Our work with leadership teams begins with the assumption that even sophisticated executives and professionals share a common learning challenge.  This challenge arises from the gap between who leaders think they are and how they actually behave. 

 

In short, we know that: 

 

• Most of us sincerely value transparency but, under pressure, reflexively withhold information that would matter to others

• We say we value listening, but we tend to hold on to our preconceptions even in the face of considerable evidence that they are wrong

• We value open agendas, but we tend to concoct strategies for managing complicated interactions and deploy those strategies on people without telling them what they are

• We believe that people make sense of the world differently, but we tend to act as if anyone acting or thinking differently than us is wrong, bad, stupid, or in some way up to no good

• Worst of all, and perhaps most importantly, we tend to be unaware of the discrepancy between what we believe and value and what we actually do

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Because high performance teamwork is built on a foundation of skilled learning, trust, and situational awareness (Losada & Heaphy, 2004), leaders and their teams predictably underperform their potential until they discover and close these gaps. 

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For these reasons, we start every engagement by asking each team member to participate in a brief, video-taped role-play of a common yet challenging workplace scenario.  We then watch and debrief these videos as a group, so that each member of the team can literally see their own (as well as their colleagues') reflexive habits. This experience serves as a catalyst for the exploration of team dynamics, with each team member discovering how she or he unconsciously contributes to the group processes that undermine collective success.   This new awareness serves as a springboard for experimentation with mindful alternatives to reflexive behaviors seen "on tape."   Ultimately, these new, learned behaviors help professionals move from being experts who defend, judge, and dismiss to being leaders who learn and co-create with their colleagues.