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Working With Diverse Teams | Independence Day
In this episode, we review the teamwork that saved the world in the 1996 classic, Independence Day. (*Spoiler Warning*) We also talk about getting the right information, anticipating work problems, creating synergy and even do a post-mortem on COVID. Working with a diverse team can be challenging but it might also be the reason you're able to save the world!
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Introduction (0:00)
Scott
Working with teams to solve real-world problems is hard. We get that. And some of those problems at work might be dealing with a difficult customer or meeting a specific deadline, or coming in under budget. Those are real problems and a diverse team sometimes can feel more like a hindrance than an actual help. So, how do you work with a diverse team to deal with a problem that is so large it feels world-ending?
Podcast Intro (0:36)
Richard
Welcome to the Work With Me podcast where we help you improve workplace relationships. As always this podcast is sponsored by IFI Training. I’m Richard.
Scott
I'm Scott.
Susan
And I'm Susan.
Richard
Each week we dive into media and pop-culture references using the 3D Relationships™ tool to better understand others. We will help you walk away with actual insights on how to solve people's problems.
Scott
Today we're going to talk about relationships in working with diverse teams. As our field of reference, we’re going to use the movie classic Independence Day.
Richard
All right, so for those of you who haven't seen Independence Day, it did come out in 1996 so you've had ample time to watch this movie. Essentially, you see the people begin to deal with some signs of alien activity. You see them kind of respond and they beginning to piece together this puzzle that, spoiler warning, there is an Eminem Alien Invasion.
Scott
And we're actually talking about true aliens from outer space.
Richard
There are several reasons why we chose to talk about the show. I think one of the main reasons is there's a diverse cast. You see a lot of different people with a lot of different experiences in this movie and it's a great story about how they work together to solve a world-ending problem.
Scott
So as the movie begins … and I love this movie because the major cast members have very distinct and different personalities, and we see how those diverse personalities work together to elevate performance and solve the mother of all problems, right? Which is annihilation from alien attack.
Susan
And it's so fun because they’re diverse from so many angles. They’re diverse in personality. They’re diverse in life experience. They’re diverse in values. I mean there are so many different ways. I love the scene between the first lady and Jasmine who come from such different worlds and yet there's the love and respect. That is just one example of where that diversity is and it shows in so many different ways. And yet what they do when they come together is solved a world-ending problem.
Scott
I think it's important to point out that diversity, our term of diversity is a little different than the world's view of diversity. Where diversity is commonly thought of as simply a cultural thing—coming from a different country or it's a race thing or a gender thing, we believe diversity has a lot more to do with the things that Susan mentioned. That is personality, perspective and character. Those are the things that matter in how we think, how we problem solve and how we communicate—even how we form relationships. That diversity is what we will be talking about in this podcast as we look at the diversity in Independence Day.
Richard
As you take a look at spots & Stripes, you see a lot of times that diversity gets really hyper-focused on culture, which is an important part of diversity. We don't want to belittle that but what we are talking when we talk about diversity is so much more than just that. It is a diversity of each segment of 3D Relationships: a diversity of experience, so those backgrounds come into play, we'll talk about that quite a bit today. It is also a diversity of values at its very core and sometimes that can be really difficult to reconcile between two people or multiple groups of people. But when you come at it from an understanding of, “this person has a different value” or “this value is more important to this person than it is to me”, that helps us better understand what diversity actually is.
The Key Relationships (4:34)
Susan
So let's start by looking at what relationships we see in the movie. At the very beginning, there are some key work relationships.
Scott
I love the three different pairs of relationships at the beginning of the movie. You see the characters of David Levinson, played by Jeff Goldblum, and how he works with his assistant, Marty in New York. David Levinson is a Bear. He's a techie. He has a sharp mind, but in kind of a quirky way he deals with with stuff. He doesn't have a driver's license, he rides a bike. Very, very intelligent and, like I said, kind of a techie, nerd person. He's all about balance, that's what Bears are all about balance, in his life. Not necessarily a very verbal person and then Marty is this kind of a flamboyant, Monkey character. And they work very effectively together. We don't see a lot of Marty in the film, but I love how they interact—how for Marty, David provides the grounding and the logic, right? And then for David, Marty is the kind of gut check. He reminds David that he needs to interact. He reminds David of just, “you got to remember people are people” and he brings the emotionality of people to the forefront. So they work with each other to become better.
Susan
Another pair of relationships that we see early in the movie is with the Will Smith character, Stephen Hiller, and a character played by Harry Connick, Jr, Jimmy Wilder. And they are pilots. And at the beginning of their interactions, you see kind of some fun but also some seriousness. And what evolves in the workplace, as they get in their planes that go up to attack this invasion, you definitely see them supporting each other through their personality. You see Stephen Hiller just telling his team, which includes Wilder, “You can do it! You got it! We're going to make this happen. Buckle down! Make things work.” And, it's fun to watch how their effective relationship as friends changes just a little bit in the work environment. But it's healthy and it's good. They're able to carry out their responsibilities the way they need to.
Scott
And Stephen Hiller is a Jungle Cat. He’s all about control and Jimmy Wilder, as the name would imply, is a Monkey and is all about enjoyment.
Susan
And a lot of fun to watch in the movie.
Richard
And we also have this working relationship of President Thomas J. Whitmore and Connie. And it's really fun because you get to see Bill Pullman, who plays Thomas Whitmore, as a Horse. He's all about the relationships. He's about the connection. He's always thinking of other people. His wife tells him that he can't lie well. He's kind of going through this political, not so much a scandal, but he's getting hammered in the press. “He's too young. He's too naive about how the world works.”
Scott
Poll numbers are dropping.
Richard
Yeah, he has poor poll numbers. And so you have his relationship with Connie and Connie is a Jungle Cat. She is about that control. She wants to make sure that they're giving off the correct image. She's making sure that things just happen. Later on in the film, you see when she's talking to her ex, who happens to be Jeff Goldblum's character David Levinson, you see them work through the fact that Connie wanted to be involved in something special. And Levinson's response was, “I thought we had something special” or “I was involved with something special” but for a Jungle Cat, a lot of times, it's about the advancement. It's about seeing things through to the end. So you see her, in that advisement role, advise the president in ways that are going to help him improve his poll numbers. President Whitmore trusts Connie—a lot of Horses have that trait, where they just trust. And he's willing to work with her. There are times when they kind of have some disagreements that they have to work through, but at the very beginning of the film, when they feel like they should not evacuate the large major cities in the US, she is willing to push him in that direction because she thinks that's going to help him. And he trusts her in return.
Susan
One of the things that’s fun about this movie, is we see those initial relationships, and there are a couple of others. And the movie weaves the story so that they all come together and as they come together and they have a crisis to face, those relationships change.
Richard
So you see kind of a reshuffling of the cards, right? These characters essentially get paired off with other characters that we were introduced to in different environments, different settings and with different objectives in mind.
Creating Synergy (9:26)
Susan
There are some really exciting things that happen as they work together to solve the problem. We see synergy in a way that didn't exist before the problem came into being. And I think that's cool. I think that happens in the workplace, that when there are needs, people step up to fill the needs. And when the team is brought together and given a forum to communicate, to interact, to innovate, to brainstorm all of those things that are so important in problem-solving, they each show what they can do and it's different from, in some ways, it's different from what they were doing before.
Scott
Diversity elevates performance, or certainly can and should and these characters do that in the movie.
Susan
One of my favorite examples is from Casse, who is the old Vietnam War pilot who came back home and had a family. Bu,t you know, he's a crop duster and he really is not what people would call successful.
Richard
There's certainly some PTSD in his experience.
Susan
Good point.
Scott
… He’s turned to alcohol and crop dusts the wrong fields. He gets in trouble at he's not taking care of his kids the way he should. So you see a little bit of an unhealthy character. But he becomes healthy in becoming more responsible in the face of crisis.
So another pairing and example of how we elevate, how diversity elevates performance, is you end up with David Levinson, The Tech Guy, again, who’s the Bear, paired with Stephen Hiller, who is a Jungle Cat. And they end up working together to solve this major problem: how to take down the aliens. And you see here the strengths of each Animal—the Bear, David Levinson … Bears are very creative, they have this natural inventive piece that just goes a million miles a minute. Their brain is always active. In one place, President Whitmore tells David, he says, “why don't you show us that you're as smart as we all hope you are in solving the problem.” And he does. He comes up with the solution by looking at it, kind of a piece at a time.
Susan
I love the story of how he gets to the solution, if we don't if we can step back for just a minute. Because he's he's racked his brain, he's really frustrated, he doesn't know what he's going to do and he is bemoaning the fact that they're all going to die. Life is not good. It’s all a disaster.
Scott
What caused this spiral is President Whitmore ordering a nuclear strike which, for a Bear who is dead set against …
Susan
He’s environmentally conscious, he is very environmentally conscious. And, “we're going to ruin the planet in an attempt to save the planet” which made no sense in his mind. So, he's depressed he’s down on himself and he sits down with his dad. And his dad says something that sparks an idea in his mind that has absolutely nothing to do with what his dad said, except that he uses it. His dad said, “get up off the cold floor, you're going to get a cold.” That turns to the idea of giving the alien ship a cold, a virus. And it's fun to watch that depression elevate into the solution.
Scott
So, he works all night and comes up with this wonderful solution. But then how to implement it? And that's where Captain Steven Hiller comes in and says, you know a Jungle Cat, the confidence, the control, “I can do this.” And he steps up and he says, “I'll pilot the ship.” And the dynamic between the two of them as they take off on this journey. The Bear, not having the confidence in executing the plan, and relying on the Jungle Cat and that confidence. But sometimes that confidence needs the problem-solving skills of the Bear.
Susan
Another thing that we're seeing happen as this crisis is being presented and this group of totally, I guess there's the core people from the White House, but you’ve got all these people who came together from different experiences, working together to try and solve the problem. There's some counseling that occurs and I love that. I love those moments. The thing that happens between David and his dad is one example of that. We see it again between Steve and David as David presents the idea of the virus and Steve comes in and shows him how to make it happen. You see, you see that theme repeated over and over again. It's about the team coming together, counseling together, creating a solution that works.
Susan
People make other people better, elevate performance.
The First Mistake (14:36)
Richard
Not being able to counsel together with the right team to get the right people with the right experiences and background on board actually turns out to be the impetus behind the biggest mistakes in the movie. The first major mistake that President Whitmore makes is not evacuating the cities. And why does he do that? He does that because he feels that people need to feel secure and he doesn't want to project panic. I think he's doing it for moral reasons but certainly, the counsel that he's getting from Connie and from all the TV that he's seeing right now … Maybe it makes it not a hundred percent of a motive, it could be … but the council isn't always done for that reason. It's not to help people work through the issue of having this ginormous alien spaceship overhead but it, in a large part, is so that he can project confidence, so he can respond to people who feel like he's too young, and too naive.
Scott
One of the weaknesses or challenges of a Horse is that trust that, Richard you talk about. They trust their people, right? Because their motive is connection, they are very loyal, and sometimes that loyalty can be misplaced. If you bring up people, and you see that in this case, where he he brought Connie up through the ranks because she helped him earlier on, he brought her. Now that doesn't necessarily mean she's the right person for the job, in this case, she is, but he also brings some people like the Secretary of Defense, named Nimziky. He is kind of a sleazy character. I'm sure that character, again, was rewarded by the loyalty of President Whitmore, but again not the best voice to listen to, and sometimes Horses have a hard time distinguishing because they feel that loyalty to all of their people.
Susan
Let me pull this back for just a minute to what this means to me and my business and to you and your business. I think we've toyed around some of these things, or, kind of talked around them but let's, let's call them out. One of those is, when you build a team to solve a critical problem, make sure that you have a wide diversity of experience, of value, of culture, whatever the pieces are—of ability, of personality, whatever of those pieces when you put that team together. But another thing that I think is key here with President Whitmore and what's happening in some of his mistakes is he's working off of what worked in the past, right? It is logical to assume that leaving people in their homes is the safest place for them to be. That seems like a normal expectation and a normal policy to put in place. But sometimes when we’re in critical, difficult problems, we need to throw the book out. Throw all of the existing notions, all of the rules that we think apply, and let's look at what's really happening here and brainstorm from the ground up instead of starting with that handbook already in place.
Richard
I think President Whitmore probably thinks there are a lot of costs associated with moving those people. I mean you get clogged evacuation routes mass hysteria…
Scott
Panic causes, yeah, death and accidents.
Richard
So, if you’re thinking of those things that already favor your position, you're participating in confirmation bias. Where you need people around you that can help you work through that. Because there are alternatives there are all trade-offs. Leaving people in place obviously could result in mass death.
Scott
One of our challenges is that we naturally assumed what is important to us is important to others. And that that's just human nature. But as a Horse with connection and loyalty and, Horses are so filled with caring, we assume that if an alien travels across the galaxy that they may not have bad intentions. In fact, it's actually not Whitmore more but Captain Steven Hiller that says to his girlfriend, Jasmine, to calm her down, “I don't think the aliens would go 93 million miles to kick our butts.” We frequently assign motives based on our own personality and it's up to other people and other perspectives and other personalities to even it out and to come up with better solutions or maybe more true Solutions. And in this in this case it takes kind of severe actions to realize that they're in danger.
Richard
So by not acting, we are acting. And sometimes it can be really costly when a problem begins to surface, whether that's in business or in departments or in our personal lives, a lot of times we may want more time to take care of it. Bears, we're really analytical they crave that balance, they love working things through all the way and they need time. Horses, with their desire for connection and a lot of times to get things perfect, also want more time to work through things typically, so that's not a strong suit for them. But they do need to recognize that it comes at a cost and the sooner we can deal with the problem, more often than not, the better it's going to be.
Susan
I love the side note here of personnel. So the president thinks he has pulled all of his advisors together as they sit down to try the beginning at the beginning to solve this problem. And through the film, we learned that he's missing key pieces and he also has key pieces in place that shouldn't be there. As you work through a problem if the people you've got on board aren't doing what needs to happen, re-evaluate. Look at who's helping synergy happen. Look at who's elevating people to their very best and make sure that the expertise is there. The president brings David in as a, he becomes a key adviser with what's happening. He also fires Nimziki. So he finds out that there's one person involved who has been, I think unintentionally, sabotaging but because he has this key piece of information—the existence of Area 51 and an alien and an alien spaceship—he keeps that to himself he doesn't bring that information up until he’s prompted to do so. So working to create the right team can be a process.
The Second Mistake (21:27)
Richard
The second major mistake that President Whitmore makes in this film is launching a counteroffensive. Again, he's listening to people like Nimziki and other military leaders. We’re told that Nimziki has been the director of the CIA at one point, so he has an intelligence background, and he's sitting in a room with military generals and they're all advising him that, “we need to respond.” And I think, again, as President Whitmore is a Horse, he probably has much more of a sense of needing to get back at the aliens, so to speak, to try to stop anything from happening, but also to get back at them. He engages in a counterstrike. We see that that is disastrous for the Black Knights most all of them die. And even Captain Steve Hiller, his F-18 gets destroyed. Fortunately for him, and for everyone else, he's able to take an alien down with him. But you cost lives of a lot more people because, again, he's listening only to, at that point military advisers. And you do see David try to talk him out of it but he does the counter-offensive and then he decides to launch a nuke when that proves ineffective.
Scott
We have to remember to sometimes step back and look at your team. Who is the team that I'm working with? Am I getting all of the perspectives that I should, right? If I've got a very limited field of view of the advisors, and especially if they're military advisers, right, you're going to counter force with force. And so they do that. They counter force with force with a very disastrous result, again because they aren't listening to all the right voices.
Susan
And sometimes you have to go to places you don’t want to go to get the good stuff out of your people. I love the scene where David actually tells the president, “I voted for the other guy.” Not someone you're likely to bring into your camp, but in this case, he proves to be the key to killing the aliens, to stopping what's going to destroy the world.
Scott
Well, David at one time previously punched the President.
Susan
Yeah, there’s bad blood there and yet, in the right situation, they work together to solve a world-ending problem.
Scott
Well, so here this Horse who has the problem, right? ‘cuz Connie is David's ex- who left him for the President, not in a romantic way, but for the job opportunity. Richard mentioned elevating her to the top position, Press Secretary in the White House. She left something special that was, to David, the marriage. But here Whitmore puts aside his personal feelings towards David and in a crisis listens to him and ends up trusting him more than anyone else in believing that he has the capacity to make a real difference in solving the problem.
Susan
There's another example of personnel maybe not being the people that you want that I love that's in this movie and it's the Brent Spiner character, whose name is actually Brackish Okun. And he is the scientist who has worked with the aliens since they were since they first landed on the planet 50 years previous or something …
Scott
1946
Susan
… and he is so excited about the activity that he's seen in the aliens since this invasion started. And he makes the mistake, maybe you could call it, telling the president has been so exciting. And President Whitmore is offended by that characterization because you're calling the loss of millions of lives exciting but, again, Dr. Okun brings to the situation key information and what the aliens can do. And the importance of separating the alien from their exo-, what's it called? Their skeleton suit?
Their “bio-suit” That’s a key piece of information for them being able to do the things that they have to do.
Scott
Underneath the technology, in the suit, they can be hurt like anybody.
The Correct Solution (25:44)
Richard
Which leads to them getting to the correct solution—the solution that’s actually going to save the world—is them having these experiences together as a team, working through the process of getting information out of the aliens. And you can call the previous experiences failures but they do provide key building blocks to finding the right solution. And sometimes that’s just a part of the process, working through the failures. Working through the experience together as a team allows them to come up with the right solutions.
Scott
That's really critical because sometimes failure leads you to greater success, right? And so, when you get stopped at some point and if you hit a roadblock in solving a problem with your teams at work, don't stop, right? You push forward. Use the failure to get back up, right? It's not how many times you get knocked down, it's how many times you get back up. That's the major thing here. And they all use the mistakes or the failures to learn and put together a world-saving solution.
Susan
In business sometimes we talk about conducting a post-mortem. The post-mortem is when we sit down and analyze the failure or the mistake or whatever was that didn't work to find out why it was a failure, and what was positive about it, what we learned from it, that kind of an activity. While they didn't have time to do those kinds of things in this particular situation, in our business world, that can be a very effective tool to getting us on the right track. To making sure that we are gleaning the information we need to from every experience we have.
Scott
President Whitmore, towards the end of the movie, gives one of them, honestly, I think it's one of the best speeches ever—delivered as a Horse, right, with the emotion. “Today will be our independence day.” It’s just a beautiful speech where he's rallying the troops and really getting them to do something that is beyond their normal capabilities, right? You take this ex-pilot from ‘Nam, who’s been crop dusting and you stick him in an F-18. Richard, I know, thinks it's very unrealistic to bring up…
Susan
He had a training session ahead
Richard
Yep, yep. 4 hours is all you need
Scot
A crop duster to F18.
Susan
But you elevated him. You took him from, really a failure who was made fun of by everybody that knew him, including his own son, and you turn him into a hero. And one of my favorite parts of the movie is when his dad goes up, flies up inside and the spaceship blows up. And Adam Baldwin's character turns to him and says, “your dad was a hero.” And he says, “I know.” and it's this incredulous, “What? What just happened? My dad was a hero.” And you take this town drunk, who can't even crop dust the right field, who now cares more about his family and more about his country and is willing to sacrifice his life for his children is beautiful.
Richard
I love that this movie shows in the third act, everybody doing things to the best of their ability. You see the best of the Horse with his speech motivating people. You see the best of the Bear finding the most innovative solution. You see the best of the Jungle Cat who's willing to take a chance flying a ship for the first time with this sense of control. You see Dr. Okun, who is a Monkey and just super excited about all this alien technology, even though he ends up, we learn in the next movie that he ends up in a coma for however many … for 20 years because of this experience. But he helps them get key information that shows just how big the threat is. That the aliens are coming. They are going to wipe them out and that really helps President Whitmore make the best decision. So in each of these situations, and also in Casse’s situation as a Monkey, again who's about the enjoyment and is struggling to fit back into society even though it's been years since Vietnam. You see him in his previous experience of having been abducted by aliens. You see that desire play in where he goes, “I need to be a part of the solution here because I have this experience.”
COVID Postmortem & Other Challenges (30:18)
Richard
I think COVID gives us a really interesting opportunity to do a post-mortem: to see what good diverse businesses were able to do in order to survive. I'm aware of a business here in Fort Worth, where we’re based out of, where they had a contingency plan in place. And they just flipped the switch and things just kept going for them just like normal. It wasn't for this exact situation, but it did allow them to be able to implement it in a way that made their work better. And I think if you get a good divers team on board, they're going to help you come up with some of those plans that work, in spite of, you know, maybe not being the exact situation but they help you see what could be coming down the pike.
Susan
Well, and if they had this solution drawn out, you wonder how many other things they planned for, right? What else is in the books that you could they could draw from? And sometimes it's drawing from a little bit here in a little bit there in a little bit and another place. They've done their work.
Scott
Anticipate an alien invasion.
Susan
Okay, maybe not.
Scott
But anticipate. The more situations we can anticipate in the work environment, and that is that's a real thing, right? You're going to have irate customers. You’re going to have machines go down. You’re going to have deadlines that have to be met.
I was talking with a manufacturing company and they've got all of these machines sitting on a floor waiting on casters because the supply chain has been interrupted. If you could anticipate that ahead of time what can we do? And one of the things they've done there, they have a plant in China that manufacturers electronic chips. And that plant has been shut down because of 10 cases of covid in the city of 350,000 people. But because of China's Zero Tolerance policy their factory got shot down. They’re not getting any chips. So their team, probably a very diverse team, got together to find out, “how do we solve this problem?” In there case they've taken old chips out of previous machines and retooled them or updated them to work in the new machines, just to continue to get product out. So, the more you can anticipate those, kind of, out out of the blue problems, use diverse teams to work into real life solutions.
Richard
And COVID for a lot of people, certainly it was it was worldwide, but for a lot of people, it was world-ending. And I think there are a lot of businesses that talk about before COVID and after COVID as major milestones in their business. I can't tell you how many articles I've seen for HR professionals on how to build another pandemic or epidemic contingency plan for work. That's something that people are going to think about. Which is hopefully helpful for people over all ‘cuz they're able to build off of maybe past failures. But it certainly presents us with plenty of opportunity to evaluate our previous experience and the backgrounds that we have and maybe try to take better advantage of those backgrounds to help us better succeed in future obstacles.
Scott
If you think about it, there are a lot of parallels between COVID and Independence Day. Both alien invasions—one with outer space and our current alien invasion has been microscopic.
Susan
Catastrophic in some cases.
Things Worth Remembering (34:04)
Susan
We've had some fun today with Independence Day. We do invite you to watch it in honor of our upcoming holiday and to enjoy the patriotism that's a part of it. But also to learn about building teams, about creating diversity from experience, interest, values, and culture as well as the other places that we usually pull diversity from. Don't wait ‘till the crisis to put your teams in place. The right teams create energy and elevate personal performance. Look at your teams. Are you in the right place? Are your teammates in the right place?
Scott
Trust in the differences that your people have to elevate your performance to come up with real solutions to real problems.
Richard
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Work With Me podcast. We certainly hope that you have taken away actionable insights into things that you can do to improve your business or improve your teams. You can get show notes or contribute to our discussion on the Work With Me podcast page at IFI training.com/work-with-me. Do you have anything to add to this discussion? Share this episode with a friend and rate us five stars on your favorite podcasting app.
Scott
Also, if you haven't yet, make sure you take the Jungle Motives personality assessment. it's free at junglemotives.com. Find out what percent of all four animals you are and if you're a Bear Horse, Monkey, or Jungle Cat. Look for the alien invasion but at the same time, make relationships work for you!