More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
In dozens of trials, kindergartners built structures that averaged twenty-six inches tall, while business school students built structures that averaged less than ten inches.
status management. They are figuring out where they fit into the larger picture: Who is in charge? Is it okay to criticize someone’s idea? What are the rules here? Their interactions appear smooth, but their underlying behavior is riddled with inefficiency, hesitation, and subtle competition.
Skill 1—Build Safety—explores how signals of connection generate bonds of belonging and identity. Skill 2—Share Vulnerability—explains how habits of mutual risk drive trusting cooperation. Skill 3—Establish Purpose—tells how narratives create shared goals and values. The three skills work together from the bottom up, first building group connection and then channeling it into action.
Close physical proximity, often in circles Profuse amounts of eye contact Physical touch (handshakes, fist bumps, hugs) Lots of short, energetic exchanges (no long speeches) High levels of mixing; everyone talks to everyone Few interruptions Lots of questions Intensive, active listening Humor, laughter Small, attentive courtesies (thank-yous, opening doors, etc.)
Belonging cues are behaviors that create safe connection in groups. They include, among others, proximity, eye contact, energy, mimicry, turn taking, attention, body language, vocal pitch, consistency of emphasis, and whether everyone talks to everyone else in the group.
Belonging cues possess three basic qualities: Energy: They invest in the exchange that is occurring Individualization: They treat the person as unique and valued Future orientation: They signal the relationship will continue
Overall Pentland’s studies show that team performance is driven by five measurable factors: Everyone in the group talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short. Members maintain high levels of eye contact, and their conversations and gestures are energetic. Members communicate directly with one another, not just with the team leader. Members carry on back-channel or side conversations within the team. Members periodically break, go exploring outside the team, and bring information back to share with the others.
When you receive a belonging cue, the amygdala switches roles and starts to use its immense unconscious neural horsepower to build and sustain your social bonds. It tracks members of your group, tunes in to their interactions, and sets the stage for meaningful engagement. In a heartbeat, it transforms from a growling guard dog into an energetic guide dog with a single-minded goal: to make sure you stay tightly connected with your people.
We are close, we are safe, we share a future.
Ashworth details the physical closeness of the two sides. While the closeness brought violence, it also brought connection, through the smells of cooking and the sounds of voices, laughter, and songs. Soldiers on both sides became aware that they followed the same daily rhythms and routines of meals, resupply, and troop rotations.
The answer is belonging cues. The trainees in group one received zero signals that reduced the interpersonal distance between themselves and WIPRO.
As one missileer told researchers, “We don’t care if things go properly. We just don’t want to get into trouble.”
He always asks questions, and those questions are always the same: personal, direct, focused on the big picture. What did you think of it? What would you have done in that situation?
I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.
Personal, up-close connection (body language, attention, and behavior that translates as I care about you) Performance feedback (relentless coaching and criticism that translates as We have high standards here) Big-picture perspective (larger conversations about politics, history, and food that translate as Life is bigger than basketball)
“He’s very smart, but the smartest thing about him is that he thinks sort of like an eight-year-old,” says Jeanne Markel, director of culture for the Downtown Project. “He keeps things really simple and positive when it comes to people.”
Beneath Hsieh’s unconventional approach lies a mathematical structure based on what he calls collisions. Collisions—defined as serendipitous personal encounters—are, he believes, the lifeblood of any organization, the key driver of creativity, community, and cohesion. He has set a goal of having one thousand “collisionable hours” per year for himself and a hundred thousand collisionable hours per acre for the Downtown Project. This metric is why he closed a side entrance to Zappos headquarters, funneling people through a single entrance.
My job is to architect the greenhouse.”
“Something as simple as visual contact is very, very important, more important than you might think,” Allen says. “If you can see the other person or even the area where they work, you’re reminded of them, and that brings a whole bunch of effects.”
“It turns out that vertical separation is a very serious thing. If you’re on a different floor in some organizations, you may as well be in a different country.”
psychological safety
The leaders of the New Zealand All-Blacks, the rugby squad that ranks as one of the most successful teams on the planet, achieve this through a rule that simply states “No Dickheads.” It’s simple, and that’s why it’s effective.
muscular humility—a mindset of seeking simple ways to serve the group.
Capitalize on Threshold Moments:
It sends a powerful belonging cue at the precise moment when people are ripest to receive it.
In the cultures I visited, I didn’t see many feedback sandwiches. Instead, I saw them separate the two into different processes. They handled negatives through dialogue, first by asking if a person wants feedback, then having a learning-focused two-way conversation about the needed growth. They handled positives through ultraclear bursts of recognition and praise. The leaders I spent time with shared a capacity for radiating delight when they spotted behavior worth praising. These moments of warm, authentic happiness functioned as magnetic north, creating clarity, boosting belonging, and
...more
A BrainTrust meeting is not fun. It is where directors are told that their characters lack heart, their storylines are confusing, and their jokes fall flat. But it’s also where those movies get better. “The BrainTrust is the most important thing we do by far,” said Pixar president Ed Catmull. “It depends on completely candid feedback.”
Person A sends a signal of vulnerability. Person B detects this signal. Person B responds by signaling their own vulnerability. Person A detects this signal. A norm is established; closeness and trust increase.
The MIT team, on the other hand, signaled its own vulnerability by promising that everyone connected to finding a red balloon would share in the reward. Then it provided people with the opportunity to create networks of vulnerability by reaching out to their friends, then asking them to reach out to their friends. The team did not dictate what participants should do or how they should do it, or give them specific tasks to complete or technology to use. It simply gave out the link and let people do with it what they pleased.
The signal being sent was the same: You have a role here. I need you.
A teammate falters. Others sense it, and respond by taking on more pain for the sake of the group. Balance is regained.
When Del Close developed the Harold in the 1970s, he wrote down the following rules: You are all supporting actors. Always check your impulses. Never enter a scene unless you are needed. Save your fellow actor, don’t worry about the piece. Your prime responsibility is to support. Work at the top of your brains at all times. Never underestimate or condescend to the audience. No jokes. Trust. Trust your fellow actors to support you; trust them to come through if you lay something heavy on them; trust yourself. Avoid judging what is going down except in terms of whether it needs help, what can
...more
When Cooper gave his opinion, he was careful to attach phrases that provided a platform for someone to question him, like “Now let’s see if someone can poke holes in this” or “Tell me what’s wrong with this idea.” He steered away from giving orders and instead asked a lot of questions. Anybody have any ideas?
After-Action Review, the truth-telling session we referenced in Chapter 7
“Rank switched off, humility switched on.
With an AAR, as with Log PT or a Harold, group members have to combine discipline with openness.
(The best way to find the Nyquist is usually to ask people: If I could get a sense of the way your culture works by meeting just one person, who would that person be?)
Givechi’s interactions with her teams take place largely in what IDEO calls Flights, regular all-team meetings that occur at the start, middle, and finish of every project.
“She doesn’t present an agenda, but of course there is an agenda behind that, and it’s gentle guiding. And one of the biggest tools in her toolbox is time. She’ll spend so much time, being patient and continuing to have conversations and making sure the conversations are progressing in a good direction.”
He discovered that for much of the time, the arousal curves of two people in conversation bore little or no relation to each other. But he also found special moments, in certain conversations, when the two curves fell into perfect sync. Marci called these moments concordances.
“Concordances happen when one person can react in an authentic way to the emotion being projected in the room,” Marci says. “It’s about understanding in an empathic way, then doing something in terms of gesture, comment, or expression that creates a connection.”
He is demonstrating that the most important moments in conversation happen when one person is actively, intently listening. “It’s not an accident that concordance happens when there’s one person talking and the other person listening,” Marci says. “It’s very hard to be empathic when you’re talking.
Building habits of group vulnerability is like building a muscle.
What is one thing that I currently do that you’d like me to continue to do? What is one thing that I don’t currently do frequently enough that you think I should do more often? What can I do to make you more effective?
Going Out of Your Way to Help Others Is the Secret Sauce.
When Forming New Groups, Focus on Two Critical Moments: Jeff Polzer, the Harvard Business School professor who studies organizational behavior (see Chapter 8), traces any group’s cooperation norms to two critical moments that happen early in a group’s life. They are: The first vulnerability The first disagreement These small moments are doorways to two possible group paths: Are we about appearing strong or about exploring the landscape together? Are we about winning interactions, or about learning together? “At those moments, people either dig in and become defensive and start justifying, and
...more
They interact in ways that make the other person feel safe and supported They take a helping, cooperative stance They occasionally ask questions that gently and constructively challenge old assumptions They make occasional suggestions to open up alternative paths
One good AAR structure is to use five questions: What were our intended results? What were our actual results? What caused our results? What will we do the same next time? What will we do differently?
Some teams also use a Before-Action Review, which is built around a similar set of questions: What are our intended results? What challenges can we anticipate? What have we or others learned from similar situations? What will make us successful this time?
