Teams Reimagined: Navigating Identity, Inclusion and Belonging in Hybrid Workspaces with Team Habits Author Charlie Gilkey

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Jennifer Brown:

Hello, Will to Changers. It's Jennifer.

And I sit with this question, why does it seem increasingly difficult to be in conversation with each other and who's missing from these conversations as a result?

We all know it's become more difficult than ever to practice the imperfect art of allyship. However, we identify it because there are few spaces where we can return to the building blocks of inclusion, places where we can deepen our self-awareness. We can analyze how trust is built and unearth our story and practice both sharing and listening.

As such, we are very excited to announce the very first Better Together Conference, a series of virtual conversations and workshops aimed to foster learning, connection, trust, and empathy with the intent of articulating a vision for true partnership that includes and enlists all of us.

So whether you're looking to level up your allyship or aren't sure where you fit into the inclusion equation, this two-day event will enhance your competence and confidence to hold meaningful and authentic conversations that build bridges across differences.

So I would love to see any and all of you joining us for the virtual two-day event. The date are October 18th and 19th, 2023. So it's just around the corner and you can learn more about the conference and secure your ticket at jenniferbrownconsulting.com/better-together. That's jenniferbrownconsulting.com/better-together. We hope you'll come back to the conversations that matter.

Charlie Gilkey:

What COVID did is took all of our workways and broke them and just dumped them out, pushed them off the table, and we had to start figuring out how we were going to work with each other.

It wasn't just I pop into Jennifer's office and we talk something out and then I go on, and it may have been that Jennifer used to hate me popping in her office, but it was just what we did. That wasn't an opportunity anymore. That wasn't a thing.

So we literally had to say, "Charlie, I have an idea. I need Jennifer's help. How do I call her? Is it on a Zoom? Does she have the right Zoom? Are we all on the cheap free Zoom?"

Well, the reality is most high performing teams, any performing teams, there's just a layer of ways we do things that we don't talk about that's just in the background, and we need it to be that way. COVID broke that.

Doug Foresta:

The Will to Change is hosted by Jennifer Brown.

Jennifer is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker, bestselling author, and leadership expert on how organizations must evolve their cultures towards a new, more inclusive workplace reality.

She's a passionate inclusion and equity advocate committed to helping leaders foster healthier and therefore more productive workplaces, ultimately driving innovation and business results.

Informed by nearly two decades of consulting to Fortune 500 companies, she and her team advise top companies on building cultures of belonging in times of great upheaval and uncertainty.

And now onto the episode.

Hello and welcome back to the Will to Change. This is Doug Foresta. Today's episode features a conversation between Jennifer and author Charlie Gilkey as Charlie discusses his new book Team Habits.

And Charlie talks about the need to redefine the way we view teams, leadership, and inclusion in the wake of the pandemic and the unprecedented challenges of the last couple of years.

He also shares insights about how remote collaboration, shifting paradigms of belonging, and innovative approaches to inclusion have reshaped the team dynamics landscape, all this and more. And now onto the conversation.

Jennifer Brown:

Charlie, welcome to the Will to Change.

Charlie Gilkey:

Jennifer, thanks so much for having me. I always look forward to our conversations in many and varied forms, so I'm happy to be here for this one.

Jennifer Brown:

Many and varied forms, yes. We are going to stretch like Gumby today. We're going to cover a lot of stuff. And I'm so excited to have a team expert on here because my space of DEI has so much to do with effective teaming, and yet we don't get to think of ourselves as experts on team dynamics and trust and building positive working relationships, creating an environment that is conducive to productivity and belonging and all those words that I know you and I relate mutually have passion for.

And I'm really excited to jump into the science of teams. And like your book says, and everybody, I want you to know, there's a new book coming out of Charlie's, it's his third, Team Habits, August 29th. Is that's the right date? And already getting all kinds of interest from all over the world for the foreign rights, which is so cool. I know how that feels.

And I was just sharing that I got... My first was a Vietnamese version of How to Be an Inclusive Leader. So I was like, "Oh, I didn't expect that." I don't know what I expected, but it was a happy surprise.

So congratulations on how it's doing already.

Charlie Gilkey:

Thank you.

Jennifer Brown:

Already.

But bring us up to speed. Introduce yourself to our audience. I know I was on your podcast when I came out with the book last fall, but tell us why the passion for teams, how did this end up being where you felt so motivated that you needed to write not one but multiple books, and what is it that keeps you coming back to this topic and maybe even just personally a little bit more about your career journey to this moment so we can get to know you a bit better.

Charlie Gilkey:

Yeah, I love this question and so let's do a little bit of an origin story here because that'll probably place me in space and time.

Jennifer Brown:

Perfect.

Charlie Gilkey:

And so I grew up in a military family and I was involved in Boy Scouts and played sports and at heart, I'm a teams guy. I love doing things in groups. I love the power of people when we come together and just do amazing things and how we create something that's fundamentally more than the sum of our individual parts. And that's always been who I am.

And, Jennifer, people know me for a lot of my work and personal productivity and maybe some entrepreneurship. And so for some folks this seems like, "Wow, this is a different book and going in a different direction." I was like, "No, no, no, no. This has always been there." If you go back to my earliest writing, it's always there. It has always been there.

But I started in a time period where the focus was really on individuals getting their information and that's what took off. So like any good entrepreneur, you don't fight with people about-

Jennifer Brown:

That's right.

Charlie Gilkey:

... those things. You go where the energy is and the energy was in personal productivity and things like that. But my heart has always been with teams.

So I started Productive Flourishing. And when I did that in 2007 or '08, I was simultaneously completing my PhD in philosophy. So I'm a social philosopher and an ethicist by training on the academic side, but I was also an army joint forces military logistics coordinator, which is a mouthful, but it's basically the functions that make sure that the Army, Air Force, and Navy and the Marines are on the same sheet of music about their logistics operations.

And so, so many of the issues that I was dealing with at the time that I started Productive Flourishing were actually leadership, team dynamics, moving mountains together was really where that started. But my academic background is really around thriving and the political and social conditions that enable people to be their best selves in the world in both the ways we talk about it on the popular side, but also what does it take to create good humans and what does that even mean. And so those have been in the DNA of my work the whole time.

And so I knew when I started my last book, Start Finishing, that it was a part of at least a trilogy of books. I actually thought that... I know there's a fourth one that's really nerdy and weird that probably or may not ever come out, but I knew the first one was really about personal productivity like how do I do my best work, how do I do my best work. I knew that's what that book was about.

And I knew the second book... I codenamed it Start Finishing Together, but it was really how do we do our best work together.

And then the third one that I knew was in the arc was for leaders, what do leaders specifically need to do so that their teams and organizations can do their best work.

Then the fourth sort of nerdy one is the fundamentals of finishing or getting things done. What create... I can look at a project, just probably like you can, Jennifer, and look at something and be like, "Hmm, I could tell you the four reasons why that one's going to get sticky and not work." Or I could say, "Oh, I could see how that one's designed to be completed."

And so that book may never come out because it's like, one, who's going to buy it and two, can I actually articulate that.

Jennifer Brown:

Buy it.

Charlie Gilkey:

So I wrote Start Finishing around the time of... Right before the pandemic. And as I was talking about Start Finishing and doing that in organizations like you do, the predictable team questions started coming up and then the pandemic happened. And that created a lot of opportunity in the crisis and in the storm.

And so it's like the pandemic accelerated and crystallized what I was already thinking that that second book was going to be, but it also had the tailwind, to use a word that I just heard you say in your intro video, it had the tailwind of start finishing that created that opening as well.

Jennifer Brown:

Yeah, wow. And what a time to be pondering what makes successful teams. If anything, I'd say teams have been under the most duress, had the most opportunity through this really pressured time where coming together was literally impossible.

And the fundamentals of what we think of when we think of teams was challenged. And out of that, I think have come some really incredible innovations of course, because pressure makes diamonds and you are literally sitting there writing this book on teams as the very definition of it is changing as the very way that we team.

And I guess I wonder so many... Did you change direction of your advice as you learned and pivoted yourself through... Because you have an organization too, so you're living this and breathing this.

But wow, that must've been really a moving target as we learned every month that went by of that time how were people connecting virtually using the tools available, what was suffering and what was thriving in terms of belonging which is really interesting because I think it just really depends how you look at net net, it depends who you are and how you identify and where you're comfortable that determines how you felt more or less belonging on your team pivoting through this time of so much shuffling.

So just tell me. Did you have a plan? Did you revisit the plan? Did you change the direction? Was it really important for you to respond to what we were learning and pivoting through in all those months and years?

Charlie Gilkey:

It absolutely was important for me to respond because I'm an adaptive creator and teacher meaning there are some visionary creators that just like, "I have an idea, I'm going to pursue it and I don't care what the world thinks," and so on and so forth. I'm not that guy. I'm the one that's like, "Oh, what's in the mix here? What are we talking about? What are people needing?" And that really does inspire what I create because I just not... I could create a lot of different things and it's just not fun to do it for and by myself most of the time. And so it absolutely shifted that.

And the reality is... Well, my argument is that we have never in American history had such rapid change in our workforce as we did in 2020, and people was like, "What about the internet and commuter revolutions?" We had a couple of decades to figure that out. "What about World War II?" Well, World War II, when women went into the factories in the workplace, that evolved over a couple of years.

But many of us have a singular date, Friday the 13th, March, March the 13th, 2020 when we knew our world of work had changed. We knew that day.

What it did is, to use my language, it took all of our workways, which is an extension of this sociologist term folkways. Cultures are made of folkways and mores.

If anyone's taken sociology, you remember those folkways and mores, right?

Well, it turns out we have workways too, right? We have just these implicit social agreements about how we do things.

So let's talk about folkways first because people understand this, right? And in your work, a lot of what you're pushing against is some of these folkways.

Jennifer Brown:

Oh, yes, indeed.

Charlie Gilkey:

That lead to unideal outcomes.

But if I were to go over to Jennifer's house and she was gracious enough to invite me over there, I don't know why she would, but in case that happened, I would probably show up with wine or a gift or something like that. And wine would be the acceptable gift unless I knew she was recovery or she was in a recovery program.

Nowhere in our society is it like, "Here is the rule. If you go to someone's house, you do this." Now there are some etiquette classes that do that, but most of us just know that.

And even if Jennifer happened to be going through recovery, which there's no problem with that, by the way, she may not be offended that I brought wine because it's this implicit social agreement that that's what's happening here. Right?

Workways are like that too. The CC thread from hell that... You know what I'm talking about. If you're working in a corporate environment, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You get 18 of these a day and you have to read them to figure out what's actually relevant to you and why you should be paying attention.

I've actually facilitated conversations with multiple layers of an organization and said, "So who likes this?" And not a hand goes up. And who created this? Not a hand goes up.

Jennifer Brown:

Who knows?

Charlie Gilkey:

Who wants to continue this? Not a hand goes up. So why are we doing this thing that we don't like? Well, we just implicitly agree to do it, right?

And so what COVID did is took all of our workways and broke them and just dumped them out, pushed them off the table, and we had to start figuring out how we were going to work with each other.

It wasn't just I pop into Jennifer's office and we talk something out, and then I go on, and it may have been that Jennifer used to hate me popping in her office, but it was just what we did. But that wasn't an opportunity anymore. That wasn't a thing.

So we literally had to say, "Charlie, I have an idea. I need Jennifer's help. How do I that? Do I call her? Is it on the Zoom? Does she have the right Zoom? Are we all on the cheap free Zoom where we have a 40-minute meeting and not an hour?"

All of those things we had to figure out, and it sounds funny, but when you unpack... Well, the reality is most high performing teams, any performing teams, there's just a layer of ways we do things that we don't talk about that's just in the background, and we need it to be that way. COVID broke that.

Jennifer Brown:

Wow. You're so right. It's pretty extreme. And then we've rebuilt. Hopefully built better. I don't know. What would your answer be to that? Did we take the lessons and the opportunities and really leverage them into something unexpected and amazing for team effectiveness, do you think overall? Probably, it's mixed, but how do you answer that kind of question?

Charlie Gilkey:

It's difficult because teams are unique, organizations are unique, but even teams are much more unique. And so if I look at the team level, it's hard to say what we've done.

So if we look at sectors, different sectors have done a lot of different things. I've seen more really good adaptation, pivoting, integration, and the creation of better new normals from the small business space and the nonprofit space that I have, the organizational space. I think a lot of big organizations are just waiting for it to go back to normal.

Jennifer Brown:

Very true.

Charlie Gilkey:

And haven't really accepted that that normal is gone. It will never come back and the world going forward is hybrid. You can fight that and lose your people and lose your productivity and lose the business battle that you're fighting. Or you can figure it out and say, "Okay, let's get out of this meta conversation around..."

I have an op-ed coming out pretty soon against a post that Bloomberg wrote. And there's still in many sectors this management paradigm that revolves around counting people in seats. And if we count people in seats, then we're being productive and things are happening. I'm like, "No. No. Trust me. That's not the measure you're looking at because humans, these teams that you have, these humans that you have are far smarter than you think they are."

Jennifer Brown:

That's right.

Charlie Gilkey:

Right?

And so we have to realize that that paradigm is gone, and the only way it's going to stay even in the conversation is because we have billionaires who can use economic coercion to force people to do that.

Yes, I went there, but that's really what's going on because left to their own devices, teams can actually figure out their right balance of in-person to virtual that will actually create the results that are needed. But you have to let them figure that out and not try to figure that out for them because we know, you know this, Jennifer, most change management initiatives fail to the degree of 66 to 75%. Top-down change management does not work right.

Now, you can get paid quite well as a consultant to lead these things, but if you are said consultant you know the game, but also I'm one of those folks, I'm like, "I have to design everything in the inverse of the way that the people hiring me think it needs to be designed for it to actually work."

And so a lot of the work that I do is having teams define what's going to work for them and their team habits, which is where we get to the book that's unique to how they work and unique to how the organization works, but not coming in as an external consultant being like, "Here's what you must do."

Jennifer Brown:

Right.

Charlie Gilkey:

"No, I don't know actually. You know. My job is to help you figure out or help you create that and articulate that and show that it works with using the same data pools and evidence that people want. Show that it works." And if you do, unless you've got a stuck paradigm like, "Well, we really... It's okay you get the numbers, but really are people really working as hard as they can be?" They're still stuck in that butts in seats like, "I don't see them working, so I don't trust that they're working." It's just like, "Come on, man."

Jennifer Brown:

There's 1950s... It's really... There's no trust. That's it. And people don't like to not be trusted, and they know when they're not trusted.

And you've got this next generation coming up that I think expects to have a lot access and transparency from day one and then treated though as a cog or like you were saying sort of being controlled or directed and therefore stifling the creativity that you're talking about, which is how would this team operate and what are the values that we want to underscore and turn into habits.

So it just stifles the whole kind of belonging process because I think to belong, we have to feel our input is valued, heard, respected, acted upon, that it matters. We need to feel significance with our contribution.

And we need to feel safe enough in environments like teams to say, "Hey, that doesn't feel good," or, "Hey, this doesn't seem to resonate with our values or align to it."

So especially creating that psychological safety in a hybrid environment... There's been moments when I thought this was hard enough to build great teams of belonging and aligned values and everything, it was super hard before the pandemic. And now it's almost like leaders are having to do this with their hands tied behind their backs because they can't read body language, they can't grab somebody, they can't... Like you said earlier, you have to decide how am I going to communicate this idea to whom and when and using what tool, and pretty soon, your hard drive is just like "meee."

Charlie Gilkey:

Yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Brown:

And the idea is gone.

Charlie Gilkey:

Yeah, the idea is gone because you're caught in process. You're caught in these workways and team habits and you functionally do not know how you're going to do it.

Jennifer Brown:

Right, right.

Charlie Gilkey:

And by the time you figure that out, you forgot what you were going to say in the first place.

Jennifer Brown:

It's so true.

Charlie Gilkey:

Absolutely.

Jennifer Brown:

So true. The older you get, that's even more true.

So how-

Charlie Gilkey:

Well, how-

Jennifer Brown:

Yeah?

Charlie Gilkey:

Real quick though, I want to talk about the younger generation coming up because I get so frustrated about the generational tension and conflict that's happening here about the younger generations. And I've led troops when I was younger and so they're like, "These millennials..." I was like, "Don't even start with these millennials." If you have seen what these millennials can do and will do, if given the opportunity, you would not be saying these millennials. And so now we're moved up. So it's to Gen Z or whatever we're calling them these days.

Here's the thing that older generations need to understand. When we grew up, when Jennifer and I grew up, if our family and our parents had issues at work, one, if they talked about it, that was great because we knew, but two, we thought it was with our family.

Well, there's a younger generation that has grown up on the internet that has seen that the absurdity of work is universal, right?

Jennifer Brown:

Oops, the cat's out of the bag.

Charlie Gilkey:

They know it's broken. They don't have to wait until they're 55 or 60 and get the can to realize, "Wait a second, I spent my whole life for this and this is all I get?" They know that. So don't be mad that they know that in advance and don't be mad that...

And this is not about generations, but I have to say this, it continually surprises me that leaders are concerned about their retention and turnover and things like that when they treat their employees like cogs and replaceable little units that they can do. Well, guess what? If you treat people like that, they're going to treat you like that.

And so I am going to always be on the lookout for the next best opportunity because you do not like... If I'm an employee, I am looking for the next best opportunity because I can't trust that you are going to be where I'm going to be able to work because "Priorities may change," and I'm out of a job and that's it-

Jennifer Brown:

That's it.

Charlie Gilkey:

... because we've lost that personal relationship because organizations don't actually lean into it.

So I am of the mindset that we don't need more people practicing the subtle art of not giving a fork actually. We need more people in their teams giving all the damns and actually caring.

And there's a specific definition that I have around teams that I want to make sure that people know what we talk about because this gets confusing.

A group is not a team necessarily. Your department is not your team. The four to eight people that you work with 80, 85% of the time every day are your team. And in that team, it's personal.

So for this call or for this podcast, I'm going to pretend like Jennifer and I are on a team because it's easier to think about it. It's very personal. I know Jennifer, I know her background. I know what she's interested in. I know... I just learned that she likes Michael Franti. I know these types of things.

And so much of when we think about work, we think teams or we think organizations or we think work. But at the end of the day, it's about what Jennifer and I do together, how are we taking care of each other, how are we covering for each other when we're falling down, how are we working out those natural bumps that happen, and how are we doing that together and not needing to get management involved and so on, so forth.

So Jennifer, I think I told you this before. I knew fundamentally when I started Team Habits, I was like, "Oh, crap, this is a book about power." Fundamentally, it's about power. Who has it? How do you use it? How do you get it? What do you do when you don't have it? I was like, "Oh, I don't want to write that." Not that I don't want to write that book, but I know how that book will be grappled in the marketplace. I was like, "That's not... How do I do this?"

But what I really sat back and thought about is like, "Look, there are at least three dimensions of power at work and most of the conversations about work only deal with two of them. So let's talk about the normal two."

That's personal power, which is power too. This is what Charlie can do on his own, my capabilities, my knowhow, my grid, my determination, all that sort of jazz. So personal power.

Then we have institutional power. So we can think about this as power over. This is what the bosses can do and this is the decisions they can make, all that kind of whatnot.

Most of our conversations about work, whether we're talking about DEI, whether we're talking about whatever are actually in those two polls of the conversation, but it completely misses this middle section of interpersonal power and that's power with.

Power with. Jennifer and Charlie have power together that we don't have that's our personal power, but it's also not institutional power and not necessarily institutional power. And we can do great things together and we can figure a lot of things out together. We don't need bosses, we don't need corporate sanctions and higher ups, and we don't need that. But we know we can't do it by ourselves.

And so what I want to do in Team Habits is go back to that question of, or when people ask me, "What should my team do?" And I'm like, "You all have a lot of power together to solve whatever that is it is. So what's blocking you from using that?"

And then we'll go through the normal sort of... I see a flow chart in my head. "Here are the eight things they are going to tell me why they can't do something."

And so we'll go through those normal eight things and then it gets to the rock bottom. It's like, "Wait a second, we can just decide together to do a thing?" And I'm like, "Probably. Let me be very specific here. Let's talk about meetings real quick."

A lot of people hate their meeting culture. They don't like their meetings, they don't like going to them. They really wish they didn't exist.

But in your team, again, four to eight people, it's Charlie and Jennifer and Amy and John and Patrick and Taylor, we four or five can look at each other and be like, "You know what? None of us like this. Let's do something different." And with this group of people, we don't need a sign off, we don't need a budget. We just need to have that conversation and say, "Hey, we can do something different together." And it's our meeting.

Jennifer Brown:

Right. Right.

Charlie Gilkey:

No one else is here. We don't have to do it that way. So if you don't like it in your team, do something different.

And it's not that that's... Talking team habits about... So much of what I talk about is not rocket science, it's rocket practice. It's not conceptually hard to do, much like what you're talking about in DEI. Conceptually hard to do the practice of saying, "Wait a second, this is not what we want to." With my team, we can voice that. That goes to that psychological safety.

I can say, "I don't like these meetings without Jennifer hearing I don't like her or I don't want to work with her or I don't want to collaborate with her."

Jennifer Brown:

Right.

Charlie Gilkey:

Right? Because I also know Jennifer doesn't like these meetings either because we were complaining about it yesterday over coffee.

Jennifer Brown:

I love it.

So taking it out of the personal, making it about the process, and the courage to speak up and voice what may not be voiced because of fear, because we do line up, we do clip our own wings in a way. We do make assumptions and get into bad habits of believing that we don't have agency. And what I hear you saying is we have a lot of agency actually.

And that the best ideas for how to shift or do processes differently I think are bubbling up from our organizations all the time. The problem is that that's not heard or listened to or there's no curiosity about it and there's fear that you let groups of people run with things and they run amuck. That's also...

That can happen in DEI stuff, especially in my world affinity groups, the number of clients who've said, "Oh my goodness. I empowered the networks and now they're trying to take over the whole thing and run it and they're way out of the lines." But it's funny what problem would you rather have.

I would rather have tons of ideas and more than we know what to do with and try to wrestle it down because that to me speaks to engagement, it speaks to energy, it speaks to, like you say, one plus one equals three thinking with each other, which is really exciting and that's the juice of business, but it can go beyond.

But the other problem you might have is this silence or the lack of innovation or rusting in place, but really there and not there employees who are really dispirited, who are beaten down, who can't wait to leave. So nobody wants that. So it's really interesting balance, isn't it?

Charlie Gilkey:

Well, it is. But even in some of those, to your point, of they're going outside the lines, it's like, "Well, why are those lines there?" And that's what we get to ask at the board and executive levels like, "Why are those lines there?" And they're like, "Well, they're there so that they don't make bad decisions," or whatever.

I'm like, "But have we actually conveyed what those decisions are and have we said, 'Look, these ideas that you have, we want to give you the context of the different choices or the different consequences of those choices. If we do this thing that you're recommending, we may have to lay off 20% of our workforce because the numbers won't work." That's the tension that we're actually dealing with here.

Jennifer Brown:

Yeah, yeah. [inaudible 00:32:10].

Charlie Gilkey:

Right?

Jennifer Brown:

Mm-hmm.

Charlie Gilkey:

And so which would you rather. Right? Because that's the choice.

And then it might have to pull up some transparency. Maybe we don't have to make that workforce cut because we have such dramatic pay scale differences. And so there just creates different forces like that. But again, are we actually inviting people into that?

And this is a funny thing because I also do a lot of anti-hierarchical or sociocratic team building, meaning breaking the traditional hierarchy.

And I've seen enough that when actually teammates and employees get handed the consequences of those decisions, a lot of times, they will want to revert back to where they didn't have to make those hard decisions because it's emotionally hard.

But even if that's the case, they have a different appreciation for the different roles that are being played in the organizations.

So even if they're like, "Honestly, I don't want to make that decision, this group does not want to make that decision," which means we are basically recreating the hierarchy. They also, to a tee, respect the different roles that are being played and integrate differently because they're like, "Oh, now we understand that if we're chewing up a bunch of time on these things, that the folks who have to make those decisions are distracted and won't make good decisions. So maybe we'll do what we do better and let them do what they do better because we don't want to do that. We tasted it, we don't want it. We want this thing over here."

And that's great because, again, that is the organization that our teams having the autonomy to say, "Nope, I'm out. And we are going to participate differently." And that's the key word participate differently in this situation versus just comply over bail or remain silent. We're going to participate differently, which creates that engagement that we're talking about.

And so I would rather have an organization which is a team of teams consciously communicating and participating with each other than being frozen in a hierarchy that may or may not work, and fundamentally, the individuals of those teams not feeling like they or their work matter.

Jennifer Brown:

Yeah, that's where you don't want to get.

What's your view on the whole question of giving input and contributing and participating has been so hampered by identity and stigma around that identity? And I think that if we're...

I often say if we're busy managing how our identity is going to be received and anticipating those microaggressions and total lack of familiarity with who we are and how we identify or what our experiences, we almost give up before we start. We might remain silent. We might disengage or unplug. We certainly will not give our best creatively.

So I guess I'd love to hear your view on... Because participation is key, that deep participation not just from the head but also from the heart honestly, because we need to pay attention to not just the processes but the people and the culture and the impact. It's not just about the output, it's how you get to the output and how people feel when we arrive at the output. Did you feel welcomed? Did you feel valued? Right?

So I wonder... It seems like it's such an integral part to a team habit to practice inclusion, to... But I wondered your definition of what that really looks and sounds like in practice. I know it's so important and also complicated.

We were talking about earlier with hybrid, who's included, who's not. Some companies... I am on with two different clients and one will say, "Well, everybody, the haves and the haves nots in this system are the ones that are remote, are viewed as having more privilege. And the ones that are required to be in the office are the ones that feel they've been unfairly tasked."

And then you've got another situation, which is exactly the opposite. Those that are remote are not included, they don't feel involved and they're feeling their input isn't considered. So it's just really fascinating to see how all of this is shaken out.

But let me ask that again about creating that inclusive environment so that we can get the participation, what gets in the way and what is a habit that...

You're the habits person. What is the habit behind what I want to see which is teams that are comfortable, trusting, trusted, open, transparent, not afraid, like you said earlier, to say, "Hey, we need to do this a different way. I have an idea," or "Could we brainstorm this?" That takes a lot of trust in each other, and I think those identities, things get in the way of that, I think, and they don't need to. But...

Charlie Gilkey:

Yeah. So that's a great question.

And chapter three, which is really the first team habits where I start breaking down different team habits of in the book starts with belonging. So I did that intentionally.

I also intentionally did not frame this as a DEI book for a lot of different reasons.

But again, I want to come back and say, "Okay, let's go back to what we mean by team. This is four to eight people. This is Jennifer, this is Amy, this is Tina, Patrick. How do we create inclusion in that scenario?"

It feels different for a lot of people when they're like, "Oh, it's this very personal thing," where what we see in larger organizations I think is where the identity start to play out more because the social game that's being played. But in these smaller intimate teams, I think it's fundamentally a different question.

So it's like, to use your language, how do you be a good ally when John consciously or unconsciously talks over Tina every time. That is an interpersonal sort of thing. And you can just say, "Hey, John, I've noticed this," and it doesn't land right. Or maybe you go to Tina, you know Tina and maybe go to Tina like, "Tina, I've noticed that. I am uncomfortable by it, but before I do anything, before I say anything more, I wanted to check in with you to see how it feels for you. How does it land for you?"

And then Tina might have a thing to say, and then you listen. You listen to what... I know it is rocket practice here. You listen. And Tina might say, "You know what? Look, I'm going to talk to John about it because I want to have that relationship with John and I don't want to triangle." And then you say, "Look, what can I do to support you, Tina? Is there anything you need from me or is this just my own stuff coming up..."

Jennifer Brown:

Yeah. It could be.

Charlie Gilkey:

"... that I need to go do my work on?"

Jennifer Brown:

Could be.

Charlie Gilkey:

And listen to what Tina says. But if Tina's like, "I just haven't figured out and I can't right now, I got other things going on," then you can say, "Would you like me to talk to John about it? I don't have to include you. I don't have to say you sent me, but it bugs me and I'm going to go talk to John about it. Are you okay with that? Yes or no?" And then you listen and you have that relationship.

And again, I think it takes a little courage to have that first conversation-

Jennifer Brown:

Definitely.

Charlie Gilkey:

... with Tina of like, "Hey, I have a feeling about a certain way." But again, if I'm going back and I'm talking about Jennifer, the real person, and I see my friend getting disrespected or getting talked over or getting hurt, I'm just not going to stand by and let that happen without at least saying, "I saw that."

And even if there's corporate policies at play that we both know we can't change, even saying, "Hey, Jennifer, that's messed up. I know it's messed up. You know it's messed up. I don't know that we can change it, but we're in this together and we can talk about it if that's helpful for you. Otherwise, just know I got you." That can go such a long way.

And it's not much more than that. Jennifer's more of the expert on the DEI, but that's the conversation that you have.

And then you have social dynamics in place, so you don't confront John in person. You don't go back and do those things that you know better. But again, it's Jennifer and Charlie and Amy and Tina and John, these very unique individuals who we talk about our kids and favorite songs, they go to the same school, we might carpool together, let's actually embrace that it's personal and have those conversations. And you might find it's not as hard as you think once you get used to it because if you can have that hard conversation with Tina, think of how much easier this stupid meeting conversation is.

Jennifer Brown:

That's true.

Charlie Gilkey:

Right? You're like, "Yeah, no, let's do something different." It's quick. You don't have to do that context setting because you have that trust and belonging and that rapport that you can do great things together.

Or imagine when it's your turn to be in that support seat and you've got stuff going on outside of work and you're falling down and Tina comes to you and says, "Look, I'm noticing this. Are you okay? Before we talk about anything else, are you okay?" And then you're like, "Nah, I'm struggling." And then Tina says, "Oh, okay. I've been seeing that too. It's all cool. We all fall down."

By the way, let's normalize that at any given point in time in a team, someone is going to be behind, someone is going to have something come up in their lives, which means the team is going to be impaired in different ways because that's what it means to have one of your teammates fall down. When we normalize that and accept that that's the human reality, we can address that differently.

So instead of being like, "Jennifer, you fall down. That's wrong. Bad, bad, bad. Do something." It's like, "Hey, oh, it's your turn to be supported. The life sandwich has come to you and it doesn't taste so good. And that's okay, but what can I do to support?"

And in this point, be careful not to assume that you know what Jennifer needs because Jennifer might be one of those people who find a lot of meaning and purpose and joy at work.

And so if you do the very natural thing that people will just like, "Oh, she's overwhelmed, so we're just going to take work from her."

Jennifer Brown:

Oh, yeah.

Charlie Gilkey:

Well, guess what you've done unintentionally, you've taken away the one thing that might have her hanging on to whatever's going on in her life and told her, "You're incompetent. You can't do it. We're taking that work from you. Go sit in a corner."

Jennifer Brown:

The worst.

Charlie Gilkey:

That can hurt, right?

She might just need you to book the office room with her or the conference room and just co-work with her for two hours.

Jennifer Brown:

I love that.

Charlie Gilkey:

That might be the fix, right?

Jennifer Brown:

Yeah.

Charlie Gilkey:

So again, you mentioned what are some things that we can do to increase inclusion and identity and part of it is address that we all have different ways of showing up and people are not a monolith.

So there's not really the Black experience at work. There's not really the LGBTQ experience, there's Jennifer's experience, there's Charlie's experience, and that might be mediated by a lot of different things. But you can ask them when you experience something that may not feel good if that's their experience, and then engage with it in that sort of way.

It's a dialogue and you're like, "Oh, Charlie, that takes a long time." No, it doesn't.

Jennifer Brown:

It doesn't. No.

Charlie Gilkey:

It doesn't. It's five to 10 minutes. Especially... And the more you do it, the quicker the conversation has become.

Jennifer Brown:

Right.

Charlie Gilkey:

Right? Because Charlie, in that circumstance, if I'm the one that experienced something that didn't feel good, I can just be like, "Yeah, no, I'm good." Or if it was Amy said something that could have hurt my feelings, like, "Oh, yeah, but look, she's going through a rough time right now. She's not her best self. We've already talked about that. And she let me know that she might be a little bit spicier. I got her. It's cool. It's not a thing. We will get it worked out," because that's the team that we have.

She's like... "Amy's just told me she's not going to be a best version of human, and I'm okay with that because I'm going to have my turn at that too."

Jennifer Brown:

Yeah, yeah. How beautiful.

I love... You just role modeled, like I do, your language is so similar to mine around the whole ally commitment in those moments. You hit on all the right... I think I agree with you all the right things to say in those moments, the script, if you will.

But the fear of getting started I think is just any habit. Of course, it's going to be clunky at the beginning. It's going to feel artificial to go through those paces.

And I often am trying to paint this picture for leaders I'm working with to say, "Through practice, this will become the habit of noticing exclusion, the habit of checking in with people and saying, 'What are you coping with right now? And do you feel supported? And how can we better support you?' The habit of checking in on workload flow, vis-à-vis people's personal commitments, and maybe mental health status."

And I know that this can be very overwhelming for leaders because the mental health thing is just coming up over and over and over again, and I think most are pretty ill-equipped to deal with it. And where they go, Charlie, you know this, the leader goes to, "Oh my gosh, the work isn't going to get done. We're not going to be productive." Or "This is intolerable." And that's that old school push it through mentality that we've all unfortunately been inculcated with.

But we cannot get work done that way anymore. And I think that's so confusing for people to say, "I used to be able to count on this process and now it's this wild card. It's all over the place. These people are humans and they're going to human."

And what you're saying I think is beautiful. Just acknowledging what's going on, making space for it, getting creative in terms of what kind of support that person needs, not just the person in that community or that identity, which I also love. You said, "Not all of us are the same. Not all of us need the same support and allyship actually. Some of us like to fight our own battles and go direct, and others of us haven't found our voice, and we need somebody to check in and actually offer to have a tough conversation that we're not ready to have."

So I just love what you're describing is that we aren't all... Each of us is not a single story. We're not a single identity. We have a name. We are many things, and that we switch off in our allyship to each other depending on when your system is optimized or suboptimized and when mine is, and these things ebb and flow.

And I would imagine the most healthy teams are the ones that breathe with each other-

Charlie Gilkey:

Absolutely.

Jennifer Brown:

... that they adjust and maybe they adjust themselves. It's sort of a weather system.

And it's interesting then what's the role of the leader in all this which leaves me curious. Are they the conductor of this? Are they the observer of it? Are they the coach to this team that's adjusting to each other, building relationships, figuring out how the work's going to get done, coming up with the ideas?

What is your point of view on that leader role with optimizing this, given all of these changing factors going on?

Charlie Gilkey:

Yes. So the best leaders do the least, but do what's essential, right?

I know that sounds like a fortune cookie, Charlie.

That's-

Jennifer Brown:

Please explain.

Charlie Gilkey:

That's an appropriation there.

But the reality is, one, the leader's role is going to be very individual to that team, that's the not helpful thing, because you're going to have some teams that are just co-evolving and hard charging, and they basically need their team leader to get the hell out of the way so they can do what they do.

Jennifer Brown:

Right, right.

Charlie Gilkey:

Right?

Other teams, especially if they're lower in their readiness or they're lower in... They're early in their forming, storming, norming cycle, they're going to need the leader to step in and say, if they're storming in that phase of the cycle to be like, "You know what? We're storming right now and it's okay, this is what happens to teams. What are we going to do about it?"

And that's it, right? And so-

Jennifer Brown:

It's calling a thing a thing sometimes too-

Charlie Gilkey:

Calling a thing a thing-

Jennifer Brown:

... as the leader.

Charlie Gilkey:

We can normalize this in a certain way and then engage with it differently as opposed to if Jennifer and Charlie are butting heads about something, the leader can go is, "You two stop butting heads." Or we can say, "Look, this is normal. You two are figuring out how to work with each other, but what's really going on here?"

And then if someone approaches with that level of EQ and safety, Charlie's like, "Well, this is one time two weeks ago, Jennifer did a thing," and it sounds very high school most of the time. Then Jennifer's like, "What? I didn't even know I did a thing. And then we've been fighting over that forever?" And it's like, "Yes, that's really been... It's not about that thing. We just bumped into each other. And I want to normalize that we bump into each other."

If you've ever worked in food service, you bump into each other, you running around a corner with a hot plate and you might hit somebody, or just a random, you're reaching over somebody. Now, most of the time it's natural, it's not a problem, it's not creepy, though sometimes it's creepy, but those are different [inaudible 00:49:51]-

Jennifer Brown:

It's another podcast.

Charlie Gilkey:

It's another podcast.

But in most cases, you're just bumping into each other. Or if you've been on a sports team or if you've been on a military team, you're forever bumping into each other. And it's just like, "Oops, my bad." Move on. Because you know it's not personal.

And so what happens in some circumstances is the leaders is like, "You two are bumping into each other and it's all good. How can we, one, change the way that we're working so that you don't bump into each other?

Or if you are bumping into each other, realize that it's not personal, it's just part of this work that we do. Like Charlie forever forgets to set the permissions on his files. And so every time, Jennifer has to ask him, and it frustrates Jennifer because she's like, 'I told you 18 times about this.' 'I'm sorry, I'm stupid that way. I really am trying."

And that might be all it is. It might not be Charlie having a power play over Jennifer and just not doing it. It's just, "I'm doing the best I can in this moment. I'm sorry."

And so the leader's role is going to change, but they're not the primary fixer because here's what we forget as leaders, yes, we have institutional power, but we also have interpersonal power.

And most leaders, there's a spectrum, obviously there's a bell curve, there's terrible leaders and draconian assholes and things like that, we get that. And then there's just these really amazing saints that we sometimes get as leader. Most of us are in the middle because of the human bell curve.

Most leaders don't want to default to institutional power. They don't want to tell you, "Just do it because I said to do it." Not when the leader is Charlie saying that to Jennifer. It doesn't feel right.

So be careful about the positions you put your team leaders and managers in because if you put them in the position of institutional power, they have to behave in a way that you actually don't want to behave, want them to behave, that they don't want to behave. What does that inject into the system?

Versus going to Amy after I've tried to resolve something, it's like, "I've done this, I've done that. I pushed this as far as I can. I actually do need some institutional power to get this done." Then Amy can go do what Amy can do to make that happen, as opposed to getting involved in ways that she doesn't.

Because we think, some people think, CEOs and board members and senior executives are these all powerful creatures that can do things. No, they're not actually. They have political capital that they have to spend in different ways and they have different things they're doing. So every time they use that in certain ways, they have to rally and do things different. They're compromised beings just like you are.

What changes when you appreciate that and participate differently?

Jennifer Brown:

They put their pants on same way as we all do. And it's windy at the top. I say too. It's really, really complex.

And like you said earlier, "I don't know if I want that job." We were talking about scope creep, right? I love that you said that. You get close to it and you're like, "Ooh, maybe not."

Charlie Gilkey:

I learned that as a-

Jennifer Brown:

"That's not my life."

Charlie Gilkey:

Yeah, I learned that as a military officer because occasionally there would be some troops, it'd be like, "Oh, it must be nice to be blah, blah, blah." And I'm like, "All right, you're running with me tomorrow." And my schedule doing everything I do, unless it's not confidential, about midday, most of the time they're like, "Nah. Sir, can I go back and do what I was doing?" Like, "Nope. We're only halfway through the day." Towards the end of the day, they're like, "Okay, I'm good. I understand fundamentally what's going on here."

Jennifer Brown:

Make it stop.

Charlie Gilkey:

Make it... "I just wanted to turn wrenches, man." It was like, "Trust me, I did too. That's why I got into this. And here I am sitting at this desk all day."

Jennifer Brown:

But then you were kicked upstairs. We always talk about leadership is really lonely at the top too. It's really a hard thing to sign up for. And like you said, you just began to touch on the complexity of knowing what is essential and knowing when to let things work out and when to step in.

I was just interviewing somebody who... There's a model in the military you may know called intrusive leadership and he wrote a book on it and he's going to be on the podcast.

And it reminds me a little bit of this conversation, which is that proactive, the interrupting leader, the leader who is intrusive in the best sense of that word, which is to say, "I know where and when to step in. I know where things are off course, but most of the time I'm going to let to the degree that I can, I'm not going to use that institutional power I'm going to enable."

And it's a different way of leading I think too. It's really... It strikes me as it's going to be a new learning curve for a lot of leaders to work in this more subtle way. But I love it because... Well, of course I love it because I want to tear the hierarchy down.

Charlie Gilkey:

Now, I want to talk to him too, because I've said in some circumstances with clients because I'm an executive coach, it's like, "Look, the best leaders know when to enter a room and when to leave it."

And again, simple, but knowing when to enter a room, when it is your time to intrude, to give the conversation, to be intrusive and say, "Nope, here's not that." Then to leave the room.

Jennifer Brown:

And then to leave. Aha. Intrude and then leave.

Charlie Gilkey:

Intrude and then leave because some people don't intrude and then things... Their teams are running with scissors and then the inevitable things that happens when people run with scissors, they're like, "I knew it was happening and I didn't do anything." It's like, "Well, come on, man. Seriously? Why'd you let Jennifer do that?"

"Again, Jennifer, why did you participate in Jennifer's suffering in that way? Because that's what you did."

Jennifer Brown:

Right. We're not being successful which hurts us all.

Charlie Gilkey:

And then how did you leave?

Jennifer Brown:

And then how did you leave? And yeah, and the important thing is... Yeah, it's tricky. It's allyship when we teach it is stepping in, stepping aside, and stepping back and knowing when to do what and... Right? And it strikes me like when do you want to elevate other voices, when is your voice the one that people need to hear because of that authority. And so it's just this really...

I can't wrap it up in a nice little bow for people, but even just saying, you have these choices of where to position yourself vis-à-vis adding value, and that it's not about letting the ego run with it, but really being very conscious and reflective of where am I needed, how am I needed in what capacity with which hat on, am I needed as a human as I need it as an institutional representative. All these things change. As a friend, as a coach, whatever.

Anyway, but, Charlie... I can talk to you all day. But I just want our audience to hear the wisdom. This is just a taste of the wisdom in the book, and I want them to buy all your stuff and literally stalk you. Hopefully, that's okay. And follow your work. And get involved-

Charlie Gilkey:

I enjoy being stalked.

Jennifer Brown:

... with Productive Flourishing. It's... Okay, good.

But August 29th, it comes out. And what can we do to support you and find our way to the book and to you and your blogs and writing and everything else you want to tell us about.

Charlie Gilkey:

Well, first, thanks so much for having me. It's always an honor to have a conversation with you, but also in this context.

So if you like what we're talking about when it comes to team habits, go to betterteamhabits.com. It'll let you learn more about the book. You could download a sample chapters or actually a few sample chapters and really get to know about that piece.

My broader body of work is at productiveflourishing.com. But if you're digging this, start at betterteamhabits.com.

I negotiated pretty hard with my publisher to ensure that we can get a really good rate for 10 packs of Team Habits so that it made it easy for you to buy one for every member of your team. So if you like it, go ahead and make that choice because it's going to work better when you do it together.

Jennifer Brown:

Yeah.

Charlie Gilkey:

Yeah. The last thing I want to say here as we wrap up, besides thank you.

Jennifer Brown:

You're welcome.

Charlie Gilkey:

If you take anything from this conversation, please lean into that interpersonal dimension that you have with your team of four to eight people.

The good news is this doesn't have to scale. This does not have to be applied across the organization. It can just be you and Jennifer and Amy and Tina or whoever your small team is. You can take care of each other and make work better together.

Jennifer Brown:

Beautiful. Thank you, Charlie. That was gorgeous. Thanks for joining me today.

Charlie Gilkey:

Thanks so much.

Jennifer Brown:

Hi. This is Jennifer.

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