Finding Humanity in Teams | Bennett Bratt | True Snacks

True Snacks - Finding Humanity in Teams - Transcript

Bennett: And my perspective, I see it changing in, in this, in the field we're in, but I also see it changing a little bit in society is, yeah, you can coach an individual leader all you want, but that doesn't help change an ecosystem. That leader is purely embedded in an ecosystem, and if that leader's gonna change, it really helps for the team to change with the leader.

My clients are teams. Sure. It might be the CEO who writes the check and I give them. Individual coaching too, but it's the, if the leader is going to change, they need the crucible in which to do it. And that's their team. And the team wants to change too. And it wants to be a part of how the whole thing moves forward.

And so I see the emergence of this focus now on coaching teams. And, uh, this kind of brings me to my second point, which is, yes, we do that for many top teams in an organization or teams where there's really concentrated value creation. A leadership team, an M and a team, a product launch team, but that does nothing for the 95 percent of the teams lower in the organization.

And this is where the needs are different. And the, in the impact area is different. I think employees describe their lived experience inside of organizations, purely through the lens of how they experienced their team and their manager. Not just their manager, but their team. Yeah. Some people will say like this company loves me, this fortune 100 company loves me.

And, and it's a bit of a fallacy, right? Organizations don't love anything or anybody. Um, people. Either love their team experience and their and the managers and part of that or they don't so we look at disengagement We look at disengagement scores over decades They don't really change much except for if downwards and I think the leverage point is how do we help these first level?

Frontline managers who get this for the first time this responsibility of having a team How do we equip them to be to be beginners on this? Humble journey of becoming a people leader, um, that equips them in the team to do wonderful things, including create a lived experience that really matters for people.

Then when they're directors or vice presidents or C suite, they will have had 15 or 20 years of really anchoring into what a great team manager really is.

Roger: Your superhero power is making the invisible visible within teams. Do you have a framework that you follow?

Bennett: That's a great question. Yeah. I mean, making the invisible visible could be the same as making the unheard heard, or making the intangible tangible and helping people just find their ability.

To settle in and be present and be able to talk about what's going on here and how we want that to be, I think frameworks are useful. A lot of the work that folks like us do. Um, and again, you know, being back to embarrassed about some of the things I did decades ago. It's like, it can be way too esoteric for these really busy people who don't have time for this and these teams and organizations.

And so I think. Frameworks and models and data. Um, Are all springboards for the dialogue. They need to have, uh, in my company, I run called, uh, team elements. We do have a, you know, like, most team models are 16 of these elements and people can say, what are the most important strengths and weaknesses here?

Um, I think that's really useful, not because the model is a savior. But because the model gives them a, a, a cognitive concept, a heuristic where they can say, Oh, I get this. I see the interconnections. These are my most important strengths and weaknesses of my experience on this team. Um, I think that's useful.

Um, and I think data also builds a ways, not as a diagnostic, but as helping them have great conversations. Every time I'm with a team, I have this little graphic I put on a slide. It's called Snow. Um, and it's, um, SNOW is an acronym for See, Name, Own, Work. And what I'm trying to help them do when I'm with them, coaching them, is, is if they can sense or see what's going on in the team, inside themselves.

Like, hey, this feels like a crappy conversation, or I was really proud of the way we handled that. If they can listen to themselves, and see and sense something, and then name it. Hey, you know, we're checking out of this meeting. I just want to say I love that interaction between you two that we got so far when you two listened to each other and had that conversation.

If we can name it. Then we can choose to own it as a team and then work on it. But nobody works on things that they don't own. So if we feel like we rent our teams rather than own our teams, there won't be any work that's done at you and I don't wash and wax rental cars before we return them to the airport.

They're rental. And so developing the sense of a lived experience that I own. Now I'll work on it, but to work on what? It can't just be anything. We can't shove people through training and trust. We have to help them say, well, I can name what my lived experience is here. And I'd love to hear how you name it too.

So we're driving to snow to see a name owner work to get to the deepest insights as quickly as possible. That lead to pragmatic change. Um, and for me, that's cause I want them to be able to do that after I leave them. You know, I just wrapped up this week with a team I've supported for a year. I see a C suite team.

And again, on the very last day, I'm showing them the snow slide. Like I hope that next year when you're together, you all can just, you have the deep ownership of your lived experience. If you can see a name, what's going on here and just. Oh, and it, and work on it. Let me know how far you go. I'm so proud of you.

Keeps keep snowing that and get into your insights and driving pragmatic change.

Roger: In those sessions. Are you demonstrating snow as a way of not only helping to make the invisible visible, but also to demonstrate those skills so they can replicate them or hopefully invite them to replicate and, and, and live, live the snow process themselves.

Bennett: Both things and I, um, and I do it. And when I do it, I try to call that out for them. And so when I'm with them, I'm not training them or I'm not consulting with them. I'm a coach, having a lived experience with them, trying to find great questions. So if I'm having experience, like I'm confused or I'm bored or I'm tired of watching YouTube bicker, then why can't I say that I need to own my experience?

Right. So I have a little thing. Um, comes from a book and a framework of nonviolent communication, which I really love, which is just like, Hey, I'm experiencing this right now. I'm, as a result, I'm feeling something, but I have a need for something different. So would you please consider doing something for four part little mental model?

And I'll do that with them. And I'll just say, Hey, weird. It happened when I was with this team recently. I'm like, wow, you two have been arguing on this point for 45 minutes and I'm feeling both frustrated and bored with it. Um, I need for us to move on. Would you be willing to find a way to get closure on this?

And so I'm trying to see and name and own it so we could all work on it together. I will do that now with you too, Roger.

Roger: Are you feeling bored?

Bennett: No, I'm really sensing the deep enjoyment of this conversation and I want to name it.

Roger: Yeah.

Bennett: Um, and because seeing and naming the positive things and the strengths help us anchor into, well, then if we're going to do this again, we're really immediately uncovering the parts of our lived experience that amplify us.

And so. And so we can do that both ways, not just anchoring into what we perceive to be a weakness in somebody else. Like one of the things I think we do in teams is we reclaim our humanity, like to begin to see each other as humans rather than roles or budgets or boxes or personality traits, but just to see your full humanness.

And so it would make no sense for me to give a half hour lecture on how to see somebody else's full humanness. But what I will do is say I'm going to get you into pairs, and I'm going to ask you to ask each other in pairs three questions, and you each get three minutes to answer. The first question is, what do you love most in life?

So pair up, please. And ask each other that question. Okay, good. You each get three minutes and they come back and I say, here's your second question, what do you fear most in life? And then they all gulp and they go like, oh my gosh, it just got harder. I'm like, you get three minutes each, go. And they start talking and they listen to each other, talk about what you fear most in life.

And then the third one is what do you hope for most in life? And then you get three minutes each. And so within. Um, 18 minutes you've sat with somebody and described what you love about life and what you fear and what you hope. And then they get all done. And I said, what'd you, what'd you hear? What'd you learn?

And they say that we're all humans, that we all struggle and strive for almost the same things. I'm like, great lesson learned. Let's go on. Okay, we're talking about conflict and budgets. Let's talk about conflicts. What's going on? So, I didn't have to tell them to be human. I didn't have to give them a rubric for being human.

I helped them explore their humanness and the other person's humanness. And then, our four hours or eight hours together is radically transformed. Now we're starting from a place of compassion and seeing me and seeing you and being seen and heard that has nothing to do with a high performing team, or let me assess you, or it's just about finding the place inside ourselves to own that.

When people come to the conference table, I mean, this is kind of pre COVID. You just see these executives, these EVPs or VPs or whatever, they walk in the conference room and they lay down their. armor on the conference table, their notepad and their laptop and their iPad and their phone, and they roll up their sleeves and they're like, it's like knights around a round table, but they're ready to fight each other.

They're armed. They're armed with grievances and, and, uh, you know, frustrated aspirations. And she screwed me out of budget last year. They, they arm with themselves. And so I could never ask them to disarm. All I can do is try to help them disarm themselves to see everybody around the table as like, now we're just here.

We need some level of vulnerability. Doesn't that be weird? Squishy. We just have to be humans and then our conflict is going to get better. And our decision making is going to get better and our accountability will be better.

Roger: When you are able to make the invisible visible for others, what's the impact does that have on others?

Bennett: Um, you know, I had one client once tell me this. Um, I said, What's it like to be seen and heard and for me to help you begin to see what's going on on this team and ways that you might not have. Somebody said, you know, that feels like love. Um, that scene and hearing and being understood feels like love.

And I couldn't trust it at first because it's so uncommon. But now I understand we're learning how to do that with each other. Um, and I. And I don't get it, but I get it and I know I like it. So help me learn more. And so the, the impact is personally, they have a different lived experience. I think from a more of a social perspective as people on the team, I think they begin to learn.

Um, if you'll see and hear me and make things visible with me, I'll do the same with you. And it might take us different amounts of time, but we're going to get there. And we have a belief that that will change things.

Roger: I think what you just said about being seen and heard feels like love. Absolutely. And we know that in our, in our personal lives.

Um, why, why wouldn't that be something we strive for in our work lives?

Bennett: I think we end up in organizations being fairly skeptical about almost everything. It's learned, it's learned from iterations. Um, I think it takes a leap of faith to say, really, now we're going to see and hear each other and climbing that wall of doubt.

Um, take some energy and it takes some risk and, um, but when I see people do it, uh, and again, not everybody's gonna do it the same for humans with different thresholds and different tolerances and, uh, but when a group of people makes has some intent to do that for each other, um, I see transformation.

Roger: So what do you know to be true about making the invisible visible?

Bennett: I think it's our act of being sacred with each other. I think when we see each other as it, as a, as a, again, as a line item or a role or an employee number or a badge or something, we begin to take very small steps in dehumanizing. And I think when we stop and see and hear and make that part of our lived experience, it becomes more of an I thought type of thing where I can see you as a full person who's struggling just as I am.

Um, and that changes the circle of us from transactional to, um, something, how, how could we ever not invest in this? When we see each other as part of a sacred pursuit.