The Game of Teams

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:  Janet Harvey, MCC is a coach, author, educator, and speaker who invites people to “be the cause of the life that most matters to you” In 2020 she wrote the Book Invite Change and in 2024 has written the book From Tension to Transformation which is the subject of this conversation today. Janet is also CEO of InviteChange which is described as a success culture building organisation for companies. Janet is an ICF Global Past President, Certified Mentor Coach, and an Accredited Coaching Supervisor.

Podcast episode Summary:  This podcast explores what it means to be human, to navigate life’s complexities acting  from a grounded sense of self, an inner authority, or Generative Wholeness.  Janet help us appreciate the many tensions we live and what it takes to mine our mindset and transform.

Points made across this Episode:

Q1. Who are you? I wonder if you can share a bit about how you got to where you are now Janet?

o    The who are you question is often challenging to answer because so much of our conditioning shapes an answer that is related to what we do. Instead Janet answers this question as it is meant. She is an alchemical seer, sovereign , radiant love, black pearl beauty, savvy , sassy, generous expression, riding on the wings of joy.

o    Janet shares that her words describe an essence statement.  Janet describes the journey she has been on as a Coach and Coach trainer taking over the company that is now called Invite Change in 2006.

Q2. How important is it to you Janet to help Leaders declare their essence?

o    Janet explains that there is no there, no goal or destination to reach with an essence statement. Goals are fine and have their place and the question becomes “what are we choosing every moment” This is the intentional self. How are we making decisions about how we show up and interact with others. We do not teach this to people instead of simply expecting they will intuitively get it.

o    Neurodivergent Learning is bringing in the more intuitive instinctive sensory systems and ways of navigating the world, in a world that today often does not meet people where they are. This then creates the importance for understanding our essence.

Q3 What motivated you to write this book?

o    Janet describes a story at the start of her book where she was often asked by Leaders or CEOs what she was doing because so many reported that “working with Janet makes my head hurt? She heard these refrains repeatedly which led to a qualitative study to determine what was going on.

o    She recognised that most leaders are rewarded for producing results. They are really good at producing results and creating stuff that is really practical. The whole system of business whether you are in a product company or a services company it does not matter. We want someone to purchase our products and services and we want to create these outcomes with excellence.

o    So Janet was curious about what they were struggling with, what were the common themes that Leaders would present in coaching sessions?

o    Janet touches on the four capacities housed in Generative Wholeness, or what it means to operate from an authentic self. The four capacities include To Originate, To Create, To Learn and To Produce. Leaders tend to be great at creating and producing but often lag in the capacities to originate and to learn. To be able to originate new thinking and to learn in a continuous loop were found to be underdeveloped capacities.

Q4. How do we lose ourselves so massively?

o    Janet was looking for ways to operationalise the authentic self. So many people are writing about authenticity, speaking about the subject but it is still so elusive a concept. It feels like a high spiritual value and it is but it is also very practical.

o    When a person is operating from their full authentic self they are listening to an inner authority. We are so much more than just our personality, our ego and what it takes for us to navigate our world. When we set down our inner authority we get stuck. There is so much more to our wholeness and it is a continuous learning process.

o    Inner authority is looking at a situation and determining what is the best relationship to it for me. This is what we do as Coaches to give people that pathway to the essence of who they are, turning the dial on their decision making rubric and have it come from the inside out.

o    Janet was inspired to write a book that would simplify and make relevant what leaders were experiencing. She wanted to explore the journey from feeling something is not right to transit the form into a new form that works.

Q5. What are you asking of Leaders to get the most from this book?

o    Janet exhaled deeply and shared “frankly to go slow” She encourages Leaders reading her book to not read it as a text book. She further asks that readers do relevant reading

o    The skill of noticing, ontologically, can be taken a bit more simply. When we are caught in the busyness of life, we barely notice or notice only so much that we forget. We can get very tripped up by this busyness and not realise that things are catching our attention all of the time. We simply go by these things and because our bodies prefer habits as our bodies are  an energy conservation mechanism, yet the thing we want most is right there. It is right at the edge of our awareness.

o    Unless we can break our habits, biases, assumptions and patterns we will not get to our aspirations. It is therefore important to notice, be patient, stay with the tension a minute or longer to  pause, to put in relevance to our lives what we are feeling and noticing. This describes what Janet calls deliberate judgement.

o    Janet suggests that we lean into tension, to let tension be our best friend rather than pushing it way. To allow tension to wake us up to realise that something inside of us is asking us to change.

o    Janet shares an example of introducing a tension into a team that is apathetic wanting to be inspired.

o    As a team coach Janet works with Teams to draw out from them language to describe an experience they are having. Then she will ask them to describe what their imagination is about the experience that could be, if they were feeling highly activated again. Generally apathy shows up in a team that has experienced a real high They are likely transitioning and feeling lost in transit. As a coach, Janet knows if she can help them cast a compelling vision that energy will carry them.

Q6. Could you say a little bit more about Generative Wholeness?

o    Janet answers by sharing how she really does not like models. She feels models are a little too rear view mirror. The challenge is that people do not fit very well into models. They certainly have a use and can be used as a way in or a gateway to a conversation. Yet when Janet was trying to articulate why she made leaders heads hurt she was really looking to describe the continuous experience that human beings have as they are learning growing and changing which all coaching does. Janet knew about the two capacities To Produce and To Create. She knew also that Leaders were with her To Learn and ultimately to originate new thinking or give voice to their thinking in new ways. Beliefs are constructions and so can be deconstructed.

o    So the model is about adopting the dynamic capacities of originating, to create, to learn and to produce in a continuous cycle of movement always from the authentic self, that = Generative Wholeness.

Q7 How did you land on the 7 tensions you call out in your book?

o    There are four that Janet recognises are common to all human beings and come from her own journey to consciousness. These include Sovereignty -Performance, Intention - Expectations, Inside out - Outside in and Relationship & Person Oriented - Process & Plan oriented.

o    Coaching is about awakening consciousness for each person and everyone they touch in their lives.

o    We were all gifted with a tape in our heads  from our upbringing that taught us how to get along, how to do well in life until some point that tape stops working. We then chose to make a different journey and we start to come back home to self. There is nothing wrong with developing a strong ego and when we overuse something it has a tendency to backfire and that is true for any skill, competence or mindset.

o    How do we find the formula for realising that we really are in charge? Nobody does anything to us that we were not part cause or agent to. That is often a hard pill to swallow. Janet goes on to describe a story about Northface the company who tried to promote an allyship program that ultimately proved exclusory. They were found wanting. They contributed to making exclusion even more visible.

o    As practitioners we are working with Leaders who are trying to move fast in very complex circumstances. It is our responsibility to say slow down. No one person can “know” everything that is occurring.

o    The CTO of Zoom was talking about adoption of technology. He shared that it took 18 years for the iPhone to get 100 million users. It took 3 months for ChatGpt. So that essentially means that the large language model is available to so many people on the planet that there is no possible way that any one person can know all of that human knowledge. Human knowledge is doubling every 12 hours.

o    So as a leader if you think deep expertise is the key to success you are going to be epically wrong. The skills that replace deep expertise is collaboration, asking questions to receive and be a learner. Discernment is the skill of the 21st century. That is not how we have trained our Leaders so no wonder?

o    Janet asks me if I have ever seen a team cave to a top request and then that teams resistance to relook at a situation or idea, knowing it is going to fail. These teams  then spend the next 18 months or so fixing a mess. Nobody goes back and asks what was the cost or opportunity cost of that period of wasted effort. Janet helps teams to articulate that story. Instead of caving Janet asks a team to articulate a  business case? What must you demonstrate and share about the impact & influence of your work on the business? Etc.. Janet is helping teams engage with Myth Busting, the idea that you can challenge sacred cows.

Q8 How did you land on the 7 tensions you call out in your book?

o    These 7 tensions were part of the original research & interviews  conducted with Leaders.

o    Janet was curious about the things that Leaders were navigating in their organisations that led them to engage with her business of coaches.

o    She was also curious about what they were learning along the way which produced the Generative Wholeness Model.

o    The tensions were fascinating to Janet because there is goodness on both sides of the tension. Janet had studied paradox and polarities and these tensions were not presenting as either one of these phenomenon.

o    The Leaders were telling about thorny problems they were experiencing.

o    In Janet’s listening she could pull out certain traits that the Leaders had put in opposition to each other. Not as a polarity, not as a duality but a knowing that they needed a bit of both.

o    Knowing and Not knowing for example is a tension. Earlier Janet talked about the adoption of technology and what it means to now know. Not knowing is increasingly important for us to accept and pull into our repertoire most likely from another. Knowing was probably 80% and Not knowing was 20% with an acceptance that we should probably allow for some innovation and creativity. Today that ratio is probably more like 40% not knowing and 60% knowing. The 60% is process knowing and not data knowing, asking how do I go about the process of learning, experimenting, testing, validating and socialising. All of these are important things to do as Leaders and they must be embedded into the process of building something.

o    The Agile industry is fascinating. It is often spoken about in words that say fail fast. Janet asks what if we reframe that to learn fast? What if we allow ourselves to cycle internally first before we go to market. This is what Agile has done in the last decade.

o    This for Janet is a developmental sequence for a team, to take a risk, to trial something before they have everything sewn up.

o    This is a Leaders mindset to say “I do not need to see the perfect solution” What I need to see is that teams have exercised deliberate judgement.

Q9. How do you illuminate the power of your promise in your book from Tension to Transformation with Leaders?

o    One of the ways that is emergent in the field of coaching is working with the body. Somatic Work.

o    When Janet is working with a client and she starts to hear two things in opposition, where maybe the ratio of the two things in opposition need to shift. She will ask the client to stand up and draw an imaginary line, She asks the client to put one quality at the end of the line and the other on the opposite side. She then invites the client to walk to one end of the line, to describe the situation through the lens of that quality. She asks questions like what are you feeling? What are you sensing? What is your intuition picking up? Once they have responded to those questions she then asks “what happens if this quality is overused? These questions often start to create insight. Then Janet asks the client to shake that experience off and to walk to the other end where she repeats the same questions. Janet is putting clients through a reflection process. The next sequence is to have the client stand in the centre, perfect balance and she then asks “what’s the ratio that works for this particular situation?” Competency 8 in the ICF suite of competencies- Facilitating client growth.

o    Janet often asks a Leader to be curious with their own teams to see if what he or she has determined from this exercise, reflection and insight matches their reality.

o    What do you imagine you can say to the team to help them see more clearly what was stepped over. This is the transformation.

Q10 How have the tensions you researched with your leaders been received more broadly?

o    Janet encourages people reading her book to find their words for the tensions they experience. Find your terms that are relevant to the situations that you find yourself in.

o    Take the words control and care. Control and Agility is the one that is in the book. Ask what was the care for? He wants his team to feel that they are cared for and he has a responsibility to the organisation to produce results. The question becomes, what in his caring is not fostering autonomy for his team? Operating from his control means he is not allowing enough information to be transmitted or perhaps he is not allowing himself to be more available to his team as a mentor or coach? That would allow people to step into more authority with some confidence that he would have their back. He is controlling because they are not developed yet. He cannot care for them because he is disappointed that they are not delivering for him and he has no time. His choices are creating this tension.

o    As coaches we have an ability to help reveal to a client that they have constructed this situation and it can also be deconstructed.

o    We help clients to look at the habits, preferences and assumptions they are making about their teams.

o    This is why wholeness is such an important idea inside of workplaces. We hired these people because we believed they had the raw material necessary to be successful and then we leave them alone.

o    How do Leaders shift their mindsets to see what is working in their organisations and with the people who have joined these same organisations? How can a Leader be engaged with a colleague or team member to be curious about the opportunity they see for a person if that person choses to step more into their wholeness. That is a generative mindset.

Q11. “Your most reliable change strategy is your mindset” Janet Harvey, how would you like to close this conversation between us today?

o    Janet picks up the thread about Mindset and calls out the process of mindset mining.

o    The art of reflection is about understanding the mindset we have adopted and being discerning about which ones are uplifting myself and others and which ones don’t.

o    The act of mindset mining comes out of a more sophisticated practice of reflection.

o    Janet wrote her books because she cares about humanity, she cares about dignity & the importance that we recognise that everyone has the right to dignity. It is a birth right of being a human being and it carries a responsibility that each of us are deliberate in the way we approach our relationships personal and professional. Janet writes to bring simple language to very complex and nuanced things to give everyone a way back home to dignity.

Resources

1.    Generative Team Coaching, InviteChange

2.    Invite Change by Janet M Harvey

3.    From Tension to Transformation by Janet M. Harvey

4.    www.invitechange.com

Introduction:  Dr Laura McHale (PsyD, CPsychol) is a consulting leadership psychologist, executive coach and writer specialising in Leader Development, Team Psychology, Communication and Organisational Culture, Laura is the author of the acclaimed book: Neuroscience for Organisational Communication:  A Guide for Communicators and Leaders.

Podcast episode Summary:  This podcast explores and explains the impact of communication in organisational life employing the lens of Neuroscience and Psychology of Communication.  Topics covered include Gaslighting, Absentee Leaders, The use of Pronouns, Weasel Words and Communication Practices that undermine employees. Laura sheds a light on a discipline that is often unspoken.

Points made across this Episode: 

o    Laura can you share a bit about how you got to where you are today?

Laura is now a Psychologist and in her mid-forties she made a radical decision to go back to school and take a doctorate in Leadership Psychology. Prior to this move Laura was working in major international investment banks as a Corporate Communications Specialist. In 2010 Deutse Bank moved her to Hong Kong to head up internal communications for the Asia Pacific Region. Laura loved her career working with International Banks & she was really curious about human behaviour at work and wanted to go deeper and in particular understand the mysterious process we call Leadership.

o    There were a number of reasons that prompted Laura to study Psychology including several transformative experiences with psychotherapy,  She was curious about the way we frame and talk about work and the psychological injury experienced at work.

o    What inspired you to write your book? The book happened organically. As part of Laura’s Doctorate she had a required course on the Neuroscience of Leadership. Laura was fascinated by the discipline and had a sense it would become a big part of her intellectual life as well as her career. She noticed that nobody was talking about organisational communication and neuroscience and Laura wanted to close the gap with her book.

o    What are the salient messages housed in your book that explain Neuroscience and Psychology at work? There is a natural interest in behavioural science. It is often hard to make the link about how the science can impact a leaders presence or choices in communication. There is a fundamental tension between the promotion strategies employed by internal communication teams and the prevention strategies they employ. In promotion strategies communicators are very assertive about the companies value proposition, what it offers and its unique differentiator’s. A prevention strategy often results in very cautions communications, judicious and a little bit like politicians the communications are somewhat evasive. Whilst understandable it can be a slippery slope and sets off all kinds of triggers with employees. The tension between promotion strategies, a desire to be open & transparent and prevention strategies can be tricky to navigate. It is often a schizoid perspective where communicators are trying to toggle two different strategies.

o    The Psychology of communication is also important for another reason. It is a very difficult time for communication specialists. The scope of the role in the last five years has changed dramatically. Corporate affairs, ESG and Government affairs are rolled up into the typical role of a communications department. This is leading to increased stress. If you add AI, chat gpt and other generative models can pose an existential threat to these groups and teams.

The changing nature of the role of communication professionals is also one of the reasons Laura wrote her book to help make sense of the changing landscape.

o    The Neuroscience or physiology of behaviour is a bit different. Insights into neuroscience can shed light on how and why we are showing up at work. Understanding rewards and threat centres in the brain, knowing how we use pronouns and its impact on others is fascinating and can be leveraged to be more effective in our communications.

o    How do leaders and internal communications understand the paradigm from which they are operating? Important to understand the paradigm you are speaking or when you are moving too quickly between the two. Employees smell spin from a mile off. Internally it can be tricky for executives to  over relying on prevention strategies in their communication. There are a lot of traps Leaders can walk into, sometimes unintentionally or at least unconsciously. Knowing about human needs can really help leaders be effective communicators.

o    What are some of those traps that Leaders walk into, maybe unintentionally? Some of it is structural. Pronoun use for example. I and We pronouns can signal more or less personal involvement in any given situation. Pronoun use can also reveal the many assumptions a leader is living. It can also give potent signals about who is in or out or who has a legitimate stake in an organisations success or failure. For example there are two different kinds of We, the inclusive or exclusive We. Senior Executives are often confused about which We they are in and how they are communicating exclusion or inclusion. This sends messages to the brain to trigger threat responses whether we are part of the in group or out group. If in the in group we get a dose of dopamine from the brain & if in the out group we can experience significant amounts of pain. I pronouns are also very interesting, some are cultural, and a really high proportion of I pronoun use can trigger a threat response in the brain. There is also an assumption in organisations that communication needs to be sanitised. This can infantilise employees and does an injustice to the complexities operating in an organisation.

o    What is your advice to executives and leaders who erroneously practice sanitising their communications. One of the biggest pieces of advice Laura gives is to speak the truth. Laura references The Loughran-McDonald sentiment analysis research to explain why telling the truth can be so instructive. The two financial researchers used sentiment analysis or the use of positive versus negative sentiment and modal or weasel words. The research showed the lengths that organisations go to obfuscate the truth or to describe adverse events. In fact many of the negative words were couched in positive words that the messages were almost impossible to work out. Curiously the negative words used were very weak words or weasels like impairment, disappointing which suggested something was bad but it was never clear. The companies using negative words more creatively had negative stock performances. The researchers noted that companies use of words in their corporate communications could be used as a smart investment strategy. 

o    How do Leaders manage the responsibility they hold to use language appropriately and not Gaslight or cause unintentional emotions at work? Organisations are like people using all sorts of defence mechanism sometimes very elaborate ones to avoid difficult and painful emotions. It important to understand why we are using these words, weasel words. It is because of an environment that lacks psychological safety, where we are not allowed to fail, or ask a question that might be interpreted as stupid. Is it an environment where people get punished for taking risks. Laura does not wish to come across as the language police she also uses weak modals and weasels in her communications too, because they have a purposeful use to indicate uncertainty. None of us can speak in with absolute clarity all of the time.

o    The link to absentee leadership is for Laura an interesting link. She imagines that weak leaders, or those who are unable to fulfil the core functions of Leadership, would employ weasel words quite a bit more than strong leaders.

o    In 2022 Laura read a “cracker jack” of an article by Robert Hogan who mentioned this phenomenon called absentee Leadership. Laura was struck by the idea that absentee leadership is an epidemic that nobody had ever named but that most of us have experienced in one form or another. It speaks to the idea of people who occupy an authority position of leadership and fail to fulfil its core functions. Laura refers to those functions as giving direction, protection, role orientation, conflict resolution and setting and establishing and protecting group norms. The interesting thing about absentee leadership is how common it is. It is reported 7 times more than any other destructive leadership behaviour. Because it is so common and can feel so mild it can go unnoticed and is experienced as neglect.

o    Gaslighting surfaces when someone is at the mercy of an absent leader they can be blamed or they blame themselves for their inability to cope with whatever is occurring. One of the things that inspired Laura to write this article for the psychologist was because of her many conversations with coaching clients. Many of her clients were  being given feedback that they were having trouble managing ambiguity. Managing ambiguity is becoming a core competency. The issue with managing ambiguity is that almost everyone struggles with it. Laura knows this from Neuroscience, it is a known stress trigger. This is a universal biological phenomenon albeit some people can handle ambiguity better than others. Laura wanted to highlight the subjects of Gaslighting, Absentee Leadership and emotions at work in her article in the Psychologist, to shift attention from blaming people for their lack of this competency as a  subjective fault to an understanding of the human needs within all of us and our need for Leadership support.

o    The fundamental attribution error is yet another trap that Leaders and executives can fall into.

o    What are some of the Villains of Communication, Threats and Triggers you would like to see squashed? The rapid communication of bad news. Communicating bad news badly. If bad news is not communicated in an open and transparent manner it can infantilise an audience. This tendency is really prominent in politics where there seems to be a tolerance for misinformation and it is seeping into the fabric of organisations too. Laura is not trying to malign all politicians but recognises that politicians regularly protect themselves against the loss of power and influence and often engage in this form of communication. This perpetuates cynicism and mistrust that Laura hopes we do not want to dial that up in our organisations.

o    The Corporate Communications Reset Workshop is a  new workshop and is really the greatest hits from her book. Her workshop helps corporate communications professional access more joy at work by reclaiming their mo-jo and about being  more strategic in their work, whilst being cognisant of the changing landscape and being able to fend off some of the threats posed by Chat GPT and other generative language models. A lot of comms people are closeted behavioural scientists and this workshop gives them a taste or a lot  taste for Psychology and Neuroscience understanding. Included in her workshop is the methodology called Structural Dynamics, the building blocks for how we communicate and don’t.

o    Structural Dynamics is a methodology created by David Kantor. It is David Kantor’s theory of interpersonal communication dynamics. It is a very interesting theory to describe the patterns that emerge when teams are together. There are a few different levels to this theory and the ones that are most often used to explain team dynamics and patterns are what David describes as the action mode, the operating system and the communication domain. The least discussed is the last one called the Childhood Story, work made infamous now by Dr Sarah Hill and her work.

o    Structural Dynamics at its essence gives people a vocabulary to describe  what’s happening in a room & a roadmap for how to change those patterns to develop a more balanced behavioural repertoire.

Resources 

a)       Neuroscience for Organisational Communication: A Guide for Communicators and Leaders by Dr. Laura McHale.

b)        www.conduitconsultants.com

c)       The Loughran-McDonald Master Dictionary Sentiment  Words list

d)       David Kantor www.kantorinstruments.com

e)       Ronald Heifetz, one of the world’s foremost authorities on Leadership https://hbr.org/2002/06/a-survival-guide-for-leaders

f)        Sarah Hill and her book Where did you learn to behave like that?

g)       Corporate gaslighting, absentee leaders and the emotions of work – 07 November 2023, The British Psychological Society.

h)       Robert Hogan: https://www.hoganassessments.com/research-project/absentee-leadership/

Introduction:  Iris Clermont is an Executive Coach, author, and professional mathematician. She holds certifications from Team Coaching International, & Conversational Intelligence and is a Professional Certified Coach from the International Coaching Federation. Her mission is to motivate teams to work effectively while having fun and gaining energy from their business life.

Iris is also the author of the number one best-selling book Team Magic and has just written her new book Team Rhythm which is the subject of this podcast.

Podcast episode Summary:  Iris has chosen a xylophone as an image and metaphor to capture the chapters of her book. The conversation explores her Team Model the ordering of her chapters on this xylophone and why music and maths support her work with teams.

Points made throughout the Episode:

Who are you? Deep inside Iris is a mission to inspire teams to have more joy and energy in the workplace. Iris then goes on to share her career history and the early influence of Mother Teresa. After approximately 30 years in Corporate life Iris found herself moving “swiftly and smartly” into Coaching. She figured out that asking people for their ideas instead of telling them her ideas changed the game for her.

Is it true you are also a Musician? Iris has played music since she was 3 years old and her interest in music form part of the auspices of Team Rhythm.

What inspired you to write the book the way you did? Iris determined that many of the teams she was facing were in egoic conflict and were very serious. She was intent on approaching the solution to team rhythm in a different way using exercises and lightness in her approach.

Iris saw that business leaders know what they need in business and what they do not practice like listening and presence. According to Iris teams need to not only speak their concerns but use exercises and lightness as a way to find solutions – As such her book is littered with music riffs and exercises that teams can employ to begin to develop skills

As a child Iris listened to a talk given by Mother Teresa that she still carries. Emotional pain is a feature of business life and one Iris’s mission is to help people resolve emotional pain. She develops bespoke exercises for teams depending on their particular concern.

Why was it important to cluster the book chapters on a xylophone and in that fashion?

–     Getting Synchronised comprises the first three chapters of the book and details the power of Listening, Creating a Clear vision and having Leadership Presence. Getting synched means looking beyond an individual’s ego and determining what is important to the team . Getting synched means raising a person’s listening skills, followed by a clear strategy & vision – this also requires checking for team and departmental understanding giving others a chance to question. Iris uses cartoons to illustrate her points. She points out that the Leader is there to serve and give direction. Finally Irish explains why her third chapter on Presence is so critical for team life.

–     What in your opinion Iris do teams forget about those first three chapters? All three of them. Iris reminds us that we all think we are great listeners but when she encourages her teams to try out some of the listening exercises in her book, members realise they are not that good. Leaders are often pretty clear in their heads about the future strategy but do they check it is understood by all? Do they gain from the experts knowledge how they see the strategy working etc. Presence in the room is often disrupted by insecurity & Iris’s exercises help bring presence more assuredly into the room  Presence can change something. A lack of presence, often especially by the leader can communicate to others that the leader has more important things to do than be there for the team.

–     What are some of the exercises you use with teams to build presence? Speaking to the last member in an audience as a choir is an exercise that iris uses with teams,

–     What comprises the cluster called raising awareness? There are four topics covered across four chapters with skills that all have room to be enhanced.

–     Raising effectiveness with Decisions. Decision making at the lowest level. Iris employs exercises to expand on Frederic Laloux’s work which says that bureaucracy gets in the way of effective decision making. He and Iris suggest moving decisions out and often down to the experts. This requires trust by Leaders to distribute power effectively to experts. Doing this is enabled by having done the work to get synchronised. A solid frame is provided that supports decision making. Trust is a big component for both the leader and the member. A leader can self-check to be curious if he/she does give power to the expert or has explained the strategy well. A member can ask if they trust themselves enough to honour the strategy and make a decision about which they are expert.

–     Speed up Conflict Resolution: The blue note is used from Jazz as a way of helping teams to accept what might not be linear or clear from which beauty can surface. There is disruption on teams especially with diverse teams and Iris encourages teams to embrace the disruption and look to wonder what can be created. Iris explores building resolution on teams using Judith Glaser’s work, Conversational Intelligence. Iris explains the dashboard that Judith outlined in her book to support understanding between members on teams. The Conversational dashboard describes 3 levels of communication from distrust to trust. Level 1 is where people tell and ask. Level 2 is where team members advocate and inquire and Level 3 where two or more members are co-creating in a space of trust by sharing and discovering together. Team members have to suspend judgement and premature conclusions to accept that people have good intentions, have value to add and are not stupid. This helps move conversations from red/distrusting to green/trusting. Iris shares that the dashboard is an image or a picture in your home that you have to step back from and observe. Stepping back and inquiring helps a team wonder how they can move into the green area where engagement, encouragement, acceptance flourishes, a place of fun and creativity. Iris loves this chapter and since her work with Judith Glaser she only needs 30 minutes to bring this topic to light & resolution. The team conflict resolution team rhythm exercise helps a team see how they react to dissonance. The exercise is used to see how teams react, what is possible and what is learnt by dissonance and the use of it. Disruption is not always a negative phenomenon it allows for difference to be heard. Trust & Commitment, chapters 6  & 7 in Iris’s book are like twins. If commitment is honoured trust is built. Similarly alignment with the mission and strategy supports trust. Trust also has something to do with each individual and their respective histories. A person has to be willing to look inside and wonder what is blocking with respect to trust and trust for others., There is a team rhythm exercise on trust. The cartoons Iris employs in her book helps people self-assess and wonder about their own levels of trust. Micro-managing for example is an indicator that trust is not widely given to empower teams.

–     What are some of the ways teams distract themselves from pursuing some of these ideas on effectiveness? Iris combines the knowledge and wisdom from her Commitment chapter with the chapter on Feedforward to suggest that team members need to be willing to open up to feedforward ideas

–     Continuously Empower and Inspire your Teams. This cluster explores 4 topics housed in 4 chapters. The first speaks to the idea that you can add value to a team and its performance by engaging with mechanism and skills that encourage feedforward practices. The next chapter explores the nature of Virtual & Hybrid teams and how teams can move from being I-Centric to We-Centric and ultimately less egoic. The third chapter in this cluster speaks to value of using the power of diversity and moving away from blaming and shaming others for their difference be it with respect to their ideas, perspectives etc to gaining. This chapter uses exercises and rhythm exercises to identify how to make use of the full spectrum of diversity. The fourth and final chapter in this cluster speaks to the idea of gaining from areas outside of your own business. In this  Iris talks about Bands and what can be learnt for business gain. She also looks at film production and what is involved there in that domain a rich resource for business.

–     What is important to you Iris about the difference between Feedforward and Feedback? The difference was experienced from Marshall Goldsmith. Feedforward is looking to the future and is hopeful. Feedback is backward looking and historic.

–     The last few chapters are very current to the world we live, especially post the pandemic. What was important to you about including them in your book and on the xylophone? Iris wanted to update her book to reflect what she is seeing in business today, that is very different from when she wrote her book Team Magic. Iris is curious to explore with teams how they can gain by diversity. Iris tells a story about her favourite team  a virtual team she was part of twenty years ago.  Iris describes how she experienced this team and remarks that she felt special having team members come from Denmark and other counties. Iris shares that it was a hugely different phenomenon  in her working life then & she enjoyed it, The team worked well together and won a prize for innovation.  

–     How comfortable are teams working in a hybrid or virtual way? Teams can get stuck in ways that are unhelpful. There are different types of people some who appreciate the technology that allows for video and others who prefer to be more private and not share their image. Some people like to see faces to focus on gestures and mimics and others are more focused on words. We have to allow for both.

–     To practice for example on a band is so important, what do teams assume that they do not practice together? Teams often only focus on achieving results and forget the process necessary to get there. To be really effective as a team you need to have the skills outlined on Iris, xylophone listening, having a vision & strategy, leadership presence, decision making, conflict resolution, Trust, commitment, Feedforward skills, awareness of virtual and hybrid teams, making full use of diversity and gaining from the lessons learnt from the outside world. Iris understands why teams often take the shortest route to success. As a mathematician that is smart & it can also frustrate when you appreciate that others are different. It then becomes necessary to upgrade these skills in order to co-create and deliver collectively. There is a parallel here with musicians. As a musician you know  you need to work alone and then together.

–     What are your thoughts about joy and how you infuse it across teams? Joy is linked to creativity and innovation. It also means looking at where I am stuck and what needs to shift. It is key to look outside of business and to gain from all of the experience we have from other domains.

–     What makes you proud about this book? This book comes from deep within Iris’s heart to enlighten teams about what is possible. To bring lightness to the business of what is often serious business. Using cartoons, exercises and several rhythm practices can allow a team see an alternative perspective & explore their effectiveness with fun. Iris is proud of all of her 3 sons who contributed to her book and one of her sons, a musician co-created with Iris to get specific rhythm exercises.

Resources shared across this podcast

–     Team Rhythm, Eleven ways to lead your team from overwhelmed to inspired. Iris Clermont

–     Team Magic eleven ways for winning teams

–     Conversational Intelligence, Judith E. Glaser

–     Feedforward by Marshall Goldsmith -U Tube.

–     www.aircoaching.com

Introduction:  Oscar Trimboli is an award-winning Author, host of the Apple award-winning podcast Deep Listening and a sought-after Keynote Speaker.

·         Oscar’s third book, How to listen-discover the hidden key to better communication is the most comprehensive book about listening in the work place. Along with the Deep Listening Ambassador Community, Oscar is on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the workplace.

·         Oscar works with Chairs, Boards of Directory and Executive Teams.

Podcast episode Summary:  In this episode Oscar shares what he means by the transformational impact of listening, often beyond words, in the workplace. He provides numerous examples of what it means to listen and how. We reference his book across the conversation to illuminate the richness of his research and to expand on the idea that listening is a skill, a strategy, and a practice – a way to balance how you communicate.  

Points made throughout the Episode:

o    Who are you? Oscar responded by saying he is really a confused human. He plays many different roles, the role of Grandfather, the role of carer for his Father and someone who loves to hike in the bushlands around Sydney.

o    What motivated you to get into this particular domain, that is listening? Oscar shared 3 stories to answer this question. The first is that as a teenager Oscar required years of orthodontic work and he did not want to draw attention to his features so he became very skilled at asking others questions. The second is that Oscar went to a school with over 23 different nationalities and whilst playing cards teams would tend to form around their own nationalities. Oscar became adept at reading body language. The third story speaks to a seminal moment in Oscar’s career in 2008 at his employer Microsoft. He was part of a larger meeting involved in budget meeting. There were 18 people at the meeting. At the 20 minute mark in this budget meeting Oscar’s boss, Tracy, says “Oscar we need to talk immediately after this meeting” This statement caused Oscar to stop paying attention and to question how he was going to communicate to those that mattered he was about to get fired. Instead the comment altered the trajectory of Oscar’s career and he has dedicated his research and work to decoding the elements of Listening. Essentially his boss said “Oscar if you could code how you listen, you could change the world”

o    That profound insight resulted a body of work where Oscar has coded how to listen and that body comprises 3 books, a quiz a jigsaw game and a playing card game that he runs in many organisations today.

o    The difference between hearing and listening is taking action and Oscar believes he had made a dent in the business of decoding how to listen.

o    What did you have to unearth or discover to know how to code listening? In the moment Oscar had no clue & about 2 weeks later he was asked to audit another budget meeting hosted by the then CFO, Brian. Despite the fact that the meeting proved almost incomprehensible with few people actually speaking, where when Brian spoke people asked clarifying questions, Oscar noticed he was taking a tally of this phenomena and then realised that he as actually beginning  to decode listening.

o    Tracy asked Oscar to code how he listened in order to change the world and what he has used since then to decode how to listen  is the research of deep listening institute, the academic literature and interviews with diverse workplace workers.

o    In all of this work Oscar is trying to make sense of what it takes to help  a person’s listening  move from  simply nodding and muttering to listening to what is not said.

o    Oscar cautions listeners not to try and use a tip they might hear over this podcast on someone that is significant to them to ward against unintended consequences and to make his point he shares a story about his friend Mick.

o    What are the salient features that describe the code of listening?

o    The maths or neuroscience of listening helps people understand why people are not good listeners. The math is as follows;

1.     People speak at the rate of 125 words per minute

2.     People can listen at the rate of 400 words per minute

3.     People think at the rate of 900 words per minute.

o    What this means is that people can stay in the conversation. Jump ahead and solve or go ahead and judge and anticipate, while they are waiting for the speaker to catch up.

o    Oscar analyses the math and helps us understand that what the speaker shares is 14% of what the speaker thinks and means. Good listeners listen to what is said, Great listeners & deep listeners notice what is not said in the 86%

o    Most of us are dialoguing using the 14% each way and we can get frustrated. If instead a listener remembers that what a speaker says is only 14% of what they think and mean then the listener can move towards helping the speaker elucidate what is in the 86%

o    In teams if you are not taking the time to fully listen this frustration is N squared by the number of people in the room.

o    In the workplace as a listener your job is not to make sense of what is being spoken or thought but to help the speaker express what they think and mean. 

o    As a nugget Oscar shares a framework which he refers to as a listening compass. First he shares that most of us are coded through our educational systems, to listen for similarities. Pattern matching. Pattern matching trains us to listen for similarities and what is divergent.

o    The first question to ask in the compass system is directional to help the speaker say more from their original draft thinking. The question is asked with empathy and genuine curiosity “Say more about that?” This helps the speaker share more about what they are thinking and meaning.

o    The second question works to explore the divergent to help illuminate what else might be considered, different perspectives for example. The question is “what else”

o    The third question is exquisite silence. Silence and listen share identical letters. Silence is like a magnet to draw the speakers meaning to the fore.

o    Silence is a sign of respect, wisdom and authority. A leader can shape the presence of the group or team to listen to each other and not just the active speaker.

o    People can immediately complain that this form of listening will take time when in fact it saves time over time.

o    What are all the ways we assume we listen and we don’t?

o    Listening happens before, during and after the conversation and it is important that as a listener you learn how to listen to yourself.

o    Many of us are not conscious of our own state, the state necessary to be able to listen.

o    Many people are stuck at level one listening, listening to yourself. Level two is listening to the content, level three is listening for the context, level four is listening to what is not said and level five is listening for meaning.

o    91% of workplace listeners are paying attention to a notification that is electronic, some of which are getting closer to our bodies such as our digital watches. We are distracted. We do not know the difference between paying attention and giving attention. We have so many browser tabs open in our mind, we are over flooded and what we want to do is shut them down so that we can give attention and listen.

o    The best tip Oscar can give to those who host meetings it to set the time for the meeting 5 mins past the hour and to run the meeting for 50 minutes, to let people decompress from their previous meeting and be on time for the next.

o    Most people are physically present when they arrive at a meeting but mentally present about 5 minutes after.

o    You can change your state by changing your calendar appointments by 5 mins each side of an hour, by drinking a glass or water and by noticing your breathing and by listening to music before a meeting or conference call

o    Oscar explains why he uses the negative in some of his questioning like asking people to wonder in an exercise “what am I not listening to in  myself” most people are used to listening to the noise so it takes a certain stillness to appreciate what wants to be heard.

o    What are the villains of listening? Oscar, in response to a request from a CEO who wanted to help more in his organisation appreciate the value of listening, did some research to generate a quiz that organisational listeners could take. They based their survey on a few very simple questions like;

1.     “what’s the other person doing when they are not listening?”

2.     “What do you struggle with when it comes to listening?”

3.     How do you rate yourself as a listener? And how would you rate others that listen to you?

o    It proved interesting that people were able to describe in much greater detail and length what others were doing when they were not listening compared to what they personally struggled with as a listener.

o    Similarly there was a massive differential between a raters self-rating and their rating of others

o    74% of people rated themselves well above or above average for listening and when asked the other way only 12% of people who listened to them rated well or above average. From this analysis the research company were able to build like cohorts which became the Villains of listening. 4 Archetypes emerged.

1.     People who were unproductively using emotion- they were getting hooked into the story

2.     People who were time or productivity obsessed – they tend to interrupt a lot

3.     People who came across as vague, disinterested or distracted-people who are given the label of lost

4.     A problem solver -they are kind of listening but really they are trying to fix someone -often labelled as shrewd.

o    These archetypes are useful to identify the listening behaviours and not used to label the individual

o    Some of the villains are related such as the shrewd and the interrupter they are both time and productivity hungry.

o    Oscar began to talk about a process question in team or group meetings that is often missed. If asked the team and group have permission to check/interrupt respectfully through the course of the meeting to see if they are on track and to adjust as necessary.

o    The question is “what would make this a great conversation” The question is NOT what would make this a great question for you Tara? The reason why Oscar and his team do not add “for you” is because of an understanding about dialogue. In a 1:1 there are always 3 present, the two people concerned and the relationship they co-create between them. Oscar describes it is the speaker, the listener and the dialogue. The question is designed to ask where are we taking the dialogue.

o    In teams it is important to ask this question at the start of the meeting. It is also helpful to ask everyone to jot their answer down on a piece of paper and to indicate a process for sharing as opposed to cold calling on people.

o    This round of asks is not done for the purposes of the host but for every member of the team. There will be times when people drift off, get distracted lose themselves in the meeting and this process can be called up by remembering one or two of the desired outcomes.

o    A good host will notice who is speaking and who is not in a meeting, He or she will determine what role they assume across the meeting. Perhaps roles such as time keeping or note keeping can be shared to increase the listening attention of the group.

o    A potent question to ask during the meeting, not at the end and don’t ask for feedback at the end either because there is not an opportunity to change, is “What is one thing we can we amplify & one thing we can  adjust for the balance of our meeting”

o    This is a technique to get people to listen to each other in a different way.

o    The antidote described above for the person who gets lost is equally valid for any of the four villains

o    Oscar describes what it might sound like for a person who prescribes to the archetype of the drama or emotional listener. They listen for the drama and pull the spotlight over to themselves often to show empathy or connection – if you are this villain ask “where is the spotlight in the dialogue” Is it on the speaker, the listener or on the dialogue. Too much on the listener and it needs to shift, think instead about a third, a third, a third.

o    What happens when the conversations go awry and descends into conflict? In conversation start to notice when people begin to use absolute language such as, “always, never , absolutely, precisely, exactly etc..” This language indicates & showcases the limits of our mental models Oscar shares another story from his experience.

o    Two groups a Finance & Actuarial Group and  sales and marketing Group were trying to agree a pricing structure for their insurance company. The two groups could not agree and began to defend their respective positions based on their understanding of the  organisational structure, incentives, lived experience, educational experience etc.. They could not agree a way forward. Oscars construct is based on the idea that “every model is wrong and some are useful” That is a George Box quote, a statistician.

o    The two groups were coming from very different orientations. In both cases everybody could only see why there model or world view was right.

o    To unpick what was not said, Oscar asked each side to argue for the arguments and rationale of the other. He divided the groups into pairs, where one person from Finance and Actuarial talked with one person form Sales and Marketing

o    The dialogue that ensued was much more energetic and engaged. People were reminded to put up stickies on the wall for information and understanding gleaned in the new conversations. After about 25 minutes into an exercise designed to last longer a person from finance stopped the entire conversation. He told the group that they all had to listen to what had been discovered. Essentially a piece of information assumed by Sales & Marketing to be part of the thinking held by Finance & Actuarial was absent.  

o    The meeting ended early with agreement by both sides. Up until then there had been no attempt to listen for what was unsaid. This is where a group listens for difference rather than similarity as is customary.

o    Many organisations live in conversations and dialogue where they speak from vested interests which has nothing to do with progressing the outcomes of the dialogue.

o    I asked a question that was a version of a level four question to ask how to listen to what is not said so far. I was clumsy and asked a question that was not quite the question I had intended. I really wanted to know if there was anything I had not yet asked Oscar that would be missed by my listeners,  Oscar shared a question that might have served better. He asked “I sense there might be something really useful you could share with the audience that I have not asked into yet?” By introducing the audience we are listening from a different perspective

o    The point here is that for leaders it is important to be conscious of the quality of dialogue, use of words and the intention behind questions.

o    Oscar shared that the two different questions would yield two very different answers one more serving of the podcast listeners than the other.

o    Oscar shared a final story to reveal the power of listening to all the voices in a room . The story of Elaine. This is a story of a team, a top team, working the issue of their growth figures compared to those of their peers. Oscar asked the group to think about two questions;

1.     What animal is our business?

2.     and what are the characteristics of those animals.

o    Most people described the business as some fast moving bird or animal something that was fast and killed. Everybody has spoken except for the CFO, Elaine. The tension in the room was palpable as the CEO was anxious, angry to get to lunch.

o    Oscar invited Elaine to speak with a gesture, an extended arm. She responded by saying. “I thought it was obvious” and she stopped.

o    Again after a few moments and even more tension, Elaine came back and said “I thought it was obvious, I thought we are a snake”

o    The animal, The Snake has negative implications in the west and very different associations in the East.  Elaine explained her reasoning for choosing a snake. She told the group that the business had failed to shed their poor practices & bad systems from the past & that was holding them back from serving their  customers

o    The tension in the room evaporated and a massive dialogue ensued.

o    The CEO admitted they never listened to Elaine. A few months later it was obvious that Elaine had found her voice and she had become a key member and astute commercial leader

o    Oscar ended by asking the audience of the GOT Podcast- what is the cost to the business when you don’t listen to Elaine and or you don’t listen to all the voices in a conversation.

Resources shared across this podcast

1.     How to listen- discover the hidden key to better communication by Oscar Trimboli

2.     www.oscartrimboli.com

3.     https://www.oscartrimboli.com/ambassadors/

Introduction:  Brendan Lenihan is a professional non-executive director, a management consultant, a chartered accountant, and an accredited mediator.  Previously he was a Partner with Andersen (with whom he worked in Dublin and New York)

Through his consultancy, Navigo Consulting, he provides strategic, financial and governance advice to clients in Ireland and the UK as well as having a non-executive director portfolio in private companies, public bodies and charities. His is currently;

• Chair of Irish International Trading Corporation Cork plc which is 103 years in business and turns over in excess of €80m per annum,
• as well as Chairing the Advisory Board of Regan Wall, a business law firm specialising in mergers and acquisitions.     
• Chair of Good Shepherd Cork, a sizeable charity providing emergency accommodation and services to homeless and vulnerable families.

Podcast episode Summary:  This podcast explores the nature of Boards, our understanding of the role of Boards, and whether we can consider boards are Teams. In addition, Brendan illuminates the constraints on boards and the potential that exists to support boards be more effective.

Points made throughout the Episode:

o    Brendan has led a portfolio career to date. An accountant by nature but he is more than that. His eclectic portfolio and experience has meant that he has learnt how to sell, navigate & supervise professional service bodies.

o    Brendan doesn’t rush towards fires but he has noticed that he ends up in the thick of things. Around the time of the crash in 2008 in NYC he was involved in the Enron Scandal and as Finance Director for a Property Company he was instrumental in supporting them through the crash. Similarly he was involved with the HSE for 4 years through Covid 19- where he put his consultancy experience where it was most needed.

o    10 years ago as the President of the Chartered Institute of Ireland it became clear to Brendan that accountants do 3 things,  they measure, communicate and decide. Brendan observed that if someone like him, even with his vast experience, were to survive he needed to move up the value chain to where decision making and governance happened. Decision making is the business Brendan is now in.

o    The Myths of Boards: The great man myth and the myth of omnipotence of boards is very much alive.  The myth that the CEO is the eternal fountain of all knowledge and the organisation pivots around him/her is similarly active. The truth is that the health and direction of a company cannot revolve around one person, especially as CEOs come and go. There is also a great myth that board work is easy, you turn up, listen and go away. That is not the case.

o    There is a grain of truth in the idea that the smartest group of people are the executives and the wise comprise the board. The smart and wise sit down together and generally the wise people approve everything the smart people have to say, although it is not always the case. The smartest and wisest is the relationship between the Chair and the CEO. There is some grain of truth to all of this but it should not be how people think for a heathy, dynamic and growing organisation to operate.

o    A lot of people end up on boards because of their success in role and the because of their functional expertise but often they do not know what the role of a board member is.

o    A healthy board is one that has a very clear sense of its role & its purpose. Many boards have an impoverished view of what their role is as a Board. Often  they encapsulate their role as their function to support management. That definition is too simplistic and too narrow a definition.

o    A healthy Board is one you cannot assess on paper. As well as a board appreciating their role & purpose it is also crucial that Board members understand each other as people. A healthy board is one where the relationships are really strong, where people can deal with conflict and differences of style etc.

o    What defines Governance? This is the starting conversation with new boards or new board members. Two central elements to Governance (based off an OECD definition) The first element is the notion that Governance is a network of relationships. The relations within the entity such as staff, the board and the executive management team as well as the relations outside of the entity such as shareholders, funders, regulators, customer as well as suppliers. The first role of a Board is to understand and add to the strength and functioning of these relationships. The second element is about the setting of objectives. What objectives is the entitiy trying to achieve, how are the objectives set and then how  are they managed and monitored.

o    The degree to which this network of relations is worked governs the degree to  which the entity achieves its objectives. That is the role of Governance.

o    Two further dimensions have to be considered. One, the compliance perspective to understand and appreciate the rules of the road with respect to this network of relations and two, a performance dimension to understand what travels over and between the network of relations. Brendan makes the point that too often people assume governance is simply about compliance and not about the management of ideas & the performance of objectives across this network of relations.

o    Management has a governance role as well but this podcast is focused on the top level of the organisation, the Board.

o    If you are sitting on a board you should be focused on the strength and productivity of the network of relations described above. In addition a Board needs to question what objectives are being set and whether they are being achieved.

o    For the person in the street the subject of Governance comes down to the simple question, who is in charge?

o    The interrelation between the work of the board and management is often confused and ambiguous. The biggest problem Brendan sees in his work is that folks on boards devolve everything to management.

o    The Board should in fact be setting objectives, be providing Leadership and operating with an amount of oversight where the board asks whether the organisation is on plan, getting close to its objectives etc.

o    Many board members especially new board members do not realise the many functions of boards and the many mindsets involved. 3 different mindsets prevail on Boards. The first deals with Leadership the second the entity strategy and the third oversight & compliance. Compliance for example requires an evidential focus. Strategy involves a creative process, a heavily laden communication process and psychological process. Oversight is where you are asked to form an opinion and decision based on the question “are we there yet?”

o    Boards mix those 3 roles into one combined headset.

o    Too often too, a board may be comprised of formerly successful executives you end up Micro Managing senior executives and end up squashing capability.

o    In the absence of understanding of the many headsets required of boards duplication, frustration and missed opportunities are inevitable.

o    The same is true of teams where there is lack of resources and lack of role clarity. This absence drives conflict and dissent and is especially evident at the interface between senior executives and the board.

o    Board members end up on Boards because of their industry expertise, functional expertise and not because they know much about Governance & especially corporate governance.

o    The rise of concern about Culture and the question about who is responsible for Culture in an organisation has contributed to the confusion that abounds. The idea that the Board is in fact responsible has really stretched and challenged boards.

o    It is not clear what the headset needs to be with respect to the role of Culture setting  but it is clear from Corporate Governance that the responsibility lies with the Board.

o    Making the interventions that shape Culture is the honours question that boards are struggling with today.

o    The board is responsible for there being a well-defined strategy and it is also responsible for the culture of the organisation that is appropriate for its environment and strategic objectives.

o    Boards are decision factories with very limited opening hours

o    Consider for example the Public Broadcaster here in Ireland which has just faced a critical Corporate Governance crisis this year.  Its board would have met about 9 times in the year which is incredibly limited opening hours to get through an enormous remit.

o    There is a real paucity of time that drives a lot of the dynamics of boards.

o    Brendan works with boards to become as efficient as is possible with oversight and monitoring as a role to free up time to spend on Strategy, Culture and Leadership conversations.

o    There are ways at releasing time and working smartly as a board but a week Chair and a board that does not appreciate its full role will fudge and burn time ineffectively leading to frustration and embarrassment as  likely possible negative outcomes.

o    Brendan works with Boards by sharing simple ideas to support the various roles they play. Leadership for example is about two simple ideas, having a plan and doing the right things. So Leadership from the Board perspective is about making sure there is a plan and challenging the board and executive to be curious about the right things to discuss.

o    Too often the senior management team is preoccupied with being busy 60-70 hours a week and they do not often get the opportunity to see the big things on the fringe about which they need to discuss.

o    There is so much value a board can bring in terms of ideas, opportunities and even concerns that the executive team might miss. To be a good leader you have to be in the dance of the work but you also need to be on the balcony & able to scan the horizon and outside world.

o    Boards can disempower themselves by not understanding their role, similarly they can also disempower their role by handing all power over to management and they can be disenfranchised by the lack of time, ability to meet and the resources at their disposal such as a budget to support Board training.

o    Brendan gets asked to assist boards where Governance has gone off the rails and the criticism is made that the board was asleep at the wheel. Often the board has chosen a minimum level of participation or hibernation, which often surprises people.

o    The lack of opening hours or time a Board spends together often means that the requisite reflection and quality control of their work is missing. The simple and evocative questions like “what worked” “what could we do differently next time” often do not happen.

o    The Titular Monarchy Position is often witnessed on Boards. Every week the Prime Minister of the UK visits the Monarch. The Monarch has 3 rights, the right to be consulted, the right to be supportive of the Government and the right to warn if necessary. That is it. Many Boards operate the same way as a Titular Monarchy where they expect to be consulted, offer support to the executive team and are a bit avuncular when they are concerned about something. This is a recipe for disaster for a Board, because all power has been handed to management 

o    A contemporary example here in Ireland includes the FAI (Football association of Ireland) who became a puppet board to management. The CEO had all power.

o    The list of matters reserved is the list of decisions that only the board can make. Brendan will often ask boards whether they know these decision rights and he knows a weak board will not know what is on this list whereas a strong board will.

o    A lot of basic structures that comprise sound principles and conditions for success for Boards are missing.

o    There is a huge opportunity for Boards to benefit from some of the ideas housed in Team Coaching.

o    It is not conclusive that a Board is a team but its performance could benefit if it thought more about teaming.

o    The role of the Chair is absolutely vital.

o    Boards are by their nature a collective and the Chair is first amongst equals. When boards break down it is almost always about the people and relationship issues. A good Chair is equipped to bring people insight, an understanding of styles and an ability to mediate if necessary, to support the effective running of the board.

o    If the Chair is open to improvement in what Brendan calls the decision making factory then lots can happen.

o    Brendan does not enter a board to discuss what he calls the plumbing or Compliance etc. His value is in helping a board get clear about the decisions they have to make, the headsets they have to be in and also the norms they have to exhibit.

o    Brendan usually engages with Boards around practical decision dilemmas. He also employs a model to share 10 behaviours that he would expect every board member to display. The 10 behaviours from this model include Power, Dogmatism, Emotion, Decisiveness, Verbal Contribution, Civility, Preparedness, Knowledge, Trust & Director Tenure. With each of these behaviours there is a golden mean.

o    If any of these 10 behaviours are out of whack the social system will be out of balance. For example if the Board has too much trust in the Management Team it will be gullible.

o    Oftentimes these behaviours are out of balance and they remain unchallenged or unaddressed until there is a big car crash, a claim or other disaster.

o    Brendan would like to see greater understanding and clarity about the  role of Boards. He would like the difference that can be seen on boards between board members to be empowered. He would also like to see a greater awareness of bias & to see more professional scepticism on Boards.

o    The big problem with Boards, with biases present is over confidence.  Brendan recalls the Financial Crisis of 2008 where many boards, filled with good people,  simply grew over confident.

o    Brendan wishes that Boards would allow Professional consultants, Coaches to better serve them than they do currently, to get that team working as a Board to work better together at a human level, on a decision making level and on a structural level so that organisations can achieve their objectives more quickly and efficiently.

o    There exist a lot of obstacles to these desires as Brendan sees it. Often there exists a lack of openness, to examine Board performance and  to take advice or to think differently. Brendan opines the lack of diversity on boards, the range of people entering boards is still, he believes too narrow. The gender balance is better but it is still not where it could be and could be if boards had better advice, tools and more openness to improvement.

o    Brendan shares two case studies, boards he worked with where governance had gone off the rails. Brendan through his work helped both to work out their roles, to define a clear strategy and to understand the interdepended nature between the board and management teams. He shared structure and processes over time to improve the decision making and relations on the Board and between the Management teams.

o    Boards cover 3 things; Strategy, Finance and People. Strategy is often misunderstood,  Finance is often exceedingly well covered and the people piece is the lease attended.

o    Since the Global Financial Crisis a number of tools have evolved to do what is known as a cultural audit. Boards are often shocked that people like Brendan can hold up a mirror and identify what the culture is at an organisation.

o    Brendan shares his definition of what comprises Culture. Visible behaviours, behaviours people will see, the group dynamic and then the mindsets that drive these behaviours. There are tools used to hold to hold up a mirror and share what Mindset ideas are being operated. Brendan shares the example of the police force here in Ireland, An Garda Siochana. Its culture was audited and it revealed the high minded ideas that were housed in the annual report with the actual mindset that actually prevailed. The gap proved to be staggering.

o    You have to ask what is going on in the narrative of an organisation, the psychology of an organisation, the group dynamic to shape its culture? It is important to tap into these dimensions to shape an appropriate culture, appropriate to the market and context in which an entity lives & it has to be attuned to what the organisation says it wants to achieve in terms of its objectives and plan.

o    This is the role of Boards and the value they can provide.

o    Brendan makes the distinction between Boards who operate answering the Pass Questions in an Irish Leaving Certificate and a Board that addresses the Honours questions, Culture, Leadership, Strategy and Oversight.

o    The Board is a team and it is also a Team with the Executive Directors & staff managing the many relations that comprise the social system in a bid to achieve its goals.

o    Brendan would love to see more conversation of this nature to increase awareness & understanding of Boards and board effectiveness and to show case the many tools and techniques that have evolved to support teams and boards to overcome bias in decision making.

Resources mentioned across this podcast

·         www.navigo.ie

Introduction:  Costas Andriopoulos is Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Bayes Business School (City University of London) He is founder of Bayes X, the Cnentre for Innovation and Disruption. He is also the Director of Avyssos Advisors Ltd. an Innovation management consultancy.

Costas was born in Athens, Greece. He was educated in Greece and the UK & prior to joining Bayes Business School, City University of London in 2014, he held posts at Cardiff, Strathclyde, Aberdeen and Brunel universities.

Costas researched New Product Design Consultancies and tech companies in Silicon Valley and was a visiting professor at Said Business School (University of Oxford)

Costas is also an author and his book, Purposeful Curiosity  is the subject of this podcast.

Costas now lives in West London with his wife and daughter.

Podcast episode Summary:  In this episode Costas shares his Curiosity Journey and the work he undertook to understand what it takes to employ Curiosity in a meaningful fashion. We discuss what it takes to be purposeful, the distractions we must refuse, and the permission needed to nurture the “Itch” within us all to follow our passions and execute our dreams. As Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think again shares, Costas’s book “Nails the difference between idle curiosity and a productive drive to discover”. 

Points made throughout the Episode:

o    What more can you say about you the person? Costas shares that since we was a child he was a very curious person. He took things apart and his friend was his screw driver. He is very grateful that his parents encouraged this fascination with how things worked, with his curiosity as a child. This same curiosity has taken him to different parts of the world to study and work and by way of it he has met incredibly interesting people.

o    When you show interest in what others do it leads you to some very interesting answers.

o    Costas wanted to become an Architect. Whilst his parents at that time discouraged that path it is not surprising to Costas that his PhD and research focuses on Creative & Innovative organisations, some of whom were design studios and others of whom where Architectural firms. There is something we are passionate about, sometimes we are steered away from pursuing these passions but if you like something so much it will always come back.

o    Costas encourages people to do something about which you are passionate and good. We can follow many topics and we need to understand these topics. Costas became curious about Curiosity and he wanted to nurture that passion and understand what it takes to pursue curiosity purposefully.

o    Because Costas knows Creativity, Innovation and Curiosity are closely linked or brothers he found researching Curiosity to be within his gift.

o    He makes the point that if he wanted to research Rockets he would find it very difficult because he wasn’t very good at physics or related disciplines and most probably he would not be interested in any case.

o    We have to care about something, we have to be passionate and we have to understand the subject to pursue purposeful curiosity.

o    Notwithstanding the fact that Costas has studied Innovation and Creativity when he first mentioned his interest in studying Curiosity everyone he spoke with thought he was crazy.

o    The external voices were really projecting their fears onto Costas about the potential pitfalls and opportunity cost of his project. When we embark on something new, and Curiosity is a new field for Costas, people are going to project their fears.

o    People who surround us normally care for us. They want to protect us from failing and still if we are passionate about something we have to learn to silence these external voices to follow our path.

o    Costas is not encouraging blind faith or reckless pursuits he is taking about projects where you prepare and surround yourself with professionals or people who know something about what you are trying to achieve.

o    To illustrate his point Costas tells us about his new interest in Kite Surfing and how he approached becoming skilful when initially it seemed daunting. In the same way as before external voices tried to dissuade him. He was told of all of the dangers associated with Kite surfing and as before he noticed people were simply projecting their fears.

o    Costas chose a good instructor, he went online to read up as much as he could about safety, essentially saying he did not go to his first lesson unprepared.

o    Being curious about something means you go to your first meeting being prepared.

o    Costas’s motivation to write his book was to research Curiosity and it became his purpose.

o    Purposeful Curiosity is about translating our curiosity into something. We can be curious about stuff, satiate our curiosity somewhat and move to the next thing. Doing this means nothing happens, no processes get better or the community doesn’t benefit etc. It is a bit of a selfish act.

o    Costas noticed he was doing this, his colleagues and others were too.

o    He was curious to understand if there were people who followed their curiosity and executed change, translating their curiosity into a service, a product or a start-up

o    For his research Costas interviewed 60 people from different walks of life, different geographical locations from Japan to California.

o    What Costas noticed was that the people he studied stayed with their curiosity longer. Too often when we are curious and something doesn’t work out we drop it. What Costas found was the opposite with those who were Curious and executed. If something did not work out they became even more curious.

o    Costas describes how when he began his research and project he got so curious his world disappeared and it became like a movement to him.

o    Costas was curious to know how we can help people be more curious, to execute their curiosity and to improve life, communities, solve problems and provide solutions to life questions.

o    It was important for Costas to address the subject of fear in his book Purposeful Curiosity. He admits himself that when he starts something new he feels fear. He is not fearless. Instead however he uses his curiosity to overcome his fears.

o    When he started Kite Surfing in the Summer of 22, he saw Kite Surfers jumping 5 or 6 metres and he was afraid. By being curious he tried to figure out what could go wrong. He developed a list of mitigating solutions. He used his curiosity and questions about his fear to help him move closer to his goals. Fear doesn’t necessarily go away but you can make it become second nature to you.

o    Costas uses his failure to learn, to ask for feedback and to course correct.

o    Costas wrote this book during Covid. It was bemusing to Costas that he chose to do something so creative in isolation because he is a person who enjoys company.

o    Costas explains making fear second nature by saying that the more we do something the more it becomes like skin. We get used to it. He uses the example of writhing his own book to explain this phenomenon.

o    Writing a book is a big endeavour. Writing 300 pages in a year and a half takes commitment, it takes time and over time writing  & pursuing this project of writing a book about Purposeful Curiosity became second nature to him.

o    Costas admits that writing is not something that comes naturally to him, in fact it makes him a bit uncomfortable, because for Costas it is about disseminating his thoughts onto paper for others to read.

o    You have to be comfortable with discomfort.

o    When Costas started writing he was very uncomfortable, it was taking him more time than he thought it should, he was stressed and he was beset with his inner critic asking “will he get it?” but curiously the more Costas wrote, the more time he took he started to get comfortable with his discomfort to the point that he began to enjoy it.

o    Costas never felt paralysed by his fear, he felt energised. He studiously worked to bring down his fear by doing more research, reading books that were close to the kind of book he wanted to write, talking to people etc.

o    To execute Curiosity you have to first give yourself permission to go on the Journey. Do not wait for others to give you the green light.

o    Curiosity leads us to be relevant.

o    All of us have to be lifelong learners.

o    Costas encourages us to figure out “our itch” to take ownership for our particular Curiosity Project. If you have a passion, a curiosity, open a folder, take notes, do your research, have boundaries, don’t be seduced by the internet, there are a lot of smart resources like Udemy etc give yourself permission become a bit of an expert.

o    Costas also notes that when you are starting out, following your itch and learning about your passion or topic you need  to find a Tribe.

o    Ask “who is your tribe” go to meetings, participate & talk to discover.

o    Don’t be afraid. The important thing is to continue learning, to continue asking questions to surround yourself with a Tribe, people who are passionate, different, open and open to being surprised and can add meaning to your project.

o    Costas expands on his acronym Curiosity which neatly describes the qualities of a good team and in this case Tribe.

o    Assembling a dream Tribe/Team is about hiring curious people. People who are Collaborative, Unabashedly passionate about the subject, Resilient, Iconoclastic, Open to outside interests, Urgent and Surprise seeking.

o    What Costas admires in his field and in his career or on his teams are the people who bring you questions. They are not waiting for him to solve for everything.

o    Costas mentions the wise adage “never meet  your heroes or heroines” He did not meet this problem when he was interviewing his 60 subjects or innovators for his research. He was surprised by their willingness to share things. People confided in him which for Costas meant that there was trust. Costas was struck by their degree of interest in his subject, their willingness to ask him questions and to take notes. There was a real dialogue with naturally humble subjects.

o    Curiosity means you have to be able to actively listen. If your tribe tells you, you are not ready you have to be prepared to listen.

o    Curious people can listen, they are present and they are humble.

o    No matter his interviewees were very successful, often monetarily they were also humble. There is always something further to learn. There is always another itch they want to scratch and they know this.

o    Costas reminds us that it is important to listen and to digest the information we are getting. We have to be patient & willing to take our time if we want to reach our goals.

o    We need to be willing to do the hard work. We live in an era where there is instant gratification, from food, to education to romance. Everything is on our Smart Phone and curiously then people complain. The book is not a pill, serving instant gratification & guaranteeing results. It is a guide that invites the reader to put in the hard work, to embrace discomfort and to learn. This work requires commitment, time, enthusiasm and effort. 

o    One of the nuggets Costas shares in his nine essential and practical lessons is the idea of “disciplined serendipity” which he explains using his own example of script writing.

o    When he started his pursuit of script writing he went through the exact process he illuminates in his book. He met fear, his imposter syndrome and all the many ways his mind told him he should not pursue this path-he knew nobody in this field- he did not have a ready-made tribe, he knew he was not professionally trained etc.. Still he prevailed. He put the lessons from his own book to work.

o    Costas put all of his concerns to one side and he started. He bought a notebook and he started to write. He soon got into “flow” a state of immersion where his world fell away. In flow you forget about time and place. It happened to him when he was researching and again when he started to write.

o    Disciplined Serendipity means we can move from one thing to something else and by applying the nine lessons from his book we can become better.

o    Costas has now found his tribe, he has identified an award winning script writer at the University where he works and he is getting the support he requires. In a way Costas developed his own curriculum & applied the lessons from his own book to become better at script writing.

o    Curiously for Costas script writing has helped him in his teaching. In his classes he is helping budding entrepreneurs start their own businesses. An important feature of start-ups is Storytelling. He uses the art of storytelling from script writing in his lectures to help his students tell better and more compelling stories.

o    Nothing is wasted. The time and effort Costas has spent learning how to become a better script writer has translated in him using this learning in his lectures. Many people refuse to start because they fear wasting time, using resources etc. Nothing is wasted you simply have to think about repurposing your efforts, combining your skills and knowledge. There is always something to be gained from curiosity projects 

o    In response to the question “who did you become by writing this book” Costas replied “his younger self” the 10 year old boy living in Athens with his friend the screwdriver.

o    The element of surprise that accompanies us on Curiosity Journeys is very fulfilling, especially as we live in an era where we do not know how stuff works.

o    Whilst I promised Costas that I would use his book to discover my next personal & professional itch he told me that he believes I already have it, coaching and doing this podcast. He is partially correct and I know there is more. His book is worth a reread.

Resources shared across this podcast & ways to get in touch

1.     Costas Andriopoulos is the author of Purposeful Curiosity, How asking the right questions can change your life.

2.     https://www.bayes.city.ac.uk/

3.     https://www.linkedin.com/in/costasandriopoulos/?originalSubdomain=uk

Introduction:  Author, Thought leader and Entrepreneur in the world of performance, learning and coaching 

• Myles Downey is a thought-leader and entrepreneur in the world of performance, learning and coaching. He was the founder of The School of Coaching, for many years a much- respected provider of coach training and executive coaching in the UK and Europe. Myles is the author of ‘Effective Modern Coaching’, ‘Effective Coaching’ and ‘Enabling Genius – a mindset for success in the 21st Century’. 

• Myles is one of the leading business performance coaches in Europe with extensive, global experience spanning thirty years. He has worked with CEO’s, COO’s and MD’s in the most prestigious organisations from Banking and Financial Services, to Manufacturing and Oil and Gas to Professional Services and in the Public Sector. 

Podcast episode Summary:  In this episode Myles Downey shares his passion for his work, his writing work, and the work he does to support leaders and organisations express themselves fruitfully and joyously for the benefit of the organisation and each other. There is a focus on his new book, The enabling Manager where Myles decodes the distinctions between Lead, Manage and Coach. 

Points made throughout the Episode: 

• How did you get into this domain called Coaching? Myles started back in the days when the word “coaching” as we know it today was barely understood. Myles was a good tennis player and enjoying playing and competing and he came upon a book called “The inner game of Tennis” Myles was a professional architect at the time and after reading this book within 6 months began to explore the ideas housed in the Inner Game 

The book title effectively divides the world into two, the inner world and the outer world where most of the focus for coaching was applied -such as how you placed your foot etc as opposed to the inner world the stuff between our ears. That was the start of Myles journey into coaching. 

• Myles set up his practice first in Dublin and then in London where he set up probably the first Coaching School called The Alexander Corporation in 1987

• Was the world of sport ahead of The world of Coaching by way of that book The inner Game of Tennis? No like Coaching it was very mechanistic and focused on knowledge and how to rather than what was happening interiorly for a person or player. 

• What did you appreciate when you first heard about the Inner Game? Gallwey the author made a critical distinction between what he called Self One and Self Two. 

• Self-One is that part of you that is in fear, in doubt, in worry and Self-Two is that part of you that is in flow. Teaching tends to put people into self-one. They start to emulate the teacher and they “try” and trying cripples people. Operating from Self Two comes self-reliance and autonomy.  

• Timothy Gallwey used to employ a formula which Myles calls out and explains. Performance = Potential – Interference where interference is about doubt, fear, thinking about winning or not losing instead of being present. If you can reduce the interference for people then they can perform. 

• How did Sir John Whitmore and Graham Alexander influence your work? These two gentlemen had the rights to the Inner Game in Europe. Myles joined them as they both moved into the world of Coaching in Business. 

• What made the work of Sir John Whitmore so impactful in the World of Business? Time & Place provided a rich landscape from which John’s work took hold. There was an openness in the mid 80s to alternatives. Sir John Whitmore was the first person to write a book on Coaching devoid of content such as tennis for example. His book was very simple and very readable. Sir John Whitmore was a man of humility and that meant his ego did not get in the way in his communication with others. 

• Myles does not subscribe to the Leader as Hero model. He shares his work with the English Rugby team and their take on Leadership housed in three capacities, Lead, Manage, Coach. 

• We often make the erroneous assumption that Leaders need to be omnipotent and be skilled in all three capacities. “Leaders are not perfect” and Myles loves that quote from Graham Alexander. 

• As an Author what motivated you to write? One of Myles greatest strengths is his ability to make intellectual distinctions that he can communicate.  Because Myles set up the school of Coaching he had to teach a lot and that motivated him to write too. Orian Publishing asked Myles to write a book and he felt he got “permission” to go ahead and write the book. Myles first book, a book on Coaching has been in publication since 1999. 

• What are the compelling messages you would like to share with the Listeners from your latest book? 

• Command & Control a model of Leadership that has been around for a long time does not work. Think engagement surveys, performance levels and a study that shared the 10 things people do not like about work. No. 10 was their manager. 

• Myles scanned the world to find what did work. The Military was one such place. Start-ups was the other place. In both there is an emerging practice that you could call an entrepreneurial mindset. 

• The US Army are exponents of what they call Mission Command. The thing they talk about most is Trust. 2 things prevail. People have to trust and they have to understand their mission. Entrepreneurial mindset is similar because everyone should know the primary objective of the new business. 

• Both places allowed for and encouraged people to be liberated to perform. 

• When Myles extrapolates these practices into his work he get to three doing words-nouns Lead-Manage-Coach. 

• Lead is about the Why. That is back to Mission Command-understanding the future direction and where the company is going. 

• Manage: describes the part a person will play in the game. Role, Goals, Projects, Tasks, Standards, Protocols etc. 

• Coach: once the person understands why something is important and their role in achieving it then you get into a conversation about “how” they might do it. 

• The authority shifts between the first two and the third. In the Coaching part the authority shifts to the person who is going to do the work. “Tell me how you are going to go about it?” 

• This shift in authority is one of the greatest difficulties for Leaders and managers alike. A lot of the time it is because they do not have the distinctions as described above. 

• The Leadership model moves from Command and Control to Align and Enable. 

• What inspired you Myles to encapsulate your model with the Noun Relate. A robust relationship based on trust will allow for these kinds of conversations to happen. 

• Relationships before results is a Mantra I use and Myles agrees it is so fundamental to work and for him before he does any team work he will indulge some time to build relations between members. 

• When people build relations and build trust they have the difficult conversations so quickly. 

• What eludes managers and leaders to apply these four nouns? A lack of understanding. So many companies try to build a coaching culture for example. Myles says “stop” stop right now. You do not want a coaching culture you want a performance culture. You have to be able to hold people to account. 

• Psycho Synthesis is a body of work built up by Roberto Assagioli in the last century. One of his ideas concerned Love and Will. There are two fundamental drives, one is love the other is will. Love is a feminine energy based on trust, based on nurturing, about letting things happen and is somewhat non-judgemental. Will is a more masculine energy, is founded in control, rigid and structured. Assagioli made the point that whilst love sounds like a good thing it has its shadow. If you are overly nurturing as a parent you rob the child of their opportunity to grow. Similarly Will might not seem appealing but if a child does not have boundaries that is not useful. Myles equates the love piece with Coaching and the good Will with managing and you have to have both. 

• Assagioli shared his idea that that any time you have two ideas, such as  Will and Love that naturally form a spectrum you need to get above both to see what is going on and for him that formed a tringle and the word he chose was Presence. 

• Presence, Will and Love underpin Myles model Lead, Manage and Coach. His model is underpinned by Relation. 

• Relationship and Intent or the fundamental understanding of intent allow for the application of Will and direct communication. 

• What does it take to be able to adeptly move between these domain, Lead, Manage and Coach? Myles answers by referring to some research that supported his book enabling genius. The research was looking at answer the question; Across those people who have displayed “Greatness” what did they have in common? The research unearthed a few things. 1. Identity was important- people understand who they are in a particular domain and how they uniquely express themselves. 2. Will was another and 3. Mindset was the third and 4. The importance of continuing to learn and grow

• Most people when given a new job to lead people are giving no training. In the UK 71% of people who are given responsibility for people are not given any training. 

• Most people when they get into a leadership position do not know who shows up. It’s a potpourri of the things they have had done to them, the expectations of the company etch. Rarely it is about that persons own authority what comes from within. 

• Myles works with Leaders to help them understand who they are as leaders. Myles has developed over time a process that starts by asking a few set questions followed by a visualisation exercise and then a few more questions to pull the analysis together. Some of the questions sound like the following;

1. As a Leader what are you great at?

2. What do people come to you for? 

3. What are you becoming?

• The visualisation exercise produces a symbol that represents a Leaders presence/essence and genius. 

• The exercise ends with the question what would you say is your unique identity as a Leader. 

• Mindset is not a given it is something that you unconsciously develop over time and knowing that you can start to develop it consciously over time. 

• Myles shares his own approach critical to informing his mindset. He uses six post cards that characterise his desired mindset. This is something you can create and guide your behaviour every day. 

• FTSOW (For The Sake of What) is this mindset important. You need to contextualise a mindset. 

• Somewhere in that mindset has to be other people and how you influence and lead other people & there also has to be something in there about how a leader maintains a clarity of context and a vision that is further than the crippling short termism that is so often evident. 

• To bring your book to life is there an example of a team you would be willing to share?  

• An example includes a case from a TV production company and Myles is quick to point out, not the BBC. One of his 1:1 clients, a C-Suite executive was determined to increase the performance of his unit. The work started with conversations with him as a leader and what that looked like and how he brought on and supported the performance of others. The leader formulated an idea that if he could up his own performance it would create a vacuum for his team to fill. As they moved through the work the leader appreciated he needed to improve his capacity to coach as did his leadership team. 

• Myles supported this leader and team through five workshops where they went through the domains of Lead, Manage and Coach. These were very practical workshops where Coaching was emphasised. On the fifth workshop Myles shared his workshop notes and together the team practiced the elements of the program to get the feel of the work. The team worked in pairs and delivered the content to their teams together, thereby learning from each other and with people. 

• The work proved to be transformational. The pairs were asked to have the work delivered across and down several layers of the organisation. 

• Unlike other Manager as Coach programs which often do not gain traction this one did by way of the commitment of the team, the clarity of the Leader about what needed to happen & unequivocal will to make it happen. The Leader was incredibly compassionate with his people & supported them to integrate the material in a digestible fashion. 

• Myles ended this podcast by sharing his wish for the future of work. Human beings should find ways to express in the world, a genuine, authentic expression of you, me, they in the world. Myles plays tennis not because he is competitive but because he loves expressing himself on a tennis court. Myles wishes that our workplaces should be places where people can express at least parts of themselves, fruitfully and joyously. 

Resources shared across this podcast 

1. Myles Downing is the author of ‘Effective Modern Coaching’, ‘Effective Coaching’ and ‘Enabling Genius – a mindset for success in the 21st Century’. He is also the author of The Enabling Manager, how to get the best out of your own team. 

2. https://mylesdowney.com/

3. www.performanceconsultants.com

Introduction:  Alan McFarlane is a Scotsman now living in Barcelona. A native of Paisley, near Glasgow, he studied law in Edinburgh before becoming a commercial litigation partner of a Top-10 Scottish law firm. His interest in business development took him in 1991 to Barcelona where he gained his bi-lingual MBA from IESE Business School before embarking on a long, global multinational career which saw him lead the design and implementation of major strategic initiatives, living and working around the world in places like France, Brazil (where he served on the Latam regional exec.) and Hungary.  Alan is a published author of two books, a book on Egypt post-revolution and the seven moments of coaching published by IESE. Alan collaborates with IESE, Timoney Leadership Institute in Ireland and Human Content, the cutting edge of understanding personality in the workplace. This is the focus of our conversation today. 

Podcast episode Summary:  Human Content is at the cutting edge of understanding personality in the workplace. Alan McFarlane works with Human Content and over the course of our conversation across this podcast he brings to life the potential, the human potential, housed in this body of work, a potential that often goes untapped. Alan illuminates what the instrument, B5+ aims to measure, why it is different from other more commonly known instruments and what can be achieved when this human potential is activated. 

Points made throughout the Episode: 

• The fundamental drivers for Alan include Freedom & exploration for creativity. 

• As part of his journey into this work Alan shares a story from his past. As a then 16 year old in Paisley Grammar School, Alan won a competition, having come from “the back of the field”, for writing, The Reed Prize for English.

• Alan explains that because there was a large element of creative writing in the challenge he won over the more scholarly classmates. 

• It was well known at the time that Alan was going to study law but after winning this prize no one reflected or guided Alan differently. 

• Studying Law in Edinburgh University proved to be a complete mismatch. He shares that by his second year of study he was down or depressed and the saving grace for him was a membership to the film society at University. This membership allowed him to consume 8/9 films a week and that was his creative escape. 

• He graduated after 5 years and went on to pursue his apprenticeship and again there was no guidance or self-reflection to wonder if that was the right thing to do. 

• Another “saving grace” for Alan, in an ill-fitting career,  proved to be his involvement with the marketing committee at his then law firm. KPMG were brought in to help the firm with a reorganisation and strategy and they challenged Alan on his personal goals and he realised he did not want to be a practicing lawyer anymore. 

• That decision back in 1991,took Alan to Spain where he applied to IESE Business school to undertake an MBA- his best subjects proving to be organisational behaviour, Leadership Communication and Business Strategy. Alan self-confesses to have been blind to the activation in him by of his strength in these subjects and joined an Insurance Company in Spain after his MBA. 

• Alan is not ordered structured or planful notwithstanding the career choices he made in his career 

• Tomas Lovenskiold, the CEO of Human Content advised Alan to leave his employ when his role was being redirected. He told him to “get out” take the check this is not you. Despite this advice Alan stayed. 

• A terminal disease for Alan’s father in law proved to be the lucky break Alan needed. The silver lining from this episode in Alan’s life proved to be liberation. Alan used the back In Scotland to write his first book and to get in touch with his fundamental drivers. 

• Various collaborations later and a meeting with bureau chief of Africa, based in Cairo, of the NYT, Declan Walsh meant that for Alan he finally got in touch with his own fundamental drivers

• Meeting Declan meant that Alan met someone who probably held his ideal role, creative writing exploration and freedom to live and write in many countries. Alan recognised this role could have been for him if he had known or if he had been guided differently. It took 35 years before Alan was matched to his ideal career.

• Alan is now passionate to expand the knowledge of the Body of Knowledge that is Human Content so that people can be activated to pursue their true potential. 

• Alan would like to see a way where people, at 18 or earlier could be given a way to understand their fundamental drivers. The problem is that these drivers, consider them rocks on the ocean floor, are often masked by the expectations of others, situations, social norms, peer  groups or job approximations. You need some way to clear the waves and see the fundamental drivers. 

• Human Content is a complete fit with Alan’s drivers. Human Content is the evolution of the Big Five Factor Model. Alan describes the evolution from the Big Five Factor Analysis 

• Alan names the modern labels for the Five Factors, two which relate to People factors 1 & 2, one where people draw energy from either their inner world or outer world and the other which measures how much people are naturally more compassionate and caring for people or more fact focused & outcome focused, making sure stuff is done at the right time. The next two factors, 3 & 5, style of work area, these include preferences on how we do things and preferences on how we think about things. The final factor measures factor number four measures emotional energy, where people are more present or absent. 

• Human Content is strident to say both side of any factor need to be regarded in equal light. There is no right or wrong way to be. The earlier use of the Big Five Factor model was biased in terms of the right hand side of the factor scales and  measures. 

• To be fully activated means a person’s needs to find a role or career which aligns with the picture created the B5-PLUS  instrument (Given the context in which a person sits) 

• Knowing your fundamental drivers opens up the possibility for a person to tactically manage themselves at work. 

• The scientific approach adopted by Human Content makes it significantly different from other better known instruments such as MYERS BRIGGS, DiSC and Insights. This scientific analysis recognises the uniqueness of each human being. Other instruments are too simple. People are extraordinarily complex and Human Content endeavours to recognise the difference. 

• Personality Research is a largely underdeveloped area and the legacy instruments served a genuine purpose to raise awareness about the differences between people. They did not go far enough in Alan’s opinion and he explains why. 

• Human Content is a well-kept secret because the legacy tools are well established and well publicised. 

• The precision of the outcome that is possible with B5-PLUS makes it attractive for organisational performance. It can drive employee engagement, You can clearly see the fundamental drivers for an individual. The fully explored factor analysis against a normed grouping gives much more exactness for role matching etc. 

• Growth Potential, Employee Engagement, Motivation and Understanding are some of the benefits that come from using B5+ as an instrument of choice. 

• The B5+-PLUS Instrument can be used to support team ambitions, understanding the needed fundamental drivers to succeed. 

• By taking the B5+-PLUS instrument a team discovers not only their individual fundamental drivers but also the nuances between them and the combination effects which means that they will have certain implications for how they are in the work place. This will have implications for what they enjoy doing and what they do well together and how they will interact together, smoothly or roughly. 

• Alan illustrates the impact of the B5-PLUS  instrument by way of a case study. B5-PLUS was used for 450 employees after a CEO decided to do a comprehensive role analysis and reformation. The employees were allowed to self-select their roles as a consequence of the rewrite using the analysis from the B5+ instrument. Customer Satisfaction as a key indicator for this firm went from 53% to 86%

• In another example this time from Norway, Alan shares a story about a hospital where the sickness rate was at 26%- 26% of all levels of the employee base at any one time were not available. The B5-PLUS  was deployed. People were allowed to be re-matched, where jobs or at a minimum tasks were readjusted or where people were reallocated to different departments. In four months after this work was completed the sickness rate fell to 2%

• Societal prejudice can blind us to the potential as expressed in certain kinds of personality or expressions of them. There is bias to seeing certain aspects of the personality spectrum as favourable. 

• Alan advocates that we take the B5-PLUS instrument and then acknowledge what is found. He asks that people acknowledge their fundamental drivers, embrace them and then exploit them for greater satisfaction in life. 

• Alan adeptly answers my question regarding the need often for people to wear multiple hats, say for example in a gig economy. 

• He also helped me be curious about a particular client of mine using the terminology of the B5-PLUS instrument and asked a couple of very pertinent questions that I can now explore with her at a future date. 

• The B5-PLUS is distinctive because of its precision as a instrument. It measures 5 personality factors and the facets that accompanies them in a manner that no other instrument does. There is a fully explored factorial analysis of the factors and facets, an order of analysis on personality that has never been done before. 

• The factor analysis, the design and process involved in B5+ makes it an instrument that is unique and helps others see their uniqueness too. 

• Alan uses his formula or 3 word frame, Acknowledge, Embrace and Exploit to encourage others to become aware of the contents of their individual B5+ report and to act on It. 

• The precision of this instrument allows you to confidently predict performance in the way that other instruments do not. Again this instrument can be used for recruitment and promotion that other legacy instruments advise cannot. 

• Alan used the last few minutes of this podcast to wish that individuals and teams at work could have their uniqueness recognised, and through that recognition for employers to make a conscious effort to match that persons uniqueness to their roles to make people, happy, satisfied fulfilled motivated & fully activated & for the employer to reap fantastic performance and growth. 

Resources mentioned across this podcast 

• B5-PLUS Product from Human Content

• B5-PLUS personality assessment from Human Content

• www.web.humancontent.com 

• Linkedin.com/in/alan-mcfarlane-ob546b13

• Novaturia Global SL, [email protected]

• www.iese.edu

• The Seven Moments of Coaching by Alan McFarlane 

• Egypt’s Thousand Days of Revolution by Alexander Murray (my pen name)