How to Unlock and Transform Teams | Making the Invisible Visible with Bennett Bratt

TRANSCRIPT – Making the Invisible Visible with Bennett Bratt

Bennett: And my perspective, I see it changing 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 is going to change, it really helps for the team to change with the leader.

My clients are teams.

Sure. Might be the CEO who writes the check and I give them individual coaching too, but it's 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.

Roger: I'm Roger Kastner and welcome to the, what do you know to be true podcast. In these conversations, I talk with ordinary people about their extraordinary skill, their superhero power, and the meaningful impact it has on others. The goal is not to try to emulate or hack our way to a new talent. Instead, the intention is to learn more about their experience with their superhero power so that maybe we can learn something about the special talent in each of us.

This conversation is with Ben Bratt and his superhero power of making the invisible, Visible. Now, Ben is a self proclaimed team geek, and you're about to learn why this is a well earned moniker. Like many of us, Ben works with leaders and teams to uncover what is getting in their way of achieving their goals, but it's his years of experience and experimentation that leads him to pursue this work, perhaps in a much different way than you and I do.

If you're ready, let's dive in.

Hey, Ben, it's great to see you. Thanks for joining me today.

Bennett: Roger. It's great to be with you. It always is. Thanks for having me.

Roger: Oh, well, the honor's all mine. Um, I'm really excited to have this conversation with you recorded on the podcast, but then again, I'm excited to have every conversation with you.

You're someone who I look up to in the space of team effectiveness and group dynamics and every conversation I've had with you, Ben, um, I've learned something new. Or I've come to rethink something that I thought I knew. So I'm, I'm sure this will be no different. And in fact, I'll keep tallies here of, of how many times you've either taught me something new or I rethink something new.

Um, and by the end I will give the total score because I know it's going to be a lot. So I, I read that you're a self proclaimed team geek. And an advocate for bettering all of our experiences with teams. And I totally can relate to that. That's, that's something that's near and dear to my heart. And I'm really excited to learn from you today about, you know, how you do that.

Um, but first, can you tell us a little bit about your journey, um, to becoming a team geek? Yeah,

Bennett: thanks for having me. Um, when I'm with you and it, and it's been a number of times over a number of years, you always. Have been in a certain, I'll just say, I mean this in a very particular way, a certain class of people that helps me.

Be so reflective and, um, I will keep tally too. And you're already up two to zero. Um, and so I always love that about our interactions and we will find one way to make this a competition, I'm sure the journey goes way back, you know? And, um, I, you know, I think I came from a family ecosystem where it was really important to pay a lot of attention to what was going on around you.

Um, and we could anchor some of that in. Family dynamics or trauma or whatever we wish, but it's like it was important from a young age to be really aware of what was being said and what wasn't, um, and I think as Children, we sometimes go through those things like you have to find your path to survival, and then we find out in middle life where those things that I learned adaptive and useful or not.

And I think what I learned, um, me when I began to take leadership roles in different areas. Um, I dropped out of college and joined the Navy when I was 20 and I found myself volunteering for leadership roles. Um, not really. Having a clear handbook for what leadership was, but it was really, uh, helpful for me to define it my own way, which was to be very astute about what's going on in the team and who's saying what and who's not and what does performance look like and what are our expectations and it had nothing to do with achieving higher ranks had to do with.

Helping the team be effective and being a part of that. And then I think throughout my whole career, most of which was in corporate America, big companies and small. Um, and before I started my own coaching business seven years ago, I think it was just this fascination that some teams were utterly miserable and I was a part of them.

And, um, some were utterly brilliant and I couldn't wait to be with those people in every circumstance. And parsing, like, Why was that the case and what was I owning when things were different? And so when I was in these kind of miserable teams, I was a part of it. I was showing up in a certain way. I was probably being miserable.

And when I was with these brilliant, fascinating, supportive teams felt like family, what was I, and so I've translated a lot of that over the last couple of decades into just, uh, um, I'm a geek. I'm a geek about teams and I love it when I'm with teams and helping them see the intangible or the invisible and make real the things they want to be.

And there's a point we can pick up later if you wish, which is I think most of our teams really just suffer from benign neglect. Like most teams are just simply ignored, not supported. We don't equip our managers or our leaders or team members to be great teams. And so that benign neglect requires addressing.

I think it requires this forum and voice you're giving me and the work we do and what we write and how we show up. Um, that's, yeah, that's part of the backstory to why do I end up at this place?

Roger: And that, that resonates with me a lot because I started off my career as project management. And I, I sometimes joke and sometimes believe it to be true that I'm now spending my time in, in org development as a way of undoing.

Yeah. The harm that I did as a project manager and not, um, yeah, not, not intentionally, um, creating or continuing the chaos that, that poor performing teams experience. Um, but not, you know, knowing that something was wrong, but not being able at that time to prevent it or change it.

Bennett: I think part of my career, looking back on almost 30 years in OD and Development and coaching. I think of the things I used to do and I'm kind of embarrassed.

Like the wisdom becomes pretty hard earned over the years. Um, and you know, we can all give ourselves grace. We did the best we could with how well we were equipped at that place. But the things I anchor into now are so vastly different than 20 or 30 years ago.

Roger: I, uh, I feel that in my bones. And, and yeah, I think part of it gets back to that concept of benign neglect that we talked about. You know, you work with senior leadership teams. I get to do the same and they're in organizations where there's so much focus on developing senior leaders on supporting senior leaders.

Bennett: 10 or 15 years ago when I was leading talent development organizations, coaching was really that thing that organizations did to prove that they really tried to help the worst performers before they fired them. So it was a preemptive prophylactic, um, approach to say, yeah, we're going to fire her, but get her a coach for a while.

And then we could say, we really tried. And sometime over the last, I don't know, 10, 15 years, it inverted. And it was like, we're going to give coaching to our top performers. These up and coming hard charging, like we're gonna invest in them and it's switched and good. Good for all of us, I guess. And my perspective, I see it changing 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 is going to change, it really helps for the team to change with the leader. And so my clients are teams. Sure. Might be the CEO who writes the check and I give them the Individual coaching, too.

But it's 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 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 in the impact area is different. I think employees describe their lived experience inside of organizations, um, purely through the lens of how they experience their team and their manager.

Not just their manager, but the team, you know, 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 on there and the manager's part of that, or they don't.

So we look at disengagement, look at disengagement scores over decades. They don't really change much except drift downwards. And I think the leverage point is, how do we help these 1st level frontline managers who get this for the 1st 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 and 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: I love the word that she said in there about the humble journey. I guess it's two words, um, the humble journey of becoming a manager. Cause most people get promoted in the manager roles because they think that's the ladder they need to be on and they get rewarded for individual.

Work and we can debate. We went debate. We would agree that no one individual actually achieves the things that they get rewarded for. It's, it's usually a system. That allows them to, to be recognized as the, you know, the individual that delivered something, but there's, there's, there's more than just the one person.

So we're, we're incentivizing the individual to be, you know, as they're promoted into that manager role to be recognized for their individual contribution. Yet, that's not the job of a, of a people leader. And that's a big shift. And I think a lot of, you know, I would imagine most of us go through that as we, you know, are put in that role and we're recognized for that individual contribution.

And yet at some point we learn, um, what it, what it actually means to be an effective people leader. And unfortunately, um, it's at the expense. Of probably a lot of direct reports who have negative experiences with you. Um, and, you know, again, I think you've used these words as well. The treating people with grace of, you know, helping people grow into those roles are really important.

And we need to, we need to apply that to ourselves and our, our past, um, uh, mistakes, uh, as we've made that shift to, to leading effective teams.

Bennett: Yeah, that's a wonderful point. The, um, you know, if I think we'd go inside an organization and look at Ellen, the leader, a budget for development of people, um, even if we looked at lower level managers, it would probably be overly focused on individual person management, how to be a coach to that person, how to give a good performance review.

And it's a pretty rare organization where they actually focus on the development of, look, you got 10 people sitting around this table looking at you. Um, How do you have that most insightful conversation where people begin to lean in, lean forward, to become engaged, to have the courage to raise tough topics, to seek clarity where there is none?

And how do you do that? How do you create that gentle crucible, that place where we can get somewhere together and foster that belief? And it has nothing to do with giving one person a performance review. It has to do with being aware of what's going on. Visible and invisible inside your team. And these are learned skills are very learnable, but they're learned.

People don't come equipped for this. They're not selected for it.

Roger: And I, I imagine the capabilities and the skills and the techniques of leading teams, um, is much different than leading individuals

Bennett: or organizations. Yeah.

Roger: Yeah.

Bennett: It's actually the scary stuff for a lot of people. And I think we can hold compassion for managers at any level people from the CEO down to the store manager, whatever it is, like, these are hard jobs.

They're lonely jobs. They're part of the system. I loved your use of the word system. A moment ago, part of the system of benign neglect of our teams because they're so hard to look at. It's so hard to come to this admitted realization that Most people say 90 percent of their teams are ineffective. 80 to 90%.

And then we ask, so what organizations do in response? And it's almost nothing. You might get a budget to take people to a ballgame and buy him a beer, but you don't have a budget to actually equip yourself and your team for what it would mean to act to be the type of effective team. You want to be high performing or not, however you define it.

Um, yeah, these are scary jobs. They're, they're, and they're, they're downright traumatic when you have to fire people or let people go or go through a riff, um, or break the bad news about next year's budget or go through an M& A and try to integrate two teams and you have no idea how. So there's, there's these focal moments where it's terrifying and then the rest of the time it's just plain hard.

And, and, you know, doing a selfie with the team and posting it on LinkedIn. Is not a proxy for great team leadership, or even did I say the word great? Let me back that up. I like the better phrase, minimum viable, like sometimes I'm consulting or coaching with organizations. They want to be structured culture, a new development model.

I'm like, what's the minimum viable one. What's, what's the thing that's the thinnest slice we can get away with. That's going to make a good enough impact. Then let's just start there. So even being a minimally viable, good team leader, let's just start there.

Roger: Tell me why. There's value in focusing on the minimal value, uh, focus for the team versus trying to do yeah, everything.

Bennett: There's value in the pursuit to begin with, like, look, we spend more time with our work colleagues than we do our loved ones. And even on the weekends or nights where you wake up at 3 AM, you're still thinking about that deliverable or that whatever strategy. Um, and if, and this is particularly true in kind of North American society, it's not necessarily globally true, but.

We over index into all things work. It's part of our self esteem. It's how we describe our life. Um, and so if we're going to spend so much time oriented to work, why not just make our lived experience better? And I would say the free meals can't get more free. The climbing walls can't get higher. The it's like the lived experience is about the nature of how we interact as people.

Um, and if we could even capture a percentage of it, 10 percent of it and say, I would love to have this personally. I would love to have this team feel less fraught. I would like to walk in and be able to say what's on my mind in a reasonable and respectful way without feeling so dangerous. If we could have that conversation for 10 minutes around the table, because not everybody's going to feel that way.

But if people could say, well, my experience is a little bit different, but it does feel fraught around these topics. Great. Then why can't we just have a team conversation about the one thing we would love to have a little bit different next month? And then do incredibly small little experiments about what creates safety for us.

It doesn't require a huge training budget. It doesn't require a high priced coach. We should be equipping teams everywhere to have a conversation about how they can just take ownership and make things a little bit better. And I think what my experience is, when you do that, it becomes a learned capability.

It becomes a team practice. You get your first muscle memory around, well, if we could do that on something like safety. We're feeling safe. Why can't we do that around conflict or decision making or accountability? Um, and I do believe there's a virtuous kind of upward spiral. I've seen teams get into with support and without where that all begins to make a lot of sense to them.

And they value it and make time and space for it.

Roger: Yeah. You reminded me of, uh, James clear and 1 percent better every day. And the compounding effect of that over time, uh, rather than trying to take on the big thing, you know, rather than, you know, go out and run the marathon versus just put your shoes by the door and go out for a five minute run.

And then five becomes 10 and 10 becomes 20. Whereas if you go out that door and run a marathon, you're, you might not be coming home.

Bennett: Totally. Yeah, I think it's part of our obsession again. Um, Partly it's with perfection or with excellence. It's partly like you have to be able to do big things immediately.

You have to be quick in overcoming grief. You have to be really speedy and having a vision. Um, wow. Why is this conflict still here? We talked about it two weeks ago. Um, and it's like, Hmm, I think we as humans, actually, we can do some things pretty quickly when mobilized in certain ways. But when we actually think about our lives together, Um, I think some things take time and they take care and feeding and nurturing.

Roger: What is it about our organization or our perspectives and culture around organizations, why we, we have that construct of, of speed and of solving big things and a short amount of unrealistic expectations around solving things quickly.

Bennett: Yeah, I think again, particularly in Western or North American, but it could be anywhere.

We have this obsession with growth, and it's driven by macro forces outside of organizations, and it filters into our organizations and then to our human experience. Um, and so if you're not hitting these growth rates, the street will punish you. Or something will be wrong and the externalities like that drive all sorts of behaviors that we don't question.

Not all organizations do that. You can actually see the ones where they're like, don't care what the street thinks. We, we're on our path. We're growing the way we want to, the way we choose to, according to our intent, thinking about writing another book. And this is one of the questions I keep getting.

Running into this, this climate in our organizations of it's fast and we need quick fixes and any quarterly results. And there's no time or money for this team to have a single conversation about our lived experience. What could be better? That's I would just say the default most of the clients I coach often are like that.

But I'm beginning to wonder, is that a feature or a bug? In our lived experience. In other words, if it's a, if it's a bug, then you'd say, well, we, we could, we could write the code that would change that bug. But I'm beginning to think it's actually a feature of our lived experience. And I can't say that there's intentionality around this people high up in organizations, but I think they want to this is going to sound so conspiratorial.

I think they want to keep us busy and distracted. So we don't actually ask the questions that could change our experience. So if budgets get a little bit tighter and we're going to just riff 3 percent of the people, um, and you got to up these metrics and we got scorecards and dashboards, all of which are fine.

Um, and we live in this constant state where our adrenaline, our adrenal glands are on overdrive because it's always a threat just around the corner. Don't actually tell them the truth. What will they think if they know what's happening over here? I think it's actually become a feature of the system. It is what we're, we're inculcated into.

It's, it's the culture. It's the air we breathe. So it's not some mistaken thing that maybe just happened somewhere. It's actually the fabric of our, space and time together. And that makes us a real challenge because it makes people like you and me sound like revolutionaries. Um, like how dare we call, you know, for a team to have the time and space and resources to actually work in itself and invest in itself and overcome the benign neglect.

How dare we? And I would say, because that's the life we choose and that's the life we want to help other people choose if they want it.

Roger: And that's what gets rewarded, that type of behavior. And most notably by the street, um, as well as within our corporate structures.

Bennett: Sure. And in promotions, right? Who are the ringmakers?

Who are the people who are, who's on the hypo list?

Speaker 3: And

Bennett: a lot of that's just about, You're on individual brand management and how you're constructing fairly artificial realities about what people believe to be true about you. And your point earlier is so great. It's like, but it takes a team to do all of those things.

Roger: Yeah. We've seen those hypos are the people who get promoted because they, they are able to execute. Um, very well, very quickly on the things that their leadership asked them to do without a lot of pushback. And yet, um, as we also talked about how people get, you know, individual contributors get promoted to manager, to director, to VP and above because of those individual focused, um, uh, contributions and yet, you know, You know, now, now they're leading these organizations because they've been very, very skillful at driving tactics and they haven't thought about, you know, the sort of the systems thinking approach to leadership where you think about, or people management, where you think about the individual, the team and the organization.

And that's, that's a muscle that hasn't been, you know, Yeah. Well developed in a lot of organizations. And then you and I get hired to come in to try to solve for these things or help leadership teams solve for these things. And they look at us, um, like we have horns coming out of our heads and wings out of our back where it's like, have you had a conversation with your team about this?

I'm like, Who's got time for a conversation? Like you don't have time for a conversation, but you have time to like deal with doing things twice or three times, you have time to come up with new strategies and overwhelm people with who haven't been able to execute on the last strategies, you have time to figure out, okay, who are we going to lay off this quarter, um, because we weren't able to execute and perform as, as the way we were hoping we would.

Uh, these teams would,

Bennett: and I, in one of my previous roles at corporate America was responsible for org design. And we did a lot of changing of boxes and sticks on org charts and creating brand new teams and divisions. And I did that for years and. What became clear to me over time was I understand that at times that's necessary.

Sometimes organizations make bets that don't play out or, um, they had an idea about this product or this geography and it just didn't work. I get that. My, you know, segue sideways and then come back. There's a number of people in my life who went through chemotherapy. Um, um, just lost my brother recently due to cancer.

And one of the things about chemotherapy, as I understand it, is it's, um, it's not a very precise drug. Um, it doesn't just attack cancer cells, it attacks cells that are growing rapidly. And so what happens is it will kill cells that are growing rapidly in your intestines or in your scalp or in your mouth or anywhere.

And so chemotherapy is a very like, um, broad tool. Yes. Hopefully it kills the cancer cells too, but there's Um, knock on effects throughout your whole body, and I think when we do reorgs or restructuring or move people in boxes and sticks around, I think what we end up doing is tearing apart the fabric and organizations and so people who are in teams or had leaders, um, we stick them in the new box and then we do nothing again to help them reconnect as a team.

To go through some, you know, to repair the damage done by ripping apart the fabric of a social organization. It's just, we got the new box and sticks in place. Okay, but what are those teams charters? Why do they exist? What does success look like? Who are these people? How do I get to know them? How can I have great conversations with them?

How are we going to resolve conflict? And we do nothing. And so, no wonder. Right. No wonder they don't actually these macro type of moves. No wonder they don't, no wonder they don't do the things that they're supposed to do. Sure. We'll change the balance sheet or PNL or something, but people over time, they just see it and they're like, yeah, that's another one.

I'll just wait on my time

Roger: as someone who is currently, you know, my, my job for the last several years has been doing org designs and boxes and lines. And, um, to some extent, um, there, there's, there's a lot of truth to the idea that the boxes and lines are almost irrelevant. If we haven't spent the time understanding what's the vision, what are the capabilities we need to actually produce the value of the vision?

What's the sequence of those capabilities? How does work flow from left to right? Where are decisions made? Who has decision rights? What are the roles that are going to do the work? And then, then we can start talking about structure. How does structure support all this? All aligned to strategy and vision.

If we haven't done that, that work up front, Yeah, new boxes and minds are irrelevant because you're going to be drawing up new ones in six months.

Bennett: Yeah. And that thought process you describe, I would say if we ever did come to a place where it's okay, regardless, let's say we're going to grow this company or go through a reorg, we're going to have new people joining us.

We're going to have new teams. Then why can't we just start with awareness? Why does that, why do we have to have a trigger finger on development programs? How about we start with awareness? Um, This is who we are. And then, and then go to intent. This is how we want to be as a team. And then have options in the menu of the developmental things we could pick and then right fit our team's needs to a set of a palette of different things we can do to get better over time and in little bite sized pieces and invest in us.

And then I would be much less cynical about this benign neglect of teams.

Roger: Your superhero power. Is making the invisible visible within teams. Do you have a framework that you follow, um, to do that or is it you, you ask some questions you observe and then it's like, okay, here are the, here are the blind spots.

Let's, let's start pushing on those. Or is it more of a, um, structured approach? for how you do that.

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 in these teams and organizations. And so I think frameworks and models and data, um, Are all springboards for the dialogue they need to have.

In my company, I run called 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. I think that's really useful, not because the model is a savior, but because the model gives them 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 in my experience on this team. Um, I think that's useful. Um, and I think data also goes a ways not as a diagnostic, but it's helping them have great conversations. I do often 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 send something and then name it. Hey, you know, we're checking out of this meeting. I just want to say I loved 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. 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 experiences here and I'd love to hear how you name it too. So we're driving to snow to see you name own and work to get to the deepest insights as quickly as possible that lead to pragmatic change.

Um, and for me, that's because 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. I want to, and work on it. Let me know how far you go. I'm so proud of you. Keeps keeps knowing that and getting to your insights and driving pragmatic change.

Roger: Are you 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, for, for.

little mental model. And I'll do that with them. And I'll just say, Hey, 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, are

Roger: you feeling bored?

Bennett: No, I'm really sensing the deep enjoyment of this conversation, and I want to name it. 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 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. And 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, what you fear, what you hope. And then they get all done and say, 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.

And 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 can just see these executives, these EVPs or VPs or whatever. They walk into the conference room and they lay down their armor on the conference table. There's 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, Yeah. Frustrated aspirations. And she screwed me out of budget last year. They arm with themselves. And so I could never ask them to disarm. All I can do is try to help them disarm themselves.

Speaker 3: To

Bennett: see everybody around the table as like, now we're just here.

We need some level of vulnerability. Doesn't have to be weird or 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 the steam 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, you know, 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, 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, Um, 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 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 thou 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?

Roger: What did you believe early on about making the invisible visible, uh, to be true that you've come to learn is not true.

Bennett: That there was a process I could just learn.

Take a team through and it was, it would be good enough, like, because some od guru came up with learning organizations. Bless you, Peter saying, um, that somehow if I replicated that, that was good enough. But what happens is it leaves us in a part of our mind that is oriented to process, rather than to being, and that makes us hook into and rely have a crutch, like, I just take you through my process and give you my data.

That's good enough, but it misses the frailty of our human pursuit and the moments when we're together and we squander them, um, and we suffer the benign neglect and can't give voice to it. Um, and so I think choosing along the way to very judiciously use processes and tools and come up with my own, which I use because I like them.

I think that has been part of the journey and I'm learning and relearning.

Roger: Yeah, the intentionality behind the tools, right? A hammer is a fantastic tool, but if a plumber pulls out a hammer, something's really, really wrong. Yes.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Roger: So are you ready for the lightning round? Oh my, I didn't know there was one.

Yes, I'm ready. So fill in the blank, making the invisible visible is learned who in your life provides making the invisible visible for you.

Bennett: It first has to be me. And then the people I love who are closest to me. Do it, um, imperfectly, but lovingly.

Roger: Is there a practice or routine that helps you grow, nurture, or renew your ability to make the invisible visible?

Bennett: Detox like organizations and teams can be toxic places. And when I'm with them, I'm exhausted and we've done great work. Um, and yet I have to listen to myself, uh, and know that I'm coming back from something where I have to reclaim and receive myself. Yeah.

Roger: Is there a book or movie that you recently read or watched that you would recommend that has making the invisible visible as a theme?

Bennett: Um, uh, right now I'm reading, uh, David Brooks' most recent book, how to Know a Person, uh, David Brooks. I've really admired his journey over recent times, um, and I think it says almost everything I could ever hope to say about being seen and heard and how to really know a person and the value to that individually and societally.

Roger: What's one thing that gets in your way of making the invisible visible

Bennett: when I'm not on my own path when I'm not centered, um, where I'm not fully able to attend. That's what gets in my way. I can't blame it on an externality. It's all me and processing my own stuff.

Roger: What word or phrase describes what making the invisible visible feels like when it's had a positive impact?

Bennett: You know, like if you walk out into the lake and in the silt, where you'll say you're up to your ankle and the silt is all, you've disturbed everything. And there's silt everywhere and you want to see the bottom again, you just have to stand there and let the silt fall back down. And when you let the silt fall, you can see your toes.

And when you can see your toes, you can wiggle your toes. And now you understand the clarity of letting the silt settle.

Roger: If a listener wanted to ask you a question or follow up with you, where would you want to point them to?

Bennett: Team elements. com or shoot me a note, Ben at team elements. com.

Roger: Um, Ben, like every conversation I have with you, I learned something and I did keep track, I learned 10, 000 new things from you today.

Bennett: That's fascinating because how many moments did I have where you really were reflective and helped me feel seen and heard? Uh, it's just over a dozen. So,

Roger: well, your math, your math skills, uh, are a little better than, than myself. I'm, I'm okay with admitting that up just amongst the three of us. Um, I really appreciate every time we get to talk, I really appreciate you taking the time to share what you've come to learn to be true about.

Making the invisible visible and I love, um, the intentionality, the precision of words, the thoughts that are coming. It's, it's, you're, you're not just sharing what, what, you know, to be true today, but in how you talk about it, you know, there is the, the voluminous. 30 years of experience that is coming through in in what you're sharing, and it's it's super valuable for me.

And, um, I just I'm so excited about the next time. We get to talk and, and hopefully one of these days we'll get to work with each other, but if not, I still love the idea of, um, you know, I, I will be one of those people that, that reach out and say, Hey, can I, can I, can I have a cup of coffee with you? Um, because again, it's just so, so positive and so generative.

To have these conversations with you. So thank you.

Bennett: You're welcome. Thank you for holding the space for me and with me.

Roger: I am so grateful for Ben for joining us here on this podcast. And you can hear how deeply thoughtful he is. I can hear the experience and wisdom resonate and how clear and precise his words are in this conversation. And I'm so grateful for the opportunity to witness that level of clarity of thought.

And what he brings to these conversations. And like I said, in every conversation, I come away with something I did not know before. Now, reflecting on this conversation leads me to ask myself who can help me identify that thing. That invisible thing that's getting in my way of achieving the goals I set out for myself.

If you like this episode, please do me a favor and share the episode with one other person. Thank you for doing that. What do you know to be true is a three blue pens production. I'm your host, Roger Kastner. We are recording on the ancestral lands of Suquamish people to discover the ancestral lands of the indigenous people whose land you are on.

Go to native hyphen land. ca. Okay. Be well, my friend, I

Bennett: guess I'm just speaking intention into the void, but I love that.

Roger: Um, yeah. Or to the 20 people that listened to my podcast,

Bennett: bless those 20. They're going to tell me more.

Roger: They're the Best looking smartest people in, in the podcast universe. So I, I, I love those people. I love the precision of the words that you choose to use.

Bennett: Just making it up.

Roger: No, you're not. I know. I know that's true. I know it's true. You're not making it up. So maybe I need to start with like some explosions or something, or, you know, one of us needs to be in a. In a, in a swimsuit or something.

Bennett: Well, you know, we could start, we could, we could start with funny hats and just start there.

And then

let everybody know. Don't expect very much out of me. I'm just an introvert.

Roger: It seems like a contradiction. Because, because a fez, a fez gets attention.

Bennett: There's a paradox in here. You're good at what you do. And I, I really, um, even if I'm the only one who ever listens to this, I don't think that would be the case.

I really did enjoy our experience. So thank you very much.

Roger: Well, my mom knows about the podcast, so that's at least two people that will listen. Um,