Joshua Warren  0:06  
conversations and decisions that maybe took hours or maybe took weeks of multiple meetings. Suddenly, they're happening in five minutes, 10 minutes, your team will become more effective. You'll arrive at decisions faster, you'll arrive at consensus faster, and you'll get better results.

Darin Newbold  0:27  
Good day and welcome to Commerce today. We are very excited to have you here. My name is Darren, and along with me, as always, Josh here to talk about our continuing subject of managing ecommerce teams. And this subject is a really fun one to talk about dysfunctional teams. So Josh, I know you got some good stuff here. so fire away.

Joshua Warren  0:51  
Oh, yeah, this is a fun one. So way back in 1944, the OSS, which became the CIA, wrote a manual on how to sabotage a foreign foreign country. And in it, it actually has suggestions for people that are working inside companies in that foreign country. And just ask yourself how often you've seen these things on your own team. So they recommend to sabotage a company, you should bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible, should haggle over precise wordings of communications minutes and resolutions. And it's really important to refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to reopen the question of the advisability of that decision. So wait, so these are things that the CIA was saying, this is how you can bring down companies to bring down a country. And yet I know plenty of teams I've worked with, I've seen these exact behaviors. So

Darin Newbold  1:44  
Josh, we we have some people that work for the CIA, what is this? We've got some problems here. Saboteurs. Exactly. So how often have you seen something like this happen?

Unknown Speaker  1:55  
I mean, it's incredibly common. I feel like unless a company and an E commerce team has been intentional about solving these issues, and creating a culture that that really prevents this, this is super common. And it's interesting. You know, there's a lot of research around this, we're going to talk some today, there's a book called Five Dysfunctions of a Team that a well known business author, Patrick Lencioni, has written and has a whole lot of research behind it. He says in his model, the very, most basic thing that teams are most often getting wrong and have to get right is there's an absence of trust that you don't trust each other. You don't trust yourself, you don't trust your team. And these behaviors show up as a result.

Darin Newbold  2:38  
So alright, so the team, the team doesn't trust each other. And so then they're going to start asking these inane questions or creating this these challenges. What can we do? What did they what did they do to help facilitate or make, I mean, build that trust, because that, I don't know, the good old days, hey, you go have a beer and, and break bread. And that's how you build trust. But there's more to it than that.

Unknown Speaker  3:05  
Definitely. And even harder to do in our remote world these days. It's a complex topic, but it's a simple topic. And it's simple in the fact that you create the right culture, and you create an environment where you don't have constant turnover. And I feel like companies these days are just missing on both of those things where there's turnover. So you never even have time to trust your teammates, because they're changing all the time. Or you're just being beat over the head constantly about results, results results, without first getting to that that level of trust. And so I think

Darin Newbold  3:39  
it's simple and yet a big task of make sure you have some consistency, some loyalty, that you're not constantly losing team members, getting new team members, and then really focus on building that environment of trust. And, and I think trust, it's important to define what we mean by trust, it means a lot of different things, different people, and Patrick Lencioni, Brene, brown, a number of others that have done a lot of research on trust and teams. They call it vulnerability based trust. So basically the ability to be vulnerable to your teammates. And I think it's not just the ability, but almost almost a desire, a willingness to pursue vulnerability. And it there's another piece to it, though, along those lines having that vulnerability. But before, I think before you can have that vulnerability, you have to have that safe space. And that's what's important. And again, you talked about having the consistency of the same people and not having turnover, well, that starts to create a safe space. But having a safe space where if a person says something there, they're not going to be overtly judged, so that they feel horrible. They're not going to be shut down in some way. And they're not going to be dismissed and Their idea or what they're saying is, is heard. By all, it does not mean that, hey, everybody agrees, or we have to do what everybody says, because then you're going in circles. And basically you have a team of CIA agents. But, but that's how you build that, I think the build that arena or build that arena, arena is probably a little militant or combative, but you build that framework for, for safety, that then creates the place to have vulnerability.

Unknown Speaker  5:31  
That's so true. And yeah, without that safety, none of this can even start. And I think it's important. You mentioned something about people not being shut down in meetings. And there's a distinction here, and it took me a while to learn this distinction. And it's that 100%, when, when a healthy team is meeting, they're going to shoot each other's ideas down, if it's not a good idea, somebody's gonna say something. But the difference is, they're going to shoot down the idea, not the person, you have to create that environment where you're comfortable doing that. And that's where there's actually a team health assessment that will link to in the show notes that The Five Dysfunctions of a Team team has put together, and some of the behaviors that they ask about under the domain of trust. They're really interesting. And so like, one of them is, team members will acknowledge their weaknesses to one another. Team members will admit their mistakes, team members are unguarded and genuine with one another. And so it's really about having that personal openness, and that willingness to treat each other like people that have strengths and weaknesses. But then also separating out once you have that safe environment, that vulnerability, separating out the topics, the issues, the decisions that need to be made from the people and the personalities.

Darin Newbold  6:52  
So from your experience, Josh, and working with teams, and you talked about kind of these crazy questions from the CIA in building this trust. What? I'm an ecommerce manager, I feel like I have a dysfunctional team. What are the things? Let's just break it down? Easy. What are the what are the things I'm seeing? What what do I see happening that I may have blown off, or I may have said, Oh, that's just how barbacks are. That's just how Suzy acts.

Joshua Warren  7:22  
Yeah, sometimes the scariest part of a team that doesn't have trust, you know, you can think of all the things we've seen on TV and in sitcoms, and things like that, where you have teams that are yelling at each other that are fighting with each other, that sort of thing. But to me, the scariest type of unhealthy team is the team where no one speaks up, where it's gotten to the point that either the team lead is making all the decisions and basically having all the conversation in the meetings. Or maybe there's just one member of the team that is contributing and everything. And that's when you get to that point where people have just basically shut down and withdrawn. That's a scary level of dysfunction.

Darin Newbold  8:03  
Okay, so you mentioned that, it's important to have what Patrick Lencioni talks about as healthy conflict, and being able to do that, because that's going to happen, and you want it. But you have to have trust, because that's the foundation of the five dysfunctions in solving these challenges. What I have, my team is not talking, I've got one leader, everybody's doing what they're doing, but they're really not effective. And I think another symptom a manager might see from that is, if people aren't speaking up, they are going to be speaking somewhere. And so then there's going to be the water cooler, cooler deals, as they might say, or you might have the the slack deals these days in a remote teams or over Microsoft Teams, or whatever communication methods you use, but there's going to be all this communication that happens outside of the team that creates grudges, and creates, it actually fosters less trust in the team. And so, again, kind of coming back, I'm that leader, Josh helped me Obi Wan Kenobi. How would What do I do?

Unknown Speaker  9:14  
It's, it's challenging. I think it requires a willingness to be pretty blunt and direct with your team that, hey, this is an unhealthy team. And if teams unhealthy or dysfunctional, you're not going to be delivering results for the business, you're not gonna be delivering the E commerce results that you want to deliver. And solving that trust issue is the number one priority for the team. And it's important to explain that and get that buy in, because really the most useful exercise I've seen to starting to build that level of trust is what's called the personal histories exercise. And Darren, I think you you've administered that to a few different teams. So tell us what that is.

Darin Newbold  9:57  
Well, yeah, and it's the I was laughing just because I pulled up the same thing you had and was looking at it. But did personal histories exercise? It's a simple exercise where you have three three questions that are answered by the team. And typically, it there's an there's a, there's different examples of how or what this might look like. But the simple way would be where did you grow up? How many siblings do you have? And where did the where do you fall in that order. And then please describe a unique or interesting challenge or experience from your childhood. And when you're looking at this, from a trust level, this is not asking someone to be overly vulnerable, they don't have to tell their deepest darkest fears and anxieties. It's merely Hey, I grew up in a small town in western Kansas, I have one brother, he's older than I am. And it was interesting. Now, I can't remember what I would say there. But anyway, it's pretty simple. But what it does is it starts to break down the, the barrier because we, we often don't trust, we don't trust what we don't know. And

Unknown Speaker  11:09  
when we don't know something, our brain automatically fills in the gaps. And I have found through life experience that those gaps are often filled by when our brain doesn't want to go to negative, ugly places. But when it has to fill in gaps, that's the quickest, easiest way. So it causes causes a person to make assumptions about someone, oh, wow, that's there this way, because who there Uber wealthy or something, and they act that way, because of that, well, maybe that's not at all related to it. So those are some of the things on the, on the exercise anyway, that that it starts to break down those barriers. Yeah. And you know, one thing I feel like it really does is, especially in a dysfunctional team, you're in your meetings, and you're just thinking about winning or getting your way or getting your next meeting. And sometimes you forget that the other people in that meeting are also people, and that this exercise kind of reconnects you to the fact that a, these are real living people with a history and a story and a life well beyond just the interactions you've had with them. And that actually ties into a subject you're first introduced me to call the outward mindset. And basically, it's a whole perspective of just seeing other people as people and realizing they have their own interests and motivations and kind of valuing them as a person. And

Darin Newbold  12:31  
there's a great book that talks that and shares that, that a great parable, a business oriented parable around that called Leadership and self deception, we'll have that in the show notes as well. But a fantastic book that when a person when you have an outward mindset, and you're you're not focused inwardly, it the behavior that you exhibit changes significantly. And it helps you not be or avoid being judgmental. Because when you have that inward mindset, it's all about you, you don't realize it. And sometimes it may take a third party to help you see that that's what's happening. But it is what's happening, and you're making everything about you.

Unknown Speaker  13:16  
Definitely. And I think a lot of these books, a lot of these tools have companies and consultants that can come out and help work your team through these things. But I think for most ecommerce teams, just getting to the point where you can have this conversation and start introducing these concepts that can do a lot for you. So don't think if you're a smaller team, or maybe you don't have a big training budget, don't start thinking oh, you know, these guys are just trying to convince me to hire some high price consultant to come in and do this. I've seen ecommerce managers really turn teams around themselves just by, by basically leading by example, by getting vulnerable with the team and saying, Hey, we have a problem with our team is dysfunctional. We need to solve it. I have some ideas. Let's work on this together.

Darin Newbold  14:01  
And I agree, I agree. And I think that's a great first step. And it's a way that choosing maybe one of these resources, whether it's a book or what that looks like, and executing on it. And working, working through all of the pieces of it, whether it's whether it's a book or whether it's the table group, which is the Patrick Lencioni is company that does all the assessments, whichever one it is move down that path and really explore this. So as we kind of come to a close here on on our dysfunctional teams that hopefully are no longer dysfunctional. Back to me being the E commerce manager, I bought my book, I started going down the path. What will what will my team look like? How's that going to play out? What What's my goal and hopeful outcome of really moving away from this dysfunctional team?

Joshua Warren  14:53  
So when we were talking before the show, you'd actually mentioned a book called The Speed of Trust, and we're wrapping up So I'm not gonna introduce a whole new concept. But I will say just that idea of trust equals speed. I've seen that when teams get healthier, especially when they have that level of trust conversations and decisions that maybe took hours or maybe took weeks of multiple meetings, suddenly, they're happening in five minutes, 10 minutes. So you're just you, your team will become more effective. You'll be you'll arrive at decisions faster, you'll arrive at consensus faster, and you'll get better results.

Darin Newbold  15:28  
Absolutely. And in looking at the overall five dysfunctions, one of the things that that I really think what happens is, we've only talked about trust, which is the base of the of the triangle of these five dysfunctions. But going up from there, we suddenly have a healthy conflict, you'll have greater commitment, which ultimately leads to much greater accountability, which we could talk that could be a series for a year, and then ultimately delivering better and more sustainable results. That's really the goal now,

Unknown Speaker  16:04  
and now you're giving me an idea for a next four episodes in this series.

Darin Newbold  16:09  
All right. Well, we appreciate you guys hanging in there listening to our Commerce today, as well as managing your E commerce team. We're excited to have you on board. Please take a moment and rate our podcasts. We'd love to hear more. And as always, we look forward to talking to you next time. Take care

Transcribed by https://otter.ai