CHAPTER 7
Two Magic Ingredients That Drive Team Creativity
A few years back, we worked with an information technology company that had seen steady success and had acquired a smaller company. As a result of the acquisition, the president of the small company, Jane, joined the executive team.
Frank, the CEO, requested our help with onboarding Jane. When he said more than once that Jane’s style wasn’t working on the team, and “she needs to learn how we work around here,” we got the impression that rather than onboarding Jane, Frank wanted to mute her or change her. We agreed to begin by working with the team for two days.
On the first afternoon, we discussed the company’s new product strategy. Jane vehemently disagreed with the rest of the team. Suddenly, three team members were on their feet, yelling and pointing at her. We were shocked by their immediate response, and we quickly called a time-out. We encouraged them to remember the two magic ingredients we’d introduced earlier in the day, vulnerability and curiosity.
One teammate, Joe, shifted his perspective and became vulnerable.
“Listen,” he said to Jane. “I’m frustrated with you because it seems like you always disagree with us. I don’t even listen to you anymore because I’m pissed.” He paused, a bit taken aback by his own outspokenness.
Susan nodded at him in encouragement and said, “Keep going, Joe.”
Joe waited a beat, then continued. “Okay, I want to try to be curious,” he said, then got up, slowly walked to Jane, and sat next to her. “I have no clue why you’re so passionate. I don’t know what you’re thinking. Help me understand.”
Jane became equally vulnerable. “This has been hard for me,” she said. “You folks don’t see the world like I do.”
Jane explained her point of view, and the energy in the room completely shifted. We could see the lights come on as Joe finally understood Jane. The discussion continued, and the team designed a completely new product strategy, incorporating both Jane’s perspective and what they wanted. This session was a catalyst for growth, and along with hard work, they catapulted into the top-three slot in their industry.
As Joe and Jane learned, the task of working as a team requires holding the tension of belief in your opinion while being equally interested in the opinions of your team members. Great teamwork involves a willingness to have ideas challenged, knocked down, and possibly tossed out. The choice to opt in to this wrestling process allows new ideas to emerge and creativity to flourish.
Through our work with partnerships, teams, and businesses, we’ve found that vulnerability and curiosity, when practiced and applied by even just one person, have the potential to transform a team in an instant. These two qualities help people work with and use the tension that surfaces in challenging situations.
Not too many people like the concept of vulnerability. Plus, in business? You’ve got to be kidding! Business is the realm of invincibility, right?
Not when you’re working on a team. If you want results, the strength of your relationship with your team matters, and vulnerability is key to growing those relationships. Being vulnerable doesn’t mean being weak. Instead, it’s the willingness to expose yourself to danger. Not for the faint of heart, eh?
Vulnerability is taking the risk to be real and honest about what’s happening for you inside; to reveal what you really think, feel, and want in the moment. To be vulnerable:
Reveal what isn’t being said. This sounds deceptively simple, but it can be hard to do. Share a different opinion—dare to reveal that the emperor wears no clothes.
Speak up about what’s happening inside of you. Tell others if you’re uncomfortable, angry, worried, or don’t know the answer.
Drop the effort to look good, smart, or in charge. Instead, let your teammates see that you’re human. Own that you don’t understand, are sorry, or made a mistake.
Acknowledge that there isn’t a right answer, or that you don’t know what the answer is. It’s natural to want to know exactly what to do or say, because having the answer makes people feel safe and secure. While leaders want to be the ones to provide answers, vulnerability requires them to admit when they don’t know.
Vulnerability can be messy. Yet we’ve experienced time and time again that when one person has the courage to be vulnerable, to share what no one else has the courage to say, the energy of the room shifts immediately. The conversation gets real. People stop trying to manage the situation, simply hoping they can escape and start generating real, creative solutions.
Vulnerability has other benefits, too. When you are vulnerable, you:
Shift from managing the world around you to landing squarely in your own shoes, which has tremendous power.
Gain the ability and courage to move forward proactively, because you’re no longer holding anything back.
Have more access to your creativity, because you’re not wasting energy covering up what is truly happening inside of you—your thoughts, feelings, and wants.
Vulnerability also has advantages for the team as a whole. The team:
Builds trust, because people trust others who say what they really think, feel, and want.
Gets to the right results, because more of the story is out on the table.
Arrives at collective creativity, enabling forward progress.
What is the business reason to be real and vulnerable? Vulnerability is a magic ingredient to cut through the niceties and get to the real conversation. When you as a leader are willing to be vulnerable, you build trust and loyalty. Your conversations save time and drive innovative business solutions that increase your profitability. It’s a small price to pay!
BE JUDGMENTAL - REALLY!
Despite the benefits of vulnerability, people avoid it. This is partially because they don’t want to come across as judgmental. Saying what’s real often means directly sharing judgments about people and their work.
But here’s the reality: You are judgmental. We all are. Being judgmental serves us; it’s how we make meaning of our world. In fact, your judgment is one of your greatest gifts, and it’s likely why you got hired.
Your judgment or opinion is a combination of your abilities in imagination, creativity, and discernment. Judgments are reflective of how you put your world together. It’s what makes you unique, valuable, and a smart addition to a team. Being honest with yourself and others about your judgments is part of being vulnerable.
The problem isn’t judgments; the problem lies in righteous attachment. Righteous attachment to judgment kills creativity and innovation on teams. We call this the right-wrong trap. When you’re righteously attached to your judgments, you’re fixed in your own position. You’re thinking in black and white terms, stuck in your perspective. You won’t see another way.
Conversely, healthy teams welcome and value differing judgments and opinions. In a trusting environment, teammates speak up when they think others are being ineffective, making a mistake, or sharing an idea that, well, sucks.
Yes, revealing and hearing judgment creates conflict. It’s uncomfortable, painful, and awkward. But holding back your judgment and opinion not only dampens your team’s creativity, it also diminishes its effectiveness. Even if you don’t speak up, the judgment and conflict is still there; it’s just underground and unused.
When you share your judgment directly as just what it is—only your judgment, not reality—you and your team gain the chance to use the energy of conflict. By sharing your outlook, someone else can provide you with a different perspective, new information, or the backstory for his or her motivation for a differing judgment.
When speaking your judgments, use ‘I’ statements. Own it as your view of the world, not the view of the world, and ask for the other person’s take. Imagine sharing your judgments like this:
“I don’t think your approach is sound, so help me understand how you got there.”
“Based on the data I’ve seen, my story is that your approach won’t work. Can you help me understand where I’m wrong?”
“I don’t have confidence that your approach will work. I’ve been hesitant to tell you, but I want to know what you think.”
The second halves of these sentences are key, as they reveal curiosity. And that’s the second magic ingredient.
BE CURIOUS
Where there’s conflict, there’s always a choice point for those involved: do you defend, or do you get curious?
What do we mean by get curious? We mean pause, consider, and honestly reflect on what is being presented other than your viewpoint. Even if someone else’s idea seems insane to you, they likely came to it with good reason. The challenge is to pause and try to understand—not necessarily agree on—how the other person came to that crazy position.
It’s not easy. When you’re passionate about something and have a strong opinion, it’s difficult to pause and listen, much less reflect and consider. Still, whenever we do this or witness our clients’ curiosity, it’s powerful. The energy in the room shifts. We’ve seen it happen over and over again.
The key is to become curious about the other person’s point of view after you own up to yours. Curiosity opens the space to develop something new, and unlocks the door to use judgment and conflict for creativity and innovation.
You don’t have to let go of your judgments or opinions. Curiosity means having your judgments and being open and interested in a different perspective. Being curious means:
- Considering that there may be more than one right way, reality, or answer.
- Stopping the fight for your right way and being open to the ideas of others.
- Taking an interest in how the other person came to his or her conclusion.
- Listening with the willingness to be influenced.
Some phrases that help demonstrate curiosity and elicit another’s response are:
“Help me understand how you got there.”
“Why is this so important to you?”
“What is driving your strong conviction?”
“Can you help me understand where I’m wrong?”
“Wow! That is very different from my view. How’d you get there?”
The benefits of being curious include:
- Getting outside of your own story, which opens a greater pool of information to generate creative ideas;
- Strengthening the team’s learning and growth;
- Making the other person feel heard and considered;
- Shifting the energy from defense to cooperation, opening the door to new, creative possibilities;
- Transitioning the focus of the team from power struggles to idea expansion.
A leader’s job isn’t to have the right answer, but to create the space for the project, team, or organization to move forward. When even one person listens to and reflects on the opposing opinion of a peer with genuine curiosity, the change in the room is palpable. That combination of vision, opinion, and passion, when combined with curiosity, leads the entire team to new possibilities. That’s the role of a healthy dose of curiosity.
VULNERABILITY + CURIOSITY = CREATIVITY
When teams are vulnerable and curious, they use the natural energy of conflict to recognize that it isn’t my way or your way, but a whole new way. New ideas emerge. Instead of a fight, there is magic.
It starts with people opting in, becoming vulnerable, and revealing what they really think, feel, and want. This allows for a free flow of opinions (judgments) combined with curiosity (not righteousness or defensiveness). The result? A team that uses the energy of conflict to become smarter and highly innovative.
Teams that master the use of vulnerability and curiosity produce creative and innovative solutions not just once, but repeatedly. They bounce back from setbacks and failure. People feel engaged and fulfilled, and they have more fun. It’s probably no surprise that vulnerability and curiosity work wonders in personal relationships too.
Either of these qualities can instantly transform a team in conflict. Put them together and the team makes a quantum leap forward. It only takes one individual. Are you willing to be that person?
If you want to learn more about the combination of vulnerability and curiosity and the power it creates on teams, check out our TEDx Talk Conflict: Use It, Don’t Defuse It! on YouTube or at www.Thriveinc.com/beautyofconflict.
Read on to see what horses can teach you about conflict.