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BlogCulture

Zoom Fatigue

by Ron Potter

My first regret with Zoom is that I didn’t invest in the company in the early days.  I’ve been a user since the early days but had no idea what was coming.  Covid increased users rapidly and the last I looked they had around a half-million users.  One more investment opportunity missed!

For this blog, I will use the word Zoom as a generic term for all of the video conference applications from Microsoft, Cisco (Webex), Google, and others.

Exhausting

Even though Zoom has become essential, the environment has become exhausting at the same time.  Why?

I’m a highly extroverted person and you would think I would enjoy the Zoom environment.  And in fact, I do prefer it to one-on-one phone calls.   And I even do OK and experience quite a bit of value in small team meetings.

But for those who are in several meetings per day and often with large numbers of participants, it’s exhausting.  I have always experienced mental fatigue deeper and harder to recover from than physical fatigue.  Zoom meetings are all focused on mental fatigue.

Evolution

We have evolved (and survived) because of our ability to understand very small expressions and understand meaning from them.  One of my pleasures is reading spy novels.  Almost all of them talk about microexpressions as a means for understanding truth, lies, confidence, fear, and other emotions.  Human communications is a combination of words, movement, timing, gestures, and others.  Scientists even have a name for all of this coordination.  They call it synchrony.

Synchrony is essential for complete communication and humans work hard to achieve it.  I believe that synchrony is essential to build trust!  It’s interesting to me that Zoom and all of its competitors are working hard to improve teamwork through this media.  I believe it was Microsoft that talked about the “art of teamwork”.  And yet, they are all looking at things that can be measured like: “Who are you meeting with?”, “How often are you meeting?”, “What time of day do you meet?”.  None of these things have anything to do with building the trust essential in good teams.

Fight-or-flight

Scientists at Stanford University found that the size of images can trigger our innate “Fight-or-Flight” state of mind.  When another person’s image looks larger and closer than others on the conference call, they can seem threatening.  Looking at a screen of nine faces where there is no coordination of closeness to screen is very different than having nine people around a conference table.  When every image is a different proportional size, the human mind is trying to figure our fight-or-flight threat.  It’s exhausting.

Feel Good Conversations

Studies also show that face-to-face conversations release neurotransmitters like dopamine.  Dopamine is linked to our feelings of pleasure.  I look forward to meeting with people one-on-one.  It feels good!

Another quote from Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction lab is “Zoom smothers you with cues, and they aren’t synchronous.  It takes a physiological toll.”

What to do

So what do we do about all of this?  So far, I’ve seen no good answer.

Virtual Apps

I’m working with a group putting together an app we call GPS4Leaders (GPS4Leaders.com).  It was originally meant to be a stand-alone app that leaders and teams could have instant access to through their phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers.  We have built the app based on years of consulting work with clients.

Since the rapid shift to virtual meetings, we are moving away from the stand-alone app to a Zoom-based app.  We’re currently working with one of the Virtual Meeting Software companies to incorporate the “trusting team” concepts into the virtual environment.  We’ll see how it goes.

Pick up the phone

If it’s impossible to meet someone directly, pick up the phone and talk together.  You can even revert to the Zoom environment but do it one-on-one, not in a group.  Talk with the other person directly.  Get to know who they are, not just what they do.  What makes them a unique individual?  What is their background?  What experiences have they had?  What are their ambitions?  Anything you can do to get to know them as human beings the better.  We are human beings, not human doings!

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BlogLeadership

4 Things that a Leader Should Provide

by Ron Potter

At the end of the last blog, I indicated that the star leaders of the future will help their teams feel safe and connected in a virtual world.  There are some critical issues that a leader must provide in order to create a safe and connected atmosphere.

Hope

It doesn’t take much reading or watching documentaries to realize that entire groups of people lose their will to live or even attempt to do so when they have lost all hope.  Leaders and teams will face setbacks and failures, but they must not lose hope.

Among the things that a leader or individual can do to provide hope include:

  • Freedom of choice and free will.  Leaders must be careful even when they are well-intentioned.  They may think that a solid plan and direction for the future will help people through a difficult situation but they also need to be careful not to stifle people’s ability to input their own ideas and goals.
  • The arts and creativity.  We all are inspired by various arts (music, paintings, motion, etc) or creativity and innovation.  Inspiration can lead to or renew hope.
  • Goodness and kindness.  These acts of unselfish behavior on behalf of another person will inspire hope.
  • There are many other things that can inspire or renew hope.  Loss of hope is deadly.

Love

The word love can be greatly misinterpreted.  A more useful word in today’s business world might be respect.  When people feel respected, even when their ideas may be at the opposite end of a scale, great things are possible.  I believe this is one issue that makes our current politics so ineffective.  It should be OK to have very different ideas.  In fact, it’s powerful and useful to have different ideas if there is respect for the person and their ideas.  Unfortunately, different ideas are not accepted or discussed with respect.

Respect is required for great leadership!

Joy

Although there is more to joy than humor, humor is a big part of it.  When we’re able to laugh and enjoy the moment with each other (not at the other’s expense) life is so much better.  A touch of humor or a lot of humor is a powerful ingredient of joy.

Peace

The opposite of peace is fear.  From the dictionary, the opposite of fear can be curiosity, trust, courage, or calmness.  What a great list of words.  Being curious is fun and leads to learning more than almost any other word.  Trust is powerful.  Both to trust and to be trusted.  How great is it to be both courageous and calm in times of difficulty?

Hope, Love, Joy, Peace.  These are the new currency for great leadership in a virtual world (or any world for that matter).

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BlogCulture

Science is Always Right

by Ron Potter

But scientists are not always right!  Even scientists have a perspective on the world that will shape the scientific data they see.

All too often I hear people refer to science as the answer that ends all arguments.  As a Christian, I especially dislike the one where Christians don’t believe in science.  I’m a Christian and I believe in science.  I’m not technically a scientist but I do have an engineering degree that depends a great deal on science.

Francis Collins might be considered this nation’s leading scientist.  He is currently the Director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) and a leader in the Human Genome Project.  Dr. Collins wrote a book titled, Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.

Virtual Meetings

My point in this rambling is that we are entering a new era of virtual meetings versus face-to-face meetings.  I believe this is our future.  Many companies, especially the ones with collaboration platforms such as Webex, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and others are adding technology to improve virtual meetings.  I believe they will have a positive effect on meetings but they are also claiming that this technology will create high-performance teams.

I believe they’re missing a key point.

Tech That Aims to Improve Meetings

The Wall Street Journal recently printed an article called “Tech That Aims to Improve Meetings”.  For the article, they interviewed management experts, technologists, academics, and startup founders.  They broke the article into the following categories:

  • Who’s Paying Attention?  Worker’s posture and expressions are analyzed to determine positivity and engagement levels.
  • AI to Manage the Flow with an AI-powered moderator.  It would provide feedback, facilitate flow, monitor time, and interject if someone is getting cut off or talked over.
  • A Seat at the Table: The software would assure that the meeting includes a diverse ethnic and gender balance.
  • Immersive Presentations: Participants would use virtual-reality glasses to view materials such as PowerPoint slides and others.  The goal is to have the participants flip pages, go deeper and move their heads to flip between tables, charts, presentations, and the meeting itself, eliminating the need to flip back and forth between these things on a shared screen.
  • A Fitbit for Meetings:  In this one, each participant wears a smartwatch that analysis and tells them about their personal overall performance.
  • The Virtual Office Party: This is an attempt to provide the casual chat between participants by having their avatar hear only the voices of nearby avatars as they move around.
  • Data-Driven Collaboration:  Avatars are used in this one as well to “help” people casually talk while keeping track of personal interactions between employees to help match up people across departments when needed.

A line at the beginning of the article says “Critics say elements of tools under discussion raise concerns about worker privacy and may face resistance as being too intrusive.”  I think if they had explored this one point further the conclusion may be that none of this technology will work because workers will find it too intrusive.

The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

At the same time that WSJ article appeared, I was also reading The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle.  I found the contrast between the two documents striking.  While the WSJ article may be focused on running meetings more efficiently, that does not translate into higher performance.   In The Culture Code, it’s stated that the highly successful groups talk about relationships.  There isn’t much in the WSJ article that talks about relationships.

One section of the books talks about patterns of interaction:

“When I visited these groups, I noticed a distinct pattern of interaction. The pattern was located not in the big things but in little moments of social connection:

Close physical proximity, often in circles

    • Profuse amounts of eye contact
    • Physical touch (handshakes, fist bumps, hugs)
    • Lots of short, energetic exchanges (no long speeches)

High levels of mixing

    • everyone talks to everyone
    • Few interruptions
    • Lots of questions
    • Intensive, active listening
    • Humor, laughter
    • Small, attentive courtesies (thank-yous, opening doors, etc.)

One more thing: I found that spending time inside these groups was almost physically addictive.”

MIT’s Human Dynamics Lab

There is also an interview with Alex Pentland who runs MIT’s Human Dynamics Lab.  He said:

“If I lean a few inches closer to you, we might begin mirroring.  It only works if we’re close enough to physically touch.”

Pentland says that words are noise.  Group performance depends on behavior that communicates one powerful overarching idea:  We are safe and connected.

Safe and Connected

All the technology currently available or available in the foreseeable future may in fact make meetings more productive.  However, I currently don’t see any that help people feel safe and connected.  This will be the challenge for the near future.

GPS4Leaders

In the app we’re developing, we do get at the issues that help people feel safe and connected such as trust and relationships.  But it will still require the participants to take corrective action and make changes when the data indicates these are a problem.

Star participants and leaders of the future will be good at this!

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BlogLeadership

He Makes Good Decisions

by Ron Potter

I happened to come across a National Football League (NFL) scouting report of a young college student who wanted to be drafted into the NFL.  The Scouting reports were not good.

The college student also took part in the NFL Scouting Combine where they test physical attributes.  The results of that were not good either.  The reports said he had poor arm strength and athleticism and his sprint times for the 40-yard dash were terrible.

In his report, one longtime analyst said, “I don’t like him. Smart guy. That’s it.”  The only positive part of another report said that “He makes good decisions.”

In spite of these poor reports, this young college student was drafted in that year.  Of the 200 drafted, he was taken at 199.

He Was Prudent

Prudent is not a word we see anymore.  In fact, it doesn’t really sound very flattering.  But the definition of prudent is: The perfected ability to make right decisions.  That seemed to be the only positive thing in his scouting reports and physical analysis.  He was Prudent.

The Perfected Ability to Make Right Decisions

There are two points that you need to pay attention to in that definition.

  1. Right.  It’s easy to make decisions.  It’s not easy to always make “right” decisions.  “Right” in this case means right for the individual, organization, country, and the world in general.
  2. Perfected.  Perfection comes with practice, patience, and wisdom.  It takes time.  You must work at it.  I’ve spent a lifetime trying to perfect my golf swing.  It’s far from perfect but it is better.  Even the pros who will hit thousands of balls a day are trying to perfect their golf swing.

Practice Makes Perfect

We’ve all heard that old adage.  But it’s not true.  Practice doesn’t make perfect if you not practicing the right things or the parts that need to be practiced.  Back to the golf pros, they not only have coaches but lots of technology to help measure and visualize their practice.  They get almost instantaneous feedback on each practice swing.

Feedback

This is why instantaneous feedback is so necessary.  I heard someone once say, if you swat your dog with a newspaper for something he did wrong yesterday, he’ll have no idea what he’s being punished for.  He will only become afraid of newspapers.  This is one reason why annual assessment sessions with employees are so useless.  There may have been an instance several months ago that needs to be fixed.  But by now each participant has formed a memory in their head that satisfies their own needs and ego.  Memory is powerful.

A college professor once had the students in his class write down everything about the day before when the space shuttle Challenger exploded during take-off.  Ten years later, the professor tracked down as many students from that class that he could find.  He handed them their own written record of that day to read over.  One student who had written 14 pages read it through and then tossed it to the side and said to the professor, “That’s not right.  Let me tell you what really happened!”  Ten years later his memory of the incident was more powerful than his recording of the incident the following day.  Memory is powerful.

Prudent Decision Making

Prudence is a process.  It has well-defined steps that will need to be practiced to reach perfection.  The Prudence process requires Trust, Diverse Points of View, and a Good Process

Trust

In my book, “Trust Me” I list the eight elements of trust.  Those elements are self humility, development of others, commitment to learning, listening and creating unity, focus on the issue, compassion for others, personal integrity, not avoiding constructive disagreement, and finally endurance to stick with it to the end.

Diverse Points of View

We hear the word diversity used a great deal these days.  But diversity by itself is worthless unless there is trust.  Trust must be established first.  Without trusted diversity of thought, there is no perfecting of the decision-making process.

Good Process

Prudent decision making is not haphazard; it is a well-defined process.  It can be simplified into three words: Deliberate, Decide, Do.

Deliberate.  Because “time is critical”, most corporate teams don’t do enough (or any) deliberation.  Other reasons I’ve encountered for not deliberating well include:

    • “We already know the answer.”  This happens because of ‘group think’ and ‘selective attention’.  If we don’t have the trusted diversity of thinking, it’s easy to fall into these traps that make us think we already know the answer.
    • This is only one right answer.  This means that all the other possible answers are wrong.  Leadership teams shouldn’t waste their time on truly right-wrong decisions.  Leadership teams should be spending their time on dilemmas.  This means they are dealing with right vs right decisions.  These are the hard decisions.
    • I believe what I see or I remember.  (See the “Feedback” section above.)

Decide.  One element of good decision making is described in something called Triple Loop Learning (Originally developed by Gregory Bateson and extended by Chris Argyris and Peter Senge).  The first step in triple loop learning is to share openly and honestly your beliefs and assumptions about the topic up for decision.

Do.  Having reached a decision through this process, the do part becomes much easier because all the parts of the team are working together.  There is full commitment from each member of the team.  I cover  “Prudence” in previous blogs–take a look to get more detail than we covered here today.

So who was that young college student that was drafted 199 out of 200 that year?  Tom Brady.

No other quarterback has appeared in more than 5 Super Bowls, let alone claimed over 4 rings.  Tom has played in nine Super Bowls and won six of them.  This weekend he will play in his tenth Super Bowl with the opportunity for his seventh win.

He makes good decisions!

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BlogTeam

Thankful and Discouraged

by Ron Potter

Today is the last day of 2020.  It has completely changed the meaning of 20-20 hindsight.  In fact, I hope it continues to fade in the rearview mirror.

Almost all of our Christmas cards described the rough year that was 2020.  It was a joy to hear the comments about how thankful and grateful people were through all of the difficulties.

Thankful

The things I’m thankful for include my family (all healthy and living around the world), the Lord and his personal love and forgiveness, and all the things that make life bearable or easier.   We are warm, have a roof over our head, and people beyond family around us that love and care for us as well.

Discouraged

The thing that discourages me the most from this year is the loss of human contact.  In public, we have masks between us, are able to elbow bump at the best, and have nowhere to meet.  I used to arrange to meet people for coffee on a regular basis.  And so we rely on video conference.  It’s just not the same.

All of my grandchildren do well with their video schooling.  But what they talk about the most is not being able to be with their friends.  They need human contact.  I went to a small rural school system where most of my classmates were together all the way through graduation.  We still get together annually and I truly do love these people.  We didn’t know each other in the work world where you’re measured on your productivity.  We knew each other because we were together.  We shared our life dreams together.  We share the difficulties with each other.  We encouraged each other.  We were human beings together.

What We Used to Know as Teams

Highly effective teams got to know each other as humans.  We shared together.  We journeyed together.  We accomplished outstanding things together.  If you saw someone on the team who seemed to be struggling, it was easy to take them aside, shake their hand or put a hand on their shoulder and ask, “Are you OK?”  Human touch!  None of that is possible in a video conference.

Today I hear leaders talk about how productive teams are because there is no time for this kind of thing during a video call.  It requires that you get to the topic at hand, receive updates if necessary, set the next goals, and assign the people who will be responsible.  The productivity is great!  But “team-building” is not.  Productivity may remain high for a period of time, but a highly-effective team needing to tackle very complex or innovative solutions will never be built.

Technical Solution

There are no technical solutions to solve this problem.   However, a team I’ve been working with has formed an app called GPS4Leaders to help overcome some of these issues.  While we’ll never solve the lack of face-to-face issues or overcome the need for human touch, we have focused on where the team is starting to breakdown and how to overcome that issue.  The system offers guidance in terms of where-to-look for helpful hints and offers what’s called a “Coach in a Box” to help guide the users in solving the problem they face.  But, there’s still nothing like a true human connection to build trust and overcome issues.

Best Solution for the Moment

While I’ll stand by my statement above that there is no technical solution to this problem, there are some things that I believe could help.

Let’s start with understanding the purpose of the various forms of communication we have available today.

Email

Email is the oldest and possibly the most used communication software.   However, email was intended to pass on information from one person to another or even several people at once.  It was not intended to provide psychological understanding or even humor.  It is a fact-based tool.

Text Messaging

Text messaging has likely taken over as the most used communication software.  I have to convince my grandchildren that it is not universally used and it is probably worse at providing understanding or humor… hence emojis.

Social Media

I believe that social media was originally intended to share thoughts with lots of people but it seems to me that for the most part, it has allowed people to vent and make outrageous statements that they would never consider making when they are face-to-face with someone.

None of these technical solutions is good at building trust and understand.  So what is a person supposed to do in this socially distanced world?

Pick up the Phone!

While a phone is still a technical solution that’s not quite as good as being face-to-face, it does allow for listening.  Listening for emotional clues.  Listening for understanding.  Listening to show respect for the other person.

GPS4Leaders

This is where GPS4Leaders tries to help.  Once issues are identified in the data, GPS4Leaders will encourage the team to talk through their beliefs about the issue or have one-on-one conversations for understanding, respect, and trust.

 

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BlogCulture

Consequences

by Ron Potter

Maybe the oldest lie ever recorded is that there are no consequences for lying.

Genesis is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament.  In Genesis, the Serpent talks to Eve and tells her that first lie.  One translation reads like this:

The Serpent says “Really? None of the fruit in the garden? God says you must not eat any of it?”

Eve “Of course we can eat it. “It’s only the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that we cannot eat. God says we mustn’t eat it or even touch it, or we will die.”

The Serpent replies “That’s a lie!” said the serpent. “You won’t die!  Eve looked at the fruit on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and saw that it looked fresh and delicious. She thought the fruit would make her wise like the serpent said it would. Eve was convinced! She picked the fruit and ate it, and she gave some to Adam to eat, too.

The Serpent tells that first lie, “You won’t die!”

The First Lie

But, what’s behind that first lie?  Adam and Eve didn’t actually experience physical death (at least not immediately) but there were consequences.  Those consequences are also listed in Genesis and remain in existence today.

No Consequences

The first lie was really saying that there were no consequences for lying.  This is the bigger issue that plagues our corporations and really everyone in the world today.

One of my daughters has started a project where she asks her parents, her husband’s parents, and a few other meaningful people in their lives to share by answering a monthly question.  I believe her intent to know more herself but also to pass the learning on to her children so they know more about the history of their family.  Her latest question is “What are some important values that your parents imparted to you?”

I didn’t have to think much to realize that the value was “Tell the truth.  Don’t lie.”

I don’t remember either parent talking to me about the consequences of not lying but it became obvious to me at an early stage that friends who did lie, had a rough time coming up with new lies to cover the original one.  Not lying was certainly a whole lot easier.  I was never able to lie to either parent about anything and that habit has continued into my adult life and old age.

Jezebel

Back to Christianity.  Jezebel was a real person in the Bible but by the end of the Bible, the name Jezebel was more of a concept than a person.  The concept?  If you’re a liar or don’t believe your actions have consequences, you’re a Jezebel.

It’s not a good thing to be known as a Jezebel.

Not Trustworthy

I feel safe in betting that you’ve never heard of anyone referred to as a Jezebel today.  But, through words, behaviors, or both, you’ve certainly heard someone described as not trustworthy.  The reason they are referred to as not being trustworthy is that they don’t believe or don’t understand that there are consequences to their actions.

If people view you as not being trustworthy, you will not experience support, unity or encouragement.  People just don’t trust you.

Not Trustworthy even when Intentions are Good

I recently worked with someone who had great intentions.  He wanted everyone on his team to appreciate him and he would say “yes” to everything.  The other person might be simply asking for a resource or seeking some advice, but this person would respond with “I’ll take care of it.”  Even when he was questioned about his ability, experience, or time needed to provide the particular item, he would still say “Yes.  I’ll take care of it!”  Unfortunately, he followed through on so few of those commitments, the team let him go.  He was not Trustworthy.

There ARE Consequences

Every word and action has consequences!  I think that is why our social media, our national media, and even our politics have gotten so vicious and divided.  They don’t believe there are consequences.  When you’re on social media and using a pseudonym, you believe you can say anything and there are no consequences.  No one knows who you are.  While there may not be consequences to you personally or immediately, there are consequences.  It creates a divided nation.

Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  He was right.  We will fall as a nation if we stay divided against ourselves.

Even our politicians seem to feel that if they lie to us often and consistently, we will start to think it’s the truth.  According to a Pew Research poll last year, only 3% of the American public said they can just about always “trust the government in Washington to do what is right.”  3%!?  How are we suppose to sustain government and society when only 3% even trust the government (read that, people running the government) to do the right thing almost all of the time.

There are consequences!

Don’t fool yourself.  Don’t believe the oldest lie.

Be open and honest.  Be transparent.  Tell the truth.

The only way to avoid the consequences is by believing there are or will be consequences!

 

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BlogLeadership

Oxygen – Part II

by Ron Potter

Last week we talked about the Project Oxygen findings at Google related to high-performing teams.

This list is from the book Work Rules by Laszlo Bock who is the person at Google that has helped shepherd the project.

The eight findings that help teams perform at their peak include:

  1. A good coach
  2. Empowers the team and does not micromanage
  3. Expresses interest in and concern for team members’ success and personal well-being
  4. Is productive and results-oriented
  5. A good communicator – listens and shares information
  6. Helps with career development
  7. Has a clear vision and strategy for the team
  8. Has key technical skills that help advise the team

Leadership or Team membership

As I said last week, my mental model puts some of these in the Leadership category and some in the Team category.  Some fit both.  I’ll distinguish how I see each of these but you can fit them into your own Mental Model.

2. Empowers the team and does not micromanage

The word empower has been misunderstood and used in recent years.  Most of the time we’re actually talking about delegation, not empowerment.  In this case, I believe either word can apply.

Empowerment

The word “empowerment” refers to influence.  The purpose is to build up confidence and self-esteem.  If you are empowered with a piece of the business, you can influence that piece of the business, but the authority clearly lies with the leader.  Empowerment is granted by the leader to grow confidence and self-esteem.

Delegation

Delegation, on the other hand, means that a piece of the business has been entrusted to you.  With teams, most of them should be entrusted with their piece of the business.  Entrusting a piece of the business requires trust and respect between members.

3.  Expresses interest in and concern for team members’ success and personal well-being

Individual success is one part of this equation.  Helping members of a team be successful will help the team be successful.

The other aspect of personal well-being is often overlooked.  With almost every team I ever worked with I ran an exercise (regularly) that I called “Human Beings, not Human Doings.”  In this exercise, team members got to know each other based on who they were, not what they did.  Often, after running this exercise someone would make a statement that expressed the fact they had known and worked with an individual for many years (15+ in one case) and they never knew “that” about that person.  All of a sudden, many actions seemed to make sense and there was a true sense of caring and empathy for the person which often helped them be more successful and better understood.

4.  Is productive and results-oriented

Team members must be trustworthy.  We’ve looked many times at character and competence which are the two elements of being trustworthy.  An individual must have character and at the same time, they must be competent at the same time.

A person may be the most honest, high integrity, highly principled person there is (great character) but if they don’t know how to do their job, they are not trustworthy.  A person may be the best at their job (highly competent) but if they don’t also have high character (honesty, integrity, principled) they will not be trusted by the team.  They will not be trustworthy.  Both need to be present.

5.  A good communicator – listens and shares information

The key to this one is listening with the intent to understand, rather than listening with the intent to respond.  If you’re listening with the intent to respond (as most of us do most of the time) we’re running a little checklist in our brain as we’re “listening” to the other person.  This checklist may include things we agree with, things we don’t agree with or anything that we want to reinforce or negate as soon as there is a break in the talking.  However, the goal is not to understand, the goal is to respond.  When we listen to understand we start asking a whole different set of questions and the other person feels we’re making an effort to understand them.  When the other person feels that way, they are much more interested in what we have to say when it’s our turn.

Google Oxygen Project

Next week we’ll wrap of the last of the eight findings of the Google Oxygen Project.

 

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BlogLeadership

Oxygen – Part I

by Ron Potter

Have you ever been near drowning?  When I was a kid I don’t know how “near” I was but I was afraid that I was drowning.  Swimming at our local swimming hole I got stuck under the 55 gal drum that we had used to create a raft.  There was a point when I thought I was done for but eventually broke free and surfaced to suck and gulp oxygen into my lungs.  That oxygen gave me my life back!

Project Aristotle

in 2012 Google set out on the task of figuring out which teams performed the best and why.  They called it Project Aristotle.  The main researcher at the time was Abeer Dubey.  He said, “At Google, we’re good at finding patterns.”  The problem was that they didn’t find any solid patterns.

Then they looked at the work of Amy Edmondson at the Harvard Business School.  Amy and her team found something they called Psychological Safety.  Psychological Safety meant that team members felt safe for interpersonal risk-taking.  Team members felt confident that they would not

  • Be embarrassed
  • Rejected or
  • Punished for speaking up

They were safe within the team!

This type of team climate is characterized by

  • Interpersonal Trust
  • Mutual Respect

Work Rules

Now comes a book titled Work Rules by Laszlo Bock.   Laszlo leads Google’s People Operations.  Laszlo does a good job of summarizing the findings during that time of searching for what makes the best teams.

Oxygen

So what does this have to do with Oxygen?  In my 30+ years as a coach and consultant to leadership teams, I saw too many people who were going through their days feeling like I did when I was underwater and running out of oxygen.  I experienced this first during one of my summer jobs during college.  It was in a factory and I would watch the employees go through the shift like they were short of oxygen.  Then as soon as the whistle blew, it was like sucking in that oxygen when my head first broke the surface of the water.  They had new life.  They were energized.  They couldn’t wait to get going on whatever it was that gave them oxygen.

Project Oxygen Finding

Laszlo breaks the results into eight “Project Oxygen Findings”

  1. A good coach.
  2. Empowers the team and does not micromanage.
  3. Expresses interest in and concern for team members’ success and personal well-being.
  4. Is productive and results-oriented.
  5. Is a good communicator – listens and shares information.
  6. Helps with career development.
  7. Has a clear vision and strategy for the team.
  8. Has key technical skills that help him/her advise the team.

I’m going to ask forgiveness from Laszlo at this point but as I categorize these elements into my mental model (Team Leadership Culture) I see many of them fitting into the Leadership category more than the pure Team category.

This is not to say they are incorrect, it’s just a different mental model.

A Good Coach

Future posts will cover each of the eight findings but I’ll close today’s blog with the number one finding – A Good Coach.

Why is a good coach necessary?  Can’t teams just get better on their own?  Do they really need that outside source to figure this out?

The answer to these (and other Team questions) is yes, but!  As good as teams get, sometimes it’s valuable just to have an outside observer and someone who has no fear of voicing opinions.  Good coaches can do that.

One of the projects that I’ve talked with you about in the past is our GPS4Leaders app.  It has been our opinion right from the start that an app will never replace the need for a good coach but can go a long way toward bringing a team closer to the Trust and Respect levels that is required for strong teams.

Project Oxygen Finding

Over the next few weeks, I’ll unpack each of the findings from Project Oxygen.  Stay tuned.

 

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BlogLeadership

Competency will get you…. Nowhere!

by Ron Potter

Amy Cuddy has written at least three very profound books:

Amy says the first two things people want to know when they first meet you are:

  1. Can I trust this person?
  2. Can I respect this person?

Psychologists refer to these dimensions as warmth and competence, respectively.

Warmth is not measured on corporate evaluations

I often run an experiment with teams where half the team gets a list of characteristics found in a fictitious person.  The other half of the team gets a similar list of characteristics on another fictitious person.

Both lists contain words such as:

  • Intelligent
  • Skillful
  • Industrious
  • Determined
  • Practical
  • As well as a few other descriptions

There is one (and only one) difference in the two lists:

  • One list contains the word “Warm”
  • The other list contains the word “Cold”

I then have the whole team vote on characteristics such as:

  • generous vs. ungenerous
  • unhappy vs. happy
  • reliable vs. unreliable
  • frivolous vs. serious
  • imaginative vs. hardheaded
  • dishonest vs. honest
  • There are 16 total comparisons

(Remember that the lists are identical except for the words warm and cold.)

The group that has the word “warm” in their descriptor attributes the more positive characteristic to their fictitious person.

The group with the word “cold” in their descriptor attributes the more negative characteristic to their fictitious person.

Is a person warm or cold?  This one factor will set our expectations for that person and can be the difference of our trust factor!  Be a warm person.  It pays rewards.

Respect or Competence

In the book, Speed of Trust, author Stephen M. R. Covey lists four characteristics that need to be present before we trust someone.  This list has often helped my consulting when there is obvious (at least to me) mistrust on a team.  However, when I ask the team if they trust each other, the answers are almost always a positive yes.

But when I break down trust to this subset of characteristics, there is usually one where people have a concern.  “Yes I trust the person but….”

The list is

  • Integrity – Is the person always the same person no matter who they are talking with or what the circumstances are?
  • Intent – This one usually revolves around the issue of what is best for the team or company vs. what is best for the individual.  Is their intent focused on the best for others or the best for themselves?
  • Capabilities – The person may be sharp and accomplished but do they have the experiences necessary to work through the situation they face?  Are they capable?
  • Results – Has the person actually produced positive results.? Often people talk a good line or more likely have a list of reasons why something didn’t work.  Did they actually produce results in spite of the difficulties they faced?

When you break down the question of trust into these four components, it’s easier to deal with and identify.

Trust/Respect

Is trust more important than competency?  Or is competency the supreme measure of success and reliability?  If you think competency is the superior measurement, you need to read a chapter from Deep Change by Robert Quinn.  The chapter is titled “Tyranny of Competence”.

Amy Cuddy says “But while competence is highly valued, it is evaluated only after trust is established. And focusing too much on displaying your strength can backfire”.

Be trustworthy first!  It’s the only way your competency will have value.

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Riding it Out or Reinventing

by Ron Potter

“U.S. Companies Lose Hope for Quick Rebound From Covid-19”  This was a headline in the Wall Street Journal the other day.  Buried in the body of the article was the statement, “Executives who were bracing for a months-long disruption are now thinking in terms of years. Their job has changed from riding it out to reinventing.”  On the same day (unrelated to the WSJ article) this cartoon appeared

I thought the cartoon was very appropriate because I’ve seen so many companies in my consulting career say they’re innovative but act like the cartoon.

Leaders Support Innovation

Leaders are not usually the innovators!  Good leaders support the innovators on their teams.

Let’s take a look at how innovation happens from a Team Leadership Culture framework.

Team Innovation

Team innovation can be the most difficult to pull off but at the same time the most rewarding as well.  However, it does take a few prerequisites for it to work.

Team Size

Many studies have determined that the best size of a decision-making team is seven, plus or minus two.

Once you get above nine people on a team, the ability to reach commitment on any given topic is greatly diminished.  There are just too many factions possible with 10+ people.

If you have fewer than five team members, it’s too easy for the team to form factions of three people vs. one person.  Even though that one person may have the most innovative idea, they will feel outnumbered and it’s too easy for the faction of three to treat them as an outlier or put pressure on them to go along with the majority.

Either way, the dynamics may be killing the innovation.

Keep decision-making teams to seven people, plus or minus two.

Team Attributes

TREC is the outline that brings the right attributes to an innovative team.

Truth.  Being able to speak the truth to each other without fear of reprisal is necessary for innovative teams.

Respect.  Each team member must be self-aware enough to know that their perspective is only a perspective.  It is not “the truth”.  It is not the only way of looking at an issue.  It’s only their perspective and each member has a valid perspective.  If the team trusts that all perspectives are valid, innovation is more likely to happen.

Elegance.   Coming up with an innovative solution that is also elegant (simple, understandable, actionable) is the best solution.

Commitment.  If the team is able to share the truth with respect, commitment can happen.  Even if your perspective was different (or even opposing) to the final direction, commitment means that no matter what, you express your commitment to the solution.  You’re able to do this because you were a member of the team that took all the perspectives into account and “committed” to a team solution.

Team Dynamics

If innovation is the goal, team dynamics becomes extremely important.  Teams have been conditioned to come together for a given amount of time (usually an hour), encouraged to follow the agenda, and finally, make decisions depending on the discussion or reports.  This feels very structured and efficient.  It’s just not good for innovation.

Innovative teams have a different dynamic.

  • They will start as a whole team to discuss the areas of possible innovation.
  • All the perspectives are shared, at least in an outline form.
  • The team then breaks up into smaller teams.  These can be as small as two individuals but should never be larger than three.
  • Deep Work is required.  Deep Work requires spending distraction-free time on the topic, pushing your cognitive capabilities to the limit.
  • Return to the full team with this new Deep Work perspective to hear what we’re learning and then discuss directions we could possibly head.
  • Rinse and Repeat.  Continue this large team, small team (maybe different small teams with each iteration) dynamics until the team begins to zero in on an innovative approach.
Team Decisions

Remember that the word “decide” means that you narrow your options down to a small number of choices (preferably two) and then you put one of those options to death.  You kill it.  You eliminate it.  You stop spending resources on it.  The commitment to the team direction should be powerful enough to put all of your resources towards the chosen innovative approach.

A Culture of Innovation

Moving the culture of an organization towards innovation usually centers around one word.

Decide!

As we’ve talked about the word “decide” lately, I hope it has become clear that the word decide means that you put one option to death in order to put your resources toward a different option.

Leaders and leadership teams will often decide on a direction but neglect to let the organization below them know that they’ve decided not to spend resources on other options.

Organizations are full of people who love the security of their job.  They’ve spent years learning the job, getting better at the job, and feeling secure that they can go to work every day and do the job.  They’re “secure.”

But, if you are now saying to them, “We’re heading in a different direction and we don’t know yet where it will all lead.”  They can often feel scared or at least insecure.  They may or may not mention this insecurity but they will wonder

  • Do I have the skill set to do the new job?
  • Will my job, group, division be eliminated?
  • Will I be asked to relocate to a different department or location?
  • Am  I back to ground zero in terms of my skills and worth to the company?

Without any clarity on these and other topics, people will tend to come to work every day and continue to do what they’ve always done.  They’ll seek security in doing the known rather than be lost in the unknown!

Open, Transparent, Humble

In times like these (which means now, in our current environment) it’s important that leadership is open with the organization.  Let them know everything that you know.

Be Transparent.  If people feel like they’re not getting the whole story, they’ll either go back to what they’ve always done or abandon ship.  Your best people, the ones you need the most will abandon the ship first.

Be humble.  Don’t give them the impression that you have all the answers when you don’t.  Let them know that you and the team are doing their best with uncertain circumstances.  Taking this approach will also bring forth more innovative ideas that you wouldn’t otherwise hear.

 

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BlogLeadership

Increasing Skills Doesn’t Make a Good Leader

by Ron Potter

The thought behind this blog was from an article on Entrepreneur.com.  Here is the list they developed as they talked about increasing leadership skills.  I agree with the list but the short paragraph after each one is based on my learning and experiences.

Trust is not automatic

Many leaders believe they are leaders because of their position or accomplishments.  Neither one makes you a good leader.  In fact, many people in the position of power on the corporate ladder are there because of their accomplishments.  For the most part, corporations aren’t very good at measuring leadership skills, but they’re very good at measuring accomplishments.  Accomplishments are seen and identified and can be checked off on a spreadsheet.  Leadership is a long-term game.  The rewards of great leadership may be seen in the short term, but will really happen over the long-term.

Kindness is underrated

The article identifies this as conscious kindness.  It shows or demonstrates how members of the team should treat each other.  I would also suggest that it goes beyond team members.  This can make a huge difference with customer-facing people.  Kindness sets a cultural standard that can be seen and experienced throughout the corporation.

I was playing golf with a group of friends and we were visiting a new course for the first time.  Our experience can be summed up as rudeness.  The clerk behind the counter was rude.  The starter was rude.  The rangers were rude.  We found out later that the course had been built by a wealthy person who considered it his private course and outside players were considered as intrusions.  The course is no longer in existence.

A word of caution.  Many people view kindness as never saying a “disparaging” word.  There is an old song titled Home on the Range recorded by many artists including John Denver, the muppets, and others.  Two lines of the lyrics are

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day

Having uncloudy skies all day can be wonderful but will also create many long term problems.  Rain is often needed.  Seldom hearing a discouraging word can also be wonderful but will also create long-term problems.  Honest criticism is often needed.  The interesting part is that criticism can be done in a very kind way with some practice.

I once worked with a leader who was certainly the “non-discouraging” type.  He was one of the kindest people I had ever met.  But his team would say to me, “I just wish I knew where I stand!”  When I asked for an explanation, they would say, “Our leader is so nice that I never hear one word of criticism.  That can’t be realistic.  “I just wish I knew where I stand.”

Be kind in your honesty.

Words are meaningless

Over the last several years I’ve been asked what I think of one President or another.  After figuring how to answer that question with kind honesty, I settled on the following approach.

I always say:  Watch what he does rather than listen to what he says.  This is another way of stating the old adage, “Action speaks louder than words.”

Again, some personal experience with another leader.  She would always say what she thought the recipient wanted to hear, regardless of what actions she would later take.  She thought it was kindness.  The people who worked for her saw it as a reason not to trust what she said.

Status quo is safe

IBM has lost much of the luster that it once had.  But during the years when I was dealing with IT departments, there was a saying that “Purchasing IBM equipment is always safe.”  Meaning that they could tell their leader that they had purchased IBM and the leaders would assume the best decision had been made.  Or at the very minimum, they would not criticize or fire the IT person for making the IBM decision.  It was safe!  It just wasn’t very innovative.

Power trips happen

As a father, I never wanted to resort to the words “Because I said so!” with my children.  Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how many times I violated that goal.  Power trips do happen, but in my book “Trust Me” the number one trait of trusted leaders is humility.  People know if it was a momentary power trip or a built-in trait.  Avoid power trips if you can.  Honestly apologize if they do happen.

Not everyone stays

One CEO I worked with said, “So you’ll show me who to fire from my current team?”  My answer was NO.  If you turn into a trustworthy leader, change the team and culture to match, people will self-select out.  People who don’t want to make the effort to follow the guidelines identified above, won’t stay.  They will seek an environment that allows them to ignore the guidelines above.

Look at each of the guidelines above.  How are you doing?  Each one takes discipline, growth, and a true belief that these traits will make a wonderful leader.

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BlogTeam

Divided

by Ron Potter

I hesitated to use the word Racism in the title of this blog.  Many would say there is no way I could understand because I’m a gray-haired white male.  I’m sure there is some truth to that statement.  But, I was a young adult, going to college and living in southern Michigan when the Detroit riots occurred in the late sixties.  Those riots left me confused, hurting, and even angry.  I wasn’t sure what I should do.

Pastor of local Black Church

When the riots hit the city where I now live, many of those same feelings of confusion, hurting, and not knowing what to do surfaced again.  Turning into a gray-haired, old white male didn’t seem to help much.

Then I had an opportunity to listen to a teaching pastor at a local black church.  I really wanted to learn from what he had to say.  I found it interesting that he was “struggling, frustrated, angry, and hurting.”  He was not gray-haired or white but he expressed the same feelings I had been experiencing.

Five things that will help

It turns out that the scripture passage we were studying was about being peaceable.  When the local pastor was asked what it took to be Peaceable he gave a well thought out and knowledgable answer.

  1. Slow to Judge
  2. Quick to Listen
  3. Eager to learn
  4. Willing to identify
  5. Ready to speak up and act.

Slow to Judge

In today’s social media, internet-based, global world, it’s very easy to judge and too many people judge too quickly.  Maybe it’s a liberal or conservative making the statement and instead of listening what is said, people instantly write it off because it was said by the “other side”.

Maybe it’s a statement made by a European or Asian and people in the US judge it quickly as meaningless because they “don’t understand” how things work in the US.

The list would be too long to identify all of the times we’re quick to judge.  When you’re quick to judge, you leave no room for learning.

Quick to Listen

Do you listen with the intent to respond?  Or do you listen with the intent to understand?  Most of us, most of the time are listening with the intent to respond.  While the other person is talking (or shouting) we’re keeping track of each point made and creating our “checklist” of either reinforcing or countering the point being made.

How does that make the other person feel?

  • You’re not listening.
  • You’re stupid (or at least ignorant).
  • You want to win the argument which makes me want to say it louder and more forcefully.
  • The louder voice “wins.”

But, how does the other person feel if you demonstrate your desire to understand?

  • You’re truly interested in what they have to say.
  • You’re trying to expand your knowledge base to understand where they’re coming from
  • You’re not trying to win a shouting match.
  • Maybe we can reach a mutual understanding because they now may want to know what you have to say.

Eager to Learn

Socrates believed that knowledge was the ultimate virtue, best used to help people improve their lives. “The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance,”

Notice that Socrates said knowledge helped improve lives.  Ignorance is (not stupidity) is the lack of knowledge.  Why do some people remain Ignorant?  They refuse to learn.

Each person is coming from a perspective that is real and “true” to them.  For instance, I grew up in a small town.  But in my adult years, my business took me all over the world.  That changed my perspective.  I now saw the world differently than my friends and family who remained in that small town.

That doesn’t make it wrong, it just gives them a different perspective.  The best way to develop relationships and understanding is to understand someone’s perspective.  This requires the first two elements, Slow to Judge, and Quick to Listen.

Psychology tells us that cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous quote says “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

The world is full of opposing ideas and perspectives.  Don’t hold on to yours to the point of stress and discomfort.  Learn!

Willing to Identify

In my mind, this may be the most difficult.  Not because we don’t want to identify with the other person but because our perspectives become so strong in our lives.  I don’t have the same experiences as someone else.  They also don’t have the same experiences that I have.  We can identify by hearing their story, listening to their experiences, and finally relating it to some experience we’ve had.  Then we begin to identify.

Don’t take the position that “You just don’t understand!  You haven’t had the experiences I have!”  That’s true.  I haven’t had the experiences you’ve had.  But I’ve had good and bad experiences.  And I can empathize with what you’re experiencing.  It’s how we grow together.

Ready to Speak up and Act

There are a lot of forces in our lives that tell us to just be quiet.  It actually starts in elementary school.  The teacher often told us to sit down and be quiet.

We’ve also been told by people (with different perspectives) that our ideas and words are stupid.  So we sit quietly because we don’t want to look stupid.

In today’s world of social media, we can quickly be criticized for our thoughts and ideas.  In this anonymous and divided world, it can quickly be labeled as hate language.  There is a fear of being labeled for our thoughts.

I experienced it writing this blog.  What if I push a wrong button and it is all of a sudden seen as hateful rather than helpful.  I just want to speak up in an effort to help.  But I have this fear of pushing the wrong button.  One I’m not even aware of.

And what about unconscious bias?  We hear that phrase a lot today.  And people are being accused of having unconscious bias as if it’s a flaw.  But what do the words mean?  Unconscious: the part of the mind which is inaccessible to the conscious mind.  It’s inaccessible!  It’s ignorance, not stupidity.

I’ve chosen through the years to keep this blog focused on building team, leadership, and corporate cultures.  I didn’t want to venture into politics, religion, or racism because of this fear of being misunderstood.  But the pastor’s five steps ends with “Be ready to speak up and act.”

I don’t’ know if he intended to put them in order but I do suggest that we don’t speak up until we’ve progressed openly through the first four steps.

Teams

And just to get back to more familiar ground, these five steps also help grow great teams.

  1. Slow to Judge
  2. Quick to Listen
  3. Eager to learn
  4. Willing to identify
  5. Ready to speak up and act.

Learn and practice the five steps to address division.  They help us become better people and build better teams.

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