Employing Differences, Episode 77: How do we get started?

Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

I'm Karen Gimnig.

And I'm Paul Tevis.

Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, "How do we get started?"

So this is a salient question for me right now, because I'm starting to do some work with a new client. And it's actually not about me starting with them. It's about them starting with each other. So this is a case where I'm starting to work with a team that is just starting to form. In fact, several people haven't even started working at the company yet, and so they're going to be coming into it. And so this is actually something that I do a fair bit of and I know Karen, you also do a fair bit of of helping groups, helping teams get started together. Going through this process of being separate individuals, who come from different places, who have different concerns, who are doing different things, and now starting to come together and form as a team, to form a community, to come together. And so what I wanted to explore a little bit today is what are the things that we do to help those groups get started? What are the things that are useful for them to be doing right away? What are the things they might start to do that maybe aren't as useful? And how do we actually help them get started? So I'm going to toss it over to you first. What do you do to help groups start to form?

Yeah, so I want to point to there are kind of two categories of things that I think are important. They can be overlapping and intermingled, but if you're not tracking both of them, you tend to lose one. So the one that most groups do at least some of is sort of values, visioning, what's our mission? Alignment around what I would call mission or goal or objective? Why are we together in a room on a regular basis? What is the thing we're trying to do? And just making sure are we all trying to do the same thing? And is there enough alignment of goal that does actually make sense? That kind of thing. And depending on how much hierarchy you've got in this situation, it may be, are we really a team? Do we really belong in this project, if you're forming a nonprofit, or community or something like that. If you're in a more corporate kind of thing, where everybody's been hired, it may even be educating from those who know and did hiring to those who are now gathering. So that that's one piece and we can talk about how to do that piece. But right up front, I want to grab the other piece, which is what I spend more time on because groups tend to miss it which is the forming the relationships, which I'm going to say is mostly about trust and safety. Some of that comes through just flat taking time for it and designing exercises that way. And some of it comes through developing skills or rituals or practices or ways of being that make us feel safer and more trusting of those around us. But being really thoughtful about that piece. Because we tend to think, well, you know, over time, we'll get to know each other, and we're all good people, and we'll all just trust each other. And that's all going to work out fine. And I won't say that never works, because sometimes it does. But you pay a pretty big price if it doesn't, and it's completely avoidable. You really can work on the trust and safety stuff up front and avoid an awful lot of headache later on.

I absolutely agree. I've heard it said that chemistry is the implicit creation of expectations and understandings about how we're going to work together. And you can do it cheaper and faster by doing it explicitly. Rather than just letting it emerge, we can do things that will actually help us to get those together. The way that I often think about the two categories that you kind of laid out is: What is it we are trying to do? And how do we want to be together as we are trying to do that? And I will often start with the latter, as you often do, because the former is really apparent to the group. I mean there often is somewhat nebulousness and confusion. We don't want to gloss over that. We do actually want to talk about what is the work we're actually here to do together? What are the results we're being asked to create? What's the outcome we want? The the what is really important. But the how do we want to be thing is very easy to skip. And particularly in corporate, in teams that I work with that have a mandate, that have a mission, that have a thing that they need to do, it's very easy to dive into the former without dealing with the latter. And so I also have to manage that tension. Because if you spend too much time in the"how do we want to be together," some people can get really antsy about it. Where they're like,"But we just need to get to work. We just need to do the thing." And so what I find is really useful is to dance skillfully back and forth between both streams. We do just enough to get started of how do we want to be together as we work, start to do some work. And then actually, we have some grist for the mill to go, how have we been working together? Is that how we want it to be? We can talk more about designing that. And then we can jump back and forth. And actually skillfully jumping back and forth between those two streams is often how I help a group get started.

Yeah, I will often, in addition to the jumping back and forth which I think is great I'll also merge them. So a lot of where I start on the "let's get some trust and safety in the room" is looking for the skills that tend to be deficient. And for me, number one, in the likely deficient skill set in America is listening. Can we really slow down and deeply hear each other? Do we know how to do that? Because almost any group in the "how do we want to work together?" "Well, I want to work in a group where people hear me when I speak." And, and actually, we're not good at that. So I will start with the mirroring practice that I know, Paul, you're familiar with. It comes from the Imago Relationships work. And I'll teach that and set them up to go off and in pairs and really practice this. And I will say that the first time I did this, I was like, "It's kind of a strange thing to do the first day a team comes together as to pair them all off." And I will tell you, I have seen it over and over and over again, that when the pairs come back having done in my practice a mirroring exercise where they had a chance to really hear each other but more to the point to be deeply heard, often in a way that they rarely felt heard before, certainly not in a work environment or outside of a deep relationship kind of space when they come back, the whole room feels safer. The whole room feels more connected. And you wouldn't think that. You'd think if you pair off, you felt closer to one person. But it turns out that if you're close to one person in the room, the sense of safety, the willingness to be vulnerable, the ability to show up is increased around the whole room. And so in that early activity for me, the listening skill wants to be there, and then use prompts for that that relate to the "What do we want to do together?" And I'll give you one other sort of secret tool that I use in that, which is that usually the first prompt is the sort of big and easy"What do we want to do together?" What am I excited about about this new project or what this project means to me or something like that. The second prompt in the same dialog and that same paired exercise is what's going to be hard for me about this. What challenges me about this? And inviting that vulnerability, that naming, right upfront and in a broad way. Nobody's put on the spot. You're not choosing how deep anybody has to go. But you're giving them the prompts to say this is a place where we talk about things that are hard for us. And if they want to go deep they can and if they want to stay fairly surface they can, so you're giving them that safety. And then I also put in the prompt, "Something I appreciate about you..." which even if they've just met thank you that it's there. And so having that sort of series of prompts creates a phenomenal amount of safety and by the way, a habit of not just talking about the positives, but also the challenges. And you can build that into a group in about half an hour. And then they come back and it's a whole different room.

One of the things that really points to is the one answer to the question, "How do we get started?" is "How we want it to be." Because you're actually getting them to practice and model exactly the behaviors that are needed from the beginning. You just get them to do it. How do we get started as quickly as we can being the way that we actually want to be together? Rather than going, well, first, we need to establish a level of safety and then we need to talk about you know... It's actually a really quick entry. Which is one of the things that I that I love about that approach. They immediately have the experience of it being like the way that they actually want it to be. So that's one of the reasons when I do the helping them articulate how do they want to work together. That's all also queuing me up to listen. To listen and watch and observe. Are they doing that? What are the things that they're doing that are helping them doing that? So that I can help to offer course corrections as quickly as possible, but that it's rooted in their request for how they want to be together. Because I might have an idea of how I think they should be, but if I'm working with them, it really needs to be their idea of who they want to be as a team, how they want to work together. And then I can just be providing observations and feedback about what I'm seeing, and what I'm noticing, and what I'm observing where they're doing that. And where they might do it a little bit more or a little bit better. I love the idea of both getting them into those behavioral patterns as quickly as possible and then also having the articulated, "Here's the patterns that we want to have" so that as someone sort of sitting on the outside, I could be giving them feedback about how they're doing it or not.

And helping them give each other feedback, which is incidentally another practice we'd love to bring in right at the beginning is that feedback. And so it really is for me all integrated in so when we say,"Okay, well, we need to think about what is our work to do?" however are we going to frame that, I'm at the same time thinking, "And how do we do that in a way that builds the relational engagements, the way that we want that builds the"how to work together." Okay, we're going to do this new exercise that we've never done before. It's one we're going to keep using. We're going to learn how to do this new practice, whatever that is. And within that new practice, we're going to be having the "What is our work together? " or "What are our next steps?" or "What should our priorities be?" or "How are we going to divvy up the roles? or all that other stuff that we tend to know we need to do at the front end. If we do that stuff with a great deal of thought and intention and frankly, often with some help from an outside consultant like Paul or I in what we do. Or at least pulling out a book that talks about these things, but being really thoughtful about, it's more than just getting into a room with an agenda. It's more than just naming the topics we need to talk about. It's being thoughtful about how we talk about those things. And then pausing to do the feedback and really building in we care about how the relationship is. We think about how the relationship is. We think about how the way that we plan things will create certain relationships. And we pay attention to what impact we're actually having, and take time for cleanup when we need it. And if you do those things, just from the get-go. And so expect it to take a little longer expect it to be a little vulnerably, uncomfortable here and there. Wxpect it to be different from a typical business meeting. And and really go in with all of that holding the relationships absolutely alongside not primary either one but alongside with what it is you're trying to do, I think that gives us a good start on how to get started.

Yep. Well, I think that's gonna do it for us for today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

And I'm Karen Gimnig. And this has been Employing Differences.