At GLP, we believe that staying abreast of new ideas, trends, and information is essential to visionary leadership. This newsletter seeks to help leaders cut through the noise and find resources that are worth reading. Visit our website to explore earlier editions!
The Blueprint: Retreats, Leadership, and Team Building
As promised, this is the second of two SPECIAL editions of the Blueprint this month!

For many of you, summer likely involves a Board and/or leadership team retreat. At a minimum, you may take time to work with your team or colleagues to consider how you work, or to design strategy and plan projects. We’ve dedicated this June Blueprint - Part Two - to some of our favorite leadership articles (both for teams and team leaders) to bolster your collaborations, and facilitate productive, effective, and energizing experiences. 

Retreats can be powerful (re)unions for teams of trustees, leaders, and teams. When given time and space to meet, trustees and school leaders can generate diverse ideas, hopes, and plans for the institution’s future. In preparation for these meetings, we often recommend assigning attendees pre-readings and reflection prompts to ensure they are enriching learning experiences and inclusive opportunities for people to share opinions and ideas. Designing ways to ensure every voice is heard engenders trust and candor. 

You’ll notice that many of the sources we’ve curated for this special edition come from our favorite business and management resources such as McKinsey, Harvard Business Review, and MIT Sloan Management Review. We believe there is great value in learning from other sectors and industries, and although the intended audiences may be corporate entities and their employees, we find the guidance and examples to be just as accessible and prudent for not for profit and educational leadership. 

In some cases, you may be asked to log in to access an article. Please don’t let that stop you! Most online magazines offer a free option that provides access to a limited number of their publications each month. Give it a try! Yes, they’ll capture your email address and send you content, but we’ll bet you’ll find value in receiving regular articles and resources from each source. If there are resources you all have found particularly useful, we invite you to share them with us!

We offer two sections of this blueprint. The first section focuses on the purpose, discipline, and composition of teams. The second focuses on ​​being a team player. Why? Teams with clear focus and purpose are essential but cannot perform at their best without the right dynamics. So how do you cultivate conditions for high performance? At GLP we believe coaching and facilitation skills are super powers in every context and especially when working with teams and team members. If there is one thing to help make you and your team more effective, it’s creating and sustaining a culture of coaching - and these articles help with that aim. Leaders who model a coaching culture demonstrate the value of collaboration, feedback, and vulnerability and inspire colleagues to follow suit.
What's in a Team?
The Discipline of Teams and Leading at the Enterprise-Wide Level

Are you really functioning as a team? Read The Discipline of Teams to explore this question in ways that are both nuanced and practical. This is an accessible and straightforward approach to describing what teams are and how they work effectively – in other words, what actually defines a team. Hint: A team is not the same as any working group.

If you are hungry for more, read Leading at the Enterprise-Wide Level. This article happens to be one of Stephanie Rogen’s favorites. She’s the first to admit it’s not for everyone. (Yes, some of you let her know!) It’s a dense read that delves into the critical importance of each senior leader’s active responsibility for the success of the entire institution, above and beyond their functional responsibility. In order to link strategy to leadership development, leaders must be able to answer three questions: What are the key elements of the enterprise leader’s job? Why is learning to lead at the enterprise-wide level such a difficult challenge? And what can companies do to identify and develop enterprise leaders?

To succeed, enterprise-wide leaders must accomplish the following tasks:

  • Focus organizational attention to reduce complexity and noise.

  • Build capabilities. Leaders with an enterprise perspective need to build strategic competence and organizational character, simultaneously.

  • Reconcile tensions in developing strategic capabilities. Leaders have to balance their need to develop a vision of tomorrow with the importance of making decisions that will satisfy people today. 

  • Create alignment. Enterprise leaders manage the five M’s: establish a shared sense of meaning, assess the organizational mind-set and articulate the desired culture, mobilize resources to do this, determine what systems-wide measurements are needed to implement strategy, and develop mechanisms for renewal, such as setting monthly meetings to assess progress, to bring about institutional alignment. 

As we said, it is a bit dense. But we read and reread this one and find new gems each time. Let us know: Hate it? Love it? Not sure?


What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team

Ok, so your team is disciplined and leading at the enterprise-wide level – but is it maximizing its performance? Leading at its highest potential? Your first thought may be that the composition of the team is the cause of underperformance. We caution you to reconsider that assumption and read this piece from the New York Times about what Google learned by studying internal and external teams.

In short, after comprehensive, exhaustive analyses by Google’s Project Aristotle – an initiative created to study the effectiveness of teams based on composition – no distinct personality traits could be ascribed to the makeup and design of the perfect work team. To the contrary, in fact. Teams composed of diverse individuals with different backgrounds, ages, identities, and beliefs were just as effective as intricately designed teams composed of certain (often presumptive) personality traits, behaviors, or attitudes.

According to researchers at Project Aristotle “...it was almost impossible to find patterns — or any evidence that the composition of a team made any difference. ‘We looked at 180 teams from all over the company. We had lots of data, but there was nothing showing that a mix of specific personality types or skills or backgrounds made any difference. The ‘who’ part of the equation didn’t seem to matter.’’’ And, as if it needed to be said, “At Google, we’re good at finding patterns. There weren’t strong patterns here.’’

You may question this conclusion and many have! You may think composition matters more. Composition can be powerful, but not without the conditions required to leverage the benefits. For example, this research is not to say that diversity doesn’t enhance a team (it can enhance it greatly!) – however – to yield that benefit, other core conditions are necessary!

What, then, made some teams more effective than others? What are the core conditions? Simply put, feelings of psychological safety — the ability to take risks, have hard conversations, and feel heard. “To feel ‘psychologically safe,’ we must know that we can be free enough, sometimes, to share the things that scare us without fear of recriminations. We must be able to talk about what is messy or sad, to have hard conversations with colleagues who are driving us crazy.”


High Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety?
Here’s How to Create it.

It may sound a bit kumbaya – but in truth it’s critical to learning and effective collaboration, innovation, and constructive conflict. This article from HBR defines “psychological safety” as “the belief that you won’t be punished when you make a mistake.” When organizations have psychological safety, employees more easily practice risk-taking and creativity, speak their mind, and stick their neck out without fear of punishment.

How can you increase psychological safety on your own team? The author offers these three suggestions:

  • Approach conflict as a collaborator, not an adversary. When conflicts come up, avoid triggering a fight-or-flight reaction by seeking an outcome that is mutually desirable by all parties.

  • Speak human-to-human, but anticipate reactions, plan countermoves, and adopt a learning mindset to hear others points of view.

  • Ask for feedback to learn your blind spots.

Creating psychological safety creates higher levels of engagement, increases motivation, invites more learning and development opportunities, and leads to better performance.

For more on strategies to cultivate psychological safety along the lines outlined above, read on!


Six Guidelines for “Getting to Yes”

What about when you want something important? You need practical strategies to convince others and get what you need without inhibiting psychological safety or engendering feelings of loss. Most of what we do in everyday practice involves negotiation. Based on the revolutionary book, this short article from Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation summarizes six negotiation skills to help people explore their interests and reach agreement. Establishing a mindset of a bargainer rather than a negotiator is a key first step in the process. Negotiators, according to the authors, don’t have to engage in a competitive, win-lose battle. Negotiators who adopt the mindset of a bargainer look for strategies that are mutually beneficial to both parties. This requires close listening, fair treatment, and jointly exploring options to increase value.

The following are the six skills to help parties get to “yes”:

  1. Separate the people from the problem.
  2. Focus on interests, not positions.
  3. Learn to manage emotions.
  4. Express appreciation.
  5. Put a positive spin on your message.
  6. Escape the cycle of action and reaction.

Check out the article to learn more about successful bargaining skills to reach mutual agreements.


Thanks for the Feedback: Finding the Coaching in Criticism

So much of how we succeed in leading and teaming is about how we show up. From Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone’s seminal book Thanks For The Feedback, this HBR article is a helpful reminder that while the ability to give feedback is a key responsibility of leaders, receiving feedback is just as important and a skill seldom taught.

The reality is that everyone struggles with taking feedback. If it’s particularly hard for you, you’re not alone. In many organizations, feedback is given randomly, or too late, and tends to lack actionable details. Worse, the emotions triggered by feedback block some from hearing the “giver” of the feedback. According to their findings, “one in four said they dread evaluations more than anything else in their working lives.” Obviously these are not the optimal conditions for people to discuss, listen, ask questions, and learn so that ultimately the entire point of feedback – growth – can be achieved.

Why is it so hard for people to receive feedback? Heen and Stone said feedback can trigger people in three very specific ways:

Truth triggers are set off by the content of the feedback. When feedback or advice seems irrelevant, unhelpful, or untrue, people feel indignant and ignore the feedback.

Relationship triggers are cued by the person giving the feedback. The actual feedback may be relevant and actionable, however the relationship between the giver and receiver is tense or hostile.

Identity triggers are tripped when you see yourself as a reflection of the feedback you’ve been given. The inability to sever oneself from their performance at work can lead some to totally unravel or feel devastated after hearing any feedback about how to improve.

Heen and Stone offer six steps to becoming a better “receiver” of feedback:

  • Know your tendencies. Are you triggered by the person giving the feedback, the content, and/or your own relationship with the work that is being evaluated? Maybe it’s a combination of one or more triggers? Getting clear about which trigger(s) you tend to struggle with, before going into an evaluation, can help you better receive feedback.

  • Disentangle the “what” from the “who.” You have to work to separate the message from the messenger.

  • Sort toward coaching. Some feedback is evaluative but some is coaching. You need to understand where you stand in the organization and what is expected of you. Coaching offers learning and improvement opportunities that help you excel. Whenever possible, sort toward coaching, especially if you are easily triggered by giver or your identity at the organization feels called into question.

  • Unpack the feedback. Take a beat to reflect on the feedback after receiving it. Sometimes it’s not immediately clear what is useful and what isn’t. In your reflection, assess whether you understood the feedback and whether you need to circle back to the giver with more questions or guidance on how to improve.

  • Ask for just one thing. Feedback is less likely to be dreadful if you ask for it instead of being told when it will be given. Rather than waiting for an annual review, Heen and Stone suggest asking for “bite-size” pieces of feedback throughout the year from different sources. This can also allow you to ensure the feedback is relevant and meaningful by requesting insights on specific aspects of your work that you know you’d like to improve upon.

  • Engage in small experiments. After getting feedback, design small experiments to test out which bits of advice will help and which won’t. If it works, great! If not, you can adjust and retry the experiment or ask for a clarifying discussion with the giver to share your findings and get their input on how to improve.

Taking criticism is hard, but knowing how and why we struggle with it are important first steps in our quest to be better receivers as we grow in our leadership roles. The benefits of committing to this work – especially by those in high level positions – can have a cascading effect. Leaders who model effective feedback receiving skills to their teams and employees signal a collective commitment to vulnerability, improvement, and trust.


Theater Tools for Team Building

How else might we cultivate honesty among team members in ways that feel safe? Sometimes, we have to switch it up altogether! Let us know if you are curious after reading this article from HBR author William P. Ferris, who offers theater tools to help leaders construct productive teams. GLP has used variations on this creative approach with a number of corporate, higher ed and school leadership teams to great success!

Ferris’s approach is based on Brazilian stage director Augusto Boal’s “‘image theater,’ in which participants silently arrange themselves as statues in a room, using their bodies, furniture, or other props to create tableaus that depict their power relationships.” In this “theater,” relationships and team dynamics are explored silently through physicality. The absence of dialogue reduces the inclination for people to misunderstand each other or talk over and past one another.

Ferris invited a team of software engineers to capture the current state of their workplace culture and relationships in physical positions. They created “tableaus” using body language, facial expressions, their presence and/or absence in the space, or they organized themselves standing or sitting next to or behind others. The tableaus showed complex relationship dynamics, such as power, hierarchies, and favoritism. Opportunities were given for people to offer comments about what emerged in the arrangements and a chance to try it again or adopt a new position after people shared comments.

As the facilitator, Ferris took pictures after each new position and, finally, asked people to adopt postures that express an “ideal” image for him to photograph. He then asked the group how difficult it would be to achieve the ideal state, the team responded with an agreement to create a “transitional” image which he also took a picture of. In the end, the three sets of photographs he posted became the basis for team building discussions and exercises. Action plans and commitments were made by the group, which set the organization on the path to create a shared language and framework to talk about difficult issues, clarify roles, and resolve conflicts.

To Ferris, the anecdotal and empirical results suggest that, in the right settings, image theater techniques can both reveal what’s really happening inside the team and improve team function and performance.


How to Spark Creativity on Teams

Finally, you may want to let loose this summer and think in new ways. To inspire your retreat design we offer this McKinsey article outlining four practical ways for leaders to shake up fixed perceptions, enhance creativity, and encourage team members to tackle problems with new methods and fresh insight.

Immerse yourself in a new environment. Get out of the board room, office, or school - wherever you normally work or meet - and get into a new space. Changing the environment can often help people dispense with preexisting assumptions and see things in a new light or through a different lens.

Challenge the team to overcome orthodoxies by abandoning a “that’s the way we do things” perspective. Challenging core beliefs encourages people to embrace new ideas, approaches, and systems. In some cases, these beliefs may cut to the core of the identity of the organization. Leaders can “liberate their creative instincts” by exploring organizational orthodoxies.

Use analogies to harness the power of associations to “make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas.” Force comparisons between one organization and a second, unrelated one, to encourage teams to make creative decisions.

Create constraints to add an element of urgency or necessity to an otherwise low-risk situation so that team members don’t over think or spin their wheels.

Being a Team Player: Coaching, Collaborating, and Learning
As individuals, we can always brush up (or develop anew) our skills as team players. Here are a few articles to help us (as peers, bosses, or direct reports) with skills that have value in any context.

What’s Your Listening Style?

This article from HBR presents four distinct listening styles. Which one(s) are you?

  • An analytical listener aims to analyze a problem from a neutral starting point.

  • A relational listener aims to build connection and understand the emotions underlying a message.

  • A critical listener aims to judge both the content of the conversation and the reliability of the speaker themselves.

  • A task-focused listener shapes a conversation towards efficient transfer of important information.

“Developing the ability to shift dynamically between these styles can lead to impactful conversations by matching the speaker’s needs with the most appropriate listening technique.”  

Ways to improve your listening:

Establish why you are listening. Consider reflecting briefly on what the goals of the conversation are, and how best you can listen.

Recognize how you usually listen. Our “usual” listening style may be sabotaging our goals. The default style being used may preclude applying different listening styles to achieve other goals.

Be aware of who is the focus of attention. Inserting ourselves into the speaker’s attention may be a default for some looking to connect or share a similar experience or story. However, “when done without awareness it runs the risk of steering the conversation away from the speaker without redirecting back.”

Adapt the listening style to achieve conversational goals. Staying focused on the speaker and the goals will help you adapt to the needs of the situation.

Ask: “Am I missing something?” Resist the urge to reassure or offer solutions – they might not be what the speaker is looking for. Instead, pause and ask if any additional information or details may be offered before coming to a conclusion or deciding upon next steps. 

And here’s the metacognitive work: “Recognizing when to shift out of our habitual styles and consciously apply alternative styles of listening and responding may allow for more effective and meaningful interactions.” So don’t forget to ask for feedback!


How People with Different Conflict Styles Can Work Together

According to this HBR article, most of us default to two approaches when we encounter conflicts: We are “avoiders” or “seekers.” Avoiders shy away from hurting feelings, disruption, and disagreements. They value harmony and positive relationships, and will often try to placate people or even change the topic. Seekers tend to be eager to engage in disagreements, care about directness and honesty, lose their patience when others aren’t being equally direct, and don’t mind ruffling feathers. Which category best describes your conflict style?

Knowing your and your colleagues' conflict styles can help leaders and team members improve interactions, minimize friction, and better manage change. To do this, the article recommends looking for behaviors that reveal avoider or seeker habits. Ask around to find out from those who work closely with an employee which style tends to be their default. Finally, invite your team to read the piece and ask them to share with you which category they think they tend to fall into.

The article goes on to offer tips and recommendations for what to do in homogeneous (Avoider-Avoider or Seeker-Seeker) and heterogenous situations (Avoider-Seeker). Whatever the dynamics are, ultimately the goal is to help people manage conflict so that they can collaborate and harmoniously work together. 


The Surprising Power of Peer Coaching

In this article from HBR, Brenda Steinberg and Michael D. Watkins contend the benefits of small-group, or “peer,” coaching can have a greater impact than one-on-one executive coaching. How could working with a small group of people possibly be better than getting individualized attention from an outside coach? Steinberg and Watkins explain benefits that answer this question:

Immersion in real-time dynamics. Coaches don’t often get to see you in action with others which limits their understanding of your experience and how to best help you improve and achieve your goals. In group settings, you can try out different strategies with others and get real-time feedback.

Insight into different perspectives. Groups composed of people with different personalities, experiences, and backgrounds can offer valuable insights and perspectives, which can help you better see and understand your skills and blind spots.

Opportunities to practice new skills in a safe space. Maybe you need practice enhancing valuable leadership skills such as deep listening, being vulnerable with others, getting comfortable hearing other perspectives, asking questions, giving or receiving feedback. The small group setting is a great place to practice assuming norms and protocols are in place to ensure the space is safe.

A robust accountability system. Openly sharing your goals, ideas, action plans, and challenges with a group on a regular basis ensures a degree of accountability that can help you stay on track. The social forces of a group can have a stronger impact on you than working with a coach alone.

An enduring support network. Being a leader can be isolating. The role comes with limitations in terms of who you can lean on for support and share openly with. In a small group, members can offer support and valuable perspectives in a safe environment.

According to the authors, “the ultimate goal of small-group coaching is to achieve the highest possible levels of individual and group learning." To achieve this goal, all members of the group must commit to the following actions:

  1. Nurture a climate of trust and support.
  2. Have a collaborative attitude.
  3. Listen actively.
  4. Provide direct feedback.
  5. Be generous.
  6. Take risks.

These actions can be used to codify group norms that can ensure the psychological safety necessary for all group members to reap the benefits of small group coaching. Consider giving it a try with a small group of colleagues at your school!


How to Get Your Team to Coach Each Other

This article from HBR explains how to set up a non-directive peer coaching network, in the Socratic tradition (in which the coachee discovers solutions to problems via dialogue), as opposed to instructional, evaluative, and directive feedback (in which an expert coach solves the coachee's problem).

To set up a peer coaching network the author recommends first “starting small.” Set people up in trios or ask employees to find two other people so the three can take turns serving as both coach and coachee for each other: Suggest each person start by discussing their goals, expectations, norms, and times to meet in the future.

Effective peer-to-peer coaching is all about asking useful questions. Some of the key questions peer coaches can ask include:

What’s the problem? Simply identifying the need for change or clarification of the problem can be a great way to start.

Why bother? Why is this important enough to go through the experience of making change?

What’s your decision? There is a fragile point in the planned change process where the decision to change can spark mindset and behavioral changes. It can also be fraught with a desire for safety and quest to keep the status quo which can shift focus away from the effort to do something new and “make it stick.” A peer coach can help by asking questions that require the person to decide which category they fall into.

What steps exactly? Good coaches ask how coachees might do things differently and surface skills they have in order to help the client design steps towards achieving their goals.

Are you really in? Similar to step 3, urgency can wane throughout the process so it’s good to continually check in with a coachee to assess the strength of their commitment.

How will you sustain it? Offer regular reinforcements and sustained support to continue to encourage the coachee to sustain progress towards achieving their goals.

Leaders who create a peer coaching network can empower colleagues, expand their skill sets, support their colleagues personally and professionally, and ultimately help the organization. What’s better than that?

So, coaching superpowers matter! As a final tip, we recommend Elena Aguilar’s books. They are great resources for educational leaders who coach and work with teams.

What's Next?
Please enjoy this edition and stay tuned for the next Blueprint in August which will explore emerging issues and challenges for our clients, hypotheses and insights for success. We'll also share a bit about how GLP is pivoting to design and deliver new, innovative, and high impact services. Hint: it’s all about talent and adult learning - for governance, for leadership, and for your staff! 

Subscribe to the Blueprint
Thanks for reading! Please feel free to forward the Blueprint to any friends or colleagues who may find it helpful. And if you're not already on our mailing list and you'd like to receive future editions of the Blueprint, click the button below to subscribe!