Have you ever stopped to think about the world’s work culture–really thought about it? We’re so used to the way things are, that it’s easy to forget that our workhorse mentality isn’t how it always used to be. That is, not until the Industrial Revolution. It wasn’t until this transitional era to new manufacturing processes that work culture evolved to meaning more hours equated to more work, and therefore more money; i.e. time is money. 

Stanley Gen. McChrystal tells the eye-opening origin story of this mental construct in his phenomenal book, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement For a Complex World, which he wrote to help leaders make their teams more adaptable, unified, and successful in the wake of change. In the book, McChrystal tells the story of Fredrick Taylor, an integral player during the industrial revolution for his contributions to improve industrial efficiency. It was Taylor who began the seeming correlation between time and money creating success. He used to go into factories and use stopwatches to figure out the fastest way to do something “reductionist”. The pressure we feel to work more hours to achieve success is ingrained in us, and it’s running us down. Our society operates on this mental construct. We’re still dealing with the aftershock of the Industrial Revolution, but it’s not the best way to get things done. We aren’t our best when we’re overworked or doing the same thing day in and day out. 

However, there is a crack in the matrix. We are ushering in a new era. An era where the quality of work due to great work-life balance and sound mental health is far more important. An era where leadership looks more like coaching and less than dictatorship. Leaders are beginning to understand the importance of possessing excellent facilitation skills to bring out the best in their employees. 

Companies are transitioning their business, from tip to tail, to align with the evolving digital age; instead of command and control, leadership is focused on helping employees adapt to a changing environment. Leaders are learning to cultivate new energy, innovation, and unity amongst their teams. In other words, facilitation is a SUPER critical skill to learn if you want your business to operate at top performance. 

This is a call to bring out the inner facilitator in everyone: we need people that help us humans be human because the computers (that are slowly taking over) are going to do everything else. 

I started to think about all of the leaders across industries outside of facilitation and what makes them great. These leaders, from the military to sports to mental health, possess traits of great facilitators. They realize we are operating in a new paradigm and we need to step into that with new perspectives and new approaches. These leaders are curious and experiment towards better outcomes. They include. They motivate. The ignite.

Let’s look at 49’s coach Bill Walsch as an example. Bill was amazing at helping folks realize they CAN do it.

“The four most powerful words are: I believe in you.” – Bill Walsch

He taught his teams that if you go into the game assuming you will lose or assuming you have already lost, then you won’t play a good game. This is especially noteworthy because this approach helped Walsch turn the worst team in the league into the best. He always coached from the perspective that the team can always turn things around. “The ability to help the people around me self-actualize their goals,” he said, “underlines the single aspect of my abilities and the label that I value most — teacher.” He also focused heavily on improvement. “I directed our focus less to the prize of victory than to the process of improving — obsessing, perhaps, about the quality of our execution and the content of our thinking; that is, our actions and attitude. I knew if I did that, winning would take care of itself.”

Walsch’s effective leadership approach is that of a facilitator, guiding his team to cultivate each individual’s best performance so that they thrive when they come together as a whole. He understands the power of a coach mentality–one that encourage’s each player’s development while simultaneously facilitating problem-solving admist change. This is what expert coaching, no matter the industry, looks like:

“For members of your team, you determine what their inner voice says. The leader, at least a good one, teaches the team how to talk to themselves. An effective leader has a profound influence on what that inner voice will say.”

Yes, Walsch is a coach by title. But he also represents the next set of bosses. Rather than traditional bosses, they are going to be coaches. Group coaching is #3 on Forbe’s list of top 5 leadership development trends for 2020. “In this new decade, everyone needs to be a leader who actively engages their people. Awareness of this will see leadership development pushed down through the organization, and coaching will become a standard part of every manager’s experience.”

This shift is critical. Knowledge work is like playing a game. While there are rules and procedures, ultimately we are “playing” against humans that are cunning and attempting different things. We need leaders to help us play the game.

Now consider a factory, where things are predictable. They work the same way every single day. Leaders and managers can simply run a checklist and prescribe a “best way of doing things”. That’s not the case when we are a complex adaptive system. This is where we find ourselves these days. Knowledge work that we engage in and even the shifting landscape requires us to learn and adapt, meaning we can’t simply just do what we did yesterday. This requires a leadership style that nurtures. Like a gardener. 

While leaders who coach may impart wisdom, much of what they do is about removing barriers, whether physical or mental. Let’s be front runners in this transition and boost up folks to shine so that we may all do our best. Ready to get started? At Voltage Control, we help enterprises scale change. We facilitate and coach large diverse groups toward shared understanding and transform cultures to sustain innovation. If you have a project that is having trouble getting traction or will require input from lots of people, let us coach you through the process. Contact us today. 

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I am working with a team of executives who have gotten themselves into a bad spot. Each has become entrenched in the notion that their teammates aren’t trustworthy.

Their feelings about each other have already spread to the layers below and the CEO has now heard multiple examples of uncooperative behavior across teams.

I’ve been brought in to help them get to the other side of the conflict before it does any more damage.

My first meeting was only a couple of hours — not much time to get to the heart of dysfunction they said had existed for at least three or four years. But I had exactly the right exercise. It worked so well that I wanted to share it with you.

Here’s how to use this exercise to maximum effect:

Team Members: If you are a member of a dysfunctional team, read ONLY to the end of step 2 and then complete the exercise to that point before reading any further.

Team Leaders: As with team members, read ONLY to the end of step 2. Complete the exercise yourself and then continue reading. Only after you’ve done the exercise yourself should you try it with your team.

Coaches and OD Consultants: There will be so many opportunities for you to use this exercise with your clients…have at it!

The Exercise

This is a great exercise because it requires no special equipment, just a pen and paper. (Although, as I learned at a session in Silicon Valley recently, that a pen and paper might be special equipment in your organization. If so, bring supplies!). It’s also great because it takes only about ten minutes. Here are the instructions.

1. “On your sheet of paper, please describe the events that have led to the current problem. What has gone wrong to get you into the predicament you’re in today?”

Give them five minutes to capture their ideas. Flex on the time if at five minutes, everyone is still feverishly writing.

2. “Write down what it would take to fix the problem. What would have to change for things to get noticeably better?”

Again, don’t be too rigid in the timing. If they’re still pouring their hearts out, let them go. When they’re finished writing, you can reveal the next step.

[Spoiler Alert: don’t read on until you’ve completed steps 1 and 2!]

3. “Now, review what you wrote. Look for one thing in particular: In your first paragraph, circle anytime you used the word ‘you,’ or ‘they,’ or specifically called out someone’s name other than your own. Does your name show up? If so, in what way? Are you explaining to yourself how your actions got you into the present situation or are you describing what other people did to you? On balance would you say this is a story about how they created the problem or about how you did?”

I don’t have people read their statements out loud, mostly because they are so rife with blame that they could send the whole delicate situation off a cliff for good. The message hits home without them having to share.

4. “What about your second paragraphs; who did you talk about there? Are you focused on what you have to do differently to get a different outcome or does the second paragraph focus on how other people’s behavior needs to change to rectify the situation?”

By this point, folks are usually feeling a little warm under the collar. The majority will have filled both paragraphs with all the things their colleagues did to create the problem and all the ways everyone else needs to change before anything will improve.

From those two pieces of information, you, and more importantly, they, can identify what role they are playing in the story they are telling themselves about the dysfunction. That matters — a lot! Humans are storytellers and if the team members in front of you each have themselves as the victim of the story, the plot line will be a tragedy.

It seems incumbent on me to now cram the complexity of these perspectives into the mandatory 2×2 grid. Oh well, why not!?!

(It’s up to you whether or not you share this assessment with the team. I don’t. I simply use it to describe the different options we have for how we approach team dysfunction.)

The Victims

By far, the most common result of this exercise will be that you find yourself in front of a room full of people who are the victims in their own stories. I write frequently about victims because I find them the most tragic people on dysfunctional teams. Once someone has convinced themselves that the whole ugly mess is being done to them, rather than by them, it can be incredibly difficult to get them back contributing. If you stay in a victim role for too long, you become more of a burden to the team than any other character. It is the people who play victim who often need to leave a team to restore it to health.

The Villains

There’s not much chance that you’re going to find someone who is willing to admit that they created the problem, but that they are helpless to fix it. If you do, they are likely struggling with self-esteem issues and will need you to follow-up on the team session with a one-on-one conversation in a safer, more private space. Don’t worry, in all the times I’ve done this exercise, I’ve never seen anyone willing to admit that they contributed to the problem but have no way of contributing to a solution. (Remember, we’re talking about behavioral issues here. There are plenty of times people really have created technical messes that they can’t solve.)

The Scapegoats

You might get a few self-proclaimed heroes in the room who see no way in which they contributed to the problem but are more than happy to swoop in to try to fix it. Although that seems ok at first, it’s a recipe for growing resentment, so even the scapegoats will need to see some way in which they contributed to the situation.

The Leads

I hope for you that you find someone in the room that took the leading role in their own story of the dysfunction. These are rare and valuable people who, when prompted, can see and admit that they played a role in getting into the unhealthy situation and that they need to play a role in getting out of it. In my session last week, I had one, and his willingness to start most of his sentences with “I” really changed the tenor of the room for the better.

Ok, so by now you see that we’re trying to get people up to that top right box (aah, the blessed promised land of the top right box). That’s where the exercise goes next.

You have choices here. If you have another 10 minutes, you can have them write their new paragraphs right then and there. If not, you can assign them as homework or convene another meeting where you’ll move to part 2. Here are the instructions for the second section.

5. “Let’s start again. This time rewrite the story of what got you here with the majority of the sentences containing “I” or at the very least, “we.” Reflect on how your behavior contributed to the current situation, even if it was only by witnessing dysfunction and not intervening.”

Some might still struggle with this. If they do, take a look at their first version and see where they might have played a part that they aren’t aware of. Ask questions to draw out the storyline. “What did you do when she said this,” is a favorite of mine because so often, the person contributed to the problem by building up hostility and resentment without saying anything. The most common answer I get to, “What did you do when she said this,” is “nothing.” If they say “nothing,” prompt with, “How did saying nothing contribute to the situation you’re in now?”

Finally, you can move toward action.

6. “The last and most important part of the exercise. Rewrite your second paragraph focused on what you can do to improve the dynamics of the team and to resolve the present issues.”

To their credit, most people get this one. Many of the actions are related to their mindset, such as, “I can give Lou the benefit of the doubt.” Interestingly, sometimes that’s all it takes. So much of the conflict has been manufactured within people’s heads that simply shifting the narrative ends the conflict.

In other cases, you’ll need to prompt them to take action. With the team last week, there were examples of how the animosity among the leaders was affecting how their teams interacted, so they each committed to speaking with their teams to reset on the expectations about collaboration.

Ok, that was a bit of a long one, but this is such as simple exercise with such profound results. I am keen to hear what insights you get from using it. Share your responses in the comments.

My new book, The Good Fight is full of management exercises like this one that will help you get out of an unhealthy conflict cycle and start using productive conflict to make your team better. You can download a couple of sample chapters here. If you have read it, the most helpful thing you can do is to post a review. Would you do a girl a favor and write one? Thanks so much.

Further Reading

How to recover when you feel wronged

Everybody Hurts

From HBR: On a terrible team? Maybe you’re making it worse

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