“Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.”
~Nido Qubein
We were with a team recently. A very stuck team.
The team had splintered and divided to the point that projects were slipping; people were feeling disrespected; work wasn’t getting done and certainly wasn’t getting done well.
In full disclosure, we were not optimistic about how far we could get them into a more functional team stance in the time we had with them.
We were brought in to help them strategize and plan for the future, but we knew we needed to be creative in our approach to break through before they could have a successful future.
We started the team retreat with the usual:
- grounding to bring us back into our bodies so that we could be present in the room and with each other
- team agreements for the session to guide actions, interactions, and even attitudes, so that conversations could safely and effectively happen
- personal sharing of experiences to remind everyone of the common humanness in the room
- refresher on all the ways our brains have evolved to make it harder for us to communicate well and work together – our negativity bias, our confirmation bias, the bias we have that we’re not biased, the fact that it takes us about 5 seconds to be triggered into fight, flight or freeze and at least 20 minutes to calm down
We started to guide the group into more task-oriented discussions and planning, which was a key objective for the time together, and the team pushed back. “Tasks don’t seem right yet,” they said.
So, we had them sit with each other more. To share even more vulnerably – their feelings, their experiences, the harm they’ve felt, the hurt they’ve endured, the hurt they’ve unintentionally caused.
The team openly shared and deeply listened. They stepped in when, before that moment, they would have stepped out. They gave grace when before they would have shut down and blamed.
It was a very full team retreat, and at some point, a few task-oriented conversations did happen. But not until the team had begun the first steps toward building a foundation of stronger relationships and deeper understanding and commitment.
We walked into this client project sensing where the team was and wondering how much further we could move them toward where they wanted to be, especially because of where they were starting from. As Nido Qubein said, their starting circumstances didn’t determine – or hinder – where they could go. It only determined where they started.
If you enjoyed this post, you can read more like it in our book, The Power of Thoughtful Leadership: 101 Minutes To Being the Leader You Want To Be, available on Amazon.
For help in moving your team forward, contact Robyn at rmcleod@chatsworthconsulting.com.
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