125 | The Leadership Edge: Mastering Communication & Connection | Marsha Acker

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

It's impossible, I think, for any one person to be able to have all the answers anymore. But yet I think that's an edge. I think it's left over from what we believe we think about leaders and what they're supposed to be able to do to what they need to do today.

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Thanks firstly to you for listening. If you're a first-time listener, you're very welcome. If you are a repeat listener, thank you for keeping listening. We're obviously doing something right, so that's nice to know. A couple of wee asks, as I always do at the beginning of every podcast episode. Firstly, if you're listening on Apple, if you could take literally 20 seconds to give us a little rating,. If it's 4 or 5 stars, all the better. And just a little comment. It really helps to get the podcast out there and in front of more people like you, which I guess can only be a good thing. So thank you for doing that in advance. Secondly, a little thank you as usual to our friend and sponsor Workvivo. They're doing some sterling work, and I actually met them at a conference in London last week. If you don't know them, workvivo.com. They've built the most amazing employee engagement platform. And part of that is actually supporting podcasts out the box. So if you've ever been thinking about setting up your own internal podcast, then, you know, by all means, pop along and have a look at their website. You'll hear a little bit more from them later on. So without further ado, on to today's our guest, Marcia Acker, who is the US-based CEO of an organization called Team Catapult. As usual, we will let her tell us a little more about what she does and about the organization in a second. She's also a leadership and team coach, and I suspect that as we go through today's episode, we'll be getting a lot into the whys and wherefores of coaching, particularly during change. So looking forward to that, that conversation later. So Marcia, hi there, you're very welcome on the podcast.

Thanks, Scott. I'm super excited to be here. So, thanks for having me.

No, listen, my pleasure. As I said, why don't we kick off with you giving us maybe the 2-minute version of you and your career and how you got to where you are? Because I think that based on our conversation previously, I think your experiences kind of echo the experiences of very many people, but lots of them just stay in the role and keep doing it rather than going, "I'm not very good at this. I think I'll do something else." So, I'll just hand over to you to explain that cryptic introduction.

Yeah, you know, I often tell folks what I went to school for, it doesn't have anything— well, it has some to do with what I do today, but my background was in software engineering and process improvement. And so the first half of my professional career, I found myself working in technology firms, leading software development teams, and trying to create the bridge actually between software engineers and end users. And I've always been passionate about change. And at that point in my life, I would say I was tied technology bringing about change. But what I noticed as I continued in that part of my career was, as I increasingly moved up in terms of responsibility and accountability and positions, I found myself in a leading director of operations position in a startup in a dot-com era. And I started to find myself super challenged by working with other humans. And over the course of a number of years, which actually then led to me starting Team Catapult in 2005, I began to realize that I had a lot of education, like I was really savvy in the technical aspects of getting work done, but I was finding myself out over my skis and didn't have a lot to grab onto in terms of working with other humans. And So that has actually led me to do what I do today. So just as a kind of a bottom line summary, it was my quest for growing in my own leadership that sent me off to learn about coaching and human dynamics and systems and actually how we can show up as leaders in that process and what, what changes as we kind of move up in terms of responsibility, where our focus goes. So I often say Today we work with leaders who are super savvy and technical in what they do, but maybe find themselves challenged in working with other human beings. And that's sort of our sweet spot is how do we bring about change when we need to work with others? And I think it's where I'm really passionate about. I feel like that's part of my, you know, my own personal journey of carving that out. But yeah, how to work with other humans.

And I think that, I mean, I've worked in a lot of big companies and worked with a lot of big companies. And what you described there about that whole idea of people having technical competence, but not necessarily having people competence. And as you said, have worked their way up organizations to the point where somebody says, well, you're now senior enough software developer, HR person, lawyer, "Whatever you are, here's a team." And you go, "But, well, A, I'm really good at doing the other stuff." And B, "I don't really know how to do this people stuff." And I think there's an expectation that because we're all people, we can just kind of do it. And I think that's a very, very, very dangerous assumption for organizations to make. Because I think certainly from what I've seen, lots of people aren't, and it's not their own fault. It's the fault maybe of the organization not giving them the opportunities to grow into that people leader role. There's a friend of mine who's a very senior CIO, and he's got a team of about 400 people. And he said to me, you know what, some days I just want to do a bit of coding. That's all I want to do. So, what do you do specifically today when it comes to— and I like that analogy of bridge, that idea of helping people across that bridge, maybe from being a technical expert in what they do to being the people leader of technical experts that maybe they need to become?

In our model for leading change, actually, and in working with leaders, one of the very first things that we do is give people a language for making sense of communication. And, you know, I think for years, I've watched, I've listened, there's certainly no lack of thought leadership of books out there about communication. It's sometimes— I would have the experience years ago of like, oh my goodness, just if somebody shares one more model with me about communication, I think, you know, I think my head might explode. But so we— I think we all intellectually get that communication is important, it's foundational. But as we've done work over the years, I've really noticed that, um, and I think this was true for me as well, that while communication— I actually, in our model, hold that communication is the most important aspect of anything else that we want to do: get work done, lead change, make the next pivotal moment in the company or in your own career. I think communication sits at the very core of whether that's moving forward or whether you're stuck in some way. But It is often felt nebulous, like, what is it? How do we, how do we make sense of it? And then the second part is, I think because we do it all the time, I think we're, we believe that we're really good at it, or that other people need to improve their communication, but not me. Like, I've, I've got this. If only they would do, you know, fill in the blank. If only they would be more concise. If only they would be more clear. If only they would just bottom line what they want to say. So I think there's a couple of things that happen for us. I think we're overloaded by communication models. I think it's a little nebulous about how it looks or sounds, and I think we think we're pretty good at it.

Okay, so what do you do specifically to help people get over that bridge then?

We start with giving them a foundation of how to read the room. And by being able to read the room, we use a theory called structural dynamics that comes from David Kanter, who was a clinical psychologist in Boston at Harvard. He started a lot of his research actually in the early '70s, and then in the '90s worked with Peter Senge and Don Shone and Bill Isaacs to actually translate his family research theory into organizations. And so structural dynamics is a theory of face-to-face communication but what it does is it gives us all a language, a nomenclature, kind of a shared language of how to name what's happening in our speech. So we look— we're able to look at speech acts and listen to what people are saying, and we can make sense if we, if we just apply the structure of it. What the theory says is that all conversation has a structure. And the structure is either propelling us forward or holding us back. And if we're, if we're being held back in some way, chances are there is something missing in the structure. And once you're able to sort of listen to that and hear it, you can, you can bring it. So I'll give you an example because theory is one thing, but how in the world might you apply it? So I often tell the story When my daughter was really young, she and I had what I call a Groundhog Day conversation. So if you imagine, if you've ever sort of had the experience of having the same conversation over and over again.

Yep.

Yeah. And you feel like if I have to have that conversation one more time, either it's, you know, we talked about it last week, I thought we decided it and now someone's bringing it back up again. Or you notice like in a dynamic with somebody else, You're often circling back to the same thing. So if you can identify a Groundhog Day conversation, one of the first ways to start to navigate that is to see if you can tell the structure of it. So my daughter and I, she's 15 now, but when she was much younger, we had a Groundhog Day conversation and I call it, "Put your shoes on, please." And it would happen anytime we were getting ready to go somewhere that she didn't really want to go., and we need it to often go in a hurry. And so I would say to her, um, Lauren, I need you to put your shoes on. And her response would be, okay. So walk away, and I'd say, Lauren, the bus is going to be here in 5 minutes. Do you have your shoes on? And she'd say, no. Well, what are you doing? I'm playing on the computer. Well, I need you to get your shoes on now. No more. And she'd say, okay, and then go back to doing what she was doing. And 5 minutes later, I'm headed out the door and I turn around and you know where the story's going, right? And she's sitting in the middle of the floor and I say, Lauren, the bus is here. And she starts crying because she doesn't have her shoes on. So what was happening in the dynamic between Lauren and I, if we actually looked at the speech acts that were happening, is I would make a move and I would say, "Please get your shoes on," and Lauren would follow by saying, "Okay." But what she really intended was what we call an oppose. There are actually 4 speech acts. Everything that we say can be coded into one of 4 speech acts. The first is a move, it sets direction. The second is a follow, it supports, it gets behind the current direction in the conversation. An oppose actually It corrects, it offers correction in the conversation. And the fourth action is a bystander. It's a morally neutral comment about what's happening. And so all conversation can be coded into one of four of those actions, which I think is pretty cool. So what Lauren and I had going on is I'd make a move and she'd follow by saying, okay, but what she intended was an oppose. She just didn't voice it. So what happens then is she and I are set up in this dynamic every day of I make moves, she follows because she's got some story that says that's the only thing that I'm supposed to say to mom when she asks me what I'm doing. And she doesn't really voice what she thinks. And I will tell you that pattern played out so often. And that pattern alone is what I see happen in so many organizations. It's what we call the COVID oppose. I don't feel like I can say no to you. So instead, I do other behaviors, I do other speech acts in the conversation that keep us stuck revisiting the same things. And so sometimes— so you asked me, what do we do with a team? The first thing that we do is give them a shared language. So we just introduce the language in a really simple way, but we start to help teams notice patterns in their conversation. So can they find the moves? Are they hearing a pose? If they're not hearing a pose, or if they're stuck in making lots of moves, we help them try to see those patterns because then that's the conversation to have. So a lot of times there will be some level of COVID opposition. So I intend one thing, but I say something different. And therefore my impact that I'm having in a team or with the other person leaves them feeling confused. So confused or frustrated or just not certain what's happening. And so a lot of times there will be stories or, you know, people, we do what we do for really good reasons. So we'll have our own story about why we might not oppose. Some of that will be based on my own behavior, on my own life history, and some of it will be coming from us as a system. So, uh, some story. Absolutely. Hi, I'm Kleena from Workvivo. When working away from the office, it's easy for your people to feel isolated and disconnected from your culture and each other. That's where we come in with our quick-to-deploy employee communications platform. It's all about ensuring that your people feel informed, engaged, and connected to your company culture values, goals, and each other wherever they work from. For more, see workvivo.com.

So, it's cultural within the organization or within the team?

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Interesting. I think one thing that actually strikes me is that when you mention that, Karen Jones from Denison, who's been a former guest on the podcast, she talks about the dirty yes. I say yes, but I don't really mean yes. And I've worked with lots of organizations and in lots of organizations where you have the slow no. I'm not going to say no, but I'm just kind of not saying yes. And the running joke here in Ireland is if somebody says to you, "Yeah, sure, I will. Yeah, yeah, I will," they totally won't. If anybody ever says that to you, they're not going to do that. They're not going to do that at all. So how do you get around that? How do you I mean, I guess by being able to name, I mean, you talked about nomenclature, by being able to name and spot these 4 different types, I guess then a leader, or if there's psychological safety within the team, the team can say, "That doesn't feel like what we should be doing right now. We shouldn't be opposing. We should be doing something else." Yeah, absolutely.

Our goal in any work is to not load up any one individual to do that work, because it's a lot. So, there will be places where the leader, the one doing that, or there will be places where the leader is behaving in ways that's giving people indicators that it's, you know, an opposed isn't welcome. So we really do look for, you know, introducing people to a shared language and then working with them to build the muscle of being able to name, see those patterns and name them when they're happening so that they can have a conversation about how they are speaking with one another. So they can talk about, okay, so what's it like to oppose in this team? What makes it hard? If we just even talk about it as an abstract, sometimes surfacing the stories that sit underneath, that sit in the culture, Scott, as you point to, about what makes oppose so hard here. And then now we're actually getting to the real conversation. Because I think spending the time having those conversations about what makes oppose difficult, why do we hold back, can we really work on collectively bringing it. So sometimes I was working with a team recently where that's been some of their work to do is to actually voice the oppose. And they were getting ready to make a decision and it actually moved pretty quickly. And then the leader went, um, So I know that oppose is often difficult for us, and before we move this totally forward, I just want to check, you know, is this, you know, no kidding, is everybody really on board? Or I'm just wondering if there might be someone who's holding back something that they're not saying. And just the very act of the leader consciously taking a pause to slow down and then invite it actually did surface the real conversation, the real concern. And, you know, I think it's not always that that real oppose is necessarily going to be the thing that totally derails, but sometimes it's the, it's the voice that shifts the decision a little bit, or, you know, it morphs it into something slightly different, or everybody goes in eyes wide open. Actually, yeah, this is a, this is a risk and we're going to make the decision to move forward with it. So, so we want the whole team to be taking responsibility for that and talking about it. I think that's one of the benefits of having the shared language is that we're able to say, we do things like we load people up. Sometimes there will be someone in the team who's really good at opposing. Then we do things like we call them the naysayer or the devil's advocate, or we say, so-and-so is always opposing. Sometimes, That then loads that one person up to always bring the opposing. So we want to work to build that competency in everyone so that they're not loaded up for the whole team.

And you might end up, I guess, in some organizations on a team they might choose. And I think what you described there is kind of that devil's advocate. So, you know, Jim or Sarah, we'd like you to sit in the meeting, we'd like you to watch what's going on, and you've got the knowledge of what these 4 types are, and we'd like you to call out when particular things are happening. But I think you're right. I think over time, it's about making sure the whole team feels confident and competent and comfortable to be able to have those conversations between them. And it's interesting, as you were talking there and talking about, you know, somebody would be holding up and saying, you know what, just before we carry on with this conversation or make this decision, is this absolutely the right conversation or decision to be making? And what's interesting is that It's easy to go to the negative and say, well, we're a bunch of people that just oppose things all the time. But actually, you might have a bunch of people who are just following, who actually aren't maybe opposing enough. They're just going, yeah, sure, because they're disengaged or because they tried to make a suggestion before and the boss said no and said no and said no again. So everyone just goes, you know what? Fine, boss. Yeah, just do it your way, whatever you think. Is absolutely fine. So, it's powerful, as you say, being able to name those things and call them out. And I always wonder, and certainly I've seen this with other models, it can feel really clunky and kind of a bit icky to start doing it in the first place. But actually, when you kind of get into your stride and you start to just do it a little bit more naturally, don't you?

Yeah. Yeah. I do think that that's really true. With anything, it can feel a little Yeah, almost like you put on a pair of shoes that are too tight or they're brand new and they kind of hurt to walk around in a little bit. But I do think that I've watched so many teams build fluency in it and it gives them, it just, it unlocks a different level of conversation. And I think sometimes, you know, so many of the challenges we can, you know, we hear during the pandemic that people are feeling disconnected or they don't like meetings, or they're not, you know, really connected to one another in a meaningful way in a remote space. I hold a perspective that I think it's less about the meetings and where we're all sitting. I think it's way more about the conversation that we're having and whether we're having a surface-level conversation that people feel disengaged, not understood, like they're just, you know, participating in a, in a play that they don't really get a say in, versus teams that are able to drop down to that next level, which is, I think, where the real conversation sits. So, so in addition to, you know, asking a team to kind of onboard a shared language, the next thing that we do is ask a team to work on the principle of bringing the conversation in the room. So anytime you feel compelled. Because when some of those patterns, some one of those stuck patterns are showing up in a team conversation, you'll likely notice people are compelled to take things offline. So if I don't like something, right, Scott, I'll call you up or I'll message you in some way after the meeting and I'll say what I really think there. And we ask teams to really watch themselves for when they do that or when they have a an impulse to do it and to then work on what do they need to do and actually bring the conversation into the room versus taking it offline.

It's very interesting because if I had a euro for every time we had talked about self-awareness on this podcast, I would be doing this podcast from the Bahamas or Bali or somewhere. Because it's true. I think probably the huge issue often is that there's a lack of self-awareness. There's a lack of a thought that goes something like, well, when we're finished with this conversation, I'm going to take this conversation out of the room with Marcia, and we're going to have a one-to-one after. Whereas actually, it's been able to stop yourself and say, "No, I need to have the conversation in the room with Marcia and the team, and we need to kind of noodle this out between us." That self-awareness can really help to drive that change.

And I don't know about you, but I think that's a real edge for many leaders. I think it's— so for us as leaders, I think there are two pieces to that. One is, getting comfortable with hearing oppose in the room from someone and knowing what to do with it. So someone opposes and you're thinking, well, great, now what do I do? So I think that's one part. I think the other part is concern. Like, if I have this conversation with Scott here in the room and I bring the conversation into the room, well, then what? Do I lose control or does everything go off the rails? So I think You know, we help to give leaders some skills around doing that, and I— but I think it's an edge for leaders. And so what they do, another pattern is that everything becomes an offline conversation. And you'll find leaders who their calendar is full of one-on-one meetings, and they're sort of the— they're sort of the golden thread between, you know, trying to connect all these desperate, disparate, um, conversations and pull a thread. And that's exhausting. So if you're looking at a calendar, I mean, one-on-ones are great to build connection and, you know, understand what's going on for people. But I think really discerning what's a one-on-one conversation versus what's a whole system conversation and actually needs to come in front of the whole system versus one-on-one. So otherwise you just load yourself up with running from meeting to meeting and trying. It's a lot of work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're putting yourself under pressure because you've got— you've then got to bring those messages from person to person to person to person, try and represent the that said it in the first place, 8 conversations ago. Whereas actually everyone being in the room is perhaps going to be a little bit more powerful. I think probably one thing when you said there about leaders knowing how to handle when they're opposed, and I think there's a lot in here and we talk a lot about vulnerability. I wonder if leaders perhaps don't put themselves or aren't comfortable putting themselves in that situation because they do have to be vulnerable. And I wonder if there's maybe still a sense that I need to know all the answers. And therefore, putting myself in that situation in front of a room full of people that report to me, my team, yeah, I'm not sure about that. I'd rather just have the answer and that'd be the end of it. Do you see those patterns?

All the time. And I think that's another edge for leaders to cross is this, again, if you're practicing this, bring the conversation in the room, you won't be able to fully live into that principle without some of that vulnerability, without being able to show up in the conversation and say, hey, look, You know, I'm noticing this is, um, this is where we're at. I'm— I— we introduced the language to leaders about, um, using the process of dialogue and actually being able to think together. So that's, that's actually the whole purpose of this communication, really focusing on communication as a skill, is that we're actually able to— in the— in this age of knowledge work where change happens, I mean, it's It's nonstop and it's only getting faster. It's not going to get slower. So I think the only way for us to navigate that is to have like a really strong foundation of how do we communicate with one another. Can, you know, no matter what happens, um, we have the ability as a team to come together and bring that topic into the room to say, you know, I'm I actually just want to think together with you all for a little while. So here's what I'm thinking. I want to hear what you are thinking. I actually want to hear, you know, let's hear from some of you who are like, this is crazy, or this, you know, this won't work. And let's hear from someone else. And then a lot of times I think the goal for leaders is to create just a little bit of space to have those conversations and then let it percolate, go away, take a break, come back then the next day, 24 hours later, and now What's the thinking? Now, where are you at? So yeah, I think leaders, um, and I, Scott, I think some of that comes from, uh, what we were talking about at the beginning of the conversation. When we have technical expertise in something, right, we are rewarded from the age of being very young for having the right answer. And, you know, we get promoted that way, we make it through school that way. And then there's something about the complexity of orgs and cultures and decisions and change that it's impossible, I think, for any one person to be able to have all the answers anymore. But yet, I think that's an edge. I think it's left over from what we believe we think about leaders and what they're supposed to be able to do to what they need to do today.

So, it's a habit that's been nearly beaten into us through experience of what's rewarded. In our lives. Yeah, it's a really, really interesting angle. At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. Just moving on a little bit and thinking about, as you said there, the amount of change happening, it seems to be accelerating. And I think you're absolutely right. And I always turn to the Amazon flywheel thing that as more change happens, then more change happens and it just keeps spinning faster and faster and faster. I heard a stat last night. I was at a thing where I think it took Facebook whatever, 5 months to get to a million users. It took ChatGPT a day and a half. Yeah. It's insane. It's insane the speed of change now. So, one thing, and I think this links back into your communication piece about how leaders communicate, I think that during change, the why is often missing. And that's why when you're bringing teams, particularly when it's kind of big change, teams often resist or people can resist in organizations. Now, We've known that explaining the why of change is critical to bringing people on journeys for literally ever. Why is it still happening? Why are organizations or leaders not able to explain the why of change?

So I would answer it through the lens of structural dynamics and say that we all have a preference for how we communicate and the language we communicate in. So in addition to the four actions, there are 3 modes of communication: power, the language of getting it done; affect, the language of care and connection; and meaning is the language of data purpose. And I think many times organizations reward communicating in power. You'll hear people say, give me the bottom line, what's the answer, what's the 3 things that I need to do. So there's a— I think in corporate business, there is a real value placed on take out the words, give me the bullet points. And so if— and so there's both what's rewarded that we've been talking about, and then we'll each have our own preference. So for me, power and affect are really high, meaning is low. So it doesn't mean that I can't speak in meaning, it can't speak in the why, it's just not the first thing I go to if I were to stack rank them. So I think sometimes it might not be the full answer, but I think sometimes it's what's rewarded in the org, and it's also our own personal preference about how we're communicating, the language that we're using. And yet, yes, we know that the why is important, and, and yes, it does get left out quite a bit.

Yeah, yeah, we see that often during, during change, or if we're working with clients, or even in case studies. You go to conferences and you hear about change programs that have failed, and you're kind of like, you just haven't explained to people why you want them to do it. Just simply telling somebody, move this from A to B, or design a process that does X, Y, Z. Actually, that doesn't really buy me in. Design a process to move from X, Y, Z, and that means everyone gets triple bonuses next year because we've cut our spend in half. Oh, okay, great. Here I go.

And I also think that sometimes the why that gets communicated is a bit covert. So, I think that in some ways, if we go back to the Move, Follow, Oppose, and Bystand. I, um, I watch leaders get really tripped up around what is the big message, the, you know, the approved message that I can communicate to folks versus what's really going on on the back end. And I think when we get to the place where we start separating those two things, we're in dangerous territory because people have that, you know, they have, um, I often call it my, uh, my, um, my internal radar starts going off when I'm in a room and I sense something that's not being said. So that's not a unique skill to me, we all have it. And I think what happens is when some of those big messages start to come out that have been written and rewritten and, you know, they they're saying the thing that everybody now approves. We've really taken the real conversation offline and we are having some semblance of the surface level conversation that feels covert to some people. They wouldn't use that language. They wouldn't maybe know to call it that, but I think it's covert.

Yeah, it's inauthentic and it, and it, and it undermines trust. And once you start to undermine trust, then you're in a whole world of pain in terms of trying to bring teams on change journeys, I think. When you did your introduction, or maybe when I did your introduction, and we talked about individual and team coaching, leader and team coaching, I think that probably if we work in big organizations, or if we've experienced, you know, coaching, transformational coaching, and that's generally done one-to-one between a leader and a coach over a series of weeks or months or years, potentially. And it's often the leader that's the focus. So, if you think more about team coaching, how is it different? And what are the benefits of coaching a team? How does that work?

Well, team coaching is, you know, in all the kinds of coaching that are out there, I think it's probably the newest. It certainly has evolved and really come into its own over the last 10 years. I think that has a lot to do the pace of work and all the things that you and I have been talking about today that really become challenging. Team coaching, you know, like in individual coaching, the focus, as you were just saying, is really on the leader. You know, what's the leader's thinking? Where are they at? Why are they doing what they're doing? What's the feedback that they're getting? So it's all about the leader. In team coaching, it's all about the system. So if— think of a team that you're on, If you think about the dynamics in the team, it'll be really easy if I were to say to you, describe the team today and how does the team work? It'll be really easy to start to say, well, this person does this and that person does this. And every time we're having a conversation, this person is always the one that does blah, blah, blah. So we'll often talk about things as individuals. Leaders will often talk about this person is performing and this person isn't. And we want to put this, you know, if we didn't have this person on this team, or if, you know, if we didn't get this person some coaching because this person's really dragging a team down. So it'll be a lot of individual focus. But in team coaching, we really teach the team to focus on the team as a system. So I often say to leaders, sometimes it might be that there's a performance issue with that one person and they need to be put on a performance improvement plan. But most of the time, people are exhibiting what somebody might call dysfunctional behavior in a team setting because there's something in the team that's creating it. There's something about the dynamics in the team and the dynamics we will all be playing a part in. Including the leader, including me as the coach. I mean, I think that's probably one of the, the biggest challenges to watch for is that I'll be contributing to the dynamics just as much as anybody else. So, of course, you know, we really ask leaders to begin to shift their gaze from looking at individuals to looking at the whole system. And if there's a lack of oppose in the conversation, that's actually a system quality. It's a system trait because it's not just one person that needs to work on bringing oppose. We will all be playing a part if we let person A who's often opposing always oppose. Where's my oppose? Why do I sort of unconsciously hold back? Because I know I can rely on that person to oppose, so I don't have to take that risk. So that now becomes the work of a team or a system. So I think everybody works in— often the question is, well, what does that look like? How do you— you know, I know that I meet with a coach, you know, twice a month for an hour if I'm going to individual coaching, but how do I do that as a team? I think it looks different for everybody. For us, it often looks like working with a team as an intact system one day a month. And so we'll often come in, help the team in their real conversations, still having their real conversations, but we'll often be pointing to structure. So because we're not in the day-to-day, we can often help them see the structure of their conversations more clearly. And we'll just pause and say, hey, listen, here's what I'm noticing about, you know, your conversation. I'm— you've been working on bringing a pose, and I'm really hearing that, but, um, now what's happening is it seems like, uh, you're, you're getting stuck in opposing. And so, what we know about that is we really need somebody to make a move. So, it's helping them see what's happening in their system, and then creating some small actions that they work on in their day-to-day, over the course of time, and then we're back. So, we typically engage for about 9 to 12 months.

Okay. And it's interesting, and it's that coaching ethos of not going in and giving that team the answer, but actually going in and holding up a mirror. And just saying, wow, it's interesting that in what you just said there, I heard this. What did anybody else hear? And what do you think about that? So, very interesting. And I think that whole idea of coaching as a system, and to me, the language sounds like it's starting to get into culture, the kind of the norms and behaviors that we have on our team and starting to kind of get into that area. But that's, given the time that we're at, that's a conversation for another day. Let me finish up by asking you this last question. If leaders are struggling with change right now, or they've got a change upcoming that they're worried about, what's the one thing that you would recommend they could do right now? 30 seconds to finish up.

Focus on how you're communicating. So, if you just take move, follow, oppose, and bystander, and listen to the structure of your conversation next time, and see which of those actions you're hearing the most, and which you're either not hearing or you're hearing the least. And then the task becomes, try yourself to bring an action that you're not hearing and see what it does to the nature of the conversation. So I just hold that what's underneath any of the change that we want to have happen is, are we able to really talk about and have the real conversation first? So start there.

Brilliant. Brilliant. Marcia, before we go, where will people find you or find out more about you and the work that you do?

Yeah. Our website is teamcatapult.com. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. I try to be pretty responsive. And I have a new book out called Build Your Model for Leading Change, and you can find that at buildyourmodel.com.

Brilliant stuff. Listen, Marcia, I've really enjoyed the conversation. Eye-opening. And I love the idea of putting some words around how we communicate with each other, recognizing those, and then effectively calling each other out to try and help teams get better. So, thank you. Thank you so much for being here today.

Thanks, Scott. I appreciate it.

Thanks for listening. To hear from other leaders in our podcasts, to read our blogs, or to find out more about the work that we do at Inspiring Change, please visit inspiringchange.ie.