Mark C. Winters explains why visionary-integrator pairs keep reopening decisions they thought they'd settled. He traces it to Patrick Lencioni's work on commitment, arguing the real problem is weak conflict and low trust. Building personal relationships outside work helps teams stop cycling back to the same arguments.
Hi everybody, it's Mark C. Winters. And today I'm really talking to both you visionaries and you integrators. And hopefully some of you have read this book. If not, I highly recommend it. It's called the Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. And in that book Lencioni talks about teams that lack commitment. And one of the ways that he describes them is they revisit discussions and decisions again and again. So have you ever seen that kind of behavior and in your visionary integrator relationship? So here's what it looks like when I see it. Visionary and integrator will have a discussion and they'll make some kind of a decision out of that discussion and then they'll continue on down the path for a little ways, hopefully all the way to resolution over here. But all too often something happens along the way after they've discussed it and thought they made a decision and it all just kind of loops back almost to where they've started. I call this pattern recycling. And frankly, I see it way too much. And you start looking at that pattern and asking yourself why does that happen? And what's really going on here is that the visionary and the integrator just aren't fully discussing the issue in a way that they need to, to get it all out there on the table. So you look at Lencioni's book and what you'll see as the reason that they're not making that commitment that they need to is because they're probably not having the kind of real conflict that they need to, to really understand what's going on and hear each other, to get all that stuff out on the table. You start looking at why they're not having the healthy conflict that they need to. And they probably don't have the level of really vulnerability based trust that they need to to feel comfortable saying the things that they need to say. I was having an interview with one of our great integrators and, and he had a great observation on the trust that's required in that visionary and integrated relationship and how helpful it's been for he and his visionary to really be able to get through things much more quickly and stick to and commit to whatever they decide after they discuss something because they have this solid foundation of trust. And I asked him what was the key to them being able to do that. And he really said they had a lot of success by making it personal. So for them it was about getting together outside of the context of work, getting to know each other's families doing things that were just really fun and more on the personal side of things had really strengthened their relationship and made them more effective as a visionary integrator duo. Okay, so three things I want you to take away from this one today. Number one, I want you to catch yourself when you're recycling, when you're falling into that pattern of behavior. I want you to see what's going on and ask yourself why. Number two, I want you to commit to full discussions and decisions all the way to resolution. So if you're going to talk about an issue in your same page meeting between you visionary and the integrator, I want you to really finish it out. Talk about all the things that you need to and the third thing is be intentional about building trust between you and your visionary integrator counterpart. Thanks for watching. Today at Rocket Fuel Ventures, we're all about creating the most powerful visionary integrator duos on the planet. And we do that by helping you crystallize what it means to be a visionary and an integrator so you can understand if that concept can help you and if you decide it can, to get connected with your complementary counterpart and then finally maximize that relationship to make it everything it can be to help you take your company to the next level. So if you want more Rocket Fuel, please check out our website@rocketfuelnow.com and that's where you can sign up for the weekly videos like this. Be sure you're getting these on a regular basis. You can also take the assessments so you can understand as a visionary or as an integrator, where your strengths lie and what the shape is of your two piece puzzles that can help you find that complementary counterpart. And finally, of course, read the book Rocket Fuel and keep those great reviews coming. So until next time, go Rocket.
