Camille Rapacz: If you hire all the right people, is that enough to build a high performance team? If every team member has clear goals, isn't that enough to get us where we need to go? Well, if you have been listening to this podcast, then you already know that these are rhetorical questions, but if clear goals and the right people to execute on those goals is not enough to create a high performance team, then what does it take?
Camille: Welcome to The Belief Shift. The show that explores. What you really need to know about building a successful business.
I'm your host, Camille Rapacz: business coach and consultant who spent too much of her career working in corporate business performance.
George: And I'm George Drapeau: your co-host and her brother. I'm a leader in the tech world bringing my corporate perspective, but mostly my curiosity.
Camille: Together, we're exploring beliefs about success and how to achieve it. But mostly we're bringing practical solutions so you and your business can thrive.
Camille Rapacz: Hello, George.
George Drapeau: Hi, Camille.
Camille Rapacz: You know that I love nothing more than to be part of a high performance team. I also think it's even more fun to build one. I'm pretty sure you and I are the same here.
George Drapeau: Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: One of the greatest joys of work, I think, is building and running a high performance team.
George Drapeau: It's pretty great.
Camille Rapacz: Best reason to be a leader.
George Drapeau: Absolutely. And seeing the individuals in the team grow and become more than they thought they could be. It's a marvelous, marvelous journey
Camille Rapacz: to help
George Drapeau: people get there. It's the best.
Camille Rapacz: And you know, we all know what happens when a team is not working well together, but let's talk about it for a minute.
A little therapy on what happens when your team isn't working well together. So whether you've been on a team or you're running a team, for me, the number one thing that stands out when a team isn't working well together is there is too much drama.
George Drapeau: What do you mean?
Camille Rapacz: People are complaining about each other.
They're back channeling. People are working around each other. There's too much drama on the team as far as interpersonal strife.
George Drapeau: That's true. What else do you notice?
Camille Rapacz: For me, it's also seeing the team, they'll start working at cross purposes. So they're not paying attention to where their work is bumping into somebody else's work.
My goals, my priorities, my work, whatever it is, and they, start getting in each other's way. I always find it interesting to see how they don't like, why are you at each other's way? Why are you guys bumping into each other? You're on the same team. And yet that happens, right?
They start kind of working at cross purposes.
What do you see happen?
George Drapeau: Lack of trust. I mean, I think trust is the cause, but the result is people not working together because they don't expect things are going to go well. Yeah. Yeah. And so they don't even really try. And that's, that's an outcome, outgrowth of a lack of trust.
People don't have as much of a say yes kind of mentality because they're afraid to take risks. They're afraid to, you know, they're afraid to say yes. So they'll box themselves into a very close protective space so if you can very clearly lay out what they will do with no risk to them whatsoever, then the yes, but it's so hard to get that way that happens, lower morale.
And people are not that happy.
Camille Rapacz: People will check out. Yeah,
George Drapeau: yeah. Yes. Like a library.
Camille Rapacz: But not nearly as interesting. What you said too, it made me think of how we had a recent episode on trust and risk. Cause you talked about like, there's no trust then they don't want to take any risks.
And so people don't put anything out there. They don't put ideas out there. They don't want to take on a bigger project because that relationship of trust and level of risk you can take it's, you know, without the trust it's missing in the, in the team. Right. They're not willing to take any chances.
George Drapeau: Yeah,
Camille Rapacz: that was episode 75, by the way, he wants to go back and look at risk. I know. Look at me. I looked it
George Drapeau: up really fast.
Camille Rapacz: That's what happens when you have good systems and you're well organized like that.
George Drapeau: Oh my God. I know.
Camille Rapacz: Shameless. I had to brag about it.
It's true. It's true. Okay. So yeah, so these are all, I mean, there are, we could probably go on, but I don't want to turn this into a whole, like, let's complain about what bad teams look like.
George Drapeau: We all know what this looks like.
Camille Rapacz: We know what it looks like and we especially know what it feels like you can feel it when you're like, ah, this team is not so great because you start to feel the, I don't know if I trust my colleagues. You know when you're not really on a good team.
I think you also know when you're not leading a good team. Even if you can't pinpoint exactly what's broken, you know it when it's not happening, when it's not dialed in. But when a team is working well together, all sorts of cool stuff happens. The number one thing I think about and this is actually what I look for to see if a team really is performing well together is can they genuinely do problem solving? Not the firefighting stuff, not the, quick to address issues.
I mean, genuinely solve problems, get to root cause. They have the. The trust and the patience with each other to really get to root cause and genuinely solve a problem. That to me is like a, hallmark of a really high performing team.
George Drapeau: Well, that's cool.
Camille Rapacz: I think also they can adapt quickly and more
George Drapeau: fluidly.
Camille Rapacz: Like they're able as a team to adapt. I see this as it went in the face of adversity. If they're faced with a challenge, it actually helps the team be stronger. Like they come together more around a challenge.
George Drapeau: Hmm.
Camille Rapacz: As opposed to having that challenge create more drama or strife.
George Drapeau: I'm mapping this to sports teams and I know sports analogies aren't usual, but I think what's helpful here is if you think about a lot of sports teams at the highest, level, they have enough structure and routine and understanding of each other. They know their set roles, but when they have to improvise, They all can and they understand enough about each other to have an idea about the other, how the other one is going to improvise.
So, like, if I'm out of my coverage spot and I know this person tends to improvise a certain way, I know they've got me because that's how they play out. So they're able to both play within role and improvise together because they trust and know each other really well. And I think that happens in every sport and in business as well.
Camille Rapacz: It's so funny. You said that I had written in to my notes, a sports analogy, and then I stopped. I'm like, that's going to come up. I don't need to put it in the notes. So thank you.
George Drapeau: Wow.
Camille Rapacz: Well, because I do think that, I mean, even though it, I know it gets overused, right? The sports analogy, but it works.
It really does work when you think about it. So even thinking about all the things that go into creating a high performance team, You know, you want the right people on the right roles. That's what we're talking about on a team and a sports team. There are different positions that you're going to play on any given team.
And you need the right people that are good in those specific roles. The analogy could go on and on, but as you do this, you know, you want right people in the right roles. You want clarity of the expectations, roles, and goals for each of those people. You need clear systems and processes for working effectively and efficiently.
You need high levels of accountability, both to timeliness and quality of work. I think that second one can get overlooked often in the accountability bucket, but all of these things are also things that individuals could do well. That still doesn't guarantee that you have a strong team.
It's not enough for every individual to do their part. It's not enough for every individual to say, I know my expectations. I have my own processes for working effectively and I am accountable. It's actually not enough. We want it to be, but it's not. And this is the point I really want to touch on, which is that hiring or building a team full of high performers individually doesn't guarantee they're going to be a high performing team together.
George Drapeau: I agree. Where are you going with this?
Camille Rapacz: It's the foundation, but it's not the ultimate end goal. you need more than that. I'm not saying don't hire high performers. I'm saying definitely do that. But
That's the beginning of building your strong team.
Camille Rapacz: Right? So what else do you need?
George Drapeau: Tell me how to get there. Tell me how to get there. I must know.
Camille Rapacz: I mean, you know, the answer, this is not rocket science. Everybody knows the answer, but I want to dig into this because there's parts of this. I think we really have to. kind of dig into the depths of. So the number one challenge I see for getting teams to be high performing teams is communication.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Teams either lack consistent communication or they're not communicating about difficult topics. They're avoiding conflict. They're doing end arounds on communication. So there might actually be too much communication happening in the wrong ways with the wrong people, or there are.
Communication on the reverse side. They're not listening enough. Oftentimes it's a little bit of all of these. All those things can be going on in a team and that lack of communication, me saying I am a good communicator is not going to change anything. Make the team a good good communication.
Really if I'm saying that I probably mean like well I told everybody what I wanted. I don't know why they don't do it.
George Drapeau: Yeah, absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: What do you see go wrong in team communication?
George Drapeau: I can't remember if we talked about this on the show. If we talked about it separately, we talked about this on the show where say there's a group of people communicating and there's one person who kind of gets into a rut. They take over and they're talking about something that's important to them.
But it's not the team topic. They're not part of the team communication and distract them. And you told me what you'll do is like, you'll actually touch them on the shoulder and say, there's a good point. So you'll disrupt that so that it, it stays a team communication. I see that happening all the time.
Most of the teams bought in and somebody there is not on board and they're disrupting it. If you don't take care of that, it can tear up the whole team communication. I've seen that happen plenty.
Camille Rapacz: That's a great example, because one of the things that I'll sometimes I'll ask leaders, what's team communication look like, you know, trying to get a feel for what's going on? And they'll sort of immediately go to, well, my team meets every week and we talk about X, Y, and Z.
And what they are not telling me is if what you described is happening. Are people allowed to take the team off topic onto some other tangent? Are people disruptive? Are they actually focused on communicating as a team? Or are they more focused on either I was told to show up, so I showed up?
Or I'm here to do the CYA report out. Everything's good over here. Don't look at me. Saying my team meets regularly does not guarantee that there's good communication on the team.
George Drapeau: Yeah, absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: And that's why I like talking about this topic, because I think when we think about communication, I want to get into all the aspects of it.
It's so much bigger than , we come together and meet or whatever your version of that is. Yeah.
George Drapeau: I'm kind of being silent here because as you're saying this, I'm thinking about meetings. I've recently been in where the meeting driver is trying to foster good communication and really good intentions, but for some reason, it's not quite coming together.
I'm sure you've been in this kind of meeting where somebody there's the agenda. They kind of run through the agenda. There's plenty of time. And so they'll say, okay, I want to throw it open. Anybody want to bring up anything? I'm going to go around the table and ask every single one of you, if you have something to say, and mostly people don't, but kind of fill the space.
Some people will offer up something they weren't that invested in anyway, but they bring up something and nobody else cares about it. And then that kind of keeps going. It , you didn't really structure the open communication very well.
Camille Rapacz: And I think it is one of the biggest mistakes that happens in these types of meetings. When you're still trying to build that trust, you still need to put structure into the communications you want people to have. So if you want people to start sharing their ideas more openly, you do need to have a more structured question for that.
So I've definitely seen that go wrong. And the better way to do that is to give them something specific to answer. Like, Hey, everybody, I want you to give me, one idea about improving X for the team, whatever this let's everybody get one idea for how we, I don't know how we can communicate better.
And whenever I do that, I first give people time to think about it. Like before we start, take a minute to think about it. Because there are always people in that room, I don't know if this ever happens to you, but I'm definitely one of these people that when I'm in a meeting, I'm processing everything, and I may not be processing it as fast as you're coming at me with, give me your response.
I'm still thinking and processing, especially if it's a big question like that. And so a lot of times those things fall flat because I didn't give people enough time to even come up with a good answer. So they're sitting there like, I'm still processing actually what happened five minutes ago.
So I think you both need to, A, give people time to process whatever question you're asking, but also give them, something they can really think about an answer to give them a more structured question to answer. If it's too open ended it's way too hard to answer that, especially if there's still a lack of trust on the team, because they're like, Oh, I don't, I'm not going to tell you what I really think.
I know what you want me to do, but I'm not prepared to do it.
George Drapeau: I fully agree with that.
Camille Rapacz: It's not enough to make your team meet. You definitely from a communication standpoint, you want to have how we communicate, when we communicate the norms and expectations of that, start creating a common language that you all use.
This is where culture and leadership comes in. All of those things will help with communication. But when it really comes to building good team communication, there's a whole other level of what you need to get to, and this speaks straight to what you and I talk about all the time from a leadership perspective.
This is the job of leaders. And so number one on my list is respect. And I don't mean respect, and we've talked, I think we've talked about this before that I don't mean respect, like being nice to each other. I mean, respect as in, I respect that George has really good ideas about this too. And I'm going to make sure that there is a space for him to share his ideas.
Or I respect that that individual has the potential to work out that problem on their own. And I'm going to respect that. I don't need to drop my solutions on them. They've got this. Respecting other's intelligence, other's potential, other's contributions. That's another level of respect than , being nice to each other.
George Drapeau: It occurs to me, some people don't understand that definition of respect. Like they really, really don't. They're not aware. They need to be taught. Right.
Camille Rapacz: Yes. I think it's so important to define when I say have respect for the other people on your team, in the room, in the organization.
You do have to go to this other level of explaining it. I don't know what other word to use, but it does often get misunderstood because we think, Oh yeah, sure. I respect everybody.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: But I'm asking you to actually respect things that are unseen. their potential, their ideas, things that you can't tangibly point to.
And so that leads to also trust. And I trust that that person has all of that in them.
George Drapeau: Yes.
Camille Rapacz: It's the essential component to coaching. This is why it always is like top of mind for me easily because it's what you're. And when you think about being a coach, you're going into it with the trust and respect for the individual you're coaching, that they have levels of potential they haven't achieved yet, and that's what you're there to help them do.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: In an organization, even though you're not necessarily coaching everybody, you still want to approach communications from that perspective in order to make room for all of that to show up. That's how the team gets to another level of performance is because everybody does start to achieve higher levels of potential.
George Drapeau: Yeah, absolutely. What else?
Camille Rapacz: So there's that.
George Drapeau: Respect and trust.
Camille Rapacz: Respect and trust. They kind of go together. I mean, really, these will all go together. But the other one I have is empathy.
Do you think people also really understand what empathy means?
George Drapeau: Some do. Some people who really understand it, I think there's some people who have a subconscious notion of it, but they've never really, nobody's explained the term to them.
So they don't know that what that feeling they could experience is, is empathy. And then some people don't. They don't have it.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Cause there's empathy and there's emotional intelligence. I think we need to do an episode on that topic. Don't you think? That's like a whole discussion. Yeah.
George Drapeau: Yeah, I think that's fair. Absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: Because along with empathy goes, so empathy is, you know, can I really understand what it is to walk in your shoes, right? Understand your perspective and your feelings about that. And then emotional intelligence. It's a component of emotional intelligence, right?
Emotional intelligence. Do I understand my own reactions emotionally? And do I have a sense of managing my emotions in the moment? So if you're upsetting me that I don't lash out at you. I can self regulate, on those things.
George Drapeau: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Camille Rapacz: That's huge for communication,
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: We all need to be able to do that. And sometimes I think people get confused about, well, aren't I also supposed to be authentic? I had an employee who was always very very direct and always borderline rude. But not quite but almost like you have a little edge to what you're saying.
That's that's not great. And this person would say, but I'm being authentic.
George Drapeau: Oh, yeah.
Camille Rapacz: And so we'd have to have the discussion that look, you not having a filter is not authentic.
George Drapeau: Yeah, not
Camille Rapacz: being able to self manage and regulate and also be thoughtful of your choice of words.
That's not being authentic.
George Drapeau: I think that's probably the best way I've ever heard that concept be described. That's awesome. You're not being able to manage your words is not being authentic. That's great. I will respond with this. A friend of mine who was very blunt, she always wanted to get directly to the point and she'd be upset when people wouldn't like get right down to it.
Like, sugarcoat what we're saying? Why do we have to be super nice? Like, can we say what we feel? And I remember telling her You know, Sarah, when we go to the dentist, we have to have fillings put in our teeth, but they'll put Novocaine in us first before they do that. That is awesome. Good point.
Camille Rapacz: Yes, because I think what happens when we make the mistake of authenticity is then it's almost like, well, I'm being authentic, so I don't have to be any of these other things.
George Drapeau: Yeah. Like what
Camille Rapacz: suddenly empathy and respect for like all of that's out the window because I get to be who I am. Yeah. That's awesome.
No, that's not what authenticity in teamwork and leadership means. It doesn't stand alone above all else.
George Drapeau: Yes. I love, I love your phrase.
Camille Rapacz: Cannot use that as an excuse to be a jerk, basically.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: But I've seen it. I have seen it done and it's, yeah. Not great. what else do I have here? Good team communication. Clarity. And I want to separate clarity from being direct.
George Drapeau: Okay.
Camille Rapacz: I was having this conversation the other day, and it's the example you gave, where somebody's like, why do I have to sugarcoat it?
I want to be direct in my communications. What I would rather you did was focus on clarity in your communications. Direct is always like one sentence. I want X. So people try to like, I'm going to take all the fluffy words out of this and I'm going to tell you what I want. But that's also lacking respect for people because it's missing context.
So if I was focusing more on clarity at my communications, I would offer context for what I'm saying. So I would put my request in the context of whatever I would offer. And it, I mean, it's not two paragraphs, it's maybe there's two more sentences that I share of information that gives context for the question I'm asking. The thing I'm asking you to do.
I mean, how many times has somebody asked you to do something and you're like, sure, but why? All the time, right?
George Drapeau: Yeah. May I make a comment about the other side of the spectrum though?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
George Drapeau: I totally agree with you that being clear doesn't necessarily mean terse. You'd say something as in as few words as possible, that terse version of direct, but you know what gets to people?
I think what, what makes people Want to use fewer words and say I'm getting right to the point is when you see somebody hemming and hawing about the request or their problem they have with you and they pick all these words and you're waiting for like, will you get to the point and tell me if you're upset. I can handle it, but they've put so much stuff around it.
That's horrible. And I'm guessing that's what some people are reacting to. And they think that the antidote to that is, well, I'll do the opposite of that. Use 500 words. I'll use two words. Stop that. And that's it.
Camille Rapacz: What you described is the other end of the spectrum of also not being clear.
George Drapeau: Yeah. Not being clear, not being helpful.
Camille Rapacz: I'm either using too many words. And so I'm not clear or I'm not using enough words. Don't have a number of words. So sorry, everybody. Two sentences, six words each. That's it. There you go. Everybody.
We made that up everybody. So no, you made that up. Two sentences with six words. It's challenging to get to. I find that I struggle. I either put too many words in or I will catch myself saying the same thing, but in a different way.
So I'm saying the same thing twice, but I'm rephrasing it because I'm worried that the first way I phrased it, it didn't make any sense. And as people are listening to this podcast, some people might be like, yes, we've been listening to you do this every single week. But you're trying to get to that clarity.
Sometimes I'm workshopping it out as I'm saying it!
It's not easy to do. But I think if everybody really focused on, Am I being clear? Like, what information would I want in this moment? Knowing that that person doesn't have the information that you have. And I think that's part of the mistake we make sometimes.
It's like, Oh, I kind of assume they handle this information. And we should never do that either. So clarity is a big one, obviously, in communication, but like respect for people, I think clarity in communication also can be misunderstood to being direct. It's not as few words as possible, it's the right amount of words.
George Drapeau: This reminds me of some of the corporate training I've gotten around stuff like this. And I think that they're addressing this, the combination of directness and clarity, like difficult crucial conversations where there's a structure to the conversation.
You have some lead up that provides context. You're kind of softening the message, but you're still delivering it directly. But it's like exactly what you said with all the context or the way you provide feedback or like we've talked about apologies where you have to say the words, I'm sorry, you have to acknowledge in terms you think that affected what they did.
And then you have to say what you're going to try to do to prevent that in the future. It's not , I'm sorry, which is direct, but it's not clear enough because it doesn't have all the other stuff, right? I mean, there's these frameworks for doing stuff like this that are exactly what you're talking about.
That's what's going through my head as you're telling me this.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. There's a bunch of that. There's a bunch of frameworks for how to be clearer in your communication and delivering it in a way that it can actually be received. That's what we're talking about in communication.
I need to be able to communicate in a way that I'm making it as easy as possible for you to receive it. So if I'm too direct, it's not going to be very well received. Unless that other person is also super direct and they've made this agreement that that's how they communicate, which some people do, but for the most part, if you're too direct and you're not giving me enough information, it's hard for me to receive that.
Like, I don't, know what to do with this information you gave me. You want me to do a thing and I don't have context. And so I'm going to struggle with that. Same thing if you don't deliver it respectfully or you don't have empathy for what, my experience is all those kinds of things.
Which takes us to the other really important part of communication. Addition to thinking about how do I make sure that you can receive this, I also then need to listen. And so communication is always a two way street. And sometimes we think of it as me sending information out to you, as opposed to also me, receiving information back so it could be listening but also Especially when you're in person paying attention to how people are reacting.
George Drapeau: Reading the room is all about right
Camille Rapacz: reading the room.
Yes. So am I paying attention to does he look like he's thinking? Does he have an idea coming? Is he kind of making, you know, furrowed brow? Always paying attention to what's going on in the room and being able to ask them the right questions about that. And this is a really big deal in these one on one conversations.
I was thinking about how in marriage counseling, there's a huge emphasis on how do we read each other? Cause you kind of get away and forget to, pay attention to these finer details and it's the same thing. And like, this is all of human interaction is, are we paying attention and reading each other?
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: A couple others that I put on my list were collaboration. Being able to collaborate. Which you kind of need all of these things to be able to collaborate. But if a team is doing good levels of communication they have high levels of collaboration with each other.
George Drapeau: I see.
Okay.
Camille Rapacz: Right. It's not that I can inform you of stuff, but we can also collaborate on work together.
George Drapeau: So we need to set up a collaborative spirit, but you've laid it out earlier. That's some of the other things that you said you need, but are not enough, like setting up a common purpose or we clear about what we're trying to communicate about here.
People understand what's the topic, what's the goal? What are we doing? When everybody has that common understanding, that's easier to have this collaborative aspect happen.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, I mean, there certainly has to be a reason to collaborate. We need to have some expectations of what that collaboration should look like, but then we have to pay attention to is that what we're actually trying to do in this moment is the whole purpose of us gathering to collaborate and then create the right environment for that. You got a pitch engine to it.
And then the last thing I think that I put on my list in terms of good team communication and what it takes to get there is for the team to also have a high level of adaptability. We need to be able to adapt to I guess I would say like, At the end of the day, we are all human, and so as much as I might try to show up consistently to every team meeting conversation, I may not.
Also, anything could get thrown at us at any moment that sends us all in a, ah, what do we do?
Anything could change our routine that we've settled into. So the team being able to adapt and maintain their working norms and expectations and fall back on their good communication norms, I think is really critical to maintaining good communications.
You got to be able to adapt. If you're not willing to adapt, then you're more likely to fall off of all of your great communication routines and, never pick them back up again.
George Drapeau: Yeah,
Camille Rapacz: right. I've seen have had teams. Tell me that they're like, well, we used to be great at it when we did blah, blah, blah.
But then this thing happened and it went away and we never got back to it. Well, they didn't adapt.
In order to have all of this happen on a team, you do have to be intentional and specific. You need to build in psychological safety. Or building enough trust into the team that you can begin this process together. And being intentional about it and being very specific about what you want to do, it's not enough to say, team, I want you to communicate better. Have you ever had this experience, George, where you're had a leader who was like, Hey team, I want us to do better. I want us to be better at communicating. Go.
George Drapeau: I can tell you, I can think of some expressions of that kind of concept where a leader has said, what I'm looking for is a team to have more of a positive intent spirit.
I'm making stuff up. Positive intent drive us, or I can do spirit or something like that where I know what they're talking about. And it's the kind of thing where clearly this leader has been in an environment where they've had a high performing team and you use these kind of vague adjectives of describing them and everybody is full of energy.
When you don't have that energy. These are bad words to use to try to incite that in people. You can't start with those complimentary words to try to build up. I'm not saying this very well, but it doesn't work when they say, I want more of this, quality, this vague quality, I'm like, well, what does that mean?
Because we don't have that quality. You need to talk about the attributes, not the, the adjectives, I guess.
Camille Rapacz: I totally know what you mean. Yes, you are getting exactly to the example of why I say you have to be both intentional and specific.
George Drapeau: Yeah,
Camille Rapacz: I see this all the time.
Like, I want my team to , I want them to be the, can do team. Want them to be the team of yes. Or I want them to go get shit done. I hear this all the time, like, that's what I want. And I'm like, okay, if you tell your team that, you are going to get every single response you could possibly imagine, and very few of them are going to be the one you actually want.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: And it's definitely not going to be a shared team response. So it's not going to create a high performance team. And leaders miss this all the time. And I think you're right, you're nailing it where it's like, they've had an experience with the team where they would describe them as the can do team.
And so then they tell this other team, that's what I want from you, but they weren't in there. They don't know what that looks like. That can do, but what, what can we do? Like what do you want us to do? So you have to be really specific about what are the behaviors that you want in this team? What does it actually look like?
And this is the level of conversation that I think is missing. And it gets to my next point about why I think this is so hard to do. The reason I think it is especially challenging for teams to have good high levels of communication as a team is because it takes good communication to get there.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: The thing I need to get what I want is the thing that I, it's very meta. But if I, as a leader, I'm not a good communicator and if I can't articulate and communicate clearly or I don't have the patience to take my team to that level of detail of understanding and get that specific, then how do I expect them to get good communication skills?
George Drapeau: How can you? You can't.
Camille Rapacz: You can't. It's very hard. So what do we do? What do we do with that case? I thought, you know,?
George Drapeau: First of all, what not to do is not to use these platitudinous phrases. Like I want you to be like the guys, the boys in the boat. I want us all rowing together. Don't say that. Don't say stuff like that. That's not helpful. You
Camille Rapacz: can back it up.
George Drapeau: I think there's probably a longer episode about this, but be as specific as you can about what's the specific behaviors you want out of people to try to build up and build up in layers It comes out of all this stuff that you're talking about. You have to really break it down.
One small attribute of is, okay, here's a rule. When we're talking together, everybody gets to complete the thought. That's one rule. That's one aspect of we communicate because we listen to each other.
Here's another rule. When somebody brings up an idea and you don't like that idea. You don't tear down the other person.
You find a way to acknowledge, you heard what they said. And then say maybe where you something is different or structure a way to handle some of these things. And you're even you're not telling them row together. You're giving them specifics about how to behave that over time. Those muscles start to build up into a better communicating team.
And it's really what I'm doing is giving specific examples of how respect plays out, how trust plays out all these things. Right.
Camille Rapacz: Yes.
George Drapeau: I guess that's what I'd say.
Camille Rapacz: Absolutely. Everything that you said, I would put into this bucket of whatever you do, you don't want to make the individual behaviors of team members, the villain in this struggle.
So we don't want to make it like George, I need you to be more like this. And then Susie, I need you to be more like that. You don't want to make it about individuals. What you do want to make it about is, Hey, As a team, we haven't established the right tools, methods, and expectations for good communication as a team.
And so we're going to do that together. And so let's talk about specifically when I say, I want you all rowing in the same direction. What do we think that means? Let's actually literally talk about it. And then every time you have an opportunity as a leader to say something's happening in the team and you realize they're not rowing in the same direction.
You use it as a teaching example, like, Oh, this is a great example. We have an opportunity to improve because this is what I want. This is what it looks like. So you need to both call out when it's not happening, but also when it is happening. So if somebody displays, say an example of courage in their communication, they come out and say something in a meeting that I know was hard for them to say.
I will acknowledge that. Thank you. I know that took courage. So appreciated. Keep going team. You have to reinforce the good behavior so that people know like, okay, I was supposed to do it. And also they did acknowledge that that was hard for me to say.
George Drapeau: We're coaching all the time.
Aren't we? We're always coaching.
Camille Rapacz: Always coaching. If you are leading a team, you are constantly coaching, providing feedback and not on the bad stuff, but you've got to provide feedback on the stuff that's working. Make sure the team knows. And again, not generically like, Hey, Good meeting team.
Why was it good? Help them understand why it was good. Our feedback can be so generic sometimes that it's not that helpful. Like, are you giving them constructive feedback or are you making them feel good? And you're kind of being lazy about it again. Is it intentional and specific?
And if it's not, eh.
George Drapeau: This reminds me, I have an off air comment for you that I want to tell you, or for our patron subscribers, they'll be able to hear it as well.
Camille Rapacz: Oh, we don't do that. Do we? We do not have a Patreon.
George Drapeau: No.
Camille Rapacz: We start having good stories to tell on a Patreon though. That could be a thing. I know we'll have to think about this. Oh, the deep dark secrets.
This made me think of something else that I read the other day that I saw. And so I'm curious if you've heard this term and this is very specific to meeting. So it's a little slightly off topic, but I want to, ask you about this. So have you heard this term Elmo to use in meetings?
George Drapeau: Enough Let's Move On.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Do you like it?
George Drapeau: I do, especially if you have the Elmo doll in the room. If you have the Elmo doll in the room, then somebody can actually hold, I've been in a group once it's done it. And It worked so it's a tool to stop rat holing, To point out rat holes and move on in a way that's kind of cute. It's non confrontational, but it gives anybody the ability to say, Hey, we're rat holing. Can we do that? Yeah, I do. Why?
Camille Rapacz: I was curious because I'm on the fence about it.
George Drapeau: Oh, okay. Oh, that's more interesting than, than I like it. Let's hear that.
Camille Rapacz: I like the idea of managing a meeting well, and I like the idea of having some like symbols or things that you can use that take the stress out of it all. And if you can build a common language around things, I think that's all good. I think it's very tricky to do it in a respectful way.
I do think it requires some level of maturity and a higher performing team to be able to do that well.
George Drapeau: I agree with that here. I'm going to offer two things in return. One is I'm going to claim that I think you're right. And also, if you put that kind of mechanism in a team that's not really high performing, after a while of practice, they'll kind of work out their own rubric for using it.
Work it out.
My second thing was, it reminded me a long time ago, When I was working at Sun, one of the teams I managed. We had a cynical jar. This was a highly cynical team. I mean, world class cynicism, people on the team.
And one thing about some culture I noticed was there was filled with cynics, but it was interesting. Cynicism usually stops people from acting. But But not at sun, people were cynical, but they still move forward. This is beautiful combination of being cynical and still moving forward, which made for good engineers because they were skeptical.
They were looking for all kinds of problems, but they didn't, didn't paralyze them. I don't know how sun culture built that up, but it was great. But sometimes the cynicism could get corrosive. And as a way for me to kind of deal with that, I had a cynical jar and I said, okay, be cynical all you want.
Every cynical comment costs you a quarter. It was a game at first the group would be self policing, like somebody would make a cynical comment and they wouldn't put a quarter in the jar and somebody else, not me, somebody else would say, Hey, I think that was a quarter. And they'd recognize it, put the quarter in the kind of laugh and move on.
And. And I said, after a while, when we get enough money, we're going to spend this on something. A Coke for everybody or a new car for everybody, depending on how cynical you were. It turned out to be a really great mechanism. It kind of lessened the tension in the room around that potentially corrosive behavior and
sometimes it got a little bit out of control and people got too raucous about the cynical jar, but after a while it leveled out and it was, it was fun. Stuff like that can be a good tool.
Camille Rapacz: I agree. I do think that you can gamify some of this stuff in a positive way that says, let's tackle this really difficult thing in a way that we all agree on the rules of this game that we're going to play.
And it's a serious topic that you're addressing, but bringing that little bit of levity into it and making it about this process that we're focused on, I think is really helpful for teams because otherwise it gets too personal. Which is where I think, so if you're going to use ELMO, the enough, let's move on.
That people are getting out of control on the meeting and you feel like we're getting off topic, instead of it always being the facilitator's job, like me or whoever's leading the meeting, their job, It empowers the team to really keep things on track together because it's basically if you're doing it in the true Elmo way, it's anybody can raise their hand and say Elmo, which is they're basically calling out, like, I think we're getting off track.
We need to move on. If you go further with it, then two other people have to second that motion. So it's not one person says it, but two other people have to say, yeah, agreed, agreed. But if it's one person who said it and everybody else in the room is saying, no, wait, I actually think we're going somewhere with this, then you keep going.
So there is a little bit more to it if you do it well. And I think that's great. Cause then it really makes the team think about. Yeah. Is this the right topic or not?
The other thing I would add to this is I do think there's times when this is what I experienced when I'm running meetings is that somebody will be going into a topic.
And I realize it's not for this meeting, but it should be for a future meeting. And so it needs to go in a parking lot. It needs to go in the for next time bucket. And so I think if you're going to use Elmo, you should also be ready to identify. We actually do need to talk about this, but not this moment.
And so if you have that process at well, it's also very respectful to that person because they might feel like, but there's no other place for me to express this problem that I'm presenting to all of you. This was my only chance. If they know that there's another opportunity to dig into it, because everybody values it.
I think that helps as well.
George Drapeau: I'm going to use this opportunity to digress a little bit, because I think the topic is interesting. The topic here is we're talking about tools that in a light way, help us to diffuse potentially emotionally fraught situations like rat holing.
Stopping that can be difficult. Literally having the elbow doll is cute and it removes tension. The thing that I mentioned about the cynical jar takes potentially corrosive behavior and it puts money into it. Ted Lasso had a concept like this too.
You want to guess what it was? The example I'm thinking of?
Camille Rapacz: I do not want to guess.
George Drapeau: Oklahoma was the keyword that they used. Yeah, because I couldn't remember the word.
Camille Rapacz: I was like, what did they say? Yes. Yeah.
George Drapeau: When, like, when they'd say, how are you doing? They're talking about something.
And if you felt that the other person really wasn't saying the full truth, you could call them out by saying Oklahoma, and that would force them to say what was really going on. And that's, it's the same tool, right? There's some innocuous little thing to say, okay, Let's get real here.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Tell me what's really going on.
George Drapeau: These are three different things that are like tools to help defuse or cut through potentially emotionally fraught situations. And I wonder what's going on with that.
Camille Rapacz: I think these are great ways to help teams better communicate together. And this is when I talk about also a team having a common, a shared language.
This is part of what I mean, like, do we have a shared language that we use in order to support each other better. And improving communications and whatever we want to improve. The other day, I introduced the idea of the swoop and poop. Have we talked about the swoop and poop?
George Drapeau: No. In
Camille Rapacz: our family, we know this as being helpy.
George Drapeau: Oh.
Camille Rapacz: But typically the swoop and poop is you as a leader come into the team, see they have a problem, you poop out a solution and then you swoop off. And they're kind of left there with like I, I guess this is the answer. It doesn't feel like the right answer, but now that he gave it to us, I think we have to do something with it.
It's a little stinky and we're not really sure what to do with it.
That is the swoop and poop. And so I will tell, teams and leaders to watch out for this. Like if your leader does it and you know, can you give the feed, you know, Hey leader, what if your team member came and said, are you swooping and pooping right now? And they'll be like, am I, and it gives them a fun way to kind of talk about, right?
There's a different language. So it's the same concept. It's the same concept. We're talking about the same concept. Can you take these tense moments and turn them into better way to talk about them, kind of lighten this whole thing up. So it doesn't become so personal because also the other thing that I will emphasize to everybody is every single one of us humans has swoop and pooped on somebody.
Guarantee it.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: You've done it to a spouse. You've done it to a friend. Because it comes from a good place. I'm trying to help. I was so in and out so fast that I didn't stop to think whether it was really helpful or if I swooped in, dropped into solution, I swooped out and then they were like, Oh, what do I do with this?
Because what makes it hard is that the person receiving it knows you meant had, had Positive intent. And so it's even worse because they're like, Oh, what do I do with this nice thing they tried to do for us that isn't the right thing?
If teams come up with these things for themselves, it's awesome. Like that's what we should be doing as teams is coming up with ways to have better communication. If you can bring some levity and fun into it, even better. But , you know, don't lose sight of that.
We are dealing with serious, human to human communication issues. They are fraught with problems because we're human. There are solutions.
George Drapeau: You and I have both talked about the importance of being able to lower the temperature in a room. This makes me think of. Professional negotiators or law enforcement that have de escalation techniques, which is a different version of the same thing.
And it gets me thinking, I'd like to explore this as a subject area sometime. I don't know if it's on the podcast or something, but there's something very important about that because what I'm, what I'm. Bring it out here is one aspect of high performing teams is they're calm, they're in flow, they're relaxed, the temperature is low.
And so, I mean, all these things feed into it, but this is another aspect of that. They can talk about difficult topics and doesn't seem to phase them. They don't get all amped up about it.
Camille Rapacz: Yes.
George Drapeau: This is not the only reason. It's not because they have these cute tools, but that's amongst the things that they have.
Like you say, our common language that lets them somehow navigate through this stuff and lower the temperature overall, which lets everything work easier.
Camille Rapacz: Absolutely. It reminds me of a phrase that I don't remember where I heard it, but I've always hung onto this, which is the, I said, one of the number one duties of, Responsibilities of a leader is to pump fear out of the room.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Any room you walk into your job is pumping fear out of that room.
That's what we're talking about, I'm coming in and my job is to create this safest environment for us to collaborate, have difficult conversation. It doesn't mean we don't have conflict. It means we can get into conflict without fear of retribution. We can really get into these topics and work through them because I've taken fear out. So we have a room. To work through the really hard stuff because that's the stuff that makes you a high performing team.
George Drapeau: I don't think people hear that phrase. At all.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah.
George Drapeau: You and I both think about it.
I don't think many people think about that explicitly. Many good managers, you know, don't think of, if I ask them, what do you think your job is or how do you think you help the team? Very few of them would say, well, I reduce the fear level in the room. I lower the temperature.
Very few people would think about it that way. I think.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah.
George Drapeau: That's too bad. Cause it's, that's a powerful model.
Camille Rapacz: It is a powerful model. I, in some ways like it better then thinking about psychological safety. That's the term we use all the time. I like it because it's like this. My job, I'm supposed to live, pumping fear out of the room.
And when I think about that, as I walk in, like, what do I do? That is taking fear out of this room right now. I don't know. For me, it gives me much more of a it feels it's a verb of, I'm going to do something. I have action to take as opposed to trying to create this environment. I know what is supposed to exit.
I know what is supposed to be out of this room in order for this to work. And I like that idea. I like that idea that that's my job. is psychological safety. Mm
George Drapeau: hmm. You're the emotional sump pump.
Camille Rapacz: Exactly. Well, that is all I had to say about communication. What about you?
George Drapeau: Did not go the way I expected it to go. This is fascinating. I'm not saying they're not interesting. I'm saying it was fascinating in a different way than I expected. Let me be clear about that.
Camille Rapacz: Wait, do we need to do another version of this podcast that goes wherever you wanted it to go?
George Drapeau: No, no, no, no.
This is great. We talked about some stuff that I didn't think we were really going to touch on.
Camille Rapacz: that's what I always love about this podcast is sometimes we end up going places where, I'm trying to not overly script them now. Cause I'm like, I don't know where we're going to go, but it's going to be fun.
Whatever it is.
George Drapeau: I really appreciate this topic. You know, this is really cool.
Camille Rapacz: Thanks. I guess now that we're all wrapped up, we will have to remind everybody that if you need help, you know what to do. You can find me at CamilleRapaz. com slash book a call. I'd be happy to communicate with you about communication.
But seriously, if you're struggling with this, it really does help to get a neutral party in to help you. So if you're like, I don't know how to start building psychological safety, I don't have enough trust in my team to even start building better communications. That's where your HR support comes in.
That's where coaches and consultants come in. Like get somebody else to help you time and time again, when I work with teams, the number one thing they will talk about is we need a neutral party to come and help us do this. I, as the leader, can't do it. We're not far enough yet to be able to do this on our own.
Definitely seek out help. If you're feeling like you don't have The level of team trust and all those good things in order to be able to, it doesn't mean you're a bad leader. It's the hand of cards you've been dealt and you got to start where you got to start. It's happening to leaders all over the place.
So you're not alone in that either. That's my sales pitch. Thank you everybody for listening and we will be back in your ears next week.
George Drapeau: See everybody.
