The Art of Conversational Capacity and Psychological Safety with Craig Weber

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This is a podcast episode titled, The Art of Conversational Capacity and Psychological Safety with Craig Weber. The summary for this episode is: <p>Today on The Future of Teamwork, CEO of HUDDL3 and host Dane Groeneveld talks to Craig Weber about conversational capacity, psychological safety, and how to inspire teams to make statements comfortably. During the discussion the two touch on elements of what makes for inspired leadership, as well as structuring team meetings in-person and remotely to best respect employee time and engagement that translates to outside office communication.</p><p><br></p><p>Key takeaways: </p><ul><li>[00:11&nbsp;-&nbsp;01:50] Introduction to Craig Weber, Author of Conversational Capacity</li><li>[01:54&nbsp;-&nbsp;02:41] Tall poppy syndrome and cultural influence</li><li>[02:45&nbsp;-&nbsp;04:36] Key elements of the dialogue of discipline</li><li>[04:37&nbsp;-&nbsp;06:34] Inclusion and the minimizing tendency</li><li>[06:36&nbsp;-&nbsp;07:38] Unhinged candor, and curiosity</li><li>[07:39&nbsp;-&nbsp;09:10] The discipline we help people learn, and speaking up candidly</li><li>[09:14&nbsp;-&nbsp;10:08] The misuse of authority</li><li>[10:10&nbsp;-&nbsp;10:38] Virtual environments and engagement</li><li>[10:40&nbsp;-&nbsp;11:53] Clumsiness and the ways meetings and communication can go wrong</li><li>[11:54&nbsp;-&nbsp;12:31] Narrow topics and restructuring the ways we run meetings virtually</li><li>[12:32&nbsp;-&nbsp;15:13] Asynchronous meetings and exponential teams, a tool in the toolkit</li><li>[15:15&nbsp;-&nbsp;16:47] Building conversational capacity and psychological safety</li><li>[16:49&nbsp;-&nbsp;17:31] Muscle development in feedback and psychological safety</li><li>[17:32&nbsp;-&nbsp;21:57] The Leader Lab, bosses, and best practices for making statements</li><li>[21:58&nbsp;-&nbsp;23:30] If the conversation is smarter, everyone has an opportunity to learn, educating your team</li><li>[23:46&nbsp;-&nbsp;26:51] What the future looks like, AI and conversational capacity tools</li><li>[26:52&nbsp;-&nbsp;28:27] The dystopian disadvantages of how AI could make people disengage</li><li>[28:29&nbsp;-&nbsp;29:32] Tips and tricks, future improvements</li><li>[29:33&nbsp;-&nbsp;31:25] Balanced participation and candor, the equation for psychological safety</li><li>[31:27&nbsp;-&nbsp;32:24] Your job is to make your team smarter and stronger</li><li>[32:25&nbsp;-&nbsp;33:38] Vistage Group</li><li>[33:39&nbsp;-&nbsp;35:41] Spreading the methodology outside of the business world</li><li>[35:42&nbsp;-&nbsp;37:08] Learning from partners and spouses</li><li>[37:10&nbsp;-&nbsp;38:24] Explicit value and dealing with difficult customers who find value of conversational capacity outside of work</li><li>[38:28&nbsp;-&nbsp;39:19] Minimizing behavior and decision-shopping</li><li>[39:22&nbsp;-&nbsp;40:47] Craig's next book, Influence in Action</li><li>[40:49&nbsp;-&nbsp;41:40] Working proactively and productively in challenging circumstances</li><li>[41:42&nbsp;-&nbsp;44:11] The code of conduct and encouraging teams to perform</li></ul>
Introduction to Craig Weber, Author of Conversational Capacity
01:38 MIN
Tall poppy syndrome and cultural influence
00:46 MIN
Key elements of the dialogue of discipline
01:50 MIN
Inclusion and the minimizing tendency
01:57 MIN
Unhinged candor, and curiosity
01:01 MIN
The discipline we help people learn, and speaking up candidly
01:31 MIN
The misuse of authority
00:54 MIN
Virtual environments and engagement
00:28 MIN
Clumsiness and the ways meetings and communication can go wrong
01:12 MIN
Narrow topics and restructuring the ways we run meetings virtually
00:36 MIN
Asynchronous meetings and exponential teams, a tool in the toolkit
02:40 MIN
Building conversational capacity and psychological safety
01:31 MIN
Muscle development in feedback and psychological safety
00:42 MIN
The Leader Lab, bosses, and best practices for making statements
04:25 MIN
If the conversation is smarter, everyone has an opportunity to learn, educating your team
01:32 MIN
What the future looks like, AI and conversational capacity tools
03:05 MIN
The dystopian disadvantages of how AI could make people disengage
01:34 MIN
Tips and tricks, future improvements
01:03 MIN
Balanced participation and candor, the equation for psychological safety
01:52 MIN
Your job is to make your team smarter and stronger
00:57 MIN
Vistage Group
01:12 MIN
Spreading the methodology outside of the business world
02:02 MIN
Learning from partners and spouses
01:25 MIN
Explicit value and dealing with difficult customers who find value of conversational capacity outside of work
01:14 MIN
Minimizing behavior and decision-shopping
00:51 MIN
Craig's next book, Influence in Action
01:24 MIN
Working proactively and productively in challenging circumstances
00:51 MIN
The code of conduct and encouraging teams to perform
02:28 MIN

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast. My name's Dane Groeneveld, CEO of Huddl3 Group, and I'm delighted to welcome Craig Weber, author of Conversational Capacity, and certainly a friend and key advisor to me through a few of the changes that we've been going through in the business world over the last few years. So it's great to be connected again, Craig.

Craig Weber: Thanks for having me on the podcast, Dane. It's great to be here.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. So for the benefit of our listeners, what can you tell us about your personal and business background? What's kind of brought you into this, the book and the body of work that you're really focused on right now?

Craig Weber: Yeah. My background academically is in organizational development and organizational psychology, so that's really kind of the formal part of my training, and then really interested early on in my studies in this work around organizational learning and dialogue. And that really captured my attention, and so that's kind of driven my work.

Dane Groeneveld: Yup.

Craig Weber: Worked slightly, or internally for a while for the State Bank of Queensland out in Australia, Suncorp back in the day, and then moved back to the US in the'90s and set up my own consulting practice, helping organizations, teams, community members improve their performance by treating dialogue as a discipline. And so, that's sort of my work, is how do you help people have more influence, help good ideas get the traction they deserve, improve the quality of things like teamwork, decision- making, change management by improving how people communicate and interact with each other, particularly in challenging circumstances.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, that's really cool. And working in Queensland, certainly, where I grew up, and I know you and I have had a few conversations about tall poppy syndrome, so you get some different cultural nuances down there when it comes to how we talk to each other and in tough circumstances. And you've seen some fascinating aspects of the communication and dialogue world down there, no doubt.

Craig Weber: Absolutely, yeah. So it's, people think, " Yeah. Oh, it's Australia, it's pretty similar to here," but a lot of very stark differences, actually. And then I've done work in Japan, different there again still. Literally worked with people from almost any country you can think of. So yeah, those cultural influences offer a big thing we need to navigate effectively if we're going to have better conversations about issues that matter.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, absolutely. And when it comes to... I love your" dialogue as a discipline", and I know you've used the term before as" the dojo", we've got to practice having this dialogue in the right way. What is it that you find allows the best teams to be performing with good discipline around dialogue? What is it that you've seen from time to time when you've walked into organizations and said, " Hey, we did the training, we started to do some practice, and these guys have really got it." Are there any key elements there?

Craig Weber: So yeah, that's... We could just spend a lot of time on that one. This notion of discipline, how do we do a better job of structuring conversations so the way we're interacting with each other aligns with why we're talking with each other, right? So how do you make sure patterns of conversation align with the purpose of the teamwork? What are the problems we're trying to solve? What's the work we're trying to get done? What's the challenge we're facing? And let's... The best teams, I think, do a good job of making sure the way they're interacting with each other serves purpose. And a team that's dysfunctional by definition is going to have a way of interacting with each other that actually works against purpose to some degree.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes.

Craig Weber: And so, I think the teams that I work with that are best are able to kind of recognize when the way they're interacting and communicating with each other is actually working against what they're trying to do, they're able to catch it, and then adjust to get back to a good place.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: And that takes a level of awareness, you need to kind of be more conscious of when things are starting to pull apart, and it also requires a degree of skill. It's one thing to notice you're moving in different directions, it's another thing to be able to adjust course and pull back. So at a high level, I think that would be what separates a really effective team that can perform well, even in circumstances that conspire against it, and a team that doesn't even perform well in mediocre, low- key circumstances.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, absolutely. So that awareness piece, I know from the book, you talk about the dashboard, trying to understand where people's behavior is in the room. Are they winners or are they minimizers in terms of how they'll contribute to the discussion? I had an interesting conversation with another guest the other day that talked about inclusion, and I think the stat that he raised was that 74% of employees will not raise their hand to contribute what they're thinking in a boardroom, or in a virtual meeting these days, post- COVID. So that's a big number. So perhaps, for our listeners, you could talk a little bit about that minimizing tendency and how you construct the awareness, the dashboard when you go into companies to help them in this discipline.

Craig Weber: Sure. Yeah, yeah. And 74%, I believe it. I just had a workshop this morning with a group of very senior vice presidents from a large healthcare company, and that came up.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: Where it's a nice culture, people are very agreeable, they get along really well. But the downside to that sometimes is people are reluctant to speak up, particularly if it's a challenging issue. It might be contrary, it might raise the temperature in the room, and that's going to violate the nice, right? So that can be a real problem. So a way to maybe think about it, Dane, is, as you're aware, there's this place I talk about trying to work in a more disciplined way. We talk about conversation as a discipline. Well, there's a way to structure dialogue that has two key components, and they need to be in balance with one another. And a team really working well together in high- pressure circumstances, on the one hand, enjoys lots of candor. The conversations are very open, very forthright, and very direct. If someone sees a problem in a meeting, their hand goes up. Someone sees a risk in a decision they don't think's getting the attention it deserves, their hand goes up. And that's really critical.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: But at the same time, I think we've all experienced lately, unhinged candor, not a good thing.

Dane Groeneveld: No.

Craig Weber: Right? I mean, there's a lot of that going around. And so, in the sweet spot, we call it, is candor, but it's balanced with curiosity. People are open- minded, they're inquisitive, they're intellectually humble, they're eager to learn. So when you disagree with me in a meeting, I don't get defensive, I don't get upset. I get interested. " Wow, okay. Gee, Dane hates my idea. The guy's incredibly bright, got all kinds of experience, and he thinks my idea is the worst thing ever. What am I missing here? What's he picking up on? What's he seeing that I'm not?"

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: That is a really good place to operate, when both candor and curiosity are in balance. And what tends to happen under pressure is that people, and often entire teams, begin to trigger out of that sweet spot.

Dane Groeneveld: Yup.

Craig Weber: Something difficult comes up, and 74% of the people start shutting down and clamming up and not saying anything. Lack of candor, and there's probably... The other side of the table is probably 20% of people in the room are starting to argue, butt heads, raise their voice. Lack of curiosity.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes.

Craig Weber: And so, the discipline we help people learn to acquire is, how do we as individuals, and then as teams, so both an individual and a collective competence, stay in that sweet spot, candid and curious, even in difficult circumstances that work against it?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: And the reason I wasn't surprised by your previous guest's assertion to 74%, goes to something I tend to talk about a lot in my workshops, and that is nothing lowers conversational capacity. Nothing decreases our ability to work in the sweet spot more predictably than the presence of authority.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: So if there's a power gradient in a meeting, you're going to find the people in the junior relationship typically becoming less candid. They shut down, they minimize, and they let... And the boss can be the most easygoing, laid back, cool person on the planet. Just the fact that there's a power gradient will affect the conversation, it'll affect the discourse. If you add to that aggressive behavior, dismissive behavior from the senior person, it exacerbates the problem. It's like putting fuel on a fire.

Dane Groeneveld: Absolutely.

Craig Weber: So that's kind of, I think, at a high level, kind of what we talk about. How do we do a better job, if we're in a position of authority, of recognizing our presence maybe squelching people's ability to bring their best ideas to the table, so we can act in a way that counters that effect? And if I'm the one in the junior position, if I'm speaking up the chain of command to authority, how do I learn to be candid anyway, not to be dependent on my authority figure for me to be effective, but I've got the muscles, you could say, conversationally, to raise my hand even when someone in authority may not be making it easy?

Dane Groeneveld: Absolutely. That whole premise of authority and the misuse of authority in a meeting lowering conversational capacity, lowering morale, it's a real problem now, particularly post- COVID, because I think a lot of people have been running back to back from one meeting to the next on Zoom calls, so maybe they're not coming in as prepared. Maybe even that laid back manager is not as laid back. So I've seen that as a problem across the board, and not just in our internal team meetings, but with customer calls, with vendor calls, it's... It just seems to be growing.

Craig Weber: I think you're right. And you could add to that too, just more stressed generally, right? I'm stressed out about my family, I'm stressed out about my health, I'm stressed out about all sorts of things externally, and that makes us often more emotionally volatile in a conversation or meeting at work.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: And so, and then you could take it to virtual, which makes it a... It's a clumsier environment in which to have a good conversation, so we need to be even more disciplined in a virtual environment.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: I often say to people, Dane, and you'd probably appreciate this, I always say... The question I'll often ask in workshops is, " How many of you have been in a virtual meeting recently where you were absolutely convinced at least half the room is on mute playing Sudoku?"

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, definitely. Been there.

Craig Weber: Right? Because it's so easy to disengage virtually.

Dane Groeneveld: Yup. It really is. And I love that word that you use, " clumsy", because it is clumsy, and I think, unfortunately, people know it. They know that others might be on Sudoku, and that actually can bring out the worst in the people that are participating in the meeting. There's probably a lot more of that absolute candor and argument and not a lot of questions because a few questions go to a silent ear, because no one's paying attention.

Craig Weber: Right.

Dane Groeneveld: So it is. It's clumsy. That's a great word for it.

Craig Weber: It really is. It's so easy to go sideways, right? There's just more ways it can go wrong.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I've never walked out in my career, I've never walked out of more meetings wondering, " How did it go so far off track?" as I have in the last six to 12 months.

Craig Weber: Yeah. Like, " That went sideways."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, totally. And I'm finding now that I have to be much more prepared going into a meeting, and then I need to debrief with myself after the meeting and say, " Where did I let that go sideways? What questions should I have asked? When should I have paused?" So it's definitely a challenge. I also, I was-

Craig Weber: Yeah, I've been talking to my clients about, probably have shorter meetings with a more narrow topic, right? So we got a shorter meeting with maybe one decision, maybe a few more meetings during the week that are far shorter, so they're a little more manageable, they're not as tedious, and it's a little easier to keep them on track if you have one, maybe two agenda items instead of six, right? So start breaking it into more bite- size chunks. And then I think you're absolutely right, prep ahead of time's key. Get people information ahead of time.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: It could be digest some information before the meeting so we can spend less time on camera wrestling with it, so I think we need to think about restructuring the way we run meetings if we're going to do more than virtually.

Dane Groeneveld: I think you're right. Actually, another guest I had on just earlier this week, Kian Gohar from Geolab, he does a lot of work, he's a futurist, he does a lot of work on exponential teams. And one of the key tools in his toolkit is asynchronous meetings, which really caught my eye, because the work I've enjoyed doing with you is, how do you get people to exercise good discipline when they're together? And like you said earlier, there's emotions, there's mitigating factors around who's playing Sudoku, or whatever it might be. But when you have an asynchronous meeting, it throws it open because now you've put up a Google form or you've put something else up that allows people to answer questions, whether it's anonymously or not. But there's possibly a way to drive more of the curiosity through the format of the asynchronous meeting and let people take their own time to digest and respond. I'm intrigued as to how effective that is when there's a real problem on the table versus driving for innovation, which is more Kian's area of work. Have you got any views on that? Have you seen asynchronous meetings being used more amongst your clients?

Craig Weber: Yeah, I guess, not really called asynchronous meetings, but things like SharePoint for example, where you got a group of people with a common question and they're posting video links, they're putting ideas in there, white papers can get attached. And so, there's this common space where we're able to share ideas over time. Great idea, great idea. Asynchronous meeting, not a bad way to think about it, right? We're still... I think there are times where that might not suit the kind of problem- solving we need to do. Client calls up, major problem, we got a day to fix it, right? We may need to... Asynchronous meeting may not be the best way to go, but I think I like having that as another additional tool in the toolkit, right? There are times and places where an asynchronous meeting may be a lot better than a regular meeting, and there'll be other places where a regular meeting's probably the most important thing. And having that as a suite of options, I think that's great. That just gives you more flexibility in terms of how you pull the team together to address an issue.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, that's a good point. And actually, that reminds me, circling back to that concept of authority, you coached me on the importance sometimes when there's a tough issue and you're wanting to bring more curiosity out of setting a question to the team and stepping out of the room so that they can come up with a couple of responses and then anonymously respond when the leader comes back in. So you were kind of already there with some asynchronous formats for team meetings anyway, because that is a meeting where someone's not in the room while some of the work's being done. And clearly that's worked a lot for me.

Craig Weber: Right. Oh, that's great.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: Yeah, that's one of the strategies we talk about, especially early on in a team, as they're building their conversational capacity. And I share that article about the engineering leader in Silicon Valley who, kind of a very aggressive personality, ran roughshod over his engineers, and then was surprised to find out they wouldn't challenge him, talk to him, or open up, right? So he said, " I'm doing a miserable job of using all the engineering talent I've assembled." But when he tried to change that and get more curious and ask them questions, they just sat there like stunned mullets, right? So it was like, "Uh- uh, I'm not sticking my head in that bear trap." And so he actually said... He put his idea on the table, he'd lay out his thinking, " Here's kind of where I'm coming from, what I think makes sense. Here's a little information. I'm going to get out of your hair for 30 minutes and let you wrestle with this. When I come back in the room, have at least three concerns up on the board. I'd love to work them through with you one at a time."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: And he'd actually get out of his engineers' way where his presence and his authority isn't killing the candor. And the funny thing about that story, and if people are interested in learning more about that example, there's on my LinkedIn page, there's this new article I put about psychological safety and conversational capacity.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: I tell that in the article, it's a great example. But after several weeks of doing this, one day he got up to leave the meeting as he's become accustomed to doing, and one of his top engineers said, " Look, we talked about this as a team, you can stay if you want. You don't have to leave the meeting." And so, that's a good example of the conversational capacity of that team going up. But it wasn't like he just said, " Hey, what do you think?" and they immediately said, " Oh, look how open he is. This is refreshing."

Dane Groeneveld: It took some....

Craig Weber: You got to kind of earn that trust back, that flywheel effect. So yeah, I love that. That's a...

Dane Groeneveld: It took a bit of... Yeah, it took some muscle development to get it there. And it's funny, it comes back to trust, doesn't it? The first time, they're never going to believe you. But once you've done it a few times, and you've shown positive intent, and you've stayed in that sweet spot, now there's comfort.

Craig Weber: Especially if, when they do take the risk and give you some form of feedback, if you embrace it.

Dane Groeneveld: Okay.

Craig Weber: Even if you don't necessarily agree with the feedback. It might not be the most useful information. You're not thanking them or rewarding them for the feedback. You're thanking them for taking the risk, right? For taking your... For trusting you to some degree.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes.

Craig Weber: And so that can be a great way to talk to authority figures, spin that flywheel up. Notice when someone takes a risk, notice when they stick their neck out, and you want to reward that behavior publicly.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, actually, I listened to a book, I listen to a lot of books these days on the drive to work, and it was The Leader Lab, I think it was. And it was talking about... They had a couple of cool pieces that tie in with your work. One of the things was saying that most employees feel relaxed when the boss calls in and says, " I won't be in today," because no one actually likes working when the boss is around.

Craig Weber: That's right.

Dane Groeneveld: So that was interesting. But the other piece it was talking about, for those bosses when they're in that discussion, that problem state, problem- solving state, they called it the Q- step. They were like, " Listen to what the individual says, and then ask a question immediately after." " Oh, so Bobby, you feel that we need an intern here? I'm glad you brought that up. Can you tell me a little bit more about why you think an intern's going to be impactful for solving the problem?" And it was essentially saying it's a way to kind of let the emotions of that individual, who's been candid in coming up saying, " This is what I think we need," to feel heard, and then to get a chance to explain a little bit more. And that ties in a lot with, I think, some of your best practices for helping those minimizing members of our team to come up and make their statements.

Craig Weber: Right. No, that's a good example of inquiry, the way I describe it.

Dane Groeneveld: That's right.

Craig Weber: One of the key curiosity behaviors we talk about, where you're actually taking active responsibility if you're helping other people get their ideas on the table in a cleaner, clearer way. So someone with high conversational capacity, the way I describe it, makes every conversation and every meeting smarter because they're in the room.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes.

Craig Weber: Not because of the amount of IQ power they bring into the room, but because the way they're participating in the dialogue, the way they're carrying themselves is not only helping their ideas get on the table in a way that sparks more learning, where the ideas have more influence, but they're putting just as much energy, and often even more energy, into helping their colleagues get their ideas on the table more clearly.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: And so they're actually expanding the amount of information being generated to make a decision or solve a problem, because they're not just putting their idea on the table, they're doing it in a way and engaging with their colleagues in a way where, even if I radically disagree with you, I still realize, " You know what? I totally disagree with Dane here, but that might be the most important reason to lean into this and try to understand where he's coming from. That might be where the learning is today. I'm going to try to find out what's going on. How's he looking at this?" And so, I talk about three ways you could inquire in a meeting to make a difference. One would be if I'm not participating. I'm in your meeting, Dane, and I'm just sitting back, perhaps out of the sweet spot. I've got a concern, and I'm worried about being contrarian. You might notice I haven't contributed and say, " Hey, Craig, we've been bouncing this issue around now for quite some time as a team. Given everything you've heard up to now, I'd love to get your take on the decision. What do you think we should do here?" And you notice my perspective is absent from your decision- making and invite it in.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes.

Craig Weber: It could be the example you just gave, where I blurt out an idea, but I don't give a lot of background. You could jump in and help me help my idea get a little more traction by helping me explain it. " Craig, you obviously have a strong view here. You just said X. Take a couple of minutes and unpack that for us. Give us a little example. Why do you think that'd be a good way to go?"

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: And you're actually helping me help my idea get more traction, and then it could be where I'm waffling on, " Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah," but my overall point isn't clear.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes.

Craig Weber: You might simply invite me to clarify. " Craig, you've been talking here for a few minutes, but I'm a little lost. Do you like this decision or do you not?" " No, I don't like it. I don't think this is a good move." And so, one person with a few well- timed, genuinely curious inquiries can have a profound effect on the quality of the dialogue and the quality of the decision- making, because to quote Airto Moreira, the Brazilian jazz percussionist, about jazz performance, he said, " I watch what's being played, and then I play what's missing."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah, I love that quote. And-

Craig Weber: Me too.

Dane Groeneveld: And it's so much better to play what's missing than to walk out of the room with everyone's gone sideways, and like you say, you haven't really leveraged the smart, the knowledge, the intelligence that's in the room, and you don't have a solution, because whatever you go and roll out, you don't have buy- in for.

Craig Weber: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: And it's... Or it may be the third best thing you could have done to address the problem, and the other two never got addressed because you didn't create the space for them to get to the surface, right? They didn't have a chance to pop out.

Dane Groeneveld: Absolutely.

Craig Weber: Yeah, I like it.

Dane Groeneveld: And I like those three ways to inquire as well because, like you said, it's making the conversation smarter. But I think what I'm hearing, Craig, is that you're also making the team smarter, because if the conversation's smarter, everyone has more of an opportunity to learn. Learn about other people's perspectives, learn more about the product we're selling, learn more about why it's illegal to do things in the way that you thought you were going to do it, all of that good stuff.

Craig Weber: Well, that's actually a really good point, right? So that every meeting now actually becomes a bit of an educational experience.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: Because I may have a marketing background, but because I'm really engaging and listening to the engineering leader, my understanding of the business now is high. And the next meeting, that does not go away. I bring that new advanced perspective to the next conversation. So every meeting you're sort of educating your team to think in a more sophisticated way, and it's almost like the movie Inside Out, right? Pixar.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: Where you got those people lined up in your head. Only, in the Pixar movie, they're emotions. In some ways what we end up with is a little team up there, like I got my finance guy up here, I got my engineering guy-

Dane Groeneveld: That's cool.

Craig Weber: ...my HR person. And whenever I'm making a decision, even if I'm on my own in my office, I now have the team up there, because of all our meetings, and they all give me advice, right? So because I know... " How would my engineering buddy react to this decision? I know what he'd probably say. What would the finance person say? Oh, we know how she would think." So you got this little team of people up in your head that don't even need to be in the meeting with you sometimes for them to have an influence.

Dane Groeneveld: I love that. I think there's a poster there to be made, Craig. I don't know how you'll get around the copyright on Inside Out, but...

Craig Weber: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: I like that. And we talk a little bit about technology in the future of teamwork. Right now, a lot of us are working on how to get most out of teams today, where we're at. But as we start to think into the future, we're going to be recording more meetings, we're going to be having AI create digital responses on behalf of Craig or Dane who can't be in the meeting, which is a little bit scary. But to that image that you just shared of, " Hey, I've got the finance guy, the IT guy, the marketing guy," it's going to allow maybe some more real- time conversational capacity in some way, shape, or form in a limited fashion, because you're going to be able to get the insights of people before you take it to the group. And maybe, going back to your point on shorter meetings, you can now say, " Hey, look, we ran this through the conversational capacity tool, and we think these are the three problems that we need to sit down and discuss today." I mean, it's fascinating to think where the technology could take us.

Craig Weber: Yeah, you wonder, like I say, in 10 years, what's the world going to look like in terms of the technology?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: Interesting too, you bring this up, because I was just talking to a good friend of mine I've known for 25 years, someone I've worked with a long time, and he's got me working with this healthcare organization where he is on the exec team. But he kicked off the workshop this morning saying, " Look, I met Craig at US Robotics years ago, and there were just..." I got involved with US Robotics when they still owned Palm Computing, and they hadn't even launched the Pilot yet.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: So we were sitting in a boardroom in Skokie, Illinois, and they brought out a prototype and were showing it to me, being just genuinely blown away. Like, " Whoa."

Dane Groeneveld: "What is that?"

Craig Weber: That's a joke now, right? I mean, a Palm Pilot.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: And so he said, " Look, over the last 25 years, think how much technology has advanced. Think how far we've come. iPhones, we're meeting in Zoom, we're meeting in... It's incredible. Have our conversations kept pace? Has it been that much innovation in just the way we structure conversation? Not much." And so, I thought that was a really interesting point. So if we're not careful, there may be a growing disconnect between our skills for conversation, particularly in challenging less- than- ideal circumstances, and the technologies we're developing. And so, I think this idea of, " Okay, we've got this new technology, we've got Zoom, we've got Webex, we've got virtual meetings, what needs to change in terms of the way we structure our dialogue so we're still verily effective in this new environment?" And I think being able to ask that question and then answer it in actionable ways, as technology continues to grow and change and new capabilities come to light, I think that's going to be a really important question for leaders to consider.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: I know what patterns of conversations work well in a face- to- face traditional meeting, but when you go to a virtual environment, the pattern of dialogue may need to shift a little bit to take into account some of the limitations of the virtual environment.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: If we go to someplace where AI's playing a more active role in five, six years, what are the patterns of dialog that're going to serve that well? So we need to kind of adjust the way we're conversing to fit the new context rather than just come in with our old pattern of conversing and hope it works in the new context.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it's actually quite profound to think that the technology could help us, but it could hinder us, particularly if... I like that word you used, " divergence". How much are we truly considering today's behavior and tomorrow's behavior, and the tools that we're adopting?

Craig Weber: Yeah, yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: And we just talked about the inquiry skills, for example. The one thing I'd point out is you got a bunch of people on a Zoom meeting, you're in a virtual meeting, and it's easier to go on mute and play Sudoku. A lot easier.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: You wouldn't even know I'm disengaged, right? I can look... But it's harder for me to disengage if I'm in your meeting, Dane, if I know, at any point in the meeting, you're going to ask me to respond to your idea to help you improve it. " Craig, what's your reaction to my idea here? What about this doesn't work for you? I know you tend to see things differently than I do. I'd love to get a little feedback here." " I'm sorry. What, Dane? I was playing Sudoku. Can you repeat the question?" That'll happen once.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: Or if I know that if I'm not participating, if I'm not really all that engaged, there's a real high likelihood Dane's going to say, " Craig, we haven't heard from you yet. What's your take on what we've been exploring here?" " I'm sorry. What?"

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: And so, if there's a high degree of curiosity, active curiosity in the meetings, it makes it harder to disengage, even in a virtual environment, because I never know when I'm going to be asked to contribute to what we're talking about.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: And so, I think we need to start thinking about maybe a little more of the use of the curiosity skills in a virtual environment to compensate for the fact that it's easier in that environment for people to disengage.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes.

Craig Weber: It's also harder for me on the inclusion front, which you brought up earlier, it's harder for me to feel like I'm not included when you're actively inviting me into the conversation.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. And actually, I know you've talked about, I think it was you that was coaching me on maybe keeping a bit of a tally if you're the facilitator and the leader in the meeting, look at who is contributing and who you might need to invite. So I think that's a good little tip, particularly if you're on a virtual meeting. The screen I hate most on a virtual meeting is the one where you only see the face of who's talking, because you forget that there are other people in the virtual room.

Craig Weber: Exactly. Great point.

Dane Groeneveld: So there's definitely some tips and tricks there.

Craig Weber: Yeah, watch what's being played, play what's missing. That's both in terms of the pattern of dialogue, but it's also in just participation. We're having a really good meeting. There's been a lot of robust discussion between two of 10 people in the meeting.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: That is not... What's missing? Eight different voices with probably really smart ideas about the problem. I need to notice those other eight voices aren't in the conversation, and invite them in, right? So...

Dane Groeneveld: Absolutely.

Craig Weber: But obviously you want balance on two fronts. You want balanced dialogue, both candid and curious, but even that's not enough if it's not balanced participation, two people are dominating the meeting.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: So you need both balanced participation and you need balanced candor and curiosity. That's a good place to operate.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, absolutely. And you touched on psychological safety with regard to your LinkedIn post, your latest LinkedIn post. I mean, that's becoming more and more common in businesses for people to be like, " Hey, we've really got to work on psychological safety in the team." I know you talked about the engineering leader earlier in that little format of stepping out of the meeting and building it over time, but are you seeing other ways that we can encourage psychological safety in teams, in that discipline of dialogue?

Craig Weber: Yeah, the article talks a lot about that. If you look at the research on psychological safety, it's described almost consistently as an enabling condition for effective teamwork, which makes sense. What I would argue is conversational capacity is an enabling competence. And as a condition, how do you create it, right? So I can't just go to amazon. com and order a box of psychological safety. We've got to build it somehow. And I think if you got a team that's candid and courageous, curious and humble. Those are the driving values in the meetings, in the discussions, in the interactions with each other. That's a place where the psychological safety's going to start going up.

Dane Groeneveld: Right.

Craig Weber: It's not only okay to raise your hand and challenge the boss, you're often rewarded for doing it because it's seen as a noble thing. Good job. So I think, how do we behave in a way, particularly when we're an authority figure, that raises the psychological safety and does it, what normally happen, lower it?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah, I like that.

Craig Weber: So I think there's a relationship there to that authority, how authority carries itself in a social system, be it a community, a family, or a business, how it can have a big effect on either increasing or decreasing the psychological safety in the room.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: It's going to pull people toward the table, or very often, it's going to push people away.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah.

Craig Weber: Whereas I'll often say to the CEO groups I speak with, like where I met you, is that, " Your job is to make your team smarter and stronger. The problem is, if you're not careful, you walk in the door, it gets dumber and weaker, right?" It's a-

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, yeah. I love that statement.

Craig Weber: But it's not that you're a bad person, it's just people react in a funny way to authority.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I think if you advertised, " Order your box of psychological safety here," you'd probably have the phone lines go down right now with-

Craig Weber: That's right.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Everyone loves it.

Craig Weber: "But wait, there's more." Like a ShamWow commercial.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, that's right. Good.

Craig Weber: "Buy one box of psychological safety, and guess what comes with it." Right? So yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Dane Groeneveld: But yeah, it's right up there.

Craig Weber: "A smallside box of trust."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, if it's...

Craig Weber: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: That'll grease the wheels.

Craig Weber: That'll grease the wheels, yeah. You can have a bundle package.

Dane Groeneveld: No, absolutely. No, I love that.

Craig Weber: So I love that idea. That's what's fun about... You and I met in a Vistage group, right? Where you get a bunch of peer CEOs, part of a peer group, where they're actually there to learn, right? They actually... They pay for an experience where they're getting their ideas and views confronted by speakers coming in and running workshops, but also from each other, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: I love that idea. It's a great example of the kind of humility I think they need in the workplace as well, right? Being open to that. I need to look at my executive team kind of like a group of people that can help me calibrate my thinking, push back on a bad idea when I've got one, and not kowtow to my authority, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: What's the work I need to do to create a level of psychological safety where not only do they see the need to do it, but they have the ability to do it, the skills.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah, you're right. And that is an interesting thing about those Vistage groups, is that there is a natural level of psychological safety because you're there to learn, you're encouraged to challenge each other, you've signed NDAs, so no one's going to run and tell the customer, the peer group, the team what's being discussed in that environment. So it's interesting how that's a good environment for developing, I like how you say" conversational capacity as a competence", developing that competence in that environment.

Craig Weber: Yeah. Yes.

Dane Groeneveld: Do you see with your teams that you're out working with, that they're starting to bring your methodology into communications that expand outside of the business? Are they talking to suppliers? Are they talking to customers? How do you see that changing in today's world?

Craig Weber: All the time. In fact, we use specific workshops helping them apply that learning to their customer relationships, for example, suppliers, partner organizations. Even more impressively, some of the best feedback I get, got it this morning, is, " This is going to really help me in the workplace, absolutely. But right now, where I think it might have the most value is in my relationship with my teenage daughter," or" my teenage son," or some other... So yeah, I think... I love the idea that the same basic traps we're falling into conversationally in the workplace are fundamentally the same basic traps we're falling into everywhere else in life, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: Whether it's a homeowner's association, whether it's a school board meeting, or whether it's the dinner table. My area of background is in organizational development, so I'm no expert in those areas, but I love the idea that people find value in this outside the workplace.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: I worked with a group in Cincinnati, and one of the members said, " Yeah, I started keeping a trigger journal, Craig. I wanted to notice when I need to be right. To win the conversation was hijacking my behavior in the workplace, and I began keeping a trigger journal in a very religious way because I wanted to reign in that behavior. And after only three weeks of keeping a trigger journal, I realized this was having a profound effect on my behavior because I got some really stunning feedback. And it wasn't from where I was practicing in the workplace, it was from my wife. And one night at dinner, she sat down her wine glass and said,'Okay, I'm just going to come out and ask you, are you okay? Did you have a stroke? Are you having an affair? What has gotten into you?'" And he goes, " Whoa, okay. This is obviously having an effect, because my wife's disturbed. So I had to actually go tell her what I was working on, but I didn't realize it was having that big an effect until someone close to me began to notice the shift in my behavior, but didn't understand it."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it's funny that whether you are using psychological assessments or you're talking to other mentors and coaches, they'll always say, " Go back and check this with your spouse," because they know you best. They see you in somewhat your more natural states and you're more-

Craig Weber: That's right.

Dane Groeneveld: ...stressed states, but...

Craig Weber: Yes, a spouse, a sibling, another really good source of info.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Craig Weber: They'll give it to you both barrels, right? I mean, they almost take a certain perverse pleasure in kind of, " Oh, thanks for asking. I'd be happy to share."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, yeah. Yup, yup. That's exactly right.

Craig Weber: And knowledgeable.

Dane Groeneveld: I definitely learn a lot through my wife. I think I shared the story with you of one morning going to get some milk out for the cereal, and Clare's there with the baby on her hip, and I was in a bad mood from work or something I needed to go and do at work, and I'm like, " There's no milk. How am I going to have my cereal?" And she's like, " Sorry." And I was like... I should have just paused. I should have walked away, but I didn't. I had to make an issue of it. And I was like-

Craig Weber: That's a great story.

Dane Groeneveld: ... "What did you do yesterday? Why is there no milk in the fridge?" And all of a sudden I know that I've just lost it. I know that I'm on the losing end of this and it's probably going to take a good 10 or 20 years for her to forget that moment.

Craig Weber: That is classic. I do remember that story. That was like... You almost... Just listening to you describe the story, you're wincing, like, " No, no, don't do it. Don't do it, Dane. Don't say it. Don't say it."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: That's so good. But yeah, you're absolutely right. And all of us fall into that trap. We all do. So I think, yes, to answer your question, a lot of people find either explicit value, we want help dealing with difficult customers or clients, or we want help establishing a more effective consulting relationship with our consulting customers, and then people say, " Where I found this really useful was at home."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: Or someone at Boeing in Seattle a few years ago attended one of my workshops and said, " I found this really helpful in this really dysfunctional food kitchen where I volunteer here in the community."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Volunteering's the hardest part, I mean-

Craig Weber: ...really a food bank. A food bank is what it was. And they were using these skills to deal with some of the frictions and tensions there.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, and that's tough, because when you've got volunteering organizations, it's not the people are checked out on Sudoku, but people are giving what time they can, and sometimes someone's not going to be up for the confrontation or the conversation.

Craig Weber: That's right.

Dane Groeneveld: And you do get a lot of dysfunction there.

Craig Weber: Yeah, absolutely. And I find it in a lot of non- profit organizations joined up with people who are volunteering their time, and they care passionately about the cause. That's why they're volunteering.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: And so, that can be a good thing, but it can also be a double- edged sword. That passion can, if it's mismanaged, can cause a lot of trouble.

Dane Groeneveld: Mm- hmm. No, I absolutely agree. And I'm thinking back to that concept of the teenage daughter. I've got an 11- year- old son, and going back to your point of divergence of social skills in having a conversation and technology, it's weird now that I'll be in the house and he'll be in the house and I'll get a text message, and it's amazing how bold he will be and the questions that he asks me in text that he won't ask me face to face. So it starts to show me maybe I need to do a little bit more coaching, maybe I've got to exercise a bit more curiosity with him so that he doesn't feel like he has to hide behind a text message to ask me that difficult question.

Craig Weber: Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Very common, by the way. That's a classic minimizing behavior. " I could talk face to face to Dad, but I think I'll send him a text."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, that's right. "And if Dad says no, I'll send one to Mom just in case."

Craig Weber: There you go.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: "I can always go decision- shopping."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, yeah. No, that's really cool. There's been a lot of discussion around the conversational capacity, but tell me a little bit more about your follow- on book and anything new that you are seeing in your body of work, going into the next few years and what you might be excited about in continuing to enable teams to perform at their best.

Craig Weber: Yeah, sure. Yeah, Influence in Action came out here about three years ago. It is a follow- on to Conversational Capacity, so the question I kept getting asked is, " Okay, I love this stuff. How do I do a better job of building it?" And so, Influence in Action is about how an individual can build their conversational capacity while they're going about trying to make a difference in their team, their organization, or their community. And so, how do you help someone use the workplace or the community work they're doing as a dojo to build their conversational capacity? It's a practice space. And then what I'm working on right now is a third book, which is how to build your collective conversational capacity. " We want to bake this into our team's behavioral repertoire, we want to bake this into how our organization solves problems, makes decisions, and navigates change. What are some strategies we can do for building our collective ability to work in that sweet spot?" So that's been a lot of fun, actually.

Dane Groeneveld: That sounds fun.

Craig Weber: So various chapters on using aspects of an organization that you have to do anyway. You run strategy, change management, giving feedback, running meetings, making decisions, dealing with conflict, all that stuff, we got to do it anyway. How can we take those activities and look at them as deliberate practices?

Dane Groeneveld: Yes, I like that. So you're actually doing more than training, you're now starting to come into a bit of continuous process improvement. How do we change the format of that meeting or the template for that feedback session?

Craig Weber: Yeah, absolutely. And how do you look at this as a vehicle for building a more robust, more innovative, more agile organization that can respond really productively to the most challenging circumstances? And to do that proactively. Let's not wait until the stuff hits the fan before we say, " Oh, let's up our game here."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: How do we kind of get ahead of the curve and prepare for the inevitable challenges we're going to face? What are the skills we need to put in place so that, when we need it, we've got that ability to work in the sweet spot? So I like this idea of a core leadership responsibility is capacity building, and one of the core capacities is conversational capacity. It's hard. It kind of breathes life into all the other activities, quite frankly.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, absolutely. No, that makes a lot of sense. And in fact, I think that's something that we've been probably unintentionally configuring over the last six months, is how are we running our meetings, and can we create some common format on agenda so that we bring about that, I like the word, that" collective conversational capacity"?

Craig Weber: Perfect.

Dane Groeneveld: Because that day that the person who has the high conversational capacity is on a business trip or not there is a great loss if you're relying on one. There's one point of failure, really.

Craig Weber: Yeah, well said.

Dane Groeneveld: Whereas if the whole team has not only been trained on it but now has a set process to go through some of these more routine meetings that still address really important developments and bottlenecks in the business, that that's going to drive a lot more momentum, no doubt.

Craig Weber: Yeah. That's one of the things that I help teams do, and you know this, is kind of help them put together a conversational code of conduct. Let's not leave it to chance that people understand what are the behavioral norms here we all agree to.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes.

Craig Weber: Let's codify it, hang it on the wall, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: And we can onboard people. " Look, you're going to join the meetings, and right out of the gate, you're going to notice something different about the way this team operates. I just want to give you a little heads- up as to what to expect and what's going on," so you can gear people up more rapidly to start adding value to your team. And you can call back to the code of conduct when you maybe think the temperature goes up in a meeting and people start to lose the plot. " Hey, things are starting to get a little squirrely here. Let's remember the code of conduct here and try to engage with each other in a smart way."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: "Oh, yeah. Right. Got it."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: And so, that can be a really helpful thing. And to your point, I find if you want to set up a team to perform well, even in really, really, really high- pressure, messy circumstances, the two, in some ways, most important things to put in place are, one, clear, shared decision- making.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes.

Craig Weber: Decision- making protocols need to be very explicit so I know who's making a decision, when they're making a decision, or what's needed for me in that process. There's not a lot of ambiguity. We're on the same page when a decision's getting made about who's making it, et cetera. And then combined with that, high conversational capacity.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Craig Weber: And if you've got a team that's got really clear, well- articulated, shared decision- making protocol, and then they've got the conversational capacity to back it up, everything else is going to kind of take care of itself.

Dane Groeneveld: Absolutely. Yeah, no, absolutely.

Craig Weber: So those are two really critical pieces. So I like that you brought that up.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, that's really cool. And I think that's definitely what a lot of teams have been working on as they've changed the way they operate, particularly in this hybrid and remote environment, is we've got to be more clear because things are different now. We're not all going back to the office. We don't all make these decisions on a Monday in a staff meeting. It's much more fragmented now.

Craig Weber: Yeah. Yeah, well said.

Dane Groeneveld: Very cool. Well, Craig, it's been an absolute pleasure. Good luck with the third book. There were some key highlights, as always, in a conversation with you around dialogue as a discipline and talking about making the conversation smarter, and we moved onto your kind of three ways to inquire of others in the meeting, which I think are really good in terms of driving that active curiosity in terms of playing what's missing and driving this learning environment. That was one of my big takeaways from today. Good conversational capacity drives the learning environment, situates the finance, the marketing, the engineering awareness of the team perspectives. I just think that's so cool. I'm definitely expecting to see a poster on that one.

Craig Weber: Well, that's great. That was like... And that was sparked by one of your observations, so I really appreciated that. Yeah, and I think, in the conversational capacity mindset, learning is the driving value. That's what needs to matter to us most. Not getting an ego massage, not being comfortable, not getting my way and feeling like the smartest person in the room. It's learning. And so, we've got to learn to subordinate our ego to learning, I think, if we want to do a better job of working in the sweet spot.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, yes. No, that's great. Well, thanks again for your time, Craig. And if someone's looking to find you, LinkedIn sounds like it's a great place to catch up on your latest articles and posts. Anything else?

Craig Weber: Yeah, the new one on psycho... I have one on a adaptive engagement that's fairly new, the psychological safety piece is up there. So you can reach me on LinkedIn, and then you can always check out conversationalcapacity. com if you want to learn more. So thanks, Dane, because I've been looking forward to this. You and I go back a while, so this has been great fun.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, likewise. Well, hope to see you soon.

DESCRIPTION

Today on The Future of Teamwork, CEO of HUDDL3 and host Dane Groeneveld talks to Craig Weber about conversational capacity, psychological safety, and how to inspire teams to make statements comfortably. During the discussion the two touch on elements of what makes for inspired leadership, as well as structuring team meetings in-person and remotely to best respect employee time and engagement that translates to outside office communication.

Today's Host

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Dane Groeneveld

|HUDDL3 Group CEO

Today's Guests

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Craig Weber

|Founder of The Weber Consulting Group