Can One Positive Person Turn a Dysfunctional Team Around?

The Team Battle

No matter what havoc Nik wreaked, one group he was part of did not go down in flames. The other members kept their eye on the goal eventually succeeding with flying colours on the task. But, when he tried the same tactics in other groups, they struggled. What was the magical juice of the first group?

Negativity is highly infectious. It travels fast below our level of consciousness affecting behaviour in all realms of our lives, shutting down the relationship parts of our brains. In any team or group environment, one negative member can “infect” teammates with the same vibe. Productivity suffers. Trust plummets. Tribalism takes over because it is no longer safe to be in the group. This is a common story that most teams struggle with either all the time or occasionally when team membership changes.

But is the opposite true? Can one positive team member resuscitate the team’s culture despite the pervasive negativity? In that the root cause of “culture” is derived from the Latin word ‘cultus’ which means care, team leaders and members alike know intuitively that constant negativity is a detriment to success. Better to have a ‘caring’ or benign environment at the least because it is less stressful, more relaxing. This switch from fight or flight to rest and relax allows members to listen to each other and dare to share. Positivity literally and automatically opens up our connecting minds stoking idea flow and creativity.

The Magic of Positivity

Daniel Coyle’s most recent book, The Culture Code, describes an experiment in which an actor with the pseudonym “Nick” deliberately plays three different roles in up to forty small groups:

•         Jerk – aggressive, defiant and argumentative
•         Slacker – a with holder of effort
•         Downer – negative type

The group is tasked with developing a marketing plan for a start-up. In the majority of the groups, performance drops 30% to 40%. Team member energy, interest in the task and caring about succeeding take a hit. In almost every group, Nick’s negativity is picked up by everyone as evident by various signalling such as heads on table, crossed arms and other negative non-verbal behaviours. But, in one group, despite Nick, team members stay engaged and the group overall does well. Why?

The researchers solve the mystery by viewing the video of the outlier group. One group member (assigned the name “Jonathan”) always deflects Nick’s negative moves with body language that conveys warmth making the “unstable situation feel solid and safe”. He asks “simple” questions to elicit viewpoints. He smiles, listens closely and acknowledges the ideas. The result is higher energy levels, riffing with the ideas cooperatively and eventually achieving a quality outcome. 

The Win-Win Bonus

Decades of research on social conflict point in the same direction. For example, when group members who play the prisoner’s dilemma game eventually ‘get’ that sharing in the bounty creates a win-win for all, they see the limitations of win-lose (tit-for-tat). By dialing up a group mindset of inclusiveness, prosperity for the many overtakes prosperity for the few or as economists put it – win-win instead of zero-sum. In an organizational environment, this also applies to sharing and communicating among teams. The positive culture helps people to cooperate leading to higher quality decision making.  This is a universal effect.

If the “secret juice” is positivity, what are the ingredients? According to MIT’s Alex Pentland, two factors are critical:

Switching out status or power differentials, even temporarily, creates an atmosphere of  equality (everyone matters)

Social sensitivity, especially positive signaling, as our ancestors did before language emerged, kick starts mutual sharing and the vetting of ideas. The vibe of “it’s safe to say something” permeates the team. All ideas are worthy for consideration.

Positive “social physics” according to Pentland and his book of the same name, generate higher performance returns by enhancing the flow of ideas and by association the “collective intelligence” of the team. Special Ops teams in the military know this well.

Two-Way Street

Team conflict has a healthy and unhealthy side. On the healthy side, differing opinions enable an environment of challenging assumptions and digging deeper. But non-respectful conversations simply escalate bad feelings. The good news is that one person can make a difference one way or the other.

In Thinking Fast and Slow, page 54, Daniel Kahneman explains how “simple, common gestures” “unconsciously influence our thoughts and feelings”:

If you “act calm and kind…you are likely to be rewarded by actually feeling calm and kind.”

Consider this - every member of a team imagines this mindset in advance of each team meeting and during tumultuous times in team meetings. Even visualizing a positive scenario seems to help!

Tips for building positive conversational intelligence in a team:

·         Be curious – ask lots of open-ended and clarifying questions.

·         Watch your non-verbal signaling – no rolling of eyeballs, crossing your arms in disgust or defiance, ignoring other members, glaring and checking your smart phone.

·         Convey respect in both your verbal and non-verbal signals– inject humor, laugh appropriately, smile, acknowledge good ideas, give your full attention in the moment (as if you are in an improv class).

·         Guide the group to dig deep, challenging conventional wisdom and assumptions.

·         Let go of being right.

  

Tread carefully with conflict. Creativity might not be the beneficiary.

We are being encouraged to welcome conflict in group and teamwork to improve creativity. So says Jonah Lehrer in his new book Imagine along with a number of critics of the traditional brainstorming method. The classical method recommends generating and building on ideas first before judging.  What the critics don’t tell us is how to debate or butt heads without doing harm.

Interpersonal communication and coaching training universally emphasize “constructive” feedback and asking “the great questions”. These gold standards are useful guides as we learn better how to get more value out of creative encounters in group settings. Underlying the gold standards is the exploration of assumptions or frames for “seeing” a challenge or situation a particular way. Once shared and different assumptions are identified, novel ideas often flow because each person is more open to another’s point-of-view. This is the environment to cultivate for great brainstorming.

But there is an art to this. Teams at minimum are comprised of different personality types and increasingly different cultures. Introverts, who like to think in advance and ponder about the ideas swirling around for a bit, typically do not thrive in an emotionally-charged debating environment. As Erin Meyer points out in “Managing confrontation in multicultural teams” (April 6, 2012, HBR Blog), people from many Asian cultures consider confrontation to be rude. On the other hand, that is not the case for North Americans in general and to varying degrees, Europeans. For example, French teams intuitively encourage conflict to reveal hidden contradictions and stimulate new thinking.

To tread a little more carefully, here are ways that Meyer and neuroscientists suggest for offsetting the potential downside of conflict while improving creative thinking:

1. Enable people to prepare their thoughts in advance. Collaborative tools which honour anonymity, one-on-one phone calls or a few simple questions answered in the security of one’s own working space can set the stage for a productive and relaxed meeting.

2. Use constructive interpersonal communication approaches. As Meyer recommends, refrain from saying “I disagree with that”. Instead try “Please explain more why you think that”. Or, use the tenets of great questions starting with “how” and “what” rather than “why”?

3. Take advantage of a variety of creative thinking tools. Any method that does not put pressure on specific individuals yet adds an atmosphere of fun and non-judgment will open up minds no matter the cultural backgrounds and thinking styles of the team members.

Since wise decisions are the aim in problem-solving, a study by the University of Waterloo’s Igor Grossman on age and wisdom (April 7, 2012, The Economist) offers insights into leavening the “dissonance” challenge in society. The parameters Grossman and his colleagues used to compare and contrast wisdom among Americans versus Japanese encompassed five crucial aspects of wise reasoning:

1. Willingness to seek opportunities to resolve conflict
2. Willingness to search for compromise
3. Recognition of the limits of personal knowledge
4. Awareness that more than one perspective on a problem can exist
5. Appreciation that the situation may get worse before it gets better

No matter your conflict tolerance, these five interpersonal and intergroup principles are a more helpful guide to encouraging conflict and creativity than simply “let’s do conflict”.

Dion lost on emotions not substance

Our fascination with Barack Obama and Sarah Palin underscores the power of emotions in a leader’s “ratings”. That ability to connect is gate number one. Substance comes later as we ponder who will step up to the leadership challenge. Stephane Dion never had a chance as he could not open his emotional gate enough.

A story by Peter Newman in the October 22, 2008 Globe and Mail brought the mystery of Dion’s disappointing results at the polls into perspective. He recounts meeting up with Dion during the election campaign and proposing how he could win nearly every vote in the country: “Instead of Stephane, call your self Celine.” “You will win by a landslide.”
Although meant clearly as “tongue in cheek”, Dion did not react by making a witty comment or gesture. He simply looked puzzled.

Maybe he thinks too much which causes hesitation rather than spontaneity. In this instance, it is quite possible he truly did not understand because of the nuance of the joke in English. This is a problem when people want to connect first and foremost and that comes from the heart.

Based on his research on leadership, Daniel Goleman considers the emotional task of the leader as primal. “It is both the original and the most important part of leadership.” “Tribal chieftains or shamanesses earned their place in large part because their leadership was emotionally compelling.” The great French philosopher Diderot would concur as he exclaimed that “only passions, great passions can elevate the soul to great things.” Stephane Dion’s passion (which he has) could not be expressed in the right notes to be felt and heard.

This primordial emotional role cuts across cultures. The Globe Project on leadership (http://www.grovewell.com/) found three primary leadership dimensions that are universally regarded as positives in leadership:

First is “charismatic/inspirational”. The most strongly endorsed contributor to good leadership worldwide, it is linked to being positive, dynamic, encouraging, motivating and someone who is a confidence-builder.

Next is “team integrator”. It means being communicative, informed and a good coordinator.

The third top universal leadership dimension viewed around the world as desirable is “integrity”. It relates to leaders being trustworthy, just and honest.

Judging from the media accounts of Dion and certainly from the comments to the editor pages, Dion scored well on “integrity” only. He was often quoted by critics as being a “lone wolf”, ignoring or rejecting the opinions of his advisors and caucus (for example, to play down the “green shift” and to counter Stephen Harper’s negative advertisements with some of the same). Reason seems to have won the day with Mr. Dion at his peril.

At the end of the day, reason and solid evidence must prevail for effective leadership. But our humanness demands connection first through “the audacity of hope” as Barack Obama so eloquently describes in his book of the same name and through assurances and clarity when we face threats and uncertainties. That’s why Stephen Harper still has his minority and Barack Obama is poised to become the next President of the United States by a landslide.