The Science of Thriving Teams - Chemicals for Better Conversations (With Simon and Amanda Cookson)

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When you've got that one person that everybody knows, it's really difficult to work with. And often that person is the one with very specific expertise. So it's your kind of rock star who's like a little bit awkward to work with and everybody 's got this work around for stuff and it creates so much more energy, waste, so much more efforts. And yet if people could just be open and honest about where they're at, what they need, what they're experiencing and own their experience. So it's much easier for people to hear, you know, when you did, XI felt, 'cause i'm owning what i'm feeling from it than to say you are awkward, you are difficult, you are doing it wrong. Yeah. So it's really about, I think, gifting people with phrases and ways of communicating, that helps. Welcome to the Product Agility Podcast, The missing Link between Agile and Product. The purpose of this podcast is to share practical tips, strategies and stories from world class thought leaders and practitioners. Why, I hear you ask? Well, I want to increase your knowledge and your motivation to experiment so that together we can create ever more successful products. My name is Ben Maynard and i'm your host. What has driven me for the last decade to bridge the gap between agility and product is a deep rooted belief that people and products evolving together can achieve mutual excellence. Hello and welcome to the Product Agility podcast. This is an extra special episode for wow. One major reason is the most people we've ever had on episode at one time because today i'm joined by a Co host. Is that OK stuff? that's OK Yeah. Steph. Ashmore. Steph, who is the producer of the podcast and today is coming to the front. Of the microphone to interview Simon and Amanda Cookson from Northern Value Creators. Hello to you both, Brilliant. Now before we begin, I think it's worthwhile us giving a bit of well, say ask me, giving a bit of introduction into who you all are. So let's do that shall we. So since two thousand and sixteen the team at northern valley creators have been coaching technical specialists and experts to become better founders and leaders co founders amanda and simon have poured twenty years experience working in tech and education into how best to develop leaders their career highlights include founding successful digital startups leading award winning customer experience programs building the U KS first digital bank and winning and managing multimillion pound digital transformation projects husband and wife team amanda and simon use a frank and funny look at their own differences and biases to bring to life with different ways we see the world and how we can use this to have better conversations sharing insights from neuroscience particularly the two neurochemicals that influence every conversation amanda and simon cookson explain how to create a positive impact. From any conversation, Amanda and Simon, it's brilliant to have you on the podcast. Welcome. Thank you for having us. Oh, well, no, you've made the time to be here and i'm looking forward to learning because today's topic is Steph. What is today's topic? today's topic is conversations of thriving teams. You mentioned in the intro the two neurochemicals that influence every conversation. i'd love to know what they. So when we are communicating with anybody, there will be two neurochemicals at play. One of them is oxytocin and when oxytocin is high, we are then in the mood for connecting. Trusting oxytocin is thought of as their kind of cuddle chemical. Originally it was thought it was only women that had oxytocin, but it's present in all of us and oxytocin gets elevated when we share a meal together and when we feel that kind of connection and In Sync with others. And then on the other side we have cortisol and cortisol is a stress chemical and cortisol gets elevated when we are irritated, aggravated, triggered. And the more cortisol we have in our system, the more we don't want to play nicely. We don't want to connect, we don't want to share. So when we are talking about these two chemicals with people, you know, delivering training and all the rest of it talk about flipping our lid because it's a nice simple way of thinking about this. So when we able to access our whole brain and do our best thinking. So this is when we have great creative ideas and we know just what to say and we're in flow. We are able to connect to all parts of our brain and access particularly our prefrontal cortex, which is this bit behind our forehead where we do all of our best thinking. And as soon as cortisol gets elevated, as soon as we get triggered or activated, we basically flip our lid, which means that as cortisol increases, we can't access our prefrontal cortex and we're not able to think creatively, have great ideas. And so, you know, people are like, oh, that's a lot of information. they're around to think about this. Have you ever been in an argument or conversation with somebody and after you leave and you're thinking about it, your brain goes, should have said this, should have said that, yeah. The reason why you don't think about them at the time is because of cortisol. We cannot do that best thinking it literally. The neurochemical costs are literally. Cuts off access to the parts of your brain that allow you to do that more kind of sophisticated, creative thinking. So it's not that it's nothing that you're doing that's wrong. it's not that you're very good in high pressure or high stress situations. It is literally how our brains are constructed that cuts off access to this small part of our brain. And I think that is really liberating to people, isn't it, when we talk to them because, oh God, I thought it was just me. I thought I was really awful in these situations. I thought it was my fault. You know, we have a tendency to kind of blame ourselves. I thought it was my fault. It was just me. But it's all and this into play between these two chemicals, this kind of dance, if you like, between oxytocin and cortisol is going on all the time. it's gone in our heads right now. And I think having an awareness of that is really quite liberating to us because if we're aware of, we then have a choice. And that's one of the big points we want to get across in our conversation is that we all have a choice in every single conversation that we're having. Whether we want to have the conversation, we want to choose language in a way that increases the oxytocin. So we have access to that creative, innovative, collaborative thinking and working or we want to increase that course at all, which is makes it puts us in that fear and protection mode. So we do all have this choice. we're talking about these indicators within teams. So how could you identify it? And is there anything you could do as part of that team to try and turn the lid over, like flip it back? I like that. To answer the first bit, what would you say in people when they're flipped? So if you think about stress responses, you've got flight, fight phone, which is that kind of connecting, you know, and people pleasing and freeze. So when people are stressed, they may not do the same thing. So for some people it's that kind of like checking out glazed, not listening. What did you say? For some of them, in that kind of Free State, it might be typing away on the keyboards when they should be listening, looking at their phone, looking out the window, Anything that kind of gives that sense of distraction away from this space, it can be when people are stressed, just racing off to go and do a whole bunch of other stuff, you know, let's just crack on with him. Either way, it's all of that energy. Yeah. it's often things that you don't because you kind of think stress responses, don't you? it's like shouting, angry. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. Or, you know, being very emotional, you know, crying, being upset. we're actually in teams and in the workplace there's often a lot more subtle things, like constantly or regularly not. Turning up to meetings or being a bit late or being late to meetings is a great one, isn't it? you're saying i'm too busy to attend? it's a classic stress response that we may not think about. Also, changing the subject a lot is a good one. it's a good distraction. So changing the, oh, I want to bring, you know, crashing the agenda, bringing something else to the table. And that's a distraction technique so you don't talk about the topic that is triggering your stress response. And you've also got things like when people respond and you get a thousand words in about two seconds. So that really, that is a stress response. So it really depends on the individual and what's going on for them. And I would say that the most powerful thing that you can do is focus on you. So when I work with leaders and we talk about how to communicate more effectively, how to get teams to be more connected, people naturally want to go into the space of them. What did they need to do? What must I make them do? And actually, if it starts with your behavior, the way you communicate, the way that you present activity will then trigger the response in others, because we have this kind of mood contagion. So if you go in feeling nervous or anxious and you're a little bit more boisterous and judgy and limiting in terms of what other people can do, you're instantly going to flip the lids of the rest of your team and start to create these moods. So it's all about starting with yourself and starting to communicate from that space of what can I say that will help people stay in that whole brain state and will keep people with elevated oxytocin rather than then that sort of cortisol stress response. Yeah, in terms of that practical, what can you do? it's about recognizing that if your natural response to people getting stressed and flipped during, say, a meeting or you've got people together because you've got something you need to achieve, maybe it's some sort of planning meeting or where decisions have to be made. I think a lot of the time our instinct is to kind of plow on, you know, to reckon, God, you know, they're behaving a bit weirdly. they're not really contributing. They seem bit disengaged. But i'm just gonna, you know, plow on because we need to get this agenda done. We need to make these decisions. it's been hard to get everybody together, so i'm just going to continue, actually, if everyone 's in that flipped state, so therefore cannot access their more sophisticated thinking functions. So you were literally, what is it, ten key points? Yeah. Well, there I saw some recent research and again, it depends on the individual. So it can be up to twenty five by key points. Yeah. Which for some people is going to make a huge amount of difference. You know, you're in this state and it's not. Again, it's not something. There is your fault that you need to feel shame about, because actually it's an ancient defence mechanism that cuts off our higher brain functions, which is telling us just get out, just get out. Because there's a tiger over there and it's about to eat you. So don't think about it, just get out. So what? The best thing you can do is actually recognize that the people are literally more stupid. they're definitely not their their best selves, they're not doing their best thinking. So instead of planning on with the the agenda, reprioritise the agenda and put at the top of the agenda, getting everyone to feel a little bit less stressed and they can chip in as well. In this state, people are more reactive, So you know, people are more likely to jump down each other 's throats, people are more suspicious. Your negativity bias goes up. So if you are trying to discuss something really contentious and people are in this state, the best thing that I advise people to do is actually to stop. And I think that too often we think right we've booked this hour, we've got to work through says no just about sticking with the agenda. it's also I think. Being brave enough to say right, it looks like this is creating quite a bit of heat and spiciness in our thinking. Why don't we all just take a break? Yeah, why don't we come back to it tomorrow? Why don't we go for a walk and then come back? Because by giving people that opportunity to stop and have a break, you can then help them get back into that whole brain state, which is what you want. Because that's My best ideas communicate the best and want to share and connect and work well together. One of the things I want to really pick up on was the point you said about modeling the behavior. Now this because this is something in delivery management, program management, like at that level, right, where you're working with a team, but you've got the constraints of the organization above you and you're trying to work with the team maybe on the same level and it can feel really hopeless in that level. Like you can't affect change. You know maybe the reason why people are so stressed is because the organization 's just it's that kind of environment. But as that team coach, team leader, delivery manager, project manager, whatever, you can actually model the behavior and that then has an impact on the people around you that you see every day. So if you're going into conversations with curiosity and openness and a calm and high oxytocin whole brain, can you then have that? Will that then be reflected back to you? i'm assuming what you yes is the answer. Yeah, a hundred percent i'm nodding which isn't very helpful in a podcast is it yes a hundred percent So the results that you get the reaction that you get all starts with you so one of my can i use fruity language on this let me give you an example then of a senior leader that i worked with that was not getting the traction that he wanted from his team his team were not thriving they were under a lot of pressure and you know when you were talking about well what do you do when the organization is in a mess and there's so many things you can't influence so this was exactly where this leader was and i started working with him on his behaviours and what he wanted and all the rest of it and he actually boiled down his key chains that he wants to asking himself a question and this is where the spicy bit is what have i done this week where i was a dick OK and a dick for him was where he was talking over people not listening being aggressive forcing an agenda you know all those things that we've just been talking about and it would then reflect and think about oh gosh i did it here i did it there you know what could i have done instead and then once he got that bit so that was working really well he would then look at his diary for the week coming up and he would ask himself when am i likely to be a dick and what could i do instead so it was pre planning the behaviour and the way he wanted to be as well as doing that retrospective and OK so when did i have those misses and the more he did the more he was able to think about how he wanted to behave and the less things he was kind of retrospectively thinking gosh i wish i hadn't done that so there there is a way regardless of you know if you're listening and you're thinking god you know my situation is really tricky this won't work for me it will because everything starts from your behaviour just a simple question like that you know when was IA dick well or when was everyone else a dick you know what was going on and what can i do differently it will make a massive transformational difference 'cause it does all start from you and the behaviours that you trigger and activate in others i think there's a really interesting additional point with in that scenario where you've got the you're in an environment you're trying to create a great team environment and a trick great team culture. Which is absolutely the right thing to do. But you're operating within that complex suboptimal organization, shall we put it kindly. You know, we've all been there. We all know what, what that feels like. And yes, it is about all of the good stuff that you mentioned there. Steph and Amanda added to. I think there is a little bit of a kind of trap that you can fall into there at what is often called that toxic positivity where you feel that you've got to take on that position as that that senior person where you've got to say it'll be everything will be all right. You know it's not as it's not that bad or you've got to put on that positive that cause a positive shine onto everything. And what that does is that can if that is overplayed and it becomes something that is overused, it can make people feel unheard and ignored and their value yet their opinions unvalued, which is a massive turn off for teams. You know, so often in the work that we do, one of the root causes of the team that's not thriving are there are people that feel that they've not been heard. And to kind of just always paint the positive side makes people feel that they've been ignored. So this kind of leads to this idea that we really like, which is the emotion is data, OK So in businesses, we're looking for for data points all the time. we're looking for insights. we're gathering data from systems, from clients, from customers and we're using that data to get better. Think of this concept of using emotion as a data to do the same thing. So if people are complaining, people are pointing out negative things, people are feeling frustrated, people are feeling upset, people feeling powerless. it's about not feeling afraid of those kind of emotions and therefore trying to squash them or ignore them or put them to the side. it's actually how can we use that as data? what's that telling me about how the team, 's feeling? levels of trust levels of engagement and motivation in the team and what can i do about it what could we do about it given the context of how people are feeling yeah i'd add into that as well the so when i think about teams that are not successful or are not thriving and not communicating well there's often this reluctance to include the difficult messages and the difficulties so the very worst thing you can do if you're in this kind of really hard place is to pretend that's not true and it's to take. Your reality as data, take frustration as data and think about OK so if that's where we are, if that's how we're feeling, what can we do, what is possible. So if we're not recognising the things that we're not doing well and we're not comfortable emotionally to be able to say I don't know how to do this or this isn't something I do well, you're not allowing yourself to learn. So by creating that environment in which people can say it's fine that I don't know how to do this. And I suppose it gets very difficult when we start to look at our emotional side. And if it's a lot harder to say I don't know how to self reflect and be self aware than it is to say I don't know how to use Excel. You know, like these are different things and I suppose the difference is when it becomes more personal. But it makes me think of the work that some of the work me and Ben do around, like training and how to get people to open up to training and being just being comfortable with that. I suppose in a team environment if someone goes on a training course it's very different. But in a team environment people can be quite reluctant to recognise that they need to learn. Absolutely, yeah. And i'm going to say that I think there's a really high cost in teams. But when you've got that one person that everybody knows, it's really difficult to work with. And often that person is the one with very specific expertise. So it's your kind of rock star who's like a little bit awkward to work with and everybody 's got this work around for stuff and it creates so much more energy waste. So much more efforts. And yet if people could just be open and honest about where they're at, what they need, what they're experiencing and own their experience. So it's much easier for people to hear when you did, XI felt, because i'm owning what i'm feeling from it, than to say you are awkward, you are difficult, you are doing it wrong. So it's really about, I think gifting people with phrases and ways of communicating, that helps. And I think we're talking now about self reflection and I have a bit of a mantra in my coaching and that's that nothing changes without awareness. So a key trigger point for you going from where you are, which is not achieving everything you want, things not being as you wish they would be to having the team that you want, the conversations that you want, the success you want is in awareness. And I would say all of that is down to you and what are you doing that is creating that impact, that is creating that disconnect. And for the leader of the team, they need to model that and they need to be having conversations like I would like to be the best leader you've ever had. What am I doing that works? What am I doing that doesn't work? And what can I do that would be even better if and once the leader starts having conversations where people can chip in and say, well actually you never give us time on agendas to reflect and bring stuff in. So it's all you talking. what's the point of us saying here we'd like to contribute to as soon as you can have those kind of conversations, makes it really easy for everyone else to start having those conversations. So that modelling and leading is really important. Is there not a huge hurdle to overcome just to get to that point? Because I can think of ten fifteen leaders, senior managers i've worked with the last twenty years, they've absolutely decided to do something like that and just spooked everyone and actually sent things in the opposite direction. So I take what you're saying, but is there not some kind of groundwork that needs to be done rather than just turning up one day and saying, oh, i'm like i'm behaving now totally differently. Surely there's something then that comes before that for our listeners to take away something like practical, if they're thinking, well I am that leader or i'm that team member or i'm that coach who has to go and support, what is that groundwork that needs to be done to enable those conversations? I I think that that term groundwork is a really good one and it's really, absolutely important. You can't just turn up, you know, you can't just read a leadership book over the weekend, turn up on Monday morning and completely alter your behaviour in a utterly different way than you did on Friday afternoon. Because what's that going to do in everyone 's head thinking back to that cortisol, your oxytocin conversation. We often use the term red and green conversations because it's really easy. So a oxytocin conversation. So that's that kind of connection. Creativity, collaboration is a green conversation. The court is all the opposite is red. that's really simple kind of traffic IT way of seeing it. If that leader rocks up on Monday morning and is appears to be a completely different person, is that a red or green? it's a red, yeah. Because it's like, whoa, what's happening here? So that groundwork 's really important. And this is, that's a really nice segue Ben into another one of the things that we think is really important and this is that kind of setting those expectations and working on definitions of good. So a big part of that ground work is to work as a team, not just as a leader coming in, dropping something random on a team is as a team working together to define how we want to work together. And if I can chip in, if you think about this from the space of Co creation. So if the leader goes in and says I want to work differently, I want to work in a more brain friendly way, or you know, however they want to frame it, this is what i'd like to be doing. What are your ideas? How can we do it together? Then what you're doing as a team has been shifted collectively and you start with where people are AT and move from there in increments. So think about retrospectives. that's about reflecting, isn't it? On what went well and what would be even better if. And it's just using that language, then about all aspects of the team, from how we run our one to ones to how I lead you to how we dish out training and development. So how much progress and learning do you think you're making? If every conversation starts to become framed in that way and you do it from that space of Co creation, that initial discomfort will move into comfort and familiarity. And what you also have to bear in mind is that for each individual, they are on their own individual journey. So for some people being asked how would you like me to be a better leader will be the scariest question they've ever been asked, and they will have no comfort at all in answering that. And for other people, they will lean in. So there's a huge movement now going on in those kind of key thought leaders about the future of leadership. Which is around personalized leadership. So as you manage each individual, you think about what does that person need to help them be the best they can be in moving to high performance? And so that sense of equality, yeah, i'm going to be consistent and the same with everybody isn't helpful because we're all different thinkers and we respond differently. And so that shift becomes, well, what do I need to do for Ben? What do I? A bit more about equity than equality, hundred percent Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Ben. Yes, Yes. So right now we've been having lots of conversations about this. We had a Lady Magali on the podcast back in, actually. It was interesting because it was one of the and the Stefan that if you saw this, but the stink it kicked up on tik tok was quite was was interesting for us because the first time we'd had about six or seven comments of people really disagreeing. I didn't see you. Yeah. Yeah. So it's worth checking out the project you see podcast from tik tok Find a video from Magali and in January because there was lots of people kicking off about just just kind of things which I don't think a lot of us perhaps would agree with if i'm honest with you. But it was interesting to see actually, yeah people don't understand between equity and equality. And I think maybe what's missing link for me at the moment is i'm thinking of the people listening and all of this is great and works if there's a motivation for change, but how would you do a situations where there is a perception from one person that the team is thriving, Whatever thriving means in that context? But then for others, there is a perception for the team isn't thriving and so because of that, one set of people has a motivation for wanting to do something differently and then the other set of people don't How do you deal then with that mismatch in motivation for the behaviour changes necessary? I love that question and I recently did some studies on the neuroscience of motivation and change and what I hadn't realized and i'm it's like guilty confession. When I LED teams, I would have the people that I loved were the people who were like so open to change, so enthusiastic. And then they 'd always be the grumpy git hey whatever it was the answer was no and what i learned in in this neuroscience of change is that as individuals the way our brains are wired i just think it's really fascinating will mean that you will either lean into this change is positive so they gave the example which is about if you brush your teeth. you're gonna have fresh breath and they're gonna be white and sparkly and you're gonna have this diamond smile and then you also then have people who if you had if you brush if you don't brush your teeth you're gonna have bad breath and no one 's gonna want to speak to you so depending on the way your brain is wide you'll either be motivated by the positive a promised land of these sparkly teeth Or you will be motivated by not wanting to have bad breath. And quite often as leaders, when we're trying to motivate the team, we will motivate them in the modality that we are infused by. So hands up confession Amanda Cookson is motivated by the promised land. And whenever somebody gives me a, if you don't do this, this will happen. My brain said, yeah, but that will never happen to me. So i'm literally not interested. It bounces off me. And so I think that when you have individuals who are saying i'm not motivated by this change, i'm not excited by this change, what we often do is we don't want to speak to them. We avoid them. It makes us feel uncomfortable. And what we actually need to do is lean in and be curious and say, OK well tell me, tell me what's going on for you. What is it about this change that you think isn't needed? And really listen, Because the more you listen, the more you understand, the more you discover and expand you will start to get. There may be an aspect that they feel is absolutely brilliant. There may be something that they are worried about in terms of that change that they'll lose and you can. Start to frame that change in a way that creates connection for everybody, because one message will not land for everyone. And that was something that before I did that study, I really didn't realize. I just thought some people were difficult and some people. That that then brings back to the equity and equality thing because often when we're going through change, if there's like some sort of strategic change that's going on within an organization, there is a an overwhelming priority to standardize the communication. So everybody is told the same thing in the same way at the same time because that is fair and that is equal. So therefore that's the right thing to do. Actually what the neuroscience is telling us is that no, you need different messages for different people and do that personalized communication through. You know what excites me about all of this is that it gives us the opportunity to re evaluate and reframe our view of management because you know, management in the last kind of ten fifteen twenty years maybe gets a bad rap, doesn't it? it's bureaucratic, it's a bottleneck. You know the the, this the self organizing team as they gold standard. I think we've got an opportunity to reframe management. Because of this personalization point and who is best placed to thinking about this personalization from a motivation, engagement and learning and performance perspective. But it's the manager. Yeah, and saying is that you know if you were issuing some change that you'd write eighteen different messages and give one to each person. This is more about having messages available that have been designed to appeal to different types of thinkers and different types of people. So some people need the detail, some people do not. Some people need the context and the why behind it, some people do not. And it's really being mindful of that because I think if you've got people who are really not leaning into a change, it will be because there's an aspect of it that they don't understand and that hasn't been communicated effectively with it. And I think to kind of go back to ben 's point on the groundwork and the hurdles, so before we even get to that point, we're talking about personalized leadership, I think is a fantastic way of putting it. And we mentioned really early on that we need to know the individual, but that takes time. And I think the core in many organizations, the core crooks of the problem. Is not having value in things like coaching. And they're only focusing on that managerial aspect of how much are you putting out, how much work are you getting done rather than are you taking time to have a one on one with your team to understand that person so you can then understand whether they're a positive or a negatively motivated person. And then when you understand each person in the team have a better impact going forward, which eventually leads to more output because everyone is happier. I think if we're talking about what is what needs to be overcome in the first place, it's organizations and leaders who value and working with the individual rather than just keep cracking the whip and trying to force people into doing the work. it's just going to chip in because I think if someone 's listening, like they might be thinking, Oh my gosh, that sounds like so much work. i've got, like the projects I need to deliver, i've got all this pressure stuff I need to do. i've got so many people in my team and now I need to know them all intimately. How on earth am I going to do that? And So what I encourage people to do in terms of that coaching aspect is be lazy. Yeah, you don't need to be psychic. I don't need to study Ben in depth and know everything about him. I just need to ask him questions. And the more questions you ask, the more the individual will tell you everything you need to know. So this isn't about people writing, you know, lengthy dossiers on each person. it's actually about taking the time to just ask questions, be curious, and to one the other person rather than to tell them stuff. let's think about what what we were talking about today, the conversations that thriving teams have. Actually, one of the most important things that a thriving team does is they don't talk at all. They listen. And listening is one of those things. Well, we all know how to do that. All you know, it's just something we do. it's instinctive, it's we just do it. But actually developing those listening skills, particularly for understanding, for empathy and for making sure that the person that you're listening to feels heard, you know, so, so things like repeating back the little phrase, which is i've heard you say, and then repeat back what they've said, that is such sounds so simple, doesn't it? But remembering to do that. Particularly in those more difficult, more emotional conversations is so powerful because it makes the other person think, oh, they've heard what i've said. And that goes, you know, an awfully long way to giving that person what they needed from the conversation and making them feel valued to making them feel included, making them feel that they belong. And therefore, if you've got those things, you've got engagement, you've got motivation. It sounds what we're alluding to here, Mrs. i'm the i'm express my opinion on this a little bit here, is that what the conversations that thriving teams need to have are often coaching conversations and the help those conversations happen. The types of behaviours you want to see in a thriving team are facilitation behaviours. But then I suppose within that there's also a situation where you have to appreciate that not everybody has an understanding of what kind of system they're operating in. I at the moment, I feel like I should be the leader and when everyone else thinks actually this is just a opportunity to be creative and innovative and just come on lots of different ideas. Or this is a situation where I feel it's really well understood and we see to come up with some tasks and go ahead and work together and do those, but someone else feels actually nervous is again the time to be creative and to explore things that's going to annoy me. So, so as those group dynamics, an appreciation of those, but feel like the conversations that thriving teams have perhaps is around for for dynamics within the team and they are sounding more like coaching conversations than they are what we would expect to be, which is maybe more task focused. Well, yeah. And I think if you have stuck too much in the space of task, you're not thinking about the people that need to perform the task and so in that space. Of helping teams thrive more, I think, doing some work around thinking preferences and those differences. So knowing who the kind of verbal immediate think is, Helping people understand whether they are more focused on subjects only the context, all of those things you know, people 's evidence filter how people see difference all of these things influence whether somebody wants to expand the conversation or bring it. down whether they are getting fixated on a tiny little aspect that no one else is particularly bothered about and so once you can start to have that understanding of how we are and what our individual strengths are you can bring that into the conversation and you can start to share and say things like amanda i know that you love to expand and expand and expand but i think we've got everything and it's time to start moving into well what are we gonna do and to deciding and so it's that ability to really work with each other so that you haven't got some because the thing the issue is then that you've just described there is if somebody 's no no no no no no no there's more i wanna keep expanding i'm not ready and they're holding on to that and instead of expressing it they're doing this kind of passive aggressive behaviours that aren't moving the team forwards and instead of making that conversation really unproductive, there's always a danger when a task conflict is being masqueraded. there's actual relationship conflict. So it isn't that not agreeing on the task, that's actually because i'm pissed off with you today or this week or this month. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think. I mean there's there's a time and a place isn't there and it's about dialling up and dialling down, having your people focused in some settings, dialled up and then in other settings having your tasks and and it's all it all goes down to just good team practices, you know, having well set out meetings. What is the purpose of the meeting? When will we know when that purpose has been achieved And you know if we can achieve that in the first four minutes, awesome, let's call, let's call the meeting to close. it's those, it's all sorts of things and that expectation setting, isn't it? So people understand, but I think as well that there's also recognizing that for some people in your team, they need time to have a purpose meeting. Yeah, And so if you dictate too much and restrict the conversation too much. Then although that will make the task focus people really delighted, it will leave the more relational context people frustrated because there's more that they want to say and share and talk about. So again, it's it's having that outlet, isn't it, to say, look, OK there's something we need to decide and you know the business has said we've got to make this decision by three o'clock this afternoon. So therefore we've got this constraint. So what we need to do is focus on that to meet that constraint. But what we'll do is we'll get back together at a later time and have a more expansive discussion about the topic, which will then be able may be able to build in later or influence the decision making later on. So it's not forgetting those needs, but it's right time, right place you'll be. we're glad to bring the temperature to a close, aren't we, Steph? Yes, that was just about to recap. we've mentioned about indicators of a thriving team. We were looking for teams that listen, teams that know one another. You need a little bit of time for that. And new teams or teams that are constantly changing and possibly going to struggle with getting some of these points in the. there's one big thing that I want to take away. it's Simon. I think it's something that you said because it's a common thread that's going to come through a number of episodes now, which is. If something isn't working, then it's you need to look at you first, because what you are doing is kind of the way you're communicating. The way you're presenting yourself as in is then affecting another person and causing them to behave in a way which is either conscious or or not conscious. But either way it you're the thing that has kind of invoked that reaction. So actually, as always, the work kind of starts with us. And there's so much that I would love to keep on talking to you about. And we're talking about elephants and riders who film of elephants and riders from a book with the Happiness Hypothesis. you're a lady called Julie Dirksen on the podcast and she's just written a new book called Talk to the Elephant, which is about designing learning for behaviour change. And it's all based around this idea the the rider is our conscious fault, the elephant is everything else. And we spend too much time thinking that we can talk to the rider. But actually we did talk to the elephant because the elephant that controls our behaviors, not our conscious fault because they're like you're saying, Amanda, just relating the same logically logical argument to everyone. you'd think, oh, everyone 's gonna get on board of this. But unfortunately, whilst our conscious minds may be aligned understanding of logical argument, but all of our elephants are different. And they're all going to be trying to put us in different directions. there's so much more we could have spoken about. But really, thank you for coming on and sharing your your insights with us all. If people want to find out more about both of you, would LinkedIn be a good place or is there somewhere better? No, LinkedIn is great. we're we're really active on LinkedIn and try to approach LinkedIn from that perspective generosity. So we're we're always sharing, we're always asking, we're always listening. So yeah, connect with us on LinkedIn and join the conversation. Awesome. Well, we'll make sure that your profiles are in the show notes and you're gonna be coming back for another episode where I believe we'll be talking about leaders and growth conversations. So a topic. A thread running between some of the things that we've spoken about today and the next episode. So we look forward to welcome you back. Well, for everyone that's listening, it'll be in a week.'s time but for steph and i it'll be in about two minutes so thanks everyone yeah thank you for coming thank you emmanuel simon again thank you steph thank you for listening we'll be back again next week