Make Candor a Core Team Value

Candor builds teams; anything less destroys them.

Many of the teams I deal with are burdened by what my friend and colleague Kaley Klemp calls  toxic sludge — the years of resentments, slights, enmities and stories that have built up between colleagues and color their perceptions of each other.

These teams are almost always successful and function well. If you saw them you’d say they work well together — they are considerate, professional and join together in action. But they also are operating at a fraction of their real capacity. Their members feel their energy drain when they get together, and the idea of being a team is not as exciting as it once was.

Some may say this is an inevitable part of any long-term relationship – whether a business partnership or a marriage, our cultural story is that passion cools, familiarity breeds contempt and the bloom inevitably falls off the rose.

In my experience, toxic sludge has two simple root causes: a lack of candor and a lack of responsibility.

The Real Value of Candor

By candor, I mean telling the whole truth. Most professionals don’t outright lie. But we often limit the amount of truth we tell.

For years I lived by the maxim that it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission. It was a way to get things done quickly in a hidebound bureaucracy. The consequence was that I often was in trouble with the boss and my colleagues, spent a lot of energy cleaning up after myself, and didn’t create much lasting change in the organization — as soon as the rule-breaker left, the rules remained unscathed.

Candor means telling the full truth impeccably, regardless of the consequences. Master truth-tellers not only reveal all the facts; they also reveal their feelings, thoughts and hunches. And it’s pretty binary: in any moment you are either being transparent, honest, and complete or you are backing off candor in some way by shading, withholding, or staying silent.

What keeps us quiet most of the time is fear. Healthy teams and workplaces create a climate where people at every level are rewarded for telling the truth about anything, no matter how unpopular the message may be.

The great thing about candor is that it’s simple to practice: start with the small things and work your way up. Before long, it’s as easy to tell the truth about what you really think of lunch as it is to tell your colleagues about your fears for your new project.

Take Real Responsibility

If candor prevents toxic sludge build-up, then responsibility is the antidote to whatever sludge there is.

You can only be responsible for what is under your control. One thing that is absolutely not under your control is the way others will feel about what you say or do. And yet much of the time, we limit what we say and do because we are afraid of hurting someone’s feelings or angering them with our idea or scaring them about the future.

Trying to manage someone else’s reactions to our ideas and actions is a futile endeavor and the primary ingredient in toxic sludge.

Instead, take responsibility for what you want to say and do by being clear, direct and consistent. This means taking the initiative to directly inform the people whose reactions you most fear. It also means explaining your ideas and actions in ways that people can understand and relate to: being abrupt or confusing will only increase the chances that others react badly. So it’s up to you to sell it.

And responsibility is retroactive: you can use it to clear up any past lapses in candor by owning up, even years after the fact.

Build Your Energy

The really great thing about candor and responsibility is that they not only eliminate the source of most misunderstandings but they also increase energy in individuals and organizations.

When I take responsibility for telling a particularly troublesome truth — one that I have been worrying about revealing for fear of a bad reaction — I feel an immediate burst of energy and creativity. Multiply this across a team and you can transform the way your entire workplace operates.

If you want to learn more about core practices that build highly effective teams, check out the Conscious Leadership Group and their 15 Commitments for Conscious Leadership.

PHOTO: www.commons.wikimedia.org

Conscious Leadership Makes the Difference for Startups, Too

Startup success these days depends at least as much on heart as head.

Working in the startup world can be confusing, tiring and disheartening — all too often it’s you and your tiny team vs. the world of entrenched incumbents and uncaring customers. And while it’s tempting to buckle down and work harder to push your way through the obstacles, there is another way.

That other way is looking inside, to the conscious leadership values of trust, connection and mindful attention to pull greater results from your self, your team and your customers. And if that’s not enough, you can do all of this while expending less energy and building better feelings. Here are three heart-based moves to surviving — and thriving — in the disruptive world of 21st century business:

Trust

Fragile organizations are based on fear: fear of failure, fear of people not following orders, fear of displeasing the boss, etc. The result is a system of control — rules, hierarchies, procedures that give us a feeling of power and therefore (we believe) power over the outcome: “if everyone follows the rules, we will succeed.”

But not only is this attempt to control fear by controlling people costly (decision-making slows, bureaucracy increases, creativity and adaptability decline), it’s also an illusion: really, we have no control (just ask the folks at Borders how all their hierarchy and rules worked out).

The antidote to fear is trust: trust that if you have the right people, give them the proper resources and enlist them in attaining your shared goals, they will do their level best to deliver. Trust increases innovation by freeing people to think about the best way to do things, rather than worrying about what the boss will think. Trust is an essential quality in small start-up teams where speed and initiation are critical to survival.

Southwest Airlines trusts its flight attendants to meet the basic goals and requirements of the pre-flight safety briefing. The result is entertaining, memorable and even more effective safety messages than competitors’ canned scripts. (Few fliers will forget a rubber chicken hanging from the oxygen mask panel.)

Authentic connection

Authentic teams share their hopes and fears, are open about their disagreements and doubts, and fully reveal their feelings. This way of relating – so different from the fixed smile of “professionalism” – builds resilience, engagement and commitment. These teams function more efficiently because they don’t waste their effort on drama, gossip or politics.

Empower Public Relations in Chicago has been the testing ground for what its CEO calls “the no-gossip zone.” Instead of bureaucratic rivalries, petty politics and personal prejudice, the team here practices the art of candor. The result is fully informed discussion where everything is on the table; there are few surprises; employee engagement is high.

Leading from behind

Smart leaders take their cues from the people closest to the action — the front line folks who are actually making the widgets, calling on the customers, serving the food. These are the early warning systems in any organization: the saleswoman who hears about the upstart competitor from a customer; the developer who sees exactly where the process can be improved; the waiter who tries out new ways to delight diners and sees the results reflected in his tips.

It can be hard for a founder, fueled by original insight and ideas, to let go of his or her conviction enough to allow others modify, elaborate or even criticize that founding vision. But finding the balance between zeal and openness is essential to fitting a business to the emerging reality of the marketplace.

At Zingerman’s deli in Ann Arbor, Mich., the leaders supplied the initial vision and ever since it’s been the employees who have turned it into a reality that today comprises a community of mutually supporting businesses — from a bakery to a corporate training service — run by workers who came up through the ranks (and came up with the ideas). It’s one of the most successful delis on earth.

These three moves — which are all about heart, not head — will make you and your organization rapidly flexible, resilient and innovative, exactly the moves needed to surf the internet wave instead of being swept away by it.

If you want to dive even deeper into these waters, join us for a two-hour workshop Jan. 28th at DUMBO Startup Lab in Brooklyn, NYC. More information and signup here. And if you want an even deeper dive, check out the work of my colleagues at the Conscious Leadership Group.