Tent Talks Featuring Brett Harned: Stronger Teams Start with Better Habits

[00:00:32] Chicago Camps: Leaders today are facing high expectations with fewer resources. What’s the first thing they should focus on to improve team dynamics without adding more to their plates?

[00:00:42] Brett Harned: Right now, more than any other time, at least in my career, probably yours too, we’re in a place where leaders are really being forced to do more with less.

Organizations are cutting teams. They’re not just cutting them, they’re gutting teams and I think the first instinct is for people to take a look at a process. There’s less people we have to change the way that we work and I think there’s more like you do have to look at team dynamics first and I do think that the best leaders are the ones who are Looking to the future and preparing for what’s next.

But when you talk about efficiency, efficiency being the thing that they want to keep up with and what they’re preparing for to always be more efficient. We always look at process and sure process plays a role. I’m the PM guy. I’m always the guy that people think I’m going to talk about process first, but I think it’s actually deeper than that.

I think it’s the things that impact team dynamics that really will move the needle. It’s about how people work together, and it’s about how they solve problems. in real time. And I think that the fastest way to improve efficiency isn’t by adding more process, it’s removing friction that slows your team down.

And that’s what really does improve team dynamics. So to me, if I’m talking to leaders, I’m telling them they can make immediate impacts just by making sure that their teams are aligned on practices and priorities. And then on top of that, if you give those people the autonomy to make decisions, and they don’t feel like they’re stuck because they have unclear expectations of their role or conflicting directives about what they’re supposed to be doing as a team, you’re making them better. You’re improving team dynamics.

[00:02:31] Chicago Camps: You emphasize communication, collaboration, and culture as the foundation of great teamwork. What are some common ways teams unknowingly undermine these key elements?

[00:02:40] Brett Harned: I love this question, because I think teams don’t intentionally undermine communication, collaboration, and culture, right?

It usually happens in really subtle ways that kind of build up over time. I actually have a presentation about the core behaviors of Teamangle. And that presentation breaks Teamangle down into communication, collaboration, and culture. But about core behaviors in those areas.

That’s more about guidance on how to build better practices. I love this question because it’s almost like the opposite of that. I want to talk about pitfalls. It’s always fun to talk about the negative, and I will say, like, when we started talking about what Teamangle was, it came from this pitfall place.

Like, everyone can relate to a failure or a problem, but then we ended up flipping it to make it more positive, but I love talking about pitfalls. So let me talk about a few pitfalls in those areas. I’m just going to talk about the pitfalls that I see most often in teams. I think that the first communication pitfall is assuming clarity.

 Just because something was said doesn’t mean that it was actually understood the same way by everyone on your team. And a lot of teams don’t have that clarity and they don’t have a shared language. I think another pitfall that I see in a lot of teams is over relying on tools. We have Slack, we have email, we have a project management platform, and all of those tools are great.

But they don’t actually replace intentional, real, face to face, or even zoom to zoom conversations. And the clarity that you can actually gain by talking things through in person. Over reliance on tools is something that drives me crazy. Let’s be humans and have conversations. That’s what moves things forward.

Another one in communication that I would mention is probably just avoiding feedback. I see a lot of teams who don’t check in, they don’t talk about what’s working, what’s not working, they’re not running retrospectives, but they’re also not checking in on deliverables and aligning on whether or not they feel like the work is good, or if it’s headed in the right direction, and then those little misalignments become major problems.

In collaboration, all kinds of pitfalls and breakdowns. I think the way that we all define collaboration is different from organization to organization, even in industries. But I think the biggest issue that I see in collaboration is unclear roles. Large teams, if nobody knows who owns what, who is supposed to be doing what or leading what, collaboration turns into chaos.

Another big issue, and I’m sure this one you’ve seen, is silos. Departments optimize for themselves instead of over shared goals. If I’ve got my design department, I’m focused on trying to meet our goals. Whatever anyone else is doing doesn’t really matter. That’s not good. That slows everything down.

Let’s talk about culture. Missteps in culture. Culture It isn’t what you say you value, it’s what happens when no one’s looking. And I believe that everyone is responsible for positive culture. But the biggest missteps where people are misaligned in terms of culture is that no shared language thing that I mentioned earlier.

I think it’s avoiding hard conversations. Letting misalignment fester instead of just addressing issues head on, because when you do that, you build a stronger culture based on trust. And then I think it’s inconsistency in leadership. Larger organizations that have people in different leadership positions, values and expectations might change based on who’s in the room. Trust erodes, new ideas come in, and then culture takes a hit.

There’s pitfalls all over the place. You can have a rock star team of the most talented people on the planet. But if you don’t have established norms for how things should happen, and you don’t have people aligned to those practices and processes, then it’s all for nothing.

[00:06:48] Chicago Camps: Tell us more about Teamangle. How does this approach help teams shift habits and solve real world problems without relying on a rigid framework?

[00:06:58] Brett Harned: Okay, fully recognize that we made up a word. We made up a word called Teamangle and we were really just thinking about how teams can become anti fragile.

That’s really where this started. And we were coming up with kind of the areas where we thought that teams could be strong or how you could measure alignment in areas. And we came up with communication, collaboration, and culture as the high level areas that break down into other principles and practices.

But we turned that concept into a platform. So essentially, Teamangle is a platform that’s designed to help teams improve in communication, collaboration, and culture in a way that actually sticks in a very human way. This isn’t about rigid frameworks at all. And again, I am a project manager at heart. I wrote the book Project Management for Humans. I know all about rigid frameworks, and I also know that they don’t work for everyone.

Teamangle is different because it’s not a system to follow. It’s a set of tools that helps teams to have conversations that help them to find the gray areas that are in their work and their working relationships and to clear those things up.

That way they can set standards for the way that they work. And it’s not us dictating that these are your standards. We definitely give some recommended practices. But essentially it’s about embracing who you are as a team, setting standards that work best for you, that you can align on. And that’s what’s going to improve team dynamics.

Teamangle includes a suite of tools, for lack of a better term. The first thing is a diagnostic. We created this team diagnostic that we can run a team through and give them essentially a heat map of where they are aligned and where they’re misaligned. And then some recommended conversation starters to get at solutions or alignment and then solutions.

Then we created this deck, which I haven’t shown you yet. It’s called the Teamangle Conversation Cards. It’s essentially a card deck that guides meaningful discussions. This is the most framework-y part because it’s essentially a framework for how to have a conversation about these difficult topics with teams.

Then we have workshops to help teams implement change. And then we’re creating a series of playbooks to help leaders just build better practices to sustain changes over time. We have a playbook about Teamangle, but we’re going to put one out about one on ones.

Because we found so many leaders are just not great at one on ones, and those one on ones are a great opportunity to do a lot of things as a manager or a leader. This is all about gaining team alignment, and alignment isn’t about everyone agreeing. It’s about making sure everyone’s working toward the same outcome.

Everything that we do at Same Team is really designed to create actionable outcomes. It’s not about talking in circles, it’s not about coming to a workshop and thinking maybe you learned a thing, it’s not about endless reflection or avoiding accountability. It’s about turning misalignment into alignment and then into action.

I can’t tell you how many leaders I’ve spoken to who are like, we’ve got nothing wrong. We deliver on time, we do all these things really great, and it’s okay. You’re not actually talking to your team. Here’s a set of questions you should ask.

And we did this with a small agency recently. We tested with a bunch of people first, the conversation deck. We did the diagnostic, and then we came up with the questions in the deck, and we did a workshop with the team and asked just four of the questions in the deck. And there was no alignment in any of those areas. And the leader was like, I had no idea.

A little frustrated, a little pissed off because they thought that they were doing really well and didn’t realize that there were issues with everything from their values and principles and team members not even knowing what those were. To basic collaboration practices and guidelines.

The questions run the gamut. But again, the questions are about those areas that are in the cracks. You might not notice them, but if you talk about them and get people aligned on them, things are going to be a little bit easier.

We want to give people the tools to be better on their own. I think where we come in is to tell you, Hey, this is exactly what the survey data told us. These are some recommended conversations that you might need to have to get at aligning on these issues. If you don’t feel comfortable with doing that with this conversation deck, hire us to come in and run a workshop and we’ll get you aligned. We’ll run a communication workshop and we’ll get your communication playbook pulled together and everyone will be aligned.

All of our workshops come with that tangible outcome. I have spent the past 10 years as a consultant, and I gotta tell you Russ, I’m tired of going in and telling people, giving people my opinion about what they should do, and then see them get too busy and not roll out any things and having paid me all of this money to do it.

At this point, I want to create the tools that put the value and the tools in their hands for them to run with. And really, it can be done with conversation. It doesn’t have to be anything crazy. It’s about learning good leadership skills, following your heart a little bit, being a human being, and really talking to your team.

That’s what Teamangle is all about.  

[00:12:29] Chicago Camps: Morale can take a hit when teams feel overwhelmed. What are some simple and effective ways leaders can create alignment and boost engagement even in tough times?

[00:12:39] Brett Harned: Yeah, this one is so timely, right? Just considering where the United States is right now where our industry is.

I think engagement is really tough now. And I would say. Engagement’s probably been tough since COVID. Especially with remote teams. I think right now, people feel disconnected. I think if you’re in a remote company, a lot of your meetings can feel transactional. There’s less of a sense of team. And work can end up feeling like this never ending list of just deliverables.

I think it’s hard for leaders because They can’t manufacture engagement. You can’t just flip a switch and then make every individual feel and be better. That’s just not possible. But what you can do is create conditions where engagement happens naturally. And I think that there’s two ways you can do that.

I think first is to just reinforce purpose. Because when teams understand why their work matters, engagement follows. My recommendation is always for leaders to make sure that their team knows that their work contributes to the bigger picture. It’s not really about like motivational speeches and trying to uplift people.

It’s about directly making sure people know what their impact is. That’s what makes you feel important. I did this really cool, amazing thing at work today. Or like we launched this product and it’s helping these people. That kind of purpose is what gets me excited about work.

I think the second one is to give people more control. One of the fastest ways to kill engagement in a team is micromanagement or constantly shifting priorities. The more ownership that teams have over their work, The more engaged they’re gonna be. People aren’t disengaged because they don’t care. They’re disengaged because they don’t see a clear path to success or they’re part in that success.

[00:14:38] Chicago Camps: What’s one myth about teamwork or leadership that you’d like to see retired?

[00:14:44] Brett Harned: I love this question. I heard a reference to this on the radio just this morning. The DJs on the radio, yes, we listen to the radio when I’m driving my daughter to school. And they’re talking about how they function like a family. Their work is like a family.

And this is the biggest misconception in leadership or teamwork, that a great team should function like a family. What bullshit. And I feel like I’ve fallen victim to it in, in some places that you might know, and it’s a shame.

It’s such a terrible feeling when you realize that’s really not how it is and you’ve been lied to. So what I’ve learned through those experiences is that work is work. Teams thrive when they operate with respect and trust and accountability and not forced intimacy or blurred boundaries. That is so problematic, and I feel like you can be on a healthy team and support each other, but also set very high standards for each other, but also draw the line between when work ends and when work starts.

Instead of thinking about teams as families, think about them like a high performing sports team. Get it? Like our same team thing is everyone’s got a role, everyone’s invested in success, everyone wants to win, and everyone’s committed to growing. Your team doesn’t need a work family, they just need clarity and trust and good space to do the work.