I’m a Habs fan. I’ve been a Habs (Montreal Canadiens) fan since before I can remember. I believe my dad was too but he “pretended” to be a Leaf fan just so we could have a rivalry but when he talked about Jean Beliveau I knew he was secretly a Habs fan too. (Although later in his life he simply said it was because he was a fan of the game more than any team.) If any of you have a team in any sport that you have followed and identified with for your whole life you understand the impact it has. It is your tribe.
A connection like this is powerful and it brings people together who would otherwise never feel connected. AND when you understand the power it has you may appreciate how to bring out the best in your team and organization regardless of the adversity or diversity.
Think about a professional athlete who is traded. While in some cases it may take some time to acclimate to the new team, its fans, its system, the athlete immediately relates with the goals of the new team–winning the championship. When you think about it from this perspective you can see how good friends become rivals because they wear different colors. One of the most entertaining Habs of all time, is PK Subban. PK at an early age was a team mate of John Tavares and their friendship is well documented. John is captain of the NY Islanders and the number one pick in 2009. Both are big stars in the league and apparently their families have been friends for many years. PK and John are on rival teams; one a forward (John) and the other on defense (PK). On the ice they are rivals and it is clear in their play; maybe more obvious because of their style of play.
Tribe wins out; it’s all about how our brain works.
The Magic of Tribe brings people together. As a leader, what are you doing to connect your people so the barriers and obstacles are broken by these connections?
Our brain computes, as a safety precaution, at the most primitive level—the amygdala, whether someone is friend or foe AND it rests on whether someone is part of our “IN” group or tribe.
In the podcast I share about a time I was hired to help a financial services firm retain the women they were recruiting. It was the 80’s and it wasn’t common to see women in the sales or management positions in the big financial firms. I was young and a bit idealistic so I was ready to push the envelope and challenge the status quo so it was a good opportunity for me. I was surprised, though, by how hard it was. The women were interested in the fascinating and lucrative work and HR didn’t find it hard to recruit them however they were leaving almost as quickly as they started. I had many conversations with the guys about it and they, interestingly, were quite open with me. I remember one telling me, “But Roxanne, they will cry…I just can’t work with people who will cry.” And another told me “My wife will not stand for this. I will be in trouble every day if she knows I am working this closely with women.” At the time I was disgusted by the attitudes. As I look back on it now I realize that they were feeling threatened. At the time, I will admit, I only related to how the women were feeling.
As I spent more time with the women who left I realized the on-boarding approach needed to be altered to encourage and welcome them into the culture of the organization. We couldn’t train and prepare them for the work or the environment in the same way we did the men. Along with shifting internal practices we needed to create opportunities for the women to come together. They were each others best support–their tribe was primary and it was instrumental in them becoming part of the organizational tribe. In time I realized we also needed to find common ground between the men and the women. I didn’t know the brain research then; I see now, this was about developing tribes based on common interests and focus to reduce the threat both parties were feeling.
This is the fifth in the series so we’re building on what we have talked about in Episodes 20, 21, 22 and 23 and don’t forget there is even more details in the related blog posts.
The keys to it all revolve around what happens when the amygdala is hijacked…..because this will mean your Direct Reports will:
- Be less capable of solving even the most basic problems…
- Suffer from fuzzy thinking so they don’t see challenges OR opportunities
- Be very defensive and reactionary
- Make mistaken connections missing the real issues of consequence
- Panic and make small issues into huge problems requiring your attention.
This week the key to not hijacking the amygdala is to create the bonds of a tribe. In David Rock’s model SCARF, the “R” represents the reward of “relatedness”.
Our brain is on the hunt for signs we are safe to just be ourselves. When you are among others who are part of your tribe you are free to be yourself. You will take risks because your tribe-mates will have your back. When you are constantly in self protection mode because you are not “part” of the group, your brain registers the threat and the amygdala is triggered.
During the practical joke I share as part of Episode 20, Ted pushed out side of the group. He was on the outside; all of those who had been included in the prank felt the reward of being included.
This is the same way a person working for you may feel if they are new on the team and can’t relate to the “inside” jokes team, or if their set up as a part time employee while everyone else is full time, or they different in any way (gender, ethnicity or other distinguishing differences) or they bring a different expertise that may not be valued by the rest of the team. Interestingly the more diverse the overall team is the less the specific differences will negatively impact, however, as the leader you will benefit from observing and acting to limit the divisions that could still develop or occur on even the most diverse teams.
It is important to distinguish this from what I spoke of in Episode #21 around Status. In Status the employee is threatened based on their comparative importance on the team and in this domain it is about how they relate within the team. Do they fit or are the outsider. You may have a lot of status on the team, especially after a promotion, and still feel like the outsider.
Recently in the role of CEO I had occasion to observe an interesting manifestation of this. My team was extremely diverse in all the obvious ways and I was pleased to see how it resulted in an environment that welcomed and supported a very diverse client base; the team, however, was primarily from one specific profession. About one year into role I decided to create a new role at the Director level (Communications Director) to focus on communications, customer acquisition and service. I hired someone who did not come from the “industry/profession” but who specialized in the assigned role. Up until then, the duties had been shared by a variety of people who were industry insiders without the unique skill set, but the past belief was that they were most attuned to the professional needs. Of course we already had a couple of people in support roles who had different professional backgrounds but not at the level of Director. The fact that she was one of three positions that reported directly to me did ensure she had the status covered.
It was fascinating to watch how she was received. I observed how warm and engaging she was with the entire team of 40 and over time it became clear it was all one-sided. I became concerned. While she was doing great work and achieving exactly the results I expected, the team was not warming to her. Rather than stepping in to try to fix the situation I decided to share with her what I was seeing. She seemed relieved and confided in me just how bad it was. I was shocked to hear about some of the direct hostility she faced every day.
As we talked about it, and I reflected further, I realized, but for my unique role, I would be treated the same way. I, too was bringing a new perspective to a well established and very conservative profession. We agreed the solution was not for me to “step in”; in fact we believed this may make it worse. Instead, we developed an idea for her to engage in various social settings and for me to include her in more formal meetings. This started to change things. Then I initiated a number of customer related projects, participating initially while inviting her to host and eventually own the process. Slowly but surely the trust and connection people felt with the Communications Director changed. It took about two years but eventually she was a highly regarded member of the team, recognized both for her understanding of the customer and her ability to communicate and support the entire team.
In Episode 19 and the story about building a leadership team focus, you may recall I observed how the entire company had established a competitive culture. Each unit and region was encouraged to compete with each other–the clearest and most destructive silo’d environment I have ever witnessed.
As part of my story, you may recall I set out to develop a sense of trust and an “in team” mindset with the Directors who reported to me. I intentionally refrained from language that created competition with the other units while encouraging them to collaborate, established joint goals and hand off the needs of the external clients through a jointly owned process making client satisfaction their number one shared focus.
Once my team of directors realized the positive impacts of engaging their respective teams differently we sought to expand our thinking to how we engaged with other units to some limited success. Because we were never able to inspire other units to “play” with us, we never did eradicate the ‘out of group’ prejudice my team felt about the other units but when we started to see how it didn’t serve us well to focus there we were able to mitigate its impact.
The way to do this, by the way is, to build even minimal social links to the other groups. It’s difficult when they won’t play but even small efforts will increase motivation and performance.
Research suggests that by providing even the most minimal of social links between people and teams you will increase the motivation and performance of all members of your larger group.
If you are serious about bringing out the best in your people one of the things you can do for them is build cohesion throughout your organization by mitigating the in group bias and the out group prejudice that naturally grows in most organizations. A few things you can do:
- Emphasize that which connects people on your team or in your BU.
- Focus your meetings on the joint efforts of members of the team–Speak in “we” language and always reward team accomplishments publicly.
- Encourage inter-team socializing.
- Recognize and reward behaviours and plans that serve the common goals AND the customer experience.
- When on-boarding a new person on the team clearly establish the value they bring and find common ground between them and the current members of the team.
- Create team rituals and formal bonding terms. This is why many professions and big organizations have their own internal language or jargon. This can make it difficult for people to break in (so be mindful of #5) but it can ultimately bond people very deeply.
- Assign collaborative teams so people have opportunities to develop more diverse connections.
- Draw connections between the unique competencies and strengths of differing members of the team and your collective ability to exceed expectations. In other words there can be a deep unity in diversity.
Further to #8 above, I am reminded of the “99 All Star Tour” during the NHL lockout of 1994, to which I have referred far too often during leadership training in the past. (In fairness to me, I was developing and delivering a lot of leadership development programs in the 90’s so this, the Challenger Disaster of 1986 and a handful of other examples at the time, were helpful reference points for discussion.) The stated purpose of the tour was for players to stay in shape and to promote hockey around the world. There was status associated with being chosen by Gretzky to be part of this so there was much speculation about how he chose. Now apparently it started with his friends and that makes sense but a professional athlete of any era or sport is competitive by nature so he also was looking to put together a team that would perform well and be competitive. Here’s a link to the roster. I remember among my friends and in the media the biggest questions were raised about Pat Conacher making the cut. Of course he and Wayne had been teammates with the Oilers and won the ’84 Cup together and Pat had later played with Wayne on the Kings but Wayne insisted he chose Pat because of his unique skill set. Pat was a role player and while he had played parts of 10 seasons in the NHL at that time he was virtually unknown, unlike every other player on this team. Gretzky, and the rest of the players on that roster, understood that a team is made of a diverse set of skills and abilities. A high performing team is not always the one with the most “STARS”.
A high performing team is born when all roles and contributions are valued and connected. A Leader who values the diversity of the whole, as different as the contributions may be, will raise the performance of the group as a whole far beyond the sum of the parts.
Unfortunately when you are a newly promoted leader you will often be struggling your self with feeling like the NEW PERSON with your peers so you may miss the real dangers associated with not mitigating the feelings within your own team. AND YET, that is exactly what will make you an asset to the organization and ensure you develop a department, team or organization that is accomplishing far beyond expectations.
When you focus on developing the deepest connections on your team, the benefits you will experience include:
- Increased trust and disclosure. You and every member of the team will be able to make better decisions and choices because communication will be more open and transparent.
- Increased Empathy. When empathy is present people feel safer and when we feel safer we take more risks and innovation is possible.
- Team Cohesion. Imagine if you had few destructive conflicts to manage. Be prepared for constructive conflict though and develop your abilities to manage it well because it will be one of your greatest assets and a positive factor of differentiation ultimately. (More on this in a future series.)
As I mentioned in the podcast, once the members of your team feel safe and like they are “part of something”, their levels of oxytocin will increase and, you know when that happens, people stick together. “Its’s like a hormone of attachment”, according to Carol Rinkleib Ellison, a clinical psychologist and former assistant clinical psychiatry professor at the University of California, San Francisco. “It creates feelings of calm and closeness.” You want a team that makes things happen create the connection and watch them exceed your expectations.
NEXT TIME: the threat associated with making the wrong call and how the Blue Jays ultimately won the ALDS in 2015.