The taboo in teams: why avoiding what’s under the surface is holding you back
and how to transform your relationships at work
I speak to lots of leaders in organisations who proudly tell me about their open culture. The reality is, even if employees are able to talk openly, it’s almost always about operational matters and not, crucially, what’s under the surface. And yet it’s precisely what’s under the surface that gets in the way for teams to be truly effective. What might start as just a grain can grow into a pile and before you know it, your house is filled with sand and you don’t quite know where to start to clear it out again.
What does ‘under the surface’ mean?
Most managers, employees, and teams spend their time discussing surface issues — these are operational matters like products, deadlines, budgets, customers. Very rarely do we dare talk about what’s under the surface; things like feelings, relationships, ways of being, mindset. These are the ingredients that produce the working climate. In essence, this is the atmosphere in the team. When a working climate is bad, it can feel like the air is heavy or polluted; or perhaps it feels like trying to wade through mud; or the irritation of a pebble in your shoe.
I believe once we become aware of climate and are able to put language to it and talk about it, it liberates the potential of teams and individuals.
“The unsaid is the most important part of language when it comes to elevating performance… The unawareness aspect puts this part of language outside our control. Until we find the leverage on this part of language, the future is written and cannot be altered.”
– “The Three Laws of Performance” by Dave Logan and Steve Zaffron
Why don’t we talk about what’s under the surface?
Some of the reasons why we don’t talk about issues under the surface is because most of us have been conditioned in our organisations to believe that these things are not work. We check our emotions in at the door and daren’t talk about them in the workplace. Yet researcher Eve Ekman has found that when we repress emotions, it takes us much longer to return to our baseline emotional arousal state. When we reappraise our emotions, in other words if we notice or name our emotion as it arrives, we return to ‘normal’ much quicker. So from a performance standpoint, it’s actually much more effective for employees to be able to talk about or at least acknowledge when they are feeling stressed, or sad, or angry, for example.
Another reason is that even if our workplace did permit us to talk about things under the surface, our very brains are designed to resist this because they perceive it as dangerous.
“From an evolutionary point of view, we’re hard-wired to overestimate rather than underestimate certain types of risk: it was better for survival to “flee” from threats that weren’t really there than to not flee when there was a real risk. And we appear to have inherited emotional and cognitive mechanisms that lead us to avoid perceived risks to our psychological and material well-being. In the workplace, fear of offending people above us in the hierarchy is both natural and widespread, and it means the speaking-up behaviour upon which teaming depends must be cultivated rather than assumed to be present.”
– “Teaming” by Amy Edmondson
Even in non-hierarchical organisations, we may fear talking about things under the surface or giving each other feedback, for example, because we might risk hurting each other’s feelings or not being liked or disrupting the collegiate, friendly atmosphere. In fact, Amy Edmondson found in her research that the “four specific image risks that people face at work are being seen as ignorant, incompetent, negative, or disruptive.”
How do we begin?
In short, start with where you are. Allow people to describe how they currently experience the working climate (do this on post-its to start with if you like). If you’re the one instigating this conversation, it will require some facilitation skills, especially the ability to listen, clarify and summarise. Most of all, a safe space has to be created — what Edmondson calls “psychological safety.”
Note: If you are a manager, you must give the team a choice — such a conversation will not work if people feel coerced. For them to choose to have this conversation, you must be clear that your role as a manager is to listen. If you talk too much, people will be silent. Be clear about your intention, which is: a strong wish to have a climate that works. Be warned that there will almost certainly be complaints about you and it is essential that you are committed to listening, and above all do not justify, defend, or argue with any feedback that you might receive from the team. This is their truth and you must meet them where they are. Only once you create trust and openness in the group can you begin to share your experiences as a manager — that will come (much) later.
Wherever people are, allow people the space to talk. As the facilitator, play back what people are saying and feeling. Clarify and summarise. As humans (especially as managers), we tend to think that letting people talk about things that are painful or difficult makes it worse. We may worry it will get ‘out of control’. But when people feel heard and felt, it creates space for new possibilities. You will feel it — it’s like the calm after a storm settles. When you notice this shift, you can begin to do some future-based listening. What do people want and what really matters to them? This is how you start to envision and agree on a working climate that you all want.
The final step, then, is to create some agreements. You have to start by acknowledging that you are all producers of your working climate and not passive victims. Define some rules or agreements to help you create and stick to the climate that you all want. (If you’re a manager, don’t add anything — simply listen, clarify and summarise. Allow the group to co-create their agreements, however tempting it may be to offer your advice!) Finally, acknowledge that this is the beginning of a new way of being together — one that will continue and require a commitment from everyone to talk about things under the surface moving forward. As you try to work in this new way, it’s natural and inevitable that you will stumble into old pitfalls. But what will make the difference is the ability to talk about it openly and respectfully.
(This is a great post about brave conversations that goes a little deeper into some of these ideas.)
“Power in organisations is the capacity generated by relationships.”
— Margaret Wheatley
The value of going beneath the surface
To go here, we have to challenge the assumptions we might hold about being straight or frank with each other. “If I’m straight with someone, it’s unkind or impolite”; “if we talk about the real reason we’re not working well as a team, it will offend people or make things worse”; “if I say what’s really bothering me, I might be fired or exiled.” Instead, we discover that giving people straight and honest feedback is kind because we are committed to contributing to that person’s development. We see that when we talk about what’s really going on in the team, it neutralises the issue and gives us the choice to do something about it.
“There is tremendous power in an organisation when you hear the truth said out loud. The cat is out of the bag. We can see the cat. Now, are we going to just look at it or do something about it?”
– Ginger Graham, former CEO of Guidant (taken from “Willful Blindness” by Margaret Heffernan)
And we discover that when we create a culture of psychological safety, we can bring our whole selves to work, express ourselves fully, and put the beneath-the-surface issues up on the table so that we can take responsibility for them, instead of letting them own us.
This post is heavily influenced by content and ideas from my Swedish friends and colleagues at Tuff Leadership Training. You can also listen to our podcast called Leadermorphosis in which I interview thought leaders about the emerging world of self-organising teams and progressive organisations. You can listen to or download episodes here.
