S1 E3: The Art of Creating Brilliant Teams: Part 2: Culture
Get ready to discover the art of building a truly brilliant team! In this episode, we'll be exploring the creative and visionary side of team-building, diving deep into the elements that make a team not only high-performing, but also innovative, dynamic, and inspiring.
From fostering a culture of creativity and collaboration to harnessing the power of diversity and inclusion, we'll be exploring the key ingredients that go into creating a team that not only achieves great things, but also pushes boundaries and sets new standards.
Join us for a fascinating conversation on the art of creating a brilliant team, where you'll gain insights, inspiration, and actionable strategies that you can apply to your own team-building efforts. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur, a startup founder, or simply someone who's passionate about unlocking the full potential of teams, this podcast is for you.
Get ready to tap into your inner artist and unleash your team's full creative potential, as we explore the art of creating a brilliant team!
Key points I discuss in this episode:
The six elements of a successful culture 2:46
How do we make better decisions? 4:08
How does communication support culture? 6:42
How can we provide a psychologically safe environment for teams to become more integrated? 8:31
How team members communicate with one another is a predictor of performance. 14:14
Individual levels of emotional intelligence can have a huge impact on the quality of customer service. 17:05
Collaboration is critical to a brilliant team. 19:42
Are you avoiding dysfunctional behaviour? Are you ignoring the signs of people? Do you understand what they are? Do have real positivity in your team 22:40
How do you bring collaboration into the workplace? 25:17
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SHOW NOTES:
S1 EP03 The Art of Creating a Brilliant Team...
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
TeamBuilding, Leadership, teamwork, Collaboration, Management, Business, Employee engagement, Organisational culture, Professional development, emotional culture, Team development, leadership development, High performing team, Team effectiveness, Team cohesion. Performance management, Conflict resolution, Personality assessments, Cross-functional teams, Emotional intelligence, Team performance
You're listening to knowing me, knowing you, the podcast that explores the art and science of creating, developing and retaining brilliant teams. I'm your host, Emma Clayton. Join me weekly for practical advice, simple steps, and inspirational ideas as we discuss topics that make a difference to leaders and their teams. I'll be sharing all the tools and having conversations that help you to build and sustain performance. Welcome to the knowing me knowing you.
Hello, and welcome to part two of creating a brilliant team. If you missed the first part of this podcast, it's probably worth you going back to listen because what we covered in that first part was what the definition of a brilliant team is; how do we define high performance? Why is that important? And then, we unpacked the science of building a brilliant team; we talk a lot, and I talked a lot about the science and art of building a brilliant team. And that can be broken into many different ways and things that we need to do. But we've unpacked it for this podcast because of the scientific performance process within an organisation. And there, we looked at the components that sit underneath that. So strategy, innovation, accountability, leading change results, and meeting effectiveness. And we pressed pause at the end of that so that this podcast can be used to dive into the culture side, which is the more artistic side because this isn't something that necessarily comes with a process or a step-by-step or, you know, do these things.
This is more about how this is about the environment, the standards of behaviour, and the values that influence how the teams work together. So this is more around the art. And it's about having a bit of, you know, emotional intelligence and curiosity and empathy with the people around you. So we'll get right into it. Now, what do we mean by culture?
Well, as I just said, it is about those standards of behaviour and the values and how we do things around here. So why are we giving the brilliant team all the skills and capabilities and the performance side?
This is more about how we do things. So there are different elements to this, which I will cover with you and then break down. So culture is broken down into six elements. The first is trust. Do the team members operate with openness and transparency? And do they trust and connect? Do they understand and trust the value that each of them brings to that team? So there are some credibility pieces in there as well. Professional conflict, again, is huge. We talked about it a little bit in performance with accountability. But with that accountability, you also need trust; you also then need to be able to create some professional conflict. Now, conflict is a word that's got such a negative connotation; people who don't do conflict but have constructive conflict in a safe, trusting, accountable environment generate and create conversations that allow people to contribute divergent thinking, challenge, and have those constructive, professional conversations, where we get into a debate. We can put opposing views across. I read a book recently around decision-making, going a bit off on a tangent here. But one of the things that stood out for me in this book was how we make decisions.
And actually, I'd love to do a podcast on this book and the methods that it, you know, suggests that we can make better decisions, you know, as leaders in our business or our teams. One of the things that stood out for me is that we often in an organisation have an idea and then find every little bit of evidence to support the idea. So we'll say, Well, we think that, you know, the markets changing, this is what we need to do. And then, we go around the business finding the evidence to support our theory. What we don't do is think about all of the evidence in the opposite direction as well. I've been in so many boardrooms in my career, for Presenting what I thought was an idea. And then I do stakeholder management; I take all of the advocates, people that supported my idea into the boardroom, what I didn't do. And if I had my time again, what I would do is I would go and find the people and the evidence that didn't support my idea. Because only then can we get a good professional conflict debate and look at how we can move things forward with real objectivity.
And a little bit like, you know, when you've got a criminal on the stand, and this is the analogy that resonated with me, in this book, when you got a criminal on the stand, we don't just go to the judge and say, these are all the things that they did wrong, send them down, we have to have a defence case. And these are all the reasons why not. And then, the judge decides because both opposing sides present their facts. And those with the most compelling evidence, or most thought through the case, then probably, you know, have done the job and the judge decides, we don't do that a lot in teams, we go with the flow, we go with what our colleagues say, or what the bosses say, and we don't encourage professional conflict. I think we could all do more with that critical piece.
And so we will dedicate a podcast that will probably dedicate a podcast and most of these. I know we will be looking at the next communication for me. And, of course, I would say this with somebody with years and years of comms expertise and strategic thinking around comms and how it plays a role in building teams and how I got into building brilliant teams through this comms channel. So we will do lots and lots of, you know, chats and discussions and break down communication, a lot more in the podcasts to come. But for today, communication is all around how those team members are actively sharing information, working together, communicating, collaborating, collegiately, and working; that's about communication, then we have emotional intelligence.
So showing a high level of self-awareness, self-regulation, emotional intelligence, and then collaboration, which again, takes its element, once we've got that piece around the communication and the professional conflict, how do those team members take proactive action to collaborate and share resources? And then, finally, this is a real, real focus I can see in many workplaces at the moment, especially coming out of the pandemic. Number six is resilience. Have those members of that team and that team collectively got strong resilience and capacity to bounce back from setbacks, changes, and unexpected happenings? What is going on with the resilience of that team? So like I did in the first podcast, I will break that down. What does all of this mean? Let's break each of those elements down.
So let's start with trust. Trust is one of the most important foundations of any team; it enables all of the elements; I've just said those six elements of culture to come alive. Because without trust, team members are doubtful to build connections with each other that form any cohesion or any kind of safety within that team. There's a lot of you know, the buzzword is psychological safety. Again, we'll unpack that in another podcast. But how can we provide that psychologically safe environment for teams to become a real integrated unit? And that is not just individuals in the team. It's the environment and the organisation that teams set. So where is trust across that whole organisation? It is the most well-supported component to facilitate team performance and generate the outcomes, such as communication and satisfaction when we trust the people around us. We don't have to like them, but we can trust them. Then we harbour a real sense of trust and safety in that team and organisation. And that's where individuals in the team admit that they're making mistakes, or they're openly sharing their own work experiences, their knowledge, you know, that person that goes off to a conference and learns loads and keeps it to themselves is never really going to embed trust or growth within their team. So it's how can we share? And how can we also have real trust in each other's competency? competency is key here; you know if you don't trust that your colleagues will take a project, action, or task and do it well. You'll probably behave very differently than if you trust them. And I also think that trust breeds care, you know, when we care about each other. When somebody isn't necessarily doing the job that they said, you know, we can hold them accountable, we can have professional conflict, but we've got to care about each other as well, we've got to have a heart within what we do. Because, as I say, humans are messy beings. And we don't always show up like robots every day. Hand the most brilliant people have off days, and that team can come in and support and care for them and nurture them through some of the valleys of the working week or month or year. And then I think also, all of that then breeds this connection. And suppose you think about some of the best teams you've worked with him. In that case, you know, I'm thinking about the best teams that I've worked in; I really can say that I had a connection with the people in my team as a result of all of the things I've just talked about, I trusted them, I cared for them, I connected with them, I shared with them, it was such a very open, safe, transparent environment. And so I would ask you to think about all of those elements in your team, are those things happening in your team, to create that trust, and I'd work on that before moving into anything else.
Because if we look at number two, which is professional conflict, it's tough to do that. It's tough to do any of the rest of these elements of culture, conflict, communication, emotional intelligence, and collaboration without trust; they prioritise how you build safety and trust in your team and your organisation. So with professional conflict, you know, the teams with a culture where they've got this professional, constructive conflict are more likely to feel comfortable voicing their concerns, arguments, and debates to benefit the team. So it's where you can sit at a table, and somebody will present an idea when you disagree. What you don't want to do is come out of that room, not bought in, not committed to what is about to happen, and have the watercooler chat where you'll say to them, or we're just visiting this meeting, someone said this, and I disagreed with it. And then it harbours this sort of, you know, the rumour mills and all these negative watercooler chats when actually, what we should be doing is in the meeting saying I don't agree with that, and here's why. Or can you share with me how you can make me feel more comfortable with this? And having that in the room allows a much greater commitment to the goal, the task, to the project. And it ensures that issues and problems aren't Left to Fester. And it doesn't undermine the effectiveness and cohesion of that team. And if that conflict is managed well, it has a positive impact on that team cohesion and the relationships and the connection as a result, which in turn will help the performance, viability and happiness of that team. So I'd invite you to consider how your team deals with conflict collaboratively. What are they doing in the meetings or together outside? What are they doing as a team to encourage that professional conflict once you've got trust because those relationships matter? And we sometimes protect the relationships at the cost of results and a high-performing team. Don't they use the relationships to get the results? They ensure that difficult issues get discussed. So are, you know, is your team making sure that those issues are being discussed, getting the real gritty things on the table? Are they having difficult conversations? Again, we'll have a podcast on how to have difficult conversations. Do they have them in a professional, trusting collaborative? I mean, for you, Mama, I've got your back. Are they resolving conflicts promptly? Are they taking disagreements and personal conflicts out of the room and solving them outside of the room? Are they voicing opinions, even if it makes someone uncomfortable? Yet, everybody trusts that the intention is positive; everybody believes they're saying this for the greater good, not to undermine or make somebody look stupid or for their ego. So that's why professional conflict is fundamental in a brilliant team.
The third is communication. As I said, we will unpack communication in many podcasts as we go forward. I don't know; I love all of these elements of the brilliant team. But this is the bit where I get super passionate. But this is how team members communicate with one another. And it is an important predictor of that performance because the quality of that team's communication directly impacts team members' experiences in that team. And that communication needs to be transparent, proactive, it needs to be useful, and it needs to, in some way, help the rest of the team to build that consultative, open team culture. And we've all been in organisations where this doesn't happen. That communications are siloed, non-existent, repetitive, noisy, and, you know, there's a real art to how we should communicate and understand the needs of the people around us and how they want to be communicated. And again, we'll unpack a lot of that in future episodes. But for now, I want you to consider whether your team is effectively exchanging views and opinions from all team members. Not just the ones that have got a voice? But those more quiet ones? How are we bringing in all of our team members? How much are we listening to? How much are we speaking? How much? Are we having those conversations around communication? And how honest and open are they? How are your team members keeping each other updated with important issues in the organisation that affect their areas of responsibility? How much stakeholder management and open dialogue across other teams is happening? How much are we bringing other people into our decisions? And how much are we listening to other people? Because communication isn't? As many people would think, communication in an organisation isn't just broadcast. It's also the listening piece, how are we engaging people in what we're doing? And then how much of the team are, you know how much time they spend celebrating successes and milestones, and also sharing the failures, the things that didn't go so well, and how much of that has been communicated in a growth mindset. And then also, really importantly, and I think that we underestimate this is how much time is being made for social interactions that then build those personal relationships, especially when we've got remote and hybrid working, what are we doing to encourage those social interactions, and the ability to in environments to build those personal relationships with them, because again, that builds a much greater connection, and we get to understand more about each other.
Again, we'll unpack a lot more in future episodes; emotional intelligence is also a key piece. And this is where individual levels of emotional intelligence will impact how well the team can navigate some emotional situations that will inevitably arise throughout the whole lifecycle of that team. Team, you know, teams do change. Team members move on, Move out, move in, up, and down. How is the emotional intelligence of that team able to ride that? How can teams approach emotional matters? Again, we're humans, we're not robots, we come with these emotions and these triggers and beliefs and identities within us. And so, how can we provide a supportive culture around managing and regulating our emotions, and all of us will respond to very different things in different ways? But it also tends to positively impact on the quality of customer service of how we show up externally, and how we improve our team performance through that sort of shaping of those team dynamics and understanding, you know, what it is that's happening with each of those individual people's emotions just as much as that team emotion. And it does impact overall performance. So, again, I'd invite you to think about, you know, how is your team consistently displaying a high level of emotional intelligence? How are the individuals in that team assessing the social situations accurately? Are they able to read the room? Can they read each other's body language and cues and observe the interests, feelings, and goals of others? So we're not just showing up with our ego but thinking about those around us. And we've got that real understanding and empathy towards each other and a high self-awareness and awareness of others. And again, this comes back to knowing me and knowing you are all around. This is a real piece of what we will be looking at in the podcast: what is the self-awareness that we have in ourselves? And what is the self-awareness of those around us?
What's emotional intelligence? So I guess not only are we going to look at the art and science of brilliant teams, but we're also going to look at the emotional intelligence of brilliant teams and how we can dissect that and improve that. Number four is collaboration. I did say, you know, highly collaborative teams are, you know, those that succeed. They are the people that will set the norms and the expectations. They are proactive; they support one another. They share information and knowledge, and they are all-around collectives. Success. As they say, there's no I in the team, but there is me. And we don't want that. Oh, I just used one of the hideous analogies. I'm sorry about that. But it's true. We say no, I am in the team, but there is me. And actually, the best is to remove that. So I would invite you to now think about the team members effectively collaborating across portfolios across functions, project teams, and leadership teams; where are the people? And how are you encouraging and rewarding this behaviour? How do your team members believe that the team's success is more important than their success? worth digging into? And how our team members regularly sharing their experiences and knowledge that benefit the whole team? What are you putting in place to allow that? Do you have lunch and learns and show and towels or chats where you can share these things? And actively discuss them and put some conflict around them? Or have you got a real creation of silos, where team members do their own thing in their way and don't care about the bigger picture, don't care about the collective responsibilities of, you know, their team and their organisation? So, think about how your team operates and if they're going out of their way to help everyone else succeed. And if you have got a reward programme, how could you put that into it, because this is one of the things that are critical to the brilliant team, you can have teams that you know, trust each other, respect each other, hold each other accountable. But it's not quite so brilliant if they're not collaborating and bringing all of their capabilities together.
And then, finally, we've got resilience critical when we're going through complexities and changes in this volatile, very uncertain, unpredictable world. how resilient Are we at managing the stresses around us and maintaining high performance and brilliance in a very sustainable way? So we're not just amazing and peacetime, but in wartime, we can rally together and have a real cultivated, harboured team resilience so that everyone in the team has got the ability and the energy to build those connections still and build that adaptation and hunger for success. It's straightforward, I say, straightforward; it's not very easy, but it's easier to do it when everything is going well. But when we've got those, well, you know, the need to step up and step out, but we have the resilience. So think about in your team, you know, are you avoiding dysfunctional behaviour? Are you ignoring, you know, the stresses, signs of people? Do you understand what they are? Do you have, you know, real positivity in your team? Are you embracing positive psychology, another thing we'll discuss in another podcast? Our members rarely make errors or, you know, fearing to fail because they are worried about the repercussions of the resilience of that, but also, you know, that lack of composure, and, you know, importantly, when there are setbacks and fails. Things don't go so well. How do they recover? Have you got people sitting there and, you know, constantly living in the past? Or are they using the past to inform the future? And then, more than anything, well, being in the workplace is such a massive issue.
And I hope to bring somebody I know who is incredibly experienced in this area. And I do. I also know somebody who supports resilience in the workplace, but how are you enabling and supporting your team members and your teams and your whole organisation to take good care of themselves to avoid that stress and burnout? Again, especially because we're not always in the company with remote and hybrid working models. So think about how you could support those people.
Now, that is how we build culture. And in the fast, we talked about the elements of building performance. But I want to leave you with if you've listened to both podcasts all the way through, think about the three things; there are many things here that I've talked about and that probably have resonated with you. Now one thing I know to be true is that if we do everything in one go, we achieve nothing. So I want you to think about the three things that have resonated with you, or the things that you know are priorities and other foundations of building all of the other components on top of Such trust, for example, was one that I highlighted communication was another, you know, do you need to be, you know, creating a clear strategy, roles and responsibilities, whatever it is think about the three things that are going to make the most difference and I'm just going to leave you with things to think about of options. unities to improve. So if collaboration is one of your things, if you need more collaboration, then try and look at the one-team approach to how do you reduce silos?
How do you reduce you know more about me? Less about them? Do you know that real? How do you bring that collaboration into the workplace? If you need more accountability, how do you challenge each other constructively? How do you correct poor behaviour? How can you make your KPI review stronger? How can you hold people responsible? How can you challenge poor performers? If you need to tackle the difficult issues more? How can you encourage healthier debate? How can you challenge each other and discuss those gritty hard issues? And how can you avoid it? Stop avoiding the conflict? If you need to improve communications? How can you create open and honest conversations? How can you keep people updated? What do you need to what mechanics do you need in place to share the bigger picture and information? And decisions? Because we've all seen it where people at the bottom don't understand the decision, and they're still doing it the old way? How can you be clear from the beginning if you need to set priorities?
How can you allocate time according to priorities? How can you better manage competing priorities? How can you have honest discussions on priorities? If you need a clear vision or strategy? How can you set clear KPIs and key performance indicators? How can you create a clear business plan that everybody's got a copy of? How can you create that shared sense of purpose and direction? If you need process improvement? How can you streamline them?
How can you standardise them? How can you have a continuous improvement? How can you embed that into your team? So they're improving their ways of working and creating consistent ways of working? If you need to Team world? How can you understand each other? How can you share strengths and weaknesses? In that trusted environment? How can you build self-awareness? How can you pit team building exercises, and I don't mean whitewater rafting in there, but where you get them together, understand each other, and build? One of the things that I'll be talking to you about is the disc programme, where we can use that as a team build to understand and elevate communication and collaboration was bringing connection together and understanding each other's personality and work style. Again, this is what knowing me knowing is all about. How can you celebrate successes and achievements and recognise and reward for these behaviours to create that culture? How can you recognise good performance?
Not just the performance, but actually for the ways of working? How can you put in regular feedback and continuous performance feedback? Not that it was a good job well done. But why was it a good job? How could you have gone better? How can you do things together more collectively? It's not about criticism. It's about how we can keep doing good work. If you need more resources, you know, align the resources to your business objectives. Where are you missing? Where are the gaps? Where are the weaknesses? How do you share resources? How do you align resources? Because there is much waste of resources where we have this silo thinking? How can you have better meetings, clearer agendas, punctuality, punctuality, better attendance, the right people, not wasting people's time in regular meetings, for catch-ups, but for a strategy for tactics, break them up into what their purpose is, get a regular meeting with them, regular business reviews, regular team meetings, regular planning process, separate the tactics and the strategy.
And then I'm going to leave you on this positive note because I did say there's a listing of fun, more social occasions, getting everyone together in a fun way, not talking about work doing things where they can connect on a human level,,,,,, not on this professional level because that is where the power is. That is how we create a brilliant team performance and culture. And hopefully, I've given you so much rich content there for things to think about. I'm sure light bulbs will go off, but pick three things.
And as I say, as we go forward with all the podcasts, you'll be able to dip into each of the elements we've unpacked today and get some real strategies and solutions and step-by-step practical advice for improving that in your teams. I hope that that's been helping a lot to think about there. We've covered some big meaty issues very, very quickly. But do come back, and I will start to go into the detail of each of those even further, and then you can switch up in a library, pick and choose the things that are right for you. But that's it for today. I will see you in the next podcast where you come and join me, and for now, look after yourself and stay brilliant. You have been listening to knowing me knowing you. If you would like to take your personality or team assessment, go to brilliant teams.org forward slash store And let's get you knowing you knowing them. Tell your friends about us and share the podcast with colleagues. But most importantly come and listen to us again next week. See you soon.
Buy your DISC Assessment here.
Buy my “Leading Highly Engaged Remote Teams” course here