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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Respect: Envy, Anger, Grudges

by Ron Potter

We’re continuing our series on building great teams.  Great teams happen when we have

We’re still working our way through the Respect series with the final set of circumstances of Envy, Anger, and Grudges.  No, great teams don’t possess these attributes, great teams avoid these attributes. Envy, Anger, and Grudges are team weaknesses that can be lethal to your team’s well-being.

Envy

Envy is the first of the team weaknesses we’ll discuss. Great teams snuff out envy whenever it rears its ugly head.  Here are some attributes of Envy:

  • Discontented or resentful by someone else’s possessions, qualities, luck, or accomplishments, style or attribute.
  • An emotion which occurs when a person lacks another’s superior quality or achievement.
  • Desires to deprive another of what they have.
  • Delights in degrading those who are more deserving.

Envy occurs when someone feels inferior to others and will do what they can to undermine or chop down those who possess more or achieve more than themselves.

At its roots, this is a comparison issue.  Always comparing yourself to others is a losing battle.  Jordan Peterson in his book 12 Rules of Life: An antidote to chaos states in rule number 4 “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.”  Comparing yourself to who you were yesterday puts you on the path of growth.

I once had a pastor who was fond of talking about the little boy pushing his wagon up a hill.  As soon as he sat down in the wagon to rest, he found himself at the bottom of the hill.  Never stop growing!  Never stop learning!  As soon as you give up on your own growth and development, envy creeps in.   You begin to be resentful of what others have or what others have become.

Envy is destructive.  Its first target is yourself.  Its second target is those around you.  As Jordan Peterson says, an antidote to chaos is to continue growing.

Anger

As the second of the team weaknesses, Anger that is directed at circumstances or failures can be healthy if it is channeled properly.  Eruptions of anger are seldom positive.  Expressing anger and disappointment in a safe environment can help everyone deal with the loss and adversity.

I’ve often run exercises with teams that have experienced great loss and disappointment.  Working in small groups I allow each person to express their emotions by writing them on flip charts.  No holds barred.  Get it all out.  Once the teams have exhausted the extent of their anger, we take the flip charts that were created, post them on the wall, share them with each other and then hand every chart out to members of the team.  They are then instructed to tear the flip charts into as many pieces as possible, throw the pieces into the middle of the floor (expressing as much anger as they can while doing so) and then we all jump on the pile of pieces and stomp on them as viciously as possible.  By the time the stomping has slowed to a stop I always witness a moment of somber quiet.  But then someone breaks out in a big grin.  Another joins them.  It soon turns to laughter and people start expressing how cathartic the exercise was.  In one form or another people shout out “Wow, I haven’t felt this good in a long time!”  The anger dissipates.  Calm heads return.  And a new determination emerges in the room to move on, work hard, figure out how to overcome and get better.

All too often the anger remains covert.  People assume they must hold their head up high, don’t complain and keep going.  When things remain covert it’s almost impossible to deal with them.  Once we brought out the anger in an overt but healthy way, new energy emerges from the team and it makes it possible to move forward.

Grudges

The third and most subtle of the team weaknesses, Grudges can be caused be either envy or anger but they just keep resurfacing over time.  It’s probably because it remains overt until that moment when it erupts once again.

One of my teams referred to the practices as “replaying old tapes.”  Something would happen on the team that didn’t seem to make sense to me and finally, someone else would explain, “Oh, they’re just replaying old tapes from what happened a few years ago.”  A few years ago?  Are you kidding me?  People are still holding and expressing grudges after a few years and no one has dealt with it yet?  Amazing.

Leaders and teams must call out grudges and put a stop to them.  Maybe it will take a team exercise like the anger one described above.  Maybe it will take some one-on-one discussions with the leader or a coach.  Maybe a leader needs to decide to help a team member move on if they can’t get past old issues.  Grudges can be like deep infections.  They continue to resurface.  Sometimes a mild antibiotic will heal an infection.  I dealt with one of those antibiotic-resistant infections a few years ago.  It took a direct injection of the most powerful antibiotic every three hours for six weeks.

Infections can be tough to deal with.  Grudges can be just as tough because they pop to the surface periodically.  You must get to the root of them and deal with them to have healthy teams.

In this post, we’ve talked about the team weaknesses you should avoid to build great teams.  In the previous post, we talked about the positive things that need to be present to develop great Respect within teams.  We’ll wrap up Respect with our next post to pull it all together with focus.

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Respect: Patience, Kindness

by Ron Potter

In our last post, we looked at the first three elements of great respect: Humility, Development, and Compassion.

Respect is the second component of great teamwork.

This week we’ll unpack further elements of Respect: Patience and Kindness.

In our final post on Patience, we’ll explore Anger and Grudges.

Patience

In today’s high paced world of do, do, do and go, go, go, we seldom think of patience as being an element of great teams.  The early Greek word that Aristotle would have used always related to people, not projects.

One of our modern-day dictionary definitions says:

Stay calm and not get annoyed.  Especially when something takes a long time, or when someone is not doing what you want them to do.

Another definition talks about not responding with annoyance or anger when faced with pain or suffering.  Patience doesn’t happen without suffering.

How often do you get annoyed by the pain and suffering of delay or what we see as incompetence?  If you’re like me, the answer is “way too often.”  However, it’s important to make sure that we don’t distribute the frustration and annoyance evenly.

When we’re part of a team it means we have responsibility and accountability to the team and team members.  Situations can be annoying.  Systems can be annoying.  People can be annoying.  But, if our goal is to grow the team, experience our own growth within the team,  and accomplish some great things together than we must keep our annoyance in check when it comes to people.

Annoyance can and will be triggered for many different reasons.  I could never list all the reasons but many that come to mind for me include:

  • Someone moving too fast or too slow to satisfy me.
  • Not doing the work the way I think it should be done.
  • Focusing on the long-term when we have pressing issues in the short term.  And vica versa.
  • Not honoring the values of the team in their work

Without going into great detail let’s look at some quick answers or reasons why you shouldn’t think of them as annoying

  • Everyone moves at a different speed.  The key is to know what deadlines are real and sticking to them.  Hold team members accountable when deadlines are missed.
  • We each work in different ways.  The key is the outcome.  Did you or the teammate get the results that were expected and needed?  If not, make sure clarification is achieved with everyone.  I’ve found that teams at high levels don’t spend enough time on clarification because they assume they’ve been there before, they assume they understand what is needed, they assume their pace and approach will be sufficient.  Notice the word assume used in every case.  I still remember a high school teacher explaining that “assume” makes an “ass” of “u” and “me.”  Don’t be an ass.  Don’t assume.
  • Each of our brains works in different ways.  On the Myers-Briggs assessment, there is a function referred to as the perceiving function.  Those who land on the “intuitive” side of perception think in conceptual terms.  They focus on the future and must have an image of what that future should be in order to deal with the daily details.  Those who fall on the sensing side of that function, work very much in the “here and now” so that they can understand how to get to a future state.  Both ways of perceiving are valid.  But each can also annoy the other.  Appreciate, honor and use the differences to help the team achieve at the highest level.

Kindness

I’m going to go back to Aristotle’s original word for this category which is Love.  I’ve converted his original word to Respect because I believe business teams are less confused by the word Respect.  As I’ve mentioned earlier, the Greeks had several words that English translates into the word love.  The word that Aristotle used was agape.  I’m going to use a definition that I believe was put forth by Chip Ingram.

“Giving someone what they

    • need the most
    • deserve the least
    • at great personal expense.”

Need the most

This implies that you’ve gotten to know a person well enough to know what they may need at the moment.  Do you know your teammates as human beings or simply as human doings (know them for what they do, not who they are)?

Deserve the least

I haven’t met many business leaders or team members that have bad intentions.  However, I’ve observed a lot of bad action.  People often do things that are counter to their intentions.  A person may have just done something that makes us think they don’t deserve help, assistance, care, understanding, etc.

At great personal expense

Kindness requires that we sacrifice some of our own needs to provide what another person needs the most at the moment.  It may require us to provide the time that we don’t seem to have at the moment.  It may require us to have the courage to step into a situation that would be must easier to simply avoid.  It may require us to delay crucial decisions to build team unity.  There is a cost.

I’m going to close this section with a line from one of my favorite books titled Anyway – The Paradoxical Commandments by Kent Keith.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.  Help people anyway.

Patience and Kindness are at the heart of building great teams!

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Respect: Humility, Development, Compassion

by Ron Potter

Teams are at the heart of great performance, great happiness, and the best memories.  These blogs are built on the 4 Levels of Happiness by Aristotle.  In his framework, Aristotle says that the highest level of happiness will be achieved at Level 4.  In describing Level 4 Happiness, Aristotle Used five words:

  • Truth
  • Love
  • Purpose
  • Beauty
  • Unity

Love (Respect)

The Greeks had several words that are all translated into the English word “love.”  The Greek word for Love that Aristotle used had nothing to do with emotions or the feeling of love that we have for another person.  This word referred to treating the other person with respect.  It’s about what we do, not how we feel.

As human beings, we seem to have an innate sense that someone respects us or not.  Great teams require great respect (love) for each other.

In unpacking the concept of Respect (or love), we will look at the following concepts over the next couple of posts:

  • Three elements of building Trust: Humility, Development, Compassion
  • Patience
  • Kindness
  • Envy
  • Anger
  • Grudges

In our last post, we looked at Psychological Safety (both Truth and Respect being at their highest level).  Research has indicated that Psychological Safety is one of the best indicators of high team performance.

This post will start a series digging deeper into the concept of Respect.  How do we define it?  How do we use it?

Humility, Development, and Compassion

These are three of the eight concepts that we learn from my book, Trust Me are present with great leadership.  Let’s look at each one and see how they relate to Respect.

Humility

When someone does not demonstrate humility, it’s hard to believe they have respect for others.  Lack of humility becomes self-focused.  When someone is self-focused, they are not “other” focused.  Humility means that I have an interest in your opinion.  Steven Covey listed one of his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People as “Seek to understand first before being understood.”  When someone wants to know what I think before sharing with me what they think, I feel respected.  I feel like my opinion counts.  I’m more interested in their opinion because they were interested in my opinion first.  I feel respected.

Development

When a leader believes it’s worth their time to grow and develop me, I feel respected.  Leaders dedicated to development will provide straight and meaningful feedback.

I once worked with a client who told me their boss was a wonderful person, always positive and encouraging but not very useful.  They went on to explain that all of their performance reviews were great with nothing but good feedback.  However, it gave them nothing to work with.  There were no suggestions for growth or betterment.  Therefore, it just wasn’t very useful.

Positive Development means straightforward feedback about what’s working and what is not working with suggestions for development and follow-up on efforts.  Taking the time to develop people demonstrates respect.

Compassion

I would often get negative comments about this topic when we first published Trust Me.  Many managers would express the sentiment that they were not running a charitable organization; they were running a business and business was rough and tumble, not soft and cushy!

I started dealing with this question by asking these rough and tumble leaders about their doctors.  Did they like doctors that looked at the lab results only and treated them as numbers on a graph or did they like doctors that related to them as human beings first and then talked to them about how the clinical numbers might be affecting their quality of life.  They all like doctors who were professionally competent but treated them as human beings first and foremost.  The same is true with your teammates.

You want a teammate who tells it to you straight but knows you as a human being first.  We are not motivated or encouraged by people who treat us as a human ‘doing’ (relating to what we do rather than who we are) rather than a human being.  If we’re treated as human beings (which means we’re respected) first, we are much more likely to respond to our fullest.

Patience, Kindness, Envy, Anger, and Grudges.

These are concepts that we’ll look at in our next post about Respect.

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Respect: Psychological Safety

by Ron Potter

Resect

We continue our series on teams and the elements that make up great ones. Teams are at the heart of great performance, greatest happiness, and the best memories. These blog posts are built on the 4 Levels of Happiness by Aristotle. In his framework, Aristotle says that the highest level of happiness will be achieved at Level 4. In describing Level 4 Happiness, Aristotle used five words:

  • Truth
  • Love
  • Purpose
  • Beauty
  • Unity

In this series of posts, I’ve concentrated on the four words of Truth, Love, Beauty, and Unity. Purpose is the word right in the middle of all five. I don’t spend a lot of time concentrating on Purpose because it is so essential and obvious. Without a purpose, there is no team.

I also try to use words that more directly apply to the business environment. Words like love and beauty are words you don’t often hear in corporate meetings. Using words that essentially mean the same thing as the original words and yet seem appropriate in the corporate world, I’ve modified the last three words to make them immediately identifiable and to help you remember them. The four words I’ve used are:

  • Truth
  • Respect
  • Elegance
  • Commitment

The Greeks had several words that all get translated into the English word Love. The Greek word for Love that Aristotle used had nothing to do with emotions or the feeling of love that we have for another person. This word referred to treating the other person with respect. As human beings, we seem to have an innate sense that someone respects us or not. Great teams require great respect (love) for each other.

In unpacking the concept of Respect (or Love), we will look at:

  • At least three elements of building Trust: Humility, Development, Compassion
  • Patience
  • Kindness
  • Lack of Envy
  • Anger directed at issues or situations, not people
  • No grudges

Psychological Safety

If we look at these first two (Truth – Respect) together, a very powerful concept of psychological safety begins to emerge. Psychological Safety is present every time a team achieves greatness and can even become a predictor of greatness.

Google thought it would look at many of their teams around the company and see if they could figure out what made a high performing team. I believe they looked at 340 teams and in the end, could not find any pattern that predicted high achievement. Or more accurately, they found too many patterns to reach any conclusion until they found the concept of psychological safety.

Amy Edmondson at Harvard is one of the more visible proponents of psychological safety. Once Google built in a psychological safety measurement into their team assessment, there was a correlation between high performing teams and psychological safety.

Psychological Safety on Teams

Having psychological safety on a team means that the truth is spoken, not holding back anything and at the same time, there is so much respect for each person, people feel safe in stating or hearing the truth. These are the first two elements of the highest level of happiness. Teams that can speak the truth with complete respect not only perform at a high level, but they are also a joy to be a part of.

I think that one reason holding teams back in accomplishing complete psychological safety is that people assume truth and respect are at the opposite ends of the same spectrum. I can either speak the total truth, even if it means that I hold people accountable for their failures or shortcoming (one end of the spectrum) or I can show total respect to someone, therefore I must hold back the complete truth (opposite end of the spectrum). But this is a false understanding. We need to think of these two elements as two different dimensions on a chart.

For instance:

  • The vertical dimension may be labeled “Truth” with complete truth at the top and lack of truth at the bottom.
  • The horizontal dimension may be labeled “Respect” with total respect to the right (at the end) and lack of respect to the left.

This leaves us with a two x two grid (which consultants love).

  • Lower Left – Low Truth and Low Respect = Insensitive and Manipulative
  • Upper Left – High Truth but Low Respect = Aggressive and Obnoxious
  • Lower Right – Low Truth but High Respect = Empathy but no accountability
  • Upper Right – High Truth and High Respect = Psychological Safety

Great teams express great truth and have total respect for team members.

Elements of Respect

We’ve pointed out the value of both Truth and Respect here in this blog. In the next few blogs, we’ll explore the elements of great respect including:

  • Humility, Development, and Compassion
  • Patience
  • Kindness
  • The benefit of the Doubt
  • No Envy, Anger or Grudges

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Respect

by Ron Potter

We started this blog series about teams in early January of this year. Teams are at the heart of great performance, greatest happiness, and the best memories. These blog posts are built on the 4 Levels of Happiness by Aristotle. In his framework, Aristotle says that the highest level of happiness will be achieved at Level 4. In describing Level 4 Happiness, Aristotle used five words:

  • Truth
  • Love
  • Purpose
  • Beauty
  • Unity

In this series of posts, I’ve concentrated on the four words of Truth, Love, Beauty, and Unity. Purpose is the word right in the middle of all five. I don’t spend a lot of time concentrating on Purpose because it is so essential and obvious. Without a purpose, there is no team.

I also try to use words that more directly apply to the business environment. Words like love and beauty are words you don’t often hear in corporate meetings. Using words that essentially mean the same thing as the original words and yet seem appropriate in the corporate world, I’ve modified the last three words to make them immediately identifiable and to help you remember them. The four words I’ve used are:

  • Truth
  • Respect
  • Elegance
  • Commitment

The Greeks had several words that all get translated into the English word Love. The Greek word for Love that Aristotle used had nothing to do with emotions or the feeling of love that we have for another person. This word referred to treating the other person with respect. As human beings, we seem to have an innate sense that someone respects us or not. Great teams require great respect (love) for each other.

In unpacking the concept of Respect (or Love), we will look at:

  • At least three elements of building Trust: Humility, Development, Compassion
  • Patience
  • Kindness
  • Lack of Envy
  • Anger directed at issues or situations, not people
  • No grudges

Psychological Safety

If we look at these first two (Truth – Respect) together, a very powerful concept of psychological safety begins to emerge. Psychological Safety is present every time a team achieves greatness and can even become a predictor of greatness.

Google thought it would look at many of their teams around the company and see if they could figure out what made a high performing team. I believe they looked at 340 teams and in the end, could not find any pattern that predicted high achievement. Or more accurately, they found too many patterns to reach any conclusion until they found the concept of psychological safety. Amy Edmondson at Harvard is one of the more visible proponents of psychological safety. Once Google built in a psychological safety measurement into their team assessment, there was a correlation between high performing teams and psychological safety.

Psychological Safety

Having psychological safety on a team means that the truth is spoken, not holding back anything and at the same time, there is so much respect for each person, people feel safe in stating or hearing the truth. These are the first two elements of the highest level of happiness. Teams that can speak the truth with complete respect not only perform at a high level, but they are also a joy to be a part of.

I think that one reason holding teams back in accomplishing complete psychological safety is that people assume truth and respect are at the opposite ends of the same spectrum. I can either speak the total truth, even if it means that I hold people accountable for their failures or shortcoming (one end of the spectrum) or I can show total respect to someone. Therefore I must hold back the complete truth (opposite end of the spectrum). But this is a false understanding. We need to think of these two elements as two different dimensions on a chart.

For instance:

  • The vertical dimension may be labeled “Truth” with complete truth at the top and lack of truth at the bottom.
  • The horizontal dimension may be labeled “Respect” with total respect to the right (at the end) and lack of respect to the left.

This leaves us with a two x two grid (which consultants love).

  • Lower Left – Low Truth and Low Respect = Insensitive and Manipulative
  • Upper Left – High Truth but Low Respect = Aggressive and Obnoxious
  • Lower Right – Low Truth but High Respect = Empathy but no accountability
  • Upper Right – High Truth and High Respect = Psychological Safety

Great teams express great truth and have total respect for team members.

Elements of Respect

We’ve pointed out the value of both Truth and Respect here in this blog. In the next few blogs, we’ll explore the elements of great respect including:

  • Humility, Development, and Compassion
  • Patience
  • Kindness
  • The benefit of the Doubt
  • No Envy, Anger or Grudges

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Truth: Summary

by Ron Potter

Over the last several blog posts we’ve been on a TREC to discover the elements of highly effective and happy teams. The reason I use the word “happy” here is because this is the highest level of Aristotle’s four levels of Happiness. Being a part of a highly effective team will provide some of your greatest moments of happiness.

TREC comes from:

  • Truth
  • Respect
  • Elegance
  • Commitment

The acronym TREC sounds the same as the word TREK. The definition of a TREK is “A trip or movement especially when involving difficulties or complex organization: an arduous journey.”

Building a great team in a complex organization during difficult times is an arduous journey.

We have spent several posts unpacking our understanding of the complex issues of Truth. Highly effective teams can share the “truth,” but the concept of truth can become very complex.

There are three concepts that must be understood to share the “truth.”

To get at the truth, a team must TAP into the underlying issues:

  • Trust
  • Assumptions
  • Perceptions

Trust

Building trust is part of the long, arduous journey. It requires humility, development, focus, commitment, compassion, integrity, peacemaking and endurance.

Without these elements in place with each member of the team, you’ll never be able to build the trust required to tell the truth to each other. You must talk about these elements. You must hold each other accountable. It’s the first step required to make it through an arduous journey of building great teams.

Assumptions

The second step in TAPPING into the underlying issues of building a great team based on Truth is Beliefs and Assumptions. A team at MIT developed the concept of Triple Loop Learning. Unless you start with understand everyone’s beliefs and assumptions, you can’t provide useful systems, processes, procedures, policies, to guide and direct complex organizations on their arduous journey. Beliefs and Assumptions will always win the day over systems. They’ll win the day either overtly or covertly. And usually, the covert path is the chosen. Therefore, if your systems, processes, procedures, policies don’t seem to be solving your problems, you haven’t brought all the Beliefs and Assumptions to the surface. They are covertly sabotaging your efforts.

Perceptions

We each have different perceptions. Perceptions are modified by events and experiences over time. If you, as a team leader or a team member assume that you have the “truth” and don’t realize that you have one of many perceptions, just like everyone else, an effective team will never materialize. Just like Beliefs and Assumptions, you must honor and respect everyone’s perspectives as valid before you can get at the Team Truth that is required to build great teams.

TAP into Greatness

To experience the sweetness of wonderful maple syrup, you must TAP into the trunk of the tree. Oak trees have deep TAP roots to withstand the ravages of nature. Whatever analogy you want to use, you must TAP into the core of your team to build the foundation of Truth.

  • Trust
  • Assumptions
  • Perceptions

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Truth: Perspective and Memory

by Ron Potter

We’ve been introducing and preparing ourselves to walk through the elements that make great teams. The first of these is Truth. Great teams can tell each other the truth. But truth needs some special understanding.

Memory

How well do you remember that event? Is it seared into your memory? If so, brain science tells us that it’s very likely wrong. The more intensely we remember something, the more the memory has been modified by our brain to align with our beliefs and assumptions and therefore the “surer” we are of its accuracy.

The day after the shuttle Challenger blew up, a professor in Florida asked his class to write down everything they remembered about the moment and following hours of the Challenger explosion. The accident had happened only 24 hours before the class. The professor gave them some guidelines to write about:

  • What were their emotions at the moment they saw or heard about the explosion?
  • Who were they with? How did the other people react?
  • Where were they at the moment of the explosion and for the rest of the evening?
  • How did their emotions shift over that time? What was the focus of the conversations they had with others?

The students spent a couple of hours of class writing about these questions and other thoughts.

A few years later, the professor tracked down as many members of that class that he could find. In each case, they were handed their hand-written papers and asked how it fit with the memory they have of the explosion.

In all of the cases, their memories were different from what they had written that day. In some cases, the students rejected what they had written and told the “truth” about what happened that day. Their memories had been modified over time and solidified about the “story” they would tell of the events they “had experienced” on that fatal day.

Because computer hard drives and “memories” have been around for over four decades now, we have this belief that just like computer hard drives, we put things in our memory and then when we retrieve them, they are exactly what was put into our memory the moment the memory was created. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Our memory is modified from the moment it is created by events and experiences along the way. We are constantly modifying our memory.

Perspective

Perspective changes everything, even the things we’re observing at the moment. Again, brain science has shed a great deal of light on how we observe the world around us and “remember” events.

I’ve written other blogs on this topic, but the essence of the matter is that we assume what we are observing is the “truth” while everyone who has a different conclusion is simply expressing their “perspective.”

Science tells us the once an image enters our eye, the image itself is broken into at least 127 million bits of information and run through several processing centers of our brain. These centers include (but are not limited to) values, emotions, goals, ideas, memories, stress, pain, experiences, etc.

It’s easy to understand that each of us has different values, emotions, goals, ideas, memories, stress, pain, experiences. It should then be easy to understand the each of us will have a different view of what the “truth” is, based on what we just observed.

Realize that your perspective may be one of many. Each perspective is valid based on the persons processing centers.

Truth

Being part of a team means that we respect each other’s perspective of a given situation and work hard at reaching a collective perspective that will help us move forward and stay united and committed to an action plan.

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Truth: Truth with Half a Brain

by Ron Potter

Do you use half or all of your brain to understand the truth?

We’ve been introducing and preparing ourselves to walk through the elements that make great teams. The first of these is Truth. Great teams can tell each other the truth. But truth needs some special understanding.

“Any one with half a brain…”

“Anyone with half a brain can see the truth.” That’s an old saying that expresses some derision toward someone who doesn’t see the truth as you see it. The implication is that if you used even half your brain, you would see the truth.

Have you noticed that people (sometimes yourself) “know” the truth? But if you point out to them that someone else sees things differently, their reaction is the other person has a perspective, but you have the truth.

Separating the brain

Years ago, it was discovered that the cure for people who have extreme epilepsy is to sever their brain halves. Each half of the brain is still fully functional; it’s just that the two halves don’t communicate with each other anymore.

For people who went through this procedure, their epilepsy issues were cured. One patient said “You don’t notice that your brain halves are not working together. You just adapt to it. You don’t feel any different than you did before.” However, the researchers did notice a difference.

To further clarify this difference they created an experiment with some of the earliest patients. These first experiments were conducted in the days before the personal computer, so they used the technology available to them at the moment, a View-Finder. With a View-Finder, each eye sees a slightly different image. The intended purpose was to give a sense of 3-D depth perception. The researchers modified this technology slightly and gave the patient entirely different photos in each eye. In the right eye, they showed the patient a picture of a women. In the left eye, there was a picture of a man.

Before placing the View-Finder to the patient’s eyes, they asked the patient to describe what they saw in the View-Finder. After a few seconds of observing, the patient described the women (in her right eye) in complete detail. When asked if she saw anything else the answer was “No, I described the woman as completely as I could.”

Then the patient was asked to repeat the experiment, but this time instead of describing what she saw, she was to pick out the image of what she saw from a group of images. After viewing the View-Finder for a few seconds, the patient pointed to the picture of the man that appeared in the left eye. In both cases, the pictures of the man and the woman appeared in the same eye. However, the patient was “manipulated” to either verbalize what she saw or point to a point at what she saw. In other words, the researchers could control which image the person saw and remembered by setting them up ahead of time. Verbal description caused the person to describe the image in the right eye. Muscle and physical control caused the person to describe the image in the left eye. Their “truth” was dictated simply by prepping them for how they would answer the question.

A similar experiment conducted with another patient years later with the use of a personal computer provided the same results. This time the patient was asked to concentrate on a dot right in the middle of their computer monitor, and then two images were flashed on the screen: one image to the right of the dot, the other image to the left of the dot.

When the patient was asked to describe what they saw, they described the hammer that appeared to the right of center. When asked to draw what they saw, they drew the screwdriver that appeared to the left of center. When asked to describe what they had drawn, the answer was a screwdriver. When asked why they drew a screwdriver when they originally described a hammer the answer was “I don’t know.”

So, what was truth to that person? The man or the woman? The hammer or screwdriver? The answer is both answers were true. But the brain used some pre-determined criteria to be aware of and record for memory the “truth.”

Current day brain science has taken us a step further. Because of the functional MRI, brain scientist can track an image as it enters through our eyes all the way to being implanted in our memory. What they have found is that the image doesn’t go directly to memory. They’ve been able to determine that once our eye perceives the image, it is parsed into about 127 million bits of information, sent through at least 12 (they think as many as 24) processing centers in the brain, then processed through the older centers of the brain for object recognition and motion detection before being reassembled in our memory.

These early discovered centers include:

  • Values
  • Emotions
  • Goals
  • Beliefs
  • Ideas
  • Happy/Sad
  • Memories
  • Pain
  • Stress

This clears up the old question, do you believe what you see or see what you believe. You see what you believe.

Team Perspective

Courtroom judges will tell you that if two eyewitnesses tell the court exactly the same version of what happened, they know they’ve colluded. Judges know that no two people see the same event in exactly the same way.

So, if our goal is to speak the truth with each other or to get at the truth as a team, we need to start with the premise that we each have our perspective. Great teams value and understand each of those unique perspectives and then work hard to develop a collective team “truth.” What will be the team perspective based on all of our individual perspectives? What will be the truth that solutions will based on so that the team can move forward with unity and commitment?

By sharing beliefs and assumptions plus perspective of the situation, great teams begin to build an understanding of what they face and how to move forward.

Use your whole brain plus have the respect (next series of blog posts) to allow for the diverse points of view held by all team members. You’ll have a better chance of succeeding and be happier doing it.

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Truth: Truth Depends on Beliefs

by Ron Potter

We’ve been introducing and preparing ourselves to walk through the elements that make great teams. The first of these is Truth. Great teams can tell each other the truth. But Truth needs some special understanding.

To create a truthful and dynamic atmosphere, teams must:

  • Develop and maintain Trust
  • Be able to share their Beliefs and Assumptions openly and without recrimination
  • Believe that every member of the team has a Valid Perception of the issue.

In the last post, we talked about building the trust required to share the truth. In this post, we’ll talk about how our beliefs and assumptions shape our truth.

Beliefs and Assumptions

Years ago, Peter Senge wrote a book titled The Fifth Discipline that was a deep book but had a profound effect on the corporate world. This book about systems thinking was based on work by Gregory Bateson and extended by Chris Argyris and Peter Senge. It known as Systems Thinking or Learning Organizations. I had never seen a concept penetrate the halls of corporations as much as these ideas.

It seemed that I couldn’t walk into any of my client companies without them wanting to show me how they were adapting system thinking or becoming a learning organization or both. It was an amazing tidal wave.

But much of this impact was related with the second loop of what Senge and company referred to as triple loop learning. In brief, let me describe the three loops.

The first loop says that you do some work, you observe the results. If you’re not satisfied, you put in a fix, and you do the work again. I’ve seen this first loop referred to as “Following the Rules” or “Are we doing the right thing.” I started to think of it as a “do loop” from my early computer days. We would talk about a computer program that was hung up as being in a “do loop.” That meant the program was running in circles and couldn’t get out. The first loop of triple loop learning is much like that do loop. Do some work, check the results, put in a fix, do some work, check the results, put in a fix, etc.

Senge and team began to talk about the second loop as a longer, more sustainable loop. In this loop that wanted you to think about an issue as not needing a fix but as part of an entire system. Check your policies, procedures, systems, and processes to see what is directing the work. If you put the proper system in place that guides the work you’ll get better, more sustainable results. But it required system redesigns and re-engineering. These are the words that my clients were using. They wanted to show me their re-engineering work and their systems redesign and the improved results. And indeed, they were getting improved results. But maybe not the best results possible. The third loop of triple-loop learning was required. Unfortunately, I didn’t see many of my clients looking at the third loop. Why?

The third loop examines the team’s Beliefs and Assumptions about an issue before the redesign or re-engineering takes place. If your personal beliefs don’t agree with the redesigned system, beliefs will override or ignore the system. If the system was redesigned based on an issue or observation that doesn’t match your assumptions, there is no true belief that the new system will produce the desired results. Beliefs and Assumptions rule the day!

Senge and company believed that by fully sharing and understanding Beliefs and Assumptions you would improve the quality of thinking and interactions and in doing so would experience more sustainable improvements. They also believed this would not be a one-time fix but would result in continued improvement of thinking, interactions, and results. Now you would become a Learning Organization.

Working Out Beliefs

Sharing of Beliefs and Assumptions is the second part of building a high-quality team that provides the highest level of happiness for the team members. But, this is a muscle or discipline that develops through training just like going to the gym to improve any part of your body.

I’m assuming here that you’ve successfully created an atmosphere of trust that will allow for the sharing of Beliefs and Assumptions. But, the first time you engage a new muscle group the results are painful. And the rest of the body must adapt to the higher performing muscle group before all of the pain and awkwardness ceases.

The first time teams practice sharing Beliefs and Assumptions there is hesitancy, holding back, embarrassing moments and even shock and disbelief from others on the team as you get used to sharing at this deep level. But even with this first awkward attempt, teams find that the solution they reach as a team is often better than most past experiences. And, as teams get better at this level of sharing at the beginning of problem-solving, it becomes almost addictive. If you’ve become comfortable with starting the process by sharing Beliefs and Assumptions, and then you walk into a team that has not developed this same muscle, you can hardly stand to face the amateur approach to problem-solving. That becomes painful.

Develop the Beliefs and Assumptions muscle. You’ll become a much more Truthful team, and you’ll become a powerful problem-solving team. And that will make you happy.

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Truth

by Ron Potter

Over the last couple of blog posts, we’ve been introducing and preparing ourselves to walk through the elements that make great teams. The first of these is Truth. Great teams can tell the truth. But Truth needs some special understanding.

To create a truthful atmosphere and dynamic teams must:

  • Develop and maintain Trust
  • Be able to share their Beliefs and Assumptions openly and without recrimination
  • Believe that every member of the team has a Valid Perception of the issue.

Trust

The leadership book is titled Trust Me: developing a leadership style people will follow.  In that book, I describe the eight elements that are required to develop and maintain Trust. Let’s take a brief look at each of the eight:

Humility – “I don’t have all the answers”

Humble leaders don’t flaunt or exercise their positional leadership. They’re always open to others and their idea regardless of where those ideas come from (see Beliefs and Assumptions plus Valid Perceptions later). Jordan Peterson in his book 12 Rules of life, An Antidote to Chaos points this out with one of 12 rules for avoiding chaos, “Assume That the Person You Are Listening To Might Know Something You Don’t”

Development – “I want us to grow through the experience”

Another aspect of great leaders is to develop the people around them. Not just those to report to them but all the people around them. Including their boss. As mentioned above, Jordan Peterson wrote his book about 12 Rules of Life needed to avoid chaos. My two daughters made a list of Ron Potter’s 12 Rules of Life. Their rule number 10 says, “You haven’t failed if you learn from your failures.” Helping people or the team learn and grow through the difficulties of life is the purpose.

Another powerful book is The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck. The opening sentence of that book is “Life is difficult.” Peck, a psychiatrist, goes on to explain that if you don’t face and learn from the difficulties of life, the eventual outcome is mental illness.

Focus – “Let’s not get distracted”

I haven’t seen anything written on this, but there seems to be something magical about the number 3. When leaders are good at focus, they seemed to be concentrating on the three things that are most important for them to accomplish. Especially CEO’s who have tremendous demand on their time from many angles. They’re always being asked to speak to an industry group or meet with a customer or talk to an important constituent. All good things for a CEO to be doing. But the ones that have great focus will say, “That’s not one of my three focus points, someone else do that.” It’s a sure sign that humility is present because it’s often ego that says “Sure, I’ll do that.”

Commitment – “We’re looking for the greater good”

One author that I’ve enjoyed in recent years is Simon Sinek. Sinek talks a great deal about why, how, what. He says that all too often when asked what we do we respond with “what” we’re doing. People aren’t interested in that. Even people in the same company. The finance people are not interested in “what” the operations people are doing, as an example. But if you share “why” you’re doing something, now you begin to capture people’s hearts and minds. You must know why you’re doing something, and it must be for the greater good. Simon is quick to point out that making money is not why you’re doing something. Money is a by-product, not an endpoint.

Compassion – “I care about what you think and who you are”

I love adages because they’ve been around for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. Why do they remain that long? Because they speak to a basic and solid truth. One such adage says “I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care.” You can talk, persuade, convince and motivate but if people don’t feel like you care for them as human beings, they will not be committed. They may be compliant, but that never gets the results you need to keep the company on top or keep the team at a high level of performance.

Integrity – “I will not hold back, I will share who I am and what I believe”

Another characteristic that leads to compliance rather than commitment is lack of integrity. Think about it for a minute. If you don’t believe someone has integrity, you’re not interested in being influenced by them. Lack of integrity destroys trust.

Peacemaking – “We want divergent perceptions leading to unity”

This has been a hard word to translate from the old texts. I’ve tried collaboration, but that doesn’t speak to the depth of peacemaking. Peacemaking is not the lack of conflict. Peacemaking encourages conflict, discord and different points of view. It’s the results of peacemaking that moves all of those different views to a united and committed outcome that the team completely embraces. To the world outside the team all they see is total commitment to the single solution, never being fully aware of the discord that was worked through to achieve the unified decision.

Endurance – “We will endure to a committed position”

When Wayne and I were preparing to write Trust Me we were reading the research by Jim Collins that eventually became his book Good to Great. In that book and research, Jim and his researchers described the kind of leader who was in place every time a company went from being a good company to a great company for an extended period. They termed the leader they described as a Level 5 leader, not to be confused with Level 4 Happiness. The two characteristics they attributed to Level 5 leaders were humility and an enduring will. Our first and last characteristic. I have seen a few leaders who are very good at enduring but in the wrong direction. I believe that if you add the other six (development, focus, commitment, compassion, integrity, and peacemaking) between the “bookends” of humility and endurance, you have a better chance of enduring in the right direction.

The other thing that I’ve observed is that every time I’ve been a part of a major change effort, it always feels like failure somewhere along the path. Enduring leaders stick with it.

How many of the eight-leadership element do we need?

Since Trust Me was written I’ve run a little experiment many times. After getting clear definitions of what each of the eight elements means. I ask teams the following questions:

“What kind of leadership style or culture will develop if we eliminate the first pair—humility and development. After they’ve filled out their flip chart with numerous descriptions, I ask them to start with a new sheet assuming humility and development are back but the next two—focus and commitment—are missing and so forth eliminating two elements at a time.

It’s been very revealing through the years is that I’ve always been very careful to set up the exercise with neutral words and tones, no good or bad yet I have never received a positive descriptor. Isn’t that interesting? Neutral set up but not a single positive response. By eliminating and two of the eight, it always leads to a negative culture and leadership style.

And then comes the most telling question when I ask each of them to tell me which culture or leadership style that they described would they want to work for? The answer is always “None of them.” Neither do their people. And so even if I said earlier that you don’t need all eight elements to start making a huge difference. If you completely miss or neglect to develop any of the elements, you won’t become a leader that people want to follow through thick and thin. You need all eight.

Truth Depends on Trust

Without building a foundation of great trust, a team will never be able to get at the truth of any situation. Start with trust.

In the next post, we’ll talk about some of the systematic approaches to getting at the truth once you’ve built the trust.

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements: Level 4 Happiness

by Ron Potter

The last Thursday post was an Introduction to Teams. Teams are at the heart of great performance, the greatest happiness, and the best memories. This post starts a deeper breakdown of the elements involved in building and maintaining great teams.

In describing Level 4 Happiness, Aristotle used five words:

  • Truth
  • Love
  • Purpose
  • Beauty
  • Unity

Purpose is the word right in the middle of all five. I don’t spend a lot of time concentrating on Purpose because it is so essential and obvious.

That doesn’t mean it’s not important. I’ve already described it as essential! Without a purpose, there is no team. Without a purpose, it’s just a group of people. They may enjoy each other and have a lot of fun together, but without a purpose, they are not a team.

Team Elements

The bigger issue I often see is a lack of aligned purpose and many times conflicting beliefs on what the purpose is or should be. It is essential that teams align on and commit to a focused purpose. But that’s a topic that would require several blog posts to cover. For these blog posts about Team, I’m going to focus on the four team elements:

  • Truth
  • Love
  • Beauty
  • Unity

I’ve read different books and papers with slightly different words in the last slot. The one that I see most often is Justice, but I’ve focused on the element of Unity because it applies so directly to great teams.

I also try to use team elements that more directly apply to the business environment. Elements like love and beauty are words you don’t often hear in corporate meetings. Using elements that essentially mean the same thing as the original words and yet seem appropriate in the corporate world, I’ve modified the last three words in an attempt to make them immediately identifiable and to help you remember them. The four team elements I’ll explore are:

  • Truth
  • Respect
  • Elegance
  • Commitment

Truth

Truth remains truth for obvious reasons. If a team can’t speak the truth with each other, they will never grow or prosper as a team. However, we need to spend some time discussing the truth. Some of the findings may surprise you.

Respect

The Greeks had several words that all get translated into the English word Love. The Greek word for Love that Aristotle used had nothing to do with emotions or the feeling of love that we have for another person. This word referred to treating the other person with respect. As human beings, we seem to have an innate sense that someone respects us or not. Great teams require great respect (love) for each other.

Elegance

Beauty may be one of the hardest words to understand in a business sense. I’ve chosen the word elegance because Elegance is beauty that shows unusual effectiveness and simplicity. Effectiveness and simplicity are the hallmarks of highly productive teams.

Commitment

I’ve chosen the word commitment here for two reasons.

  1. Commitment is the observable outcome of unity. In team meetings, unity is often expressed by words or a nod of the head, but how one behaves away from the meeting is a clear demonstration of unity.
  2. Commitment leads us to an acronym that helps us remember the four elements.

TREC

The acronym TREC sounds the same as the word TREK. The definition of a TREK is “A trip or movement especially when involving difficulties or complex organization: an arduous journey.”

Building a great team in a complex organization during difficult times is an arduous journey.

  • First, it’s a journey. It goes on for a long time. I might even say it’s an epic journey
  • Second, it’s a strenuous effort; difficult and tiring.

But it also provides the highest level of happiness. When you talk with people about their great memories in life, they will often talk of the time than spent on wonderful teams. The obstacles they overcame. The accomplishments they achieved.

Let’s start this TREC together and see if we can uncover the secrets of building and being a part of a great team. I guarantee it will bring you great happiness, even during a tiring, difficult, arduous journey.

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team: Introduction

by Ron Potter

A new year, a new series. Ready to talk teams?

When Wayne Hastings and I began writing our first book, Trust Me, I assumed we would cover all three areas that I focus on, building Teams, Growing Leaders, and creating Cultures—TLC. As we began to work with the publisher, it became obvious that the first book was going to focus on the leadership area. The team and cultures would have to wait their turn to be covered in future books. The good news is that over the years I’ve learned more about what makes great teams work.

A few of the things that I’ve learned about teams include:

  • Hitting the sweet spot of TLC
  • Team is the leading element
  • Being a great leader, functioning as part of a great team and creating great cultures makes you happy!

Hitting the Sweet Spot

When I formed my company in 2000 (I had been in the business for ten years at that point), I wanted to give it a name that described what we did. Reflecting on the previous ten years, one pattern that emerged was that new clients hired me at one of three entry points:

Leadership

I was being asked to help improve the leadership skills of existing or up-and-coming leaders.

Or a slight variation was the young hotshot contributor that the company thought would make a great leader someday but was currently advancing based on some great competency and had not learned the role of being a leader.

Or sometimes I was being asked to help save a derailed leader who had been in the organization for a long time but had gotten off track.

Team building

Team building was the second point of entry into a client. The work wasn’t necessarily related to a leader (at least in their mind), but the team wasn’t performing well.

Many times, these were existing teams where:

  • Productivity had fallen off or never existed.
  • There was a conflict or rift in the team that they couldn’t get past.
  • The team was facing dramatic change they weren’t handling well.

Sometimes they were ad hoc teams where:

  • They were pulled together for a short-term project that needed a quick launch to get productivity levels high as soon as possible.

A side story to that scenario was my first taste of team building when I was a young engineer. My company brought in a consulting firm (HRDA—Human Resource Development Association) to help facilitate communication, understanding, and decision making between ourselves (the constructor) and the design engineers. The process was called “Face-to-Face.”

Both companies had good people. We were all good engineers but weren’t communicating or more importantly, understanding each other. I began to realize that understanding relied more on good relationships and character than it did on competency.

Corporate Culture

My third possible entry point is corporate culture. When I started in the business in the early 1990s, the idea that you had to understand, pay attention to, and mold corporate cultures wasn’t well known, understood, or accepted. By the early 2000s, it had become an accepted fact.

Those seemed to be the solid entry points for me to provide services and add value to all the companies I worked with in those early years of my consulting work—leadership, team building, corporate culture.

Team is the leading element

After ten years I could see that my three entry points were leaders, teams, and cultures. The challenge was what do I name my new company that reflected those points?

Leaders—Teams—Cultures            LTC

Culture—Leaders—Team            CLT

Teams—Culture—Leaders            TCL

Teams—Leaders—Culture            TLC!!

TLC, that was it. Team Leadership Culture, LLC. That was my new company, TLC!

I must admit that I still thought of leadership being at the core and many of my presentations still reflected that belief. But how could I pass on TLC, so that became the name of my company, Team Leadership Culture, LLC.

What’s interesting is that over time, I’ve come to believe that great teams are the essential lead element. I’ve seen more corporate failures caused by the lack of teamwork than either of the other two elements. Great teamwork can overcome mediocre leadership and lack of a good culture, but neither leadership or great culture can overcome a bad team.

TLC is indeed the right sequence.

Happiness

One of my friends is Jim Berlucchi, who is the executive director for The Spitzer Center. Jim introduced me to the four levels of happiness that were described by Aristotle and greatly expanded into a mental model of leadership by Dr. Spitzer.

Aristotle concluded that what makes us uniquely human is our pursuit of happiness. That is why our forefathers included it in the Declaration of Independence.

It seems even more visible when we see the opposite. Despair and depression seem to occur when there is a loss of hope or happiness. If the ability to pursue happiness is lost, depression fills the void.

The pursuit of Happiness has Four Levels

Level 1 drives our basic needs for food, money, and sustenance — anything that relates to the senses. Without level 1, we don’t survive.

Level 2 drives us to win, improve, get better, achieve, grow. Without level 2, we don’t thrive.

Level 3 is focused on providing blessings to others. These are the elements of our book “Trust Me” which provide great leadership.

  • Humility – “I don’t have all the ”
  • Development – “I want us to grow through the ”
  • Focus – “Let’s not get ”
  • Commitment – “We’re looking for the greater ”
  • Compassion – “I care about what you think and who you ”
  • Integrity – “I will not hold back, I will share who I am and what I ”
  • Peacemaking – “We want divergent perceptions leading to ”
  • Endurance – “We will endure to a committed ”

Level 4 is described by Aristotle as

  • Truth
  • Love
  • Purpose
  • Beauty
  • Unity

These become the elements of great teams and deliver the greatest level of happiness.

Over the next several blog posts, we will be exploring each of these “Team” elements in more detail.

The team is the sweet spot. The team is what makes you happier. The team is what provides the greatest value to your organization. A great team will provide the greatest of memories when you think back over your career and lifetime.

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