No Trust, No Team: The Secret to Building Trust and Healthy Conflict | #6

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Welcome to the latest episode of Unleash youh Impact, Unlock Others.

I'm here with Rich Horton today.

Hi, Rich.

Hi, Dave.

And today we're going to be talking about the topic of building relationships that matter.

So, Rich, last time we were together, we were talking about the importance of creating the right environment so that people could perform to their optimum level.

And we talked about that in the context of motivation, and we referenced Daniel Pink's great work on what does modern motivation mean in the workplace.

So today I'd like to explore a bit more.

How do we create that really inclusive, optimally performing team environment?

How do we do that?

And what are your experiences of having seen that done well, having seen it done not so well?

Building relationships that matter?

Why does that matter?

So I think people perform best when they feel that you have their back as a leader.

I wouldn't disagree with that.

And I think we need to create an environment where there's a degree of safety that people can just actually think, I can perform at an optimum level.

Yeah.

A common phrase used is that of psychological safety in the team.

So I think we could talk about a lot here.

Trust is therefore a key issue.

But I think maybe today let's pick up on this element of trust as a starting point, and how do we build out from that in terms of creating relationships that matter, but also using those relationships to drive optimal performance?

I think a really good leadership model, or team model, if you like, around trust, has been developed by a guy called Patrick Lencioni.

Yeah.

His most famous book is the Five Dysfunctions of Team.

Great book.

Yeah.

In which he articulates a model which is basically a triangle with five layers.

So why don't we use that as a basis for today's discussion and weave in some our own experience, our own thoughts around that?

Yeah, yeah.

So you said the model has five layers.

Do you want to explain to the listeners what those five layers of the model are?

Yeah.

So imagine a triangle.

Imagine five layers.

And the bottom layer, or the foundational layer probably is a better term for it, is trust.

Yeah.

So if you have a good level of trust in place, you're going to create an environment where people will feel able to disagree with you or each other.

So the next level up is the ability for a team to engage in healthy conflict.

It's interesting about conflict.

A lot of People think conflict is a negative thing, but actually there is such a thing as healthy conflict.

Yeah.

And I get a little bit worried if I work with a team and say there's no conflict at all.

We've really got on really well.

That might ring a few alarm bells for me, because it's nice to get along and it's important to get along a bit, be friendly and respectful to each other.

But actually, you need to create an environment where you can disagree without falling out.

Well, maybe we'll bring out some of our own personal experiences, because you and I are in many ways quite different.

Although we share the same sense of purpose, we are also quite different people.

And we definitely have conflict.

Yes.

But we use it in a way which is a healthy conflict, not an unhealthy conflict.

Yeah.

And that's positive.

That's a positive thing for us.

It's a positive thing for our business.

So if people feel that they have a voice in the context of disagreement, the next level above that, then the third layer, the triangle model, is what Patrick Lencioni calls getting commitment.

Yeah.

If you're talking about something as a team, you're debating and you come to a decision, it's really important that you get the team to commit to the decision.

Absolutely.

In other words, they don't go away and circumvent the decision or undermine the decision outside of the team context.

And I'm sure that goes on quite a lot where people.

They sort of feign commitment, but actually just go and do their own thing afterwards.

Yeah.

And often people feign commitment because they don't feel, or they feel unable to share their perspective, share their opinion.

They feel that they might get shouted down or whatever the reason for that is.

So we've got trust, we've got healthy conflict, we've got gaining commitment.

And then the fourth level is accountability.

So making sure people follow through on that commitment.

Basically, it's following through on the commitment.

There's a subtle twist here in this model.

So Patrick Lencioni talks about team accountability.

The best teams hold each other to account.

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely.

So rather than the manager having to do all the accountability conversations, the team, naturally, because they feel safe, they have a voice, the decisions are clear and there's commitment to those decisions.

They then can hold each other to account for the decisions that they've collectively.

Made as a team, which is usually far more powerful.

You often hear that it's talked about in the context of professional sport, don't you?

I remember people like Alex Ferguson, who were successful for Many years.

But he had some senior pros that used to do some of the accountability stuff for him.

Yes, exactly.

And that happens in a lot of walks of life, actually.

Yeah.

The final level, the tip of the triangle, if you like, the fifth level is results.

And again, the important thing that Patrick Lencioni stresses here is collective results.

Yeah.

So in other words, the team has clarity in terms of collectively where they're going, what results they're aiming for, and they succeed and they fail as a team.

The best sports teams, when they succeed, they celebrate together.

And when they fail, there's no pointing fingers and blame.

They accept the fact they failed.

There's a healthy conversation about what went wrong, what can they do better next time.

So you succeed and fail as a team.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

And that's.

That's about the environment you create, isn't it?

So when we're talking about this model today, in terms of helping us through this conversation, we are very much focusing on the team, not the individual.

Yes.

Yeah, that's right.

And I think we're going to focus probably most of all on the trust level and the conflicts level.

Well, let's start with trust then, because you're dead right.

Yeah.

We would tend to perform better as human beings when we think someone's got our back, when we feel actually it's okay to make a mistake because no human being is perfect.

We're all going to make mistakes.

It's interesting to use another sporting analogy.

So I promised not to reference F1 too many times because I love F1.

Mercedes, a number of years ago, were one of the most successful teams in F1.

And it's interesting that Toto Wolff, who's the team leader of Mercedes F1 team, he had this sort of mantra.

We tried to establish a no bling culture.

So if they lose a race, they don't resort to finger pointing.

They're debriefing after the race focused on what went wrong, what could we do better?

Fail as a team.

There's no finger pointing and no blame.

So you have to accept that people might make a mistake.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

But the point of those debrief meetings is to recognize where the mistake and the failure happened.

It's not about finger pointing.

You create the environment where people own up to the fact that, look, in this situation, I think I did this.

But if you create an environment where people don't feel that they can own up to a mistake, and then those mistakes and failures, the reasons for them will remain hidden and you'll continue then to make the same mistakes over and over again and also create an environment where people feel they can take appropriate risks.

So this is something that's really worth leaders thinking about because it's actually quite a hard thing to do to get a highly successful functioning team.

It's not an easy thing to do.

We would all be doing it.

Everybody would be a man city or an F1 Mercedes team.

So let's try and explore how can we actually make this work for us.

So trust is fundamentally important, but quite a hard thing to foster and achieve.

Yeah, yeah.

So where's the starting point do you think, with this?

So I think it's really easy for leaders and managers to say that we're going to create a blame free culture.

Yeah.

I think it's important to state that as an aspiration.

You want to create a blame free culture, but the really important thing to do is to make sure that your behaviors are aligned with that aspiration.

So for example, even just what we call micro behaviors.

Yeah.

So if somebody makes a mistake, just simply sighing like, just like that.

That's a micro behavior.

It's a little thing you've said you've created a blame free environment and yet you sigh when somebody admits to a mistake.

That little behavior is going to shut people down in the future.

Interestingly, the starting point for a leader who wants to create this very trusted environment is to go back to self awareness.

Because your own experiences, your own preferences are sometimes going to be getting in the way of actually developing a trust free.

Yeah.

And we have to understand what are those micro behaviors that we've got that might get in the way.

We've got very good intentions, but actually can we make those intentions come to.

Life if people don't feel they can share their mistake?

You're not going to learn as a team.

I can give an example early on in my career where I inherited a team where we had quite an important service that was being delivered to the organization.

Yeah.

And one of the issues with the service was the systems kept going down and it was causing reputational issues.

Don't you just turn them off and turn on again?

Isn't that the solution?

Yeah, indeed.

So what I wanted to do is to address this issue.

Yeah.

So one of the things I did was every time the system went down, we had what I call a lessons learned meeting.

Yeah.

So you imagine I was new into role.

First meeting we had, system went down, had all the people, technical stakeholders in the room.

I said, right, okay, so what went wrong?

Yeah.

What do you think the initial response.

Was to that question, I'm guessing there's some finger pointing.

Was there?

Not so much finger pointing, but more like the tumbleweed moment.

Oh, okay.

People just sat there on their hands, not really wanting to say anything.

So I think after a while, after a little bit of coaxing, the conversation started to turn to actually, this happened.

And this happened how I responded to people owning up to issues was really important for future meetings and future lessons learned to meetings that when I asked the question, okay, what went wrong?

People were open enough to say, well, I think this happened ritual, and then we can learn and then we can move on.

So that tumbleweed moment is really important because I think if we've got a leader listening to this today, thinking, oh, yeah, that's really important.

Is your team ready for that environment?

There's two things.

Are they ready for it?

So you might need to do a little bit of coaching in terms of getting people to talk.

And then once they start to talk and you start to explore more deeply the issues, how you then respond to what they've just said is really important.

Okay.

So that's definitely one thing that is a really helpful practical tool to start to develop trust.

What else can they do?

I think it's really important that people feel that they have permission to take appropriate risks.

And if they take a risk and things don't go well, again, how you respond to that and the coaching conversation you have with that person, it's really important that that doesn't then limit or inhibit their ambition to take another risk.

Yeah.

So giving people the permission to take a risk, so being very explicit about that, obviously if there are boundaries to the risks you want them to take, it's important to articulate those.

Because you want people to take appropriate risks.

Yeah.

Not just for risk sake, not.

Not stupid risks.

Yeah.

But then how you respond to the failures is important that you don't suppress the ambition to take risk.

And if people feel that they have the freedom and the autonomy to take risks and that you're going to learn lessons from that, they're going to take risks more.

And the more risks you make, the more innovative you'll be as a team and the more creative you'll be as a team, is what I'm saying.

Yeah.

I guess my point about is the environment ready for this type of treatment of trust?

What can people do to create that environment if the environment's not ready?

So my thought process would go straight away towards, well, have you got a set of company values where actually the behaviors that are important are Embedded in the team.

So actually people know how they're expected to behave.

Because if you haven't got that kind of framework, it's really hard to introduce this trust based environment, isn't it?

Yeah.

So maybe that's one way in which you could actually make sure the environment is ready.

The most important part of that is they're not just words on the wall, they are does everyone understand how to behave around everyone else?

I guess what you're describing there is articulating your ways of working, articulating the attitudes and the behaviors that you want people to demonstrate.

So those are aligned with creating an environment where people feel safe and they feel trusted.

So if we don't have that, what else can we do to create this trusted environment?

Getting people to build personal relationships inside the team.

In other words, getting the team to know each other better.

Yeah, the psychology is quite clear here that when we know somebody better, we have a deeper relationship with them.

We're going to have their back, we're going to give them more slack when they make mistakes.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay.

So if you create a team environment where you spend time getting to know each other, not just on a professional level, but encourage encouraging people to share some personal stuff, obviously within the boundaries and the limits that they feel comfortable with, but actually getting to know each other on a deeper level builds that team spirit and builds trust and builds a sense of having each other's back and giving each other slack.

It's not about going out on these expensive team building days, although they can be very, very helpful, as you said.

It's just about understanding what makes your teammates tick.

So we put something very simple in place in our Zentano team meetings every Monday morning.

The first part of the team meeting is you ask the question of how was your weekend share from the last week?

Some professional or personal good news?

Yeah.

That segue I think is really important now.

It's not about where everything that somebody says is amazingly interesting to the other person.

It's about listening to these stories.

I'm understanding what makes this person tick and therefore I can actually form that deeper relationship with them.

Now we only spend five minutes doing it, but actually I don't think those meetings would be as good if we didn't do it.

Yeah.

And I think the danger with team meetings if you're not careful is they can become very transactional and very task focused.

And that's important.

Important.

But thinking about the people element, the relational element of the team building in time to do that in team meetings is really Important.

Yeah.

And often undervalued.

Definitely undervalued, I would say.

Yeah.

So if someone, again, is listening to this podcast and thinking, well, I think I have got a trusting environment, or I'm not really sure whether I have, what are the signs?

So I'd just like to share with you some thoughts about what teams there's an absence of trust look like.

So does your team conceal their weaknesses or mistakes from one another?

Does your team hesitate to ask for help or provide constructive feedback?

Oh, right, yeah, yeah.

Do people just jump to their own conclusions, make judgments about each other without really attempting to clarify that that's what's actually going on?

Do people hesitate to operate outside of their own area of accountability or responsibility?

Okay, it's not my job.

Why should I get involved?

Yeah.

Do people just fail to recognize the skills and aptitudes and experiences that other people have got?

Do they hold grudges?

Do they waste time and energy managing behavior just for the effect of it?

I know Patrick Lencini talks about a lot of this in his book, but these are signs where in your team, trust maybe isn't quite where it needs to be.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that's a really good list.

And the other sign which I think leads us to the next level on the model is are you engaging in healthy conflict?

Because if you're engaging in healthy conflict, it's a good sign that you've got a good level of trust in place.

Okay, so before we go on to conflict, is there anything we've missed here in terms of creating a trusted team environment?

So I love the lessons learned idea.

I think the segue idea is a great idea.

Is there anything else obvious that people could take away practically from this conversation and do?

Okay, so how do you respond to mistakes and failures and people taking risks?

Great.

So let's move on.

We've started to create a more trusting environment.

Let's explore this concept of healthy conflict.

Because I said earlier on, I think people think of conflict as a bad thing.

Actually, it can be very toxic.

Bad thing.

But conflict in a team is really important.

Yeah.

Sometimes when I talk about this in training sessions or team away days, some people find the word conflict quite.

Triggering.

Triggering.

Yeah.

They're really uncomfortable with encouraging healthy conflict.

But let's be really clear what we mean when we talk about healthy conflict and what unhealthy conflict is.

Unhealthy conflict is when things become personal.

Yes.

Healthy conflict is where you focus on the facts and you focus on the issues and you are not making it personal.

And if you're being challenged, you're not taking it personally, providing the person is sticking to the facts and the issues.

The moment you start to label people or start to huff at the perspective of the point of view that they're expressing, that's when it starts to become personal.

So good teams are able to have even quite heated exchanges around the facts and the issues, but they don't take it personally or they don't make it personal.

I think that's the important don't make it personal, isn't it?

If I say to you, Rich, the problem with you is this, I've straight away made it personal.

If I talk to you about Rich, when you behave in this way, that's a different.

It's subtle, it's a different intonation.

Yeah, yeah.

I think it's also important to say that people will have different tolerances for how heated the debate can be.

Some of that can be cultural, some of that can be personality trait driven.

So for example, in our business work in relationship to co owners of this company, we're very different in terms of personalities and we often have disagreements, don't we?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Because we have different perspectives and in the main we manage that, I think in a very healthy way.

I remember when I first started to work with you, it was quite interesting that you have a very different tone of voice to me.

You have quite forceful, energetic, pushy tone naturally.

Yeah.

So that's not criticism, that's just.

No, I agree.

That's naturally how you are.

So I found that in the early days quite triggering in.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely.

So if somebody starts to raise their voice or get a bit punchy with me, that can trigger an emotional response in me that I need to manage.

So although you might have been raising an issue that and you weren't making it personal and it was a, you know, sticking to the facts, managing yourself and your own personal triggers and also being sensitive to the style of your delivery and how that's landing with the other person.

Both of those things are really important and good teams do that really well.

It goes back to my point, I guess, earlier on.

About the starting point for this is self awareness, isn't it?

Because if we're not self aware about how we come across to other people, so we might think, well, I think I come across in this way or I think my impact is this.

Well, you might think that, but there's a bunch of people around you that don't see it the same way.

So I think we have to Get a degree of self awareness here about how am I impacting the people around me?

Because it's often not as you see it yourself.

I think the other important factor in conflict is too often the dominant voices will have the sway in the conversation, and particularly people with naturally strong, forceful personalities.

The danger is that they get their way and they seek to win the argument.

So putting in place mechanisms and processes to ensure that every person has a voice and every perspective, even if it's not as well expressed as other people are able to express their perspective, you use your coaching approach to draw out people's perspectives so you fully understand, particularly those that feel maybe more timid or more shy or have less ability to express themselves with clarity.

Skillfully bringing that out and making sure every voice is heard is important.

As a team I've worked with, they have a policy of making sure that everyone in the team has an opportunity to chair their team meetings, regardless of seniority.

So that's really interesting way, isn't it, of giving everybody a voice.

Do they all want to do the chairing?

Because not everyone wants do it.

Not necessarily, but they do.

It's also a good developmental activity as well.

So they're able to chair a meeting in a safe space.

But it also gives everybody the potential then to chair and lead conversations.

So everybody's voice is at least over time, is at least heard.

And I think that's a really good, good approach.

There's another potential spanner in the works here.

Yeah.

So there's one thing to have the intention to create the environment where people can have a voice and they can share their perspective, but you've got to want to listen to it.

So this is, and this is a mindset issue.

So if I'm a leader thinking, yeah, I'm going to do this, but you aren't really fully committed to it.

You don't really want to hear other people's views or you want to hear them, but actually you pretend to hear them.

So the mindset behind this has got to be spot on.

What would your advice be to a leader?

To make sure that the mindset is in the right place.

Look hard inside yourself for the need to win the argument and get your way.

Okay.

Because as human beings, we all like to win.

And when we get in an argument, sometimes what we want to do is to win the argument as opposed to understanding, understanding everyone's perspective and understanding collectively the best way forward.

There are times where leaders need to cut through the crap and say, right, this is what we're doing.

But if you're having a genuine collective conversation, get out your own way, because actually the decision might come from a perspective that's completely different to what you thought about.

So to be open to other possibilities.

Has there been a time when you've done this as a leader?

Has there been an occasion where you've had a conversation where everyone can put their view and rather than you making the final decision, you've maybe said, well, let the team make the decision.

Maybe we'll go with consensus.

I have a tendency as a leader to seek consensus, but there are times actually where seeking consensus isn't the right thing.

No, no, no.

So I think by all means, if you have a perspective and a way forward that you think is really clear, and this is what we're doing, is to give people the opportunity to respond to that so you can at least acknowledge other perspectives in the room to understand where they're coming from.

So, Rich, let's just look at teams that actually fear conflict.

Someone could be listening to this, thinking, well, I think I've got a fairly healthy the team environment as far as conflict goes.

Well, here's a few pointers as to whether you have or haven't.

Do you have boring meetings or do you have lively, interesting meetings?

Okay, so in other words, there's debate and discussion.

Yeah.

Do you have an environment where back channel politics or personal attacks tend to happen quite regularly that suggests maybe that the conflict isn't in the right place?

Do we ignore controversial topics or do we leave elephants in the room?

Particularly if those things are critical to team success?

And do we waste time and energy posturing trying to sort of position things the way that we want to position them?

If any of that happens, that probably isn't an environment where conflict is in the right place.

So, Rich, there are other layers to this model.

As you said earlier on, there's commitment, there's the accountability, there's results.

But actually, if we don't get these first two layers right, we're not going to achieve the other three layers anyway, are we?

So perhaps that's something we can explore in a future podcast.

Yes, yes.

In terms of the conversation we've had today, what would be your top tips for creating a trusted environment that then allows you to have those healthy conflicts?

Okay, so watch your micro behaviors.

Yeah.

So how you respond to failure and risk taking.

And I think the other thing is to become comfortable with discomfort in conflict.

So that's self awareness and self management.

That's the emotional intelligence bit.

So it's going to be uncomfortable for you potentially and other people in the room if you're challenging each other and the temperature of the room is rising in a healthy way.

So training yourself and training your team to be comfortable with discomfort.

And the other thing to recognize is some people will love conflict, they'll thrive on it because we're all wired differently and some people will really uncomfortable with it.

So coaching your team through that and recognizing there are two different responses to conflict.

Well, the number of different responses to conflict, but essentially two.

So being comfortable with that discomfort I think is important.

And if you have got a good lively debate just because you're uncomfortable, don't squash it.

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

I think my top tip would be doing a bit of an assessment of whether you've got the environment ready for this.

So if you haven't got a set of core values where people can understand what behaviors are expected of me, then put that in place.

Make sure that your own level of self awareness is in the right place so you're not going to get in your own way.

And maybe you need to go and actually get some feedback on that about what other people think.

Think.

So that would be probably my top tips.

So thank you for listening everybody.

We will be back again soon with another topic for another day.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.