Have you ever sat in a meeting where everyone nods in agreement, yet you leave sensing something wasn't said? That silence might be your team's biggest liability. The teams that feel most harmonious, most polite, most nice are often the ones moving slowest, innovating least, and leaving the most impact on the table.

In this conversation, we're exploring a counterintuitive truth about high-performing teams: psychological safety isn't about everyone being nice to each other. It's about creating the conditions where people feel brave enough to disagree, curious enough to question, and safe enough to say "I made a mistake." What if the path to faster impact runs directly through healthy debate rather than around it? What becomes possible when leaders shift from performing in their teams to orchestrating them?

Claire Gray is the author of Thriving Teams, an executive coach, and someone who spent years helping leadership teams move from polite agreement to genuine impact. She works with teams across Australia and beyond, bringing this rare ability to surface what's really happening beneath the team dynamics most of us are too nice to name. In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why nice teams go slow, and what psychological safety actually requires of us

• How the four Ds of healthy debate (diagnose, dialogue, decide, dedicate) create alignment without consensus

• Why making people feel they matter goes far beyond the work they do

• How leaders can operate as both contributors and orchestrators, not just participants

• Why shared accountability ripples across organisations when teams co-create their goals

• How to navigate the post-COVID reality of reinforced silos and fractured stakeholder connection

• Why silent agreement probably means you don't have alignment at all

• How to create joint ownership rather than defaulting to the leader for every decision

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Understanding Psychological Safety

(20:20) - Healthy Debate vs. Argument

(23:51) - The Four Ds of Healthy Debate

(26:52) - The Role of the Orchestrator in Teams

(31:20) - Creating Joint Ownership and Accountability

(32:08) - Building a Culture of Accountability

Other References:

1. Thriving Teams Book | Claire Gray
2. Thriving Leaders Book | Claire Gray
3. Thriving Leaders Podcast
4. Google’s Project Aristotle
5. McKinsey Post-COVID Study
6. The Power of Mattering | Zach Mercurio

You can find Claire at:

Website: thrivingculture.com.au

Podcast: Thriving Leaders

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leadership-coach-facilitator/

Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/

Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/subscribe

Follow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/

There's this misconception that psychological safety is everyone's just being nice to each other. It actually requires us to share when we don't agree, share when we've got a bold idea or something different, put up our hand when we've made a mistake. Because if you don't get that learning culture with accountability and psychological safety, then the team is either in their comfort zone or their anxiety zone.

The themes that seem most harmonious are actually the ones that holding your organisation back.

My guest today is Claire Gray. She's the author of Thriving Teams. She's an executive coach and someone who's spent years helping leadership teams move from plight agreement to real impact. Claire works with teams across Australia and beyond, and she's got this knack for seeing what's really going on beneath the surface of team dynamics. And in this conversation, we're exploring why nice teams go slow and nice is not a good thing.

what it really means for someone to matter in a team and how do you create the kind of accountability that doesn't just live within your team but ripples out across your entire organisation. So if you've ever sat in a meeting and bit your tongue or wonder why your high performing team still isn't creating the impact that you know they're capable of, well this one's for you. Hi, I'm Digby Scott and this is Dig Deeper, a podcast where I have conversations with depth that will change the way you lead.

Claire, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

It's good to be here. You've just published your second book, Thriving Teams. And I'm curious, you strike me as someone who really knows what you're talking about when I look through this book, I read this book. I'm curious about what surprised you the most through the process of writing the booklet. What did you learn? What came out of left field? went, wow, that's fascinating. What surprised you through that process?

One of the things that surprised me, I thought when I wrote my first book, Thriving Leaders, I did interview some case study organisations just to bring the book to life. And I wanted to do the same thing. And when I first decided I was going to write the book, I had this pipe dream that I was going to do this big study like Project Aristotle that Google did in a post COVID world. And I wrote what my research hypothesis was going to be.

And you know, how I was going to collect all the data and how I was going to go about doing it, tested it with a few people. And then I started doing some research and realised McKinsey had done this amazing two year long study that actually validated my thriving teams model. And so then I was like, winning. don't have to do this long two year study myself. So that was one thing. But the, what I also did was I wanted to reach out to thought leaders, people that I really admired. And so I reached out to Amy Edmondson and David Clutterbuck and a whole bunch of amazing people.

and interviewed them for the book. So I think I interviewed about eight thought leaders, plus I had the four case studies organisations that I reached out to, which were recorded for my podcast, The Thriving Leaders Podcast. And I thought that would make it easier writing the book, but it actually having, you know, what was it, like 12 to 15 hours of content on top of all my ideas kind of made it really hard to work out what to include and what not to include.

And actually writing the thought leader insights and the case studies was probably for me the hardest part in the book. So yeah, so that really surprised me because I thought I was making my life easier and actually I found it more challenging because I had so many ideas and I had to really boil down to what do I actually really think about this and what part of what they've shared is most relevant and useful. So I feel like it was a little bit harder than I expected.

It makes me think, yeah, so many listeners listening to this are going to be maybe not writing a book, but though potentially overwhelmed with information and that challenge of sorting the signal from the noise. And what do I really think about this sounds like a really useful question. Tell us a little bit more about that wrestle. How did you discern signal from noise about what the important stuff was to focus on versus not? Because I think was writing a book or

just making a strategic decision. know, there's, I suspect some parallels in the process.

Definitely. I feel like sometimes we're always looking to validate what we already think. Yeah, because we all want to be right. And which is ironic because we talk, I talk a lot about that in the context of teams and what often happens with teams when we have healthy debate. So yeah, so I was really conscious about, well, am I just validating my own thinking by reaching out to people that think similarly to me as well? So I tried to get really diverse people as well that I was speaking to from like AI in teams to

Yes.

people that are going to look at it from a systems perspective versus, you know, like Amy Edmondson, who's a real thought leader in the space. And for me, it was probably coming back to the fundamental things that I actually see when I work with teams, like what I actually observe, what I notice, because, you know, you see some teams that fall into complacency or the nice teams that aren't actually having the conversations that they need to have. And so for me, it was more about using real.

and you still have time to refine it. I missed all his, like I talk about mattering, but I don't actually reference his work. I wasn't familiar with it then. And it's one of those things as well, like forever you're like, I could have included that. I could have included that. And again, it's like, actually you have to catch yourself to be, you can't include everything and you kind of have to be happy with where it got to.

Yeah. And it's a step on a larger journey. know, whatever you're producing is not the complete finish point, right? It's like a step. It's an offering. It's a thought piece for people that hopefully might find it useful. Now you mentioned Zach Mercuro. Yeah. For people who aren't familiar with who he is and what he does, including me, who's that?

So he talks a lot about purpose, but he's got a book on mattering and it's about, and I'm only part way through reading the book, but I've heard him speak on podcasts and it's one of my, will finish obviously listening to it before I interview him. But one of the things that he talks a lot about is about how do you actually make people feel valued and like they matter. And there's a huge link to purpose and meaningful work. And a lot of things that I think are really important in a high performing team, you know, how do teams actually connect their people to these things?

Absolutely.

he comes at it from a very different angle around mattering.

Tell us a little bit more, because you've piqued my curiosity here. I'm really interested in, I reckon, the fundamental question that someone needs to be able to answer when they're part of a team is, do you feel like you matter? Even before you get into, so how are you contributing to this team and all of that, it's like, do you feel like you matter? Tell us a bit more about that.

So from my perspective, it's about showing people that they're valued, their contribution is really, really valued, but you actually see them beyond just the work that they do. Like you see them as a human, you see their strengths, you see their value and you let them know in really subtle ways. It's not necessarily about having this deep conversation about this is what I observe and what I notice and going into this big purpose discussion. It can be just in these little incremental moments that you notice these little things and you share them.

And people, I guess, feel that more than it's like, more than it being really, really intentional. So I feel like it's about how you're making people feel and people actually want to be there. And I think there's a huge link to inclusion and belonging and purpose.

Yeah, there's something about what comes up for me is that you can't just say you matter. You've got to show that they matter. And that feels really important. Can I just rewind a little bit though? So we've jumped right into this and this is you talking about your book and you tell us a bit about you. Like what's the work that you do that lights you up the most at the moment?

So it's an interesting one. think probably I'll share two things that really light me up at the moment. One is working with leadership teams. I love working with teams to surface the things that they're not talking about so we can have those challenging discussions. And probably then working with the next layer of leaders, because one of the things I'm quite passionate about, and we often like to jump to the next thing, but one of the things I'm really passionate about is about alignment and how you can actually get teams working together. So working with senior leaders to

I guess work through conflicting priorities, have the conversations that they need to have, having those really high quality conversations so that they can enable their strategy. And what I find, I don't know whether it's just my perception, but what I'm observing at the moment is in a post COVID world, everyone's working in a hybrid way or generally speaking. And we have these anchor days for our teams. And so we're connecting with our teams, but we're not always connecting with our stakeholders. And from a systems perspective,

I feel like people, it's reinforced silos within teams and know, silos is not a new thing, but I think it's been really exacerbated in the last couple of years. And I think leadership teams are really learning that you can't actually enable strategy unless teams are working together, like a cross-functional collaboration happening between teams, working together on outcomes together. And I feel like that to me is stuff that's really lighting me up at the moment. Like how do we actually do that really effectively? Cause it's no, there's no silver bullet.

It's a real cultural systemic challenge.

It sure is. Offline, I mentioned that Simon Dowling and asked whether you knew him and he said, I've heard of him. You two have to meet. He's been a guest on this podcast. He's asking the same sort of question in a different way. He's calling it radical alignment. How do we create that? So you two, think together would be a force of nature in this place. You're both tackling a really, really important question. What led you to this work? Tell us a bit about the journey to here.

Well, if I go way, way, way back when, my parents were both school teachers and I remember thinking, well, I'll be a school teacher because their whole generation was school teachers. And they were like, do not become a school teacher. You know, you don't earn enough. But I think learning was really ingrained in me from a young age as something that is really, really important. And then when I got to uni, I got sort of two years into my psychology degree and thought, I don't want to listen to people's problems every day.

But you know, I like to persevere and have grit. So I finished my degree and then moved over to London and that's where I got into HR and ended up listening to people's problems every day. Fast forward to, well, I guess then when I got back from living in London, I started working at the National Australia Bank and a three month contract ended up being 10 years later and had these amazing opportunities where I got really passionate about leadership and team development. And we had a

my now youngest child and moved to Byron Bay, which was a real pivotal moment. But just before we actually left to go, I really recall, and it's funny because I just wrote a LinkedIn post about it I just had my seven year work anniversary. And I was doing a level two coaching course with the Institute of Executive Coaching and Leadership. I was being coached by somebody else and I was talking about, well, we're moving to Byron Bay and I'm going to start my own business.

And she kind of came out of coaching mode and said, you're not going to be able to do that. You're going to have a young family. And in my head, I thought, well, I'm going to show you, aren't I? Anyway.

Was that her intent, I wonder?

Well, I don't know, but she was like very adamant that this is something that I wouldn't be able to do. And it really stuck with me because, you know, obviously we moved to Byron Bay and then was on maternity leave to start with. And it was about, I guess, you know, 12 months later when I was wanting to think about what I was going to do for work. And my husband said, well, why don't you just do your own thing? And I recall that moment. And I was like, yeah, you know, I'm really missing working with businesses. I'm going to do my own thing.

And that's where my business started from seven years ago. And so it's really evolved and really niched into leadership and team development, but I've always had this passionate, there's been a thread through my whole career around leadership and team development. And I think there's just been little catalysts along the way that sort of reinforced doing some of that. So that's my whole life story there.

In a nutshell, can I ask you about the shift to Byron? You said it was a pivotal moment. How so? Because here's what I make up. You're moving against the grain. There's something about, you know, corporate Claire, national Australia bank, yada yada, Melbourne based. That'll be an easy path to continue to follow. Right. Cause it's well trodden, you know, it's rewarded and all that. What was that like?

to choose a different path. What helped? Obviously there's some catalytic moments there. And what's been the payoff do you think?

It's really interesting because I kind of reflect, I think I have this self narrative that I'm pretty risk averse. However, like my nickname in high school was ballsy because I was a bit ballsy. And then sometimes I hear from my friends, you know, oh, you really put yourself out there on LinkedIn and other things. I'm like, oh, okay. That's just part of what I do for work. And what's really interesting was I think I always thought I would work for somebody else. My dad was a school teacher, but then he purchased a

café that didn't do so well and like we had to sell our house and move, you know, and it was still, you know, completely fine. But in my head, I think one of the narratives was, you know, don't take risks, work for somebody else. So it's funny now that the last seven years I've actually worked for myself. And the other thing that I think is quite funny is you do learn the corporate jargon and the irony is I talk a lot about authenticity. And when I first started my business, I

facilitated the CEO masterclass that was paid for through Oz industry with 16 local Byron Bay CEOs from some really awesome companies and brands. And I remember kind of getting up with my corporate badge of honor and these are all Byron Bay entrepreneurs who just felt like a ton of bricks, know, did not land very well. And I quickly learned that I had to unlearn all the corporate jargon. And I think I'm still unpicking some of that stuff because it gets very ingrained in you.

Do you

Like I remember clearly the room I was in. remember, I think I was talking about, I think we're just working in financial services didn't land very well to start with and working for a big four. think some of that, I mean, you know, one of the participants was from a medicinal mushroom company. So it was all very, you know, and hemp seeds and other, other types of brands as well. So probably didn't resonate with the establishments. I don't know exactly what I said, but it felt very corporate and very jargony.

Yeah, no, I've been there as well. You got to read the room, right? You got to know who your audience is, man. Big lesson there for you. I'm curious about, what's been the payoff by moving away from the corporate path to the way that you're living and working now.

So the payoff is, I think, having the lifestyle that we have. And I feel like you're almost forced into it when you live in a regional town, which is a lovely regional town to live in, Byron Bay. You kind of need to either have your own business or work 100 % remotely, or there's only certain size businesses that you can work with. And based on where I was in my career, I had to kind of make a call about that. And it was an interesting one. recall flying back from Melbourne. I'm originally from Melbourne, so a lot of my clients were there.

having this moment where I kind of flew into Gold Coast Airport and I was like, home to paradise. And so like, was just a really nice moment of like, this is why I'm doing this. And it's the lifestyle that we can give our two boys and you know, there are challenges because I do travel a lot and all the rest, but we've sort of gotten into a fairly good rhythm with that.

I reckon listeners, you know, one of those questions that comes up every now and then for some, lot of the time is like, what am I doing? What am I doing it for? What brings me alive most? And all of those questions ask you just to listen to, Hmm, okay. Where are your breathe out moments? Like, you know, Gold Coast airport, home to paradise. I mean, that's a breathe out moment, right? That's a ha and you know, there's been a number of guests on this podcast that have made some big calls.

and not regretted it because they followed that instinct of actually, you this is the place I want to be. This is the work I want to be doing. This is how I want to be doing it. And you seem to have leaned into all of those. And why are you doing this work? Like you've said, you've always been drawn to leadership and teams and that work. What is that about for you?

I think I like seeing people have aha moments, like those light bulb moments, whether that's one on one coaching somebody or whether it's in a team of, you know, me being quiet, that impacts you when I don't speak up and say what I think. Or, you know, just having those aha moments is probably what motivates and drives me. And, you know, sometimes you get feedback about those moments, but often, you know, it's just a feeling that's in the room as well. And I think that's...

something that drives me. And I think it's also helping people be more confident and curious as well. So I think we often get in our heads and that's what holds us back. And sometimes maybe it is channeling, you know, my inner ballsy to help people feel a little bit more confident with the skills to be able to do things well.

Yeah. Yeah. I can't let that one go. The ballsy bit. How did you get that name? Like you said, our people just called you that, but what, give me a story.

It's really quite funny that you asked, because I actually reached out to my friend Katherine to ask her and she just didn't get it hasn't got back to me. So I feel like I need to come back to you. I remember that Katherine, one of my girlfriends started calling me ballsy and I didn't really like it. And so I tried to rebrand my nickname to Mad Dog Whitey because my maiden name was Whitey. Sorry, my maiden name was White Hill, not Whitey.

Anyway, and so then for my 18th birthday, I even had like a invite where I said, come to Mad Dog White hill's party. Cause I was really trying to change my nickname and all my friends were like, you can't change your nickname. And then fast forward a few years after I got back from London and then some of my guy mates started calling me Mad Dog all the time. And I was like, I don't want to be called Mad Dog either. Why would I come up with that? So I don't really have a very good answer for you, but we'll go with the meaning of ballsy being, you know, being courageous.

Yeah. Well, here's a bit of a segue. It's a bit maybe ham-fisted, but there's something about ballsy and in your book, you talk about this idea of healthy debate. Right? So this is the ham-fisted jump in back into this team space. You make a distinction between teams that argue and teams that have healthy debate. And to me, there's something about ballsiness courage to be able to put stuff on the table in a way that may be contentious or it might be scary to put on the table.

but this is the conversation we need to have. What's the difference between an arguing team versus a healthy debating team?

So I think an arguing team often wants to put their view forward and not build on and grow. I think there's something about healthy debate where all the opinions and views get on the table and we can debate it in a way where we actually disagree about things. And that's actually really quite productive to disagree, but then we can actually decide together and get aligned to a way forward together. And so I think some of that requires us

obviously to have some psychological safety to have those types of conversations, but also to have more of a growth mindset or be open to other people's perspectives. And you think about, you know, when you debate something with your family, because often we're a little bit more raw with our family and we maybe don't always bring our best selves as well. And sometimes it's just because we're trying to get our point across and we're not really listening to what the other people's views are as well. Can I share a funny story of writing a book around healthy debate? So.

I asked David Clutterbuck who he's written 70 books and he's someone I have long admired, especially in the team coaching and mentoring space. And I even studied under him a few years ago with his global team coaching Institute practitioner program. And so I interviewed him for the book and I started talking about healthy debate. And then he challenged me on that, which was normally when we think about debate, we think about someone like a school debate. We're trying to defend our view. We're trying to get our perspective across.

We're not fully listening to what's being said. And he challenged me to, it actually is better to have dialogue and obviously, you know, lots of people talk about generative dialogue. And so then I was debating the irony of this, debating the word debate. And I felt like using the word dialogue to describe the discussion that needs to happen, took a little bit of the maybe ballsiness out of it or the courage to have the tough conversations. And it became very nice. And I think there's this misconception around psychological safety means nice.

It actually means getting a little bit uncomfortable. And so the four Ds of healthy debate is about diagnosing the problem. Like what's the actual challenge that we're trying to solve here? Because often teams can talk about all sorts of stuff, but they're not actually clear. Like what are we actually here to do right now? What's the conversation we need to have right now? And then, you know, the second D is dialogue. It is about asking curious questions, listening to learn and sharing your perspective. And what I find is the people who

great listeners, often the people who actually do ask the best questions. Often we think listening is about being quiet, but often when we listen really well, we actually are more curious and we ask more powerful questions and also sharing perspectives. What I notice in a lot of teams is, often people don't realize it, when we don't share our perspectives, people feel like we're holding back. Like, why aren't they sharing? Like, you know, and that actually can impact our psychological safety within a team. And then the third day is about decide.

So often teams can have these really circular conversations, but we actually don't get clear on what the decision is and be clear like how do we make decisions as a team? And how helpful is it the way that we make decisions as a team? Do we always default to the leader? You know, what are some of the behaviors that we demonstrate when we're trying to make a decision or do we avoid making decisions? We just have really long circular conversations. And then the final part's about dedicate. And this is about the team actually being really united and aligned to the way forward as a team.

And, you know, often teams might not agree, which we don't want everyone to agree. We want to disagree, but we want to be aligned to the way forward as a team.

I really like that. That's memorable. It's logical. I love that distinction between dialogue and debate. And to be honest, I've always preferred the word dialogue until today. Your way of describing the shadow side of dialogue, as in it can be a bit soft, maybe we're not really being edgy or ballsy. That's really helpful because to me, I'm a big fan of dialogue. Like explain your position with humility, like say that you don't.

have all the answers, but this is my perspective. I think that's a core part of dialogue. Yet you want a challenge in that too, right? You want to be able to have a bit of hang on, hang on, I think you're missing something here. Can I just, yeah, this idea of the cone in the box, you know, that we're all seeing different sides of, you know, a picture here and maybe you're not seeing the full picture. So that's where that edginess potentially can come in. What comes up is say you're the one who's leading a debate.

or a chunky conversation, whatever we call it. What are the skills you need as a leader to create the conditions for that healthy debate to happen?

actually think one of the first things to do is actually give permission for us to debate and like, cause sometimes people will hold back because they don't realize that they can even challenge their boss. And it depends on the culture within the team, but even giving permission to say, you know, I want to be challenged. I want to see you challenge each other and actually having a conversation about what would that look like? Talk about the process. Yeah. Or it could be also, you know, having open conversations about how effectively.

Yeah, talk about the process.

you know, are we problem solving? How effectively are we making decisions and actually have a conversation? What could we be doing differently? You know, what would make us, you know, 10 % better? You know, just to put it back to the team. I think sometimes the leader feels like they always need to do react. think giving permission can be useful to the team to create that holding environment for us to actually have the healthy challenging debate that needs to happen. And then I think it's also the role of the leader.

I like to think of a leader in two parts, the leader as coach, so asking that some powerful questions to role model what that looks like, but also kind of to play that facilitator role as well. And the thing is we want the leader to be part of the team too. And sometimes for some leaders, you might be really, especially for more extroverted leaders, you might be very quick to give your view and your opinion. So if you're that way inclined, maybe it's about being intentional to kind of hold back your view until later, especially if you notice that there's a bit of group thing that happens within the team when you do share your perspective.

And likewise, if you're a more quieter leader or more introverted, it could be about being more intentional to share your view at the right point, rather than feeling like you always have to be the last person to speak as well. You want it to be a little bit organic. And I think there's some emotional intelligence that needs to come to be able to read actually what's happening in the room. And also how you bring people in, how do you bring in quieter voices? How do you let some of the louder voices know that we've already heard your perspective and we need to hear from others as well?

Yes.

So it could be saying something like, I'd love to hear from the voices that we haven't heard from yet, you know, as a kind way of trying to draw quieter people in and maybe quietening some of the louder people within the team.

there's a distinction between performing in a team and orchestrating the team. And the way you've just described it, it's a bit like, I think it's kind of like a host at a dinner party, right? So you, you know, you bring people together, you want it to be a great night. You want good conversation. You probably want a bit of ballsiness, right? A little bit of edginess. It makes it memorable. And so your job is not just to be one of the participants around the table.

You also need to go, how's the energy in the room going? Do we need to kind of turn the music up or get a few more drinks going, whatever it is. And noticing how people are showing up and have you made connections between people and all that stuff. It's kind of like you need to be operating at two levels as a contributor, but also as an orchestrator. And I often think that leaders may not pay as much attention to the orchestration piece or give it short shrift. Whereas in fact, this is when it can make a break.

the quality of a conversation, the quality of the decisions, right?

I love that. And I think, you know, to build on that in terms of that orchestrator role, I think it's sometimes about calling out your observation to the group without necessarily interpreting, but you could often interpretation, but it could be, Hey, I've noticed the energy has really dropped in the last 10 minutes. What's going on for everyone? Or it could be like, Hey, I feel like I'm feeling a little bit uncomfortable. How's everyone else feeling? Rather than necessarily shutting down or trying to smooth things over so everyone feels nice, like actually calling out so we can discuss it.

I do think use of humor sometimes can be useful as a, know, to sometimes stay in some of the discomfort, you know, using humor in a helpful way, not to deflect, but to try and help people feel more comfortable to stay in the discomfort for longer can be useful. So working out based on your leadership to style how that might work.

Can you tell us a story when you've been working with a leadership team and you've seen some of these behaviors, some of these mindsets in action?

Yeah. So like, I think a really good example, was working with a leadership team and we had surfaced some, some history and some legacy, I'm going to say legacy issues, but you know, from the previous leaders and some baggage that people have been holding onto from the past. And, you know, there was, you know, some emotions coming up in the room around, know, some people were feeling frustrated. Some people were feeling a little bit angry or misunderstood, I would say. And, you know, the CEO was sort of

bearing some of the brunt of this, whereas they weren't leading the team at that time, but they were sort of getting wiped with this brush because of it. And, you know, I was playing the role of team coach. You know, not everyone has that luxury all the time, but the benefit of having a team coach is that, you know, if you are the leader of the team, you can play the role of team member and not feel like you have to facilitate it because you have power, you have authority in your role as a leader of the team as well. And that kind of shifts the dynamics.

So just being able to call out, you know, how I was feeling as the facilitator, which sometimes a leader can do as well to say, Hey, I'm noticing, I'm feeling a little bit uncomfortable. I'm noticing this what's happening for people, you know, where do we want to go next? And actually putting it back on the team rather than feeling like I had to own, well, this is what we're going to do next. And for me, that feels uncomfortable at times because I'm someone who likes to drive to outcomes. quite results driven as well. And it's something that I would say I've learned over my

my time as a team coach, not to feel like I have to own the outcome because I'm not part of the team when they go back to work. They need to own the behaviors that they want to take forward as a team. So how do I help facilitate that process? And I think leaders can do that as well really effectively too.

I really like that and it's becoming the word ownership because often you can see in a team dynamic that you have this conversation debate and then the decision gets made and there's this defaulting often to the leader to make the call or whatever. And I feel like there's a trick that's been missed there around the joint ownership that I think great teams really exemplify.

What do we need to learn about how to create joint ownership? This is the thing I find when I'm working with teams a lot of the time. It's they say they own it, but really at an embodied level, they're not. And it's living with one, maybe a couple of people in the team. And there's these kind of fragments that start to get bigger because of that lack of it.

Well, the research tells us that we actually will look to the most senior person in the room every 11 seconds just for direction, protection and order. And so that's pretty frequently that we're looking at the, yeah, not to make any leaders feel self-conscious, but you know, people are observing your behavior and how you react to things. And I feel like what I think, you know, when I hear the word ownership, it makes me think of accountability. And this is something I'm quite passionate about.

That's a lot.

in terms of how do actually create cultures of accountability? Because it's become a bit of a dirty word. People relate accountability to finger pointing and blame, where it really is a privilege. know, given accountability, it means someone's trusting in us that we can get the work done. And I think as a team, getting your team together to work out what are our shared goals as a team? Individually, you'll be accountable for certain things, but a team needs to have some shared goals that they're working towards so they can hold each other accountable to those things. And

not just default to the leader to hold team members accountable because it becomes a real hub and spoke team. Whereas you want it to be more of a network of, you know, team members working together to get to outcomes and the leader becomes a bottleneck. And so why that's really, really important is it's very hard to hold each other accountable if you don't have a clear direction or some goals that you're working towards and you need to have psychological safety in place to be able to hold each other accountable. So actually having a conversation about, you know, what's the...

the work that we need to do, what are our key goals? And having your team co-create what that looks like, they're gonna have way more buy into that. And then having a conversation of, what does this actually require of us? What are the behaviors we need to demonstrate to be able to achieve these goals? So you're actually calling out some things that you value or behaviors you wanna demonstrate when you're together. And the team's coming up with that. So it makes it easy to hold each other accountable if we've actually created this thing rather than being told. And so I think everyone in the team needs to have a bit of skin in the game.

and realise that they contribute to the messiness that is Teams, but they can also contribute to the success of the team as well.

I really like that that contributes to the messiness. It's like, that's the human element. It reminds me of when I worked in recruitment in London years ago and recruitment is a bit of a sales game, right? So there's this whole achieving target sales targets and all that. And for the first six months in that team, we had individual targets and you know, and that drove certain behavior was a little bit more like, you know, I'm just going to go and you kind of protecting your patch and all that. then for the next financial year.

The boss said, right, we've got a team target. It's just one team target. was double what we'd each individually, you know, if we aggregate the individual achievements from the previous year, was double that. And we're looking at guy, how the hell are we going to do that? Give it to a month. We smashed it. I think we were like 150 % over the previous year. And it came down to, well, we all have to contribute to this and we're all.

a part of this. And it was interesting because while she gave it to us, that was, here's the bar we need to reach. We then went, how are we going to do that? And that's where we came together as a team and our behaviors completely changed. There was so much more referring, supporting each other, going to joint meetings. And I loved working in that space because it wasn't that dog eat dog world. It wasn't just my bit. It was our bit. And it really did shift it. So this shared goals thing.

that you mentioned that there's an example of, you know, the power of that, right.

100%. And I think you can achieve so much more together, but we're so, I think we're rewarded at the structures and the systems within a lot of organisations drive individual goals and rather than shared or collective goals. And I think the shift to like, I think we actually have to create a culture of accountability. like to think of it as a ripple. First of all, it's individually what you're accountable for, then shared within a team. What's the team accountable for, but then collectively between teams, what we're accountable for and

I think often we focus on the inside of that circle or the inside of that ripple, the individual. Like when you think about, well, well, it's too hard. You know, the rest of my team aren't doing their bit, but I'm just going to double down on what I'm accountable for. we think a point, well, that team's not doing their bit, but as long as we do our bit and our team will be fine. But that reinforces this siloed behavior that often happens, whether that's within a team or whether that's between teams. And so that's why I think it's so important to have conversations about

video.

well, this is what's important to us, what's important to your team. You know, these are the trade-offs. How do we actually work out what the right priorities are to create a true culture of accountability where we can have those conversations openly? And it's not gonna be perfect and it's gonna be quite messy. And obviously, Simon Dowling and I need to kind of solve this problem that organisations are experiencing. But yeah, I just, think it's quite systemic. And I think we often have lots of systems and processes that reinforce.

behaviours that we don't necessarily want, like individual performance targets, for example.

Yeah, right. So because I'm thinking, what do I need to hear? Say I'm, I'm a member of the team and I've got my individual accountability and I'm clear on that. What do I need to hear? That's going to shift me to go, of course I'll sign up for that shared goal because I'm going to have self-interest. I'm going to have this intrinsic drive to be an achiever of my own terms and blah, blah, all that stuff. I think it's probably deep in my human psyche, right?

What do I need to hear or what's the conversation that will bring me to the team or the collective accountability table wholeheartedly?

Having the first place to start and I think pretty much every research on high performing teams talks about having a clear team purpose. But what I find is often teams think a team purpose is us articulating what the goal is we're trying to achieve and that's the what and the when. A purpose is the why. And it should link to the work that you do every day, it should link to your own individual values, but actually coming up with a team why statement or purpose statement is really, really important. And I think starting there,

is a great place to start because that's what's going to bind the team together. That's going to talk to the why. Then talk about the work that you need to do. And I think we often go the other way. We talk about what do we need to get done? And we actually never get to that conversation about, why do we need to do it and how do we need to behave? And that's why I think, know, purpose and the why, how is around our behaviors, psychological safety and trust. And the what and the when is around accountability and the clear direction. And I think sometimes we start

We just go straight to what we have to do and we do have to talk about what we need to do. Don't get me wrong that we're all here to deliver some stuff, but often taking a step back and actually having more meaningful conversations about purpose and individual wise and values can be helpful as a team.

What are the best questions to get into the why? I mean, I guess the overarching one is why we're doing this yet that feels like it, could go in a million different directions with that. Like what are the guiding questions that help us? get the sense it's got to be a heart level shift as opposed to a head level shift, right? You've got to go this excites me. You know, how do we get there? So.

I think, you know, asking the question like, why does this team exist? You know, what does this team do that no other team does? Okay. And then I know we recently spoke about legacy and the use of the word legacy and maybe the negative connotation. But the question I often ask is what legacy do we want to leave? I might have to rephrase that. It's in print. It's in print. So, you know, what's the lasting legacy that people want to leave or what's the lasting impact that we want to have?

So I think asking some of these why questions can be really useful. And then once you start, you know, I like to use a whiteboard, you know, collecting all of these ideas to come up with a statement that then once you come up with the statement, actually being like, well, does this inspire us? Is this aspirational? Is this helping you want to get out of bed in the morning? What does want to help you want to get out of bed in the morning besides your alarm? Like asking some of those questions. Cause sometimes when we say something really vanilla, we're like, that's pretty underwhelming, you know, and then it's about, well, okay, let's revisit this.

What we've put up here is probably not our true why.

What have you got someone who's like, got most of the time going, hell yeah, we're frothing about this. and then you got one person guy. What do do with that?

happens a lot. Yeah, when I'm facilitating, someone's just like, you know what, this isn't inspiring me. And other people are like, no, this isn't inspiring me. And so I actually think that's really good because we want to disagree. want to get to the, you know, that disagreement helps us innovate and get better as well. And so I think we bring that in, okay, well, you know, if this doesn't inspire you, what would? And then actually getting there, you know, making sure that their voice is heard and bring it in because that's a

Rickin

question.

What I find when I facilitate this is we get to a point and people are like, yep, we're there. And then someone would be like, mm, blah, bit vanilla. And then I'm like, yes, someone said that. Okay. So, or if they haven't said that, I was like, okay, well, do we feel inspired by this? You know, does this feel aspirational? And so I might ask those curious questions, but it's far better if someone else calls it out in the team because then they've got more ownership and buy-in.

And they're like, what?

I think it's quite common is everyone's like, can we now use AI to kind of generate our statement? And I'm like, sure, go for it. However, we need to still feel like we're connected to it. And often it takes our real...

The danger of AI. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. It's like you don't get full ownership unless you're really wrestling with it yourself. And I think, you know, I love AI. It's brilliant for the work I do, work you do. There's so much of a place for it. But when it comes to really getting something at a heart level or just embodied level, you got to pick up the pen yourself, you know, and that's important. The other bit that comes up for me there is if someone's saying meh,

to whatever's come up with that requires a bit of bravery sometimes, right? So you've got to create a con the conditions again for people to go, this is what I honestly feel. And, you know, I've seen plenty of people just go, I won't say anything cause it's not safe. I'll just go along. And I've been one of those people. I always remember I was part of a leadership team of a business few years ago. And there was this grandiose vision. We're going to inspire millions of people around the world, blah, I'm like,

You've got a metric of a hundred million people. So I don't know what was, but I didn't say anything. I didn't feel, I felt like I was a bit of a traitor or at least a fly in the ointment if I said it. I shut up and I've reflected on why I think it's just because I didn't actually feel like I belonged. And so it was, you know, I think there's some conversations to be had if it's not moving you.

then there's some honesty required as well. It's like, well, is this the place for you? Is this the team that you want to be part of? Am I off the mark there or does that kind of have some credence?

I think if you hit the nail on the head, I literally just submitted an article for CIO magazine talking to this exact point about how teams need to align. And often what happens is there might not be psychological safety in place to be able to say, I actually don't agree with this or this is a bit meh. And I think, although it can be a little bit annoying to the leader who's like, I just want to move on to the next thing, but it's like, this is good. Someone's actually challenging. They feel safe enough to do this. And I think when you've always got silent agreement.

you probably don't have alignment because people are either having the meeting after the meeting or they're going back to the team to say, we're doing this, but I really think that. And that just creates a culture of distrust as well. And I think there's this misconception that psychological safety is everyone's just being nice to each other. It actually requires us to share when we don't agree, share when we've got a bold idea or something different, put up our hand when we made a mistake.

Because if you don't get that learning culture with accountability and psychological safety, then the team is either in their comfort zone or their anxiety zone.

Yeah, both of those things. Not great. That's so good. If there was one thing, yeah, I'm a listen to this and I'm a, I'm a leader of a team and there was, I haven't read your book yet, but there, wanted to get a quick, like the powerful, most leveraged piece of advice you could give me for helping my team level up and how it thrives. What would that be?

you know, having these conversations, you know, what is the big important work that we need to do? know Amy Edmondson talks about this and what does it require of us? When she came on my podcast, she said, actually, we shouldn't talk about psychological safety. We should talk about the big important work we need to do and what it requires of us. And then you're going to create the environment that is psychologically safe. So I think it's about having open, curious conversations with your team.

like that.

That's brilliant. There's something very crisp about that. It reminds me of that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry quote, you know, if you want to build a ship, don't give orders to the men to go and gather wood, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. It's like, what's the big important thing? Why is this important? You know, that's awesome. If you created lasting impact in your work, you know, I don't know, 50 years down the track and you kind of sitting back there and it's like, ah.

Yeah, my work is done. How would you know?

That's a really good question, Digby. You are so good at asking questions. I think if I had a lasting impact, there would be more cultures of accountability where they have healthy debate with each other.

comes through really strongly in how you talk. It's very clear and I'm with you on that. I'd do anything I can to support you on that too. It's brilliant.

How will I

What would you say?

don't know. Well, hopefully robust conversations where people are cutting through some of the BS maybe. I don't know, but I'm not sure what I would say.

maybe less friction and more impact. That you want to mean by friction, like that kind of unnecessary, like we're not having the right conversations, getting to the right, so we're having faster impact, greater impact, whatever it might be.

like faster impact because I think when we have nice conversations, we go slow. We don't innovate. We don't get better. So faster impact.

That is a cool way to finish. Well, let me just ask you the question I always love to finish with, which is, so we've had a rich conversation, right? What's something that you've learned or been reminded of as we've gone through our conversation?

I like it's been a good reminder about why I do what I do. So I know we've talked about purpose, but it has helped me reflect on how do I have a lasting impact. So I think there was a thread of that through our whole conversation. So thank you.

Thank you. How do people find you if they want to learn about you, your work, your book? Where they go?

So the best place would be my website. So thrivingculture.com.au or checking out the Thriving Leaders podcast could be another way.

Brilliant. So there you go, folks. You've heard from Claire Gray around her brilliance around thriving teams. We've covered some amazing territory. The thing I'm going to take away, I reckon, is this, the four Ds, the diagnose, dialogue, decide, and dedicate. I really like that as a memorable way of helping teams just work through to do good work. And there's so much around that that you can lead on. So thank you for that. We'll see you soon.

Thanks.

So that was a cool conversation, hey? Claire is clearly the thought leader in this space of developing high performing teams. And I really encourage you to check out her book, Thriving Teams. Beyond the healthy debate stuff, which I found myself really taken with, I also found myself a little bit surprised when I was talking about being a performer or a participator versus an orchestrator. And to me, I think that's real challenge for leaders is this idea of, you

don't just want to be in the team, you want to be orchestrating the team and the stuff that Claire was talking about around being able to observe what's going on for you in a conversation and naming that and sharing that and asking the question, how are the others feeling? I think that's a really, really important skill. just another lovely little takeout from a great conversation. Wondering what it's got you thinking, wondering what it might get you to do, lots of practical things out of that conversation. So try something, try something out.

as you get into your assuming, you're listening to this at the start of a year, when you're thinking about your team and getting them ready for success, what's something you can take from this conversation that will help you? As ever, I'm Digby Scott, this is Dig Deeper, and until next time, go well.