Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Jillian Miles Massey

  • Teamwork Makes the Dream Work…Unless the Team is Dysfunctional

    Teamwork Makes the Dream Work…Unless the Team is Dysfunctional

    This week, I had the great pleasure of facilitating in-person training with a group of junior managers who are working diligently to improve team and unit dynamics among their direct reports. They quickly identified the teams they lead that are functional vs. dysfunctional, and we had some deep discussion about why some teams work and some don’t. 

    Patrick Lencioni is a subject matter expert on organizational health and team dynamics, and his model of the “5 Dysfunctions of a Team” is embedded in most training about how and why teams work or don’t. The foundation for the model is Trust, followed by Healthy Conflict, Commitment, Accountability, and Results. 

    Source: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

     

    Trust must come first, and trust isn’t always easy to establish. Effective team leaders build trust through psychological safety, which in turn creates an environment where healthy conflict can sprout. 

    Our instinct when we hear Conflict is to physically cringe (unless you’re someone who is wired for it), but Healthy Conflict is simply the open sharing and ideas – allowing space for innovation and continuous improvement through challenging and questioning. Without it, a team will never achieve cohesion and commitment. 

    Another way to think about Commitment in teams is buy-in – are all team members bought-in to the shared purpose and goals? Without buy-in, the team will lack internal accountability. 

    When team members are not comfortable holding each other accountable to shared purpose and goals, any results achieved maybe by happenstance, not by clear and cohesive teamwork. Results improve exponentially when all members of the team hold themselves and each other accountable. 

    If teams have Trust, Conflict, Commitment, and Accountability, but struggle to value collective team success over individual achievement, they will ultimately reach some level of dysfunction. A team of people who are focused on their own independent successes are really just a group. There’s a difference!

     

    So, take a minute to evaluate a team you’re a part of. How many of the critical pillars of functional teams do you have? Is your team stuck in one of the dysfunctions? What insights can you take from Lencioni’s model back to your organization? 

     

  • Training and Developing Growth Mindset

    Training and Developing Growth Mindset

    Two weeks ago, Taylor kicked off our new series on Growth Mindset: what is it?! Today we’re exploring a growth mindset in training & development. 

    The Neuroleadership Institute (NLI) defines growth mindset as


    …the belief that your skills and abilities can be improved, and that ongoing development is the goal of the work you do. However, creating a growth mindset culture isn’t just about having optimistic employees, but creating a space where employees strive to learn, enjoy being challenged, and feel encouraged to develop new skills.

    Let’s look at a case study of NLI’s work with Microsoft. 

    A few years ago, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella started a revolution from a revelation: the success of the company was dependent upon a culture of continuous learning and a workforce of “learn-it-alls” instead of “know-it-alls”. 

    Training and development became the forefront of the Priorities, Habits, and Systems of the company. 

    NLI’s growth mindset work follows a structure of Priorities → Habits → Systems. In the case of Microsoft, executive leadership adopted a growth mindset as a major priority to be supported through habitual training and learning activities and embedded into organizational systems like performance management and pulse surveys.  

    Microsoft created “interactive online modules with rich storytelling and multimedia” for their employees to learn independently and on-demand about the why, what, and how of growth mindset. Managers were given conversation guides to help drive and facilitate meaningful discussion about growth mindset within departments and teams. When team members exhibited growth mindset habits, they were recognized and positively reinforced.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Graphic: NLI Growth Mindset Case Study Collection

    Training is often thought of as sitting in a room (physical or virtual), facing forward, listening to a facilitator read words from slides. Training doesn’t have to – and shouldn’t – look and feel like that. 

    Our team hosted an interactive workshop this week where participants sat around one large table with the facilitators, everyone facing inward and around at each other. Learning was facilitated through large group discussion, partner discussion, independent work, and even physical movement around the building and the block (we literally walked around the block during a break!). 

    Is your training stale? How can you shift the paradigm to a Growth Mindset in your training and development priorities, habits, and systems? 

     

  • Why Encounter Groups Work

    Why Encounter Groups Work

    One year ago this month, Mary Ila published “4 Exercises to Enhance Your Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Efforts” and featured the Encounter Group Model. This blurb stuck out to me the most: 

    “When we engage in these types of activities, we get to know people. We build relationships. And when we know people it makes it much harder to hate them, or people that are ‘like’ them.’”

    Since then, our team has partnered with a client to pilot Encounter Groups with about 50 people in an organization of thousands. And it’s working. 

    We define Encounter Groups as “a group of people who meet, usually with a trained leader, to increase self-awareness and social sensitivity, and to change behavior through interpersonal confrontation, self-disclosure, and strong emotional expression”. For this particular pilot program, participants were identified from existing internal leadership development cohorts who were already meeting regularly, and a member of our team joined the cohorts to facilitate Encounter Group sessions.

    At the first session, after introducing the purpose and process of Encounter Groups, we asked everyone to write down the experiences that have shaped their lives. We allowed time to reflect, and then we asked everyone to share their stories with the group. Some folks bristled at this. It’s a professional setting, and we’re asking them to get personal. It’s uncomfortable…which is why it works. 

    When people allow themselves to be vulnerable (even when they feel forced into it), it’s like they unlock part of their brain. Vulnerability breeds growth. By the end of this first pilot session, the cohort felt more like a cohort. They felt a connection and a shared purpose. They grew together. 

    Our Encounter Groups include homework (gasp!). In between the first and second sessions, we asked this group to read a few excerpts from stories written by a pool of authors who are culturally, racially, sexually, and socioeconomically diverse. We split each pilot group into three subgroups and assigned three different sets of reading materials. When we gathered for session 2, we asked each subgroup to summarize their readings to the other subgroups, and we asked questions like:

    • What aspects of the stories did you relate to? In what ways were their stories/life experiences like yours? 
    • What aspects of the stories did you NOT relate to? In what ways were their stories/life experiences different from yours? 
    • What made you uncomfortable about the information you read?
    • Based on your reading, what would you like to explore further? 

    By the end of the session, members of other subgroups were asking to borrow reading materials they hadn’t had the chance to read. They were relating to each other over shared experiences and backgrounds, and they were asking questions about experiences that were different from their own. Real, meaningful conversation was happening! 

    By the third session, the cohorts wanted to take action. They’ve since put together a clear list of items they’d like to tackle within their organization, and they are in the process of presenting an action plan to leadership. Encounter Groups work.

    Encounter Groups work because they create a safe space where people can expose very real challenges and solutions for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts within their own organizations. Encounter Groups work because people get to know each other as people first. Encounter Groups work because they lead people to act. Encounter Groups work.

    How is your organization getting vulnerable this year? How are you getting vulnerable? Can you implement Encounter Groups and create space to get to know people?

  • Learning from K-12 Educators

    Learning from K-12 Educators

    “Naturally, everyone must find a way to earn a living wage, but the paycheck should not be the only motivation. Employees who are confident in their abilities and somewhat comfortable in their workplace can be highly productive. Please note that my sentence said ‘somewhat comfortable.’ We must become a bit uncomfortable to grow professionally.” 

    This is a quote from a K-12 Career Counselor in our latest Continuing Education Class for Facilitating Alabama Career Development: Assessments & Resumes. For the last couple of years, our team has been working with K-12 career developers throughout the state of Alabama, and one big takeaway has been the need for assessment and resume skills that meet students where they are but also challenge them to stretch. As this educator says, “We must become a bit uncomfortable to grow professionally”. How can we support students AND make them a bit uncomfortable…in a good way? 

    In our continuing education class, we test some assessments ourselves, and we review others using sample reports. We explore free and paid tools, formal and informal. Which would you guess our K-12 educators prefer to use? Turns out – all of them! 

    “I feel that in the interest of time – I only focus on interest and do not include values. The more I read and learn – I think I’m going to pick a few assessments for the students to take and send the results to me for meetings…working to complete a portfolio”

    Our educators work with vastly different children with their own wildly different learning abilities and preferences. What works for one may not work for another. What makes one uncomfortable (in a good way) may not be challenging enough for another. Couldn’t the same be said for us grown-ups? Just as educators provide a variety of learning tools for students, HR and Training professionals should and do provide a range of professional learning opportunities that explore hard and soft skills and allow for light to heavy self-evaluation and awareness. 

    “The company that provided our training gave us several personality assessments, skills assessments, and work-based values assessments in an effort to help us learn how to ask questions and determine what was important to our students and how to use that information to help them develop their own plans for success, not only in college but in other areas of their life.  To be honest, at first, I was somewhat skeptical of this, but after seeing this method work in how to approach students and co-workers, I am a believer. I have seen it work MANY MANY MANY times with wonderful results.” 

    So here’s what we can learn from our K-12 educators: 

    1. Be willing to be uncomfortable 
    2. Try formal and informal assessments 
    3. Engage in a variety of learning experiences 

    What steps are you taking to grow personally and professionally, just like our children and teenagers are doing? 

  • Lead Up and Learn Up

    Lead Up and Learn Up

    MYTH: Individual Contributors can’t shift the paradigm at the organizational level. 

    Our team has a long-term partnership with a multinational company to facilitate leadership training for all of their Managers of People (MOPs) and Individual Contributors here at the local site. The program we’ve developed for them consistently receives glowing reviews, with one caveat: Individual Contributors are skeptical of a real shift among the “higher-ups”. The feeling is something like, “This is great and all, but unless corporate changes the way we do things, I can’t have an impact.” 

    Let’s tackle the myth. 

    Willie Pietersen, Professor at Columbia University and former CEO, refers to leading up as “The Neglected Competency” and says, “Leading up effectively is not easy to pull off. But I think we owe a duty to help each other learn and grow regardless of rank. We all have our blind spots. When I look back on my corporate career, the subordinates I valued most were those who helped me grow as a leader.”

    Did you know that Starbucks didn’t always write customer names on the cups? Pietersen highlights this story as an example of small, incremental change that influenced a corporate shift: 

    In 2011 an imaginative barista decided to enhance [the] personal experience by writing the first names of customers on cups, instead of just calling out the name of the drink that had been ordered. The idea raced to headquarters and today this simple practice happens four million times a day at 30,000 locations worldwide.

    Individual Contributors can and do influence organizational change every day. Sometimes it happens slowly, with small, incremental changes within a team or a department. Sometimes it happens overnight on a global scale. In every case, it takes guts and it starts with leading the self. John Maxwell emphasized leading the self when he crafted a simple message nearly a decade ago with 9 Ways to Lead Your Leader:

    1. Lead yourself exceptionally well.
    2. Lighten your leader’s load.
    3. Be willing to do what others won’t.
    4. Do more than manage – lead!
    5. Invest in relationship chemistry.
    6. Be prepared every time you take your leader’s time.
    7. Know when to push and when to back off.
    8. Become a go-to player.
    9. Be better tomorrow than you are today.

    So we bust the myth; we learn to lead ourselves in such a way that we Lead Up and influence organizational change…and then we tackle the fact that we need our top leadership to Learn Up in order for our organization to be a living, thriving place. 

    Pietersen says, “Arguably the most important learning is that which occurs from the ground up. When that circuit is blocked, an organization faces a survival problem. According to a Gallup poll, companies that listen to their employees are 21 percent more profitable than the competition.” 

    Leaders who Learn Up are more likely to see higher profits! Organizations that encourage Individual Contributors to Lead Up and Leaders to Learn Up are likely to make. more. money.

    Be a workplace of and for the future. Lead Up and Learn Up.