Peter Block has a rule of thumb that is very useful if you want a group to apply its collective knowledge to address a difficult issue, Connection before Content. Before a group attempts to use its collective knowledge to deal with serious issues it has to build the relationships that will allow the group to hold an open conversation.
However connection does not mean just going around the room and having everyone say their name and organization – that’s useful, but it doesn’t build connections. We build connections in pairs or trios - groupings that are small enough for each person to gain a sense of who the others are as human beings. For example individuals need to understand, How are these other people like or different from me? Are they open to hearing an idea if it contradicts their own? What shared experiences have we had? Building that level of awareness about others in the group provides the confidence that this is a safe place to say openly what each individual is really thinking about the issues they are facing together. It is a way to create the psychological safety that Edmondson talks about.
When a group has not had the opportunity to build those connections, members so consistently act in ways that reduce the knowledge available to the group. that it is almost as if they were follow a set of unspoken rules. For example:
- Members tend not to share any “unique” knowledge they hold, so group discussions tend to focus only on information that is jointly held. The result is that little that the group does not already know is discussed.
- Members don’t admit implementation mistakes they or their group have made, even when doing so would benefit the whole group. So the group is likely to repeat mistakes that could have been avoided.
- Junior members tend wait until they have the “lay of the land” to speak, leaving those who are in acknowledged positions of power to do most of the talking. That means a diversity of ideas and opinions is lost to the group.
- Members don’t ask for help from the group, even when they recognize that others in the group have the insights or knowledge they need. So everyone learns slower than necessary and a great deal of re-inventing the wheel occurs.
A couple of days ago I sat in on a meeting in an organization that is facing a difficult challenge. A number of their offices are going to move to another city – one several hundred miles away in a different state. The employees that work in those offices will either have to find a new job or move when the job moves. The group that was meeting has been tasked with setting the policies and dealing with the logistics for the move. They hope to make the move go as smoothly as possible, even given that it is going to be traumatic for hundreds of employees.
This was the second of what will probably be months and months of weekly meetings. Twenty-some team members were seated around a long conference table. Those that came late sat in a second tier of chairs placed against the walls. A few people in the room knew others, but most did not.
The leader of the group, not wanting to waste anyone’s time, got the group’s attention and started to work down the agenda. Four or five of the people in the room did most of the talking during the hour and a half meeting, primarily directing their comments to the leader. A few others answered questions when the leader called on them, but otherwise just listened.
The meeting produced little in the way of knowledge exchange or learning. These were well meaning people, wanting to do a good job, but if I were guessing, I’d say this won’t be an effective team. They’ll get their task done, but they won't be able to make use of the knowledge of those in the room.
To build a group that could learn from and with each other under these circumstances, the leader would have had to get the group connected before dealing with such difficult content. For example, they might have spent the first two meetings working in trios rather than the full group, learning about the issues and each other at the same timel. At the first meeting each trio might have identified the key issues the group must address. Perhaps at the second a different set of trios might have talked about the difficult issues they’ve had to face so far in dealing with the move. Such topics would have allowed them to test out their own views and get the reactions of others to them. It might have taken more than two meetings, but having built a level of connection and trust, they might have been ready to talk in ways that would create learning in the group, that is,
- Offer new ideas even when those ideas were not yet fully formed
- Challenge each other’s tacit assumptions which would have allowed them to generate fresh ideas
- Share their own mistakes when it would benefit the group
- Take the risk of saying something they were aware the group would not want to hear
- Ask each other for help when that help would speed up the process in their own units
That people need to feel some relationship to each other in order to be open is not news to any leader that has had Team Building 101. So sitting in on this meeting raised a question for me, “Why don’t leaders put into practice what they know will help teams and task forces be more effective?”
One answer that comes to mind, is that we’re often hesitant to do anything that smells of relationship building for fear it will be perceived as a waste of time - playing games when we have too much to get done. I share that worry every time I’m asked to help a leader with a new group. As I start to put people in pairs or trios, I wonder if this time they will all rebel and just say they don’t have time for “exercises.” But they never have (yet) and in the subsequent days and weeks I hear from this one and that one, that it was important that they took the time at the beginning - that it made the difference.
There is another reason we might hesitate to use the tools for learning that we know about. I wonder if many of us have been in so many meetings that were a waste of time that we’ve lost faith in meetings as having any value. Maybe we feel there is nothing to be done but to tolerate what we cannot change. The meeting I described earlier would confirm that view. My hope in writing this blog is to encourage leaders to renew their faith in the power of conversation in groups and more over to do the simple things that make those conversations more learningful like Connection before Content.
