Ep26 Megan Giannini: High Performing Teams

This week we interview a client Megan Gianinni, Global Head of Talent, Development and Organisational Effectiveness at Philips, on the topic of building strong, high performing teams. Megan has been a client of Zircon for over 5 years and has been responsible for rolling out a number of initiatives across the organisation to improve team performance and collaboration.

In this podcast we talk about some of the characteristics of high performing teams, the tips businesses can put into place in order to improve performance and create happy, healthy and psychologically safe teams.

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To contact Megan via LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/megan-giannini-400189
To contact Amanda via email: TheCPO@zircon-mc.co.uk

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Timestamps

High Performing Teams

·       00:00 – Introduction to High Performing Teams

·       00:33 – Megan Giannini: How it all began

·       01:31 – I love teams!

·       02:23 – Why so important a topic Amanda?

·       03:22 – Research vs. Reality

Consider if you will, the world we live in…

·       05:19 – These are turbulent times…

·       06:12 – VUCA or BANI; you be the judge.

·       07:05 – Forming, Storming, Norming & Performing (these could be The Doors)

·       08:31 – Those that take on these steps

·       10:19 – “Change is good, Constant Change is better”

·       11:57 – What to consider when creating a team

·       13:49 – Strengths vs. Motivation

·       15:00 – Cognitive Diversity

Getting a lot done in these conversations…

·       15:50 – Productive Conversations

·       17:29 – This is all new to me!

·       18:30 – I need some clarification for that

·       20:49 – State of mind

·       21:45 – Creating an environment for everyone to be the best

·       23:09 – Summary of Productive Conversations

·       23:28 – What’s stopping you?

·       24:39 – Does the research support this?

The current trend.

·       25:44 – Quiet Fleecing

·       27:22 – It doesn’t fall within my boundaries…

·       27:53 – Quiet Quitting

·       28:53 – I wasn’t aware…

·       30:35 – Following the Leader

·       31:33 – Who’s the most important member of the team?

The keys to building a high performing team.

·       32:47 – Key takeaways

·       34:50 – Removing the drains

·       35:43 – Environment of learning

·       37:12 – A puzzle by Google (Not solving its tax avoidance…)

·       38:18 – Parting thoughts?

·       39:28 – The end.

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Transcript

Angela Malik: 0:04

Welcome to this episode of the Chief Psychology Officer with Dr. Amanda Potter, chartered psychologist and CEO of Circon. I'm Angela Malik, and this week we'll be looking at high-performing teams. What makes a team high performing and how to build an effective team? I'm pleased to welcome Megan Giannini to the conversation today. Megan is the Global Head of Talent Development and Organizational Effectiveness at Philips. Welcome, Megan.

Speaker: 0:28

Thank you so much for having me.

Angela Malik: 0:30

Megan, do you mind telling us a little bit about your role in Philips?

Speaker: 0:33

Absolutely. First, maybe I'll share a little bit about Philips. So Philips was founded in 1891 as a leader in lighting technology. And over the past decade, we've transformed into a focus leader in health technology, generating about 20 billion in revenue, and we have a workforce close to 80,000 workers. My role at Philips is leading the HR centers of expertise, excluding reward and DI. What that includes is our workforce strategy planning, so strategic workforce planning, identification of strategic capabilities, the leadership and culture strategy, the learning and development, as well as talent acquisition, onboarding, and talent management. Lastly, we cover organizational effectiveness, which includes team effectiveness.

Angela Malik: 1:23

You have a real passion for team effectiveness and for building high-performing teams. Why is this topic top of your mind?

Speaker: 1:30

Well, the way I think about it is using a sports analogy. So first off, there are sports that are focused on individual contributors like running and skiing and swimming, all of which I love. And then there are team sports, right? Like football, cricket, basketball. And the differentiating factor on who wins in football is really how the team performs together. And the way I look at it, business is a team sport. So for me, high-performing teams are an essential ingredient in business as well as personal success. Secondly, my experience with being on high-performing teams is that they're also a lot of fun. So I think that this is really an important topic because not only can they bring personal and business success, but they can also bring a lot of fulfillment and happiness when you're on a high-performing team.

Angela Malik: 2:18

Definitely. It's great to feel like a winner. So, Amanda, why are high-performing teams such an important topic for you?

Dr Amanda Potter: 2:24

I love what Megan has just said, and I completely concur. It is about making sure that teams are as effective and as efficient as possible and that they drive performance, but also that they're happy that they're engaged and that they're fulfilled. And the key to a high-performing team is that they predictably execute the strategy, that they meet the goals, that they take accountability for performance and they deliver results. But what's interesting about a high-performing team is that they require less management. They don't need overseeing quite so much as a team that is struggling or might be going against the strategy. So if a company wants to outperform its competitors, it needs to inform and influence not only how people work, but how they work together in order to really drive that high performance.

Angela Malik: 3:14

There's the research around team building and team effectiveness, and then there's the reality. Megan, have you seen a difference between the two?

Speaker: 3:23

This is clearly an emerging space, right? That we we haven't discovered the end-all be-all solution for high-performing teams, right? But I think there's a lot of great work out there. And I reference it regularly. Whenever I'm in a moment where I'm bringing my team together, I'll look at my favorite books and articles. And I think that some of the things that really stand out to me are ensuring that we have, as a team, really clear purpose, clear accountability, and clear priorities. So those are some of the things that you often see in the literature. In general, I think that there's also some from a day-to-day perspective with the team, there's an element of intangibles, right? So how the team relates, how well they know each other, how strong the trust is between the team, and how autonomous they feel they can be. And they have their own team culture, which they create together. Some of that you'll find in the research, and some of it is just created within each unique team.

Dr Amanda Potter: 4:25

Megan, your point about culture is a really good one because what does it feel like to work in a team? In other words, the climate, and what are the agreed processes or conducts for doing business within a team, which is culture? That's so profound and fundamental in helping somebody understand what's required of them and how they need to interact in order to succeed, but also how does it feel to work with their colleagues? And of course, it all links back to the concept of psychological safety. But so many of the words that you've just said within your little summary there are so key around trust, accountability. We had personal connection, relating to people, autonomy. There's so many things that are mixed up in high-performing teams. It's not a simple concept, is it?

Speaker: 5:14

Yeah, no, Amanda, I completely agree. You're absolutely right.

Angela Malik: 5:17

Amanda, we're in such turbulent times, and a common theme of our conversations in the past has been about the volatility and the lack of predictability that teams are facing.

Dr Amanda Potter: 5:26

Volatility is really key. In these very turbulent times that we're facing, we are really lacking predictability. And as a psychologist and many people in HR, they use the term VUCA. VUCA stands for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. And we use that term to describe the environment in which we're working because there's a clear lack of certainty. And we need leaders who can cope and adapt in this VUCA environment, but they can lead teams and guide their teams through that volatility. And the individuals within that team also need to be incredibly tolerant of the lack of certainty and the lack of predictability that they're facing as a team.

Angela Malik: 6:11

I know a lot of our listeners will have heard of the concept of VUCA already, but the world seems to be getting increasingly more complex. Is VUCA still an adequate descriptor for this?

Dr Amanda Potter: 6:21

It's interesting because actually, as psychologists, we are one for coming up with new concepts. Well, the new one is BANI, and BANI refers to brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible. And the fact that we've even had to come up with another term to describe another level of complexity just says it all, really. A researcher named Francos has introduced the concept of BANI to reflect what he calls the age of chaos. And in this age of chaos, we are really looking for teams and individuals within teams to face up to that challenge and find clarity and unity so that they can be stronger together.

Angela Malik: 7:03

The most common model when we think about team progression and success is the TUCHMAN model, the forming, storming, norming, and performing stages. How relevant are these stages of team development in this banny VUCA world?

Dr Amanda Potter: 7:18

Actually, it's not that well accepted now. TUCHMAN has had a fantastic place in the psychology books and in the researchers' minds and is a great starting point for talking to teams that are developing. But actually, we rarely get beyond storming. We rarely get to the point of norming because teams change all the time. We're in a hybrid environment, and teams are much more organic and evolving. And so as a result, we have to move with significant agility and we have to perform without even having the opportunity very often to fully form, storm, and norm.

Angela Malik: 7:54

Megan, does this reflect your experience in Philips?

Speaker: 7:57

It does. It's somewhat, I will say. I I we do refer to the four phases at times, informally, I would say, that and usually it's storming that comes up. Um, that we say, okay, well, it's okay. We're still in that sort of forming storming phase, right? So maybe that's why it's not relevant because we don't always go through all the steps, but I still hear it referenced, and people are familiar with that. And I think it brings some empathy, right, to some of the inherent challenges of being on a team.

Angela Malik: 8:30

What industries or teams might go through four stages more traditionally?

Dr Amanda Potter: 8:35

So for me, it's teams that have longevity, teams that are established and they stay together more efficiently. So if you think about industries or teams that are required to work together for longer time, so it might be teams that are in the services, so it could be in the military. I was trying to think of teams, it could be teams on oil rigs, engineering teams who are off-site or working away from a traditional office where teams are much more organic and you're getting pulled from one project to another. Certainly in consulting in our business, Angela, you and I, we might be part of multiple teams. You and I are parts of a number of different projects and programs and client projects. And so we have to go through those four stages multiple times each day and might be at different stages with different people depending who joins. And what's fascinating is if you bring a new member into that team, the dynamics of the team and the trust and psychological safety shifts, and you have to almost start again. You may not go all the way back to forming, but you most definitely go back to storming as you work out the roles each person are playing in that new team.

Speaker: 9:42

I completely agree, Amanda, with what you've just shared. And when I think back to times when I've experienced teams that can go through the four stages, I would say it's when there's just less change. And there are, I think, businesses that are like that today, right? That are more stable, or maybe parts of businesses that are more stable where things are really working and it's more of a continuous improvement. But I see them less often now, that's for sure.

Dr Amanda Potter: 10:10

Yeah, I don't really know any organizations that we work with who don't have change as central to their agenda. So much so that a client that we've just spoken to, his mantra is change is good, but constant change is better. Even though his organization are feeling quite change-fatigued, he's still driving the business to change and adapt and be agile at quite a phenomenal rate.

Speaker: 10:34

On that note, by the way, when referring to the Francos model of BANI, I almost wonder if it shouldn't be called the age of chaos, right? But the age of agility or the age of speed or the age of rapid change, right? There's something about chaos that seems quite negative to me. I think that there's a lot of good in the ability to quickly adapt and to get used to how we can do that effectively.

Dr Amanda Potter: 11:00

Your point is incredibly well made. When I was thinking about BANI, I was thinking about the opportunities to respond to it. And actually the point that we should focus on agility rather than chaos, I completely agree. Because if we think about brittle, if industry and doing business is brittle, then we need to be resilient, we need to be persistent. If you think about the A, which was anxiety, then we need empathy, we need self-compassion, which I think is a really important topic at the moment, and we need to be mindful and considerate. If it's nonlinear, we need to be agile to your point, Megan. And if it's incomprehensible, if we have no clarity, then we need to use our intuition a bit more, which is of course based on previous experience and all the years of knowledge that we've built up, but we also need transparency. We need to be honest with each other and with ourselves when we're not clear and we need to ask questions or when we make mistakes.

Angela Malik: 11:56

So given our new VUCA banny world and our age of chaos or agility, depending on how we want to look at it, it seems that teams are facing complex problems in highly pressured circumstances. Megan, what do you think is important to consider when creating a new team with this in mind?

Speaker: 12:13

It's a great question. And I think the importance of having or being a high-performing team in this banny world is utmost. It's even more important. What I would say is important to consider when creating a new team, of course, is having the diversity of the capabilities, but also the styles and the strengths in the team. I think that's really important, as well as the backgrounds and the perspectives. And then it goes straight into trust and clarity. And when the environment is uncertain around us, I think that the importance of having trusting relationships increases. So being able to build that trust quickly is essential.

Dr Amanda Potter: 13:02

There's two things that you've said there that really resonate. One is around strengths, and the second is around trust. And the point around trust, I'll start with, which is the foundation, that if we have personal connection and we believe that other people's behaviour and intentions are honourable and they're always working in line with the team purpose and the mission of the team, and that they're not self-serving or throwing other people under the bus, that actually every action they take, even though they might seem peculiar at times or they operate a different way to what you expect, that you know that their intention is good, that they're operating in line with the best will, if you like, for the team. So I think I completely agree that's really important, particularly in these really tricky times. And the second one is strengths. And I wanted to differentiate between strengths and motivation, because I might be part of a team because I'm motivated to develop my career or learn a new skill or to improve my own career in some way, or because it's something that the business needs, and I want to contribute to what that business needs. But actually, the point you've made about strengths, Megan, is so key because if we can identify our strengths and then spend time doing the things that we love and we're passionate about, we're going to be more engaged, we're going to be more productive, we're going to have better well-being. And therefore, I'm going to be a nicer colleague to work with. I'm going to be more fun, back to your point, right at the start of the podcast. And I'm going to bring joy and enjoyment to that conversation rather than this is a bit of a slog, I'm doing it because I need to do it. And my language will be, I want to do it, I'm excited by it, rather than I'm doing this because it's important, because the team requires it, because I know this is required of me. And I feel exhausted almost saying this, if you like. So yeah, I think it's a really important thing to differentiate between strengths and motivation when we think about a team and focus on the things you love so that you bring personal joy to your team and to your colleagues.

Angela Malik: 15:00

I also like that point you made, Megan, about diversity of strengths, which really is cognitive diversity, and it's something that we at Zircon absolutely preach in our strength-based approach.

Dr Amanda Potter: 15:12

I completely agree, Angela. Albeit I might not use the word preach, but I hope I don't preach. But I certainly do talk a lot about the importance of cognitive diversity and the fact that each of us come to the team with something unique and special and different. And as much as we can assess individual team members for their team preferences, their team type, so how they prefer to interact and engage with the team, and also their strengths, what they're energized by. The more we can do that and understand the roles that people want to play in a team, the more likely people are going to feel part of something that's important. They're going to feel included, but they're also going to be doing something that they love.

Angela Malik: 15:49

Well, speaking of cognitive diversity values, Megan, what from your experience are the most important characteristics of a successful and high-performing team?

Speaker: 15:59

Well, I think we've mentioned a number of them already, but there's one we haven't talked about that I wanted to just call out. And it's something that I've noticed is often absent from teams, and that is the ability to have productive conversations. And what does it mean to have a productive conversation? That's when we have someone who brings a position into the team to say, I have a thought about what we should do here, et cetera, right? And then the next step in a productive conversation is for another team member to clarify, right? Their understanding. Okay, so is what you mean the following. And then it could go back to the positioner and they could say, no, that's not what I meant at all, right? Or yes, you've got me, right? And then you go into what do we want to do with this position, right? What do we want to do with this perspective? Should we take an action? Is there a follow-up, right? And I rarely see teams able to repeat this productive sequence of contribution. And as a result, you end up having people often just bring a position, bring a position, bring a position, bring a position. I think this, I think that, right? I disagree, right? And then they just move on, right? And I think that it's such a lost opportunity to get the benefit from all of the team's diversity and strengths if we don't actively close on each contribution in a productive way.

Dr Amanda Potter: 17:28

I've never heard of the concept of productive conversations, but I really appreciate it. So, Megan, what are the benefits then of this productive conversation approach for a team?

Speaker: 17:40

Yeah, that's a great question. I think there are several, right? One is that you are able to use the insights from the team most effectively because they're truly understood and acted on. I think the second thing I've seen, which is sort of a tacit effect that is a positive one, is when you make a position, you make a proposal, right? And someone says, Let me check if I understand you. Did I get your point, right? That creates a lot of trust and psychological safety because the person who's contributing really feels heard and feels important. And so following these steps can also increase the trust and psychological safety of a team, not only the productivity of the team.

Dr Amanda Potter: 18:26

So fundamentally, if we have a productive conversation, what we're saying is that you position something to me, Megan, I clarify it with you, I ask you questions, I show that I've been listening. I might disagree, I might have an alternative position, but actually where I lead with is curiosity. I lead with listening, I lead with clarifying. I don't lead with, yes, but I've also got an opinion here and I'd like you to listen to me and hear me. And that does sound incredibly productive, actually, because I'm taking the time to understand your viewpoint rather than leading with my own and wanting to spend time being heard. And this is a really interesting point because I'm coaching a leader at the moment who is struggling with his executive presence. And one of the things that I'm talking to him about is how he shows up in a boardroom in a meeting. He almost skulks into the meeting room and he also tries to stay under the radar. He also spends the whole of the time that he's in that meeting preparing for his time when he's going to be presenting. He's not listening, he's not engaging, he's not actively contributing. So he is not doing the clarifying stage at all. And so then he wouldn't build on their stories because he hadn't been listening to them, and he would just focus on his delivery and his own desire to have presence. And he missed every opportunity actually to be inspirational, to have presence, because he wasn't checking in, he wasn't showing he was listening. And he's not the only coaching client that I'm working with where I'm getting feedback from the business that their greatest risk is that they don't make the connections they think very much. In a silo way about what they're doing and what they need to deliver and what they want people to hear. It really strikes me how important this is and how I've seen it actually playing out with a client.

Speaker: 20:11

Yeah, and you know what stands out to me too in that story is we discussed the first step being to position and the second to clarify. But in order to clarify, that requires deep listening. And you don't have to be the leader of the team to play this role, right? Just a team member can play it just as well. And that value of that skill, um, that discipline of listening is sometimes underappreciated. Oftentimes there can be a lot of ego in wanting to position and have your input. Um, but I think that there's often equal, if not greater, benefit in listening really well for teams.

Dr Amanda Potter: 20:48

And I wonder if it has something to do with our state of mind and our mindset, because when I'm at my best, I'm open, I'm agile, I'm prepared to listen, I'm interested and curious about other people's views. I want to ask questions and I want to learn. When I'm not at my best, I'm quite closed in my mind. I want other people to hear me. I want to prove a point. I want to win. You know, I'm really thinking about my worst version of myself. And I'm probably going to go in speaking more than I'm listening, particularly because I'm an extrovert. So I was just thinking about resilience and positive versus negative affect and our state of mind that we have when we're going into a meeting, and therefore the impact it has on our ability to have productive conversations versus I just need to get my point across because I'm nervous or I'm anxious or I need to prove myself and prove a point.

Speaker: 21:45

Yes. And so to bring that back to a high-performing team, the team has a role in creating an environment where we're at our best. And that enables us to feel safe enough to listen and to echo the perspectives of others and connect the dots as well. Now, there's always a part of our own well-being that we are individually responsible for, but you can't have that independent from feeling safe and confident in the team as well.

Dr Amanda Potter: 22:16

That's such a great question, actually, because I've been starting to ask that with my coaching clients, which is if you were to describe how you interact at work, are you proud of the way you interact and engage at work? And are you at your best? Do you think you're the best version for yourself in that team? And if not, why not? What sort of behaviours are you demonstrating that you're not that proud of? What are the things you're doing that you would criticize in others but you're seeing yourself doing? So that point around certain people bring out the best in you, certain environments bring out the best in you, and some environments don't. It's quite interesting. But going back to the point around productive conversations, I really love the model and hadn't heard about it before, had been almost doing it without realizing it, but I love a model, that's why I'm a psychologist. And so now having introduced this to me, Megan, it's incredibly useful. So thank you.

Angela Malik: 23:07

So to summarize this productive conversations model we've been discussing and its benefits for high-performing teams, the model is to state a position, clarify that position by leading with curiosity and asking questions, validate and develop that position further, and then agree on next steps. So moving on, Megan, what have you observed that stops teams from being effective?

Speaker: 23:32

Well, many things, right? And that's probably why we're talking about this today. But to name a few, I would say lack of clarity on the roles of the people on the team. Often having too big of a team, I think, can get in the way of a high-performing team. Lack of clarity on the collective priorities. So people may have clarity on their individual priorities, but they aren't clear on what they are collectively working on, which may not be the total set, it may be a subset of the individual priorities. Having an unsafe environment, I think can definitely stop teams from being effective. Favoritism. Another thing I've often witnessed is dominant behavior, right? So if you sometimes have someone who always wants to contribute, even if it doesn't serve the team, I think that can really get in the way of teams being effective. Or I guess a lot of change and the team not having the trust in each other that can really erode the effectiveness of a team.

Angela Malik: 24:38

Amanda, do these things reflect what you know from the research?

Dr Amanda Potter: 24:42

They really do. And I also would add to them, so I agree with each of them, but I would also add the impact of not dealing with the dominant dynamics, for example, or the favoritism, is that what you might get in the team is social loafing. That's when you don't deal with challenging or lazy colleagues. And what it results in actually is quiet fleecing. So you're quietly fleecing certain members of the team of their time, their personal time, because you go to them more than others to ask for their help because they're more likely to deliver. And so it creates an environment that undermines trust because there lacks fairness and lacks consistency where people are being treated differently. Some people might have more work than others or might be put upon more than others. And so the language I would use is social loafing and quiet fleecing. And both of those concepts and aspects will really undermine team performance.

Angela Malik: 25:42

Amanda, can we go into more detail about exactly what quiet fleecing and social loafing are in terms of other examples, just so it's really clear.

Dr Amanda Potter: 25:52

Of course. So let's do quiet fleecing first. So quiet fleecing is when leaders build trust and rely on certain people within the team. For example, Angela, we might have a colleague within our team who is incredibly reliable, very consistent, and always delivers and also prepared to work at the weekend. So it would be easy for me to delegate to that person because I know that they're going to be available, I know they don't mind working at the weekends, and I might get into a bit of a habit of doing that. So I might have an over-reliance on certain team members. And there might be other colleagues in the team who are very much nine to five. And then there's nothing wrong with that. Let's be clear. We don't want to take advantage of people, but they may also try to do as little as possible during those hours of nine to five. And that might be because of their own issues around lack of clarity, Megan's point, or they may not really understand the role that they're contributing to, or they may not feel listened, or they may not feel part of the team. There might be a number of reasons why they're social loafing. Because I believe people go to work to do a good job. I believe in the integrity of the employee. But leaders need to face up to this and they need to be curious, ask questions, and understand why someone might be avoidant, why might someone might be staying under the radar, and recognize the fact that their strategy for coping with it is to burden the people who are good and almost punish the good people by giving them more and more work.

Angela Malik: 27:19

There's something in there around boundaries as well, I think. So that person who's very reliable and perhaps does work a weekend or two, it could also be that they don't have very firm boundaries with themselves of this is my work-life balance at stake here. I should be saying no more often because they find it difficult to say no, for example. And if from the organization's point of view, if you're not mindful of that as a possibility, it's quite easy to forget and turn to that person again and again. So yeah, I think maybe something about boundaries as well.

Dr Amanda Potter: 27:51

And that links beautifully to quiet quitting, which is of course the topic that's been so much in the press, which is when people don't have the boundaries, when they are feeling put upon or they are feeling that they're being asked to do more and more and more for whatever reason. That's where now why we're hearing about this quite profound move, which of course originated within TikTok and has been picked up in local press about people's quite quitting and saying, no, I'm going to do the job I'm paid to do and not do more.

Speaker: 28:22

Does this reflect your experience, Megan? Well, I think what stands out for me about the description Amanda just gave is that I don't think leaders are always aware of what they're doing, right? When they depend on certain team members more than others. So I guess what I'm curious about is how we can help team leaders be aware of their own contribution to these circumstances, right? And how they can limit those. So that's the thing that I was thinking about is I don't think man leaders often are even aware that they're doing this.

Dr Amanda Potter: 28:59

I agree. And I think that leaders are not always completely aware of the strengths of the team. Because of the previous conversation we had around the difference between strengths and motivation, they often treat people similarly. If they were clearer about the things that really energized and excited certain team members, the things that they got joy from, they might be more likely to delegate different activities to different colleagues, depending on what they enjoy, where they get their energy and where they're most likely to bring value to that team. But instead, I'm one, actually, I'm probably the worst person at this, actually. And Sarah, my co-director, Megan, who knows incredibly well. She's told me off for years, because we've worked together for 17 years now, because I used to be front a front of mine leader. If I was sitting opposite Angela and I needed a job done, I'd give it to Angela. There was no thought in my delegation at all. It was literally, would you like to come and join me to this meeting? Because you're sitting in front of me. I didn't think who's going to get the greatest value from this meeting, who would benefit from it, who will bring the most, and also who should I give it to, depending on fairness. It just literally was, I'm an extrovert, I'm impulsive, I've got an opportunity. Angela, you're sitting in front of me. I'm looking at you. Do you fancy joining me? And Angela would say, Yeah, sure. But I wouldn't think about the fallout.

Speaker: 30:16

Yeah, but I think in this BNI world, there's more and more likelihood that will happen, right? Because leaders are trying to do so much so fast, and they may just go to the first person they see. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's a great point. And I think that there are many people who probably struggle with that.

Angela Malik: 30:34

It's also worth keeping in mind that junior members of the team will take signals from the team leaders. So if a team leader is overly relying on one member or two members of the team, the rest of the team may unconsciously start to do that too, because they're viewing the team through the lens that the leader has set.

Dr Amanda Potter: 30:54

Yeah. I think they create the rules of conduct, don't they? Fundamentally. And if the leader is operating in a way that isn't fair, that has favourites and accommodates social loafing or people staying under the radar, it suggests that that's okay. But actually, we're seeing, I think, in industry with our clients, a greater level of intolerance of that type of behavior, particularly in this hybrid world. And what we want to see is people playing their part, contributing positively to a team or to an agenda and not tolerating negative or toxic behavior.

Angela Malik: 31:31

So with that in mind, playing a role. Megan, who's the most important member of the team? Is it the leader?

Speaker: 31:38

Well, that's uh yeah, that's a tricky one because I think the leader does have a massively important role in setting the tone of the team and the direction and creating the trust and the culture within that team. So I would say that the leader plays an incredibly important role. And if I had to choose who's the most important, okay, I would say yes. But I think that the team members themselves are a very close second, right? So it's not like the leader has 90% of the influence on having a high performing team and the team has 10%. I think it's more like 51, 49. Um, the the team really feels it's their team, right? And they have a role in making it a high-performing team as well. There's that model of the prisoner, the tourist, and the player, right? From years past. And that one comes to mind in this circumstance where we want players. And if the team recognizes that it's their team and they're actively helping contribute to it being a high-performing team, then I think it's much more likely that that'll be a great team to be on.

Angela Malik: 32:45

So given everything we've been talking about, high-performing teams, what would you say are the key takeaways for how to create a highly effective team?

Dr Amanda Potter: 32:54

So I think the first takeaway for me is the point that Megan made around purpose and clarity. And I would add belonging. So a team that has a strong set of common values and a common purpose are more likely to be aligned. And having a clear line of sight between what the team is delivering and the strategy or the goals or aspirations of the organization is really key for that core purpose and that shared purpose.

Angela Malik: 33:24

Speaking of belonging, it does come up as a key stage of diversity and inclusion.

Dr Amanda Potter: 33:29

Yes, and that's a great segue into my second area, which is teams that are high performing are often diverse, but even more importantly, inclusive. And our research with 40 C-suite women that we conducted a few years ago found that the single most important predictor of the success of the female leaders was the preparedness of their CEO or their leader to include them in conversation, which really swings back to that productive conversations point that Megan was making. I really like the point that we need to listen and to be curious. And that's what that research was showing is that the most successful women that we interviewed, they pointed to inclusion and being listened to as being the most important thing for them and their careers.

Angela Malik: 34:16

I assume that another important point for a highly effective team is psychological safety.

Speaker: 34:21

Yes, couldn't agree more, but I think there's a really tight relationship between inclusion and psychological safety. So you can see how these things all connect. But a high-performing team needs to feel psychologically safe, meaning that they're able to deal with failure in a healthy and productive way, which is truly underpinned by trust, respect, accountability, and candidness.

Dr Amanda Potter: 34:47

And candidness, I think, leads me nicely to the fourth point, which is something we've talked about today, which is removing the drains, dealing with the difficult or challenging or toxic people, and facing up to those challenging conversations. And I interviewed Mike Clare, the founder of Dreams, and asked him about the secret of his success as part of our winning attitude research. And he said his secret is that he hires radiators and fires drains who suck the life out of you. And he said you need not to be afraid of dealing with toxic people or having those challenging conversations. And in fact, you need to do that in order to show the organization, to show the team that you're prepared to face up to those difficulties and deal very swiftly with problems. And so we need to deal with social loafing and we need to remove the risk of quiet fleecing.

Speaker: 35:42

And I think the fifth one I'd like to add is really creating an environment to learn. So this is critical for a high-performing team because curiosity makes us feel good. Merely describing a day when you felt curious has been shown to boost mental and physical energy by 20%, even more so than describing a happy day. And there's so many opportunities to create learning. It doesn't have to be taking a class, right? And so being able to create that environment where the team is appreciating all that they can learn and recognizing that and seeking it out to find more creative solutions. They end up making less errors, have less levels of team conflict, and they don't feel that they have to be perfect, which creates a lot of uh safety as well to experiment and take risks and learn from those risks they've taken.

Dr Amanda Potter: 36:39

That's great. And I think it's that when we learn, we feel alive. I think that sense of vitality is so important. I mean, how often do our employees talk about vitality at work? We talk about vitality in terms of health and fitness and energy outside of work, but it would be brilliant to have a sense of vitality and being alive and passionate and excited within work because of course learning helps us gain knowledge and skills, but it helps us to feel alive and part of something that's new and exciting.

Angela Malik: 37:11

So, speaking of curiosity, that reminds me of something that Google did back in, I think it was 2004. They put up an anonymous billboard on Highway 101 in California in the heart of Silicon Valley, and it just had a puzzle on there, the first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e.com. And the answer was a series of numbers.com. And if you went to that URL online, there was another puzzle to solve. And the handful of people who actually took those steps and did solve those puzzles were invited to submit profiles to Google for a role and to apply. And so they then literally offered positions to those people, Angela. Yes, I believe so. I mean, it it just shows that Google places a premium on curiosity. So they took a novel way to hire new talent that would be curious.

Dr Amanda Potter: 38:03

Wow, I wouldn't have known the answer to that question, I must be honest. But I love the fact that they were prepared to go out there with something so profoundly different to do that, to see who would be curious.

Angela Malik: 38:14

So to close this episode, Megan, do you have any parting thoughts for our listeners?

Speaker: 38:20

Well, I've really enjoyed the conversation. I hope that the listeners have at least one takeaway they can bring back to a team that you're each on, that you'll think about how to be a contributing member in a different way and and recognize the important role that every team member plays in making that a high-performing team.

Angela Malik: 38:41

I've personally taken a lot, especially out of that productive conversations model that we discussed. I plan to implement that as a sort of opener for my own team meetings in the future. So everyone has that model front of mind when we start the conversation and we can avoid having these long drawn-out conversations that go nowhere in the end because everyone is positioning, positioning, positioning. So thank you for that.

Dr Amanda Potter: 39:05

I agree. I'm also going to keep the productive conversations model front of mind, but I'm also going to think about my mindset and how prepared I am to listen, to remain curious, and to show that I'm truly attending to the views and the opinions of others and not just positioning myself and wanting to be heard.

Angela Malik: 39:25

So yeah, I'm gonna think about it too. Thank you both Megan and Amanda for yet another fascinating conversation. I always learn so much from this podcast. And if our listeners enjoy it, the Chief Psychology Officer Podcast, please subscribe, rate it on whatever streaming platform you're using. And if you'd like to keep up to date on the latest Zircon research and thought leadership, please like and follow Zircon on LinkedIn. I'd also like to thank Caitlin Cooper for her research and for preparing this podcast.

Dr Amanda Potter: 39:54

Thank you for being our guest, Megan, you brought great insight, great energy. And you brought something that I didn't know to this podcast, which is fabulous.

Speaker: 40:04

Thank you so much, Amanda and Angela. It's been a sheer pleasure to be with you to discuss this really important topic.

Dr Amanda Potter: 40:11

Thank you so much, everyone, for listening, and I hope you have a lovely day.