The Challenges of Hybrid Work and Teaming
Guest Speaker Dr. Britt AndreattaIn this episode of WiseTalk, CEO and Executive Leadership Coach Sue Bethanis hosts Dr. Britt Andreatta, an internationally recognized thought leader who uses her unique background in leadership, neuroscience, psychology, and education, to create brain-science based solutions for today’s workplace challenges. Britt is the former CLO for Lynda.com (now LinkedIn Learning) and she has over 10 million views worldwide of her online courses. She regularly consults with corporations, universities, and nonprofit organizations on leadership development and learning strategy. Britt is the author of several brain science-based books including Wired to Grow (about how the brain learns), Wired to Resist (on how we move through change), and Wired to Connect (how to create great teams through inclusion and belonging). She was recently named a Top 20 Learning Influencer for 2021.
Listen to the full episode here:
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INTERVIEW SUMMARY AND KEY TAKEAWAYS
Britt offers great perspectives on leadership, learning, and teamwork in Hybrid settings. She applies research from neuroscience into the workplace to find new ways of operating for both leaders and teams. With Hybrid and remote work here to stay, we have emphasized the need for more intentional connections and Britt reveals the science behind why it’s so important.
Some key takeaways from this talk:
- Britt provides insights into progressive ways to train and create learning experiences. She defines the three-phase model of learning in which we learn something, we remember it, and then we change our behavior (which she notes can take 40-50 repetitions). She also discusses the Growth Culture Model which helps managers and leaders to understand the different ways to bring out someone’s potential. (8:57)
- As connection was a main theme of this talk; Britt points out that from a neuroscience perspective our brains don’t perceive video calls as the same form of connection as in-person. We are losing opportunities to build trust and rapport among colleagues when in fully remote settings and need to emphasize intentional connection in these settings. (15:17)
- Britt recommends bringing teams together to develop trust and connection during team building stages prior to collaborating with one another. She also recommends leaders give teams more freedom when it comes to busy work and tasks, but to come together in-person as much as possible when collaborating and working as a collective. (27:41, 30:20)
- Sue and Britt also discuss issues surrounding psychological safety and burnout. Britt provides some intriguing data on how our brains experience exclusion the same way we experience physical pain, which points to the importance of creating safe and inclusive workplaces. Addressing burnout is also crucial to maintaining the psychological safety of teams and preventing higher rates of resignation. (11:43, 35:10)
To increase connection throughout organizations, leaders must create cultures of support, acknowledgment, and trust. By being available and accessible to others, through virtual office hours, check-ins, or drop boxes, others can bring forward feedback and ignite deeper conversations. There’s no one single magic formula, but Britt encourages leaders to look at what will fit best for the people in their organization. Hybrid work is here to stay, so adopting practices that foster connection and collaboration early on are crucial to creating long-lasting and productive teams.
FAVORITE QUOTES
- “The Growth Culture Model…helps managers and leaders make that really critical pivot from being an individual contributor that has people reporting to them, to being the facilitator of other people’s excellence. And it’s really a mind shift that their job is now to create the conditions for others to thrive, not to be a star producer themselves anymore.” (8:57)
- “I think the thing that drives it home for folks is the science on exclusion, and how damaging exclusion is…It turns out that human’s experience exclusion as a form of pain…And so, when people understand how powerful exclusion is and how powerful inclusion is, all sudden, they’re really committed to working on it.” (11:43)
- “So, the problem is, when we communicate through a screen, our body ultimately does not count it as real human connection, even though we can have conversations and other meaningful things can come out of it…In this Hybrid/remote world, teams that had a lot of in-person and trust-building time with each other before they were separated, held in there pretty well. I’m really worried about all the folks who onboarded during the last two years because while they’re very tasky with their team, and they may feel some sense of connection, their body didn’t get to anchor in all that stuff that happens when we’re in person.” (15:17)
RESOURCES
Dr. Britt Andreatta:
Website | LinkedIn
Books:
Wired to Grow: Harness the Power of Brain Science to Learn and Master Any Skill
Wired to Connect: The Brain Science of Teams and a New Model for Creating Collaboration and Inclusion
Wired to Resist: The Brain Science of Why Change Fails and a New Model for Driving Success
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Sue Bethanis 0:00
Welcome, everybody to WiseTalk. This is Mariposa’s monthly podcast providing perspectives on leadership. Today we are excited to welcome Dr. Britt Andreatta. Dr. Britt is an internationally recognized thought leader who uses her unique background and leadership, neuroscience, psychology and education to create brain science-based solutions for today’s workplace challenges. As a CEO of Seventh Mind, Inc. Britt draws on her unique background and leadership, and she unlocks the best in people and organizations. Former Chief Learning Officer for lynda.com, which is now LinkedIn Learning Britt is a seasoned professional with more than 25 years of experience. She regularly consults with businesses, universities and nonprofits on leadership development and learning strategy. She was recently named a top 20 influencer for 2021. She’s also the author of a lot of books, and most recently Wired to Connect: The Brain Science of Teams and a New Model for Creating Collaboration and Inclusion, Wired to Grow: Harness the Power of Brain Science to Learn and Master Any Skill and Wired to Resist: The Brain Science of Why Change Fails and a New Model for Driving Success. So I got all of them.
Britt Andreatta 1:08
Yes, you did great.
Sue Bethanis 1:10
Okay, great. So, I really want to welcome you. She’s joining us from Santa Barbara, which I’m sure it’s beautiful down there, because it always is. It actually is kind of Santa Barbara like here today, in San Francisco. It’s been beautiful weather. So before we start into hybrid, and some of the books and such, I just want to, I read your bio, but I also want to hear from you a little bit about your own personal journey, like what got you into neuroscience? Why did you decide to write these particular books? I mean, just talk a little bit about the personal side of it if you could.
Britt Andreatta 1:40
Absolutely, I mean, my doctorate I earned at UC Santa Barbara, and it’s an education, leadership and organization. So, I’ve always kind of been at that intersection of leadership and learning. And I worked at the University for many years, I created leadership development programs and ran freshman success courses. And then after I’d kind of built everything I wanted to build, I was ready to leave higher ed and Lynda Weinman and I who had been on a panel, and she’d been recruiting me for a while, and finally, we figured out what I could do. So, I popped over there as their Chief Learning Officer and was running leadership development programs. And then she wanted it all to go in the library. So, we filmed all my content. And pretty soon it was being consumed by people around the world and getting really great reviews. And I was in that role. I mean, I’m a lifelong learner. And I’m always, you know, I will always have a subscription to Scientific, American, and Nature. And I had started to kind of geek out a little bit on the neuroscience of stuff, which wasn’t really a thing when I was getting my doctorate. So I went back into the journals, and I was really researching for my own personal interest to be better at my craft. And I was amazed at everything I was finding about what we now know about how the brain learns. So that became the first well, first it became a lunch and learn and then it became a book and a keynote. And I thought, okay, good. I’ve done that. And then we were acquired, Lynda was acquired.
Sue Bethanis 3:04
We should be like Lynda, there’s really a Lynda, by the way, there’s a Lynda with a Y that actually exists. Yeah, there’s this. It’s not just a name. But yeah. So that’s good to know.
Britt Andreatta 3:13
We were acquired by LinkedIn, and I was certified, and all the change management programs. And we were in the middle of that acquisition, and I realized none of them actually worked. But none of them explained what I was going through. So, I thought, hmm, I wonder what brain science says about change. So that became my second geek out experience and Wired to Resist. And then I guess I, you know, I was like, I guess I’m doing this, I guess I’m going to be translating neuroscience to business topics. So naturally, the next place to go is teams and inclusion. And right now, I’m working on my fourth book, which is all about purpose. So that’ll come out next year, but I’m starting to do some, I’ve learned that I’m a better writer if I present it first and then turn it into a book. I’m starting to do the keynotes on that topic right now.
Sue Bethanis 4:00
Yeah, I’m with you on that. Same with me. I have to like test stuff out first before I write it down. Great. Well, I love that story. I love how you got into neuroscience. So, talk with us. Has it changed over the last 10 years, let’s say in terms of yeah, let’s I guess we could I mean, there’s less things I can ask you. But let’s focus on connection. And I think I want to probably focus mostly on the word connect, because it’s so prevalent right now with hybrid return to work or not return to work.
Britt Andreatta 4:25
Let me first start with learning, in terms of learning and how it’s changed in 5-10 years just because I wrote the first draft, or the first edition, and then I decided to make a second edition of the core of the book Wired to Grow five years later. And typically just so you know, this, someone can call a new edition, a second edition, if they change 20% of the book, of course, I set myself for what I thought was going to be an easy writing experience, you know, but so much had changed in the field. In that five years, I had to completely rewrite the whole book, it was 80% new material. So, some of the big things in learning that have changed as well, really understanding how our brain forms and stores memories, which of course is really important for learning professional or not, we’ve really started to understand habits and how we create habit change and sustained behavior change. And then of course, Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety – that’s a psychological concept. It definitely has pinnings, in neuroscience in terms of how we respond to threatening environments, so lots of big changes. And it really changes how learning professionals create learning experiences for others. So it touches the whole training and education field. And that’s honestly then touches everything else, because we can become better leaders, we can become better managers, we can become better parents, better citizens, all through learning. So for me, it kind of then spins off into everything else.
Sue Bethanis 5:49
Right. So, what has changed then, specifically in the learning field, if you will, from neuroscience, I mean, there was, we were applying neuroscience to learning 10 years ago. So, what have you picked up in those 10 years, that’s different from like, take habit forming, for example, I mean, we use the book Leader Habit a lot. And, you know, I got, he did a lot of research to help us realize, gee, it takes 60 days to learn habits like we knew this, we knew this intuitively. I’ve been talking to people about two months for, I don’t know, 25 years, but I didn’t have the research, right. So, talk to us a little bit about how the neuroscience has actually helped us perpetuate this a bit more.
Britt Andreatta 6:31
Well, now the research shows that it’s actually numbers of repetitions, it’s not days, so it’s 40 to 50 repetitions, on average, it takes to change or establish a new habit. So, if you do that behavior every day, you’re gonna get there pretty quickly, multiple times per day, very fast, once a month, gonna take you a long time, you might not have been repetitions to do it. So that now gives learning leaders the ability to craft and design their learning experiences. So, we can build those repetitions in a room and get people on that pathway faster.
Sue Bethanis 7:01
So 40-50 days. Yeah.
Britt Andreatta 7:04
You can currently predict when the grumbling goes away. So that’s one thing, the research on memory around that we, our brain likes to attach learning to something we always already know. So, our brain has kind of file folders and scientists called them schemas. And then you can have an experience live in multiple file folders. But essentially, when we recall a memory, our brain is going back, finding that file folder and feeding that information up to us. And how it goes back is it’s tied to a sensory, it’s tied to a sight, smell, a sound, and taste. So, we can now use that information to code learning through the main senses. And also, I use it now, I never teach anything without building it around a metaphor or a schema so that I’m attaching learning to something people already know. And that makes it much more sticky. And therefore rememberable, which is what we want, we want people to be able to use that information later.
Sue Bethanis 7:56
Give me an example of a metaphor you would use with somebody.
Britt Andreatta 8:00
So I’ve built from my – So after I wrote those books, what surprised me was so many people started asking for training, and I built it for my own clients. But now I sell my training solution. So, for example, my change training is built around the metaphor of hiking or mountain climbing. You know what it is. So, then every piece of content is affiliated with that metaphor in some way. And then I use imagery, because our brain thinks in pictures, not words, to really help kind of anchor that in people’s experiences. And later, they can see one of the slides and tell me what the content was because I’m intentionally using the science of how our brain finds information to, to work that in an intentional way.
Sue Bethanis 8:43
I love that I love the images. That’s great. So, um, let’s talk a little about your book and some of your models. So, you’ve got the growth culture model and a three-phase model of learning. Tell us a bit about those, and then how we’re using those every day.
Britt Andreatta 8:57
Yeah, so I’ll start with the three-phase model of learning. I mean, I was taking all the neuroscience research and kind of breaking it down to there’s three phases, we learn something, we remember it, and then we do it, we change our behavior. So, learn, remember, do, but then that’s all housed within the context of psychological safety, because you need psych safety in order to take risks and make mistakes. So learning professionals would probably use that model, and it would help them figure out how to design and deliver the training for its optimal effectiveness. The growth culture model – that’s a model around what brings out an individual employee’s potential in a workplace and it’s a model that I teach managers and leaders so they understand the different levers they can push to bring out someone’s potential. And it’s around the metaphor of a tree and the employee being the tree. They’re sitting in psychological safety, the soil. So, everything comes from that. The trunk is their growth mindset and their workstyle, how they approach things, and then you’ve got their output and their skills. But then we’re really talking about managers or leaders are in the role of kind of the gardener or the orchard manager. They’re the ones that are responsible for creating the conditions for people to grow. And so, I also find that this particular model helps managers and leaders make that really critical pivot from being an individual contributor that has people reporting to them, to being the facilitator of other people’s excellence. And it’s really a mind shift that their job is now to create the conditions for others thrive, not to be a star producer themselves anymore.
Sue Bethanis 10:34
Yes, this is great. This is great setup for sort of mirroring. I’m going to skip over to Wire to Connect, because I love the voodle that you did on a connection. And I sent it to the people I just work with today, because we were talking basically, the premise today was hybrid culture, and how the first question I asked them is like, how are you connecting with your folks? So, they’re actually doing a lot of connection. But what I want to marry here is, how do we help people and be my whole thing is how do we be more intentional about the connection? I mean, I don’t think anyone’s going to say we, you know, you have the data, but no one’s going to argue that connection is unhealthy. I mean, the connection is helping, we want to be connected. I don’t think anyone would argue with that. But we have to be more intentional about it. So that’s where this this three-phase model comes in of learning. And how do we get people to do that? One of the things I did today with them which they got, which they liked is that there was actually like, everything I was doing with it was actionable, like I said, ‘Okay, so what are you going to do about you’, we said, ‘we heard all this noise, which one thing you’re going to do?’ That’s actionable. So that’s one way to do it. But tell me how you want to marry these how we with the idea that we want to want people to connect more in this zoom fatigue world? But how do we get them to do it?
Britt Andreatta 11:43
Yeah, so two things, I’m a firm believer that training has to be actionable. Otherwise, you can have a feel-good experience, but if you don’t actually drive behavior change training, it’s not worth the time and energy, so then we can apply that to anything and apply that to a change training, manager training, teams training. So absolutely, you know, we want people to know, things they can do to go back and make their team more connected, more productive, more positive, more inclusive. So first of all, it’s like I think people lean in more when they understand the why behind things. Science and neuroscience, because when I started describing these concepts, people immediately have an embodied memory of like, ‘Oh, I remember feeling that’, ‘I remember seeing that’, ‘I remember doing that.’ And then it’s about, again, getting real crisp about what are – you can’t flood people with too many things to do, right. So we have to be clear about okay, here are the key things you need to work on. Particularly with groups, you know, that I think the thing that drives it home for folks is the science on exclusion, and how damaging exclusion is. And the thing that blew neuroscientists away was that when they were studying exclusion, the pain center of the brain is what was lighting up on the MRI machines. Back that, but it turns out that human’s experience exclusion as a form of pain.
Sue Bethanis 13:01
Oh, my gosh, that’s awesome. That’s a great, that’s a great piece of data.
Britt Andreatta 13:05
Yeah. And social pain does not live in a different place than physical pain. There’s just- we’re so shocked that they thought well can – what happens if we give someone pain medication, and sure enough pain medication, you know, adjudicated the feeling of social pain. And this is one of the reasons I think we have an opioid epidemic is that people go on these painkillers for legitimate injuries, you broke your arm, you take that pain pill, it doesn’t make the break go away, it changes how your brain senses pain, and then it wears off and you take another pain pill? Well, while you’re on that pain pill for a legitimate physical injury, you’re getting this invisible, unspoken break from all your social pain, all the ways that you feel like you don’t fit in with your family or your community. If you’re a marginalized community, the ways in which your community is experiencing microaggressions or bias, you get a break from that. And then it’s time to cut off the pain pill because you’re healed. And yet, we don’t talk about all this other stuff. And so, when people understand how powerful exclusion is and how powerful inclusion is, all sudden, they’re really committed to working on it, and not just seeing it as a ‘Oh, yeah, check the box’ kind of thing.
Sue Bethanis 14:17
I’m gonna riff on this a bit. So, I would go so far to say, and tell me if I’m on the right track here, that part of exclusion and inclusion includes loneliness, the idea of exclusion causes loneliness, and pain. There’s another reason why people are doing these, on opioid epidemic, because we’re in the middle of a fricking pandemic that has caused a lot of loneliness and mental harm. I don’t know if that’s affecting our clients as much as other things in terms of loneliness. What I’m hearing you say is that there’s a connection between belonging and exclusion and connection, belonging connection with the opposite of exclusion loneliness. And it’s actually a physicality. So, talk with us more about that. And I guess that, whilst there, just say there’s if that’s causing the kind of pain and wonder people are in so much pain.
Britt Andreatta 15:17
Yeah, absolutely. And so I mean, we have an issue that I think is an issue in our society and the pandemic, just put it on 10x. Right. So, exclusion definitely causes feelings of isolation and loneliness. And then we know that the physical outcome of that is there’s it increases anxiety and depression, it increases illness, people just don’t have the same inflammatory response to things. The feelings are so uncomfortable, people start to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs. It leads to feelings of unworthiness and helplessness, and ultimately suicide. So, it’s really clear that exclusion, ostracism, isolation, loneliness are incredibly devastating. And then we now have an entire world where we were not physically together. Now, what’s interesting is we live in a hyper connected world, virtually, yes, yes, that’s right now, you know, lovely to meet you, Sue. But my brain knows I’m not really meeting with you, I can only see you from the collarbone up, you’re two inches tall, I can see my living room, I can see my backyard. So, my brain while we’re having this lovely communication knows we’re not really together. So, the problem is, when we communicate through a screen, our body ultimately does not count it as real human connection, even though we can have conversations and other meaningful things can come out of it. Which is why when you’re visiting, and many of us are starting to have this experience, I got to go to a conference last week. And it was just amazing to be around real humans in my tribe. When we get to be in person with other people. There’s just a level of relaxation and trust that you release. Yeah. And so, taking it to the rest of your question around in this hybrid remote world, teams that had had a lot of in person and trust building time with each other before they were separated, held in there pretty well. I’m really worried about all the folks who onboard and during the last two years, because while they’re very tasky with their team, and they may feel some sense of connection, their body didn’t get to anchor in all that stuff that happens when we’re in person. I mean, scientists don’t even still know how our brains achieve neural synchrony, how our brainwaves line up and stuff. There may be electrical impulses going through the air between our bodies that they can’t measure yet, nothing. We know pheromones play a role, and we lose pheromones on the screen. And even just right now, we’re 2d images, and our brain loses the ability to read those micro muscular differences. That tells us someone’s emotions. So, we lose so much. And yet we can be so productive. And I think the danger we’re in right now is, we have an illusion that we’re hyper productive, and we can’t quite see or measure all that we’ve lost, but we’re feeling it in our souls.
Sue Bethanis 17:57
I’m with you. I’m wondering though, while Zoom is not, or whatever want to call zoom, Google Meets, all of them, is not the best, I still think it’s better than phone and better than a lot of things. So, I mean, this having a pandemic 10 years ago would have been a very different thing. So, I think while it is 2D, we still get some of the pheromones, I guess.
Britt Andreatta 18:23
I call them good stuff. Yeah.
Sue Bethanis 18:26
So is neuroscience studying this in terms of like, what people are getting out of video?
Britt Andreatta 18:32
I mean, video is definitely better than just voice, and voice is better than just written text, right? Because all of these you start to see exacerbated layers of miscommunication and misunderstandings. I think the message for the world now is to find balance, right? And here’s what I talked about, in my book Wired to Connect, so much of what happens in those early meetings, when you bring a team together, that if you’re going to spend money on bringing people together, do it at the beginning when they’re building trust and getting to know each other. Once that’s in place, we can go long periods of time virtually and be fine. And then if there starts to be a lot of stress, or strain in the relationships, or tension and conflict, bring people back together because you’re using then all your biology to kind of help you communicate. With that said, technology is amazing and wonderful. I mean, I love that I get to connect with people around the world that I would never meet in person and connection. So it’s really about balance. You know, when we first went into the pandemic, a lot of learning leaders were worried that ‘Oh, once we push learning all online leaders are going to see the savings of that and never want to be in person.’ But good news is we all know that in person matters. We all feel it in our body. So, it’s now finding talents. So be judicious about when you bring people together. I’m just putting in the chat because some people are talking about my session that I did at ATV last week which was on the neuroscience as a purpose, I actually did it again today as a webinar for HR executive, the link lives on my LinkedIn. So go look for it and it was recorded and watch it for free. If you have to start a team virtually, which many of us have to do these days because we’re not in person you have to over index on get to know you activity. Because what we lost and where a lot of trust building happens is in those informal watercooler conversations. And those get lost when you go right into the agenda. And so, we have to build a way to create the virtual water cooler. Create times for people to share about what they did this weekend. And it’s all those little moments that we learn, oh, you have a dog. I do too. Or you saw that movie, I loved it too. Or oh my gosh, you know, those are all the moments where we learn about each other. And we have to intentionally build them back in a in a hybrid world and over index on them.
Sue Bethanis 20:50
Yes. So, I’m using the word attentional, you’re using over index, they’re both the same thing. I think what’s great about having a practice is that we get to hear from all these different people about what they’re doing and be able to share. It’s not trademarked, share what people are doing, I actually shared with the group today, something I learned the very beginning of COVID, it was probably like March 20, where a VP, who now is a coach by the way, said to me, you know, what are we’re gonna do like he says, ‘How are we going to connect?’ and that was, so that was March 20. And then a week later, when I saw him, he says, ‘here’s what we’re gonna do,’ he has a group of 200 people, he said, ‘we’re gonna have meetings from 9 to 12, and 2 to 5. That’s it. So, people can do self-care there. Of course, at that point, kids were like, all over the place, and people were crazed. And, you know, they were just people have kids, especially having a hard time. So, to me, that was just a wonderful way of creating connection, because you are saying, this is when you can connect, so allows people to not be all over the map. And that they could feel like they can have time to themselves. So, to allow the for self-care as well. He did that for a year until he left, and I think it’s a great idea. So, tell me a little bit about what you’re hearing from your clients, what you espouse as far as ways people can connect, and be and be over indexed on it, as you say.
Britt Andreatta 22:08
Yeah, so a couple things. I think when you’re bringing a team together, having a get to know you session where you’re not just jumping into the task and the project, great questions to ask people and I borrow these from Appreciative Inquiry, you know, ask people what their strengths are, ask people a project that they recently worked on that they’re really proud of, you kind of give people a chance to share their strengths and what they’re good at. And so that certainly get to know you stuffs, you know, questions about people’s personal lives, and what gives them a sense of purpose, and what their hobbies and interests are, and all that kind of stuff, you know, you have to find a balance because different people have different comfort levels with sharing. And so, you want to put that through a filter. But the kind of getting to know you and getting to know how you approach work, and what you’re good at are all great conversations.
Sue Bethanis 22:57
Conversation starters, just icebreakers. I mean, these are speaking questions. And they’re I mean, what do you watch on Netflix? That’s the favorite one these days? What are you binging on? So yeah, so lots of those kinds of questions. And there’s many of them, and we don’t have to be, we will never run out of them.
Britt Andreatta 23:13
No, but I do think it’s important to bring in the work strengths and things. Because people want to be seen and heard, we have a biology to prove our value to the group. Because even if it’s like me, if there’s value, my biology will settle down, because I’m less likely to be ousted by the group. So being a value to the group is really important. And so, when leaders set up the opportunity to have those conversations, and when we create a culture, where we do shout outs and kudos to each other, where we acknowledge each other, and not just focus on what went wrong. Those are all things that contribute to psychological safety and people being heard. Amy Edmondson has some really good stuff around like safety, I feel very fortunate that I have the only training that she has put her stamp of approval on. But she has five strategies that leaders need to do in order to create psych safety. And the first is, you know, just be accessible, you know, management by walking around worked, because you and I might talk about a work thing, but then I’ll be like, well, so there’s something I’ve been wanting to raise with you, because now I have access to so we have to recreate access in a virtual world, having office hours, having virtual drop boxes, those kinds of things where people can bring things forward. The second one is to acknowledge your own fallibility, which is to basically you have to pierce the barrier of power. And you got to do it intentionally by saying, Hey, I don’t know everything I’m counting on you to tell me or you have a different view than I do. I really want you to bring it forward. So, we have to create those opportunities and acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers so that they feel comfortable bringing it forward. We’re making it up as we go along. The third thing you’re having conversations is being intentional about digging deeper, you know, asking more about “well tell me more about that.” “What are we missing here?” “Can you share an example’. But it has to be truly with the tone of curiosity and not someone. The fourth one, and this is the hardest one is that when people do come forward with a critique, a question, mistake, you have to train yourself that the first words out of your mouth are ‘Thank you.’ Thank you for telling me that. And I literally set up scenarios in my training where they practice just that being their first response
Sue Bethanis 25:34
they’re getting triggered
Britt Andreatta 25:36
Absolutely. We all have an ego. And if someone comes to us with a critique or a question, it’s very easy to to get defensive. But if we get defensive, we shut down, it’s like safety, and people learn things. So that’s the fourth one, and probably the hardest, but the most important. And then the fifth one is to harvest mistakes for lessons. And to have a culture where instead of it being a shame and blame game, or sweep it under the rug, you actually say, Okay, we messed up, let’s dig in, what did we learn? What would we do differently? What? What can we gain from that? And if you treat it, as we learn, as we do things, of course, we’re going to try to figure it out. You know, I think the philosophy of just don’t make the same mistake twice is a great one. We want people to improve, we want people to hold themselves to a high standard. There has to be room for mistakes, too, and really valuable.
Sue Bethanis 26:28
So one of the things that another client said to me about a year ago, I think we were talking about how to create the watercooler and, you know, how do you do that? And so what he said, which I think, you know, again, it’s great that the stuffs coming from there things that they’re experimenting with. And he said, you know, after I have a team meeting, I pick up the phone and call somebody every time. I said you’re lingering, he said yes, I’m lingering, and I also will slack somebody. So, we picked up on this, and we talked about it some more. And I’ve been sort of sharing that with other people that is the watercooler when we go to meetings in person, we always linger after sometimes we’re rushing off, but I mean, even if we’re rushing off or maybe talking with somebody on the way or, you know, we’ll come in early, and we’ll talk to somebody ‘so hey did you just see my email?’ I mean that is so what we do, and we don’t have that now, because when we have one zoom to the next. So I liked that idea of lingering. I’m not sure what neuroscience says about that. But it is connection. It’s deepening some of the things, one of the things you’ve talked about is just psychological safety. What are some other things that you do to help people with the watercooler?
Britt Andreatta 27:41
I think it’s just to be intentional about it. Second, we just need to cut back on meetings, we’re in way too many meetings. During the pandemic, we went into more meetings and were not being productive. So, you got to be – when you take a 60 minute meeting and you make it 45 minutes. So, you take a 30 minute make and you make it 25. A it helps people just be able to focus but be then leave a little room for lingering. And B you acknowledge the fact that we just don’t need to be in so many meetings. I mean, really, my challenge to everyone is get rid of 30% of your meetings. Yeah. Or even 10% would be a huge thing. Sharp return. And I think right now, what I’m challenging people to do is separate the difference between the tasky work and some of that can be done asynchronously. Right? Online collaborations, people can be co working in there, from when do we need to be in person. And we need to be in person for the trust building difficult conversations, brainstorming, onboarding. Those are things where we need to be together. And so, then we can start to be really judicious around yes, we’re going to use in person too. The thing we’re seeing in the news right now is so many people saying like company forced me back to work. And I’m sitting in the office, and everyone’s still here. Right? So that’s dumb. Like we need to bring people together when it makes a difference and let people work remotely when they’re doing tasks and stuff. And that means we’re going to have to reinvent our workday.
Sue Bethanis 29:08
Yeah. And that’s what we spend most of our time talking about today. It’s like in this thing I just did, and what I’m speaking to a lot of people about, and one of my clients is like, we just got rid of the office, what do we do to connect? What do you think I said, what you tell me? What are you doing to connect and so we talked about it and it does need to be intentional. And it does need to come from the top to say, if the top says, Okay, you guys can do what you want, which is what people are pretty much saying in a lot of the – leave it to tech companies. The banks a little bit different. But Jamie diamonds be a little bit more specific about people coming back, but even he’s like, changed his tune a little bit. So, assuming that people are saying Do what you want, it’s putting it on the managers and actually we talked today about how it’s a burden, and it’s almost like it’s almost too much in a way but they would rather have it that way because they get to choose. What would you suggest as far as what you’re seeing as people coming back from off sites. once a quarter, once a month, people coming in and every Wednesday, people having their team meetings on Mondays and then coming in and doing more water cooler stuff on Wednesdays. I mean, these are all ideas that are floating around. And I mean, I’m almost like, do whatever, but just make it consistent.
Britt Andreatta 30:20
Yeah, I mean, there’s no one magic formula. So, I always like people to look at what’s your culture and context, right, it needs to fit for your group of people. But I think this conversation around what work is tasky and what work is connection and kind of thinking about it as two separate but equally important things. We’ve spent the last two years prioritizing tasks over relationship. And while some companies had banner years during the pandemic, they’re paying the price now and the great resignation, people feel disconnected, and they’re looking for something else. So, it’s really about looking at both of those pieces as equal and important. When you do an off site, you can kind of combine them, we can be tasky, and together. But when we’re in this remote world, we need to now make sure that the connection part doesn’t fall away. And I think that if you’re going to ask people to come to the office, then those are the days when meal service is provided. So, people can eat together. Those are the days when you’re not having a ton of meetings to make decisions. But you’re having more brainstorming, conflict resolution team building activities, because the person and I realized some organizations have people literally all over the world, and they may get together once a year, if at all right? That’s okay, just be super productive of the connection time when you’re together for that period of time. Because then it will create the fabric, it creates the connective tissue that connects together.
Sue Bethanis 31:45
Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of teams, of course that were remote before. You know, so they look into those teams, did you see what they were doing in terms of bringing people together? I think it’s really helpful. And actually, I liked the idea of having the relationship building on the task, and then that does a separating them. But being aware and being cognizant of the balance, I like that a lot.
Britt Andreatta 32:11
I want to say one more thing, which is, and I’ve talked about this in the book, there’s actually three types of teamwork that we asked teams to do. And it exists on a continuum. So, the most basic is cooperation, and then there’s coordination, cooperation, collaboration, and they get increasingly more complex, and they require higher levels of skill. If you have a group of people that are each doing their independent piece of that task, and they don’t really, they’re not too interdependent, they can probably be fine staying remote and not have a lot of stuff. But the minute you’re doing cooperation or collaboration, then those relationships need to be in good shape, because the definition of collaboration is there is conflict as people tussle with ideas and co-create something together. It’s built because of everyone’s input, well, then you need to have trust, you need to have, those relationships. It needs to be, you know, girded with that relationship stuff. So, the other thing to do is if you’re a manager or leader is to look at, what type of teamwork am I asking teams to engage in? And then surrounding them with the right resources? To be great at that level?
Sue Bethanis 33:24
Yeah. So coordination, cooperation, collaboration.
Britt Andreatta 33:27
Yeah. So yeah, it’s a continuum. So, coordination is when two functions in the business are completely independent from each other. They don’t interface but they might just communicate to each other just to give each other a heads up about something. But there’s nothing that they’re doing, what’s happening over in facilities has nothing to do at all with its what’s happening over and IT right. The next example, is cooperation, where they’re still doing their independent piece of a task. But the task might get done until it hands off. So, for example, if it is bringing in new laptops for everyone, or desktops, facilities might need to play a role in that to make sure that things are ready and they’re can be handled. So, there is interdependence. They’re kind of their distinct portion. Right? Right. When there’s collaboration, which is if you’re asking facilities in it to design a whole new way of, of working or designing our workspace around tech, then they’re gonna get together and they’re going to be tussling with ideas, and they won’t know how it’s going to turn out because it’s getting built from the input. And that’s the highest level of teamwork. We use the word collaborate a lot when we really don’t mean it. Collaboration, then you really need to be indexing on relationships because definitely trust has to be there for teams to treat it that way.
Sue Bethanis 34:51
I liked that. I liked that distinction a lot. So, any last words as far as what we can do with hybrid? And I mean, I think window for a hybrid return to work. It’s what do we it is hybrid. Some people are remote only, but they’re still going to come together for off sites?
Britt Andreatta 35:10
Probably yeah, and we’re not going to be able to put this genie back in the bottle like work chain. So, you need to be embracing hybrid work. Yeah, it is the future work experience. Absolutely. It’s the new way of working. So, it’s about embracing that and maximizing its strengths and counterbalancing its weaknesses. I think the other thing that I would add, and it’s something I’ve been talking about a lot lately is burnout, people are burned out. And so, if you’re not addressing burnout, while you’re trying to bring people together, folks are in bad shape. And until they have enough rest and play, those are the only two things that help you heal from burnout. And there are seven types of rest until people can get kind of fluffed back up. They’re not their best selves. And so, when they’re being asked to come back into the workplace, which we’ve all gotten out of the habit of we don’t have the stamina for feels kind of overwhelming. For many of us, particularly women and people of color, and LGBTQ folks, we got a break from the jerks in the office, we’ve been feeling safer and happier than we have in a long time. Right. So, who wants to go back into toxicity? Those are groups that are resigning at higher levels. So right, some of the things you have to think about is first of all, we got to help people recover from burnout, and I’ll pop into the chat box, I’ve done two webinars on that that might be helpful. There, then we can really see what state our workforce is in. But I think a lot of people are leaving their current jobs, because what happens with burnout is you just have apathy, you’re tired and you have apathy. So, things that used to feel good, like accomplishing a task, working with the team aren’t good anymore. And so, people are thinking, Oh, I must leave this job. They’re not realizing that it’s actually one of the symptoms of burnout. And if they can just rest and recover a little bit, some of that joy will start coming back.
Sue Bethanis 37:01
Yeah, I like what you said about that. I mean, I think people there’s a lot of people waiting around like thinking that we were going to keep going back. So, there was not this conscious effort to connect or conscious effort to relieve burnout because we kept waiting. Yeah, I think people get now that there’s no more waiting. This is it, we are in the future. And we’re in it. So let’s be more intentional about it. So, thank you again, Britt. I really appreciate it. This is a great amount of information. I want to just let everybody know you can find Britt on LinkedIn, of course. And our website is BrittAndreatta. You can also find her on Twitter at Britt Andreatta. Thank you and thank you for the resources on the webinars as well. I got a lot out of this. I’m going to send it out to a lot of our clients, for sure. And I really appreciate you being with us.
Britt Andreatta 37:59
Thank you so much. it’s been great talking to you and talking to the folks of you who joined us.
Sue Bethanis 38:03
Yeah. Thanks again, everybody. Wish you the best. Thanks. Bye