The Game of Teams

Introduction:  Tracy Bertran, Michele White, Traci Manalini and Larissa Thurlow are all executive coaches, team coaches, individual and group supervisors offering diverse and extensive experience in the fields of learning and adult development.  Podcast episode Summary:  This podcast discusses the often-misunderstood topic of Supervision, how it serves coaches and team coaches and how it is distinctive from Mentoring and Therapy.  To fully appreciate the value of Supervision in the field of professional coaching this episode explores the evocative question: what bothers us about Supervision.  Points made throughout the Episode:    Tracy Bertran PCC, kicked this conversation off by sharing how she came to Supervision. It was an integral part of her Coach Training. She confesses that supervision and its value went off her radar once she finished her Coach training. Larissa Thurlow came to supervision slightly later in her professional career. Larissa was doing lots of training & exposure to team coaching and felt something was missing. She learnt about Supervision, still was not completely sure what she was getting into and then found its value.  Traci Manalini picks up the thread about not really know what you are going into by virtue of Supervision and shares that a colleague found that Supervision made him better as a Coach. Intrigued Traci explored more and found many to be of the same opinion. Supervision supports you to become a better Coach. For Michele White Supervision brings her back to herself and who she wants to be as a Coach. Like Tracy Bertran, Michele came back to supervision after a while and trained to become a trained Supervisor mainly because she wanted to become a better reflective Coach and from there her supervision practice grew.  In addition to becoming a better reflective Coach, Supervision offers more. It provides illumination that extends to the whole of the system. Supervision helps to normalise our practice. It helps to see better and see again.  The title of this podcast is called what bothers us about Supervision and Traci Manalini shares that what bothers her is that people really do not understand what Supervision is as an offering. The word itself, Supervision, has so many preconceptions about what it is. Often people assume it has something to do with a power dynamic, where the Supervisor is “overseeing” someone’s work. This puts an extra emphasise on education to support people unlearn their perceptions about what it is. It ends up that people do not understand what Supervision is and the close their minds to the possibilities it affords.  Tracy Bertran adds that what bothers her is the confusion between Supervision and Mentoring. Some treat the two modalities as interchangeable as if the names are simply semantic preferences. In addition to this confusion what bothers Tracy is the amount of supervision being undertaken by Coaches. Only about 50% are actively engaged in the practice of regular supervision. Professional Rigour is at question.  It makes Tracy sad given the fact that there is so much to be gained by undertaking Supervision. The opportunity to look at behaviours, thoughts feelings, patterns, systems etc is provided. Supervision allow coaches to build mastery as opposed to the acquisition of new knowledge. Supervision can be transformational.  Michele White builds on the feelings of sadness by sharing that she feels sad because Individual or Team Coaches do not experience the joy of Supervision & the depth of Supervision. She queries the ethical nature of the Coaching Profession if supervision is absent. This asks the question about the responsibility of the Professional Bodies to make supervision mandatory. It would appear they are tentative, not mandating supervision or enough supervision. Larissa Thurlow adds that there is an inconsistency at play if we as coaches are asking our clients to be vulnerable and yet we are not doing the same. If we are supposed to be thinking partners with clients who are we partnering with to stretch and expand our capacities, in thinking, seeing and ways of being.  Larissa turns the word “bother” on its head to suggest that increasingly we are bothered about taking up Supervision. She recognises the difference between when she first started out and people thought she had a number of heads talking about Supervision and now where it is being talked about.  What bothers Coaches and Team Coaches about Supervision? We have to appreciate that adopting Supervision is a change. It is a fundamental difference to how Coaches, at least in North America have been practicing. Maybe there is a perception by Coaches that they are being put upon by having to accept Supervision as part of their practice, especially if it is seen as mandatory. If coaches are labouring under the assumption that they have been practicing individual coaching and team coaching for ages and could write the book they might be assuming there is nothing to be learnt by going to Supervision. Without understanding there is every chance the imposition of Supervision could feel heavy handed.  Tracy Bertran adds that Supervision can be exposing. You have to be vulnerable enough to expose things about your practice to allow Supervision to be enacted. You can feel vulnerable amongst your peers and it cannot be forgotten that Supervision allows you space to celebrate as well to share successes and interventions that worked.  We can be brought to the of our thinking, our comfort zone our feelings of safety and right to the edge of where we need to go to invite learning. Supervision can be in equal measure scary and brilliant.  Traci adds that often Team Coaches will deselect themselves from Group Supervision believing they are not yet experienced enough or have enough cases. This can also mean premature judgement by coaches that they will not add enough value.  Judgement about experience, whether you are too experienced or inexperienced can confuse the potential value of Supervision when coaches fixate on the relative exchange they will experience.  The differences in experience could be handled in the set up by Supervisors as Michele explains. We need to be careful not to engineer the set up too much. We too can make erroneous assumptions about what might work. It is both and.  It is very likely that protective defences are being exercised by Individual and Team Coaches in the space of Supervision. This begs the question how can we help as Supervisors?  Traci Manalini offers that when talking about different experiences or levels of coaches and number of cases they can or cannot offer etc might mean we have to accept the differences and not over engineer the set up. As a parallel Teams, very often do not chose their team colleagues.  Having 1:1 Conversations is one step that support the development of care and safety, the next might include the norms we create in a group to ensure reciprocity etc.  There is another parallel going on with respect to group Coaching. Tracy suggests that if you think about Team Coaching, team coaches are looking at the wisdom of the team and the same is true of Group Supervision. The learning in relation you get in group Supervision is similar to the process of surfacing the intelligence that resides on teams.  Michele notices her own resistance the mention of hours and the nominal value of 5 hours to be undertaken by Team Coaches if they chose to become certified. She questions whether 5 hours is enough. 5 hours is simply nothing for a team coach.  Tracy had a similar allergic reaction as Michele to the mention of 5 hours. For Tracy it is another “bother about Supervision” The more team Coaching Tracy engages with the more Team Coaching Supervision she needs. It serves as a restorative place a place where she can get professional reassurance.  If we think about Supervision providing Normative, Formative and Restorative resources this is especially true with Team Coaching.  As Larissa puts herself in the shoes of Coaches and Team Coaches she opines that it is often the case that Supervisors extol the virtues of Supervision. For Larissa naming 5 hours to support certification is serving a purpose and it is getting Supervision recognised.  Supervision is an investment in time and money and that could potentially bother Coaches as well.  Tracy would love the 5 hours to be an introductory taster to Supervision so that people could experience its value and wonder how they could have lived without it in the first place.  It would appear that as Supervisors, guests to the GOT podcast, that a threshold has been crossed to appreciate the value of Supervision. How can coaches and team coaches be communicated to in a way that makes the crossing so much easier? What can be said on this podcast to help people imagine what we are experiencing?  Traci suggests “to try it” to give Supervision a try and maybe not just once. Most of her practice, at least 90% have suggested that Supervision has been transformative.  Michele shares a story to help illuminate the potency of Supervision. What Michele was feeling and brought to Supervision was a belief “am I good enough” What she learnt in Supervision was that she was carrying this belief on the part of the team. It was not hers to own. In fact each of the executives in her case was feeling really challenged and each of them in differing ways were questioning whether they were up to the challenge.  A parallel process was revealed. Tracy is pretty sure that each of us and anyone who has attended group supervision about their team practice will have been asked “what belongs to you and what belongs to the system?’ Larissa further adds to the same theme by describing how two coaches who operated as Co-Coaches both came to the realisation in Group Supervision that what they thought was about them as a dynamic or as a duo and around which they were stuck was actually the stickiness of the system. Having a place to get unstuck helped them see what they had to do to help the team get unstuck.  One way to distinguish between Mentoring and Supervision is to appreciate the different language used in both. In Supervision psychological phenomenon such as Parallel process, transference and counter transference are often used terms. Supervision is the art of looking at systems and calling out complex patterns and concerns. Mentoring is more about the acquisition of skills and competencies.  Coaching and Mentoring can often be about goals and achievement whereas Supervision is often a place holder for the unknown, that which wants to emerge. It’s often about “kicking the tyres” looking at cases from different angles or looking awry. Supervision is akin to theory U which speaks to sensing and allowing for emergence.  Some knotty issues can present in Supervision. Relations and team dynamics invariably surface in Supervision, especially when you think about the many interdependencies  on Teams. Entanglements is often a theme.  Contracting is or seems to be a fairly typical topic that presents in Supervision “All roads lead to contracting. System Patterns is another. Often difficult to see in the moment and very often surfaced in Supervision.  To be able to see the very many complex dynamics and pattern on teams is the territory of Supervision. Roles come up a lot in Supervision as well. The role of the Team Coach, the seduction to assume responsibility to fix the team is often a conundrum to be seen. The proclivity of Team Coaches to be sucked into the team, to assume a role on the team or to become enmeshed is often a theme to be explored in Supervision.  Money and people willing to invest in themselves is the unspoken elephant in the room. It bothers Traci that so many coaches, team coaches and often Supervisors question their own value and so do not invest in this magical offer.  The podcast conversation comes full circle to explore the vexating temptation by coaches to invest more in the acquisition of knowledge and skills than in their personal professional development and reflective practice as coaches.  Michele wonders if there also a need to educate our Clients as well.  Michele is provocative and asks, how many of us as Coaches put at the top of our credentials the fact that we are in regular supervision?  Michele acknowledges that she might have ceased the “grabbing” of more courses in favour of Supervision but she has not mentioned that in her credentials.  Tracy hopes that coaches embrace supervision as an integral part of their practice. Larissa shares this hope and adds that she hopes for more research, to provide an evidence based rationale for Supervision. Traci was really struck by the word integration used across the podcast and her hope is that coaches integrate their knowledge and skill acquired in Supervision. Michele would love everyone to experience Supervision for the depth, joy and resourcing it provides Ways to get in touch with my four Guests    Tracy Bertran, PCC, Director of Mu Team Brilliance www.teambriliance.co.uk Michele White, Owner People & Development LTD, https://www.peopleanddevelopment.co.uk/ Traci Manalani, MA, PCC, ACTC & rebel with a cause, Principal of Practical Solutions for Sustainable change. ps4change.com/about.html Larissa Thurlow, linkedin.com/in/larissathurlow  

Introduction:  Agnieszka Wolinska-Skuza is CEO of MasConsulting. She is an experienced strategic consultant with a background in top management consulting in Corporations. Agnieszka from the Warsaw School of Economics & gained her PhD in Economics from the University of Westminster in London, Trinity College London. Agnieszka is the author of the book The ART of Changing Your Mindset. Agnieszka recently moved to Barcelona where she lives with her husband and two children.  Podcast episode Summary:  This podcast discusses the important topic of Quiet Quitting, a phenomenon that is not new but has gained increasing interest and concern post the Pandemic. Agnieszka shares how pervasive Quiet Quitting is and what Leaders need to become to address this pernicious concern and to focus decisively on people. Much has to do with Mindset, the mindset around leadership, growth supporting a robust culture and responsibility.  Points made throughout the Episode:  Agnieszka entered came into this field by observing organisations in the process of change using her background in business consulting. She observed a lot of issues with Productivity, Retention and Mental Health issues post-Pandemic including of course geo-political and social crisis & high inflation together having a profound impact on workforce strategy  Quiet Quitting is a complex topic that Agnieszka has been investigating for a long time. It is not a new phenomenon but before it did not get the attention it is receiving today.  Quiet quitting presents in different ways making it complex to observe and detect. It impacts many elements of the business including a powerful retention strategy.  Quiet Quitting can be defined as a phenomenon where you can observe that people are disengaged at work, where people are losing motivation, losing focus, uneven participation by withholding and detaching psychologically from the job. Employees can refuse more tasks & question why it is important to work hard.  Quiet Quitting can be simply described as a change in Engagement  The critical characteristics of high performing Leaders & their teams and how much mindset influences how they are managed. Mindset is critical for Leaders and in particular having a Growth Mindset.  A Growth Mindset predisposes leaders to create a healthy culture of accountability, that drives business growth. Leaders with a Growth Mindset see opportunities within their teams, they look for possibility, they don’t hide believing all efforts have been wasted and they do not blame others.  Leaders who lead with a Growth Mindset make every effort to accelerate their teams growth even in times of crisis.  So leading with a Growth Mindset is critical if you chose to create a team that is pro-active, creative and solution focused.  Exceptional Leaders know & appreciate they have to consciously grow their skills and the skills of their teams. Strong passion, energy and a vision for growth inspires others to be part of business growth and success.  To adopt a Growth Mindset you have to interrogate your beliefs, thoughts and feelings and in order to assume a growth mindset you have to believe in the possibility for growth, to look opportunistically and to be focused energetically. You won’t be minded to blame the situation but be oriented to search for solutions.  You can always find a way forward if you look for possibility and solutions. If you have a fixed mindset the likelihood is that you will give up and retreat, you will always blame the situation and people and you will likely lose people.  Given how tired and exhausted Leaders and people are after the pandemic the question becomes one of asking how to try to do more with a more positive energy.  People are valuing their time differently and so if they observe that their leaders are not behaving positively they will put distance between them and what they esteem to be toxic leadership.  Focus and being deliberate or intentional about what work means today, giving people a new sense of belonging are ways to help retain people.  After the Pandemic people have come to value their time differently. They are focused on how they spend their time and the quality of that investment.  So quiet quitting is really about changing in engagement -Engagement is a kind of choice. You can chose to engage or to withdraw.  A culture that engages people could look like improvements in the ways flexibility is offered to work, a re-focus on purpose and an acknowledgement that empathy is required.  Leaders also need to look at time, their relationship to time, engagement and their choice of Leadership  Leaders are feeling the pressure of change, of market forces of their work loads and their own mental health. Important for Leaders to mind their mental health to be able to share their energy & empathy with others.  There is an onus on Leaders to monitor their state of mind. If you lose your energy and it impacts your capacity to be empathetic people will feel this and be equally impacted.  State of mind is everything and it is an everyday occupation. If you want to have a strong mindset you need to feed your mind every day. How does Quiet Quitting show up? No one will tell you as a Leader that quiet quitting has become a phenomenon in your organisation but you can begin to observe behaviours and be curious. Isolation, participating less, valuing time differently are the hidden signs that something in the culture is amiss. This amounts to disengagement at work. Others signs include becoming less available for mandatory meetings or less volunteering for social events or even not answering emails promptly or as before.  Gallup has for years now being reporting on engagement at work. Statistics consistently slight poor levels of engagement at work at around 33%. Quiet Quitting is not knew and so how can Leaders be more bothered about their approaches?  It is important to remember the power dynamic at work and Leaders have a disproportionate amount of power available to them and this power can be used to energise the work force.  Wellbeing, retention strategies, upskilling etc are all tools which if employed can make the job of workers more fulfilling. How do Leaders help their teams see this perspective together. They have to re-think how to engage teams in this work as well.  There needs to a recognition that people are valuing their time differently and they have talent that can be deployed. This requires new thinking, new methods of approach and more proactivity on the part of Leaders and teams.  It could be advantageous to start asking and questioning the employee base for their new thinking, to hear their obstacles and concerns and to find solutions together.  It is one thing to conduct exit interviews and hear the missing factors that precipitated a leave and another to engage earlier to understand how an organisations atmosphere could be improved.  Being explicit about the business, business performance, the standard you are respecting, the values you are honouring and the ethics by which you are operating are all features that could make a difference to employees to hear.  If Leaders chose to take a critical look at their culture and to institute change they need to go back to the fundamentals and examine their values. Open and transparent dialogue is required along with perhaps a modicum of vulnerability by the leader- asking for help for example.  As a Leader if you sense there are issues with your culture with Quiet Quitting don’t hide.  Changing Culture requires that the effort be shared,  where joint responsibility for the success is owned collectively. This can happen if the right atmosphere is created and there are no negative consequences for speaking up or sharing ideas.  Quiet Quitting and a lack of psychological safety are probably pretty close cousins which suggests that there is a large gap to address to course correct. It doesn’t mean it is impossible to recover especially if the right attitude is employed and Leaders can admit that they missed information.  The Pandemic has more than likely contributed to Quiet Quitting and the opportunity to catch creeping disillusionment when people were working from home and on screens.  To start adopt a Growth Mindset. Find out what are the limiting beliefs and obstacles on teams. Lack of trust for example is a limiting belief, or the idea that if people work remotely they will not be productive. Leaders might resist, by micro managing etc. this instead of looking for alternative solutions.  Accepting the phenomenon of hybrid working, accepting that people have a changed relationship to time could result in some constructive new norms that everyone can agree.  Leaders often underestimate their success in creating conditions of belonging for example believing they are doing a better job than others judge them to be doing.  Deloitte research has found considerable discrepancies or disconnect between how a Leader perceives their effort and how an employee experiences it. Only 56% of employees believe a company’s executives  cares about their wellbeing whereas the same executives score themselves 91%  Leaders have to be aware of theses gaps in perception as cited by Deloitte and start with manageable strategies to narrow these gaps.  Agnieszka suggests starting by setting clear expectations for teams, asking questions about working hours, and reasonableness in terms of those same expectations. There is often a large gap between expectations and realism.  Role clarity, growth opportunities and expectations are subjects or topics that are often not clear & require conversation. Are we clear about the many limiting beliefs and obstacles that sit on teams? Does the team feel connected to the Organisations Purpose?  Start with a diagnostic and get a base line understanding of where people are, knowing it might be hard to digest but recognising that this is a process and a start.  Agnieszka’s book covers 12 areas in business and in life that are important. Her book is about transformational change in each of this areas. To help she teaches her readers at the start of her book how to adopt a Growth Mindset. Change for the subsequent chapters is made easier by using this particular lens.  Agnieszka also talks about our Comfort Zone and notices how important this is for Quiet Quitting too. She encourages us to move outside of our comfort zone to deal with Quiet Quitting. It might appear as hard work at first but it can also be very rewarding.  If Leaders are willing to put themselves outside of their comfort zone they should not resist Quiet Quitting but instead take actions to minimise it, investigate and ask probing questions to do with the company’s purpose, structure, conditions etc.  Leaders need to create the space for employees to be part of the solution. If they hold on to solving the surfaced issues by themselves they are in fact engaging in a fixed mindset and likely disenchant further.  People are happy to share their thoughts, ideas etc if they see it can yield value.  Agnieszka’s final request to listeners and Leaders is to focus on people    Resources shared across this conversation www.awolinskaskuza.com The ART of Changing Your Mindset by Agnieszka Wolinska-Skuza Deloitte Insight www.deoitte.com/insights   

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   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.  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.  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   IESE Business School www.iese.edu The “Teamness” of Top Teams based on Hambrick, 1994, Simesek et al., 2005 and Raes et al., 2013 “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: 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. 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 “Moods are the most contagious phenomenon known to humans. We are biologically, inescapably emotional beings – everything we do, is because of the mood we’re in. Each day we are called to deal with unanticipated interruptions and interferences - breakdowns to our habitual rhythm of life. Breakdowns can be both positive and negative - winning the lotto vs losing one's job. Our resourcefulness to adapt and deal with our breakdowns, is a function of the mood we choose to live and lead from. Moods are ‘spaces of possibility’; they can predispose us to limited or infinite possibilities for action” Bernard Desmidt.  This episode speaks to the domain of learning called Moods.    Points made over the episode Bernard starts this podcast by reminding us of his background and the Mood of life in South Africa that shaped him and then helped him appreciate the gift  & wonder of South Africa.  Bernard began to appreciate the potency of moods through lived experience.  Growing up in South Africa and living through Apartheid, Bernard recalls the moods of despair and anger as a “white child” living a privileged life by contrast to other children around him.  85% of Black South Africans lived in abject poverty, pain & abject cruelty. Bernard remembers his anger at the injustices and his feeling of powerless to do anything about his experience. It took Bernard a while to legitimise his heritage and to come to appreciate the other side of anger & despair to appreciate the wonder of South Africa.  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- The mood is deep acceptance of who you are.  Ubuntu- Means we are because you are & because you are definitely I am. This serves to affirm an others humanity, by recognising their uniqueness and their differences. This expression acknowledges our interconnectedness-The Mood of Gratitude embodies this expression.  Hambi Gashi – means “Go well, gently in peace and travel safely- The Mood is of deep care and Compassion.  We exist as Human Beings in 3 domains. Language, Moods & Emotions and The Body. At its essence this trinity distinguishes human beings from any other living form.  Moods are fundamental to our existence yet we are mood illiterate.  Daniel Goldman brought us information about Emotional Intelligence and EI at its core is about mood awareness.  We are never not in mood & all moods serve us until they don’t. Example Frustration. What is frustration taking care of? What is it guiding us towards. Moods are signposts. The mood of frustration is signposting that I am not feeling heard or understood.  The mood of anger is a signpost to feeling taken advantage of. Use the energy housed in frustration or anger to access what is missing.  Emotions are energies that move us.  The mood of anxiety is letting us know that we might come to harm. The mood of curiosity is signposting us to our openness to learn.  Alan Sieler, Fernando Flores, Miriam Greenspan and for me Julio Olalla were all teachers of the distinctions of Moods.  There are six moods of life & Moods manifest in language. The language act of assessments illicit moods that predispose us to action. In resentment I am preoccupied with seeking revenge.  There are two linguistic acts that are fundamental to the understanding of the manifestation of moods. Assessments and Declarations. Generally when we are in assessment there are 3 categories of assessment that we make. Facticity, Possibility and Uncertainty. There are two declarations we generally make. Oppose and Accept. If we plot assessments on the horizontal axis and declarations on the vertical axis we can plot these 6 universal moods. Resentment, Acceptance, Resignation, Ambition, Anxiousness and Wonder.  Bernard goes through each of these moods sharing their predispositions for action  In the first category of assessment is for  facticity; we can either oppose the facticity and live in Resentment or accept the facticity and embrace acceptance.  The mood of acceptance is the gateway to living a fulfilled life. It is the highest order of mood. Grief for example is refusing the facticity of death. When we move into acceptance we meet the mood of sadness for our loss.  The second category of assessment is for possibility. Opposing the possibility for change leads to resignation. This is a toxic organisational mood. We are predisposed to look to whom to blame and or find reasons why things cannot happen. You cannot flourish in resignation you can only flounder. The acceptance of what is possible elicits the mood of ambition.  Bernard shares the example of Pfizer and Astra Zeneca looking for a vaccine in Covid. They had to live a mood of acceptance first that the protocols they usually insisted were not available and then live a mood of ambition that a breakthrough could be found.  The third category of assessment is uncertainty, in otherwards I cannot control or predict, When I do not accept the normality of uncertainty I experience the mood of anxiety. In anxiety we are minded to believe we will come to harm and we will not be able to manager or control this inevitability. The mood of anxiety is bubbling away when it comes to accepting a new cadence for work for example and it requires of us to accept the uncertainty and access the wonder of what could be.  When we give permission to these moods to control us they make us unresourceful. Resentment, Resignation and Anxiety are called “selfish moods” We are preoccupied with seeking revenge, victimhood and or protection.  The Moods of `acceptance, ambition and wonder are called relational moods.  To flourish a team needs to access the gateways of acceptance, ambition and curiosity.  I shared an example of a conversation I had the evening before this podcast where I became very frustrated with a hotel chain who with every person I spoke gave confusing and different information. I did not achieve a satisfactory outcome Bernard offered me the perspective that the mood of frustration was serving me. It was signposting me to the lack of clarity regarding the hotels policy with respect to Vouchers. He suggested the action necessary was an explicit request.  Brene Brown discovered through her research that the male species or at least 80% of men could only name 3 moods-Happy, Sad, Angry. We are collectively mood illiterate.  Working with Teams Bernard will share the first perspective & distinction that as humans we live in 3 domains, Language, Moods & Emotions and the Body.  The second perspective Bernard will share with a team is that teams rise and fall by the quality of their relationships. There are 8 elements of effective working relationships, Respect, Trust, Concerns, Moods, Appreciation, Co-ordination, Conversation and Alignment. Mood is an important constituent part.  From here a team can move into simple observation and identification answering the question “what mood am I in?” Followed by the question for what sake am I in this mood? What is this mood signposting and what is it taking care of? It is important to legitimise the potency of moods and become versed in the variety available to us.  Bernard shares a story with us about a team with whom he has been working for some time where the team was stuck around an issue. The team were invited to look at the issue from the lens of mood. They identified irritation, frustration and anger when this issue was surfaced. Appreciating that the team is responsible for the success of their collective efforts Bernard invited the team through a series of enquiry to be curious about the mood they needed to live to explore this issue productively.  Bernard suggests we stay vigilant in mood, to identify what these moods are signposting. Too often teams want to exorcise moods from the conversation.  Unfortunately for us as humans we cannot not live in mood. What is possible is to design the mood we can commit to live.  When Bernard hears someone declare “I am angry” he asks who is the “I” We are not our moods we only have them. When we can recognise that “I am in a mood of anger” we create the space between ourselves and our mood, to create a subject object distinction.  When we say “I am angry” we are allowing the mood to control us. What we can do instead when we say “I am in a mood of anger” we can manage the energy of that mood and the information it is sharing. Often we over identify with our moods and become fearful of them, leaving no room to manage them.  Bernard shares a story of a client and the many moods that same client moved through in the course of the conversation and how Bernard became acutely aware of his own mood and how he was being “infected” until he wasn’t and allowed himself to accept the choices his client was making in the moment.  Moods are contagious and Bernard had to be mindful not to take on his clients mood but instead “be with him” while he moved from anger to acceptance and through to possibility.  Important to remember when faced with a team communicating multiple moods to not rush to move them. Bernard invites teams to wonder about what is happening for them in body. Moods manifest in body. You can see a mood. You cannot fake a mood. As a coach you can offer a perspective and share what you see. Bernard shares his approach with a team and how he enters the conversation of mood.  We have to trust and accept that human beings live in moods. What is unknown to us and often confusing to us is the understanding of moods. Bernard facilitates the six moods of life with a team in an embodied practice.  Some tips or nuggets to learn how to manoeuvre our moods.  Notice & Name It- Monitor your mood and ask what mood am I in? Do not judge yourself  Allow & Acknowledge it  Investigate & enquire. For what sake am I in this mood? What is this mood taking care of? Choose and Cultivate- So what mood could better serve me? Declare and Develop that chosen mood. So what new possibility could this mood open me up to? Keep a mood diary. Ask what was the assessment you were making? Then notice what that mood predisposed you to do or not to do.  Use the acronym W.A.I.T – why am I talking? We talk for only two reasons to understand and to be understood.  Remember we are not our moods we have them. I am in a mood of anger or I am in a mood of happiness gives us space and the opportunity for choice.  Recognising that we are not our moods opens the possibility for forgiveness.    Resources shared    www.bernarddesmidt.com Team Better Together by Bernard Desmidt A Guide to Manage Your Moods Inside Out Leadership: How to Master the 4 Principles ofI Effective Leadership and become the Leader others chose to follow

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   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

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: 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; 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. Discipline Two- A Teams Purpose. Teams exist for a reason, they serve a cause and have a clear, compelling and challenging “WHY” 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. 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 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: 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

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