Lisa Danels of Human Edge On 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Manage a Team

Enable Psychological Safety and Trust– When team leaders cultivate a safe climate, team members feel open to speaking up and taking risks on the team without negative consequences​. This is the foundation of Psychological Safety, but it’s not just the leader’s responsibility; the team members are also responsible for creating a safe environment. This is why it’s essential the leader calls out behavior on the team that is contrary to the behavior that will allow all team members to contribute. As part of this positive work climate, the leader must cultivate trust between team members. When there is a high level of trust between team members, they have each other’s back and are comfortable being vulnerable with each other. This leads to open discussion and debate, and the team can deal with conflict while everyone feels valued and heard.

As a part of our series about the five things you need to successfully manage a large team, I had the pleasure of interviewing Lisa Danels.

Lisa Danels is the founder and Executive Director of Human Edge. She is a senior executive, talent and leadership consultant and coach. Lisa holds a master’s degree in Organization Development and Human Resource Management from New York University and a bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Public Policy and Administration with a concentration in International Relations from the University of New York at Buffalo. She is a certified executive coach and a pioneer in the field of leadership and organizational development. She’s the author of The Human Edge Advantage: Mastering the Art of Being All In. She resides in Basel, Switzerland.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! What is your “backstory”?

Professionally, I’ve always been curious about how people and businesses work, leading me to a career in organizational and leadership development. I was lucky to find my passion when I interned in the training department while studying at university. I am grateful that I worked at numerous Fortune 500 companies, ensuring organizations had the right leaders and culture to deliver on their business strategy. As my career progressed, I started to work with executive teams and took them on high-performance journeys, which created more meaning and impact in their teams and organizations.

One thing to know about me is that I am a research nerd with a big heart. I love to learn and ask why. My dad had the most significant influence on my life growing up. One day, he told me, “Lisa, you missed your calling in life; you should have been a philosopher.” I replied, “I am, not just in the traditional sense.” Only recently, I came across the original definition of the word philosophy comes from the ancient Greek words φίλος (philos: ‘love’) and σοφία (Sophia: ‘wisdom’). In my work, I enjoy sharing wisdom. I believe everyone in front of us is a teacher.

I approach my work from a global perspective, as I have lived and worked in three countries. After working in corporate for many years, I ventured out seven years ago to found Human Edge. I am passionate about developing mindful and purpose-driven leaders and unlocking their full leadership potential. I am a certified executive coach, author, and a pioneer in the field of leadership and organizational development. My purpose is to help people wake up to their true selves.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

The most interesting story was about traveling to Delhi, India, to deliver leadership development training. Before going, I had to learn all about the cultural differences and be able to translate the American way of doing things into a new cultural model so it would resonate. I think the most surprising was how they called me their “guru” and how they gave me so much reverence. At first, I found it very overwhelming, but it turned endearing.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

While working at American Express, I was asked to deliver my first training in Canada. This was my first business trip, and I was excited to go. I was overly prepared, and the session went very well. Upon my return, while exiting Canada, I arrived at US Customs and Border Protection, and the officer asked me for my passport. I look at him in bewilderment as I forgot to bring it — complete rookie mistake. I explained to him that I went to the University at Buffalo, and we would always cross the border with just a driver’s license. He very sternly explained that when you fly, you need a passport. He let me go, but while standing there waiting, the only thing I could think of was how I would get home and how I would explain to my colleagues that I got stuck in Canada.

The lesson I learned is, to be honest and fess up if you make a mistake. Also, to focus on the bigger picture not just the work itself.

Ok, let’s jump to the core of our interview. Most times when people quit their jobs they actually “quit their managers”. What are your thoughts on the best way to retain great talent today?

In my experience, people want to be seen and acknowledged for their work. Being seen means you care about them as a unique individual and leave space for authentic connection. Sometimes, life goes awry, and giving space and showing empathy when a situation is falling apart or unraveling is essential. For example, one of my colleagues was getting married, and the store was out of business when she arrived for her first fitting. A third party demanded she pay for the dress, but the dress did not fit. Her wedding was only one month away, so she had few options. It was the first time I ever saw her break down and cry. I held the space for her to express her emotions while showing empathy. When she regained her composure, I suggested she take the next day off to sort out her dress. She was so relieved, and, in the end, she was able to salvage the dress she loved, and it all worked out perfectly.

The second most important thing is acknowledging people for their contributions, good or bad, being honest with someone when they’ve missed the mark, and celebrating when their work has made a significant contribution. I can’t stress enough how providing positive feedback can make all the difference in the world. People will actually light up and look at you with shining eyes. Our role as leaders is to enhance or maintain a person’s self-esteem and self-confidence. When we provide positive feedback, we fill others’ emotional tanks; when they are full, they have a deep sense of satisfaction. But that is not all; when their emotional tanks are full, they are more receptive and open to hearing and acting on constructive feedback. This leads to building greater capability for the person and the organization. When you invest in people, challenge them and they grow and develop, they tend to deepen their commitment to the organization and stay longer.

How do you synchronize large teams to effectively work together?

See below.

Here is the main question of our discussion. Based on your personal experience, what are the “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Manage a Team”. (Please share a story or example for each, Ideally an example from your experience)

In my newest book, The Human Edge Advantage, Mastering the Art of Being All In, I bring to light that the old way of leading people and teams, best described as POLICE, which stands for planning, organizing, leading, implementing, controlling, and evaluation, is becoming outdated. A new generation of highly skilled workers who can POLICE their work. Today, they want and expect more. Empathy is the new currency. A new leadership paradox is emerging where the leader’s new role is to establish a space for co-creation that inspires new possibilities for people of all generations and backgrounds. Below are the five most important things managers and leaders need to know to manage a team successfully and harness all members’ collective genius.

1 . Establish Shared Clarity and Purpose — As leaders, we are constantly grappling with the question: How do we get our staff to fully commit and go above and beyond what is being asked of them? The tides toward purposeful leadership have swelled; if you want your employees to co-create and innovate, they must care about why the company was started, what it stands for, and what it hopes to give back to society. Purpose: Defines the reason your company exists above simply making a profit. It also illustrates how your product or service positively impacts the people you serve. It provides a sense of why you do what you do that engages and sustains you and your people, making them feel proud to be part of the organization. This is known as your North Star.

Once, I was consulting with an executive team that ran a company that did background checks for hiring. They wanted to develop a more inspirational purpose, and as the team worked, they came up with a purpose that was vanilla and far from inspirational. When I challenged them, they were able to get creative and had a breakthrough, and the room was filled with energy as they unveiled their new purpose. They realized it was not just about their current customers and ensuring a secure hire, but they decided they wanted to be the first company to have a digital background check for everyone on their smartphones. They saw the opportunity in security for entering a concert hall or sports stadium and the ability to streamline the recruiting process. They wanted to put the power into the individual as they owned their data.

2 . Create the Frame — Framing creates a space where the teams can function individually or as a whole; it ensures that the doors of creativity are wide open to explore new ideas and opportunities while defining clear boundaries to indicate what team members should and shouldn’t consider. The frame makes the limits and responsibilities associated with such freedom clear to everyone to avoid heading down rabbit holes that would lead to wasted time and effort. Framing gives everyone’s genius a place in which to play.

For example, my team was exploring how to incorporate AI into our work with clients. At the initiative’s beginning, I said, “When we look at AI, it must be aligned to our purpose: bringing human potential to life. We’re not interested in creating solutions that in any way dehumanize people, such as how some major companies are using this technology to fire people.” This simple statement provided direction and a boundary for the team without offering a specific solution. It also gave me peace of mind knowing that company time wouldn’t be spent investigating areas countering our core business values.

When the framing is clear and consistent, people naturally follow it, creating a powerful feeling of team unity. Employees feel entrusted and empowered to accomplish the goals with minimal interference and judgment. However, when the framing is vague and inconsistent, people stick to their own frames and/or compete over whose interpretation should be followed. This causes confusion and limits leveraging the brainstorming power within a team.

3 . Set Clear Priorities and adhere to them– Teams fail to reach high-performance levels because they don’t know how to prioritize and stick to them. There are many times when team members must say no to good things, and the leader needs to lead the prioritization effort to ensure the team members are sticking to what has been agreed. Prioritization is determining what activities and use of resources will impact the organization most. In theory, it’s not that hard to do, but what gets overlooked is the day-to-day work that still needs to be done to keep the organization moving. If leaders can’t help their teams find a way to implement continuous improvement and think differently about how the work gets done, then teams will be doomed to get stuck in the cycle of prioritizing but never adhering to it. Ultimately, team members will feel overwhelmed and unable to cope unless they challenge their assumptions and think about the work differently.

One team I worked with took the time to list the day-to-day work that they felt had to be accomplished. We created a mural, then stepped back and examined and challenged which work still needed to get done and how it could be done in a new way. When assumptions were challenged healthily, new ideas emerged that the team members had not considered. This unburdened the team and gave more energy to strategic activities or priorities that significantly impacted its business and customers.

4 . Learn when to cooperate vs. collaborate — Many teams I work with are overly collaborative, draining team members’ energy and impeding effective decision-making. Leaders must be more intentional and apparent when they offer clues on how they want people to engage with each other. When does it make sense for team members to work individually, cooperatively, and collaboratively? Team leaders often confuse working cooperatively and collaboratively. Working cooperatively is often used in a team and works well when the approach to work or output is not fully defined and may be enhanced by the insights and experiences of others. Involving others may significantly improve outcomes by adding new insights and avoiding operational implementational challenges down the road. On the other hand, working collaboratively works most effectively when there is a need for transformational impact or innovation, when solving complex or ambiguous problems, or when addressing opportunities that require various expertise. Here, we move beyond gaining input from others to co-creating solutions and new possibilities.

When I begin working with teams, I conduct a team diagnostic, and in most cases, the team tries to discuss all issues in team meetings. Not everyone can give the proper input in such large teams while sticking to their agendas. If teams want to have more impact, they need to know when the whole team needs to weigh in on which decisions; otherwise, the team is not genuinely leveraging the brilliance of the team members. In the end, team members are confused and waste effort. I have seen giving the team clarity by defining how we work can unburden the team and reenergize them.

5 . Enable Psychological Safety and Trust– When team leaders cultivate a safe climate, team members feel open to speaking up and taking risks on the team without negative consequences​. This is the foundation of Psychological Safety, but it’s not just the leader’s responsibility; the team members are also responsible for creating a safe environment. This is why it’s essential the leader calls out behavior on the team that is contrary to the behavior that will allow all team members to contribute. As part of this positive work climate, the leader must cultivate trust between team members. When there is a high level of trust between team members, they have each other’s back and are comfortable being vulnerable with each other. This leads to open discussion and debate, and the team can deal with conflict while everyone feels valued and heard.

Let me give you an example of a team I am currently working with where trust among team members is there, but psychological safety in the group setting is not present. Team members in this organization are cordial with each other and have each other’s back. Still, in team meetings, when differences of opinion are brought up, they are minimized, glazed over, or ignored. Leaving the team and team members highly frustrated. They can’t move their critical agendas forward. As a facilitator, I need to create a safe space where people can speak up without fear of retribution. I do this by watching the team solve real problems, examining what is going on in the moment, and helping team members overcome their own inner barriers.

What advice would you give to other CEOs or founders to help their employees to thrive?

Ensure you have alignment between your own values and the purpose of the company. Recruiting great talent to smaller companies is not an easy task, and you want to ensure that people feel a deep sense of meaning and purpose. Ensure you hire people who share the values that make the company successful. The other important thing is the employees feel they are making a difference to customers/society and growing their capabilities.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

The greatest gift I can give to others is for them to have the courage to be themselves and step into their personal power to unlock their genius. In my new book, The Human Edge Advantage, Mastering the Art of Being All In, I dedicate a whole chapter to how it takes courage to fully be ourselves and a whole section of the book on how to cultivate personal power.

The reason that it’s so hard to be ourselves is that we all experience societal programming growing up and are implicitly taught the acceptable paths and what are within the limits of social norms. In his famous poem The Road Not Taken, the great poet Robert Frost expresses the diverging roads as a metaphor for two kinds of life choices in general: the conventional versus the unconventional. By choosing the less-traveled path over the well-traveled path, Frost suggests that we value individualism over conformity. To use our genius typically requires us to take the unconventional path, which typically does not have a clear-cut pathway and has many twists and turns.

Now, let’s turn to this notion of personal power. Before doing so, we need to understand our current understanding of power. We have been conditioned to believe that power is seen as finite, meaning we live in a world in which only a tiny minority control it. Our society has hoodwinked us, believing we can’t really take care of ourselves and thrive unless we give up our power to an organization, leader, government, or religion. This old model of power over is rapidly dissipating, and a new model of power is emerging. The true source of power is power within, which means we all can author our own lives through productive or generative power derived from an internal self of worth, self-knowledge, inner connection, and being. This notion of power shifts us from following the conventional pathways to being a creator where possibilities are limitless, and each person has the unique potential to shape their own life and the world. When people stand in their own power, they are drawn to making a difference, creating meaning, and awakening to their true selves while encouraging others to do the same. Imagine the inventions and new possibilities that can emerge when people are purpose-driven. We could solve world hunger, create cities in space, and clean up our oceans.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Through my exploratory true-self journey and removing my masks, I realized that when we stop proving who we are, we become who we are. That being our true essence.

On some level, we all believe we are not good enough, and we need to prove or show the world how good we are. This behavior keeps us in a state of action and pushing rather than unearthing the balance between allowing and letting life and situations unfold and directing and taking action.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can learn more about me on LinkedIn, lisadanels.com and human-edge.com, and follow me on Instagram at lisa_danels.

Thank you for these great insights, and for the time you spent on this. We wish you continued success.