#573 How to build a super team

0:00Helen:These teams get more done because they manage their time, energy and attention effectively.

0:09Helen:We are borrowing brilliance from an article by Ron Friedman, which is called How to Build a Super Team That Keeps Getting Better. Who doesn't want to be a super team that keeps getting better? I don't think I've been in that many super teams. I've been in some good teams, but that criteria, constantly building skills, actively making one another better, getting more done because they manage their time, energy and attention. I don't think I've been in many that ticked all those boxes. Building a super team feels more important than ever because super teams can respond to the change and challenge that lots of us are experiencing.

0:41Helen:Oh you know what are you finding frustrating? Use those frustrations as energy for experimenting. There's that sort of old phrase which I do I still think is true which is what gets measured gets done.

0:56Hi I'm Helen and I'm Sarah and this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, a weekly podcast where we borrow some brilliance from things we've been reading, watching, listening to, just discovering in the world. And we try and connect that to your work so that we have some new insights and ideas to help us improve in our careers. And today's episode is another one that we are proud to be doing in partnership with Post-it Notes. So we have taken Post-it Notes and incorporated them into what we're going to be talking about today to make it super, super practical and easy for you to apply.

1:28Helen:And I think this one, given the topic, is one to do together as a team, because we are borrowing brilliance from an article by Ron Friedman, which is called How to Build a Super Team That Keeps Getting Better. Who doesn't want to be a super team that keeps getting better? Which is featured in Harvard Business Review. If you go on HBR website, you can usually get, I think it's three articles for free. So hopefully you'll have the chance to read it. but even if you don't we're going to summarize it today we're going to talk a bit about what a super team is and why we want to be in one what's the what's better because you're in a super team and then there are these seven features uh that ron friedman found in his research and so for each feature we're going to describe a question that you could ask each other and then an action that you could take together to again try and make this very practical remember sarah got really excited because you read this first i did yeah and then i think on whatsapp you were like this article i think you screenshotted the pages yeah are we allowed to do that i don't know sure we maybe we did do that maybe we didn't perhaps i got some whatsapp messages i don't know what copyright is anyway we didn't share it beyond that but i remember reading it and i was trying to zoom in because i hadn't got my copy of the magazine yet and then i just read it online so it's the easiest way for me to do it so i think the three better because is in terms of why why you want to be a super team um and it not just being a sort of shiny title that draws people in which is a good title, is that these teams get more done because they manage their time, energy and attention effectively.

3:00Helen:I also particularly like the word attention there. We talk about time and energy, like we talk about energy a lot, but I like this idea of attention. What are you paying attention to? So that was the first point. The second one is that you actively make each other better, which I really liked. The whole is bigger than the sum of the parts rather than just a collection of individual superstars. And then the final one, which is very learn like a lobster. And I think this is actually why I got excited and sent you the screenshots, maybe, is they consistently and constantly build new skills and improve.

3:32Helen:So they sort of have this sense of always learning and feedback and continual improvement. And that's always in the pursuit of sort of growing and developing. So there's lots in here about learning. so other than your current team what what is the superest super team you think you've been in to date um I was in one team at Sainsbury's part of a kind of a leadership team that I think does stand out for me in my career as a bit of a super team can you see those factors in there yeah I think well whether I made other people better I think is quite hard for me to judge this is your team that you were leading well no a leadership team that I was part of but you know like I feel like I can't say oh yeah those people because of me because of me because to be fair they're all in very um impressive and high impact roles okay probably because of me right they could be listening and be like Sarah's taking way too much credit well some of them actually do listen because they are my friends um so they definitely made me better whether I made them better who knows um but you know like working alongside them I I definitely learned new skills sort different ways of doing things and also they were also really impressive so you know like they raised the bar and then I think that makes you want to be better um definitely to building new skills and improving and I also think that's naturally in my DNA so like I I do that in whatever team I'm in but I think you do it probably more in your job like more learning as you go when you're in these kind of teams versus sometimes if you're in a lower performing team perhaps you just have to lead your own learning and it perhaps feels a bit more separate um and then I think we did get more done I think it was always really clear what we were doing and why we're doing it um which makes a big difference and we we knew what mattered what mattered most like some of the work I am most proud of other than what we do um was definitely sort of made or produced or happened like during that time yeah how about you um mine would have been when I was at Eon um and it just feels so tangible like I was working for Phil Gilbert we were in the Ignite team and we were in innovation and so time and energy I don't know about attention that's an interesting one but time and energy because there was a real pace to that team because we had to get things out so I really remember that we definitely made one another better it was a really good leadership team and because of Phil like Phil really invested in learning and spotted like I remember we were like I remember because we had to hire really quickly and because it was a team that was starting from scratch and we had like a big a big agenda to go after I remember we had I mean it was slightly wasted on me but this kind of football pitch analogy when we were recruiting about like the different players and the different talents and needing different I mean obviously I get lost in that I'm like what position do I play I cheer everyone on I'm sorry rolling his eyes it's interesting though you say that because actually as I was describing that team I was thinking a lot about my leader at that time and just the difference that they made that she that she made I was working for actually a lady called Sarah there Sarah Warby and I think just so much of her behaviors like set set the but set set the tone and set the bar and then and then almost like we could be like this as a leadership team and And actually, when you read this research, there's not a lot of emphasis necessarily on just leadership.

7:01Helen:This is more about what it's like to be in that team. But it's interesting, isn't it? It's like being a super team, does it rely on? Have you sort of got to have a super leader to be a super team? Yes. Maybe we'll have many super leaders in the team, so we're not reliant on them. Maybe we'll get to that. It also had two reflections. One was, I don't think I've been in that many super teams. I've been in some good teams but I don't think I've been in that many when I looked at that criteria like they felt nice to be in but that criteria constantly building skills actively making one another better getting more done because they manage their time energy and attention I was like I don't think I've been in many that ticked all of those boxes I think I've been in lots of actually quite a few very good but maybe not quite not quite great the super teams yeah not quite the super team perhaps where two of the three would have been true but not but not all three yeah so that was my kind of my reflection wasn't that i didn't enjoy being in them but if that's the bar yeah i can see quite a few teams that didn't quite reach the bar and then my other reflection was like oh what if that's a super team like what's the opposite of what's the opposite of what's it when you're not in one of those because if the opposite of this would be your team isn't getting um things done because people are rubbish at managing their time um they you make each other worse yeah maybe there's like i have seen that toxicity yeah maybe and fear and blame and all that kind of stuff and the skills are stagnating because nobody you know i don't know no one gives you the feedback yeah so i was trying to work i was like what do we call that team stagnating stalling horrid the opposite of a super team is a horrid team also quite stuck stuck okay i almost feel like you'd be stuck right because you're like you're not you're not making progress like individually you're not making progress team sad it's a sad team to be in um well moving away from sad team and back towards super teams um i think sarah and i saw a lot of the work that we do in this a lot of the work that we do with companies a lot of the learning that we do which was i think quite validating for what we do and we also recognize that i think building a super team feels more important than ever because super teams can respond to the change and challenge that lots of us are experiencing.

9:16So I feel like if you've got super team strength, then you're just better equipped to navigate stuff. So what we have done, as Sarah said, we've got seven different factors that come from the research and from the article that you can read. For each one, we're just going to summarise what it is. What do super teams do? We're going to give you a question that you can ask yourselves as a team so you can maybe evaluate how this works at the moment and then an action for you to try out. Ready to go? We are. Okay, so super team feature number one is super teams run more experiments. So this means they are asking questions.

9:49They're not just accepting the status quo. They're trying new things out and they innovate. And I really like this point. They innovate even when things are going well. Because I think sometimes people wait for things to fail before they think, oh, we should probably do this differently because it's not working. And the bit that I took away from it was that it can be going brilliantly, but you can still look for ways you could do it differently and better.

10:12Helen:yeah I said the same to you I think even in learn like a lobster where we've got a whole chapter on experimenting we will often say to people oh you know what are you finding frustrating use those frustrations as energy for experimenting which is you know is a good place to start but I think looking at this in a different way of going what what is going really well yeah but what are we really good at and then be like oh okay but don't you know it's almost like don't get complacent yeah what's an extra experiment because what if that extra experiment makes you like even better Yeah. So I think it's and what we know with experiments is they're designed for learning.

10:46Helen:You learn fast. You learn by doing. Whenever I use that word in a workshop with people and say, you know, what do you think of when you think of experimenting? They're always really energetic words. Everyone's like, just try stuff out. Give yourself permission to fail. It's all about progress over perfection. And people are always really enthusiastic about experimenting. I think we naturally all enjoy experimenting. They sort of feel low pressure. We just sometimes maybe need a bit of permission to do it. Yeah. Back to kind of the environment. So let's make it easy then. So we thought about a question that you could ask as a team.

11:19And actually, this is one that we have prepared on our post-it notes. And we haven't told each other what our answers are going to be. So we will reveal them live and see how similar or different they are. So the question to ask a sales of the team is, what's one thing we're good at as a team?

11:34Helen:Do you want me to go first? Yes. So we've already written them down just so that if you're listening rather than watching, you don't have to listen to us write things down. I also wrote three. Of course you did. I'm really sorry. I know the question is cross. This is why we can never be a super team, because you can't ever follow a brief. I do this every week in our meetings. I like it, Matthew, every week. Every week in our meetings on a Monday morning, we have like, what's your one thing this week? And I'm like, wow. And I'm like, oh, not again. Also, you know the research around like clarity and prioritising.

12:04Helen:I think you just find it really hard because you get, I take it as you get enthusiastic about multiple things. That's true. Okay, go on. So you haven't, right. So I wrote down helping each other. Okay, well, that was one of mine. Oh, there we go. We're in the same team. I've got very practical. So events. I think our team are very, very good at events. We put on some brilliant events. Yeah, we have the BAFTA. The event we did at BAFTA for the companies that we work with, like Learn Like a Lobster. We are very good at that. Learn Like a Lobster was... That was the dream. We hired the aquarium. It was brilliant.

12:38Support. I think the team are very very good at supporting each other there's this very nice sense of that in the team um and also I think we're getting better at experiments I think people we do talk about experiments so no we do I would agree so you would do that as a team and then I think yeah you could all do it on a pasted note and put it up on a wall and then you could compare and you

12:56Helen:could actually there's a lot to be learned by how much similarity how much difference yeah are the things that you are good at that maybe you're taking for granted did different people see different things it's interesting that we got one that was the same so you're like oh that's probably a bit of a standout strength yeah well that's a nice way of telling it standout strength um so the action here is you take you take the thing so like let's take support for example and you're going to design one easy experiment to try something new so let's say i guess if support was one of ours an experiment could be um i don't know each of you could every week one person puts forward a problem and then there's like you the kind of team try to support and solve it together like by the end of the week so within a week like team support for a week and we just experiment that over like a month so we have four people's problems one a week and then we have this kind of team support so the support is a little bit more focused to your point like we know it's a strength we might take it for granted so if we kind of focus that strength we focus that support around a specific problem maybe maybe it has more impact I was thinking differently um I was thinking I feel people are very good at supporting people in our team but do we ever get support from things like AI so I think our team's default would always be to support through each other through a conversation I was like what if when you were looking for support in a week you sort of swapped out a real person with like a squiggly AI support instead like what would you know like what would that look like a different kind of support um the thing i also really like about what you described is i think we are very good at reactive responsive support you know if something's gone wrong or we need to fix something fast or something's a priority um everybody would always rally around like i've i've always have no doubt about that with our team um but what you described is actually more proactive support like this is a bigger thing i'm thinking about how could we support that person to think about that or to think that thing through or to come up with new ideas um so it's nice isn't it because you come up with experiments which are almost new strands around something that you're like we're already proud of this thing this is something we're really good at um and i can really imagine using post-it notes for this because you'd sort of use post-it notes for the one thing we're good at or three in your case and then i can imagine using post-it notes to connect experiment ideas with oh okay well if these are our consistent strengths like what are we going to do yeah you You could just give people like five minutes to be like, okay, so what experiments have we got?

15:25And then just to give people like time to think. Yes, yeah. I think that's one of the benefits of it because you write it down and then you can move it around. I love it. I love it. Okay, ready for our second feature of a super team? I like this one. I do too. I think we like all of them. We're just like, yes.

15:39Helen:I don't know. There are certain ones where I was like, I really like this one. Oh, I thought you were going to say there's certain ones I didn't like. Oh, no, no. No, I think I did like all of them. So the second feature is making curiosity contagious. contagious i was like that contagious word i'm always a little bit like interesting choice um but i get i get the point here is that um i guess it's almost like curiosity is impossible to miss in these super teams like it is constant they are they know what they don't know that was a point actually in when i was reading it that stuck out for me so it's not just about they're constantly learning and they're learning from other people in other places which i think sometimes is the default for when we think about what curiosity looks like.

16:18I really liked in the article that they said they know what they don't know.

16:23Helen:Yeah, I felt like, I think, is it called purposeful curiosity? I think I've got that book. But that was the word that sprung to mind. I was like, it was purposeful, intentional curiosity. And I do think that is different to just sort of, you know, being open and curious, like we would both say we're naturally curious. But I think what this is describing here is a much more it's also a togetherness about your curiosity because curious can feel quite an individual thing you know what am i curious about i'm going off to learn about these different things whereas this was like collective curiosity i was like oh how often do we think about curiosity like together what are we all curious about what do we all want to learn about versus people just going off and doing it individually well it reminded me about like in lobster as well about the we have the point about richard fineman's uh don't know notebook yeah and that idea of like as a team taking time to think what don't we know about this project rather than just kind of rushing rushing on um and so that actually is our suggested question that we think would be useful for your team to ask together what don't we know enough about that feels important for what we do um so i had to go answering oh did you yes okay okay i was going through these and i would try to answer all of them maybe think on the spot now okay what was your answer yes to be fair i've obviously not doing this on the spot so i'd already thought um the usefulness of ai coaches within companies because i'm seeing more and more companies and tech providers who are clearly creating these ai coaches saying oh no we've we've added that in now to how this company works so they've got essentially a career coach by their side sort of day in day out and I was thinking oh I would be really interested to see how does that work versus you know just using Claude because I'm like well I would like why could I not just use Claude to do that there must be something that's better because you've kind of got this AI coach is it because it's trained on a company's processes and policies or tone like um and I've never seen one in action because I guess we don't have one in our company but I am sure some of the companies that we work with must have a version um so i was like that would be i was like i don't know it feels very relevant to what we do at amazing if um and with squiggly careers and that felt like something that i was like oh we could have collective curiosity right about how these ai coaches are helping or and also what are the kind of challenges with them because like most tech it won't be perfect because i think loads and loads of the companies we work with will will start to try them out we haven't asked our team these questions yet i think we will do um I'm really interested to hear what they say.

19:02My head went to say the question, what don't we know enough about that feels important for what we do? And we really want squiggly careers to go into companies because we think that when teams are talking about it together, that's when we can make a really big difference to development. And I don't think I know enough about how companies are using our resources. People tell me all the time, oh, I recommended this, or I gave this person in my team a pod sheet. Oh, I used your company toolkit.

19:26Helen:And I'm like, oh, when did you use it? When, how, which one? And yeah, which one have you never used? I feel like I really, I should ask a few more questions to have a bit more understanding there. I love that one. And so the action that we have got here to make curiosity contagious for your team is to bring the outside in. So I think quite, I mean, I say this because I've seen it a lot in companies that I've been where you just get a bit internal with - Yeah, of course. You get team talk and company talk and it's like the world. Yeah, industry even. And it's like a bubble which can get a bit bigger, but then it doesn't go beyond that.

20:02And so bringing the outside in is maybe you've got a friend that works in a completely different industry. And you could say, you know, can you tell us? It doesn't even have to be directly related to the job that you do. Can you just tell us what are some of the priorities and problems and insights and issues in your industry right now? And I think the thing that makes it with curiosity is you don't want to constrain it too much. as soon as you go well we need to make this directly relevant to next week's team meeting

20:29Helen:you suddenly put a boundary around it i suppose that's the sort of balance you know because that's almost the opposite right to what i was saying i was like oh we need to be purposeful and intentional but actually what you're challenging with there is going yeah but if you get too narrow you kind of might miss out on borrowing brilliance and getting inspiration from elsewhere so maybe what you have to try and do is sort of connect some dots around going well how do you solve problems as somebody working in the fashion industry you know I don't know I don't know how those you know in fashion how do people solve problems so maybe you need to give that curiosity enough of a frame to be useful for for a team to make it that kind of intentionality but then go but it doesn't really matter where people work or what kind of job that they do someone in our client actually was telling me this morning who I saw she works in HR and people um and there's a guy who I think like designs he's like really into gaming and designs games in the same company but she got him to come and talk to the people function about like games and like dare I say it gamification for those of you who've listened to the gamification episode and she was saying like how much they learn and how much energy it brought and I was like oh that's a really good example of probably that team going, there's probably something in gamification that might be relevant for learning, but we don't know loads about it.

21:50And what if everyone in the super team, I bet everyone in the team knows someone who does something interesting. Yeah. And you can give it a frame. Who's got the most interesting job out of anyone you know? Yeah. And because then it doesn't have to cost money. It's just like, bring them in. Like what's an average day in your life look like? What are the skills you use at work this week? Those sorts of questions. Yeah. See, we get so excited about this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. We should move on. Okay, the third one. Well, this is probably, it's less, I don't want to say it's less exciting, but it's less.

22:19It's harder. Yeah, it's harder. So the third feature of a super team is that they ask the uncomfortable question. So they're not just updating each other. So think about, I guess, you know, we're talking about those sad teams or the stalling teams or the stuck teams. Well, that's when you just like default. Today I have. Yeah. It's like, do I need to be in this meeting to hear this? Yeah. But super teams aren't doing that. What they are doing is uncovering what's getting in the way of progress. Their time spent together is not taken up by an update. Their time spent together is taken up by how could we do this better?

22:52What's not working? What would be a different way? Those kind of uncomfortable questions, which I think you are very good at an uncomfortable question. I think you bring this feature into the team, I think. So the question, if you want to kind of explore this together as a team, and the question that we thought was useful here to kind of bring in a bit of that discomfort is first of all state your most important priority so our most important priority is dot dot dot as a team and then the question is what's getting in the way of us making progress and again i think this goes back to something we have said a few times about i think a team has to feel safe to be able to say this like what's getting in the way because maybe it's you maybe if you're maybe

23:34Helen:Well, actually, Sarah, it's the fact that whatever it is. I think that might be true some of the time, to be fair, when I slow things down. I feel safe saying it. I was just thinking about something I've worked on with a team this week where I kept asking questions. You know, you're just like, I think they thought they were done. And I was like, just one more question. Or like, I'd find another thing or something that didn't quite work. And you could just see them being like, well, are we done? No one said that, obviously. But I was like, they must have been thinking it. anymore no more no more so um yeah I think I do ask I think I do ask the uncomfortable questions um and I guess if you ask them together as a group and if everybody is sharing it I think that makes it easier um yes you could ask these in one-to-one but I think back to this being in a team you're almost particularly if the person leading that team is listening if you can create the safety where it's like I genuinely I really want to know this it reminds me of um Amy Edmondson's original work in like fearless organizations when she did work in hospitals um and the hospitals that were really good at kind of figuring out what was what what didn't work and it took the leader quite a few goes to find the right question you know to get people to share what wasn't working because the same person would ask the question in one way and people were like I am not up for I'm not up for sharing what's not working because I'm fearful of the consequences or I'm going to be blamed i'm also in an environment where it has quite serious consequences if if things go wrong where it was almost like when they then framed the question in a way that felt very supportive and was more like um well what's what's one change that you would make that would make things safer or you know make these processes work better so i also think here you might have to play around with asking different questions and see which are the ones that get you the most insight see which the ones that people it's almost like you need people to be comfortable answering the uncomfortable question otherwise you won't get the insight it's more it's sort of asking the same question differently i think that's exactly what it is yeah and i think some i find this even like sometimes you'd have to you just have to keep trying and then you're like oh that's the one that's stuck or that's the one that's that people have obviously felt okay enough to answer yeah so what's the action here because when uh you came up with this action and i was like this is the most hell in action of all time so what do you want people to do what makes it helity do you think the rhyming uh no i was like i could just see the table and i could just i've got a table in my head i knew there'd be a table in your head and i was like i could just imagine you doing it and i was like when i read it i was like okay yeah we'll we'll do this go and tell everyone what we're now going to do is a blockers and unlockers list obviously so you take the blocker so the thing that's getting in the way of the important project that you want to make progress on so you kind of got to name it i think to be able to kind of respond to it sarah is getting in the way this project sarah's inability to stop asking questions asking questions or improving well actually let's just take that as an example let's do it let's work it through and then okay then you think well what would unlock it so you know fire me no that's an option but if it is an option i might add it in so unlocking it could be um how actually framing a session i always think framing a session is a useful way of this so like having a challenge and build session so it's it's everyone goes into that session knowing that sarah's going to ask questions and that other people can ask questions so i'm not feeling like i was going to present something to you and your questions are coming at me in a way that i hadn't expected them so that could be something um an unlocker could be um sending you a draft and you kind of going through it on your own and sending your questions in a slightly different way um I think an unlocker could be more whens you know when do you need to get work done by and you know sometimes them framing you know almost like well we want to get this out today so it doesn't mean you don't have an opportunity to ask more questions and we can't still improve it but you know sort of being able to signal to someone like people being able to say signaled to me to say well we we are going to share this now like we were working the thing we were working on earlier this week to be very specific because actually it will come out to lots of people listening is we were doing how to use five skills for a squiggly career for a team um with some ai prompts and we're using it for our companies but we're also going to make it available to everybody who subscribes the newsletter so we're working on that as a team and i was asking question question question um and what someone in our team because we not really got any dates or deadlines I just kept going yeah whereas actually if someone in our team had said okay wherever we get to by the end of today that's the version we're going to use for this client because they need it now and like almost kind of go are you happy that it's good enough because it doesn't mean that we can't improve it after today and actually funnily if it was me that ended up making I ended up making the call for the team like even I think I'm asking too many questions yeah you know and I sort of went well let's let's use what we've got let's improve the rest of these things afterwards ready for the next thing but i think that's where we struggled a little bit like what was stopping us making progress was almost like we hadn't up front got that clear sense of what do we need to do by when yeah we knew what we needed to do and then we just kept on doing and you know like doing and doing doing so i think when's helpful i probably also put a bit of a limiter on you i'd say like what your three biggest questions yeah and i'd be like we can solve the details solve today yeah or what can we solve of you can have as many questions as you want yeah but these are the ones that we can solve now and the now versus not for now that would have actually been really helpful because some of the things what are your not for now questions sarah well some of the things that i think all my questions were fine but some of the answers to the questions were now some of them were not for now and actually what our team tried to do was answer all of the questions now and so if they had that confidence to be like oh well actually some of these things are like tech fixes or whatever yeah so they're not for now and then you don't store progress in the same way so to take it away from just i know we've got me we've got the rabbit hole of sarah's working style that the point is have you know that you know the blocker because you've got it from the question but the unlockers i think it's a really nice team activity because there might not be one right answer but it's the fact that you're all generating well what could we do to unlock this problem and you end up with quite a few and then i think there's then a lot of commitment because as a team you then decide well this is the this is the one this is the one that we're going to do.

30:01Helen:Shall I do the next one? Do it, yeah. Rolling up your sleeves. Yes. And here what he talks about is that super teams support each other to deliver, regardless of role or hierarchy. So those super teams might have structure, they just feel quite flat in terms of the ways of working. So there's not people being like, you know, that's not my job, or almost like, oh, I'm too senior for that. It's sort of when something matters, everybody sort of dives in and plays their part. Definitely don't want to micromanage. It's not about that. But it is about this kind of sense of, you know, like you're working together on something that matters.

30:42Helen:And no one is more important than anyone else. Everybody's contribution is really, really valuable. And I think, you know, there is always a temptation as a leader you know you can sometimes feel a bit separate that can just feel like that's sometimes the nature people will say you know leadership is lonely yeah um and this is sort of the opposite of that it's like okay but you can still get involved you can still kind of get work done um and they talk in the article about not becoming disconnected from the work you know almost um I was trying to ask myself this question actually I was thinking you know like could I if I was thinking about our team do I know all the tasks could could I have a go at all of those task or are there somewhere i'd be like i actually don't know how that happens and it would be a mix me i wouldn't i wouldn't know how to do them all do you think then that you in a super team everyone needs to be able to do each other's job because that seems quite uh yeah i think that's sort of not what they were describing i think they were describing more you know when you're working on a big project together you know like you were saying and you've got real energy it's like everyone's just sort of in it together and everyone's supporting each other i don't think you have to be able to do each other's job but I think there is often some value in like understanding the jobs that people do without necessarily having to do them all yourself like there'd be things that would happen in our team where I think if I was a bit close to it a bit like when we talked about zero distance on the previous podcast it probably helped me to roll up my sleeves a little bit more maybe yeah so the question here is what are two strengths that you have that you can see being useful across the team.

32:15Helen:And the idea of this question is so that you can see how your strengths can support opportunities and maybe solving problems in more than just your job, you know, like trying to think more across the team rather than just kind of in your role. So my two that I thought of, because I was like, like I say, I answered all the questions, were creating new ideas. So I was like, oh, if anyone needed to create new ideas, I like creating new ideas and critical thinking. Yes, these are two things that you are very good at. We need it in our team. What would you have? I think I would have relationship building.

32:49So I can kind of go out and I have no fears about that. So that can help people that are like, oh, we could do with learning a bit more about this. And I think I also have, we've talked about before, but clarity creating. So I see sometimes when people in a team are maybe getting themselves in a bit of a muddle. Like seems like, oh, it seems with making that like way harder than it needs to be and I feel like I can kind of get in and simplify and cut some things away so that people can make progress on projects. Yeah you can do that. And so whenever it's like messy I'm like oh okay let's it doesn't need to be messy that we can we can get through that.

33:22Helen:And so an action that you might take here is run what we would call like a hive mind session which is where somebody shares something like that's maybe an objective or an outcome in their job and then together the team almost bring their strengths to that so I was thinking um we might ask ourselves the question how do we double the number of subscribers to the Squiggly Careers newsletter um and that does sit within a person's job but it also matters to all of us um and I would bring ideas and critical thinking you could build you might bring like relationships but almost I suppose you're explicitly saying to people we want you to bring those strengths um rather than it just being like an idea generation session because that could just be like a what ideas have we all got yeah like helen what are the relations what relationships how could relationships help us solve this problem and i almost wanted it to be as a sort of more pointed session a more specific session where let's say um almost frustratingly there's so many sarahs and in our team it's actually sarah i work for sarahs i've got sarahs it's sarah in our team who looks after the newsletter so sarah might be facilitating this hive mind session but she would say well Sarah I want you to come to the session with three new ideas that we've not tried out yet that we could experiment with um Helen I want you to then convert those ideas that Sarah's got into like clarity because I'll probably go all over the place you might convert them into like some prototypes you Sarah might ask you a question about well who should we build relationships with who also have really good newsletters so almost like you've beforehand you've kind of done a bit of strengths mapping and then you've given that person almost permission to like draw on all of those strengths and you could do it one-to-one but I think in a group it would feel really nice and by the way if anyone does want to subscribe to squiggly chris newsletter the link is in the show notes that's how to double it if everyone just subscribed that would be that would be really helpful for us um should we talk about the next one let's do it um which I also think is a hard one I think this one might be the hardest actually out of all of them more than the uncomfortable questions I think so okay so this is make feedback feel like support um so super teams learn quickly and feedback fuels learning so they are very good at feedback asking giving receiving feedback which we've talked about before on the podcast but there is a specific point in the article where they say um and this bit is actually focused on leaders but this would be for everybody when leaders say deliver harder to hear feedback it it feels like it's there to help everyone improve and to grow and it's sort of well well received so even though it might be hard to hear it's actually you know it's it's acted upon it's it's in the context I guess of having a high trust team so they do particularly point out that say the hard thing feedback works really well in a super team and this is why it's hard to be a super team well it's a skill to say it isn't it it's a skill to receive it and then it requires safety all around it so it probably is I felt like it was the tough one um so i thought an easy ask because i was like you probably don't want to you do want to think all feedback first before you then get into an action like maybe you say the hard thing action was what are the meetings and moments when we could add feedback into how we already work so i often think the reason feedback doesn't happen is it's just you've got low frequency so what does feedback look like in our one-to-ones what does it look like in a team meeting what does it look like whether we're using teams or slack or whatever we whatever we're doing so kind of making feedback a habit making it unmissable and then the action here I think it is good to consider what saying the hard thing would mean for your team and I liked the idea of like starting by saying the hard thing which might be counterintuitive but I wonder if you wait to say the hard thing till the end of a meeting or end of a project it either gets rushed or it doesn't get done um or you avoid it because maybe it doesn't change anything because it's right at the end so let's imagine um we were starting something new um or let's imagine our team meeting on a monday so this would be very different to what we do now um we always meet on a monday we could start our team meeting on a monday by picking something we're all working on and go right we're all going to start by saying the hard thing about this which is a really interesting one because you'd be like well that feels quite negative it feels like potentially quite a negative way to start the week but the point of a super team is that wouldn't feel negative it would feel like this is a shared project or priority and so we're going to start with that and we're all just going to do one say the hard thing statement of like what might be getting in the way of that because we've agreed it really matters and you're just creating a bit of space for that before you move on to whatever else you might you might do now it doesn't have to be in a team meeting it might be about a project it could be something you're working on but I think the space and the practice of saying the hard thing really matters I think the sooner you start practicing it the sooner you start getting better given we've done a lot of work on it in the last nine months it's just starting to be part of our language the words that we use in our team and I'm starting to think about more and more moments for it but I think you've just I would almost go just start anywhere start somewhere that feels easy to have a go at I think there's a lot to learn when you start doing it you can see people who find it relatively easy.

38:43Like, oh, you're giving me space, permission, here you go. And it's quite clear. And then you can see the people, they might giggle. Or they might sort of start and then say, but it doesn't matter, but it's okay. You know, like you can, and actually it's like, and you kind of want, I think, to get everyone almost to a level of neutrality with it, which is we can say the hard thing without that being a bad thing to say. Yeah. It's okay to say it, but I do think that takes time. And you'll be able to see maybe where who might need some more support with it.

39:13Helen:Yeah. Number six, which back to a lovely one, encourage growth even when it doesn't benefit you. So this is really interesting. In super teams, they support side projects, strength stretching and development beyond today's role. And so they talk about people's hobbies being celebrated, people who do different or interesting things that are not to do with the day job. like that being sort of proactively encouraged and people being like intrigued by that and i was thinking well that was very much us right that was that was me at sainsbury's and going off one day a week to do early early days of squiggly careers um and almost people not feeling like they have to hide it and like kind of talk about it and so a really easy ask here is what do you enjoy doing when you're not at work we did our little post-its for this yes and i was thinking let me guess what Let me guess what's on yours.

40:05Helen:Oh, yeah, because I was thinking this is not going to be that interesting for us. Surely we know she's the two well. What does Sarah enjoy doing when she's not? I don't think you will guess what I've written down. I would say like reading or walking. Okay, that's not what I've written down. Okay, what would you think I've written down? Have you said cooking? Oh, no. Gardening. More specific. Growing new seeds. Growing vegetables. Growing and eating vegetables. You would be so impressed with my vegetables. I've seen them on Instagram. Oh, no. my chard is like i mean he's the best chard ever in the whole world what is on yours oh i wrote building habitats and crabbing but is do you enjoy doing that or do you enjoy spending time with max oh no i enjoy the actual thing no no max is sarah's little boy for context yeah no i enjoy the actual so if max wasn't there you would still build habitats and go crabbing crabbing definitely i would i actually don't know what i'm gonna do when he doesn't want to do that i mean the other week there was there was this guy right who turned up on the beach oh it's a slight segue but honestly it was amazing to watch the guy turned up on the beach from wales um and we were down in dorset um and we were catching crabs you know with like the nets and bait and stuff he just got in the sea and caught spider crabs with his hands so he was just like putting his hands around the edges of rocks facing you crazy people like coming back with these massive spider crabs and honestly i've never been so impressed and my son was like oh mum is he a professional like as in like a professional crab catcher no he's just incredibly at one with nature I'm there with like my bacon trying to catch these crabs but I do like I like love yeah I love it I love catching crabs and fish I love how our out of work life is about chard and crabs I mean I would say I actually thought our team do this better probably than us um because the side projects across our team are fascinating yeah uh we've got people into sewing like yeah the djing french ceramics jewelry making yeah and people will often talk about those in like their wins of the week or they'll share how they're getting on and i feel like we all end up getting quite i get quite invested in some of what they're doing yeah um and that's really lovely it's so nice um so my idea here for an action was uh petra kutcha am i saying that right yeah yeah um i'm calling it petra kutcha passions because there's alliteration and that made me happy.

42:30Helen:And so if you've not done this before, it's where you sort of do a presentation where you don't have to do it in this way, but often you set a time limit and have a number of slides, but the point is you're kind of constrained. I did a version of this actually of Sainsbury's, the team I led at Sainsbury's, and actually it was a really nice way to get to know everyone. Isn't it images only as well? Yeah, you just sort of show like big images. Quite a lot. I think it was like 20, maximum of 20 slides. But I almost feel like that's too many because that's sort of from quite a long time ago before the days of TikTok and people want things really short.

43:00Helen:So I think you could do your own like constraint. Maybe it's five minutes, five slides, for example. And I think any team time together you've got or in a way day, you could just get people to share a passion. I can't wait to see your pet your passion on crapping. I could show you a video right now. No, it's fine. It's fine. I've got the video of the spider crabs. I didn't have a picture of the guy, but I really wish I hadn't. We all came back. My partner hadn't come, but my sort of brother-in-law had. And we were so enthusiastic. I'm sure he's like famous. That's not normal to be able to catch a spider crab in your hands.

43:34Helen:He had very like surfer wildlife vibes. Oh, wow. And like, yeah. Yeah, he was. We were all quite in awe of him. It was really funny. And you could, I was like, you could either do it all at once. So when I did it at Sainsbury's, everybody did it. And we'd got the time to do that. So five minutes each. Five minutes each. And everyone's done it. You've done it in about an hour. Or if you were going to do it in your team meeting, which might be more realistic if people were like, I want to get started on it straight away rather than wait for a team offsite or whatever. I was like, you could do one a week.