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Truth

BlogCulture

Consequences

by Ron Potter December 3, 2020

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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BlogCultureCulture Series

Culture – Involvement: Empowerment

by Ron Potter October 24, 2019

Organizations with highly empowered employees have a couple of things in common:

Processes Pushed Downward

The first common point is that processes are pushed down the hierarchy to the lowest possible level.  When I say processes, the survey measures explicitly Information, planning, and decisions.

This point starts with the genuine belief that the information needed for good planning and decision making resides with the people closest to the action.  I used the words “genuine belief” because I’ve seen too many leaders and leadership teams proclaim that the needed information resides and is better understood at levels below them but their ego and position keep them from letting go of their own beliefs and assumptions.  They also believe they are the leaders of the organization because they are smarter and know better what to do then those who have not yet reached their level in the company.  If you’re a member of a high-level team, be very, very careful that you don’t let that ego prevent you from hearing and understanding the information from the people who are closer to the action.

During my blog series on being a Leader, I talked about the Sweet Rewards of Humility.  You can follow the link below if you have more interest.

My point is, you must be a humble leader in order to empower your people and organization.

Positive Impact and Involved

The second thing that organizations with highly empowered people have in common: Employees believe they can have a positive impact and are therefore highly involved in their individual work and the work of their team.  They are good at integrating their work with that of their team.

Integrating Work with Others

The key to positive impact and involvement? Integrating with others.  It takes good teamwork.  We’ll look at the elements of a Team Orientation in a future blog.  But for now, let’s remind ourselves of the aspects of building a good team:

  • Truth: Being able to speak the reality of a situation.  This ability must reside both in peer-to-peer relationships as well as a top-down, bottom-up relationship.
  • Respect:  We must respect the opinions and observations of everyone.  When people feel respected, they are willing to share and integrate their work with others.
  • Elegance: Good integration of work means reducing the friction caused naturally between different parts of an organization.
  • Commitment:  Integration means that sometimes, other parts of the organization must benefit.  It is possible to improve each part of the organization but not to maximize each part of the organization.  A good team requires a commitment to the best for the overall company, not just a particular part of the organization.
Empowerment is required for good involvement.
Good involvement is a requirement of a great culture.

 

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BlogLeadershipTeam

Team and Leadership: Summary

by Ron Potter July 15, 2019

Over the last several weeks we have been reviewing and expanding on the elements of a great team in our Thursday blog.  At the same time, our Monday blog has been exploring more detail on the elements of great leadership.  These are the first two legs of our Team Leadership Culture (TLC) model.

In general I believe it’s important to build a great team before working on leadership skills but in reality, it’s difficult to accomplish one without the other.  In many cases, they are tightly coupled and interdependent.

Today let’s review the elements of team and leadership and see how they fit together.

Elements of Team

Truth – Respect – Elegance – Commitment

Elements of Leadership

Humility – Development – Commitment – Focus
Compassion – Integrity – Peacemaking – Endurance

Interdependence

Let’s start with the elements of Team and look at the interdependence, overlap, and alignment with the Leadership elements.

Truth => Humility – Integrity – Peacemaking

To build a great team, members must be truthful with each other.  Truthfulness requires Humility, Integrity, and Peacemaking from the Leadership Skill List.

Humility

Humility has been misunderstood and misused in recent years.  Often people think of “turning the other cheek” or even being a “doormat” in order to be humble.  The original meaning of the word meant great power under complete control.  Humility doesn’t mean you’re powerless.  In fact quite the opposite.  It means that you have tremendous power.  Enough power to crush your opposition.  But when you’re humble, you choose not to use that power in a destructive way but to use the power for intense learning and curiosity.  Humble people may be the most powerful people in the room but are focused on individual and team learning through curiosity.  Humble people assume the other person may know something they don’t or have a very different perspective that’s worth learning.

Integrity

Integer also comes from the same root as integer.  It means whole, complete, sound and even incorruptible.  A person of high integrity is the same, complete, whole person no matter where they are or who they are with.  You can always trust they are and will be the same and say the same thing no matter what.  This is essential for the Truth required on teams as well as Commitment.  If you can’t trust that someone is genuine and has integrity, it’s difficult to get at the truth or sustain commitment.

Peacemaking

Peacemaking is also a word that we’ll see associated with Truth and Commitment.  Peacemaking is not the absence of conflict and different opinions.  Peacemaking understands that differences of opinion is natural for human-beings but has figured out a way to work through the differences and conflicts in a healthy productive way.

Respect => Humility, Development, Compassion and Integrity

Building and maintain respect with a team requires a leadership style built on humility, development, compassion, and integrity.

It’s important to note here that when I use the word leadership, I don’t mean the identified leader of the team.  I have observed people of all ranks and positions being leaders.  True leadership comes from your actions, not your position.

Humility and Integrity

We talked about humility and integrity in the Truth section above.  The same issues apply to Respect.

Development

From my book “Trust Me” development is described as “Leaders who accept the truth and train others to seize the benefits of adversity, loss, and change.  Growing people and giving them opportunities is one of the best ways to show respect.

Compassion

There have been a few clients through the years that didn’t believe compassion had anything to do with business.  In their minds, business was logical and should be dispassionate.

I’ve often used an old adage to counter that thinking:  “I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care!”

When people feel like you care for them as a human being first, they feel trusted and respected.

Elegance => Commitment, Focus, Peacemaking

Commitment and Focus

I’ve combined these two but they do go together in many ways.  It requires a firm and aligned grip on the goal and purpose of the team to accomplish the required tasks in the simplest way with the least amount of friction.  Make the goals and purpose clear and then make sure everyone is committed.  This will eliminate much of the territorial behavior that happens with teams.

Focus is under attack more than any point in history.  All of our modern devices are determined to capture our focus thereby scattering our attention.  Our own egos also drive us to accomplish more things and be in more places than necessary or even possible.  Staying focused on the goal and purpose is the only way to keep things Elegant.

Peacemaking

Peacemaking was discussed above.  In making sure that things are accomplished in the simplest way possible, it will take a great deal of peacemaking to settle territorial disputes.

Commitment => Commitment, Peacemaking, Endurance

Commitment and Peacemaking

These two were also discussed above.  In terms of Team Commitment, it will take a strong commitment to the goal and purpose of the team.  It will also take a great Peacemaking/Decision-Making process.  Our earlier blog on Team Commitment talks about the process that provides a win-win environment which is essential to reach full commitment.

Endurance

I used the TREC (Truth, Respect, Elegance, Commitment) acronym because it looks and sounds like the word TREK.  A TREK is described as a long arduous journey.  Especially one involving difficulties and complex organization.  Building a great team is a long arduous journey.  It takes great leadership to deal with the difficulties and complex organizations.

Team and Leadership

That’s the summary of the first two elements of TLC, Team Leadership Culture.

  1. Build a great team
  2. Development great leadership skills
  3. Create the culture to achieve the goals and purpose

The Rest of the Year Adventure

Over the next several months we will be talking about Culture, the third leg of TLC.  We’ll be doing this in our Thursday morning blog posts.  Our Monday blogs have been dedicated to the Leadership aspect of TLC.  For the rest of this year, we’ll be using Monday’s to blog about things that provoke some thought.  These usually come from my daily experiences in life, what I observe in the world, an article or book that makes a point that I think should be shared.  They won’t happen like clockwork every Monday morning but simply when something strikes me as worthwhile.  Stay tuned.

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Commitment: Building Trust

by Ron Potter June 13, 2019

Building Commitment from Unity is the last element of our TREC to build a great team.  Remember that TREC is our acronym for:

  • Trust
  • Respect
  • Elegance
  • Commitment

Building Commitment requires the following three pieces:

  1. Trust in Purpose, Leader, and Team Colleagues
  2. Diverse Points of View
  3. Good Process

Purpose

Building Trust in the purpose of the team can sometimes be difficult.  Often team members don’t feel they have any power to set the purpose of the team or even tweak it slightly.  It seems to be dictated from on high.

It’s important to note that you always have a choice.

  • You can go along with the purpose even if you don’t believe it.
  • You can decide that the purpose of the team doesn’t align with your personal values or direction and make a move.
  • You can be a part of building a team that’s open to the discussion about the purpose of the team to help align it with personal and corporate goals.
Going Along

Going along, even when you don’t believe in the goal can be a dangerous route.  Going along will make it difficult getting out of bed in the morning and headed out to a job you don’t believe in.  Not speaking up when you don’t agree with the purpose and direction has been directly linked to some of the more horrific events in life.  Be very careful about making this choice, it will affect your well being and may affect the well being of others.

Make a Move

Making a move can also be a difficult decision.  The need for security plays a big part in our lives and making a move means leaving what we know, even if we’re uncomfortable and moving into the unknown.  The unknown is always scary.  However, I have seen this play out in my life and the lives of many of the people I’ve worked with through the years.  If you need to make that move, make it!  Dealing with the scariness of the unknown is much better in the end that living with the consequences of staying in a place that isn’t right for you.

Build a Great Team

Being part of a great team gives us much better options in life.  Building a great team starts with being able to speak the truth with each other.

All good teams start difficult discussions by being open to everyone’s beliefs and assumptions about the topic.  When we understand that we’re not necessarily speaking a “truth” but only our beliefs and assumptions based on our unique lifetime of experiences, it’s easier to state a position that may be very different from the expected purpose.

By starting with beliefs and assumptions, teams can often reach a unique solution that everyone sees as positive and leads to team commitment.  However, keep in mind that this process may lead you back to options one or two, going along or making a move.  I don’t believe going along is ever a good option but if it leads to the need to make a move, it will be much easier to accomplish and will happen with the support of many team members which will make the decision much easier to make and execute.

Trusted Leader

Having a trusted leader for the team is also key to developing commitment.  There are eight great attributes of trusted leaders but the first and most powerful one is Humility.  It almost seems like a paradox or dichotomy but humble leaders are very confident and have great self-esteem.  They just don’t wield either one of them like a sword.  They remain very open to listening and learning from anyone and any circumstance.  Research confirms time and time again, that the number one reason people leave a position is because of their boss.  If you’re the leader, develop into a trusted leader.  If you’re a team member, mentor your boss (mentors are not simply the older person).

Trusted Colleagues

Trusted colleagues possess two great qualities:  They are truthful and they are respectful.  This combination of truth and respect can be found throughout history and has a great biblical foundation.  This series of Team Building started with those two attributes, truth, and respect!

Committed

Teams must be committed to the purpose, the leader, and their colleagues in order to build great teams.  When you see it in action, there’s nothing quite like it.  And, there’s nothing more thrilling than being a part of it.  If you’re not experiencing that kind of joy in your life, figure out why you or others are not committed to the purpose, leader, and members of your team.  Today!

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Respect: Summary

by Ron Potter April 4, 2019

Over the last several blog posts we’ve been working on the framework for great teams.  The four elements in the framework  include:

  • Truth
  • Respect
  • Elegance
  • Commitment

TREC.  The dictionary defines a TREK as “a movement, especially when involving difficulties and complex organization: an arduous journey.”  I realize that TREC and TREK are slightly different, but I always want to add an element that helps you remember a concept or framework.  Notice that building a team includes difficult and complex organization and is an arduous journey.

Teams don’t just happen.

Just because you gather together a group of people at roughly the same level in an organization, that doesn’t make them a team.  It’s simply a group of people who have some of the same goals and many different goals.  Leadership teams are charged with lining up the goals of all the participants, regardless of their personal or functional goals.  Sometimes those personal and functional goals need to be sacrificed in order to move the team goals forward.  It’s an arduous journey.

There is a fifth element that was not included in the list but needs to be checked and that’s Purpose.  The reason I tend to minimize the Purpose goal is that I assume leadership teams know what their collective goal is or should be.  However, if that’s not the case, this fifth element will jump to the top of the list to be solved first before the TREC can begin.

Truth and Respect

So far we’ve worked through the details of Truth and Respect.  We summarized Truth and I would like to summarize Respect in this post.

We need to look at the individual pieces of Respect as covered in the last three blog posts but there is also an important principle that relates to the combination of both Truth and Respect.

Respect

Individually, Respect can be made up of several elements.

Team Strengths
  •  Humility
    • When someone does not demonstrate humility, it’s hard to believe they have respect for others.
  • Development
    • When leaders believe it’s worth their time to grow and develop people, it demonstrates respect.
  • Compassion
    • People are motivated by being treated as human beings.  Not by what they do or don’t do, but who they are.
  • Patience
    • Stay calm, don’t get annoyed, turn back to Humility, Development, and Compassion
  • Kindness
    • “Giving someone what they need the most, deserve the least at great personal expense.”  Chip Ingram
Team Weaknesses
  •  Envy
    • Envy occurs when someone feels inferior to others.  It’s destructive, first the one who envies, then those around them.  When someone is dealing with envy, help them develop.
  • Anger
    • Anger eruptions are seldom positive.  Helping the team express anger and disappointment in a safe environment helps in dealing with loss and adversity.
  • Grudge
    • Grudges are usually caused by envy and anger but they just keep surfacing.  Deal with the envy and anger constructively to stop the grudges.

Truth and Respect

There is also a powerful force when a team is both very truthful and yet maintains great respect for every individual.  Amy Edmondson is may be the best-known author to identify the concept that when both Truth and Respect are present, a team experiences “psychological safety.”  Amy and others have shown through research that when psychological safety is present, teams perform the best.

Truth and Respect are necessary individually but when combined they help teams perform at a level that is much higher than expected.

Respect, Often the Missing Element

After spending nearly 30 years working with leadership teams, my experience has been that respect is often the missing element holding teams back.

Truth: Overt

“Truth” tends to be overt.  People say it.  Or more accurately, people blurt it out.  The problems happen when someone believes they have the truth and everyone else simply has a perspective.  I’ll write more about perspective in an upcoming blog about modern-day philosophers.  Billy Joel says in one of his songs “the only people I fear are those who never have doubts.”  If you have no doubts about your “truth”, you’re probably wrong.

The other thing I’ve seen happen on teams as they deteriorate, the truth turns sarcastic.  Yes, it is the truth but it certainly doesn’t get expressed with any respect.

Respect (lack of): Covert

I find a lack of respect to be covert.  Nothing is really said out loud or face-to-face but outside the room, there are comments made about a person or a position that is not very respectful.  Issues that remain covert are the most difficult to handle.  I know that people seem to think it’s kinder to remain silent and they’ll avoid the expected conflict created by being overt.  But anything that remains covert is always more difficult to work out.

Truth and Respect.  These are the first two steps in our TREC to great teams.

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Truth: Summary

by Ron Potter February 21, 2019

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.”

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

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 February 7, 2019

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 January 31, 2019

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 January 24, 2019

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 January 17, 2019

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: Introduction

by Ron Potter January 3, 2019

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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