Slowly spiralling to a trusting team
Lynne here, navigating a spectrum of vulnerability
Heya Kate,
Your last email was such a treasure trove of resources! The concept of a ‘mind read’ - “ where you notice and make explicit the assumptions you are making about other people’s thoughts or motivations” - sounds so vulnerable and I can see that it would be completely transformative for a team. I’m imagining myself finding ways to frame what I am thinking so that I can be honest and still kind. I know that when the unspoken micro moments build up I have a tendency to become frustrated and, particularly in the online space, then struggle to maintain a general level of professionalism. What a relief to be forced to name the things out loud and fully meet my side of the frustration.
This technique for vulnerability has really got me thinking about real vulnerability in teams. Every team I’ve been part of talks about it as an aim, but I feel few have genuinely gone there. I’ve seen how transformative it is when we do. It’s the really vulnerable moments that have the biggest impact in building trust in a team.
That being said, I’ve also seen when vulnerability is too high on the agenda and things start to become derailed - the team spends more time talking about their emotional worlds than they do working on the things they’ve come together to work on. I’m imagining a spectrum of bringing vulnerability into the workplace:
At one end of the spectrum - vulnerability pours forth at breaking point. Like when a person is no longer coping and they have a breakdown. Or there is an underlying conflict that reaches a head and external facilitation process is needed to create the space and ability for those involved in the conflict to even talk to each other. Probably if the person/organisation gets to this point the team has already been significantly impacted and emotional upset has already gotten in the way of the team doing the things they’ve come together to do.
On the other end of the spectrum - everyone in the team is constantly vulnerable and the workplace becomes a place of constant processing. The risk of ‘letting therapy-speak invade’ is high if everything has the potential to be a ‘trauma’ and we need to ‘set boundaries’. As Maurice Mitchell writes “Discerning what is yours to hold and what is the collective’s is an essential life skill and fundamental to organisational work, collaboration, and meaningful engagement of others.” Or in permaculture terms ‘apply self-regulation & accept feedback’.
Somewhere in the middle we have an elusive sweet spot in which the organisation offers appropriate tools for both personal wellbeing (paid holiday, resources to access appropriate support), regular opportunities to share vulnerably in appropriate containers and good conflict processes when needed. Plus opportunities for celebrating together. And the emotional intelligence to know what tool is needed when.
Of course, that sweet spot in the middle is a moving target. What worked yesterday might not work today when the team, the work or the socio-economic backdrop changes. The task of spotting and holding when the team feels like it is slipping too far from balance undoubtedly falls to someone in the team with enough confidence/experience/seniority to identify it. In my junior working years I used to believe this was the kind of thing HR departments would do, but the reality I’ve observed is that the HR person or team isn’t involved in the day to day, and instead simply hold the bureaucracy of having employees. I’ve seen organisations employ a role like ‘Culture Lead’, but mostly I’ve seen that there is usually just one or two people in a team that have deep empathy and social awareness to be able to shine a light on tensions before they grow. This holds to the permaculture principle of ‘observe and interact’. The person/people that spot this will be 100% inside and interacting with the team.
A lot of this feels obvious, so why is it often so hard in practice? Perhaps it is just hard because balance is always elusive. But I also wonder if the concept of ‘professionalism’ has a role to play? Professionalism, to me, is a double edged sword. On the one hand it helps us to put aside the petty differences and emotional baggage and focus on the tasks and projects at hand. On the other hand, it can be stifling and suffocating when emotions build and it feels like there is nowhere to put them. Most teams that I’ve worked with/in have had virtuous aims of bringing more vulnerability in the workplace and having processes to share deeper drives/feelings/concerns. But often meeting time is limited and we don’t get to scratch the surface. My sense is that many of us are worried about letting down some of that professionalism wall to have a vulnerable conversation because they are worried about what will come out if they do - worried about what we’ll say or do that we just can’t take back. Professionalism becomes part of the armour we wear to avoid vulnerability. In my experience taking off that armour can be messy. The words and/or emotions that come out can be big and that feels ugly and scary. How do we make that okay enough, while keeping it professional enough?
I can see the permaculture principle of ‘use small and slow solutions’ is valuable here, as we slowly spiral our way to a more trusting team together. And I hear Bayo Akomolfe’s words in my head “the times are urgent; let us slow down”.
With slow and vulnerable love,
Lynne
PS. This article by Maurice Mitchell is absolutely full of gold. I referenced it in passing above but it deserves a fuller read.
PPS. I’m feeling a little dose of embarrassment for writing a whole post about organisational vulnerability and not referencing Brene Brown. Another post 🙂