Does your team have a high trust culture? Does everyone on the team express themselves openly, naturally, respectfully and authentically? How do you overcome barriers that may be preventing this from happening?
In our last Collective Leadership Insight Series article, Jane explained the four layers of collective leadership. The layers represent a process and a journey for a team to take together that can be readily understood and, with effort and commitment, ultimately attained. The 4 layers are another vital ingredient in creating the fertile ground in which leading from a systems perspective can develop and flourish in your team.
First Layer: Aware of Self and Others, Fully and Authentically Expressed
This article focuses on the first layer of collective leadership: team members are present and aware of self, each other and the system, and are able to express themselves openly, naturally, respectfully and fully authentically.
This first layer enables the “being” condition of the First Principle in our Collective Leadership Model: Team members are self-aware, closely connected and trust each other. This in turn enables the Second Principle: Leading from the “Whole” rather than from the “Rock” – by the leader using their relationship systems intelligence to be connected to all the different talents in the team, sensing the system dynamics within and outside the team, and aware of what the team is creating together. This naturally leads to the Third Principle: Leading from the Emerging Future.
The importance of this to leadership is explained in our previous articles. To recap: In our Collective Leadership Model leaders know how to generate and tap into collective intelligence – how to find insight there, and how to call on everyone’s participation. Collective leadership is founded on trust, allowing each member to take the lead at the appropriate time, contributing a particular talent or strength to meet the needs of the moment.
The collective leader trusts that each member will step in as needed with their unique set of skills and perspectives. Leaders need to be willing to co-lead together in the unknown, leveraging each person’s unique strengths and insights to read the subtle signals of change.
Our Collective Leader Model requires people to be able to connect with one another openly and honestly, with the courage to be fully, authentically expressed. When we each know we can trust this from others, we have enough safety to freely offer up to the team all our insights, talents, strengths, creativity and innovation and to show up fully.
Barriers To Trust – Team Toxins
There are four ways of being in communication that will wreck a system by preventing the safety required to build trust that allows the first layer of collective leadership to be achieved. If people feel unsafe to be completely themselves at work, this prevents them being present and aware of self, each other and the system.
It takes courage to be honest with colleagues, because you are revealing things as they are. As Jane wrote in the previous article: “We also need to be willing to express ourselves openly, respectfully and with full authenticity. Many leaders tell us “In the hot political environment of our organisation, being fully authentically expressed is just not possible, it would be suicide!” Yet, unless the team members can absolutely trust that they have this from each other, they will lack the solid foundation for leading collectively. When the team culture trusts that this is in place, enough safety is created for people to freely offer up to the collective their insights, expertise, strengths, creativity and innovation and to express themselves fully, speaking up even when it feels challenging to do so.”
The team toxins are based on the work of relationships expert Dr. John Gottman who has undertaken research into relationships for over 40 years.
In his celebrated book, The Relationship Cure, Gottman writes: “Paying attention and turning towards one another’s needs clearly has a positive impact on workers’ lives and the organisations that employ them. Studies show that an employee’s perception that he or she works in an emotionally supportive environment increases job satisfaction, lowers stress, decreases the likelihood of quitting, and improves team performance. Yale University researchers found that workers’ ability to talk with one another about their stress helped them to cope, and even protected them against health risks. Another one of their studies showed that work groups’ performance suffered when members didn’t communicate well or didn’t pay attention to one another’s feelings or when individuals became so controlling that they didn’t allow others to contribute. In contrast, when people in these work groups got along with one another, the positive results were synergistic – that is, peers in the group motivated each other to do better, and the sum of their combined efforts ended up being greater than if each person had been working alone.”
Gottman identified what he calls the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” – commonly seen patterns of negative interactions that can have toxic effects on relationships. These are the “team toxins” described below. These toxic ways of behaving damage team collaboration and are difficult to recover from. They eliminate a team’s ability to practice collective leadership. We often don’t realise we are communicating in these ways, but it’s helpful to remember that at times we all do this, it’s normal!
The following explanations are adapted from Gottman’s writings on relationships.
Criticism
You’ll always have some complaints about your work mates – but there’s a world of difference between complaint and criticism. A complaint focuses on a specific behaviour or event, and includes describing how you feel and a request for what you need or prefer. A criticism is global and expresses negative feelings or opinions about the other’s character or personality.
“The problem with criticism is that when it becomes very frequent, it paves the way for the other, far deadlier horsemen.” – John Gottman.
The antidote to criticism is to “complain without blame” by expressing frustration in a manner that others can actually hear. You can do this by bringing up an issue in a direct, respectful, and courteous manner as soon after the incident as possible, while memory is fresh. For example, you could use this four-step process, adapted from the Centre for Creative Leadership’s SBI process:
- Situation: Describe the situation non-judgmentally, being as specific as possible. Avoid generalisations and vague language like “every time you have a deadline . . .” which can lead to disagreement right from the start.
- Behaviour: Be equally specific about the behaviours you’ve witnessed. Don’t share opinions or make assumptions. Instead, focus on objective facts—what the situation was and what occurred. Don’t make it personal, focus on action or behaviour, not the person.
- Impact: Express the impact of the behaviour you observed, whether on you personally, on your team, or on others. Again, be specific and nonjudgmental. Rather than saying something like “it’s clear to me that you are very rude and you just don’t care about helping our team,” share what you experienced, saw, or heard. Don’t say anything about the other’s intention.
- Request: Ask for what you need in clear, specific and positive terms.
Contempt
Gottman explains that contempt arises from a sense of superiority over someone. It is a form of disrespect that can be expressed as sarcasm, cynicism, hostile humour, name-calling, eye-rolling and mockery. Contempt is often the result of an accumulation of differences between, and negative thoughts about, another person that haven’t been resolved.
“In whatever form, contempt is poisonous to a relationship because it conveys disgust. It’s virtually impossible to resolve a problem where the other person is getting the message you’re disgusted with him or her.” – John Gottman.
Gottman’s relationship research shows that a negative remark sits with us much longer and goes deeper than a positive remark, so it takes many more positive remarks or actions for us to rebuild trust with the person who hurt us. Various research studies also show that contempt can also have a health impact. The person exhibiting contempt can self-harm, as well as impact the other person’s well being.
The antidote for contempt is for the collective leader to build relationships founded on mutual appreciation and respect by treating people as our equals. Create a habit of scanning your work environment for things you can appreciate and then communicate it clearly in the moment to the appropriate colleague. Consider the colleague’s positive qualities, strengths and the things you appreciate most about them.
Defensiveness
When someone feels attacked by hearing criticism and contempt their natural response is to become defensive, reversing the blame they are hearing. Gottman’s research shows that defensiveness rarely has the desired effect, because it’s a way of blaming the other person: “It’s not me, it’s you.”
“Defensiveness in all its guises just escalates the conflict, which is why it’s so deadly.” – John Gottman.
At times people can respond to appropriate feedback about a complaint defensively. Colleagues can dread giving this type of work mate feedback because they are not receptive to hearing about anything that they could do differently.
The antidote to defensiveness is taking responsibility, even if for only part of the problem and its impact. The collective leader does this by being open, curious and respectful.
“Take the time to hear your partner out and take responsibility when appropriate. A simple, genuine apology can go a long way.” – John Gottman.
Stonewalling
When criticism and contempt and defensiveness go round in a cycle it can eventually lead to one of the people withdrawing, either emotionally or physically, and refusing to engage. The person doesn’t share their frustrations and refuses to address issues they have with others.
Stonewalling behaviour could be giving a colleague the silent treatment, such as not taking phone calls, not replying to emails, avoiding meetings or other physical interactions and generally closing themselves off to the person they are in conflict with.
The antidote to stonewalling is to stay with the conversation. If you need time out to take a few deep breaths and collect your thoughts, let your colleague know, and then return to the conversation when you’re ready. This way, your colleague will understand that you are taking care of yourself, not trying to reject them. If you feel completely overwhelmed it’s because you’ve become ‘physiologically flooded’. An indication of this is if your heart rate is over 100 beats per minute. If this is the case, tell your colleague and take a break for 20 minutes to calm yourself and return to continue your conversation.
Open Mind, Open Heart, and the Will to Progress Along the Path to Collective Leadership
In systems of human interaction what emerges is culture. If these toxins are present in your communication then your team culture will struggle to progress along the path to collective leadership. However if you successfully learn the antidotes to these communication toxins your team system will adjust and you will be able to progress to the other layers of our collective leadership model.
In our experience we believe that you need what Otto Scharmer calls the states of open mind, open heart, and open will.
My personal experience is that some type of mindfulness practice is key to this first layer: if you can be in the present moment you can be aware of self, others and the system. This self awareness enables emotional self-regulation which allows you to choose how to express yourself openly, naturally, respectfully and fully authentically.
Summing It Up: The Journey To Collective Leadership
At Leadership Coefficient we take intact teams through a process in which they gradually develop as a coherent whole – able to practice collective leadership fluently. The members begin to relate in new ways, broadening to organisation-wide views. Aligning together around their shared purpose and aware of each other’s strengths and potential for contribution, they are supported to shift out of silo thinking and into systems thinking. Together, they develop the emotional maturity that will support a culture of agility through systems leadership.
This is how we are able to increase overall team effectiveness and performance.
