I was at a 12-step meeting last night and a relatively new guy asked the group to chime in on how he might be able to speed up the process of “getting better”. I think what he meant by “better” was more confident, less judgemental, less reactive, and maybe more principled in general.
Since we were in a 12-step meeting I suggested actually practicing the 12-steps which is my usual snarky go to when a new guy asks for a short cut.
But in the context of my readers here, I’ll add another dimension. And because I’ve been hot and heavy delivering Better Teaming Workshops for senior leaders, I’m going to talk about that a little.
We would all love to invest in a 1-day offsite with our team and have the result be an instant 75% improvement in communication, decision making, new ideas, and lived experience right? Hell yeah we would!
But that’s not typically how it goes. In the recovery world there is a saying that if you walk 10 miles into the woods, it’s gonna be a 10 mile walk out. That isn’t totally accurate, nor is it really measurable, but it does make the point that we did a lot of damage and now we have to do some healing.
I’ve found that there is a similar ROI with working on your team. If we haven’t been investing in being a better team for some time, then the relationships and skillsets have typically decayed during that period of neglect.
The unfortunate news is that becoming a high-functioning team requires patient improvement. Reps and cycles. Repeated meetings, projects, convo’s in the hallway, etc where we get 1-2% better with each interaction.
Creating psychological safety takes time. Learning to communicate well to our peers takes time. Creating structure and clarity takes time. Just like everything in life….It takes time.
The new guy from my meeting last night has actually made unbelievable progress over the past year or so. He just can’t see it clearly. Sure he has a car and a drivers license, a good job, a great place to live, etc. But in his mind, that’s not enough. There’s a term for this called hedonic adaptation where the improvement we’ve made in our lives only feels pleasing for a short time, then we drop back down to baseline levels of happiness.
It’s not full-on blindness to change, but our appreciation for the change/improvement declines over time making it feel like we’re not doing enough to get where we want to be. And “where we want to be” is a goalpost that keeps moving into the future. Never achievable.
For my guy in recovery, I’d suggest a daily gratitude list as a means of keeping the progress he’s made front and center in his mind. But for the CEO’s in the room, I’d suggest being thoughtful about the ways you can spot improvement on your team’s journey from dysfunction to high-function. There isn’t just 1 moment when everything clicks and the team is rocking and rolling. It’s a progression and progressions are measurable.
How you choose to measure is up to you and will be contextually specific to the improvements your’e trying to make. But off the top of my head, I’d say:
- More laughter in senior leadership meetings
- More ideas being presented without fear of judgement
- Less complaints coming to the CEO
- More high-five’s in the hallway
- Less quiet moodiness in meetings
And if you’re still not seeing what you’d hoped for (and articulated as a goal), then maybe it’s time to call me. That’s what I’m here for.