What's Teamwork Kryptonite and How's it Stifling Your Ability to Become Elite?

Dr. Jim: [: 00:00:00

She's got a background as a certified change management specialist. She's a certified talent optimization leader with the predictive index and a neuro facilitation practitioner. She's had the privilege of bringing her thought leadership as a speaker, trainer, consultant to a number of fortune 500 companies.

And prior to her current role as a director of people in culture, she was a consultant for nearly a decade and the CEO and founder of changing greatly a culture and talent consultancy specializing in creating psychologically safe, inclusive cultures where humans love to work. So Maura Barkley, welcome to the show.

Maura Barclay: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here to have this discussion

with you.

ore we dive into the meat of [: 00:01:00

Maura Barclay: The thing that's impacted me the most when it comes to Being in an inclusive environment. My own lived experience was being a professional firefighter and being one of a very hand small handful of women. It was my first experience of what it means to belong and What it means not to belong and then feeling like you need to work and adapt and code switch so that your peers will accept you.

And in terms of firefighting, I learned a lot about teamwork in very high stakes environments. We could say millions of dollars is high stake and I would contend that life threatening circumstances far exceed the jeopardy there. So having worked in those very high stakes environments.

t's where I learned a lot of [: 00:02:00

Dr. Jim: You've had an interesting path to HR leadership. I think it would be valuable for you to share with the listeners a little bit more detail about that path. I'd be curious to understand how those non traditional experiences and pathways into HR informed how you handle the people leadership role.

Maura Barclay: I'll give you the cliff notes here and try to land the plane. So I've had a very non traditional career trajectory. I'm what you might call one of these deep generalists because I would try something and get as good as I possibly can.

se managerial or. Leadership [: 00:03:00

So it was all about mentoring and finding moments where we could very delicately pursue honesty over harmony. That's a foundational piece that in the teaching aspect, I've been a teacher and a leader every in every job I've ever had. Regardless of how outside of leadership or management it might appear to be, I somehow managed to be given the seat of leadership everywhere I go.

There's something about me that inspires people. To give me authority or leadership. So I've leveraged that in a way that I feel is in the highest integrity. And very gently urged people into as much truth as possible in every environment I've ever worked.

and always in the background [: 00:04:00

It's always been about helping people work at their capability, not their capacity. And to me, that's the heart of HR. And one of the tools, one of the levers that I pulled to do that is creating psychological safety, high trust environments. That's where these direct conversations where people actually come together and cohese as a team can happen.

Dr. Jim: You mentioned something in terms of your career path where you spent.

ur strategy when it comes to [: 00:05:00

Maura Barclay: Everything from the firefighting where I was invited. Behind the blue curtain, as it were, and these men allowed themselves to feel comfortable enough that they would just be themselves in front of me.

Now, part of that was a little bit of a privilege because they're not accustomed to having to adjust and part of it was comfort. So it depended on who was there. So firefighting really gave me this insight into the male psyche and different kinds of. Approaches of leadership and work styles among all the men and how to make adjustments and shifts.

In order to get the most out of all of us, seeing the different leadership styles and work styles and seeing how people responded to it and seeing the men who are all about their lieutenants bars.

eed your eyes. I need you to [: 00:06:00

Impacted me being a leader. The mind body work, it really helped me connect to people as humans and recognize that was the humanity piece of my learning where. We work with people.

We're all humans and these human bodies having an experience. So it brought this sort of humanity to the work where sometimes in professional or professional capacities, I think people want to distance themselves from what happened at home before they showed up. And, there's professionalism, but there's also is this going to.

he headspace of we're humans [: 00:07:00

To balance the needs because I can't always do it, but I have a desire to do it. The motivation to balance and try to represent every team's need to all different teams.

Dr. Jim: When you look at your experiences earlier in your career working in a command and control environment, and you've gone through this transition where you've taken a human centric approach to people leadership, there's got to be a game changing realization there between those two approaches.

So what was it that you realize that needs to happen? Between those two opposite poles for people to build a high performing team.

as, and I want to be clear, [: 00:08:00

I promise you that Sully was command and control all day long in that cockpit when he took it. In order to save everybody and land that plane on the Hudson, there is absolutely a time and place for command and control, certainly in the military, certainly on any critical incident. And even within the fire department, there's a time and a place.

And if you're outside of that environment with that particular style, you're going to lose people. They won't respect you. That's been the thing. And I think that the critical piece of that, of the transition is recognizing that people will give you the leadership and the respect because they see that you respect them and that you're not relying on your role or the title.

rk, your Alma mater, or, the [: 00:09:00

And the way that they show that is through sincere conversation and a lot of this like direct feedback and asking a lot of questions and being. Team oriented, team centric, being more people centric than task. And you can still get plenty done. And I know that very many work styles are task over people.

n some stuff is going wrong, [: 00:10:00

It's when you lean on titles and all these other superficial things, because you don't trust yourself as a leader. That's when you run into trouble. I think a lot of this comes down to the psyche of the leaders themselves. And we're seeing this all play out now. And I think men have been painfully indoctrinated into this hyper masculinity.

And a lot of men, a lot of men are waking up to this and shaking off the indoctrination saying, no, this doesn't work. It's not sustainable. And Oh, by the way, we're not making the best decisions because we don't have women and people of color in here.

Dr. Jim: I get your point about there's a time and place for command and control. I also understand, how taking a human first approach has its place as well.

tioned was the key to all of [: 00:11:00

In today's world of work, everybody is about maximize shareholder value as fast as possible, and you often have teams that are running super lean. So when you're looking at that contrast, we know what best practices look like, but we also know what the resource allocation looks like as well. How do you still satisfy the shareholder expectations while building that trust, that psychological safety, that environment of respect? What have you seen that works really well that that, that allows you to do both things?

Maura Barclay: Two words. People data. And here's two other words.

ause I don't want to have to [: 00:12:00

Tell me what this person's, this person needs to feel like I care. What is it? Now, first of all, you have to be willing to actually care. That's step one. That takes zero time. Also, it takes zero dollars to be kind and to extend compassion. Zero dollars. and zero time can be a conversation. It can be one sentence.

So I would argue that these sort of moments where the care is shown and compassion is shown. Those are momentary. Perhaps it can literally be one email or one sentence. It depends on the situation. However, from a I want to say a tactical point of view or an operational point of view because I'm a pragmatist from the Midwest.

es us an opportunity to look [: 00:13:00

I use the one to one relationship guide to see, Oh, this person needs a lot of this. They need less of this. If I act this way, they're going to feel ignored. If I act this way with their work style, it will help them feel Seen or appreciated or whatever it is. And if you look at all the research coming out right now about engagement, it is not about giving at that's just a gender thing.

I was about to say it's not about giving kudos. It's about getting the right kudos to the right people for the right thing. What it's calling upon leaders to do is get specific care enough to get specific. It won't take that much more time. And I would also offer the following.

e, which means you want that [: 00:14:00

If you want that, you need to show you care. All the research is in. This is not my opinion. And that's what the shareholders want.

Dr. Jim: I really like that. It reminded me of a conversation that we had with Yasmeen Duncan, who's the chief people officer of Magnolia Bakery. And one of the things that she was faced with when she joined that organization, and it's a smaller organization, she was asking the question, how do I take the guesswork out of People leadership from the time that somebody is actually even hired and one of the things that she developed and rolled out and she's been doing that in several of her roles was an onboarding inventory.

rt of deep meeting. Is going [: 00:15:00

How do you like to be managed? What works? What doesn't work? So you're level setting and taking the guesswork out and it your conversation about the predictive index Took me immediately to that So if you're running with limited resources, if you're running on a lean team If you have a pace that is emphasizing some other stuff you have to be looking at things that takes the guesswork out of Your people leadership process.

So I want to tie all of this back to 1 of the things that I mentioned earlier on the conversation and that is the idea of what are the things that show up when you're building a high performance team that can be kryptonite for that team? So tell us a little bit about things that you've seen that really derail your efforts in building that high performance team.

post. About, which is people [: 00:16:00

That said, men are, I would say, generally speaking, more culturally conditioned to be aggressive and competitive in this way. And there's a difference. It's one thing to be competitive by bringing your best. Wanting to be being inspired by other people that you're working with being as good or better than you and wanting to bring your best to your work that is wholly different than being competitive by trying to knock your colleagues down that.

Is teamwork kryptonite that will kill a team. It will kill productivity. Whenever you see a team member who's doing this, and again, different between competitive.

by knocking people down very [: 00:17:00

Sometimes that habit evolution. Can work and other times it just means that he or she is not aligned with the core values of the company and, or the team. And that's something that can actually be sussed out through the predictive index,

Dr. Jim: There's a couple of different phrases that I use when talking about what you just described. I used to call it, we don't hire the productive a hole.

w long you've been there, if [: 00:18:00

So that's the perfect culture for those sort of those personalities. But my question is this you mentioned, you can always use the PI as a way to suss that out. What are some of the things that you can ask in the hiring process or the interview process that will help you determine if you're dealing with one of these sorts of people?

Maura Barclay: The one thing I love about the. Predictive indexes. It has what's called an interview guide based. When you're hiring for a role, you build a very precise job target that has the drives that would allow a person to thrive in the role.

And when you get candidates, it tells you how good a match their organic. Native drives are and if there's some that aren't in alignment with the job target that's been created an interview guide. AI does all of this for us an interview guide. Helps you ask questions into the gaps wherever the pattern is out of alignment.

ing upon predictive index to [: 00:19:00

Their brand is like, Hey, I'm not for everybody. And I get it done. And it doesn't matter how I get it done. That comes out. I think you'll find you don't need to dig very far. Most people who are a holes don't care what you. think about them.

Dr. Jim: Great conversation. Maura, we covered a lot of ground in a relatively short amount of time. Before we sign off I want you to package this up into a framework when we're thinking about building a high performance team what are some of the key things that you want our listeners to pay attention to as they navigate this process?

have a one on one with every [: 00:20:00

And it's these check ins, it's these, it's sincere inquiry in a anonymous. Protected environment. So the first thing that I found to be helpful is give people a safe place to deposit their truth. We can be with you. It can be with your team. It can be, it has to be somewhere. People need to feel like there's a place where they can.

Be completely authentic and that's that. Then you start to build that muscle. Once you gather some data and surveys can be good, but a conversation is best. I highly recommend step 1 having real conversations. With as much anonymity and as much protection for the people as possible and couch it that way, let them know Hey, if something comes up, I'm, I have to, we have to have a conversation if this information needs to go somewhere.

een you and me get that real [: 00:21:00

You can't, you gotta, you have to build the psychological safety throughout the conversation. You can't come in and say, I dub this a psychologically safe space because all the stuff that happened before that moment is still active in the group. All those dynamics are real and they're very present. So I have a concept called the first domino and when you're building psychological safety and it might take, a number of repeat, repeated.

the team itself, having them [: 00:22:00

And that sounds like a really mundane question, but let me tell you something. It is magic. Because suddenly no one needs to read their mind and everyone's Oh, that makes complete sense. And now I can actually change some things .

So that's a communication cadence thing that we never would have gotten to had I not asked what about a pet peeve.

So it sounds silly but it was magic and that because that executive was vulnerable, it knocked over the first domino and everybody else started to get very real. And then we started to get to some psychologically safe. Spaces with this group.

e teams. Now, if you work in [: 00:23:00

HR, you have a whole team. So facilitating FACILITATE These operating agreements helps identify and operationalize the microcultures of these departments, and it also helps them have this sense of cohesion and it operationalizes the core values of the team that operate under the umbrella of the core values.

Of the business. And that has been tremendous.

Dr. Jim: Last thing before I closed down, where can people find you?

Maura Barclay: Find me on LinkedIn, Maura Barclay. I'm there. I'd love to collaborate with people. So please feel free to find me there and hit me up.

Dr. Jim: I appreciate you hanging out with us. And to those who have been listening to the conversation, there's a couple of things that I want to add to the takeaways.

d I think people at small to [: 00:24:00

So everybody likes that. That cookie cutter that really well framed out position description and here's what this person looks like don't be afraid of looking for that non traditional profile because oftentimes they can actually bring a lot more to the table than what the quote unquote textbook profile looks like.

The other thing that really stands out about this conversation is the need to be flexible. Look for opportunities to take the guesswork. Thank you. Out of. Anything that you're trying to do instead of trying to guess how you and another person can work well together. Why not be transparent and ask those things out loud so you can level set and move forward knowing what you need to know to.

Work productively [: 00:25:00

Let us know what you thought of the episode. Tune in next time where we will have another great practitioner on the show to give us their game changing experiences that led them to building high performance teams