As a leader the expectations are vast – drive engagement, foster high-performance and cultivate a sense of belonging within your team. All this while ensuring the seamless execution of day – to – day tasks. Today’s teams are very human, dynamic, and often decentralized. It’s imperative for leaders to adopt an approach that mirrors the intricacies of human interaction, acknowledging the emotions and inter-dependence that characterize modern teams.
Join Craig and Jennie as they navigate the labyrinth of team dynamics, offering insights into how leaders can architect environments that guarantee engagement, create the conditions for high performance and foster genuine connection between all members of the team.
Curious? So are we:
What distinguishes task and social connection: do the nuances between these two set the foundation for well rounded team dynamics?
What are the elements that drive engagement? Is it a catchy buzzword, or critical to success?
What is beyond the forming – storming – performing model still so widely used?
https://www.linkedin.com/smart-links/AQFKQKvfWtqZzg
Follow SAIT Corporate Training on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/saitcorporatetraining/?viewAsMember=true
Connect directly with Jennie and Craig on LinkedIn:
Have burning questions about leadership that you'd like us to address? Email them to leadership.questions@sait.ca and let your voice be heard.
As a leader the expectations are vast – drive engagement, foster high-performance and cultivate a sense of belonging within your team. All this while ensuring the seamless execution of day – to – day tasks. Today’s teams are very human, dynamic, and often decentralized. It’s imperative for leaders to adopt an approach that mirrors the intricacies of human interaction, acknowledging the emotions and inter-dependence that characterize modern teams.
Join Craig and Jennie as they navigate the labyrinth of team dynamics, offering insights into how leaders can architect environments that guarantee engagement, create the conditions for high performance and foster genuine connection between all members of the team.
Curious? So are we:
What distinguishes task and social connection: do the nuances between these two set the foundation for well rounded team dynamics?
What are the elements that drive engagement? Is it a catchy buzzword, or critical to success?
What is beyond the forming – storming – performing model still so widely used?
https://www.linkedin.com/smart-links/AQFKQKvfWtqZzg
Follow SAIT Corporate Training on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/saitcorporatetraining/?viewAsMember=true
Connect directly with Jennie and Craig on LinkedIn:
Have burning questions about leadership that you'd like us to address? Email them to leadership.questions@sait.ca and let your voice be heard.
This is the Leading Beyond Any Title podcast, your Guide to Transformative Leadership. We're your hosts. Hi, I'm Craig Hess. And I'm
Jennie:Jennie Gilbert. Each episode at Breakfast, we'll bring you weekly quick lessons and conversations about topical leadership challenges. You're guaranteed to leave with one big idea, two applied strategies, and three questions to consider that can help enhance your leadership. Every day
Craig:we'll bring you insights on how to lead beyond any title and unlock your own leadership potential, and we'll
Jennie:both hope you enjoy this episode. Here we are. We're in. Welcome. Morning everybody. As Craig mentioned, you've found the chat if you haven't found it or typed in it. Fair not. It will be there all the way through. And on my toolbar right next to it, on the right hand side is the Q&A, but I think it varies according to how you have your Zoom set up. Quick note to our conference coming up in the middle of February, and Craig has some. Pretty cool things to say about that in a few minutes. But first, before we go any further talking of sunrises, I had the pleasure of working physically at SAIT's campus beginning half of this week, and this was the view as you arrived just outside Heritage Hall on Monday morning. So literally the sky seemed to be on fire. SAIT is based in Calgary. That's Calgary's skyline right there. For those of you who are not joining us from Calgary and originally and still known as McIntus. Mcintus is the meeting place of Two Rivers, I think it's actually the elbow of Two Rivers. We are situated on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy, which encompasses our indigenous people of the Treaty seven region. That is the Siksika, the Bacani, the Gani, the Sutina, the Stonia Nakoda, and the Northwest Métis homeland. We're always treated by a great view at SAIT, but it's very cool if you just take a moment and remember what was here before traditional hunting grounds, none of that. I'm sure the sky was still on fire, so it's important to us to acknowledge everybody who makes their homes in the region of Treaty seven. And thank you for joining us wherever you might be in Canada or beyond, as we well know.
Craig:Yes, thank you Jennie. And yes, just before we get going, we are super excited a little over two weeks now to be hosting our third, I can't say annual because this will be the second one this year. But our third conference around leading beyond any title sessions this year will be ranging from accountability to trust too. Some digital skills to some project management skills. We've got about 14, 15 different sessions for folks to choose from, and I'm just gonna pop into the chat right now. Be a special offer just for this group because you are so kind to join us on a Friday morning if you want to take advantage and bring a friend for free or bring yourself for half price, take advantage of that code that I've just popped into the chat and we would love to have you or your company join us. If you are interested in having folks from your entire organization or a larger team join, don't hesitate to also take advantage of that code or reach out and we can see what we can do for you. But with that in mind, Jennie today is one of those, we get into these little cycles where we get get into some great topics like feedback and goal setting, et cetera, et cetera. And then every once in a while, I think we get a little smart and we put out titles like we have for today. Around whether your team needs to be built, connected, or engaged. And as we get closer to the date, we start talking to each other and going, what exactly did we mean by this when we set this title? But I think what we're looking at today is this piece around, we have all heard the phrases of forming, storming, norming, performing, and as you added in for me on a surprise, a joining, you're right, it doesn't quite fit in with the piece. But just a leader's job is to build a team. It's to build a team. It's to connect with their team. It's to engage their team in general. If you think about this as the bigger picture of leading a team, you're probably gonna have a team that is there for some time. People are gonna come and join that team and disappear from that team, etc. You're gonna have short-term project teams and so on. There's a few ways we can look at this, but let's just start there. This whole idea of forming, storming, norming, performing the adjourning, it just, it just
Jennie:doesn't, anyway, it, it ruins the flow. The adjourning piece does, and you say it better. Yours almost rhymes. So, so what have we got there? Forming, storming, norming, and performing comes from, actually comes from sports psychology research in the 1960s, no less. And they looked at sports teams. And when you think of a sports season that makes perfect sense. Team gets together, that's your forming part, storming hundreds of questions, disagreements, questions to center. Why is Craig the leader? What's he got? What puts him in that place? Those kind of questions will question everything. We'll question the goals. We'll question the setup and the storming is just generally conflict and disagreement. When we come out the other side of that, we enter a phase called norming. Excuse me. And norming is where most teams actually get to, which is where you can execute the day job. And those that hit high performing status move into that performing phase. Now in the sports team, you've got that end of season. That's where the adjourning came from. And closure is important to us as humans. So short form. That is what, excuse me. The journey for a team looks like, we call it group dynamics, and the part that some leaders miss is that every single group or team will go through these stages. So immediately, if you are a leader that doesn't like conflict, finds difficult conversations, hard struggles with challenge. That storming phase is a tricky one because if you sweep it under the carpet, it just lasts longer. The other problem with it is when we look in business and we look in leadership, it's not as neat and tidy as a phase, like a sports season unless maybe if you work in projects. But I think even those are so big and complex these days that doesn't run either. And one of the problems with it is when we look at it from leadership, it's not linear. It doesn't run nice and neatly. Okay, let's form, let's storm it's norm. It's more, there's more of a pendulum that swings first off between storming and norming. And then if you can kick out the other side to get into norming, the question becomes how do we elevate to high performing? And that takes time and it takes a lot of work as well. That was a lot in the first sentence. Might be something there.
Craig:Yeah, there was, there's a lot to unpack there and I'm just picturing the leader who says, okay, this Friday we finished forming Monday, we storm, but that's a, that's a different conversation. I think you raised a really interesting point is it's not neat self-contained, et cetera. Yes. There are occasions where if you're now asked to lead up a project team, pull a team together, where you may have the ability as a leader to go through this. To an extent, most of us, when you become a leader, you become a leader of an existing team. Maybe I shouldn't say most of us, but I'm assuming that would be the case. So I think there's some it. I wanna park the simpleness of starting a team from scratch because I think we're all currently more than likely part of teams leading teams Etc. The piece that comes to mind here is how do you do this as. Folks, leave your team, folks come into your team as a leader, how do you think about these?'cause individuals are going to perhaps join at different stages, right? I, I don't know. What does that trigger for you?
Jennie:Every time somebody joins you basically come back to the beginning again as they enter in, which again, it isn't, excuse me, it isn't that linear easy progression every time somebody joins you, right back to the beginning. But the interesting thing is, if we look at it. Not as a line. You and your team wherever you are at, can be forming all the time. So what forming is getting to know the people around you? So forming is building connection, forming is building relationships, and when we've got connection, we've got relationships, we've got the real power and energy that leads to great work. Engagement comes alongside with that. The problem is that often when we form, we, sorry, excuse me. When we form, we do it day one and somebody new joins your team and you're like, okay, meet Jennie. Hi, I am Jennie. I'm Jennie. And then we say, okay, well now they're in, they'll figure it out. Or we're not quite that callous. And we put someone to work with them who shows them the way and they find their feet and gradually they build up speed. They don't know everybody to the extent that everybody else knows everybody. And so if you constantly have forming in the back of your mind, how am I building that social capital, that connection, you've got a win, win, win, win on your hands because you are bringing that person up to speed quicker.'cause they're getting to know the people around them. You're constantly holding the relationships. And when you build connection, what we say, what Brenny Brown says when we're building connection. People want to be seen, heard and valued. And there's no better way to do that than by holding that space and time to execute that. And it doesn't have to be sparkly icebreakers every time you have a team meeting. It can be a real down to earth connection question at the start of a meeting and good. Give an example. What would an example be? So the quickest, easiest form that if you want, if you have no more than a minute, you can do round table of a two word check-in. We run it all the time. And the easiest one, what is one word for the best of your life right now? One word for the worst of your life. Right there. And I was joking with someone yesterday,'cause if I did it at the moment, my word would be work and work. But if you are my leader. Later that day, you have the opportunity to say, Jennie, that was an interesting answer this morning. What's going on? Okay. And I'm gonna tell you about the highs and the lows that are running in my week, but you don't have to do it that you could do. What is the best thing for you about being on our team and what is the worst thing for you about being on our team? You need a little bit of psychological safety for people to show up in that space. Move on. And you want to go in that? In building those relationships. There's all kinds of different ways, and I can never pronounce it, but there's one way you show, you have five slides in your 20 seconds per slide. It's a whole like, sounds like Pekee, Pikachu or something. And it is not that I'm not doing it a service, but give your people like two minutes, tell us something about you that we don't know from just looking up. There's so much to build into and. If you do, if we do that, I'm gonna talk about field hockey and you are gonna talk about ice hockey. Great. Now we have a conversation where we can, we're completely different in that space, but there's a really good conversation there. And the beauty of that is when we get into a meeting and we disagree and we need to disagree if we're gonna elevate anything when I next see you. There's way more to you than the job title or the disagreement, and so we have so many other connection points. It keeps the cohesion and the social capital on your team healthier.
Craig:Yeah. It's almost a case of slowing down To speed up a little bit with that, I think a lot of leaders, at least in my experience and I think about the teams that I've joined, not and and been on, that probably has rarely happened and I. What's that? Sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting. So I heard you say that I was brilliant and it's, Erin also pointed out she, they say that they'll be calling that formal, that format of presentation Pikachu from now on, regardless. There we go. So question has come in, I think fits in very well here, and that is what if our team is so small and we have three levels of management in those meetings. How do we get our management to do social capsules or make them aware of them?
Jennie:They're human too. If whoever's meeting it is, they're human too. And Connect first, who we work with a lot, calls it connect before content. And it doesn't matter who you are in that organization. If you're in a meeting, your expectation is connect before content. It's a minute, two minutes before the start of every meeting. So how do you get management to buy in, have a conversation, explain the benefit of it, and. I'm trying to think of a shortcut to getting the benefit to somebody. There is a great TED talk, we'll put it in the show notes by Margaret Heffernan, and I think she actually has the best description of it. And what she talks about is every good company has its bricks in place, and your bricks or your vision, your mission, your policies, your KPIs, your goals, whatever else it might be. But social capital is the mortar between the bricks and the mortar. Between the bricks is the relationships and at the end of the day. Companies don't have ideas. People have ideas. People don't leave companies, people leave people. So the stronger that mortar is, the better the company is in the long run. And so when it comes to management, they care. The sort of line of where they're judged is generally bottom line, company, et cetera. That's what you're speaking to. That's your value in it. And for everybody else. Work is a better place to come to when we have better relationships. Yeah,
Craig:yeah. Conversely, you can't spend all your time focusing purely on the relationships. Right. You've gotta get the work done. So that talks a little bit to me about this move now from storming, norming to. High performing. I, this episode is gonna sound like a Dr. Seuss book soon, but I guess the piece that I think we're really leaning into, and thank you Nancy for the, the link to the Ted talk in the chat there. The piece that we've really leaned into here is the connecting, and I wonder if we can, I'm not sure we were thinking about going this direction, but I wonder if we can dig into that a little bit more and just speak about. That relative to the storming, norming, performing stages. Clearly, if you're well connected and you're a team, it becomes much easier to get to that high performance stage like the Ebbens and Orthers that we haven't mentioned yet. But we'll park that one for now. But just wondered if you can dig into that a little bit more, because I think my gut reaction to this is when we talk about connection and we talk about connecting. It comes back to the question that we had there. It seems to be this nice thing to have and maybe this piece that we, a lot of leaders perhaps shy away from.'cause to your point, Jennie, we got stuff we gotta get done and we got results we have to generate. We should be focused on that. We shouldn't be focused on this nice stuff.
Jennie:We did that on purpose, didn't you? When we're, there's, there's so much in there. It's hard to know where to start as a leader. It's, it's about time. It's right back to what you said again. Okay, so let's just, let's take a small example and we'll play it face to face and we'll play it virtually. You and I Bump into each other at eight. Okay? We're moving between buildings at seat. And classic you say, Jennie, how are you? And before I've even got a word out of my mouth, you are halfway down the corridor because you're running back to back or whatever that might be, and moving on. And there's still a smile. There's still, oh, there's Craig. He saw me, but he didn't hear me. Okay. The difference between connecting and not connecting is probably about a minute less than that even. Yeah. Where you actually stop walking. And you say, Jennie, how you doing? Now I have a choice. There are times when I'll tell you, yeah, I'm great, thanks. And there's no space or time for anymore. There might be something that you notice within there. The way you say, I say I'm great, and you're like, you are really doing okay. Yeah, you know what? It's a little up and down at the moment and that that point, you may still have to rush off, but you have connected with me because chances are what you'll do is circle back later in the day. You've got time for coffee late in the week. Do you wanna have a chat? Blah, blah, blah. I can still say no, but you are recognizing that that's an extra 30 seconds. Literally, in your day, you actually, I'm gonna put you on the spot here, but you did it this week. We were in a teams conversation. You picked up something and your next two lines, which would've taken you less than three seconds to type everything. Okay, question mark. That's what connection is when we make the time to see the human in front of us. As opposed to spinning all the way, just on the numbers, just on the metrics. And then other things in connection is they're so simple and a lot of them, we do it naturally. The question is, are we consistent with it? Mm-Hmm. So another thing that we talk about in connection is being present, and I'm sure we've used it in here before. John Amici, who wrote 12 Promises of Giants talks about how prepared are you to swivel your chair completely. And you don't have to be sitting down for that. What that means is how prepared are you to actually engage with the person in front of you? And we put our phones down in the middle of the table. No, the phone is still, the more, the most important thing between us. Leave the phone behind, have a conversation with the person. And by the way, this is still looking at your phone because you're reading the email on your smartwatch for nine out 10 people now. The connection really is literally be interested in the person in front of you. They are fascinating, but if you don't make time to find all that out, you will never, ever really get the beauty of who you're working with. And when we are connected, we do better work. We know that.
Craig:Yeah, I think that is the key piece in there is that. When we are connected, we do better work. Your level of trust goes up, your level of psychological safety goes up. Everybody somewhat buys in. We've been talking about this on our team, is, I've really been thinking about culture lately and I think we can get into the role that Alita plays in fostering culture around engagement.'cause as we will talk about, it's more than just an engagement survey. No offense to Gallup, but it doesn't matter. It does matter who your Q-ten is. And if you know the Gallup survey that's, do you have a best friend at work? That's that connection piece. But the survey isn't gonna solve it all anyway. I, we will come back to that because there's a question here that I want to get to, and it's a, it's longer, but let me go through it. It feels like our team is stuck in storming for about three years now. How can I get management to buy into accepting that we are in this situation? I think they feel like it would be admitting things aren't going well and they are scared to do that. My thing is, if we don't name what is happening, we can't get over it and move into performing. We have a new group of leaders and I'm not sure they know what to do. I'm not in a leadership role that makes it extra tricky. I've been around this place for 15 years and know this is how our team should not be functioning.
Jennie:Send them the link comes the webinar. No, I'm kidding. So three years in Storming, that's exhausting. And that's one of the things with Storming, it's like nobody wakes up in the morning and says, oh yes, give me a good conflict today. Like generally you say the word conflict and the hairs go up on the the back of people's necks. So when you get stuck in Storming and lots of teams do. There's a lot. I think the answer to the question is almost in the question, how do we call it as it is now, storming often happens when people don't have the big picture as I was stealing. Chris Voss's tagline, vision drives decision. Let's get back to stars to talking about where are we going? What is the purpose? What is our priority? What are our steps to get there? And then a lot of the questions around storming the elevation, if you like, that will get us out. The other side is making conflict productive. And in order to do that, we have to have the psychological safety to say, here's the obstacles that I have, here's what's holding me back. And all of that is made easier when those relationships are formed. And as I'm listening to that question, a new set of leaders. Chances are those leaders don't know each other well enough, and those leaders don't know the team, and the team doesn't know. There's so many different connections in there that are missing. So we want to put some clarity around what the issues are and build the relationships start to form even with leaders and team members all together. That's the other thing that we often want to do is put leaders in one space and individual contributors in another space. Where actually the real value is knowing that your leader in front of you is completely as human as you are. And that's difficult for a leader that wants to be perfect. It's just is parts that we work through. And the other thing that sort of sticks in there is some of these are difficult conversations. They're called difficult conversations for a reason, don't get in and then run. Get in and stay in there. And that requires some emotional management too. So there, there's so many different parts in there. I'd come back to build a relationship and start to get some clarity, and that means asking good questions. That's sometimes enough to bring it to the forefront. Leaders who are out there an agenda item, sometimes at the end. What are the questions that I'm not asking or what are the questions that I'm not answering? That's a, that's good. That's an agenda item and open that up to your team and any degree of psychological safety, you'll start to get a few. And then pulling on psychological safety, somebody asked one, your productive response is the gem in there, because if you respond productively, even to the extent of, wow, I didn't know that was a question, let me think about that. Then people will ask again. If you let the ego out of the cage, you might ruin the chances of people asking again. So you have to manage yourself in that situation too.
Craig:Yeah, and I think that also takes a, a huge piece of vulnerability by that leader to be able to say, what are the questions? Those two questions, Jennie, I think are absolutely brilliant, but, and for new leaders, I think it could be incredibly scary. You get put into a position of leadership and rightly or wrongly, you feel like you should have the answers right. And so I, I do think that's a chasm sometimes where you talk about the connecting piece and leaders connect. And the teams connect, but you never bring them together in the same room to connect.'cause we probably shouldn't be mingling for whatever ridiculous reason that is. Or putting yourself out there as a leader and saying, wow, I had no clue. I. Some don't ask the questions. You're afraid to hear the answers of sometimes rings in your ears. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So we've touched on the deforming storming, connecting the piece that we touched into here so that this piece around, we'll go back to our very beginning statement around build, connect, engage. Let's talk about this transition between connection to engagement.
Jennie:Okay. And I think I would, I think I'd remove the word transition. I think you do both. I think connection leads to, yeah, engagement, and I think they're both continuous. So the biggest mistake that we see is we need to engage our people. The classic is we'll run an engagement survey and then we do nothing with it. But engagement has nothing to do with surveys. Engagement is about engaging your people. So how are you listening to your people? For example, do you know what motivates your people? Do you know what lights their fire? Do you know what? Do you know what makes them angry? What, where do they get, where's the venting really happening? Because people don't get. Angry or frustrated for no reason. And so when we start to listen at different levels, you start to get much better information that you can use and you can work with. And so when we talk about engagement, we're talking about employees that are committed, that thrive, that have an attachment to the work that they do, as well as the people that they work with. And the byproduct of engagement is discretionary effort. And so in looking, digging into and researching a bit for this morning, he came across the phrase, quiet quitters again. And I didn't realize that was still a thing in terms of people still talking about it, but it is. And so I think we hover around 30% are actively engaged in North America in the work that they do. Fifty-one percent of what we refer to as quiet quitters. And for those who view who missed the first round, quiet quitters are people who simply do the job that's asked of them. We could call it really healthy boundaries, I don't know. And then the noisy quitters, which are actively disengaged and this group is potentially toxic to your team and to your organization, is hanging out there around, I think it hovers just under 20%. Those aren't fabulous numbers. And so I think that by building connection, see, hear, and value your people continuously and consistently, that leads to a level of engagement. Are they doing the work that lights their fire? Now, we can't all sit in this space. I love ninety-eight percent of my job, literally. And not everybody can have that, but the research tells us 20% of your day. So if they got that in there, then we can lift that engagement. But you don't know what that is for a person if you're not making the time to have really good conversation with them and find out. And that's back to forming as well. Look at that. You've wrapped it all up. No one does.
Craig:No. And then there's so much good in there and I think it is probably a good time to, to jump into the thought around surveys, especially as we move to engagement, right? Because to your point, a survey isn't the same thing as creating connection. A survey may give you some sense of some of the themes that exist within your organization, but it certainly does not foster connection. I. Maybe I've answered the question in and of itself. What's the challenge with the use of an engagement survey to, to believe you're actually creating an engagement? You, you simply
Jennie:won't, you'll say, I don't think that you will. You do get. Is feedback. You do get feedback. And the challenge is how do you change that feedback into feedforward? What are you going to do with it? And we see all kinds of strange things where leaders performances ranks on their engagement score is curious in itself. The trend now are the pulse surveys, whereas two or three questions and you do them more frequently. And again, you're getting feedback. The question is, what do you do with it? And so if you're going to run them, okay, so what are your scores and what's the conversation that you're having with your team? But instead, what we do is we wait for somebody somewhere in some department to come up with a strategy, which is actually just a plan, not really a strategy. Then we put the plan into place and we're already six months down the line. I don't remember what I put in my engagement score. And it's changed. Truly. It will have changed because we're humans and we're bumping into each other all the time. And so be careful how you use them, I think is what I'd say. And then the other thing is, yes, you're getting great data, but where else are you getting your data from and what are you doing with your dates? If you take engagement survey and let's say there's a space where I can put in my own comments. The classic thing is people go through and they rank positive or negative. It's still, there's still not great information and I believe now, I was reading about this yesterday is fascinating. There's an NLP neuro-linguistic programming AI function where they can do much better data analysis of what's within those statements. It'll give you much better information, but then don't stop there. Okay. Take that. Plus are you doing exit interviews? Why are people leaving your company? And how is that combined with what we're seeing within the engagement surveys and then social media? What are people saying about your company? What's the engagement there? And then we've talked about these before too, what your listening strategy throughout your company and your people know so much more. So if you say like your title, Craig is director. The more that you talk to adjunct instructors, the more information you're gonna get about the audience who's in the room. You meet somebody who makes a decision out there, fantastic. We need that. But you also need to understand what the audience is in the room or what it the experience is. Suddenly you've got no instructors. Well, what's going on there? You're not gonna get that from the engagement survey. So I think you want,
Craig:you
Jennie:wanted a zero response, but there you go. Yes. Okay. So what is that? Are they all quietly quit? No. There's something much bigger than that going on, and we'll never get the beauty of that. And the problem with it is that this is a people positive point thing and we've gotta make that work in all. Work. So we have to want to know to make it has to be intentional to make it happen. Yeah.
Craig:I think the thing I come to there as well, and I, I agree with you. I've seen engagement surveys come and go. I've done many of them. I've moved from engagement surveys to pulse surveys to Surveys being positioned as part of a listening strategy. Listening strategies to me just sounds like surveillance, but that's a different thing. I'll leave that along, but. Ultimately the real work in this ties back to what we talked about earlier, and that is if you're walking past somebody in the hallway, right? How are you connecting one-on-one, and how are you as a leader using your one-on-one meetings to connect and build engagement? How are you using, if you do regular performance feedback sessions, how are you using those more productively versus just filling out the form or filling up the system with. Whatever that one requires to connect with the individuals on your team. How are you bringing those individuals on your team together in a team building activity? We haven't really talked about the role that team building activities playing here, and how useful is it for everybody to go Axe throwing whatever that team building might be, but it comes back to that individual piece and I think that's where, to another point that we've made here, and it's been running through the chat. We're all expected to generate results. We're all expected to get stuff done. And generally that ends up because it's spoken about so much more taking priority over all the other piece, which inevitably, if you did focus more on it, would result in better outcomes.
Jennie:So there's, and one thing before I go to where I'm going next, going back to the surveys, I just remembered this Amazon, I don't know if they still do it, at one point was doing a question a day. That was their cadence. The one that I heard about was brilliant is your leader a com, a simplifier or a complexifier? That was a quest, like an example of one of the questions. So they were, they were pretty hard hitting in places too, but that was a different cadence. Again, other than the poll surveys, back to what you were saying about one-on-ones, I really like where you went from leader, getting to know their people into people getting to know each other too, so that we always talk about the one-on-one as the leader and the employee one-on-one. Does your team have one-on-ones with each other? The work that they do is interdependent. What a fabulous idea. If they have one-on-ones and those one-on-ones don't have to be an hour in 10, 15 minutes, whatever that might be. But is it intentional? Are they building that? Are you helping them with what they could be talking about within their, both on that social capital side and on the productivity side as well? And then the other part, when we talk about productivity and we talk about results and we have to get these metrics. Alex Pentland did a study, and I forget which European country it was, but there was an organization, big organization, and what they did was they banned coffee cups at desks. Now, I said this the other day in a classroom, and the North American response to that is absolute horror. That's what they did. And the reason that they did that, and they made it possible, is they wanted people to take a coffee break in a common area. And the deal was when you were in the common area and you'd stopped for coffee, is that you talked about anything but work. And you literally, you built connection. Now the results from that study are so. Mind-blowing. I just went back right the way back to the original research paper to double check that there hadn't been a typo somewhere along the line. But the problem is for leaders, and I'm not suggesting that you go ban coffee cups today, but for leaders to make that change to slow down before they speed up, to stop and be physically present, et cetera, et cetera, you are really changing status quo. And back to something you said earlier, there's a courage involved in that because the mind is immediately gonna go to what if it doesn't work? What if we don't get that metric? And the deal with high performing teams is they take years to get to that place. And because they get to that place, because they have done such a good job of figuring out the social cohesion. The task cohesion. What is it that we do? The task cohesion, the jobs that we do, our priority, our focus, our efficiency and effectiveness in there. And the social cohesion that is as important. Who's who? How do we work together? Even if I don't like you, we don't have to be best friends at work. I think Alan says you only need one. You're a team of nine I and have to be besties with everybody. You can have that social cohesion plus that task cohesion, and that's where your high performing team will come from.
Craig:Yeah. You touched on something there that I think leaders struggle with or worry about. I don't know if struggle with is the right word, but how long should it take? Right. So it's not as simple as coming to a Friday morning session with Craig and Jennie, even though we wish it was, and then you coming to the conference free plug for the conference. Then you engaging with say to work over time. All joking aside, but how, I think that's where leaders struggle, right? We're gonna start focusing on this, we're gonna work on connecting more, and then a month from now, nothing's really changed. Two months from now, nothing's really how long should it take, right? I think that's where the nuance in this, or the difficulty in this, is that it's not as simple as changing the process and seeing the outcome. Right? And that's that feedback loop and that time for results, you. Talk about connection results. I don't know. I think there's something that
Jennie:does that trigger. Yeah, absolutely. And you're right. And I, it's funny. Okay, we're going to focus on connection is like saying, let's sit down and have a conversation about psychological safety. You're not gonna get there. You literally won't. Nobody wants to play that game. And so I think it is, it's taking the decision that you are prepared to hold it as a priority. And if that's the case, you can, and you will make five minutes at the beginning or the end of a meeting to run some kind of connect before content. I like that phrase that works really well in your meeting. And in the back of my head I'm saying, okay, let's come up with five or six that we can put in our show notes. This is gonna take me a while, but we'll get them there. Keep an eye on it, and here are the classic connection things that you can do and. You asked me for some earlier, another one's just sprung to mind. Take a dice in to your next team meeting and think of six questions that are either fun to answer or connected to the workplace to answer. Have everybody around the table, roll the dice, answer the question connected to the number that you roll, and you can place so many different adaptations and variations on that already. That doesn't take a long time. You are not gonna go from. Metric-ninety to Metric-eighty because you rolled a dice around the table. But you are gonna find out what everybody's latest Netflix show favorite is, and if yours and mine are the same, we're having a conversation now over coffee discussing the lead role or the drama behind it, or something along those lines. And then you get trust, you get reciprocity, you get learning, you get helpfulness, and you're reaping the rewards because you threw a dice for five minutes. This isn't a big. Effort. This is just paying attention to the people around you. Yeah.
Craig:And as a leader, if you focus on it, whether you verbalize, you're gonna focus on it. Even making the change and then sticking with that change and being intentional to keep it authentic, ultimately results in it being something that. The team focuses on one last question in the chat before we wrap up, because I think it's a good one here that mixes in. They're always all good questions. Do you have any tips on how to get a team to connect that has a mix of introverts and extroverts without essentially the extroverts taking over?
Jennie:Oh, especially face-to-face meetings. They are designed for extroverts to hold stage, so you know the people around you. It depends how big your team is. Sometimes setting people up for success helps. So if you're running something like questions, you could release the questions beforehand. The one I really like, we use this a lot when we're working with bigger groups, is we call it one, two, four. It's the simplest way. So everybody writes their own ideas down first on a post-it note or in their book. Now everybody has something to say. And then share it with the person next to you. So you've got twos around the room. And then if you are a big group, or even I suppose eight would be a minimum, twos become fours, and then we feed back the fun stuff or the interesting stuff. And what happens there is those who like time to ponder, have that moment a conversation with just two people. There are most who can engage in that. By the time you get to the four, the one from each pair who are happy talking are doing most of the talking. And from the four, your chatty people are coming back and joining the conversation. There's numerous different ways you can use a talking stick. You can start safe and two word connections, two word check-in that we talked about earlier on. Then just build it slowly. The part to remember is that these kind of exercises, these kind of conversations where we're bringing everyone in, they're exhausting as well for the highly introverted, and we're not doing an hour of them. We're doing five minutes of them. And if you notice someone looking particularly uncomfortable or or disengaging, there's a really good conversation to have one-on-one later and get to know that person and ask them, because they know. And sitting. I'm probably more ambiverted. I think there's a lot that I don't know. So get to know the person in front of you.'cause your point is a good one. One size does not fit all here.
Craig:That would, because I muted myself for a second there when I was coughing. So let's wrap her up. Let's, let's move on. Let's close with our big idea for today.
Jennie:So for those with us this morning, you can see the screen. If you're listening to the podcast version of this it, okay, I will help you through it. You have no need to see the pictures. They literally are pretty much just nice images behind one or two words. We always finish with one big idea. Two things you can do straight away. And Craig's request is three questions, and sometimes I have three. Sometimes I have more. I've never had less yet. That might be a one. So our big idea for this week, this episode, is if you want to build engagement, then do exactly that. Go engage your people, make the time, stop, listen. Be a part of what's going on. Two things that we can do to do that, and this is a bit of a wholesale going on here, so I picked on the see here and valued. We're going to start with hearing how can we listen, hear people better. And it's important to remember, here's all the things you are not listening. If you're talking leaders, love talking. So concentrate on your voice share. Are you actually not talking? I love the phrase active silence here. Where can you be actively silent and engaged in that conversation? You are not listening to people. If you're planning advice, okay, go for it. Try today, it's Friday. No advice. Don't give anybody any advice today. Just listen, and then you might hear what it actually is that they're trying to solve.'cause often we're giving them wrong advice. If you're caught in trying to share your fabulous, brilliant story, stop let them share their story. This isn't about yours. If you're just trying to listen to reply, you're not listening. If you don't wanna be in the conversation, don't be in the conversation. If you don't have time to find out how somebody is, don't ask the question. Just say, good morning, or Good afternoon. And if you're stressed as well. So if you are overextended, it is really difficult for you to hear properly. So we talk about connection and we talk about hearing people. This is a really generous version of listening to the person in front of you. The second little bit shorter this time, but it is something that helps in all of these if you want to move through those phases of group dynamics. Or build connection or actually solidify your engagement, build your recognition. And I am not a fan of the SMART acronym until it is applied to two recognition. So you can apply smart there to your recognition, but when you're valuing people. If you appreciate them. If you acknowledge them, this goes a very long way. And if you dig back in our previous episodes, you'll find out what a power thank you is too. And that is a very impactful way to say thank you. And for those of you who can see this screen, I cheated. I have three bullet points, but Craig called me on it already. There are actually five questions on there to leave the day. Rumbled in action. So as you move through your Friday, we're gonna change it into four. Can you not give any advice today? That's your first question. But who is on your team and are you seeing them? That person that you know nothing about, you haven't seen them, maybe that's the next person to make a good connection with that person you don't really like. You don't really know them. You don't have to be a best friend. What else do you need to know? Where today can you employ active silence? That doesn't mean switch off and don't pay attention. It means that you're genuinely and generously listening to the person in front of you. And then what, if you're a leader here today, what are the conditions that you're setting up for your team? Is it possible to be engaged with the conditions around you? And if you are contributing somewhere, what is it that you need to engage and have you told your leader? Because if you're not talking about these things, they don't know. And what they don't know, they don't know. There you go. 1, 2, 3. We made it.
Craig:There we go. 1, 2, 3, 5. And thank you Jennie. And folks again gonna throw the code back into the chat. If you'd love to join us in person in a couple weeks from now, take advantage of that code. Bring a friend, bring a table. We'd love to have you join us and Jennie and I'll be back in a couple weeks for one last conversation before a March break. Have a fantastic day, great weekend, and as always, Jennie, I appreciate you. Thank you, and we'll talk to everybody soon. Take care. Thank you once again for joining us on the Leading Beyond Any title podcast. If you'd like to stay connected and receive more updates from us, please follow state corporate training on LinkedIn. Stay in the loop with the latest insights and valuable content to the link in the show notes.
Jennie:Additionally, don't miss out on the opportunity to experience leading beyond any title Live Sign on for our webinars and experience the podcast before anyone else. Finally, make sure to rate, review, and subscribe wherever it is that you listen to your podcast. Thank you again for listening.