The Game of Teams – Details, episodes & analysis

Introduction:  James Scouller spent 15 years researching and writing his trilogy of books, how to build winning teams again and again…  

He led three international Companies as CEO for eleven years before he founded his executive coaching practice, The Scouller Partnership in 2004. Today he coaches Leaders and their teams. James is the author of the bestselling book, The Three levels of Leadership: how to develop your leadership presence, knowhow and skill. He is the holder of two postgraduate coaching qualifications, and he has trained in applied psychology at the UK Institute of Psychosynthesis.

In addition, James holds a 4th Dan Black belt in Aikido. He lives in London with his wife Tricia.

Podcast episode Summary:  This episode explores what you need to know, what you need to do and how you do it to become a winning team. James shares his passion for teams and his quest to reveal what it takes to build real teams. It takes effort.

Questions asked & points made throughout the Episode:

o    How would you like to fill in the gaps, in terms of my introduction? James is an ex-CEO and that is an important part of his identity. James firmly believes that if individuals and team want to grow they need to address their unnoticed psychological obstacles. Peoples biggest obstacles are not to do with technical stuff, but it is more to do with psychological blocks. James believes that most people, if they can recognise these psychological blocks and work on them they can not only see greater improvement in work results but also greater levels of personal satisfaction. James has been working for nearly 48 years. 20 years ago he decided to set up on each own as a Coach, to train as a coach and along the way he wrote the book The three levels of leadership which he calls a self-help psychological manual and for the last 10 years his focus has been on writing the trilogy on teams. -that’s James story in a can.

o    What does your first book unearth in terms of the psychological principles you speak?  The first book has a role in the trilogy to describe what you really need to know about teams. What you need to know about teams is firstly the distinction between what a team is and is not, the definition of a team and the many alternative work group units. You also need to know about the psychological forces that are going on beneath the surface and if you do not know about them you are going to end up a victim of them and you will not act and succeed as a genuine team. The third big thing that you need to know is the commit, combust, combine model which James explains is a psychological model but it is also a practical model and a team can use it to determine which issue they are facing.

o    How do you help teams you work with through the collective forces and individual forces material you describe in your book? James is clear that he doesn’t, certainly not in the way he described in the book. He does not take teams into the dual forces model, it is a little academic and doesn’t give a team an immediate “so what”. James remains as a coach with his clients and not an educator, although now the books are out he may find himself having to spend more time in an educative role. What James really wants teams to know is that there is stuff going on beneath the surface. He will use a scaling question from 0-10 where he asks a team how well they can skilfully assert themselves in a conversation 1:1 and with the same question in a group. Typically the response is much lower in the group setting and this helps sensitise a group to the knowing that something more is going on in a group setting. This question and revealing is about as much as James will ever do with a team when it comes to the dual forces model. James will more readily use the other psychological model, Commit, Combust, Combine as well as the material from his second book with teams. James wants to make his sessions with teams as experiential & as developmental as possible. James will always explain The Team Progression Curve, which features in book one, which differentiates the different work groups such as task group, potential teams, pseudo teams, real teams and high performing teams. James find that most teams and in particular senior teams like this mapping. Teams get it, it intuitively makes sense and they see things that they didn’t know that there is a choice of unit and there is a trap called the Pseudo Team. On the same flip chart James will draw arrows on the ascent between the potential team to the real team that shows Commit, Combust and Combine. James is intent on allowing the teams he works with experience what each of these psychological elements feels like and it is only when he is bowing out of a team coaching assignment he will refer back to the explanation of the Commit Combine and Combine model. Instead James gives teams the team fixer model, book three so the team can self-diagnose. In summary James does not give his teams intellectual food on the models discussed in book one.

o    How did you find the synthesis of these three models helped you and your practice? I am a synthesiser. The world of applied psychology frustrates James because he finds that there are so many people describing the same things using different language. The work has an application for James because he can assess which issue is foremost in terms of commit, combust and combine to help him figure out which of the seven principles and action keys, in his 7 principles model described in book two will be most useful for the team and which to zoom in on. 

o    James what do listeners to this podcast need to know in terms of the interplay between the three models described in book one? The only thing that team members or team coaches need to take away from this conversation is that there is a model, a dual forces model that explains what is happening beneath the surface that is making it difficult for teams to form easily. James wrote book one to make the point that if a team does not take the material seriously enough it is unlikely to succeed in building teams. He wanted to create some pain to make the point. Book one is going to be of far more interest to psychologists and coaches than to teams other than to make this important point, you have to understand it takes effort to build winning teams. The Commit, Combust, Combine model is much better for teams to help them answer the question “what do I do with this information?”

o    Can you give the listeners a thumbnail sketch of each of the three elements in Commit, Combust and Combine? James starts by saying that the world has been fascinated with the idea of Psychological Safety and he will put it in perspective with respect to the C-C-C model. Trust and Psychological Safety are not the first immediate issue with a team. Commit, Combust, Combine is an attempt by James to take the brilliant work of William Schutlz who first came up with a model called FIRO-Elements in 1950, to make this work applicable to teams. Commit is the first issue for Teams. Commit is all about engagement. It asks am I psychologically in this team or am I not? This is not about whether you are physically present on a team, very often you do not have a choice but you do have a choice about whether or not you commit to the team. The commit issue gets revealed with these questions; what is this team going to be like?, is this going to be a good team, what do we have to do here? How does the Leader react to me? How are other people reacting to me? Can I sense a role that adds value to what I think this team is about? Do I feel included and noticed based on  the behaviour of other people towards me and on my experience to date? If team members can say, yes I understand why this team is here, I like the purpose of the team, I can be part of this and I feel noticed & valued and the leader pays attention to me and I can see a role for myself here, then they will likely declare “I’m in” That the simple way of describing the Commit issue and what has to happen to navigate through it successfully. This phase can go on indefinitely and many work groups do not get past the commit issue.

o    Is ambivalence the shadow of commit? Yes because if a team is unclear about the aim of a group, or they do not care about the aim, or they cannot see a role for them in the team then they are unlikely to be able to commit and the result is ambivalence.

o    How long does it take to help a team see their order of Commit? The elements commit, combust and combine do not work like a ladder or linearly. There can be recycling of issues. Moving through or getting commitment can take minutes or months especially with work teams who can often be so fuzzy about their purpose.

o    If we continue with Combust and Combine what do they both mean? When Commit is resolved enough and enough people declare “I’m in” this is when the combust issue emerges. Combust is essentially about Power. Now the team is asking itself questions like; how do we get things done here? How do we make decisions here?, Is that clear and acceptable? Individually questions are asked like; what is my part in those decisions?, how happy am I with my influence over those decisions? Combust is all around influence, power and role. In commit we are trying to sense our role and in combust we are trying to settle into a role that meets our power needs. Not everyone has the same power needs. Combust is resolved when people are happy with their role, influence and how decisions are made.

o    How was the choice of the word combust made? Is it indicative of this phase that combustion will be likely? James lets us into a secret about the naming of his model. He shares that Bruce Tuckman admitted that the real success of his model was because it has a neat rhyming to it and similarly James wanted a memorable model. Psychological Safety comes in at the third issue of the C-C-C model. James restates that in his view, based on research by William Schultz, Psychological Safety it is not the first issue. Combine is a bit more intricate because there are two sides to it. The first side of combine is about trust  & intimacy and the second side is about focus. This is where we have questions like; Is it safe to say what I am really thinking? Who can I trust here? Do I trust? Is it safe to be the real me or if I express myself naturally and honestly will I find myself being rejected. Is it ok to be open, to say what is really on my mind. The other side of combine is about focus. The first two and half parts of the C-C-C model has been about the individual. This second half of the combine issue is about the team or “we” This is where a team member asks if they are prepared to put the groups agenda ahead of their own. The focus needs to be on “we” if the team is to navigate Combine successfully.

o    How do you segue into your 7 principles model? If you apply these 7 principles in a sequence that makes sense in the situation you are in, you will nail the three psychological issues of Commit, Combust and Combine to form a winning team. The 7 principles and the action keys underneath them are designed to try to help a team address the issues described in the commit, combust & combine model.

o    How does resistance feature and where? Because James works mostly with senior teams he finds that they are likely to resist when team coaching is introduced. If you can work quickly on helping a team work on something to do with commit you will find the scales of resistance drop. There are occasions if teams have gotten into the habit of lying to each other and are well down the path of becoming a pseudo team, James will work to help the team become more genuine with each other, otherwise James will start with a team’s motivating purpose. It’s a great piece of work to starting being honest with each other and feeling valued & noticed and feeling that their collective objective is something they care about.

o    What is the difference between a team’s basic purpose & their motivating purpose? The motivating purpose comes from James first book where he describes Leadership as paying attention to four dimensions, and the first of the four dimensions is motivating purpose. A motivating purpose for an organisation is a vision and for a team a motivating purpose Is their number one goal. The distinction between basic purpose and a motivating purpose is an essential distinction. So many thought leaders and books blur the two. A basic purpose and a motivating purpose are connected and distinct. A basic purpose answers the question “why do we exist” and a team needs to get that clear because it signals what kinds of skills and people are required to fulfil the purpose. Most teams that James works with do know what their basic purpose is and it is not a problem for the team, however on two occasions he has met teams where the basic purpose was not clear and its affects were devastating. James has described the two cases in his second book. Sometimes it’s enough that a basic purpose says something like “our job is to lead the company to enjoy continued success and growth” A motivating purpose brings urgency, it is much more localised and specific. It answers the question, what is the most important thing we have to get done together in the next 3-12 months. This purpose will reflect the basic purpose but it is much more here and now. A motivating purpose is a device for building a team. You are not going to have commitment if nobody knows exactly what they are committing to and typically the basic purpose is not enough. If you have a sensational basic purpose like “to get Tara Nolan to the moon by Christmas and bring her back safely” that is a serious purpose or for a project team it could be “to save the business from going under by finding €15 million in savings by the end of February” That is a basic purpose that can function as a motivating purpose. A basic purpose if often more philosophical.  A Motivating Purpose is very specific and urgent expressed in emotional language, with no more than three metrics and targets against these metrics and you check to see that team members care about its achievement and if they don’t they will feel pretty awful they will feel that they have let themselves down. As a device developing a motivating purpose helps a team speed through the commit issue.

o    What is Leadership in your 7P model? It is the third principle that James calls shared flexed principled leadership. Essential for Leaders to grasp. The word leadership is a massive problem for executives. They have a very unhelpful mental model about Leadership. It is not a person, an office or a role, it is a process, it is in fact a four dimensional process, the process of paying attention to a motivating purpose, task progress and results, upholding group unity and paying attention to individual nuances. This definition according to James is very significant. People need to make a shift in the way they see leadership. The way Leaders see leadership is making it difficult to lead a team and the way team members see leadership makes it difficult for them to share leadership. Asked to define leadership most people say something reasonable like, “leading a team of people to realise its purpose” James will then ask and “how useful is that definition in guiding you about what you do and how you do it? To which he will invariably get the response “not helpful at all” When James digs further to probe the definition of leadership he gets answers like “leadership is done by people with remarkable capabilities who get sensational results” This definition affected James when he was a CEO and it has affected every CEO client he has met and sadly we are not aware of it consciously. This definition sets up leaders to feel an incredible inadequacy and it can set off defensive behaviours like becoming task obsessed, micro managing, or over criticising because leaders are simply terrified of failing.

Leaders and the people they are trying to lead are conflating leadership with leader. Shared Leadership as a principle recognises that there is an official leader, who in difficult circumstances will make the ultimate decision if the team is stuck and everyone is there to move things along in terms of the four dimensions mentioned. Shared leadership means everyone is paying attention to the four dimensions  of leadership which for James means motivating purpose, task progress and results,  team unity and individual nuances. Interestingly The SAS, Rangers, Special forces in the USA have got the idea of shared leadership that is so obvious on a sports team. Hierarchy means nothing to these entities. In business we haven’t yet grasped the idea of shared leadership.

o    James what keeps us attached to this idea of Leadership? The false idea of what leadership means and its conflation with the leader and the second thing is that people are unaware of the distinction between performance groups and real teams.

o    James in your third book you call out your team fixer approach to apply the material from book two, what surprised you? How difficult it was to answer the frequently asked questions. James wrote answers to 40 and about 5 or 6 were really tricky.

o    What is the current state of teams and what would you like to see happen? There are a couple of myths I would like to bust and a trap I would like everyone to know. Myth number one: Team building is not rocket science and we do not have to put great effort into it. Team building is tougher than rocket science, you do have to put effort into the process. Putting a rocket into space can be solved with mathematics. Teams are comprised of human beings, different human beings with free will. Members can change their minds at any time and you have these subterranean forces causing havoc. Building winning teams is demanding. Why do so many elite sports team leaders gets fired every season? This work is difficult and these leaders, sports leaders have been learning the art for years unlike business leaders. Myth number two: Team building is not easy to do consistently. If you put the effort in you will get better results and you will enjoy the experience The trap is the trap of a pseudo team. Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith came up with the  term sixty years ago. Most people do not know it or have forgotten it and James has resurrected it. James invites us to visualise the team progression curve and to see that between the potential team and the real team there is marshland or quicksand. This represents the pseudo team trap. A pseudo team trap is a common one. They are not rare and probably more common the more senior you go. The pseudo team chases the idea of being a genuine team, not because they have a collective something that they have to achieve together but because they assume it is what you do in the 21st century. These types of teams put all the emphasis on teamwork, being emotionally supportive, asking supportive questions being nice to each other. Essentially this team is pursuing harmony above all else and they end up achieving poor results because they lose their focus and they give teams a bad name. Pseudo teams do not have a highly motivating performance goal that demand they pool their efforts.

o    How would you like to close. This is not an easy area. This work is difficult and it is why top team sports coaches get fired. Accept this work is difficult. If you put the effort in you can learn the art. You have to practice. You can realise that working on a team can become one of the most interesting and joyful of experiences. You have to put effort in and there are things to learn but you can do it!

o    How can we be in touch with you? www.leadershipmasterysuite.com

and for listeners who are interested if you add /GOT you will go to a welcome page where James has offered sets of tools to download for free.

Resources shared across this podcast 

o    www.leadershipmasterysuite.com

o    www.leadershipmasterysuite.com/GOT

o    How to build winning teams again and again – a trilogy by James Scouller

Introduction:  David Rothauser, MA, MS, PCC, PsyA is an executive coach, coach supervisor, educator and psychoanalyst who has worked in leadership & human development for over 20 years. David brings together expertise in these areas to offer a unique forum for growth and development.  David trained in executive coaching at Columbia University, psychodynamic group leadership at the Centre for Group Studies, psychoanalysis at the Centre for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies and Coaching Supervision at Oxford Brookes University.

David offers individual and group supervision for coaches and is currently the Chair of Coaching Supervision for the Association of Coaching, US region.

On a personal note David lives outside of Philadelphia with his wife and two children.

Podcast episode Summary:  Supervision is explored through the prism of a live case that I brought to David as my Supervisor. David shares his approach and illuminates what can often remain mysterious & behind closed doors. We both opine on the value of Supervision and how it can bring relief and clarity from a place of being stuck as well as significant personal development.

Questions asked & points made throughout the Episode:

o    Who are you? And could you share a bit about how you got to where you are today? David reminded us of his professional identities and when encouraged to go further went on to say that he is a husband, a father of toddlers which means it makes up a big part of his learning journey today. David went onto say that he is a patient in his own therapy, in individual and group therapy & a supervisee with multiple supervisors.

o    Supervision has been a vehicle for David, over his career to support his development.

o    The invisible parts of our practice means we do not get to see how we take care of our work.

o    What interests you or intrigues you about a psychoanalytic approach to team and individual coaching? David is a trained psychoanalyst and he used psychoanalysis for his own development for his work as a coach in the professional world. David started coaching in the educational sector.

o    David may not have encountered psychoanalysis if it wasn’t for his sister who was training to be a therapist while David was training to become a school teacher early in his career. Looking across both domains David felt that the field of Psychoanalysis for postgraduate work felt richer and more compelling. David noticed his field was more behaviourally focused whereas his Sisters field was more about people working hard to make meaning. That field was focused on what makes people tick and how can work get done more effectively. David began to dabble and have experiences with psychoanalysis.  He continued & pursued his interest, studied more and at this point is a graduate of two psychoanalytic institutes and has his own psychoanalytic practice. He does not think of his coaching perse as Psychoanalytic.  

o    David is interested in being effective. This work has helped David explore cases where he was stuck, where the reasonable and rationale approaches of other disciplines have not been of help. Psychoanalytic training & supervision provides a space where we can access more parts of self & engage creatively when the counter transference is puzzling, when for example emotions are difficult and we don’t know what to do and where we are stuck. This realm has been a major orientation for David,  where the emotional and relational fields are enhanced with a psychodynamic lens.

o    What do your clients appreciate about your approach and do they even know? What is common about David’s Supervision sessions is that there is a feeling of relief and an opening up for new creative possibilities.

o    David takes an understanding based approach and in a lot of ways David draws on different disciplines, education, sociology, philosophy and psychoanalysis. When we are stuck we don’t understand what is happening. It calls for more meaning making.

o    At this point I re-introduced a case I had brought to David for Supervision. My case is a small team about whom I was stuck. I was curious to see if David, for the sake of my podcast listeners, could help me decode the approach David took, the potency of supervision & how it served me and my client at the time. David wondered too.

o    David shared that there is something about this work where there is a mystique about it. There are many kinds of supervision some for example where there is direct observation of a coach coaching with their client. The supervisor will observe a person actually coaching whereas a psychodynamic approach happens behind closed doors.

o    We decided to try and David asked “how shall we try” Whilst I endeavoured to revisit the case David suggested that “we back up a little” to share how he thinks about the work

o    A unique contribution of coaching & team coaching is offering an opportunity to the client to see themselves in new ways, to access their own creativity so that they can make new choices about what they want to do and how they want to be with others. No matter the discipline or theoretical orientation CBT, positive psychology, a PhD in coaching psychology or whatever the way we relate has a profound impact on the quality & outcomes of the work

o    One area of work that can always be expanded and deepened is the work we do on ourselves. It is a lifelong process to know yourself and to use yourself. The difficulties we experience with clients like fear, hopelessness, anxiety, shame and not having access to our minds is natural

o    Many of us in the helping professions are drawn to this work, either consciously or unconsciously because of the roles we picked up from our family of origin. That was when we were first introduced to our emotional lives. There were things we learnt about our feelings that were going to be acceptable and those we learnt to avoid. Our interpersonal tendencies around openness and avoidance were learnt in our early families.

o    Often the feelings that pose challenges for our clients are feelings that we have learnt to avoid or step around. As a supervisor they are the clients David hears about from his supervisees & the ones he brings to his own supervisor.

o    I shared my experience of working with my client and the feelings that were evoked in me especially the ones, fear of rejection, that I find intolerable. This is the value of talking.

o    Psychoanalysis is the talking cure and coaching is a kind of talking cure too and supervision is too.

o    In supervision with David, we dreamed up my case together. In our collaborative dialogue I was able to speak what might have been unspeakable for the client, to say more and more and more about what was happening. David pays attention to his supervisees and their subjective experience. He works to help supervisees make meaning and understand what is inside of them. David is happy to work & to talk about what to do but he leans more in terms of helping clients reach understanding.

o    Many of us come to supervision to wonder what to do and the question becomes to what end?

o    Looking for ways “to do” can  sometimes be about avoiding  the work of understanding and meaning and sometimes not. Brainstorming things to do or interventions to offer can provide avenues to see a way forward. Using our imaginations for example in a session like “what do I really want to say to this client in a world with no consequences” “what would I tell these people?” Some of those kinds of imagination exercises can be freeing.

o    The unconscious is not a civilised place. It can be unruly. This is how we can get stuck with our cases when some of our more unruly parts get activated & our more professional parts are hard at work to make sure those parts do not get air time. That is why it is important in a supervision space to create a playful open space for any words to be expressed.

o    How to deal with resistance on teams? Resistance is a word that can bring up a lot of resistance. The view of resistance that is helpful is that resistances are defences. They are needed to protect. There is no such thing as a relation without some form of protection. Peoples reluctances tell us something, they communicate something to us to us non-verbally. We will get a feeling that something is afoot or that this is a no go topic. Sometimes resistances show up not just in the non-verbal field but in the behavioural field, coming late to sessions, cancelling sessions etc.. these are all forms of behavioural resistances.

o    Freuds ideas about resistance, the original psychoanalytical conception, or resistance to free association was what he was interested in. He gave instructions to patients to say everything which was of course an impossible task. It was Freuds observation that something would interfere with the patient saying everything and he called that interference the resistance. Each person resisted the task of “saying everything” in a unique way. Freuds idea was that it was the transference or the patients expectations of the authority figure that made up the fuel for the resistance.

o    Freud had a particular method of intervention and there are many others ways of working with resistance today that are supportive, relieving and safety making for clients to find new ways to get the self-protection they need.

o    What are some of those ways of working with Resistance? A coaching client brought a case to David where the client of the supervisee was not doing the work, the reflection work, the work in between sessions and the coach was left with the feeling that they were doing all of the work. The coach had an uneasy feeling that something was not right. It did not feel to the coach that the client had any real skin in the game. David and his client imagined how to join the clients resistance. Just be like the client, not in a tongue in cheek sarcastic way but simply meeting the client where they are. If you have an ambivalent client it is not going to be helpful to be eager with them

o    The coaches mindset – a supervisee who already had the idea that there was resistance with her client enabled David and his client to work on the idea that the client was trying to protect themselves in the coaching process and they were then able to be curious about how and why that was the case. Resistance is important it is serving a protective function is a very different conversation than what can happen in coaching where a diagnosis is made and a conclusion drawn, for example this client is un-coachable

o    Resistance is mysterious because they are hidden or non-verbal in so many cases. So one feature of resistance in this work is that we feel it and it lives in our body before we can put thought or words to it.

o    If as a coach you feel those feelings you may or may not chose to reveal them to your client but you can of course speak to them in supervision. It is case dependent.

o    Winnicott’s idea about the use of an object is an important idea that David takes into his coaching.  For any of us to make use of another is a developmental proposition. David needs to know how a client makes use of him. He wants to know how he is perceived and how what comes from him might be perceived and made use of. David needs to have an imagination about that, a sense that the client will give him and he treads carefully assessing the appetite or motivation a client has for the work. It tends not to go so well in a coaching or other helping profession to give something that the client is not asking for. It is a primary task in the coaching relationship to understand what is wanted.

o    Coaches can be busy “cooking up stuff” to feel useful and of value especially in the face of uncomfortable feelings.

o    The phenomenon of not knowing can be very hard for everyone, being in the mystery of how the client is making use of our work or the work with us can be unnerving especially as each of us has a relationship with not knowing.

o    We explored so many topics across this podcast and David bemused that we did not speak to the unconscious. He chose “to leave it out there” as something we could pick up on another conversation and podcast.

o    David ended the podcast by sharing information about his practice. He occasionally has spaces in supervision groups and individual supervision programs and he is available on LinkedIn and he is happy to talk.

o    Finally after being asked how he wanted to close the conversation David shared how he didn’t want to close the conversation. He really enjoys talking with me about these topics and looks forward to more opportunities like this in the future.  

Resources shared across this podcast

1.     https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidrothauser/

2.    Donald Winnicott English paediatrician and psychoanalyst

Introduction:  Tracy Bertran, Michele White, Traci Manalini and Larissa Thurlow are all executive coaches, team coaches, individual and group supervisors offering diverse and extensive experience in the fields of learning and adult development. 

Podcast episode Summary:  This podcast discusses the often-misunderstood topic of Supervision, how it serves coaches and team coaches and how it is distinctive from Mentoring and Therapy.  To fully appreciate the value of Supervision in the field of professional coaching this episode explores the evocative question: what bothers us about Supervision. 

Points made throughout the Episode: 

• Tracy Bertran PCC, kicked this conversation off by sharing how she came to Supervision. It was an integral part of her Coach Training. She confesses that supervision and its value went off her radar once she finished her Coach training. Larissa Thurlow came to supervision slightly later in her professional career. Larissa was doing lots of training & exposure to team coaching and felt something was missing. She learnt about Supervision, still was not completely sure what she was getting into and then found its value. 

• Traci Manalini picks up the thread about not really know what you are going into by virtue of Supervision and shares that a colleague found that Supervision made him better as a Coach. Intrigued Traci explored more and found many to be of the same opinion. Supervision supports you to become a better Coach. For Michele White Supervision brings her back to herself and who she wants to be as a Coach. Like Tracy Bertran, Michele came back to supervision after a while and trained to become a trained Supervisor mainly because she wanted to become a better reflective Coach and from there her supervision practice grew. 

• In addition to becoming a better reflective Coach, Supervision offers more. It provides illumination that extends to the whole of the system. Supervision helps to normalise our practice. It helps to see better and see again. 

• The title of this podcast is called what bothers us about Supervision and Traci Manalini shares that what bothers her is that people really do not understand what Supervision is as an offering. The word itself, Supervision, has so many preconceptions about what it is. Often people assume it has something to do with a power dynamic, where the Supervisor is “overseeing” someone’s work. This puts an extra emphasise on education to support people unlearn their perceptions about what it is. It ends up that people do not understand what Supervision is and the close their minds to the possibilities it affords. 

• Tracy Bertran adds that what bothers her is the confusion between Supervision and Mentoring. Some treat the two modalities as interchangeable as if the names are simply semantic preferences. In addition to this confusion what bothers Tracy is the amount of supervision being undertaken by Coaches. Only about 50% are actively engaged in the practice of regular supervision. Professional Rigour is at question. 

• It makes Tracy sad given the fact that there is so much to be gained by undertaking Supervision. The opportunity to look at behaviours, thoughts feelings, patterns, systems etc is provided. Supervision allow coaches to build mastery as opposed to the acquisition of new knowledge. Supervision can be transformational. 

• Michele White builds on the feelings of sadness by sharing that she feels sad because Individual or Team Coaches do not experience the joy of Supervision & the depth of Supervision. She queries the ethical nature of the Coaching Profession if supervision is absent. This asks the question about the responsibility of the Professional Bodies to make supervision mandatory. It would appear they are tentative, not mandating supervision or enough supervision. Larissa Thurlow adds that there is an inconsistency at play if we as coaches are asking our clients to be vulnerable and yet we are not doing the same. If we are supposed to be thinking partners with clients who are we partnering with to stretch and expand our capacities, in thinking, seeing and ways of being. 

• Larissa turns the word “bother” on its head to suggest that increasingly we are bothered about taking up Supervision. She recognises the difference between when she first started out and people thought she had a number of heads talking about Supervision and now where it is being talked about. 

• What bothers Coaches and Team Coaches about Supervision? We have to appreciate that adopting Supervision is a change. It is a fundamental difference to how Coaches, at least in North America have been practicing. Maybe there is a perception by Coaches that they are being put upon by having to accept Supervision as part of their practice, especially if it is seen as mandatory. If coaches are labouring under the assumption that they have been practicing individual coaching and team coaching for ages and could write the book they might be assuming there is nothing to be learnt by going to Supervision. Without understanding there is every chance the imposition of Supervision could feel heavy handed. 

• Tracy Bertran adds that Supervision can be exposing. You have to be vulnerable enough to expose things about your practice to allow Supervision to be enacted. You can feel vulnerable amongst your peers and it cannot be forgotten that Supervision allows you space to celebrate as well to share successes and interventions that worked. 

• We can be brought to the of our thinking, our comfort zone our feelings of safety and right to the edge of where we need to go to invite learning. Supervision can be in equal measure scary and brilliant. 

• Traci adds that often Team Coaches will deselect themselves from Group Supervision believing they are not yet experienced enough or have enough cases. This can also mean premature judgement by coaches that they will not add enough value. 

• Judgement about experience, whether you are too experienced or inexperienced can confuse the potential value of Supervision when coaches fixate on the relative exchange they will experience. 

• The differences in experience could be handled in the set up by Supervisors as Michele explains. We need to be careful not to engineer the set up too much. We too can make erroneous assumptions about what might work. It is both and. 

• It is very likely that protective defences are being exercised by Individual and Team Coaches in the space of Supervision. This begs the question how can we help as Supervisors? 

• Traci Manalini offers that when talking about different experiences or levels of coaches and number of cases they can or cannot offer etc might mean we have to accept the differences and not over engineer the set up. As a parallel Teams, very often do not chose their team colleagues. 

• Having 1:1 Conversations is one step that support the development of care and safety, the next might include the norms we create in a group to ensure reciprocity etc. 

• There is another parallel going on with respect to group Coaching. Tracy suggests that if you think about Team Coaching, team coaches are looking at the wisdom of the team and the same is true of Group Supervision. The learning in relation you get in group Supervision is similar to the process of surfacing the intelligence that resides on teams. 

• Michele notices her own resistance the mention of hours and the nominal value of 5 hours to be undertaken by Team Coaches if they chose to become certified. She questions whether 5 hours is enough. 5 hours is simply nothing for a team coach. 

• Tracy had a similar allergic reaction as Michele to the mention of 5 hours. For Tracy it is another “bother about Supervision” The more team Coaching Tracy engages with the more Team Coaching Supervision she needs. It serves as a restorative place a place where she can get professional reassurance. 

• If we think about Supervision providing Normative, Formative and Restorative resources this is especially true with Team Coaching. 

• As Larissa puts herself in the shoes of Coaches and Team Coaches she opines that it is often the case that Supervisors extol the virtues of Supervision. For Larissa naming 5 hours to support certification is serving a purpose and it is getting Supervision recognised. 

• Supervision is an investment in time and money and that could potentially bother Coaches as well. 

• Tracy would love the 5 hours to be an introductory taster to Supervision so that people could experience its value and wonder how they could have lived without it in the first place. 

• It would appear that as Supervisors, guests to the GOT podcast, that a threshold has been crossed to appreciate the value of Supervision. How can coaches and team coaches be communicated to in a way that makes the crossing so much easier? What can be said on this podcast to help people imagine what we are experiencing? 

• Traci suggests “to try it” to give Supervision a try and maybe not just once. Most of her practice, at least 90% have suggested that Supervision has been transformative. 

• Michele shares a story to help illuminate the potency of Supervision. What Michele was feeling and brought to Supervision was a belief “am I good enough” What she learnt in Supervision was that she was carrying this belief on the part of the team. It was not hers to own. In fact each of the executives in her case was feeling really challenged and each of them in differing ways were questioning whether they were up to the challenge.  A parallel process was revealed.

• Tracy is pretty sure that each of us and anyone who has attended group supervision about their team practice will have been asked “what belongs to you and what belongs to the system?’ Larissa further adds to the same theme by describing how two coaches who operated as Co-Coaches both came to the realisation in Group Supervision that what they thought was about them as a dynamic or as a duo and around which they were stuck was actually the stickiness of the system. Having a place to get unstuck helped them see what they had to do to help the team get unstuck. 

• One way to distinguish between Mentoring and Supervision is to appreciate the different language used in both. In Supervision psychological phenomenon such as Parallel process, transference and counter transference are often used terms. Supervision is the art of looking at systems and calling out complex patterns and concerns. Mentoring is more about the acquisition of skills and competencies. 

• Coaching and Mentoring can often be about goals and achievement whereas Supervision is often a place holder for the unknown, that which wants to emerge. It’s often about “kicking the tyres” looking at cases from different angles or looking awry. Supervision is akin to theory U which speaks to sensing and allowing for emergence. 

• Some knotty issues can present in Supervision. Relations and team dynamics invariably surface in Supervision, especially when you think about the many interdependencies  on Teams. Entanglements is often a theme. 

• Contracting is or seems to be a fairly typical topic that presents in Supervision “All roads lead to contracting. System Patterns is another. Often difficult to see in the moment and very often surfaced in Supervision. 

• To be able to see the very many complex dynamics and pattern on teams is the territory of Supervision.

• Roles come up a lot in Supervision as well. The role of the Team Coach, the seduction to assume responsibility to fix the team is often a conundrum to be seen. The proclivity of Team Coaches to be sucked into the team, to assume a role on the team or to become enmeshed is often a theme to be explored in Supervision. 

• Money and people willing to invest in themselves is the unspoken elephant in the room. It bothers Traci that so many coaches, team coaches and often Supervisors question their own value and so do not invest in this magical offer. 

• The podcast conversation comes full circle to explore the vexating temptation by coaches to invest more in the acquisition of knowledge and skills than in their personal professional development and reflective practice as coaches. 

• Michele wonders if there also a need to educate our Clients as well.  Michele is provocative and asks, how many of us as Coaches put at the top of our credentials the fact that we are in regular supervision? 

• Michele acknowledges that she might have ceased the “grabbing” of more courses in favour of Supervision but she has not mentioned that in her credentials. 

• Tracy hopes that coaches embrace supervision as an integral part of their practice. Larissa shares this hope and adds that she hopes for more research, to provide an evidence based rationale for Supervision. Traci was really struck by the word integration used across the podcast and her hope is that coaches integrate their knowledge and skill acquired in Supervision. Michele would love everyone to experience Supervision for the depth, joy and resourcing it provides

Ways to get in touch with my four Guests 

1. Tracy Bertran, PCC, Director of Mu Team Brilliance www.teambriliance.co.uk

2. Michele White, Owner People & Development LTD, https://www.peopleanddevelopment.co.uk/

3. Traci Manalani, MA, PCC, ACTC & rebel with a cause, Principal of Practical Solutions for Sustainable change. ps4change.com/about.html

4. Larissa Thurlow, linkedin.com/in/larissathurlow

Introduction:  Agnieszka Wolinska-Skuza is CEO of MasConsulting. She is an experienced strategic consultant with a background in top management consulting in Corporations. Agnieszka from the Warsaw School of Economics & gained her PhD in Economics from the University of Westminster in London, Trinity College London. Agnieszka is the author of the book The ART of Changing Your Mindset. Agnieszka recently moved to Barcelona where she lives with her husband and two children. 

Podcast episode Summary:  This podcast discusses the important topic of Quiet Quitting, a phenomenon that is not new but has gained increasing interest and concern post the Pandemic. Agnieszka shares how pervasive Quiet Quitting is and what Leaders need to become to address this pernicious concern and to focus decisively on people. Much has to do with Mindset, the mindset around leadership, growth supporting a robust culture and responsibility. 

Points made throughout the Episode: 

• Agnieszka entered came into this field by observing organisations in the process of change using her background in business consulting. She observed a lot of issues with Productivity, Retention and Mental Health issues post-Pandemic including of course geo-political and social crisis & high inflation together having a profound impact on workforce strategy 

• Quiet Quitting is a complex topic that Agnieszka has been investigating for a long time. It is not a new phenomenon but before it did not get the attention it is receiving today. 

• Quiet quitting presents in different ways making it complex to observe and detect. It impacts many elements of the business including a powerful retention strategy. 

• Quiet Quitting can be defined as a phenomenon where you can observe that people are disengaged at work, where people are losing motivation, losing focus, uneven participation by withholding and detaching psychologically from the job. Employees can refuse more tasks & question why it is important to work hard. 

• Quiet Quitting can be simply described as a change in Engagement 

• The critical characteristics of high performing Leaders & their teams and how much mindset influences how they are managed. Mindset is critical for Leaders and in particular having a Growth Mindset. 

• A Growth Mindset predisposes leaders to create a healthy culture of accountability, that drives business growth. Leaders with a Growth Mindset see opportunities within their teams, they look for possibility, they don’t hide believing all efforts have been wasted and they do not blame others. 

• Leaders who lead with a Growth Mindset make every effort to accelerate their teams growth even in times of crisis. 

• So leading with a Growth Mindset is critical if you chose to create a team that is pro-active, creative and solution focused. 

• Exceptional Leaders know & appreciate they have to consciously grow their skills and the skills of their teams. Strong passion, energy and a vision for growth inspires others to be part of business growth and success. 

• To adopt a Growth Mindset you have to interrogate your beliefs, thoughts and feelings and in order to assume a growth mindset you have to believe in the possibility for growth, to look opportunistically and to be focused energetically. You won’t be minded to blame the situation but be oriented to search for solutions. 

• You can always find a way forward if you look for possibility and solutions. If you have a fixed mindset the likelihood is that you will give up and retreat, you will always blame the situation and people and you will likely lose people. 

• Given how tired and exhausted Leaders and people are after the pandemic the question becomes one of asking how to try to do more with a more positive energy. 

• People are valuing their time differently and so if they observe that their leaders are not behaving positively they will put distance between them and what they esteem to be toxic leadership. 

• Focus and being deliberate or intentional about what work means today, giving people a new sense of belonging are ways to help retain people. 

• After the Pandemic people have come to value their time differently. They are focused on how they spend their time and the quality of that investment. 

• So quiet quitting is really about changing in engagement -Engagement is a kind of choice. You can chose to engage or to withdraw. 

• A culture that engages people could look like improvements in the ways flexibility is offered to work, a re-focus on purpose and an acknowledgement that empathy is required. 

• Leaders also need to look at time, their relationship to time, engagement and their choice of Leadership 

• Leaders are feeling the pressure of change, of market forces of their work loads and their own mental health. Important for Leaders to mind their mental health to be able to share their energy & empathy with others. 

• There is an onus on Leaders to monitor their state of mind. If you lose your energy and it impacts your capacity to be empathetic people will feel this and be equally impacted. 

• State of mind is everything and it is an everyday occupation. If you want to have a strong mindset you need to feed your mind every day.

• How does Quiet Quitting show up? No one will tell you as a Leader that quiet quitting has become a phenomenon in your organisation but you can begin to observe behaviours and be curious. Isolation, participating less, valuing time differently are the hidden signs that something in the culture is amiss. This amounts to disengagement at work. Others signs include becoming less available for mandatory meetings or less volunteering for social events or even not answering emails promptly or as before. 

• Gallup has for years now being reporting on engagement at work. Statistics consistently slight poor levels of engagement at work at around 33%. Quiet Quitting is not knew and so how can Leaders be more bothered about their approaches? 

• It is important to remember the power dynamic at work and Leaders have a disproportionate amount of power available to them and this power can be used to energise the work force. 

• Wellbeing, retention strategies, upskilling etc are all tools which if employed can make the job of workers more fulfilling. How do Leaders help their teams see this perspective together. They have to re-think how to engage teams in this work as well. 

• There needs to a recognition that people are valuing their time differently and they have talent that can be deployed. This requires new thinking, new methods of approach and more proactivity on the part of Leaders and teams. 

• It could be advantageous to start asking and questioning the employee base for their new thinking, to hear their obstacles and concerns and to find solutions together. 

• It is one thing to conduct exit interviews and hear the missing factors that precipitated a leave and another to engage earlier to understand how an organisations atmosphere could be improved. 

• Being explicit about the business, business performance, the standard you are respecting, the values you are honouring and the ethics by which you are operating are all features that could make a difference to employees to hear. 

• If Leaders chose to take a critical look at their culture and to institute change they need to go back to the fundamentals and examine their values. Open and transparent dialogue is required along with perhaps a modicum of vulnerability by the leader- asking for help for example. 

• As a Leader if you sense there are issues with your culture with Quiet Quitting don’t hide. 

• Changing Culture requires that the effort be shared,  where joint responsibility for the success is owned collectively. This can happen if the right atmosphere is created and there are no negative consequences for speaking up or sharing ideas. 

• Quiet Quitting and a lack of psychological safety are probably pretty close cousins which suggests that there is a large gap to address to course correct. It doesn’t mean it is impossible to recover especially if the right attitude is employed and Leaders can admit that they missed information. 

• The Pandemic has more than likely contributed to Quiet Quitting and the opportunity to catch creeping disillusionment when people were working from home and on screens. 

• To start adopt a Growth Mindset. Find out what are the limiting beliefs and obstacles on teams. Lack of trust for example is a limiting belief, or the idea that if people work remotely they will not be productive. Leaders might resist, by micro managing etc. this instead of looking for alternative solutions. 

• Accepting the phenomenon of hybrid working, accepting that people have a changed relationship to time could result in some constructive new norms that everyone can agree. 

• Leaders often underestimate their success in creating conditions of belonging for example believing they are doing a better job than others judge them to be doing. 

• Deloitte research has found considerable discrepancies or disconnect between how a Leader perceives their effort and how an employee experiences it. Only 56% of employees believe a company’s executives  cares about their wellbeing whereas the same executives score themselves 91% 

• Leaders have to be aware of theses gaps in perception as cited by Deloitte and start with manageable strategies to narrow these gaps. 

• Agnieszka suggests starting by setting clear expectations for teams, asking questions about working hours, and reasonableness in terms of those same expectations. There is often a large gap between expectations and realism. 

• Role clarity, growth opportunities and expectations are subjects or topics that are often not clear & require conversation. Are we clear about the many limiting beliefs and obstacles that sit on teams? Does the team feel connected to the Organisations Purpose? 

• Start with a diagnostic and get a base line understanding of where people are, knowing it might be hard to digest but recognising that this is a process and a start. 

• Agnieszka’s book covers 12 areas in business and in life that are important. Her book is about transformational change in each of this areas. To help she teaches her readers at the start of her book how to adopt a Growth Mindset. Change for the subsequent chapters is made easier by using this particular lens. 

• Agnieszka also talks about our Comfort Zone and notices how important this is for Quiet Quitting too. She encourages us to move outside of our comfort zone to deal with Quiet Quitting. It might appear as hard work at first but it can also be very rewarding. 

• If Leaders are willing to put themselves outside of their comfort zone they should not resist Quiet Quitting but instead take actions to minimise it, investigate and ask probing questions to do with the company’s purpose, structure, conditions etc. 

• Leaders need to create the space for employees to be part of the solution. If they hold on to solving the surfaced issues by themselves they are in fact engaging in a fixed mindset and likely disenchant further. 

• People are happy to share their thoughts, ideas etc if they see it can yield value. 

• Agnieszka’s final request to listeners and Leaders is to focus on people 

Resources shared across this conversation

• www.awolinskaskuza.com

• The ART of Changing Your Mindset by Agnieszka Wolinska-Skuza

• Deloitte Insight www.deoitte.com/insights 

Introduction: Anneloes Raes is Professor in the Department of Managing People in Organisations and holder of the PUIG Chair of Global Leadership Development as IESE. She holds a PhD in Organisational Behaviour from Maastricht University and an MA in Psychology at the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.  Anneloes’s research has been published in academic journals such as the Academy of Management Review, The Journal of Applied Psychology, Human Relations and Small Group Work. Her research has also featured in press outlets such as the Financial Times and La Vanguardia. Anneloes lives in Barcelona with her Husband and two young boys. 

Podcast Episode Summary Teamness at the Top is not as prevalent as one might expect. Only 21-30% of teams across the globe can satisfy the elements that describe a real team.   The world of today and tomorrow asks that organisations can solve complex and wicked problems. That becomes possible if teams are able to mine the collective wisdom of teams, collaborate and share information so the best strategic decisions can be made. Anneloes illuminates what needs to shift to make this phenomenon a reality for top teams. 

Points made over the episode

• Anneloes started this podcast by describing her journey into this field of work. Her interest in this field started by way of her research for her PhD at Maastricht. Her formative studies in Psychology meant she was already interested in the interpersonal dynamics between people. Very early on she got the opportunity as part of her studies to sit in on the discussions of a board. 

• That experience shaped her thinking about top management teams. The reality of top teams making strategic decisions, sharing information together and collaborating well together is often far from what you might expect. These teams like others comprise human beings with all of their flaws and differing perspectives. 

• Team Based Leadership at the top is as crucial as it is the requirement for effective teams across the organisation, even when often people wonder if it is feasible or possible. When we look at organisational life we appreciate that so much of its success is dependent on teams and collaboration.  It is true too that we accept that we can achieve more together by way of the diversity and also the complementarity of team members, knowing that and especially where the work is too complex to do by an individual the default is team. 

• The work at the top is particularly complex with a high volume of task and uncertainty. 

• It is almost hard to understand that top teams would not work as a team. 

• We expect our leaders to be role models and we expect everyone in the organisation to be team players, how is it then that a top team can get away with not being a team? 

• Real opportunity for the top team to exemplify real team work, given the need to solve complex problems and model behaviour for the rest of the organisation. 

• Why then does it not prevail? There are many different versions of team work that top teams  aspire or desire. It is not as binary as either or dilemma. There are degrees of teamness. There is also the real possibility that members of the team have very different perspectives of the order of teamwork required. 

• Anneloes work takes an evidence based approach. In her research she found 3 significant reasons why a Top Team might choose better teamness

1. Strategic Decision Making at the Top; The Executive take better decisions by combining more and diverse perspectives. It is important to have a good process in place to combine these perspectives. 
2. Organisation Stability & Executive Sustainability -Being at the top of an organisation is a very demanding job. Operating in a truly functioning team can provide a lot of support. We say for a reason “its lonely at the top”  sharing the load of responsibility and creating a system of social support can mitigate this felt loneliness. It also makes sense when you consider the current focus on mental health and wellness and the increased openness to expressing vulnerability and concerns by employees in general.  The great man theory of Leadership is the oldest perspective on Leadership and one that is slowly being overturned for greater and greater degrees of peer executives teams. True teamness doesn’t come from scratch it requires effort even with the most benign of Leaders who welcome a strong leadership team around them. Time together & the maintenance of a well-functioning team needs investment. 
3. Setting the Tone at the Top. What are the implications for others in the organisation by way of the behaviours exhibited by the top team? The outcomes, decisions and types of conversation held at the top, how the team interacts their style, the unity they do or do not espouse all has an impact on others in the organisation. Anneloes took a real interest in this area and the relationship between the tone set from the top and the organisational climate. She expanded on this research to wonder about the implications this same tone had on employee wellness. 

There is a powerful cascading affect between the behaviour at the top and how it trickles down into the rest of the organisation. Empirical studies show strong connections and can refute the natural scepticism that might prevail to wonder if boardroom conversations behind closed doors can impact individuals who never come into contact with those same leaders. The tide is turning and in favour of this focus, where employees are now considered an incredibly important stakeholder about whom the top team needs to be responsible. 

• Top Management cannot assume that their conversations behind closed doors remain just that, behind closed doors. The conversation leaks out and has an impact on employees. 

• Teamness at the top  needs a variety of support and structuring in terms of time , relationship management and task completion as well as external professional help. 

• 8 hours together in terms of relationship equity is a good start and top teams need to be able to manage the distractions that could impose on or collapse the time focused on building relations even when teams do not have the vocabulary, comfort etc.. 

• We could collapses the notion of what it means to work and appreciate the importance of collaboration and relations and it does not have to be so difficult. Teams do not have to get too worked up about how “it should be” and run the risk of being discouraged because they cannot achieve relationship excellence. 

• Don Hambrick has designed an assessment for Management Teams that can be used to assess the Teamness of Top Teams. This assessment tool has a series of questions in three dimensions; Joint Decision Making, Information Exchange and Collaborative Behaviour. It is a very practical check list that top teams can use for conversation and contracting. It is also a very useful tool by which a team can explore different perspectives held on the team

• Anneloes refers back to the team she observed while she was researching for her PhD. She recalls how ably the team were to align their calendars and offer support to each other. 

• Teamness at the top is often stymied or hampered by the mindset that is held by the members of the top team. The idea of a strong one Captain on a ship notion gets in the way of real teamness. The real fear that the people on the team will get into conflict if they try to become a real team. Similarly the fear that the team will take forever to make decisions or does not have the accountability to do so are other reasons why top teams might stay shy of becoming a real team. 

• These fears are often valid as Team Work is not necessarily easy or even in all cases a good thing. Group think for example is a risk or trap teams fall into when they do not want conflict. On balance these concerns are held in the minds of Leaders but don’t necessarily play out in reality. Good process management for teams can prevent some of these perceived risks. 

• Being explicit about the teams mindset, their level of awareness, the common goals they want to achieve are ways that invite dialogue and help teams get into action as a team. 

• Having a common purpose, a why, can put the need for team into perspective and help the Top Team navigate what might initially be awkward conversations, fears etc. 

• Anneloes’ suggests a team can start by creating a common understanding of where the team is and where it wants to go. She uses the checklist mentioned above with the three dimensions, Joint Decision Marking, Information Exchange and Collaboration to discover with the team where they might against each dimension. It helps to have a common vocabulary. Anneloes is fully aware that of course there are so many more dimensions by which to asses a team for example in terms of interpersonal relations etc. but this check list serves as a starting point.

• Facilitating discussions, putting in place learning mindsets and creating the conditions for a safe space to express perspectives always in service of the collective goal are some of the processes Anneloes employs with Top Teams. 

• Having a discussion to really bottom out & understand what is the Tops Teams collective goal and what the strategic priorities is an important & relevant discussion. 

• Having the “What” we are here to do and the “How” we are going to get there along with a learning mindset, appreciating there will be hurdles along the way and it is a journey,  can advance the Top Team on a good level of Teamness. 

• The future of work would be better served in Anneloes’s opinion if teams and individuals alike had a better mindset around collaboration. The idea of a One Man Leader is very limiting to address the complexities of our world.  

Resources Mentioned Across this Episode

1. IESE Business School www.iese.edu
2. The “Teamness” of Top Teams based on Hambrick, 1994, Simesek et al., 2005 and Raes et al., 2013
3. “Many Leaders, however are ambivalent about teams. They fear overt conflict, tunnel vision, lack of accountability and indifference to the interests of the organisation as a whole” ….their fear of delegating -losing control-reinforces the stereotype of the heroic leader who handles it all.”

Manfred Kets De Vries, 2020  

Introduction: Bernard Desmidt is an accomplished Coach, Facilitator, Speaker and Author. His first book is called; Inside Out Leadership: How to master the 4 Principles of Effective Leadership and become the Leader that others will follow. His second book is called: Team Better Together. Bernard was born in South Africa and he lived there until he was 38 and then he emigrated to Australia where he now lives with his wife and children. 

Podcast Episode Summary “Moods are the most contagious phenomenon known to humans. We are biologically, inescapably emotional beings – everything we do, is because of the mood we’re in. Each day we are called to deal with unanticipated interruptions and interferences - breakdowns to our habitual rhythm of life. Breakdowns can be both positive and negative - winning the lotto vs losing one's job. Our resourcefulness to adapt and deal with our breakdowns, is a function of the mood we choose to live and lead from. Moods are ‘spaces of possibility’; they can predispose us to limited or infinite possibilities for action” Bernard Desmidt. 

This episode speaks to the domain of learning called Moods. 

Points made over the episode

• Bernard starts this podcast by reminding us of his background and the Mood of life in South Africa that shaped him and then helped him appreciate the gift  & wonder of South Africa. 

• Bernard began to appreciate the potency of moods through lived experience. 

• Growing up in South Africa and living through Apartheid, Bernard recalls the moods of despair and anger as a “white child” living a privileged life by contrast to other children around him. 

• 85% of Black South Africans lived in abject poverty, pain & abject cruelty. Bernard remembers his anger at the injustices and his feeling of powerless to do anything about his experience.

• It took Bernard a while to legitimise his heritage and to come to appreciate the other side of anger & despair to appreciate the wonder of South Africa. 

• 3 African expressions inform his way of being and working today 

• Sibona -a Zulu word for hello, which means “I see you and by seeing you, I bring you into being. By seeing each other is this way we hold each other with respect, dignity and legitimacy- The mood is deep acceptance of who you are. 

• Ubuntu- Means we are because you are & because you are definitely I am. This serves to affirm an others humanity, by recognising their uniqueness and their differences. This expression acknowledges our interconnectedness-The Mood of Gratitude embodies this expression. 

• Hambi Gashi – means “Go well, gently in peace and travel safely- The Mood is of deep care and Compassion. 

• We exist as Human Beings in 3 domains. Language, Moods & Emotions and The Body. At its essence this trinity distinguishes human beings from any other living form. 

• Moods are fundamental to our existence yet we are mood illiterate. 

• Daniel Goldman brought us information about Emotional Intelligence and EI at its core is about mood awareness. 
• We are never not in mood & all moods serve us until they don’t. Example Frustration. What is frustration taking care of? What is it guiding us towards. Moods are signposts. The mood of frustration is signposting that I am not feeling heard or understood. 
• The mood of anger is a signpost to feeling taken advantage of. Use the energy housed in frustration or anger to access what is missing. 
• Emotions are energies that move us. 
• The mood of anxiety is letting us know that we might come to harm. The mood of curiosity is signposting us to our openness to learn. 
• Alan Sieler, Fernando Flores, Miriam Greenspan and for me Julio Olalla were all teachers of the distinctions of Moods. 
• There are six moods of life & Moods manifest in language. The language act of assessments illicit moods that predispose us to action. In resentment I am preoccupied with seeking revenge. 
• There are two linguistic acts that are fundamental to the understanding of the manifestation of moods. Assessments and Declarations. Generally when we are in assessment there are 3 categories of assessment that we make. Facticity, Possibility and Uncertainty. There are two declarations we generally make. Oppose and Accept. If we plot assessments on the horizontal axis and declarations on the vertical axis we can plot these 6 universal moods. Resentment, Acceptance, Resignation, Ambition, Anxiousness and Wonder. 
• Bernard goes through each of these moods sharing their predispositions for action 
• In the first category of assessment is for  facticity; we can either oppose the facticity and live in Resentment or accept the facticity and embrace acceptance. 
• The mood of acceptance is the gateway to living a fulfilled life. It is the highest order of mood. Grief for example is refusing the facticity of death. When we move into acceptance we meet the mood of sadness for our loss. 
• The second category of assessment is for possibility. Opposing the possibility for change leads to resignation. This is a toxic organisational mood. We are predisposed to look to whom to blame and or find reasons why things cannot happen. You cannot flourish in resignation you can only flounder. The acceptance of what is possible elicits the mood of ambition. 
• Bernard shares the example of Pfizer and Astra Zeneca looking for a vaccine in Covid. They had to live a mood of acceptance first that the protocols they usually insisted were not available and then live a mood of ambition that a breakthrough could be found. 
• The third category of assessment is uncertainty, in otherwards I cannot control or predict, When I do not accept the normality of uncertainty I experience the mood of anxiety. In anxiety we are minded to believe we will come to harm and we will not be able to manager or control this inevitability. The mood of anxiety is bubbling away when it comes to accepting a new cadence for work for example and it requires of us to accept the uncertainty and access the wonder of what could be. 
• When we give permission to these moods to control us they make us unresourceful. Resentment, Resignation and Anxiety are called “selfish moods” We are preoccupied with seeking revenge, victimhood and or protection. 
• The Moods of `acceptance, ambition and wonder are called relational moods. 
• To flourish a team needs to access the gateways of acceptance, ambition and curiosity. 
• I shared an example of a conversation I had the evening before this podcast where I became very frustrated with a hotel chain who with every person I spoke gave confusing and different information. I did not achieve a satisfactory outcome Bernard offered me the perspective that the mood of frustration was serving me. It was signposting me to the lack of clarity regarding the hotels policy with respect to Vouchers. He suggested the action necessary was an explicit request. 
• Brene Brown discovered through her research that the male species or at least 80% of men could only name 3 moods-Happy, Sad, Angry. We are collectively mood illiterate. 
• Working with Teams Bernard will share the first perspective & distinction that as humans we live in 3 domains, Language, Moods & Emotions and the Body. 
• The second perspective Bernard will share with a team is that teams rise and fall by the quality of their relationships. There are 8 elements of effective working relationships, Respect, Trust, Concerns, Moods, Appreciation, Co-ordination, Conversation and Alignment. Mood is an important constituent part. 
• From here a team can move into simple observation and identification answering the question “what mood am I in?” Followed by the question for what sake am I in this mood? What is this mood signposting and what is it taking care of?
• It is important to legitimise the potency of moods and become versed in the variety available to us. 
• Bernard shares a story with us about a team with whom he has been working for some time where the team was stuck around an issue. The team were invited to look at the issue from the lens of mood. They identified irritation, frustration and anger when this issue was surfaced. Appreciating that the team is responsible for the success of their collective efforts Bernard invited the team through a series of enquiry to be curious about the mood they needed to live to explore this issue productively. 
• Bernard suggests we stay vigilant in mood, to identify what these moods are signposting. Too often teams want to exorcise moods from the conversation. 
• Unfortunately for us as humans we cannot not live in mood. What is possible is to design the mood we can commit to live. 
• When Bernard hears someone declare “I am angry” he asks who is the “I” We are not our moods we only have them. When we can recognise that “I am in a mood of anger” we create the space between ourselves and our mood, to create a subject object distinction. 
• When we say “I am angry” we are allowing the mood to control us. What we can do instead when we say “I am in a mood of anger” we can manage the energy of that mood and the information it is sharing. Often we over identify with our moods and become fearful of them, leaving no room to manage them. 
• Bernard shares a story of a client and the many moods that same client moved through in the course of the conversation and how Bernard became acutely aware of his own mood and how he was being “infected” until he wasn’t and allowed himself to accept the choices his client was making in the moment. 
• Moods are contagious and Bernard had to be mindful not to take on his clients mood but instead “be with him” while he moved from anger to acceptance and through to possibility. 
• Important to remember when faced with a team communicating multiple moods to not rush to move them. Bernard invites teams to wonder about what is happening for them in body. Moods manifest in body. You can see a mood. You cannot fake a mood. As a coach you can offer a perspective and share what you see.
• Bernard shares his approach with a team and how he enters the conversation of mood. 
• We have to trust and accept that human beings live in moods. What is unknown to us and often confusing to us is the understanding of moods.
• Bernard facilitates the six moods of life with a team in an embodied practice. 
• Some tips or nuggets to learn how to manoeuvre our moods. 

1. Notice & Name It- Monitor your mood and ask what mood am I in? Do not judge yourself 

• Allow & Acknowledge it 

1. Investigate & enquire. For what sake am I in this mood? What is this mood taking care of?

• Choose and Cultivate- So what mood could better serve me?

• Declare and Develop that chosen mood. So what new possibility could this mood open me up to?

• Keep a mood diary. Ask what was the assessment you were making? Then notice what that mood predisposed you to do or not to do. 

• Use the acronym W.A.I.T – why am I talking? We talk for only two reasons to understand and to be understood. 

• Remember we are not our moods we have them. I am in a mood of anger or I am in a mood of happiness gives us space and the opportunity for choice. 

• Recognising that we are not our moods opens the possibility for forgiveness. 

Resources shared 

• www.bernarddesmidt.com
• Team Better Together by Bernard Desmidt
• A Guide to Manage Your Moods
• Inside Out Leadership: How to Master the 4 Principles ofI Effective Leadership and become the Leader others chose to follow

Introduction

• Marva Sadler is the COO of Coaching.Com and has a reputation for her extensive expertise in strategy creation, leadership development and executive coaching.  She is an experienced business executive and consultant with over 25 years leading strategic and operational growth programs for small to mid-sized organizations
• Marva has also served in the nonprofit sector as Program Director for People Helping People, an employment success program for low-income women, and as a Board Member and strategic advisor for No More Homeless Pets of Utah. 
• Ms. Sadler is a certified Theory of Constraints Jonah.

Podcast Episode Summary

• This episode shares wisdom about Leading a team and the kinds of principles that help teams be great together. Applying Civil Discourse, being human and kinder with each other in our interconnected world are themes that feature across his conversation. 

Points made across the podcast episode 

• Important to remember that Marva, in addition to the career highlights shared, is also the mother of five adult children 
• Biggest lesson Marva learnt from her own family is that a Leader is not without honour except in her own family. 
• Marva recognised that her children saw her as a parent or “just my Mum” and that kept her grounded, maybe humble but with a sense of perspective. 
•  In a previous role, as owner for a small historic woollen blankets manufacturer, reproduction Civil War & Revolutionary War Blankets, Marva was invited to lobby Senators and Congressman. The lobbyist she was with was surprised that Marva could “hold her own” Marva makes the point that they are human too. 
• Her attitude in communication even in the face of authority is to treat people with respect. 
• Marva was doing very well in her previous role in a Tech Strategy Consulting firm and one of the main reasons she moved to WBECS to become CEO for a coaching company was because she believed there was a serious deterioration in civil discourse. 
• She asked the question, “who are the people most likely to change the way we speak to each other”? not politicians because they are part of the problem and not the religious because they have lost influence. Her answer was businesspeople and all of the people they touch. 
• The people most likely to influence businesspeople are coaches. The vast majority of coaches believe in and practice civil discourse. 
• The reason Marva got back into coaching was the desire that more/all people speak to each other more kindly. 
• WBECS firmly believe in the value of Team Coaching. It is a significant trend in the industry and the next step in the evolution for coaches. 
• Coaches are needed to help Leaders; businesspeople think about how to do things together. We can multiply our impact when we work with teams. 
• Teams are the building blocks for how organisations get their work done. 
• There are many approaches to team coaching not all of them coming out of coaching perse, for example agile principles housed in agile development and agile management of teams. 
• The project management institute or PMI are doing a lot of work around how to make teams more effective. 
• Important to remember that team coaching is not coaching more people at the same time. It is not about coaching individuals on a team but the team itself, the interactions between team members and the spaces between. 
• There are skills to be developed in working with interactions on the team and the spaces between that require skill development. 
• Marva has always been convinced in the efficacy and productivity of teams. She has always worked to help individuals on her teams to work collaboratively, use the collective wisdom on teams to be more creative
• The process of collaboration on teams gives you answers that were not even visible to individuals on teams. 
• There are techniques and methods that team coaches teach teams that help teams illuminate how they are showing up as collective. 
• Marva shares a story from her own history and family system that demonstrates the power of team. She regales a story about her own daughter and how in one year, participating on a soccer team, the team went from success to demise based on the different approaches of two different coaches, one believing in individualism and stardom and the other believing in the wisdom of collective endeavour. The individualist approach meant the girls were pitted against each other and the result was failure. 
• The question is then what does the team and or team of teams accomplish together by being willing to put their egos aside. 
• The most important techniques include the systematic view of the ecosystem in which the team resides. 
• Objectives come from discerning a balanced set of objectives in appreciation of stakeholder needs. 
• Marva has witnessed a shift in strategic focus from maximising shareholder value, or managing future cash flow, to maximising stakeholder value in a balanced manner. 
• The former approach was in humane. It did not value the environment or employees for example. Marva goes on to question the value of this former approach and she makes the case for Team Coaches, whom she believes take a broader more balanced and systemic approach to team and team of team value creation in terms of the balanced outcomes they help teams create. 
• Marva has empathy and sympathy for Leaders who preference 1:1 management of their team members. It is not however the most effective approach a Leader can take such as encouraging interaction among team members, encouraging collaboration and innovation across team divides is critical to team leadership. Getting people not just to row in the same direction but in creating new directions in which they can row together. 
• Marva is a big believer in rewarding the outcome and the people who contributed to the success of the outcome, she is also a big proponent of letting the group recognise individuals if that is important. 
• The Team Leaders job is to recognise the group or team and the productive behaviours they display. 
• Culture is critical to create the conditions where conversations can be had “in the team room” with such psychological safety that team members can disagree, including disagreeing with the team leader. To do this we need to transcend our individual egos. 
• We can sometimes believe in our own publicity and Marva refers to Marshall Goldsmiths book “What got you there won’t get you here” using behaviours that when overused become weaknesses.
• Most leaders suffer from ego fragility. Do team leaders really mean it when it comes to disagreeing with them? 
• One of the best things we can do as Team Leaders is to model the behaviours that support radical candour. How do we admit our mistakes, apologise in front of team members when we have lost our equanimity. etc.
• It is a hard principle to model vulnerability when often admitting you are wrong can be seen as career limiting. 
• The construct that you have to be “on” that you are performing, managing everybody’s expectations, is exhausting. 
• If we can give people permission to put down that holographic image, they are projecting to just being real would be so liberating. This directs energy to the right things instead of reputation management, image management or ego management. 
• Social media is a place where we curate our images.
• Marva helps her teams focus on the business outcomes they need to achieve together. It is also important to spend time and energy on working out what are we trying to achieve as human beings with each other. 
• Marva spends time working on the team by asking questions like “how did we do in this meeting?” 
• The ROI of establishing relations with team members and between team members, understanding each other, cultivating commonalities and strengths within teams is almost infinite because it gives people the opportunity to navigate the concerns they are dealing with. 
• WBECS was already remote and had learnt a lot of techniques about operating teams remotely. It believed in the principle of providing support and care for individuals and so it was able to double down on the kinds of supports needed during the pandemic. Marva shares a story of where this principle came to life with a colleague suffering Covid-19 with her daughter at home. 
• The pandemic taught us many great new norms, caring for each other, considering ourselves as whole persons not just professional suits etc. Some of the threads of these new norms have been loosened. Some people continue to compartmentalise their lives. 
• Marva believes that some coaches are prone to a form of compartmentalising too. We are taught Civil Discourse in our profession as coaches but sometimes we forget those same principles in other domains of our lives. 
• Marva shares a story “on herself” to honour the title of this podcast called confessions from the field of Team Leadership, where she was not happy with the way she behaved and how she caught herself and ultimately responded. 
• Marva shares the labyrinth involved in communication between complaint and solution, pausing & reflecting on experience and evidence, choosing how to respond, managing the space between stimulus and response.  Victor Frankl. 
• The marriage of WBECS and Coaching.Com means greater access by coaches to technology and the use of a coaching management system and greater access to coaches by enterprises. In the middle Coaching.com hopes to offer a marketplace not just for coaching learning programs but products and services that coaches and companies can use. Principles U is an example of such a product being developed by Coaching.com 
• Coaching.com is building a responsive and dynamic eco-system, with a desire to raise the global standard of coaching by exposing more people to the value of coaching by lifting the quality of coaching and by bringing all things coaching into one space. 
• Coaching.com is coaching methodology agnostic. It is an open platform where all kind of coaching, coach training and affiliations are welcomed. 

Resources shared: 

Website: www.coaching.com 

Introduction

Aidan James Higgins is the CEO of ADEO Consulting. He is a Leadership Consultant, Emotional intelligence & Teamwork specialist and is passionate about getting people to be at their best. He is the author of the book Lead From You, which launched at the end of 2021 and is now in 7 countries. 

Podcast Episode Summary

This episode speaks to three concepts, awareness, authenticity & emotional intelligence. Aidan employs the psychometric The Enneagram to support leaders understand themselves and others better and to Lead from You. 

Points made across the podcast episode 

• Fish Slap story explored and why it resonated with Aidan. He was woken up at a Management Training Program where he realised, he was living from one world view. The training had shocked Aidan that the world he had been inhabiting was only one point of view.  
• Most of us are asleep. We are working on our programming without interrogating it to improve our self- awareness. 
• Aidan wrote the book Lead From You because of the appreciation clients & friends held for the work and their interest in learning more. 
• Feedback from the book suggests readers are appreciating the importance of self-awareness and how it is contributing to clarity of decision making, trust building, empathy & compassion 
• Aidan points out that we must have self-compassion to appreciate we have grown up to be & do in a particular way and until we come to be aware we think it is the only way. 
• Aidan has attempted to author a book that helps a person be a more complete person, to be happier and to lead. 
• Aware, emotionally intelligent & authentic Leadership is what is needed in the 21st century 
• People & Leaders need to wake up and pull back what is referred to as the veil of illusion. 
• To become self-aware, to be authentic and emotionally intelligent requires of a leader or team member to wake up. Once people wake up, they generally become curious to learn more. 
• Resistance is often present in this work, too many of us are trained to avoid emotion, being soft and being empathetic or compassionate. 
• People do not realise they are unaware. Aidan shares a story from Anthony de Mello to help explain what he means by being self-aware. 
• Tich Na Han says “people will not change until they are sick of suffering”
• We are subject to a programming that was brought into us early on in our lives. We make all kinds of assumptions about the way we are to lead or act. Example: Must remain in control. 
• Benefits of becoming self-aware & other awareness means clearer decisions, clearer emotional awareness and therefore information, access to creativity and innovation. 
• We evolve a view of the world until we see it from where it has come and how useful it is to remain. For example, the child who learns to please people to get attention or a person who is ignored if they do not win can be programs that thwart successful leadership in the future. 
• Becoming self-aware is not a thing you do it is about understanding. Knowing what water is doesn’t make you wet. 
• Aidan helps clients become aware by first creating a safe space to be together and then by sharing how people are likely to have come up through the world. He shares his framework and gives people space to reflect on their beliefs, habits and patterns, ways that have informed up until now. 
• Aidan shares another example where he asks a client how is feeling when he is not working. The client responded “trapped” and felt the rise of anxiety when he wasn’t doing anything. This client then became aware that underneath is drive to get things done, there was an anxiety driving this way of being. 
• Understanding changes behaviour not a set of things to do. 
• Sometimes you ask someone how they feel, and they do not have the words or language to tell you. It can often be about giving clients words.  
• According to a Harvard Business Review, improved self-awareness on teams doubles decision making capability & doubles the ability of a team to deal with conflict. 
• The Enneagram is a system that has been around for years. Authored by the Greeks who divined that there were 9 ways to look at the world. These world views begin around the time of a child where object constancy is understood. It is similar but deeper than MYERS BRIGGS type indicator. 
• The Enneagram employed on teams helps team members understand each other better. Understanding in turn leads to emotional intelligence. 
• Working with a team, Aidan will start by building the self-awareness of the members of the team, often by using the Enneagram tool. Then he moves to create awareness of the other members of the team, which often brings a team to compassion and fuller sharing. 
• Team Emotional Intelligence explores nine norms. 3 Team Fundamental Norms: Roles and Responsibilities, Meetings and Goals & Objectives. 3 Individual Norms: Understanding Team Members, Demonstrating Care, Addressing undesirable behaviours, 4 Team Norms, Review the team, Support Expression, Build Productivity Proactively and Build Optimism, 2 External Norms; Build external relationships & Understand Team Context. These nine norms lead to three outcomes: Psychological Safety, Team Identity and Constructive Dialogue. 
• Aidan is amazed at how often the team fundamentals have not been worked. In an example Aidan shares how a Team Leader confused sending a team memo about the purpose of the team and their roles meant that they had been communicated with and would therefore understand. 
• Other examples of where teams get stuck include conflict avoidance believing “we are too nice” can mean bringing new ideas is risky. 
• Addressing team norms early on can mean a team becomes more effective early on and can in many instances take on bigger projects.
• Team resistance comes from being too quick with the change and not allowing buy-in over time, not explaining the “why” for change & not taking care to identity willing enthusiasts who could tip the team into working with the change. 
• With some teams all you can expect to get to is professional respect. Personal conflicts can mean enmity for years. 
• Resistance can also present from a formed organisational culture. 
• Teams need to remember that changing the composition of a team means that previous shared understanding is temporality lost, requires a period of mourning and then a willingness to induct new members. Teams must move back to Norm and storm where they had originally moved through all the four phases of team development: forming, norming, storming and performing. 
• Aidan explains that understanding is a holistic phenomenon. 
• Team Emotional Intelligence requires that a team deals with emotions, and we deal with them as they arise. Some people are terrified of emotions, or some of the 9 types are terrified especially in a high-pressured business that needs to get things done. There is fear that emotional expression will slow the team down. Instead, the team needs to generate appropriate boundaries, self-regulate and self-correct.
• The evolutionary mind suggests that teams are tribal, require a purpose and a Leader is appointed by way of certain needed tasks. 
• Notwithstanding that Aidan has already littered this conversation with anecdotes and stories he was asked to share a story of a team that illuminates his work. He chose a large team that was asked to go through extraordinary change, to cut costs while simultaneously improving productivity. This team was not provided all the information available, and they were not allowed to communicate the required change to those on the ground. Luckily the team were already self-aware, were IQ, EQ savvy and had each taken the Enneagram survey. Aidan had been working with the same team for two years. The situation demanded an understanding on the self of ambiguity, the impact of mindsets they needed to influence and the impact of culture. 
• That project was about teaching the team to focus on Purpose, decision making, trust and resilience but also about their own personal issues with control & trying & failing that needed to be managed.  
• Organisations today need to think in terms of Teams of Teams to be able to deal with the pressures & demands of today’s business. Complexity and expertise at the edges makes the case for this way of thinking.
• Teams need to be agile and have a peer structure where everybody contributes and where the Leader is a servant or at a minimum a supporter of the team. 
• Positive conflict is encouraged along diversity of opinion & an appetite emotional discourse within boundaries. 
• Finally, teams need time to reflect & improve. 

Resources shared: 

Books: Aidan James Higgins: Lead from You

Website: www.adeo.ie

Introduction

Gary A. DePaul is an accomplished speaker, with over 100 talks, workshops, and seminars. He is an author, and his books include Nine practices of 21st Leadership, What the heck is Leadership and why should I care & several books on HR and Talent Development. Gary is a performance consultant using analysis, instructional design, knowledge management and performance support interventions. He is also a researcher on subjects such as Leadership, DEIB and allyship, HRBP development and performance improvement. Gary is an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina, and he is also a podcast host. His show is called The Unlabelled Leadership Podcast 

Podcast Episode Summary

Leadership is misunderstood. Gary is passionate that in the 21st century we get clear on the distinctions between Management and Leadership, and we immerse ourselves in the practices that can yield qualitatively different experiences of Leadership. In this podcast Gary’s latest book, What the heck is Leadership and why should I care is explored and one vignette an audio clip Gary shares illuminates the difference between management and leadership in nano seconds. 

Points made across the podcast episode 

• Leadership started for Gary after being laid off from a company called Lowes and after a meeting with a gentleman by the name of Jim Hill who is a performance consultant. He encouraged Gary to “Think Big” 

• You never know the impact of your comments to another but in this instance, Gary took to heart the encouragement to think big and he decided to write a book.

• When you have enough people practising Leadership in an organisation it gives you a clear competitive advantage. 

• The challenge for 21st Leaders is the often-held belief of traditional leadership thinking. Our thinking about leadership has not evolved 

• Leadership is not the domain of the person at the top, wisdom or the second version of leadership says anyone can practice leadership 

• There is a famous definition by Mary Parker Follett, that says management is the art of getting stuff done through people. It is often considered a definition of Leadership

• Management is a role Leadership is not. 

• Leadership is not a role, but it is something you apply to a role. 

• Gary provides a technical definition for Leadership which is to help people mature, mentally and morally 

• David Marquett says Leadership is not about you but other people it’s about creating a work environment in which people can be at their best and Ron Karr from the Velocity Project says Leadership is about making people succeed beyond their wildest dreams. So Leadership is really about helping others build character that is revolutionary from Traditional views of Leadership 

• Gary shares an audio clip that illuminates the difference between doing managerial tasks and practicing leadership. Michael Junior is the compare. 

• The first clip sees a person asked to perform a task and he willingly obliges. The second practices leadership through a managerial task by encouraging the person to sing from his history, context where meaning is infused in the piece. The result is transformational 

• Gary shares an example of firing someone, where in one instance the manager can slave a script and execute the task perfectly or he can choose leadership and simultaneously give the person a “why” for the termination, help that person learn from the experience and grow. 

• The important thing to take from Gary’s 7 principles of Leadership is that it is not about you. They appear so simple, like for example the first principle “believe in others”, yet putting that principle into practice is beguiling challenging. 

• An executive for example believe that a person on joining an organisation must prove themselves before he believes in them. This is counter intuitive and can have the opposite affect that a person doesn’t perform. 

• It is so easy on a team to have in-groups and out-groups when you have people that might be a little different from you and you inadvertently exclude their opinions etc. 

• In a workforce reduction project, an executive warns against unwittingly firing minority groups and it turns out that is what happened. Further investigation proved that managers were reluctant to give Black people feedback and so their performance suffered, and they then suffered termination. Another example in Gary’s books showcases making assessments of people without due diligence to see if anything else might have been contributing to the workers seemingly being “lazy” So believing in others might sound simple but it is often much more nuanced. You have to dig deeper to understand what is driving people to behave as they do and your job as a manager is to remove those barriers. 

• Learning & Leadership go hand in hand. To practice the 7 principles outlined in Gary’s book, What the Heck is Leadership and Why should I Care, involves practice. 

• The Seven Principles include: Believe in others, Connect, Put Others First & Sacrifice Ego, give up Control, Encourage Change, Collaborate, Practice. 

• Gary studied 16 books academic books written on Leadership in the 21st century and from his analysis he derived the 7 principles from the patterns he saw repeat. He then wrote a book called the 9 practices of Leadership which showcases how to do Leadership. 

• Gary illuminates one of the 9 practices called Facing the Lion which incorporates listening and feedback. He shares that we comprehend so much faster than for example what we can read out loud and so when it comes to listening to another person the brain is nearly always focusing on how to respond rather than carefully listening and enquiring into what is being said for meaning. 

• Giving up or ceding control and sacrificing ego is a tough challenge for Leaders especially those new to Leadership. 

• Often employees feel they must ask for permission from line managers or leaders and the way to cede control is to ask for example “well how would you do it” very quickly initiative and learning can flourish. 

• Psychological safety, play and purpose are the wholly trinity on teams. If you as a member on a team believe that the Leader is not allowing for psychological safety to be the outcome necessary for great work, then you can initiate psychological safety by admitting “I wish I could do this better” or “I made a mistake” it is uncanny how quickly people row in behind you. 

• It be being vulnerable and allowing vulnerability it encourages others to do the same. 

• In response to phenomenon observed on teams Gary explains the “Fundamental attribution error” You need to study this idea, learn from examples, and not assume you know it. 

• We get in our own way. We assume as Leaders that we are the authority on so much and we fail to recognise the brilliance of others. 

• When you can recognise that you need the contribution of others, like those closest to the customer and you can contribute by way of your managerial experience then you can accomplish great things together 

• Gary explains group thinking and the importance of contribution and different contribution by team members. 

• Gary quotes Jack Zinger who says that “we take too long to train our leaders” and Gary adds to that by saying when we come into management, we do not express enough interest in Leadership we are all about the doing. Instead of taking more than 10 years to assume a Leadership mindset combine Leadership training with management training in combination. 

• A good practice for people coming into roles is to assign them a mentor and a better practice is to do that from outside of their discipline 

• Important to exercise our emotional and social intelligence in addition the exercise we already devote to our intellectual intelligence. 

• Gary would love to see a de-emphasise on technical functional skills, more emphasis on trying to avoid outgroups, championing ideas and enquiry. He wishes organisations were more attentive to biases, to championing leadership not just with executives but with many more across an organisation. 

• Gary would like to see organisations model values that are around Leadership to allow for innovation, creativity, and improved performance. 

• At the end of our conversation, I ask Gary for a Leadership hack and he offers his 4-step process to Leadership -material from Marshall Goldsmith 

• Foundation: You must read about leadership & acquire knowledge about leadership 

• Feedback: How am I doing? - what are two ideas to help me be a better listener for you? 

• Let people know about your blind spots 

• Follow up. Am I doing what I said I would?

Resources shared: 

Books written by Gary A. De Paul- 

• What the Heck is Leadership and Why Should I Care
• The Nine Practices of 21st Century Leadership

Introduction: Bernard Desmidt is an accomplished Coach, Facilitator, Speaker and Author. His first book is called; Inside Out Leadership: How to master the 4 Principles of Effective Leadership and become the Leader that others will follow. His second book is called: Team Better Together and is the subject of the Podcast. Bernard was born in South Africa and he lived there until he was 38 and then he emigrated to Australia where he now lives with his wife and children.

Podcast Episode Summary To flourish as a team is a choice. It takes discipline and in this episode Bernard Desmidt helps us appreciate the 5 disciplines teams can apply to get at impactful results & meaningful relationships. In addition Bernard litters this episode with nuggets of wisdom and incites to help understand the work of teaming better together.

Points made over the episode

• Bernard starts this podcast by sharing a story of his background that he has only recently shared publicly.
• 3 African expressions inform his way of being and working today
• Sibona -a Zulu word for hello, which means “I see you and by seeing you, I bring you into being. By seeing each other is this way we hold each other with respect, dignity and legitimacy
• Ubuntu- Means to affirm an others humanity, by recognising their uniqueness and their differences. This expression acknowledges our interconnectedness
• Hambi Gashi – means “Go well, gently in peace and carefully.
• Bernard spent 20 years in corporate life with companies like ICI and Goodyear in South Africa where he recognised the considerable waste of time on teams and the inherent dysfunction that often resides with teams
• After an outburst on an executive team, where Bernard was a member, the team engaged in Team Coaching. That was where Bernard met Peter Stephenson, a pioneer in team coaching in Australia at the time. Bernard recognised that he had found the work he was meant to do in the world and joined Peter’s company.
• The motivation to write Teams Better Together was born out of Bernard’s experience working with teams.
• The Paradox -The 80-60-20 heuristic shares that 80% of Leaders spend 60% or their organisational life on teams and only 20% of those teams flourish.
• High performing teams are elusive because Teams rise and fall by the quality of their relationships and until this is understood it is unlikely teams will co-ordinate wall and relate well together to get impactful results.
• It is important to invite teams to share their lived experience on teams to assess the quality of lived relationships – do team members hold each other with the same respect as they wish for themselves? Are they open to learning together? Is there sufficient trust and safety to speak concerns openly and honestly? These are some of the questions that can be asked to determine the quality of relations on teams
• Bernard administers an assessment against 5 disciplines. Two indicators in the fifth discipline score the lowest
• Team Behaviour & shared ways of working have been identified & consistently upheld
• Team members are open to receiving & giving feedback to each other on performance and behaviours
• The practice of observing a team in action whilst sitting in the corner of a room can often be the best form of due diligence of the effectiveness of a team.
• To flourish as a team is a choice. A High Performing Team is like an elite athlete, they employ rigorous discipline
• Teams are living systems that need to evolve, learn and adapt.
• Teams need to be able and willing to open themselves up to new ways of thinking, being and doing
• Teams need to acknowledge their interdepended nature, to know that relationships matter and have to be cultivated and will impact the impact of their results.
• 4 Team Types are distinguishable with discernment.
• Two dysfunctional teams reveal themselves as combative or competitive
• Two functional teams can be identified as Cohesive and Collaborative or Flourishing.
• There exists a subtle distinctions worth prising apart for our understanding.
• Cohesive Teams converge thinking similarly, they enjoy harmony often cordial hypocrisy, they often avoid speaking the truth or sharing their real concerns. Cohesive teams have a dysfunctional relationship with Conflict, Challenge and Critic.
• A Collaborative Team seeks divergence in thinking They are more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. Collaborative teams dance with conflict. Collaborative teams have a positive relationship with Conflict, Challenge and Criticism. Care underpins their search for the best results and best thinking.
• The work starts with an inordinate and unashamedly strong focus on the analysis phase. Bernard is keen to establish real commitment for the work of Teaming better together. He will do this in a few ways, by conducting in depth 1:1 conversations with each member of the team and by administering his own questionnaire against the 5 disciplines. The result is a discussion with the team that informs the work.
• Team Building is about forming. Where a team gets to know each other. Team Development is about informing where a team learns about decision making, processes for team co-ordination etc.. Team Coaching is about transformation where a team shift their mindset, ways of being and doing, the assessments they make & how they show up for each other.
• Team Coaching, or a typical program of work is about 7-8 months long.
• The work involves the assessment phase, contracting, 5 day long workshops, peer coaching and individual coaching of the CEO and others on the team
• The Five Disciplines can be described as follows;

1. Discipline One- The Mandate. Often the mandate is assumed. Here the team discovers how their stakeholders appreciate the team, what they need more from the team and what they find difficult.
2. Discipline Two- A Teams Purpose. Teams exist for a reason, they serve a cause and have a clear, compelling and challenging “WHY”
3. Discipline Three – The team design This is where the team designs its culture, the ways of working, the health of team relations and the bulk of time is spent in this discipline. The work of Gloria Kelly is introduced here. Gloria Kelly is an eminent sociologist and determined 8 elements to support effective relations. Bernard has employed her work and tweaked her model to include 5 elements to support ways of being and 3 elements to support ways of doing together. Trust, Respect, Concerns, Moods & Appreciation comprise the 5 being elements and Co-ordination, Conversations & Alignment comprise the 3 doing elements.
4. Discipline Four- This is the discipline to deliver. What are the collective performance goals that can only be delivered by the team working interpedently? In this discipline the work of Michael Bungay Steiner is employed where a team discerns between Bad Work, Good Work and Great Work
5. Discipline Five- Team Learning & Development. This discipline involves the team giving each other feedback on performance and behaviours, reflecting on work together and developing skills and knowledge to support the teams results. This discipline has the highest predictive validity that the team will flourish.

• An exercise for Appreciation: Here the team sits in a round and for two minutes each team member is afforded a piece of appreciation from the other team members
• The Sequence of Learning for a team follows the 5 disciplines over time. Discipline 5 and 3 are being weaved from the beginning.
• The gift of 1’s and 5’s is offered at the start of the assignment where Bernard encourages team members to be firm giving 1’s for development and 5’s for excellence where 3 is considered cowardly.
• Bernard concludes the Podcast conversation by sharing a story of a client in retail who by following the rhythm of the 5 disciplines managed to move from floundering to flourishing through Covid.
• The Podcast ends on a hopeful note & Bernard wishes that teams who chose to flourish can enjoy the results of wonderful relationships and impactful results.

Resources shared

• bernarddesmidt.com
• Team Better Together by Bernard Desmidt
• Inside Out Leadership: How to Master the 4 Principles of Effective Leadership and become the Leader others chose to follow
• Do more Great work by Michael Bungay Stanier