Innovative teams: How to foster the right kind of friction
One of the most talented teams I ever worked on sat at the back of the ninth floor of a 10 story building. This is relevant for one reason only: the ninth floor was known for being the loudest floor in the building and it was all because of us — the Innovation Team. Why were we so loud?
Our team’s charter was to embed innovation into the organization’s DNA and we were passionate about this work. Our love language was rousing discussion and debate. The diversity of the team, which was composed of individuals with a wide variety of backgrounds as well as perspectives, experiences, and expertise, brought with it agile principles, and an incredible tension that was not for the faint of heart. But we loved it. We were trusted, empowered, and unafraid to better ourselves through failure. The work we did together earned us the number one spot on Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators in 2020.
Now, we weren’t always perfect at managing this beautiful tension. It wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows. And that’s why I agree with Timothy R. Clark, in his book The Four Stages of Psychological Safety, when he says the role of a leader is to “simultaneously increase intellectual friction and decrease social friction.” In other words, leaders must make it safe to bring diverse teams together (ie, low social friction) who have naturally differing viewpoints and perspectives (ie, more intellectual friction) to spark creativity and innovation. A little tension can go a long way toward helping a team challenge the status quo and operate at their highest potential.
Where there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to creating a diverse team that is characterized by a high degree of intellectual friction and a low degree of social friction, there are some basic principles that can be applied in any team context to help achieve a healthy, innovative team.
Psychological safety
A psychologically safe environment is one in which people feel free to make suggestions, ask questions, and challenge the status quo, without fear of punishment or humiliation. It is the most important element in facilitating intellectual friction in any context. This type of safety demands that team members value one another’s contributions, care about one another’s well-being, and have input into how the team carries out its work. For a culture of creativity and innovation to flourish, people need to first and foremost feel included and then feel free to learn, question, disagree, and present radically different opinions. It’s the role of leaders to nurture this and to hold their teams accountable in co-creating that safety.
Less niceness, more kindness
One error teams often make is mistaking niceness and congeniality for psychological safety. In fact, an environment where people feel the need to be nice all the time is quite the opposite of psychologically safe. Niceness and kindness are obviously closely related, however, there are important differences. Niceness means being pleasant, agreeable, deferential, avoiding ruffling any feathers or stepping on toes. And while niceness may well reduce social friction in a team, it will also likely reduce intellectual friction, because people will be more hesitant to disagree with each other. And that’s the last thing a team needs if it wants to inspire the best ideas and solutions. Kindness, on the other hand, actually encourages intellectual friction because it builds trust and solidarity through respect (antidotes to social friction) without sacrificing honest and healthy disagreement.
“For a culture of creativity and innovation to flourish, people need to first and foremost feel included and then feel free to learn, question, disagree, and present radically different opinions.”
All for one and one for all
One phrase I hear often on teams is “assume best intent.” In other words, give your team members the benefit of the doubt. However, assuming best intent is often not enough to mitigate social friction, it’s more defensive than offensive. A team culture that successfully manages social friction operates under the belief that all team members are fundamentally for each other. This belief not only encourages team members to see the good and assume best intent, but to actively promote, encourage, and advocate for each other (be each other’s “hype-man”). When you are for your teammates, you want them to win, and you believe your success is connected. The “all for one and one for all” attitude means no one is left behind, you have each other’s back, and you help each other shine.
Consent vs consensus
Ultimately, there will always be moments when tough decisions need to be made. One way to decrease the social friction in decision making: adopt a consent-over-consensus model. Consensus happens when everyone agrees on the same plan. Consent, on the other hand, is where no one says ‘no.’ In other words, you might not agree with or like the plan, but your objections aren’t so severe that they override your ability to move forward with another idea and, at the very least, test it out. If you must say “no” then your team should trust that as a sign that there may be a better way that simply hasn’t been tested yet.
Test, learn, and embrace failure
All healthy teams want to win. When you leverage all that beautiful intellectual friction of your team to build winning strategies, naturally you’re going to encounter more than one way to look at a problem and proceed. Recognizing that strategy is first and foremost a hypothesis is critical to remember. As such, a test-and-learn approach is non-negotiable. Rigidity is the enemy of innovation and effective strategy, but so is getting stuck in indecision. So, leaders should ditch encouraging teams to have “strong opinions loosely held” (after all, humans aren’t really built to hold their opinions loosely) and, instead, help them form hypotheses based on their sourced information. Then, experiment. This approach treats both success and failures as nothing more than valuable data that can be utilized to stay the course, improve, pivot, or start over. All in service to the team’s ultimate goal: a win that makes everyone proud.
Read more: Culture: What’s in the sauce
