the Action Learning Iceberg

How does your team react when you tell them there will be a team building or leadership session next month ? A session where they will learn how to communicate better, give better feedback, increase collaboration. Or build trust.
Some will pump their fists: "Yeah, a day away from the office !". Others will roll their eyes and think how to minimize the impact on their already heavy workload. In a few cases, someone will report a work emergency the morning of the session.
During the session, people are often distracted (phone, email, or other apps) by urgencies coming from their "real work". The session feels optional and work priorities need to be dealt with.

At the end of the session, reactions will vary from "That was fun. Now let's get back to work." at best to "What a waste of time." at worst. Time and money gone. Motivation, teamwork and collaboration enjoy a temporary blip, if at all.

Action Learning turns things upside down. Leadership and team development cannot happen disconnected from daily priorities. We bring a team together to work on a burning issue, a complex problem that impacts the whole organization. Top management gives the team the authority to work on this challenge, propose solutions and implement ideas. A number of sessions happen over 3 months or so, and the team takes actions between the sessions to collect information, test out ideas and validate assumptions. If we were to stop here, this would just be an enhanced form of project work or problem-solving.

The Action Learning coach looks at the part of the iceberg under the water. The coach observes the team dynamics and identifies learning moments - not teaching moments. Learning is anchored in the observable interactions between team members. The coach brings these dynamics to the team's awareness and invites team members to discuss what works well, what can be better and how the team wants to develop the dynamics further. There is no theory or 'here's what you should do' guidelines. The team is the context from which learning is created. From one intervention to another, and from one session to the next, the team and the individual members grow. Almost literally. Growing means taking the current situation as the reality and moving up one step. And then another.

The coach has a double role. Of course the team needs to be able to present their solutions for the business challenge to the top management at the end of the sessions. At the same time, the coach ensures that each individual, as well as the team as a whole, increases self-awareness, and takes steps to become better individuals and members of the team. I sometimes say that the business challenge the team works on is the excuse through which to bring in personal and team development.

Looking for real development in your individuals and teams ? Take a look at Action Learning www.wial.org.

Taking teams for granted ...

When a professional develops experience and successes over the years, he at one point often gets promoted to manager (or leader, or supervisor ... pick your preferred term). And most of the time does quite well. He will get some feedback or evaluation about which of the managerial skills he needs to develop. And again most of the time all this goes well. Until it no longer does. And then the peers or superiors get into analysis mode about how to deal with this manager (leader, supervisor ...) who is not performing as he should. At that point, we often realize that the person had kind of - accidentally ? - stumbled into a management role. He had not really been prepared, or mentored, or trained to take on the role of a manager.

We often assume that people know what management is about because of what they have seen around them. If you have been around it, can't be so difficult to do the same, the thinking goes.

In my experience, the same happens with teams in organizations. Second to leadership, teams are probably one of the most talked about/written about concepts of personal and organizational development. Everybody knows what a team is, often starting from a young age with sports teams. And when we start to work, we are part of teams. Or at least they tell us we are part of teams. Some teams are working well, others are not. So just as with the management itself, we assume that people know what teams are and what to do or not to do when working on a team. But often, and in my experience this happens even more frequently than the case of the individual managers, teams do not live up to the expectations or the potential. Open conflict is probably (hopefully !) rare, but what we call a team is most of the time a group of individuals coming together once in a while to share information.

A team can be so much more. But for that to happen, you cannot expect to get there without some effort. Teams require work. Where do you rate your team in 2016 on a scale from 1 to 10, and what is your plan to improve on that in 2017 ?

Using Action Learning to accelerate the development of team psychological safety

Click on the link here or below the picture to read my blog post published online in the CLO Chief Learning Officer magazine !

http://www.clomedia.com/2016/06/09/action-learning-can-accelerate-team-psychological-safety/

What Google's research DID NOT say about high-performance teams

Amy Edmondson's concept of team psychological safety has been around for 15 years. But it takes a company like Google mentioning it to bring the topic in the mainstream ! Google spent a lot of time to analyze what differentiates high-performance teams from mediocre ones. Although many interesting characteristics were looked at, none of them was really the differentiating factor. What really set high-performance teams apart from others was "a shared belief by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking".

Unfortunately this complex team dynamic is already being reduced to one-liners and simplifications. One of the articles I came across discussed Google's finding with the eye-catching title

"Google spends years figuring out that the secret to a good working environment is just to be nice."

Well, no ... First of all Google didn't try to find out what a good working environment looks like, but what high-performance teams look like and behave like. Secondly, the title leads to a serious misunderstanding. Being nice is not what makes a team excellent. If that were the case, I would know of numerous high-performance teams. Especially in Asia, being nice is very important and doing the opposite creates tensions. But being nice in itself does not result in excellence. When being nice means not challenging one another (for fear of losing face), not speaking up when you really should (for fear of standing out) or faking agreement (for fear of creating tensions), you have a team with lots of niceness but little excellence.

Nothing wrong with being nice. But do not equate that with a high-performance team !

What does Google see as the MAIN characteristic of an effective team ?

I am sure that if you ask leaders what the key characteristics of an effective team are, they would come up with a list of great and noble words. Trust. Diversity. Shared goals. Appreciation. Focus. And many more like this. Team psychological safety will probably not be on that list. And yet that is what Google says contributes most to the effectiveness of a team, click here for the original article. Google lists 4 more characteristics, but Team Psychological Safety beats the other 4 by a long way !


In my discussions with leaders in Asia, I found out it is a description that scares people to some degree. Psychological and safety are words with a lot of interpretations. Amy Edmondson's definition of Team Psychological Safety is "a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking". Not just risk taking, but interpersonal risk taking. This means telling others when you made a mistake. Or asking for help from one of your peers. Or speaking up when someone else has made a mistake. Doing this means taking a risk with respect to your peers. It requires some courage to do this. But when you create a climate where people can take this can of interpersonal risks with one another - in a safe way - the foundation for a great team is laid. And all the other characteristics will grow on that fertile foundation.



You don't develop Team Psychological Safety over night. It grows over time. And it can also disappear over time. But the reward of a team that continues to grow is really worth the effort. So think about how you work with your team, and what you can do to increase the "shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking".

Building the wrong kind of trust

A lot has been written about developing trust with your team members. Trust takes time to build and can be destroyed in a minute with a careless remark. In Asia, trust is maybe even more critical when leading a team. We know all that. Nothing new here. But I have seen senior leaders attempting to build trust with their team yet at the same time destroying the very foundation of that team.

Here is what I have observed more than once. The leader sits down with Tom, one of his direct reports, to review an important project. "Great job Tom, I am really happy I asked you to be in charge of this project. We are on track and the client is really satisfied. You have definitely confirmed your capabilities". So far so good ... great expression of trust in what Tom has done so far. And then the conversation continues ... "Now, for the next step, you will need to work with the marketing manager Susan. You know she can sometimes be a bit reluctant about launching under the circumstances we are in. You may want to spend some extra time to convince her. But at the same time, I trust Susan that she will lead the marketing campaign successfully."

What has happened here ? The leader has created great trust between him or herself and Tom. Tom probably walks out of this meeting really pumped and motivated. But what about Tom and Susan ? The leader gave some advice about how to approach Susan, and also added that he or she trusted Susan with her part of the project. So all should be set and done between Tom and Susan, right ? Unfortunately, trust does not work that way. Trust is dyadic, a difficult word to indicate it can only exist between two people. I can trust A and I can trust B, but that does not mean that A trusts B or that B trusts A.

Developing a team requires not just trust between the leader and the direct reports. There is much more potential for value - as well as downside - in the trust relations between the team members. If the leader talks to Tom about Susan, when Susan is not there (and doesn't this happen all the time ?), then what does this do to the relationship of trust between Tom and Susan ?

Trust between your team members is as important as trust between you and each of them. As a leader, you cannot "manage" this trust, but what you say - and what you don't say - to each of your team members influences these trust relationships to a large extent. Something to think about for your next one-on-one.

So what really happens when you're not around ?

The real test of a team is to observe what happens when the boss is not around. At worst, bickering and territory-defending starts. Sub-cliques get together to gossip and point out whose fault this or that latest issue is.


But let's be positive. Let's assume yours is not a dysfunctional team. When I ask leaders what happens when they are not around, they tell me that things are just working fine, that work moves along and gets done as it should be. Thank God (or rather, thank you !) for that. But is that really where our expectations for our team should end ? That the usual stuff gets done ? That managers stay in their comfort zone and stick to the established routines ? What happens when something important (not routine) comes up ? How does your team deal with that ?

Team Psychological Safety is a concept that describes how team members feel and interact when the boss is not there. Originally developed by Professor Edmondson from Harvard University, it refers to “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking".

What does this mean ? Let's say an important challenge arises, where people have conflicting opinions and the boss is not around to decide. What do your team members do ? Do they get together and look for the best solution for the organization ? Or do they wait it out for you to come back ? Do they develop work-arounds (duplicate work) to deal with the issue without addressing the root cause ? Do they stay in their comfort zone (comfort zone = job title, department or small circle of buddies) or do they take the risk to step out of the comfort zone and find a solution, even if this is maybe "not their job" ?

We all know what we think should happen. But the question is what really happens ?

You can measure the Team Psychological Safety that exists in your team. Team Psychological Safety does not emerge after a beach-side team building or after the annual retreat. It takes effort, and time, to build it up. But the rewards are very significant: a team that grows and takes responsibility, also when you are not there !