How can your team deal with complex challenges ?

Most of the challenges facing leaders today are complex. Dave Snowden’s Cynefin model separates the types of situations leaders are confronted with into simple, complicated, complex and chaos, and indicates how each should be dealt with differently (HBR November 2007). A complex challenge requires leaders to probe, sense and respond. How can this model be applied to a team ?

When teams are invited to solve a problem or find solutions for a challenge, they nearly always intuitively move into solution mode very quickly. Each will mentally assess the situation, categorize or analyze the facts and then share which solution is the best and why this is so. “I think we should do this because I used to …”. Experts often save the day. Brainstorming helps to share as many ideas as possible in a short period of time so the team can respond quickly to the issue. Advocating solutions, expert input, brainstorming or sharing best practices works for simple or complicated problems where the Cynefin model prescribes the steps of sense, categorize, respond, and sense, analyze, respond respectively. Simple and complicated problems are prevalent in an “ordered” world where actions have predictable results. Approaching complex problems in the same way leads to half-optimized solutions at best and a team stuck in disagreement at worst; it is often up to the leader to decide what to do. So much for the team’s contribution !

How can a team work through the steps of probing, sensing and responding and tackle complex problems efficiently ?

That’s exactly what Action Learning does. Action Learning is a problem solving process where a small team works on a real and complex business challenge, takes action and learns as individuals and as a team while doing so. Rather than jumping into solution-mode, the ground rule “statements are only made in response to questions” helps the team focus first on what the real issue or challenge is. Perceptions and assumptions are put aside as the team asks questions about the different aspect of the problem. This corresponds to the probing step in the Cynefin model.

Based on the discussion and exchanges in the Action Learning session, each team member will decide what actions to take after the session. They can take action to test out an idea, confirm an assumption or talk to people to collect more information. This is the sensing step in the Cynefin model.

When the team reconvenes to continue their work on the challenge, each will share the result of their actions and what they learned from them. The team will take in this new information about the challenge, and continue to work on shaping the understanding of the situation through questions. This is the responding step in the model. 

For a leader, the Cynefin model describes how to deal with a complex challenge. When this leader wants to empower the team to learn, develop and come up with new ideas, the Action Learning process provides a clear structure and rules to avoid the pitfall of tackling complex challenges through the ubiquitous brainstorming-like “let’s find the solution” approach.

Is your team sustainable ?

Sustainability is one of the many popular business buzz words. In the last year or so, I have seen issues of Harvard Business Review and Rotman Magazine dedicated to the topic of sustainability. In times of uncertainty, stakeholders want to be reassured that the organization they are investing in, belong to or are a consumer of, will continue to be around.

On a somewhat smaller scale, let's look at a team's sustainability. A sustainable team would mean that the team is "able to be maintained at a certain rate or level". This means that the team continues to deliver high performance, year after year, whether in a crisis situation or in a growth environment. A sustainable team also means that the team continues to deliver after you - the leader - has moved on.

Leaving behind a sustainable team is the pinnacle of team leadership.

Any team can be "whipped up" to deliver under difficult circumstances. A pep talk, an all-hands meeting will often boost energy and motivation. But this does not go on forever. If the team is pushed all the time, for more, faster, better ... individuals will often end up being burnt out. You can only push so much, or be pushed so much.

The only antidote to performance burnout is to create and maintain a positivity in the team. Positivity is not the same as friendship (although camaraderie is part of it). Positivity is a shared energy and power to support extraordinary motivation (www.teamcoachinginternational.com). In a future blog I will review the components of team positivity, and how you can nurture each to create a sustainable team.

Can you spot the team leader ?

Open up your Google browser. Type in "high performance team" and look for the images that turn up.  You will find stock photos of "sample teams" but these are not real teams. They are people posing for a picture that is supposed to represent a team. The pictures you will see of "real teams" are all sports teams. Bike riders, skydivers, rowing teams, or the Formula 1 team at a pitstop. And in all of these pictures, the members of the team are in full action. Where is the leader of each team ? Are they somewhere behind the scenes ? Or is one of the folks in the picture the leader ? Or are there many leaders ? I believe it is the latter. Sports teams work based upon leadership. not on the premise of a leader. Some lead the team in individual development, others in medical support, others still in communication, financing, equipment or recuperation.

Now turn to Amazon and look for books on high performance teams. All these books (and there are plenty) are focusing on who ? Not on the team, but on the team leader. There are plenty of models of what the team leaders should do. The 5 steps. The 3 dimensions. The 7 D's (I made these up ... don't look for them !). Because for some reason we are made to believe that it is the team leader who brings about the team performance. The team leader "does upon the team" certain things and then, voilà, the team propels itself to high performance. Or does it ... ?

And so here is a conundrum. Sports teams manage to deliver performance week after week. There is no apparent single leader or 'boss'. Yet at work, all the focus is on the leader and on what he or she does (or not) with or says (or not) to the team. Ever wondered why getting a team to work optimally at work is such a challenge ? Maybe we should be looking at teams again ...

Where do you practice leadership ?

We have all been to numerous leadership development courses. We have read the classics from Lao Tzu, Drucker or Covey. And we also read the latest gurus who distill the "five things super successful people never do", thinking that there will be some new nugget of wisdom or a key trick that will help us (or more often, those around us) become the perfect leader.

Once outside of the training room, the MBA lecture room or the retreat resort, and after all the great exchanges and practice we had, we get back to ... work ! Research shows that only 15% of participants in leadership courses really manage to implement the tools and methods they have learned and change the way they lead.

So what is missing ? Why is the world not full of inspirational leaders, with all those great books on leadership ? Individuals who are highly skilled have become so through endless practice. Sports and music teams spend most of their time practicing. We don't have opportunities to practice leadership. Practice during the training session or retreat is not practice. It is role play or "let's pretend".

We cannot really practice a customer engagement meeting. What could be the impact on the customer  if something unexpected happens ? We cannot really practice how to run a better team meeting. What will the participants think if things don't go well ? In the words of Peter Senge, we need to find "practice fields: opportunities deliberately created to practice and to reflect upon the results, rather than to take action. These are distinct from performance fields, where participants are typically expected to perform and learn at the same time."

In my experience, Action Learning is a great setting to create practice fields. With the explicit participation of all (including customers or suppliers), and the upfront clarification that the session is about learning, participants have the possibility to apply their leadership concepts, engage and learn individually and with the others. With all the investment in leadership programs, one wonders why this final step is all too often left out ...

When does your team start ?

What is the best time to start to work on your team's interactions, looking at how to optimize productivity and team cohesion ? That question came up when I worked with a recently formed team. The team had been in place only 2 months, and because not everybody was located in the same office, a few team members had not yet met their new team mates (although they did know each other). At the end of the 2-day workshop, one participant shared that it would have been better to have more team history (6 months or so) because this would make the workshop more effective.

He had changed his mind by the end of day 2.

All too often, leaders call me for help with their team when things start to go South. When tensions arise, or even conflicts appear. When people are getting entrenched in their respective silos. Or when the team is just treading water and not delivering on its targets and commitments. Of course working with a team in this situation can help and performance and cohesion can improve.

But to come back to the original question: the earlier you start to work on your team, the better it is. On day 2 of the session, the team members shared their respective responsibilities and expressed where they needed help from the others in the room. Or they proposed their help with a topic a peer was working on. They then established the norms they would start to work towards. And finally they identified one single project that they would jointly work on, and that would show their efficiency to themselves and the rest of the organization. They will reconvene and check on the status of all this in one month.

The feedback from the team leader at the end of the workshop was: "Really happy we did this. We saved a lot of time !". Don't wait for a crisis to start working on your team !

Building trust ... where to start ?

A fellow facilitator recently contacted me to ask for ideas about an exercise around trust for a team session. And she specified that it shouldn't be childish or goofy (her words) like the famous "trust fall" exercise since this is a senior executive team.

Trust is a word we often use lightly. A key point to understand is that trust exists only at the level of two people. An easy way to think about this: if A trusts B and A trusts C, then this does not mean that there is trust in the team A, B, C. In fact, it is possible that B and C don't trust each other. So you cannot put 8 people in a circle and say "let's now build trust in this team". It starts at the level of the different pairs.

When I work around trust, I always start with the pairs. The trust between pairs will become the trust within the team as a whole.

My favorite exercise is the "hot seat". Each person takes turn sitting in the hot seat, and the others, one by one, give feedback about this person. Round one follows the "I appreciate that you do/say this or that and I suggest you continue doing it" structure. Round two is "I think it would be great for the team if you could start/stop doing/saying this or that". The person receiving the feedback can only say "Thank you" and not react in any other way. If done consciously, this can go quite fast and it is typically well received by all participants. There is sometimes laughter and sometimes genuine reflection and appreciation.

You won't build trust in a single session. But there is a way to get started.

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 ?

Why working in a team is the best leadership development ...

Bringing a diverse group of people together and asking them to find solutions for a complex company-wide problem will push participants slightly out of their comfort zone. How they deal with this challenge will demonstrate their capability to learn and survive in the VUCA world in the future.

A recent experience with a services firm confirmed this. I worked with 11 high potentials during a couple of months. The organization's focus was to validate who from them were really high-potentials, ready for further development or promotion. At the end of the series of sessions, the team presented their conclusions and recommendations on the challenge they had worked on, and each team member presented separately to the top management team what they had learned, the insights they had discovered and how they evaluated the experience over all.

And it was during the individual presentations that things got interesting. Some of the people who were thought of as high-potentials confirmed or even exceeded their potential. Others who had in fact been a bit under the radar jumped out from the crowd and positively surprised the management team. And a few who were considered as top guns strongly disappointed.

As the country manager said (at the end of the session): "We now know where people really stand ... and in some cases that is not where we thought they were standing !".

We could have decided on some leadership training. And I am sure the participants would have liked it. And learned a lot. But working in a team, not being in their area of expertise and having to progress together really highlighted the strengths some had, and brought to the fore the gaps others were struggling with.

It is tempting to identify HIPOs and future leaders by looking at each of your team members individually. But it is by having them work in a team that you really will see how they stack up !

Keeping employee engagement simple !

Employee engagement is probably one of the greatest buzz words of the last few years. Consultants make great money with measuring and evaluating employee engagement, and often show leaders how terribly low the engagement of their employees is. And after having shamed these leaders, they then feel obliged to hire the aforementioned consultant to hopefully turn those disastrous numbers into something more presentable. Often, a multi-year "engagement project" is started ... with great costs.

So it is refreshing to once in a while come back to earth and see how simple engaging employees can be ! I had the chance to work with teams at a service firm in Bangkok a few times. Each time I discovered different knowledge sharing sessions being offered to employees, designed and delivered by peers and colleagues. Not by the training department or the HR function, but by the seniors in the different departments.

It is a great step forward if an organization can instill a mindset of sharing knowledge as opposed to hoarding it. Knowledge is the only thing that multiplies when shared amongst others. Yet in reality, people are often incentivized to sit on their knowledge for their own performance measures. Through this kind of sharing sessions, the company instills pride and empowerment when it gives the opportunity for employees to develop and deliver these sharing sessions.

Just think how different this kind of sharing sessions are received by the employees compared to the traditional email from HR about the list of training programs to sign up for ?

Employee engagement is a long term effort, for sure. But it doesn't need to be complicated. When you are embarking on an engagement effort, start by looking at and asking your ... employees !

When self-awareness hits home

I was positively surprised in a team Action Learning session some time ago. Two very high-potentials, extremely sharp and well-spoken, contributed heavily in the first half of the session. Not to say they pretty much monopolized the discussion. Their peers sat and nodded most of the time. But then again, their contributions were really top notch.

As the session progressed, and the Action Learning coach invited the team members to share their personal reflections and learning, both spoke out to say they "had to be more quiet" and "give more chance to others to participate". Now, that happens quite often. What happens more rarely though is that they actually changed their own habit without much prompting.

They were both more quiet but explicitly encouraged others to share. Even if they had some great ideas, they refrained from expressing them. They encouraged the entire team to contribute and share. The dynamic of the team changed from one with two dominant figures to that of a team working together.

During the reflections at the end of the session, one of the initially dominant ones shared a well-known quote, which was poignant because she had just demonstrated how to apply this wisdom, rather than just being able to rattle off the quote. "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

High-potentials are often those of who the organization thinks they are a level above the other, today and in the future. If this potential can be combined with a genuine self-awareness and actions to work on their own shortcomings, then you have in your hand a few gems. Rare but really valuable.

Learning meetings ... ?

I just read an article of one of my favorite authors in the latest issue of HBR. Michael Watkins is a very good resource when you are interested in career transitions and he is pretty much the expert in this little-researched area. In this article however, something caught my eye ... and makes me react.

Watkins explains that as a leader of a team, you should have three types of meetings. Strategic meetings to make the big decisions on business models, vision, strategy or organizational evolutions. Operational meetings to review forecasts, short term performance and adjusting plans. And finally, you should have "learning meetings". These meetings are "scheduled on an as-needed basis, often after crises or in response to emerging issues. They can also focus on team building."

Wow ... what a let-down ! Learning meetings ?!

So let me get this straight. There are meetings where we "do" stuff like operational things and strategy things. These are the doing meetings. And then when we do not do anything, and if we have some time on our hands, we can have a "learning" meeting to think and learn ... I strongly disagree with this view of what learning means and how it should be integrated in the way people work. My other favorite author and thinker - and father of Action Learning - Reg Revans says

"There is no learning without action and there is no action without learning"

and from what I seen in my experience, this is the only way to make learning a continuous and integral part of how to grow a team and a business.

If learning is something that is distinct from the "real" work that is being done ... it means you are relegating it to the back seat. The only way to really learn is to make learning part of every meeting, project, and activity.

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/

About questions and onions !

When a team experiences Action Learning through a first discovery session, the questions they ask can be a bit haphazard. It sometimes feels like there is a competition for asking as many questions as possible. This can frustrate the problem presenter who might think that this “great new tool” that would help with the problem feels more like an inquisition ! And indeed, not all questions are created equal. Team members are aware during the session what questions are really powerful and helped the problem presenter, and which ones were not really helping that much. So after debriefing about what they learned, they sometimes ask me “But how should we ask more of these great questions ?”.

I prefer to avoid any attempt to “teach” which questions are great and which questions are average. After all, it is the person who receives the question who determines whether that question helped to open up new thoughts, or whether it felt more like a burden to answer. There is no such thing as “the one great question” that works in any situation !

It is not really a matter of great questions versus average ones, but more about the extent to which the questions help the problem presenter think. I use the metaphor of an onion (see the picture) before we start the session. I explain that there is no harm in asking the questions that are at the level of the outer peel of the onion. When exploring a new issue, team members need to get basic information. These questions are useful for the team members to start to know about the problem, but they will not really help the problem presenter develop new ideas. For new ideas to be explored, team members need to try and move “towards the center of the onion”.

The team typically gets this concept very well. In a recent session, I asked the team what they thought about the kind of questions that were asked. One team member replied “We are asking questions at peel of the onion !”. The team immediately picked this up and confirmed that they would have to try and move to the center of the onion if they wanted to help the problem presenter. A similar intervention when I feel a team is asking rather superficial questions is “Team, from the questions we have been asking so far, have you seen the problem presenter having to think a lot or not ?”. The metaphor of the onion comes up almost immediately.

Avoid to teach what a great question looks like. Invite the team to think about questions that help the problem presenter … think !

Changing others ...

In the team sessions I run, participants share management challenges and learn from each other through a questioning process. 100% of the challenges are about someone who is not in the room. The difficult colleague. The demanding boss. A team member who is not doing what is asked. Or another who is talking behind your back. The context and specifics are different, but it is always about them. And how to change them.

The presenter explains to the colleagues in the team session all he has tried, all the tricks in his management tool kit that have been tested. And how all these attempts were not successful and how the issue is still there. Once the explanations about the situation are complete, the presenter eagerly listens to what the colleagues will come up with, in the hope they will have a magic trick in the tool box that is brand new and untested and will be the secret to dealing with this management challenge. Alas, after a few minutes, the discussion often turns into "I have tried that too and it doesn't work" or "This solution is not possible in this case because ...".

The exchange quickly grows stale when the focus is solely on what other or innovative tricks exist to change the other person's (peer, boss, team member) behavior. The real insight comes when the presenter realizes that he or she can only change his or her own behavior ... and then see what impact that has on the other person. This seems pretty basic for some but it is only when this awareness has grown that the presenter can come up with real steps of what he can do himself to deal with the challenge.

Meetings that work !

I was lucky to be able to deliver the first public workshop on Action Learning in Vietnam last week. At the end of the session, all participants confirmed they really saw the value of the approach and they would apply it in their organizations. As a facilitator, it feels good to get this kind of feedback but I am also aware that very often, reality (with deadlines, emails, presentations to do ...) sucks us up very quickly.

So I was really excited to receive an email from one of the participants of the Vietnam branch of a global FMCG company sharing his very first - and innovative - application of the principles of Action Learning !

His sales team had scheduled the annual Joint Business Meeting with a key customer the day after the workshop. In the past, this Business Meeting was a full day of Powerpoints where each team shared their views, their objectives, results and challenges. And the hours were spent in discussing, explaining, debating, resulting in some agreements and some disagreements. Pretty much a long day for everybody involved, with hours of time spent up front to create the Powerpoint slides.

So my participant, in charge of the sales team for the global FMCG in Vietnam, decided to try and apply the principles of Action Learning in this annual Joint Business Meeting. Out with the laptops, and out with the Powerpoints. The sales manager adapted the standard WIAL Action Learning script to fit his need for this meeting, maintaining the core ground rule of "Statements are only made in response to questions". Participants asked questions to one another to dive into the challenges their respective businesses were facing. Quite a difference from stating your point and trying to convince the other side yours is the right view. Both teams followed the Action Learning approach and achieved a high level of consensus on the key challenges they faced. At the end of the meeting, next steps were jointly identified to work towards and solve the challenges. Participants rated the session 8.5 out of 10 !

Next step: do the same with 2 other major customer teams.

Now that's what I call Action Learning ... in action !

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".

Nobody's perfect ... but a team can be !

I first thought this was a generic quote close to common sense. But I realized it was in fact the title of an article written by Dr. Meredith Belbin some time ago introducing his Belbin Team Roles (www.belbin.com). I agree with this statement and I believe most business leaders to as well. But I am also astounded that, although this sounds like common sense, it is so far from how many leaders I meet go about leading their teams.

Indeed, I often meet leaders who explain that they have a great team except for the marketing manager. Or the HR manager. Or whichever manager. And so - their thinking goes - if only they could get rid of that particular manager, and replace him or her with the perfect marketing, HR or whatever manager .... if only that could be done, then all would be well. Yet finding someone new takes time, is costly, and however great someone's CV/resume/Linkedin profile looks, the reality sometimes is not really that glamorous. And if all the above turns out positive, there is no guarantee that this new manager will fit into the culture and work well with the other managers on the team.

When I meet leaders and ask them how they work on the development of their team, they mention an annual retreat, or a monthly team meeting. These events are often reduced to a series of presentations about each department with their priorities and results. And once in a while they throw in a team building day, which is great fun for sure. Is this how you build a team ?

There is so much more potential that can be developed when you focus on the connections between your team members. What happens when the quality manager is adversely impacted by a new process the finance manager is proposing ? Are they sitting together to find the best solution for the organization ? Or do each stay within their silo complaining about the other ? Or maybe even worse ... does nothing happen until you - the boss - decide ? Working on the connections between your people and the reactions to events that impact them is the real way to develop a team. It takes time, there is no 1-2-3 solution. But from what I see around me, this is an area that most teams simply do not work on.

Learning ... one KISS at a time

KISS Keep It Simple Stupid was originally coined by the US Navy to emphasize the importance of keeping things as simple as possible. The target the navy commander had given to his mechanical design team was to ensure that a ship's engine system could be repaired by a mechanic with limited experience or specific training. The idea was never to refer to that mechanic as stupid. In fact, the original KISS was written without a comma, meaning that things needs to be kept simple AND stupid (without writing the 'and'). Since then, many have changed the original meaning and added a comma to read Keep It Simple, Stupid ... Written that way, the 'stupid' becomes an insult to whoever the message is addressed to.

I recently came across another meaning of KISS I had never heard before. A business leader told me his team always ended their meetings and working sessions with a "KISS" ! KISS in this context stands for:

Keep: what did we do well in this meeting that we should keep doing ?
Improve: what did we do that was so-so and we should think about improving next time ?
Stop: what did we do that didn't work and we should commit to not doing again ?
Start: what was missing and we should add or start doing for our next meeting ?

A simple way to remind yourself and your team that learning happens all the time. There is no need to make things complicated. The only requirement is to spend a very small amount of time to reflect together on a key number of questions and create a shared commitment on making sure the next meeting, project, session or retreat is better than the last 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 !