Strozzi and as a consequence and honed over many years Tom is able to say that his declaration says he is “a commitment to awakening the full power of the human spirit in organizations everywhere” That declaration has been his guiding light ever since
• The human spirit is what makes a life worth living and work worth working. 
• We are all connected and have always been connected but we forget. The space between us and the quality of our relations determine whether we thrive. 
• Tom began to recognise the “Tower of Babble” he encountered in organisation with many multiple interventions/modalities of learning and leadership that spoke different languages. He found that many omitted the unifying principles on which their theories are founded. His book attempts to illuminate these unifying principles to squash confusion and allow for real conversations. 
• If you understand the Four Fields of Leadership everything becomes coherent. 
• The four fields of Leadership include the Field of Self, The Interpersonal Field, The field of teams and the Enterprise field. There is a huge degree of complexity, subtlety & fragility across each field as well as an amount of wisdom and intelligence 
• Everything starts with an understanding of the Field of Self. That means understanding and having an appreciation for awareness in three minds, The Physical, The Emotional and The Analytic, our responsibility to be in Choice and to take Accountability. 
• Humility is required to know that we are not always in control of our state. It takes humility to step back and say “ I have some work to do on myself” 
• Tom’s approach with teams is present based. He always listens carefully and senses into the field of teams. He often speaks with each individual member of the team to see how they experience the team. He simply starts where the team is and doesn’t lead with content or theory. 
• Tom notices patterns of behaviours on teams and intervenes to help the team see its dynamic. 
• He makes an important distinction between context and content. If you can notice the context and work with that the content is often that much richer. 
• Tom shares The Cycle of Leadership suite of conversations-a model for how effective conversations can happen. 

-The first being a conversation for possibilities where a leader taps into the wisdom of the community or those around who might be impacted by his decisions. 

-The conversation as Declaration. This is where a future is declared, Conditions of Satisfaction are shared so that everyone is clear about the COS that need to be met for success. 

-Conversations for Requests- sharing the who will take responsibility for what. 

-Finally and importantly Conversations for reflection This is where the team asks questions of itself, not just the project. Questions like “how are we?” This can serve as a healing conversation before a team gets too distorted. 

• As Coaches and Practitioners we can be more influential on teams if we are willing to be courageous and call out that team members need to do work on themselves. 

 

Resources shared 

• Tom Goodell: The Four Fields of Leadership 
• www.lindenleadership.com 

Introduction:  Iris Clermont is an Executive Coach, author, and professional mathematician. She holds certifications from Team Coaching International, & Conversational Intelligence and is a Professional Certified Coach from the International Coaching Federation. Her mission is to motivate teams to work effectively while having fun and gaining energy from their business life.

Iris is also the author of the number one best-selling book Team Magic and has just written her new book Team Rhythm which is the subject of this podcast.

Podcast episode Summary:  Iris has chosen a xylophone as an image and metaphor to capture the chapters of her book. The conversation explores her Team Model the ordering of her chapters on this xylophone and why music and maths support her work with teams.

Points made throughout the Episode:

 

Who are you? Deep inside Iris is a mission to inspire teams to have more joy and energy in the workplace. Iris then goes on to share her career history and the early influence of Mother Teresa. After approximately 30 years in Corporate life Iris found herself moving “swiftly and smartly” into Coaching. She figured out that asking people for their ideas instead of telling them her ideas changed the game for her.

Is it true you are also a Musician? Iris has played music since she was 3 years old and her interest in music form part of the auspices of Team Rhythm.

What inspired you to write the book the way you did? Iris determined that many of the teams she was facing were in egoic conflict and were very serious. She was intent on approaching the solution to team rhythm in a different way using exercises and lightness in her approach.

Iris saw that business leaders know what they need in business and what they do not practice like listening and presence. According to Iris teams need to not only speak their concerns but use exercises and lightness as a way to find solutions – As such her book is littered with music riffs and exercises that teams can employ to begin to develop skills

As a child Iris listened to a talk given by Mother Teresa that she still carries. Emotional pain is a feature of business life and one Iris’s mission is to help people resolve emotional pain. She develops bespoke exercises for teams depending on their particular concern.

Why was it important to cluster the book chapters on a xylophone and in that fashion?

 

–     Getting Synchronised comprises the first three chapters of the book and details the power of Listening, Creating a Clear vision and having Leadership Presence. Getting synched means looking beyond an individual’s ego and determining what is important to the team . Getting synched means raising a person’s listening skills, followed by a clear strategy & vision – this also requires checking for team and departmental understanding giving others a chance to question. Iris uses cartoons to illustrate her points. She points out that the Leader is there to serve and give direction. Finally Irish explains why her third chapter on Presence is so critical for team life.

–     What in your opinion Iris do teams forget about those first three chapters? All three of them. Iris reminds us that we all think we are great listeners but when she encourages her teams to try out some of the listening exercises in her book, members realise they are not that good. Leaders are often pretty clear in their heads about the future strategy but do they check it is understood by all? Do they gain from the experts knowledge how they see the strategy working etc. Presence in the room is often disrupted by insecurity & Iris’s exercises help bring presence more assuredly into the room  Presence can change something. A lack of presence, often especially by the leader can communicate to others that the leader has more important things to do than be there for the team.

–     What are some of the exercises you use with teams to build presence? Speaking to the last member in an audience as a choir is an exercise that iris uses with teams,

–     What comprises the cluster called raising awareness? There are four topics covered across four chapters with skills that all have room to be enhanced.

–     Raising effectiveness with Decisions. Decision making at the lowest level. Iris employs exercises to expand on Frederic Laloux’s work which says that bureaucracy gets in the way of effective decision making. He and Iris suggest moving decisions out and often down to the experts. This requires trust by Leaders to distribute power effectively to experts. Doing this is enabled by having done the work to get synchronised. A solid frame is provided that supports decision making. Trust is a big component for both the leader and the member. A leader can self-check to be curious if he/she does give power to the expert or has explained the strategy well. A member can ask if they trust themselves enough to honour the strategy and make a decision about which they are expert.

–     Speed up Conflict Resolution: The blue note is used from Jazz as a way of helping teams to accept what might not be linear or clear from which beauty can surface. There is disruption on teams especially with diverse teams and Iris encourages teams to embrace the disruption and look to wonder what can be created. Iris explores building resolution on teams using Judith Glaser’s work, Conversational Intelligence. Iris explains the dashboard that Judith outlined in her book to support understanding between members on teams. The Conversational dashboard describes 3 levels of communication from distrust to trust. Level 1 is where people tell and ask. Level 2 is where team members advocate and inquire and Level 3 where two or more members are co-creating in a space of trust by sharing and discovering together. Team members have to suspend judgement and premature conclusions to accept that people have good intentions, have value to add and are not stupid. This helps move conversations from red/distrusting to green/trusting. Iris shares that the dashboard is an image or a picture in your home that you have to step back from and observe. Stepping back and inquiring helps a team wonder how they can move into the green area where engagement, encouragement, acceptance flourishes, a place of fun and creativity. Iris loves this chapter and since her work with Judith Glaser she only needs 30 minutes to bring this topic to light & resolution. The team conflict resolution team rhythm exercise helps a team see how they react to dissonance. The exercise is used to see how teams react, what is possible and what is learnt by dissonance and the use of it. Disruption is not always a negative phenomenon it allows for difference to be heard. Trust & Commitment, chapters 6  & 7 in Iris’s book are like twins. If commitment is honoured trust is built. Similarly alignment with the mission and strategy supports trust. Trust also has something to do with each individual and their respective histories. A person has to be willing to look inside and wonder what is blocking with respect to trust and trust for others., There is a team rhythm exercise on trust. The cartoons Iris employs in her book helps people self-assess and wonder about their own levels of trust. Micro-managing for example is an indicator that trust is not widely given to empower teams.

–     What are some of the ways teams distract themselves from pursuing some of these ideas on effectiveness? Iris combines the knowledge and wisdom from her Commitment chapter with the chapter on Feedforward to suggest that team members need to be willing to open up to feedforward ideas

–     Continuously Empower and Inspire your Teams. This cluster explores 4 topics housed in 4 chapters. The first speaks to the idea that you can add value to a team and its performance by engaging with mechanism and skills that encourage feedforward practices. The next chapter explores the nature of Virtual & Hybrid teams and how teams can move from being I-Centric to We-Centric and ultimately less egoic. The third chapter in this cluster speaks to value of using the power of diversity and moving away from blaming and shaming others for their difference be it with respect to their ideas, perspectives etc to gaining. This chapter uses exercises and rhythm exercises to identify how to make use of the full spectrum of diversity. The fourth and final chapter in this cluster speaks to the idea of gaining from areas outside of your own business. In this  Iris talks about Bands and what can be learnt for business gain. She also looks at film production and what is involved there in that domain a rich resource for business.

–     What is important to you Iris about the difference between Feedforward and Feedback? The difference was experienced from Marshall Goldsmith. Feedforward is looking to the future and is hopeful. Feedback is backward looking and historic.

–     The last few chapters are very current to the world we live, especially post the pandemic. What was important to you about including them in your book and on the xylophone? Iris wanted to update her book to reflect what she is seeing in business today, that is very different from when she wrote her book Team Magic. Iris is curious to explore with teams how they can gain by diversity. Iris tells a story about her favourite team  a virtual team she was part of twenty years ago.  Iris describes how she experienced this team and remarks that she felt special having team members come from Denmark and other counties. Iris shares that it was a hugely different phenomenon  in her working life then & she enjoyed it, The team worked well together and won a prize for innovation.  

–     How comfortable are teams working in a hybrid or virtual way? Teams can get stuck in ways that are unhelpful. There are different types of people some who appreciate the technology that allows for video and others who prefer to be more private and not share their image. Some people like to see faces to focus on gestures and mimics and others are more focused on words. We have to allow for both.

–     To practice for example on a band is so important, what do teams assume that they do not practice together? Teams often only focus on achieving results and forget the process necessary to get there. To be really effective as a team you need to have the skills outlined on Iris, xylophone listening, having a vision & strategy, leadership presence, decision making, conflict resolution, Trust, commitment, Feedforward skills, awareness of virtual and hybrid teams, making full use of diversity and gaining from the lessons learnt from the outside world. Iris understands why teams often take the shortest route to success. As a mathematician that is smart & it can also frustrate when you appreciate that others are different. It then becomes necessary to upgrade these skills in order to co-create and deliver collectively. There is a parallel here with musicians. As a musician you know  you need to work alone and then together.

–     What are your thoughts about joy and how you infuse it across teams? Joy is linked to creativity and innovation. It also means looking at where I am stuck and what needs to shift. It is key to look outside of business and to gain from all of the experience we have from other domains.

–     What makes you proud about this book? This book comes from deep within Iris’s heart to enlighten teams about what is possible. To bring lightness to the business of what is often serious business. Using cartoons, exercises and several rhythm practices can allow a team see an alternative perspective & explore their effectiveness with fun. Iris is proud of all of her 3 sons who contributed to her book and one of her sons, a musician co-created with Iris to get specific rhythm exercises.

 

Resources shared across this podcast

–     Team Rhythm, Eleven ways to lead your team from overwhelmed to inspired. Iris Clermont

–     Team Magic eleven ways for winning teams

–     Conversational Intelligence, Judith E. Glaser

–     Feedforward by Marshall Goldsmith -U Tube.

–     www.aircoaching.com

Introduction: Georgina Woudstra is an ICF Master Certified Coach (only 1% of coaches are qualified to this level) and she specialises in chief executives and senior leadership. Georgina has more than 20 years’ experience and a proven track record coaching CEOs, executive boards and other senior individuals and top teams.Georgina has been described by clients as having “strong presence and credibility”, as being “experienced and wise” and a coach who “has extraordinary empathy” allowing her to be “challenging but gentle” This show and conversation reveals Georgina as she is found by clients. 

 

Podcast episode summary: In this episode Georgina Woudstra MCC, shares her thoughts on the world of teams, the challenges they face given our VUCA reality. She opines that leaders need to develop a more sophisticated model of Leadership whereby they can step back and pause & have the courage and presence to help their teams step back as well. Georgina goes onto expand on the role of Team Coaches, clarifying the distinction between Team Coaching and Team Facilitation. Her story illuminates that distinction with alacrity. There is of course a role for team facilitation but there needs a wiser alignment between the outcomes a team is seeking and the intervention chosen. 

• Our VUCA world is real. It shows up in our being overstretched, reactive, under pressure where it is hard to pin down long term strategy and it contributes to our being filled with anxiety
• Leaders need to cultivate a stance where they have the confidence and presence to pause and reflect rather than persist with blind devotion to a plan or pace of current business activity-they need to have confidence to create intentional interruptions 
• Georgina would love for teams to be set up for success. This means the team being well designed 
• Coaching and Team Coaching is a journey over time- often times Team Coaches get a distress call from a sponsor to help a team get unstuck. Too often Team Coaches are tempted to start to fix rather than contract for a better way. 
• Georgina shared her approach to team coaching and the steps she takes in the initial engagement. This involves resisting urge to simply provide a half -day intervention but to influence for appropriate amount of time, to seek to influence Leadership and to understand the authority power dynamic on a team. 
• She often aims to work with the team leader first to understand style, decision making and how accountability is honoured
• Her quest is to determine who is responsible for the Coaching Journey
• She urges Coaches to slow down & invest more time upfront in contracting phase
• Team Coaching is about transitioning a team to take ownership for their outcomes and their process so that they absorb the team coaching over time. 
• Georgina shared a story where her team coaching style, presence and the competencies involved in team coaching were evidenced. 
• She emphasised the importance of a team coach cultivating their capacity to work in an emergent way, to work in the moment using team coaching competencies rather than in a pre-planned or pre-determined way. 
• Important to work with team in its own context –context affects behaviour and often team away days are more of an abstraction. Hard for team to mine learning’s back in the day job. 
• Georgina shared her 3 pieces of wisdom for Team Leaders and Team Coaches. She encouraged us to –

1. Move from doing to being- drop our attraction to tools and models and instead cultivate a capacity to be present to what is. 
2. Embody team- coaching competencies. Her studio has identified 15 different competencies that need to be fully integrated. 
3. Practice-Practice-Practice 

 

• Georgina ended our conversation sharing how she is enjoying the work of collaboration. She sees a world that is moving towards a greater degree of collaboration over competition, which she believes, is both powerful and graceful.

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

1. International Coaching Federation www.icf.com 
2. ITS www.itsnlp.com 
3. Executive Coach Studio www.executivecoachstudio.com 
4. Georgina Woudstra www.georginawoudstra.com 

Introduction: John McCusker is the VP Global Head of Talent management for Bacardi. He sees himself as the fitness coach for 7300 colleagues or as Bacardi says cousins, to help people grow professionally and personally. John has spent most of his career in talent management working for Kraft Foods and Dixons in the UK. John has travelled extensively and has picked up a fluency in Spanish, Portuguese and French. He believes himself to be a reforming Imposter and this part of his being has informed much of John’s purpose.

 

Podcast episode summary:  In this episode John explored the Bacardi approach to Leadership, Culture and Team & Individual development. We discussed formal and informal approaches to development at Bacardi. John spoke to the many who have influenced him and some of the more dynamic practices he has employed to get at Creativity and Innovation and organisational wide buy-in. We discussed topics like Mindfulness, Presence, Conversational excellence,  creating moments that matter, Psychological Safety, Authentic Leadership, Emotional Intelligence & relational support. Bacardi is intent on creating a culture based on three curated pillars; Fearless, Founders and Family. Bacardi wants to be a catalyst for magical moments in peoples lives. 

 

Points made through the episode:

• Travel has been a big part of John’s life-learning French, Portuguese and Spanish along the way.
• His parents exercised a huge influence on the choice of career that has become his passion
• John confessed to suffering from Imposter Syndrome. A huge part of his way was in pleasing people and not being conscious about what he wanted.
• This being has influenced how he is towards others and the purpose he has set himself to help more people plan and unlock their own potential both professionally and personally.
• At Bacardi John is the self- professed “fitness coach” Bacardi knows that if it wants to have the next best 10 years it needs to engage its people and culture to be the very best.
• John has done his own personal work to acknowledge the imposter within him and to understand & appreciate his own emotions in a way that helps him manage conflict constructively
• John is endeavouring to build a culture at Bacardi where people feel appreciated for who they are, and not what they “should” be in order to unlock potential and performance
• Bacardi encourages Coaching, Team Coaching and Development to help people work collaboratively and across boundaries rather than towards a title.
• Bacardi has employed concepts like Hackathons to unleash energy and commitment to company-wide ideas – doing so has improved company engagement scores by 10%
• Bacardi wants culture to be owned by everyone and not just a few
• As a Talent Manager John has learnt to appreciate being less attached or attracted to Avant- Garde ideas & more focused on execution & simplicity
• He is also keen to slow down and to allow the organisation to really implement well
• When John thinks team he thinks the following; Laughter, Cohesion, Irreverence, tightness to support each other professionally and personally
• We spoke about Patrick Lencioni and the work he has created around the 5 dysfunctions of teams. John uses the corollary of the dysfunctions to engage hearts and minds.
• John is not keen on labelling or classifying people. He uses models and frameworks lightly and is more interested in the conversation for possibility
• Amy Edmondson introduced the Bacardi Leaders, 50 who were on a bespoke leadership program to Authentic Leadership. She spoke about creating a fearless organisation. He liked how she spoke about framing work for people ,so they understand what is expected and how to create a culture where mistakes are seen as opportunities to learn
• We are so busy being busy that even though we are extremely connected we are disconnected. How can we build the pause to be present to each other?
• Bacardi is working hard to be relevant in a society where people are interested in drinking less but drinking quality drinks. The company is doing a lot to self-regulate. It is promoting slow drinking in France, Drink Driving campaigns in Russia and Portugal.
• The Cocktail business is growing by virtue of people wanting less but better.
• Bacardi is also moving into the business of no and low alcohol
• What matters now to John is the idea of promoting mental wellbeing at Bacardi. He was taken by a presentation given by a former Unilever executive, Jeff McDonald who spoke passionately about encouraging discourse on mental wellbeing at work.

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

 

1. Amy Edmondson: The Fearless Organisation
2. The GOT Podcast episode 25 with Sarah Hill
3. Patrick Lencioni: The 5 dysfunctions of a Team
4. bacardi.com

 

Introduction: Alexander Caillet is renowned for his pioneering approach to team coaching and his state of mind research with organisational Leaders. He is an organisational psychologist, consultant, executive coach and team coach, working internationally. Alexander is CEO of Corentus, a coaching and consulting organisation dedicated to transforming teams. He is also faculty at Georgetown University, He is a frequent international speaker on subjects such as  change, Teams, Team Coaching and Leadership. Alexander has co-authored a mini book called Corentus Team Coaching, a fascinating read. Alexander is a dual citizen of France and the US and he lives in Boston with his wife and 3 beautiful daughters.

 

Podcast episode summary: In this episode Alexander Caillet communicates with enormous clarity & passion his approach to team coaching, the power of this methodology and the gift it can afford teams and organisations especially in answer to our VUCA world. Alexander describes the company’s approach to team interventions, the models he deploys and the role of the team coach. He shares many vignettes to illuminate the power of team coaching and how by way of this work the teams work is sustainable. 

 

Noteworthy points of discussion

• Alexander Caillet saw the power of Group Dynamics in his studies at Columbia University and he wanted to bring this power into his work with teams. 
• Team Coaching is the product of integrating a real time approach in group dynamics in a business or organisational setting with the team is doing its work so that they can adapt and get at improved performance 
• Teams and groups today are brought into the work using tools to support the building of team charters, defining a purpose, clarifying goals understanding roles etc. but they stumble on communication, trust and respect and although we have tools for these ideas they are seemingly insufficient when the team is back in the workplace. 
• The real translation of those tools around communication trust, psychological safety happens in the moment when the team has a breakdown back at work and they can see how to navigate these issues with real time coaching. 
• There is almost an implicit assumption at work on teams that “we don’t do that kind of work it is too dangerous” but group dynamics in terms of norms/patterns/outcome are unavoidable and without it we lose opportunity to get a HPTs. 
• There is a role with teams for Team Facilitation, Team Building, Team Teaching and Consulting and there is also room for Team Coaching. 
• Corentus offers a customised approach that is a combination of all four modalities
• Team Coaching is an engagement over time sometime a year-that allows for team observation and analysis of its processes and patterns to further sustained difference 
• Corentus employs a definitive model to support teams engage with their work: The model is described as Sensing/Being/Making moves. 

• Being describes the way a Coach shows up-important to be fit for the work as this work is not for the faint of heart-essential to be grounded and to understand triggers – being calm and clear gets noticed and helps the team
• Sensing is about gathering data either quantitatively or qualitatively and then feeding it back to the team in a neutral manner . Corentus uses many tools but important to them is the idea of the relationship between norms/patterns and outcomes or the OPN model – all teams have patterns laid down by norms, assumptions and beliefs that generate definitive outcomes 
• Making Moves is about using the data in the various domains of decision making/accountability etc for difference 

• Having data and asking powerful questions in the moment when the team is doing its work can often be a real turning point for a team and the real value of Team Coaching 
• We walk into systems very quickly and often we become blind or go native to the system we are in. Team Coaching allows us to pause and notice and ask the team to do the same- to notice what is happening, what patterns are emerging and what needs to be changed if anything? 
• Important to this work is Leadership Coaching in addition to working with the Leader and team publicly, Corentus will work with the Leader and their impact offline over time. 
• We are living in a VUCA world 
• Volatility represents the relentless speed & pace of change, Uncertainty meaning things are harder to predict, Complexity making things difficult to analyse and Ambiguity making things harder to interpret. 
• VUCA drives a lot of overwhelm. 
• Corentus and Alexander sees a real need for teams to focus, for teams to invest time together, to come together to work things out. 
• Alexander sees the work of Team Coaches as  instrumental and of value in this VUCA world if we can transfer  the knowledge and skills we use with teams so that they can sense/be and make moves for themselves. 
• Alexander shared a powerful story of work with a with a well-known NGO and how his approach and models supported the Executive Team of this entity ultimately make decision four times faster than they ordinarily were able to do. This ability and skill learnt over time  was of enormous value when in reality the NGO was faced with a humanitarian crisis after the Tsunami in 2008. 
• Alexander is intent on building Corentus Globally , writing and speaking more, stepping out of delivery and having an impact in terms of increased global collaboration and collective intelligence . I wish him all the success in these endeavours 

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

 

1. WWW.corentus.com 
2. Introduction to Corentus Team Coaching by Alexander Caillet and Amy Yeager

Introduction: Cath Bishop is a three-time Olympian, World Champion and Olympic Silver medallist in rowing. In her career as Diplomat, she specialised in stabilisation policy for conflict affected areas of the world. In business Cath acts as a Business Coach & Consultant, advising on Teams and Leadership Development. She also teaches on the Executive Education Programs for Judge Business School at Cambridge University. 

Podcast episode Summary: The book, The Long Win is a deep and rewarding exploration of human motivation, in sport, politics, business & our personal lives. This episode explores Cath Bishops alternative approach to a zero sum approach to winning. Her approach is housed in an alliterative 3 C’s, developing Clarity, Constant learning and Connection. Cath’s passion for a different approach to success and in solving our  worlds complex issues is palpable across this conversation. 

Points made throughout the Episode: 

 

• The book served as vehicle to make sense of Cath’s experiences, failures and wins.  Cath looked at the common themes that could get at sustainable performance
• She observed our collective obsession with defining winning on narrow terms 
• Her aim for this book is to challenge our definition of success, challenge the simple metrics on which we so depend & to begin to define broader success criteria that matter. 
• A meaningful purpose is one that offers a contribution outside of ourselves, is meaningful, it allows us have agency and connect more widely to be part of something together. 
• Having broader aims allows us to be resilient, to be creative in the face of setbacks and to be involved not just from a head space but from a heart space too. 
• She invariably challenges metrics to wonder what might not be housed in a metric that also matters. 
• In her experience as an Olympian athlete especially for her first two experiences Cath noticed a very dominant theme. Toughness. It took failing on a big scale for Cath to ask some tough questions of herself. She took a year out. 
• Cath’s third experience in Athens was different.  Cath appreciated the change in sport psychology.  It wasn’t necessarily about “fixing athletes” that led to performance gains but to an appreciation of the Culture and environment in which athletes trained. Removing fear and separating out performance from results. To an understanding that more things about an athlete, like mindset, behaviours, relations with others contributed to the performance. 
• These learnings underpinned what became for Cath her 3 C’s, Clarity, Continuous Learning and Connection. 
• Cath is often invited into Corporate Settings to explore her wins and help others be winners. She explains that this is not the question. Instead she asks how Leaders can share why their organisation exists, the difference it makes to society and then to go about connecting and making links with every employee. 
• Start what Success means to the team on a broader level. Cath shares a story of where a team was facing into miserable results but with her help they were able to mine the real learning they had achieved over the year. 
• She extols a Growth Mindset made famous by Carol Dweck. Cath asks teams to look at what went well, to leverage learning and be prepared to do consistent reviews. This gets people away from having only one metric the outcome. 
• Cath learnt the capacity of connection as a Diplomat. She notes that it is a little bit mad that it took a Pandemic for organisations to give themselves permission to ask people how they are. Importantly we should take stock about why that was the case. 
• In her capacity as a Diplomat Cath was keen to make connections before the content of her assignment. Who am I speaking to beyond the title? Knowing a person helps you tap into the their better part. 
• The Brexit negotiations are really forged out of an archaic system of Zero sum games. Competition and politics where someone has to lose. 
• Complex collaboration is required to solve some of our more wicked social problems 
• For teams Cath suggests that each team define what success means to them, to put people first and to value the team ethos in addition to the metrics. She suggests people on teams need to take responsibility for what matters and to challenge entrenched thinking. 
• Make sure the conversations about Purpose are not outsourced as a Comms initiative but spoken to everywhere. 
• Cath’s biggest discovery in writing the book was the realisation that a lot of our more systemic issues and inability to collaborate are borne out of our education systems. She admires the work of Alfie Cohen in the US and his thinking on Co-operative learning as well as the approach adopted by the Nordic countries. 
• We do not have a lot of cognitive diversity much of us have learnt the exact same curriculum. How can we allow for more choice? 
• Begin by defining success on your own terms and lose the “should” 

Resources 

1. Bishop.C; The long win; the search for a better way to succeed
2. Cohen.A; Punished by Rewards
3. www.cathbishop.com
4. @thecathbishop

Introduction: Covid-19 struck like a thunderbolt and has thrown the world upside down. Many are still reeling as we grapple to right side for a new order. All of us have been forced to wake to a new reality, to pause and immediately assume a virtual reality for most of the population. Teams have been beset too. Episode Two is an invitation to look at how we allow for emotional expression and how we use emotions intentionally in our conversations. The worldwide experiment in distributed work has put into question many of our old rituals and practices as work. How can we use the pause to reassess?

Podcast episode summary: To answer these and several more questions I interviewed Sue McDonnell, Paul Lawrence and Dan Newby for their perspectives. This conversation proved to be a very rich and varied conversation covering emotions, behaviours, perspectives, the opportunities to rethink and reimagine the future as well as the very real and positive opportunity for sustained interest in Climate Change, values based Leadership and the practice of reflection. The general consensus over the course of this conversation was the need to practice emotional agility, to allow space to think and connect and to give agency to every person's version of empowerment.

 

Points made through the episode:

• The mood is variable on teams. Some are thriving others are languishing in anxiety and uncertainty
• The structure afforded in the physical domains of work is absent and contributing to anxiety and overwhelm
• We live in various stories about this crisis. It has been described as apocalyptic and like a roller coaster, a tsunami of emotions. The question we can ask is how we want our stories to influence our actions? If you change the narrative, you can intentionally shift your emotion.
• What will support you right now?
• As a leader you can check-in with yourself and observe your somatic reactions. We are great at prepping for task related conversations and less good at the emotional conversation. As a leader ask how do you want to impact your team? How do we wish to leave the team feeling? And during the meeting check-in to see what is happening?
• Huge tendency right now to max zoom meetings. Need to recognise that over stimulus is exhausting. Important to vary and shift orientation of meetings between Zoom, chat, email phone and use them purposefully for emotional conversation as well as task conversation.
• Teams need space-create the space for teams to think together and work out or figure out how best to progress.
• Irreverence as an emotion allows us to laugh. There is a difference between employing irreverence productively and mocking or denigrating others.
• In the physical world of work, we moved around. In our homes we need to manage our boundaries and our energy. Energy can be accessed by having conversations for laughs. In Australia there is a practice called “Hanging shit on each other” a humorous and light way to connect with team members.
• Remember as leaders that looking after your mental state is not an act in selfishness. Our moods are contagious so be careful with yours.
• Ask what is giving you energy and what is draining you of energy?
• For Leaders the pressure of believing you have to have the answers is being thrown into question In a distributed workplace. Those who hold on to that Leadership standard will find themselves exhausted and will frustrate the work of teams in this space.
• Silos for example have collapsed. Our environment has changed such that silos cannot exist. Its usefulness is in allowing for Trust, Transparency and Empowerment to grow.
• Some assumptions about Leadership have been disabused in this environment. The idea that any one leader can know in this environment is absurd. Instead allow for vulnerability and openness.
• Encourage different perspectives and allow people to author their own version of what empowerment means.
• Leaders need to be less directive and more enquiring. Curiosity as an emotion is undervalued or used in team dialogue. Two roles Leaders and team members can adopt. One of detective and scientist. The first allows for self -discovery and the second allows freedom to experiment and get things wrong.
• Strong correlation between Psychological safety and innovation and performance. See real room for kindness, forgiveness, vulnerability and acceptance to pervade teams.
• We often only get as far as naming emotions, but we miss a next step. The next step is to ask if the emotion is in fact of service. Humility for example is probably needed right now and it then allows a person to ask for help.
• People are using the space and time to think to be creative. One leader has introduced videos, mindfulness, somatic practices and dancing as invited parts of his team meetings.
• The space has been a great leveller and an opportunity to reflect.
• The panel ended the conversation by hoping that this time for reflection and self -reflection will stay, that the introduction of distributed work practices may stay and  new rituals will be harnessed and that the permission to employ more heart thinking into conversations will also progress.
  
  

 

Resources: the following include the resources I alluded to in this episode.

• Sue McDonnell: suemcdonnell.com.au
• Dan Newby: schoolofemotions.world and The field guide to emotions: A practical orientation to 150 emotions by Curtis Watkins and Dan Newby
• Paul Lawrence: The Tao of Dialogue: Lawrence, P. Hill, S. Priestland, A. Forrestal, C. Rommerts, F. Hyslop,L. & Manning,M. (2019), The Tao of Dialogue, Routeledge. UK

Introduction: This episode showcases the business of Leadership and what good leaders need to notice in our current VUCA world. Conor Brennan is CEO of Arachas Corporate Brokers in Ireland. He says his role as a CEO, isn’t just to make sure we have the expertise and resources to make good on the promises we make every day, it’s to make sure our people truly understand the role they play in being there for our customers when they need us most. Conor was formerly  CEO of Zurich UK General Insurance & CEO of Zurich GI in Ireland. He held roles as Deputy CEO Chambers Ireland and roles in print and media with a BA Hons, Commerce and Communications from Dublin City University.

 

Podcast episode summary: This episode discussed Leadership and some of the needed competencies for leaders today. The conversation spoke to the importance of societal change and its impact on business, especially the war for talent. The insurance business of which Conor is apart can be seen as traditional and hierarchical often with a legacy of heroic leaders. That way of leadership is changing. 

• Conor did not dream of being in Insurance he almost fell into Insurance after a significant period working as Deputy CEO for Chambers of Ireland
• He loved his degree in college, it was new and exciting to be in communications in an Ireland that was a two station TV nation, a country governed by the Church where much of Ireland was really insular. 
• He quickly appreciated the power of reading and reading voraciously to equip him in Business
• To him the construction of business leaders is broadly governed by societal changes. 
• Generational understanding is critical. Important to be able to listen, the new generation of workers expect this as a minimum, it also allows for collective intelligence leading to better decision making 
• Leaders have to be mindful of the generational mix in business and to ensure the wider system is respected. 
• Quality of debate seen in recent Brexit talks by our Taoiseach, Simon Coveney and Helen McEntee was inspirational & speaks to the brilliance and educational minds of our young leaders
• We are not having harmless conversations about climate change anymore and people like Greta Thunberg and our own young protesters are heralding a sea change in our response to this crisis-shows how the opinion of the next generation is feeding into our contemporary conversations 
• Impact of Brexit is having an impact on the war for talent. With companies choosing Ireland over the UK as a centre along with Direct Foreign Investment means tightness with respect to labour. 
• Demands of younger generation & what appeals to them from a career perspective much different to what was. Purpose paramount, ethics essential, continuous learning, flexible work conditions/terms and older workers mean a lot to consider over financial remuneration 
• Leaders have to be congruent and you have to believe in your intentions -audio has to match the video
• Behind language is action-tough challenges in a competitive market means much greater need for mature conversations on the top team
• Norms are important, respect, integrity, an ability to dialogue and appreciate difference
• Leaders need to mind their inappropriate use of EGO

• Conor’s Leadership Style is inclusive, and he works hard to bring diverse opinions into the room to form better decisions. He ensures the conditions on his team allow for mature and respectful conversations where a common and shared view of the business is held. 
• Conor shared his journey into Leadership and how preparation, passion and a willingness to invest in himself and change his style including getting coaching meant he could then assume greater and more responsible roles in Zurich. He was well resourced by Zurich in terms of leadership development 
• In hiring for his top team, he looks for attitude first. Technical skills are necessary but can be taught
• In terms of our VUCA world Conor helps leaders especially younger leaders to look less for perfection and encourage other intelligences including listening to their gut
• Conor draws inspiration from many sport’ teams and he is especially proud of the Dublin GAA. He cites a story where a player came off the pitch after a major win and in the moment did not recall the point win, instead he noted the team’s performance. 
• Conor admires the naturalness, connected nature of high performing sports teams who do the right thing. He sees harmony and symphony as necessary prerequisites to teams’ performance in our complex networked world. 
• Conor is a big fan of coaching and he employed team coaching for his top team at Arachas. Getting team members to get at mutual goals is hard work and a continuous practice 
• Culture change is hard and rewarding but it must be worked with commitment and effort. 
• Conor’s top 3 tips or nuggets for teams include 

1. Be appropriate with your ego 
2. Work with people that stimulate you and challenge you
3. Have fun 

 

Quotable Quotes: “helping people do their best work elsewhere” “Be appropriate with your ego” 

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

 

1. Prisoners of Geography 
2. Unauthorised Biography of Tiger Wooods 
3. Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood 

Professor David Clutterbuck is a scion in the field of coaching, mentoring, team coaching and research. He is one of Europe’s most prolific and well-known management writers and thinkers. He has written in excess of 70+ books and numerous articles and blogs. He is the co-founder of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council and is now a lifetime ambassador of the association. He is a visiting professor of the faculty of coaching and mentoring at Henley Business School, Sheffield Hallam, Oxford Brookes and York St. Johns Universities. I was delighted to have the opportunity to speak with him today and I hope you enjoy this episode on the Game of Teams Podcast series.  

This particular episode with Professor David Clutterbuck illuminates the systemic nature of teams and how teams are part of a nested system. The terrain is complex, often messy and fraught with issues like a team’s history, unspoken expectations, power dynamics, team dynamics and competing priorities and often a misguided sense of why the team is a team.

Professor David Clutterbuck shared many vignettes, ideas for engagement, a framework called Perill and his explanation of a powerful question hidden in an acronym called Prairie. David spoke to his passion for teams because they are so complex and replete with learning and also his passion for writing. He has just written a new book adding to his portfolio of 70+ books called A Practitioners Handbook of Team Coaching, which is launching in the last week of April. A must read for any team Leader/member/coach or practitioner wishing to support teams be great.

Noteworthy points of discussion

• Stand-up comedy was by far the most scary thing David has every tried but he recognises that laughter is a huge remedy and can be helpful in providing the “fizz” and “buzz” on teams
• He often asks of teams to tell him the most ridiculous positive thing that happened recently to connect people with their humanness and to improve the quality of conversations.
• Important to see teams as a part of an ecosystem and to appreciate the complexity of the system of which teams are apart
• Teams need to understand their history to know their future
• Psychological safety is very closely linked to high performance
• David Clutterbuck advises more time spent in upfront preparation and getting to know the team than in actual team coaching. Really important to appreciate the complexity of teams/the dynamics of interrelations not just within the team but also with their interfaces.
• Many reasons to engage in team coaching. Conflict, A new Leader, Project teams needing to move faster and be a real team, working out interdependencies, all kinds of transitions, learning skills/process management and how to collaborate or dialogue effectively together.
• Important too to get clear agreements between all parties to a team coaching engagement to understand expectations
• Fundamental role of Team Coach is to be redundant over time, to get to a place where the team has absorbed the coaching process.
• Learning is a critical dimension for teams. Top teams must be able to answer the question “Is this team adapting, evolving and changing at pace ahead of or at least abreast of pace of change around them?”
• A team must work with a team development plan. What is the learning the team must achieve together to cope with their environment and to get at the performance required.
• David Clutterbuck shared his PERILL Framework for teams. P stands for Purpose and Motivation, E stands for external relations and processes, R stands for relations, I stands for internal processes like decision making, L stands for learning and L stands for Leadership not the person but the 15 or so functions a leader needs to negotiate with the team to distribute effectively.
• This model is inherently the first Complex Adaptive Systems thinking framework for teams.
• Too often teams reach for the simple solution but David Clutterbuck explained the peril of this way of simplistic thinking. Teams needs to understand their system sufficiently well to put in place solutions and ways of working that are sustainable
• The simple question “who are your stakeholders” is often a mystery to many teams
• Other similarly provocative but helpful questions include “what is the unique contribution this team can make?” and “who would care if you were not hear?”
• David explained his formula for powerful questions housed in the acronym Prairie. P is personal, R is resonating, A is acute, R is reverberating, I is innocent and E is explicit. The key is to ask short/sweet questions that are to the point with emotional impact.
• David Clutterbuck spoke about endings in a team coaching and more specifically about his process with teams.
• David reminded me that the team has to be responsible for their process.  He often asks and repeatedly asks two questions. 1. What is going on in this team right now and 2. What would you collectively like to do about it?
• He ends when teams have absorbed the habit of coaching.

 

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

1. Clutterbuck, D. (2007) Coaching the team at Work.
2. Clutterbuck, D. (2004) Everyone needs a Mentor
3. Clutterbuck,D. (2013) Powerful Questions for Coaches and Mentors
4. Clutterbuck,D. (2019) The Practitioners Handbook of Team Coaching
5. https://www.davidclutterbuckpartnership.com

Introduction:

Reiner Lomb is the founder of BoomerangCoach, an executive coaching firm specialising in leadership and career development, innovation & transformational change. Before becoming a coach, Reiner had a 30+ year career in technology, started and developed software businesses and led leadership development. Reiner is the author of the book ASPIRE: Seven Essential Emotions for Leading Positive Change. No Matter Where You Are. 

Podcast Episode Summary:

Much has been written about Leadership Effectives and the behaviours needed to succeed. What is often missing is the discourse on emotions and how they drive leadership behaviours. Reiner shares through his experience & stories the enormous potential for positive change which he believes is achieved by understanding 7 essential emotions and how they marry with 7 essential leadership behaviours. 

 

Points raised across the podcast conversation: 

• Reiner is the product of a multi-cultural household and identifies as a next generation post war person. 

• He grew up in the Western part of a divided Germany through the cold war and felt the heartache over his country’s role in the Holocaust and World War II. 

• He believes the large challenges we face in the world, climate change, social, economic, political can and need to be figured out collaboratively 

• Reiner has been living in the USA for over 30 years and believes his adopted country is divided by emotions such as hatred, fear, resentment with mass shootings and a big political divide. 

• Passion & Purpose motivated Reiner to move into the realm of Leadership Development. He always loved learning for himself and gets great satisfaction seeing others grow. 

• His mission today is to mobilise leaders to help create a sustainable future for all. 

• Aspire is one of the Leadership Development models that Reiner employs with his clients 

• The name of his company Boomerang was a metaphor that captured his wish for people to return to their true passion and purpose 

• He formulated a neat framework, a pyramid of 7 essential Leadership behaviours that people will readily recognise, behaviours that are driven by 7 essential emotions. 

• Understanding these 7 emotions in a granular way can help further a Leaders effectiveness. 

• Emotions are a key domain of learning that are the least understood and developed. 

• We as humans are always in a mix of emotions and by becoming familiar with our internal states we can self-regulate for the kinds of conversations and actions we want to have in the world. 

• Emotions then are gateways to effective conversations and equally barriers to the same conversations if held in an emotional field that does not serve. 

• Empathy, Compassion, and Interest are the foundational emotions that drive Care, Serving and Understanding

• From this foundational platform a Leader can vision, understanding the needs of his stakeholders and people. To vision a leader needs to be optimistic about the future and the kind of future he wishes to create. 

• Emotions like resentment, resignation keep us mentally and energetically stuck in the past and do not serve when we are trying to Lead. 

• Inspiration on the other hand mobilizes people to co-ordinate action and achieve realisable visions. 

• To co-create a future in the world we live requires collaboration and that is fuelled by the emotion of trust. 
• Projects and plans to proceed no matter how well co-ordinated meet with obstacles and adversity and to survive both requires resilience. Resilience is supported by the emotion of positivity. 
• Negativity is counterproductive to resilience. The more negative the leader, the environment, and the culture the less resilience is available to the organisation 
• Positivity is a palette of emotions including optimism, interest, inspiration, joy, awe, gratitude, and hopefulness. 
• Leaders are well versed in the Leadership competencies required to lead what is missing is the discourse on emotions. 
• Reiner shares a powerful story from his client relations where he helped a client recognise through his storytelling that he was living in a mood of resignation. Reiner was able to share the impact of living in resignation. He also shared that there is not a straight line between resignation and optimism, the gateway is acceptance. 
• To become versed in emotional literacy takes time, patience, and practice. Reiner suggests choosing one of the 7 emotions to start, maybe one that could have the biggest impact to a person’s leadership.
• As a coach it is important to put language to what a person is experiencing. Similarly, a coach needs to employ interest, empathy, and silence to allow what needs to be spoken. 
• Part of the learning of emotions involves understanding the distinctions between each. The more granular the understanding and appreciation for the difference between each emotion the greater the possibility for appropriate action.
• Understanding is often thwarted around a team table by the need to have the right answer and quickest response born out of our educative system. 
• In organisational life we often do not get rewarded for asking the right questions or for spending the time to have a real and generative conversation between peers on teams. 
• We need to move from the predominant focus of “me” or self-interest to “we” 
• We must cultivate a mindset of “we” on teams 

• To do so we need to appreciate that everyone is responsible for the success of the team, its climate and what is possible 
• The team leader can do much to encourage dialogue, to mine the aspirations of each member of the team and to make sure they align with the team’s vision 
• Trust is very complex emotion. We must understand what we mean by trust. What dimension of trust, sincerity, care, reliability, competence is being affected on the team and with & between whom? 
• A Leader plays a large role in facilitating trust between team members especially in circumstances where teams are short lived, are remote or in a hybrid configuration. 
• I tried to share an example of a client who in a team meeting expressed guilt and was met with another colleague who expressed anxiety to get on with the work at hand. I clumsily said “Grief” to Reiner instead of Guilt. My apologies 
• The learning that Reiner shared, however, to decode the emotion of grief in this instance remains. 
• A formula if you will, is to attend to the emotion, allow it to be heard with the attendant thoughts etc. This can sometimes be enough. Choose the desired emotion to move towards. This may or may not be possible. Sometimes a better strategy might be to simply to attend to emotion expressed and to help the client process that same emotion. 
• What is not acceptable is to skip the emotional discourse. 
• Grief for example is an emotion that spells loss, sadness for a person or situation lost. For Reiner it calls for resilience to be able to balance the need to continue living, serving, be in relation with others and managing the emotion of grief. In Reiner’s case he sourced positive emotions 
• Do not confuse sourcing or resourcing positive emotions like joy, interest, hope etc for toxic positivity where you supress negative emotions 
• If negative emotions surface, allow them, try to hear the story that accompanies the emotion and try and identify the source and corresponding need. 
• Reiner shares a story from his work that explores his use of his model Aspire and how he supports leaders become familiar and fluent with the 7 emotions used with the 7 essential leadership competencies. 
• Reiner’s favourite leadership lesson extols the virtue of care. He encourages listeners to really identify their “why” a passion that will fuel purpose. 
• Pick what you care about and develop your leadership to support that passion. 

Thank you