Finding Wonder and Transforming Work into an Experimental Playground with Colin Hunter
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Dane: Welcome to The Future of Teamwork podcast. My name's Dane Groeneveld, CEO of the HUDDL3 Group. And today, I'm joined by Colin Hunter from what seems to be the sunny UK. Welcome, Colin.
Colin: The sunny, semi-sunny.
Dane: Semi- sunny.
Colin: It's never really sunny here, Dane.
Dane: Wimbledon's been looking good.
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: So Colin, you're an author. You are the CEO of PotentialSquared International, a coach, podcast host. You're doing a lot of work around teams. And as I was sharing with you before the show, I like some of your sound bites around playgrounds, workplaces as playgrounds, or creating playgrounds, and amplifying the human and leadership. So could you perhaps tell our listeners a little bit more about your story, how you came to be doing this amplification?
Colin: Yeah. So thank you, Dane, for having me on. It's a pleasure to be here. So I don't know how far we go back, but let me take you back to my childhood. I used to have two sets of friends that I thought were my best friends. And so, if I go back to my early days of playing with teams, those two teams of friends, I used to experiment with to see if they would gel together, work together, get together and have a blast like I had with each of those. And I was fascinated in those early days, this is about 12 to 18, fascinated how they never gelled together. There just didn't seem to be those connection points between them.
Dane: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Colin: So that's when I look back and I go, so I was, by fascinating, by working with those two fascinating groups of people, I suddenly got this feeling that, so what is it about me that connects with them, but also what is the disconnection? So that's what I've spent my whole life doing. I had a bit of a period, when I went off and I became an adult, and that was a big failure in my life because I always come back to the inner child is the most important piece.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: So I went and tried to be an adult. And then at the age of 30, I had a breakdown. So I was trying to be an adult. I was trying to use my energy in a way which was inefficient. I was trying to do a job I hated, I was trying to build connections with people, which I was doing, but I was not doing it for a purpose. So I didn't realize it then, but the breakdown led me to two weeks of soul- searching and then a journey towards this, what I call, practice leadership. Which, if I go back to those group of friends, how do you bring people together? How do you get them to build connection? And as my New Zealand friend would say, " How do you get them to dance with the music they bring to you, rather than actually bringing your own music to their dance?" Which I think was one of my learnings from those early days. So that's what I've been about, and therefore practice what I preach, leadership, set up PotentialSquared as a business, worked with our clients. But all my clients buy in to one contract, which is we're going off to play together, we're going to fail together, we're going to learn together, and we're going to grow together. So, that's it.
Dane: That's exciting. I love that statement or that phrase, " Dance with the music they bring to you." That really is bringing out the inner beauty of any individual, it turns out. Rather than saying, " Here's our way of doing things."
Colin: I think it opened my eyes. Because I've done a lot of work in that space, but never felt comfortable. Because I'm opinionated like anybody else, and I've always been a control freak. I always joke that if you take the control out of the control freak, all you've got is a freak. And therefore, when the freak was coming out, I was starting to realize that a lot of it was because I was trying either, one, to dance, get them to dance to my music. Or secondly, I was trying to create this third type of music. And this is Darren, so a New Zealand colleague who's brilliant, who gave me this. And when he said that, I opened it up to diversity, inclusion, equity, but even design thinking, which we do a lot of and connect it with. It's that bit about, how do I get human- centered and how do I connect? But dancing with other people's music, it's like jazz, isn't it?
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: It's like, you make mistakes, you have a go. Yeah, it's good.
Dane: It also makes me think of one of my favorite festival experiences, which is going to the silent disco.
Colin: Yes. Yes.
Dane: Because everyone's got different music on and they're all dancing, and everyone's having fun. And they're not worried about, do I look like I'm hitting this beat right? Everyone's just having fun.
Colin: Yeah. And as a bad dancer, or dad dancer, as my girls would say, I'm like, " Yeah. It doesn't matter. I'm going to just hit the wrong beats." I was at Bruce Springsteen at the weekend in London.
Dane: Nice.
Colin: And my feet and legs would go in different directions to everybody else, but did I care? No, it was great.
Dane: Yeah. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. And tell me a little bit more about the types of organizations and teams that you get the opportunity to work with. Is it a particular industry set? Is it geography? What tends to drive those contracts?
Colin: I'm lucky we're industry agnostic in a lot of ways. So we get to play. I tend to, we've never really done any marketing of ourselves. We've always had word of mouth. And so, therefore, when people have moved on, so for example, we're the largest provider of development for internal auditors and financial services.
Dane: Great.
Colin: So we've actually got outside accreditation for that. We've got recommendations for Barclays, for being the reason that they provide assurance. And the main reason is because when we go into a client like that, we've worked with them on conversations. So they're having the right conversations on the right risks, with the right auditees, in the right way. And therefore, we've been rigorous about those styles of conversations.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: So financial services, technology, professional services. We tend to get brought in when people want to have real conversations, because we never really left, we never leave anything unsaid in the room. Refreshingly direct, as we call it.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: And therefore, it allows us to play into a space where the CEO of an organization one dinner sat me down, had most of his top team around and said, " Right, Colin. So analyze my team." And I went, " No, I'm not going to do that." But have a conversation, you want to do that now and let's hear from your team about how they would analyze themselves. So that's where we're at our best, is in those moments.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: That's cool. I mean, a lot of our guests that we've had on the podcast, will talk about the need for clarity in organizations and the need for psychological safety. They seem to be the two biggest points that get hit. So this whole real conversations concept, it addresses both of those points.
Colin: It does, and I think it goes back to connection. Which is our definition of connection is dancing with the music others bring to you, which is where we start. But then it comes to curiosity, it comes to collaboration, it comes to really truly understanding the human in front of you. I mean, my big influences are good friends. Jamie Smart, who wrote Clarity, which is the ability to fall out your own thinking in the moments and really connect with the person in front of you. And then Michael Bungay Stanier, around curiosity and the advice trap that we all fall into. So those pieces, if you can build true connection, then a lot of the psychological safety comes naturally for me.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: So you don't have to do a whole bunch of these fancy ropes courses and things like that.
Colin: I love the ropes courses. It's interesting.
Dane: It is.
Colin: I mean, if we go back to some of the work we did long while ago with Deutsche Bank, and we were in the middle of Dartmoor, and we had actors down caves, and this team had to do what we would call A Day from Hell, where they had to take over search and rescue for 24 hours. Had to-
Dane: Wow.
Colin: ...man the communications, the network. They had to deal with press who were actors, they had to deal with all of this. But when we go back to it, it's that bit about how do we put people into what we describe as a playground, where we've taught them the skills for the first three days. The fourth day, they get a chance to really deeply immerse themselves, purposely practice it, but it feels real to them. And therefore, psychological safety is also the ability to make mistakes. It's the ability to say the wrong thing and get away with it in a situation where somebody will teach you, learn how to do it. So for me, connection is an important part, but how do you build connection? Ropes courses. I mean, joking aside.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: So they still work? It's part of the formula.
Colin: It is part of the formula. Even VR nowadays is fascinating, because you put somebody in a headset, they can't help but be themselves. They're immersed.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: I can screw up with the best of them when I'm in the VR headset. It's great.
Dane: Immersive learning, project- based learning. I mean, we're starting to see a little bit more of it in our schools. But in a workplace, so much corporate training has always been, you know, " Here, watch the videos. Sit in a classroom. Good luck. Go try it tomorrow."
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: But this playground concept that you talk about, where you make it immersive, is that something that you'll do immediately attached to the training and the concepts? Or is it something that you'll bring back more iteratively in teams and organizations?
Colin: I think it varies depending on the needs. What we're big on is not doing too much teaching in the room. So what we want to do is get the content out there beforehand, so they're getting the theories, the models. So that's where, for us, the blended learning approach really works. So get the teaching. And then, for me, it's literally immersing somebody. Expose what they know about it. And classically, we've done it, eat our own dog food, drink your own champagne, whatever expression you want. But for our own team, we put everybody through a coaching course. So whether they have people reporting to them, we ran three and a half hours of coaching and taught them how to coach. But the important thing is that immersing them into that, getting them to practice it, they realize how difficult it is. They realize how to be on the other side as a coachee. It's one of the things for years we've been saying, how do you teach people to be better direct reports, to be better coachees, so that they're ready to push the boss to challenge them? Why not? Why are bosses and leaders afraid of having somebody who's going to tell them what they really think or have the honest opinion? That's what we want, isn't it?
Dane: Yeah. Absolutely. And actually coaching, Alicia shared a great article with me about an organization that's replacing managers with coaches.
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: So they're really tearing the traditional hierarchy apart. But it is such a, you know, it leans into curiosity, it leans into clearer conversations and communications. And it is powerful. It actually reminds me of a story from the weekend. My son, Riker, he's 12 now. He rolled his ankle at rugby practice on Thursday night. So he was in a boot, resting his ankle. He couldn't play rugby on Saturday.
Colin: Oh, no.
Dane: And he was a little bit down. And I said to him, " Hey, Riker. You're my assistant coach for the day. Come on, you got to come out here. You know the players, you know how I like to run warm- ups. You come and be the coach." And it was a fascinating experience.
Colin: I can imagine.
Dane: Seeing his highs and lows.
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: He was like, " Oh, this is awesome. The boys are listening to me. They're warming up. Oh, now they're messing around. They're not doing my drill." And then, when we're actually in the game, and he and I, coaching your son is always hard, he and I have a few rubs every now and again. When we're in the game, and the players are walking and he's shouting at them, I'm like, " See, Riker? Now you know how I feel when you guys are walking out there on the field, and now you kind of understand why my voice will raise a little bit every now and again."
Colin: There's a beautiful moment, which is difficult sometimes as a parent to teach. So I've got my daughter who is head of house, and again, just listening to her try to lead people, the difficulties, and I don't think they really appreciate that. I was laughing as you were going through it. Because Dan Carter was on the High Performance podcast and he was talking about coaching his son, Fox's rugby team. And firstly, all the dads and the parents on the side were being very, very quiet because Dan Carter was refereeing and coaching, so they couldn't say anything.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: But secondly, he also had this anonymity because most of the kids had never heard of Dan Carter. So it's that bit. So I think there is those teachable moments, as I would call them, or brilliance. And I think sometimes we shy away from the teaching of them or the learning from them. And I think that's the playground has to have the loop of priming them, immersing them, purposeful practice, and then the feedback loop that comes out the back end of it.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: Yeah, the feedback's huge because people find it so hard to give feedback. At least if you create that environment for it, it's going to come right there in real time.
Colin: Yeah. I mean, I love the concept of design thinking. It was introduced to me. I like, I wish, I wonder as a feedback model. Soon as I got that, I started using it all the time because it's also a non- threatening way of going, "I like the way you did that. I wish this would be different. I wonder whether we could do that." And where we've implemented in the businesses, those teachable moments, you can hear people wandering along a corridor going, " I wonder." And powerful, powerful moments of, " I wonder."
Dane: It brings that curiosity back around again, doesn't it?
Colin: It does. Yeah.
Dane: What catches my ear is that, in so many organizations with hierarchies and processes, people are afraid to be seen to be wrong, or not to know the process. Hey, there's a written protocol on this, why didn't you know it? But if leaders set the example of the I wonder piece, and then everyone else starts to follow, that has to create, that's just got to open up the team. It's just got to be a huge unlock.
Colin: It is. And I think, for me, we've had moments with my team, I had one with one of my team members today where she gives me those eyes, that you can see the eyes going, " Oh, God." I'm not going to swear on here, but you know the, " I'm going to fail at this. I can't do this." We have something which we've implemented called Brief Back, Check Back.
Dane: Right.
Colin: So give them a task. It comes back to your point in clarity, and it's from the military and the Marines. But here's the brief. Now brief back to me what you've heard. Now, a lot of the times we don't do that as leaders because we go, " Is that clear? Makes sense?" I do it a lot myself. And then people go off, and they try something and then they could bring something back, which is not what you asked for or thought about. So the brief back piece, where you go, " So brief back to me, what have you heard?" It brings that clarity points. So even when they're thinking and their eyes are, for those listening and not watching, it's those open eyes and those scared eyes, it's that moment as leader going, " Okay, so this feels like it's daunting to you. Tell me a bit about that." But that is important.
Dane: And so the brief back is asking them to come back to you, what's the check back?
Colin: So once you've done that, and once they've, the largest scale I've seen this on was 200 people in an asset management company doing strategy. And they all had, I think, it was 10 teams of 20 people or something along those lines, but they had strategy maps for each of the areas. So the brief, the strategic brief, was given. Each team then did their map and they briefed back from what they'd heard. Now what happened then was, firstly, the other teams were looking at dependencies and saying, " Well, hold on a second." It was also some of the gaps were coming back to say, " Well, you've missed that. Okay, so we need to do something on that." Or there was gray areas where they didn't understand. But the biggest thing was they came back with stuff which wasn't relevant, but it was also taking budget or time away from other people's teams. So that brief back is, " I hear it. I see the gaps as a leader." Also gives you a whole load of clarity about how clear you are as a leader.
Dane: It does. Yeah.
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: That's one of the things I enjoy on the coaching circuit, is that I'll say something to the kids or the boys and they don't get it. And I'm like, " That's my fault. I wasn't clear."
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: And it's so infrequent that we'll do that in business.
Colin: I know.
Dane: Right?
Colin: Until the end, until the annual appraisal. And we're going, " Let me just revisit what happened there."
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: Are you going to bring that up again?
Dane: Yeah. That brief back, check back reminds me of a tool I used in a company years ago called the Action Cycle. I don't know if you've seen the Action Cycle.
Colin: I've heard of it, but I haven't seen it. Yeah.
Dane: The thing I liked about it, which is like the brief back, is that I would be essentially the customer, if I'm bringing a task for you to do, Colin, and then you'd be the performer. And so I would tell you, " Hey, Colin. What I'd really like you to do is this, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." You then have to respond to me with what the conditions of satisfaction are. So we actually codify the conditions of satisfaction and agree, because we might need to negotiate them. If I'm saying, " Colin, I need this by Friday and it needs to be in this format," and you are telling me, " Hey, Dane. I can get it to you on Friday, but it won't be in that format. Because so- and- so who does the PowerPoints isn't here. Do you want it in Word or do you want it on Tuesday?" But it just gets rid of a lot of the ambiguity and the hurdles along the way.
Colin: I love that. We went through a process, good friend, Australian who runs a company called Fuel, and he gave me this concept of owning your role versus renting it, and how you do it. And it was one of the most simple but powerful context, because coming back to that customer ownership piece, if I own my role and I'm accountable for everything in terms of the experience, then I'm going to listen, firstly.
Dane: Yep.
Colin: But secondly, I am going to do that brief back in detail. And I love the conditions of success to that, because it's saying, " So what does success, what does my stay at your hotel look like?"
Dane: Yep. Yes.
Colin: Is it comfortable? Is it rich? Is it luxurious? Is it to this standard? And are there paybacks or offsets against that? Yeah, I love it.
Dane: Yeah, that's huge. And own it versus rent it. I have heard of that one before, but I know how I treat rental cars.
Colin: Yes.
Dane: Hopefully enterprise isn't listening. But, yeah.
Colin: Who takes the videos?
Dane: Very different.
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: No, that's very cool. You were just talking about the asset management customer that you went in and did strategy work. In your experience, Colin, how much of your work around conversation systems, leadership, best practices, is around the strategy side of a business versus operational excellence, and getting down into the weeds of a team?
Colin: Well, my belief is most of our work is organic because we tend to go in the pain points. So once we get the pain points, we start to work back up, either upwards for the strategy side, sideways for the silos, or downwards in terms of whether the pain points. I mean, most organizations, blockages happen at middle manager level.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: They're always the problem. We don't have succession, they don't have the gravitas, they don't have the whatever else. What you normally find is once you've pulled the splinter out of their eyes, you've got a plank coming out of the leader or the managers in terms of those.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: But most of us are organic. That's probably what loses us so much work, as well as wins it.
Dane: Right.
Colin: Because people don't want to do that hard work that we go in, and they either want the McKinsey deck or they want the full thing that they can rely on strategy side, or they want the honest conversations to get into the culture, as I would describe it. Yeah.
Dane: Yeah, yeah.
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: That's interesting. So if I'm sitting there and I've got a sales problem in a team, and we're just not... Well, Colin, here's a common sales problem. Sales team keeps calling on the customers that we already have to get new orders, but they're just not setting enough appointments with net new customers. They're just not pushing new service lines hard enough at new customers. So that could be a reason to say, " Hey, let's create an experience. Let's create some conversation, create a playground, and bring a cross section of the organization in, from leadership right down to the sales floor." How would you tackle that one?
Colin: I think it depends on the sales structure. Is it a product? Is it a service? Is it-
Dane: Yep.
Colin: So for me, a lot of the work we do is in service. And therefore, you're getting into this concept of practice leadership, because we all know engaged connections is the core to sales. So how do you build quickly an engaged connection?
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: I was chatting to a very good friend the other day, and he's probably the expert in setting up systems, Salesforce on sales. Now he knows that it's very difficult for the majority of people to replicate what he can do, but his teachable point of view in there is if he builds up his engaged connections, always somebody will know somebody in that space. And that's where, for me, networking, talking to the people you've never talked to before, breaking your own echo chamber or some of the pieces of language I would use, it's those principles that if I think, how do I fill my pipeline, it's normally a cultural point in the salesperson. It's either they're too hard a closer, they're too transactional, they're not consultative enough, on the service side. I think on the hard product sales, for me, it's the unclear amount about the value proposition, the point of sale. So if I was going to solve that problem, I'd probably want to do design thinking with them. I'd probably want to say, " So, is this an observational insight path that we can lead to, that we pick out?" The insight is, because we had one in our business, is the new people didn't understand our product. Now, all the people who were delivering it understood it, but the people internally in the business who had to sell it were they'd never led. So how do you solve a problem when somebody hasn't led when they're selling leadership?
Dane: That's tricky.
Colin: The only way was to teach them. So we started teaching them to be leaders, started teach them to be coach and go back to what we're doing before. So we're building up the muscles so that when they're in there, they're working in there. So I think for a sales team, and how you're going to go in and do that, I think there probably is 20 pain points for each sales team I've ever worked with. 20 pain points. What's the bet? Where are you willing to place your bet? I normally ask the clients where they're willing to place the bet to go for, but where we get best traction is having the real conversations in the room about the unsaid that's been going on for years, which is normally about the sales leader, about the product clarity. Or people don't believe that their product is worth the money, has the right value proposition. It's a long answer, but it's-
Dane: But again, it's the design thinking, it's the discovery process, it's drawing out conversation. To draw that conversation out, sometimes it's hard to do it when the sales leader or the CEO's in the room. So are you building your workshops, your conversations, to be one- to- one, one to many, carving out certain people? How do you go about that?
Colin: It is fascinating for me because it depends on the organization. I'd rather have everybody in the room. Yeah?
Dane: Yep.
Colin: I'd rather have the leaders, normal people, everybody else as they describe themselves, in the room. I'd rather have some of those key people. I'd also love to have some of the customers in there-
Dane: Interesting.
Colin: ...to talk to. I mean, I have a very good old friend, client friends, unfortunately no longer with us. But he used to say something, which is, " When things are going well, go and tell your client. When things are going badly, run and tell your client." And therefore, for me, the same principle for us is that, in that team, people should be running. They should be running to have those conversations. And so, therefore, we tap into those conversations happening. Tell us what life is like.
Dane: Yep. Yep.
Colin: And normally, with life stories, it's like anything. You start to find the purpose, you start to find the identity, and probably that's where we land on most. What are the habits? Goes back to James Clear's work.
Dane: Yep.
Colin: What are the habits that are feeding your systems? We have five systems we always talk to in teams.
Dane: Could we walk through those systems, Colin? I know we touched on them briefly before the show, but I think that would be really helpful for listeners.
Colin: Yeah. So the way I tend to do this is do it in a hero's journey concept, because they're iterative. So if you think about the first stages, I'm going to use Lord of the Rings for those who are listening. If I've just turned off the majority of the audience, I apologize. But most people don't.
Dane: We all love Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter.
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: But Frodo and Sam start off and they have connections. So they know Merry and Pippin, those connections are joined. So they create their team together. So they engage. So they get Aragon, they get a dwarf, an elf, and they have the fellowship of the ring. Those engaged connections is the first bit. And they will have their iterative moments of, what is termed by inaudible Smith, ritual sniffing, moments in the animal kingdom where they're getting together, they're starting to work out their patterns, their norms, how they behave, how they work together, whether they like each other or not. So that engaged connections, normally the leadership style is the host, as we would describe it. So the host is engaging those connections. But it's also inviting in different voices at that stage. So it's breaking the echo chamber, it's getting the Council of the Nine together, Council of Elrond together.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: Once you've got the engaged connections, then what's your quest? So we talk about inspired energy. We talk two elements of that. So one is what's the compelling story that you're involving people in? So storytelling but compelling, where people can see a part to play, where your purpose links in. But that's where the leader does the hard work. There's a lovely technique which I picked up, which is writing a letter to yourself. Don't know if you heard it?
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: Yeah. But writing-
Dane: No, but share it with the listeners. I've heard of it, but I think it's brilliant.
Colin: So it was literally write a letter as if you were starting 1st of January'23. Write a letter dated to yourself, 31st of December 2023. And write it as if you've completed and done, and what you've faced, the good, the bad, and everything in there. First time I did that for my team, which is about three years ago, it was the first time they had clarity about where they were going as a business coming back to it. And then they write their own letters back to yourself. So that story, that where they fit, so I'll mention their names in, where I see them fitting in the story of that year, they get clarity in there. So that's the inspired bit. And then the energy piece in there is resilience. Center for Resilience has now defined it as the ability to thrive in chaos. So how do we purposely find our energy, our source of energy, our resilience, our sleep? I'm a big experimenter, and so I've got the Oura ring on. I measure my sleep. I tape my mouth now for breath, so I nose breathe.
Dane: Oh, wow.
Colin: So I improve my sleep quality. Who knew I would be taping my mouth? But my quality of sleep is massively improved through the nose. So I experiment to find my better self, my better energy. So that's the inspired energy. And then the third, so once, if you think about it, the quest was to destroy the ring in Lord of the Rings. And then the drive and resilience was a number of people, like Frodo would have that, Sam provided energy in there, and then the fresh ideas, as we call it. But here's challenges, facing good and evil. Let's experiment. Is it the Mines of Moria or is it over the mountain? Well, actually it's the Mines of Moria. So we lose Gandalf, we have to iterate, who's been our guide through this. So we experiment and we challenge, we make decisions. And I love that moment when Gandalf sits in front of the two choices of pathways in the mines. And eventually, after smoking his pipe, he says, " It's this way." And they're all thinking this profound answer will come up. And he goes, " It smells better that way."
Dane: Yep.
Colin: So simple, but those decision points are critical. So that's fresh ideas. 80% of our ideas will fail, 20% will be successful. So that's the system. And then the fourth important one is the intentional growth, which no hero goes back to the village the same person. So how do you get mentored and coached to be there? Who's your guide? Who's your coach to do that? So engage connections, inspired energy, face your quest, fresh ideas, intentional growth, and then you start off another journey. So, those are the four systems of growth. Yeah?
Dane: Yep.
Colin: And then the fifth one is, how the hell do you have your conversations? Which is purposeful impact. So we talk about three things, confidence, conviction, connection. How do you physically be confident in the moment? Physicality, vocality, conviction is your purpose and identity, and your red thread and your values. And then we've mentioned the connection, which is how do you dance with the music others are bringing to you?
Dane: Yeah. It's a-
Colin: So those five systems are the critical ones. Yeah.
Dane: Huge systems. And just as I really appreciate the way you walked through that, Colin, with the Lord of the Rings story too. When I look at it, I look at my own teams, I can see pieces that we're doing. But each system is not complete and they're not running into each other and learning. And that's really interesting. And you see it right now I guess, is compounded because we've just shifted to this hybrid work state. So teams aren't together as much. We've got more gig workers, so teams aren't all employees anymore. So I guess that just adds more nuance to how you start to build these systems around the teams and the quests within any organization.
Colin: I agree. And also just Zoom, and we're on camera today, but you think about the energy drop and the sapping nature of having coaching conversations with somebody. So for example, some of the new technology, even just the old technology, picking up the phone. So I've started, I've lost my eyesight earlier this year. Got it back.
Dane: Oh, wow.
Colin: Tore a retina. But I started just to ring people and have phone calls. But it's amazing your senses pick up so much. So I've stopped doing video calls for one- to- ones, gone back to the telephone. So there's an example of resilience, but connection in there. And then there's things like Coach M, which is a great Australian product, which is a chatbot for coaching and 95% engagement. But all it is a chatbot, that once you've done something, you've learned something, it says, " Hey, Coach M here. What have you learned?" They can do self- coaching.
Dane: Great.
Colin: And what's shown is that they've adopted it for performance management for organizations. They've got more impact by the person owning their own conversation in their hybrid asynchronous in there. So there's ways around it, but you've got to play with them. You've got to try them, experiment in them, and it won't work for every organization. So this is where, I hate when people say, "Here's the five things you're going to do and they're going to be successful."
Dane: Yeah. That's a fascinating one. We've spoken a lot to people about the emergence of asynchronous tools and meetings. And then there is this wider question of, is there one tool for everyone? Is their one coach for everyone? And what's very clear is that, as much as organizations, no matter what their budget is, have gone out and looked at the requirements and put great systems in place, Colin may love this tool, and Dane may not. And so, it's really hard to build a standard of coaching and growth and feedback, because going back to your original piece, you're not dancing to the music people bring.
Colin: You're not amplifying the human.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: So that piece about, so what works for one person doesn't work for the other person.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: For me, I was never a hand writer because my handwriting's terrible. However, I started to go with the app for technology for habit trackers and other things for my work, but actually that was increasing my depletion of energy from the mental strength and mental health. So I've just gone back and it's sat here, but I've gone back to the habit tracker, handwritten, and I find it with gratitude journal every day, I do my journaling. But the writing, handwriting of that, for me embeds the learning. So again, let's work with it. Let's not try to standardize everything. That's the real work of a leader. It's not easy.
Dane: Yeah. No, it's not easy. It's not. Actually, it's funny, there's science out there that shows that we process and retain more of what we write with our hands. Or draw. I'm a drawer. I love to get on a whiteboard and draw visual maps, rather than put stuff down into a nice Word document or Excel spreadsheet. And then now, what I do, because I've got a phone, is that I can take a photo of my drawing on the board and I can save it to an app that I'm using, TurboScan, and name it. And now I can go back at what I'm saying, what were we talking about with the sales process in Houston, I can pull up those maps. And that's just my way of bringing it. But it's good for me. It's not necessarily good for my team because they can't access my moments or my learnings.
Colin: I think my team hate me, but certain things do work in there.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: Because I brought Murals. You know, Mural's the other version.
Dane: I love it. Yeah.
Colin: But I started coaching my coachees, so client coaches, coachees, on a mirror board. So we'd be on a call like this, but we'd diminish the picture. So we didn't need to look at it, but we'd have mirror boards and be able to... So as they're talking, I'm typing in the post- it notes all of their patterns of thinking. They get access afterwards.
Dane: Yep.
Colin: Who knew it, that they'd go, " Oh, this is really, really good. But can you put that article on it?" Yeah, I can put the article on. So now, Mural are giving free access for us to our coachees, to all this. But again, it's just experimentation. Because again, it might work for one person, but the other person wants a postcard written afterwards with the topics, with a writing.
Dane: Or they want to listen to the video or read the transcript.
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: Yeah, everyone's got it different.
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: It is fascinating. It's really fascinating. I think, going back to these systems and going back to fresh ideas there, that third system, I think the teams, and I think teams can be independent of the companies that they're within or across. But the teams that get good at the fresh ideas that really unlock everyone's energy, enthusiasm, capabilities, they're the ones that are really going to drive insane results. Innovation, customer service, you name it. Personal growth.
Colin: Yeah. I think it's the key. I had Josh Seiden on my podcast recently, and he's written a book on outcomes. And I don't know if you've read it, but-
Dane: I'm not familiar with it.
Colin: Brilliant book. But that was a big moment for me because experimentation, for the sheer hell of it, great. But when you've got an outcome focus to it, and you're saying, " So what are the outcomes we're trying to get to and how are we measuring them, leading indicators of that, as a team?" Because a lot of this is about killing the bad ideas that come up, and that's where we're bad at it. Great at brainstorming, but also it's not the first, second or third idea that come up. It's the 13th, it's the trailing ideas, 13th or 14th, that's a really good idea. Then it's about testing it.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: But if it doesn't work, kill it. If it does work, it's because you've got the right indicators against them. And his work really helped me to be clear in that space.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: And that testing, taking action. I mean, I think that's a problem for teams right now. It's certainly a problem for me on a lot of days, is that it's easy to run up 10, 13, 15 ideas because we've got all of this information just constantly flooding us, and ideas, and we've got access to people like you. And I can be talking, you're in the UK, I'm in the US. I was talking to another founder today in the UK, just having a chat on my drive to work. We've got this insane reach. But once you've got all of those ideas, how do you find that discipline to test something and to learn from it, and to codify that for the team? I think that's something that not too many teams have really nailed yet.
Colin: I think it's also, you've got to give yourself permission as a leader sometimes to go, " We're going to stick with this." So we had a rhythm. We do something called a pulse every day in the business. 9: 15 in the morning, everybody comes on. What was the highlight yesterday? What are you working on today? What are you doing tomorrow? And for about two years, some people hated it. Some people loved it, but it was because we weren't experimenting enough with the content. So Monday, we started to do it right. What are your three buckets for the week that you're focusing on? Excuse me. And then what we did for Friday, because Friday was the least attended of it, mostly because people weren't working, but there was other reasons. So how might we create the best pulse of the week on a Friday? So we've now said, and one of my team came, Steven Buck, came up with this. He said, " So, let's get a learning from the week. Let's get a highlight from the week and let's do something about next week." So we built on that and the next person came in and said, " Okay. So what's your song that represents your week?" So on Friday, you play a song. So it's We Will Rock You.
Dane: Oh, I love that.
Colin: Welcome to the Jungle, or whatever it is.
Dane: That's fun.
Colin: But it's become fun. So people are now going, " Oh, what happened?" So last week, we all created avatars for ourselves and people had to guess who the avatars were from those. But by creating that playful nature, it's not become work. It's become a spark to start your day with, and therefore by the primer, go back to the primer, people are like, " Oh, I can be playful here. Colin's allowing me to do that." Not perfect, but it's better than it was.
Dane: Yeah, I agree. I think stories, music, costume, it's amazing how some of those props can change that dynamic in a team. Create a bit more play.
Colin: Yeah. We've got to do it. We're a long time dead, as they say. So that's a good point. And we spend a lot of time at work, so why wouldn't we have our best friends at work? It's another principle I hold, which is people at work should be my friends. Not to the point of being overly- friendly, but I should have connection. I should understand what's going on in their lives, and vice versa, to do that.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: I know Dan Pink talks a little bit about that. He's like, " We're together so long. We're not doing ourselves a service by just turning up and having transactional relationships with all these people that are so critical in our lives." And going back to your point on the quest, if we're part of teams where the quest, the journey, the purpose is meaningful, you're going to need that relationship. But you should actually be rewarded by it, if anything.
Colin: We waste so much energy then, in terms of being somebody we're not. And my biggest coaching issue is getting people to say, " So, what are you doing that is not you?" And that classic James Clear quote, which is, " Every action is a vote for the type of person you want to be." And every action you're doing now, which is not the person which you're making the person you want to be, what are you changing? And if we think about, so when we put a suit and a tie or whatever else, we go into work and suddenly we're restricted, so we've got to try and find a way of releasing the real person. And I know a lot of people have said that, but there's not a lot of people who have been experimenting with the ways of getting that to come to life. Yeah.
Dane: There are not. Yeah. Actually, we started using user manuals in some of our teams, where you got to put a one- pager together that says, " This is who I am. This is what I like to do for fun. This is how I communicate best. This is how I process information. This is what I'd really like to be doing if I won the lottery, the taco stand," or whatever else it is.
Colin: Yeah. That's great.
Dane: But just trying to create a bit more human connection, reality.
Colin: I mean, I will always plug one person in my life all the time. But reading Michael Bungay Stanier's book, How to Work with Almost Anyone, he's got the five questions for building the best possible relationships, whether you like those people or not. But it is simple, basic stuff. But how often do we ask the questions that he's putting into that book, to get to know the person in front of us? That they suddenly turned into be a goth. There was a great lady who was a goth, in our spare time, and then was a finance person in a big bank. And who knew it until we found out. Once you knew it, why don't you bring that in? That's brilliant. That's you. Yeah.
Dane: It's funny. Harley Davidson did a study at one stage, and they realized that a lot of their writers were accountants. And they were so buttoned up and organized at work, that on the weekend they wanted to get on the Harley and let loose.
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: But you wouldn't have known that when you were working beside one of those individuals unless you were close to them.
Colin: I have a funny connection point, my favorite band is Rush, the Canadian band. And I always can tell, when I love somebody, I like somebody connected, and it's amazing how often I'll start talking to them. And then I'll work out and say, " What's your music?" And they'll say, " Rush." So I've got two colleagues I work with who are both massive Rush fans. But one, Chris Carter, who's a writer, brilliant book he's got. But when we first met, within about two minutes, we'd worked out we were Rush fans, and that made the connection. So, yeah. Brilliant.
Dane: That's it. That's it. So we've covered a lot of cool stuff. I love that opening quote about dancing to the music they bring. The inner child piece that you referenced, being an adult, having the breakdown, going back to being that inner child, I think that's a big part of expression. That's our most unadulterated self that we can always bring to a team, or to a relationship, or to a party. Coaching and the importance of people doing coaching to be better at receiving coaching. And I love the I like, I wish, I wonder feedback method. I mean, that's something I have not used, but I'll absolutely steal it.
Colin: Oh, it's great. Stealing with integrity. It's great.
Dane: Yeah, that's it. There's lots there. And obviously, the five systems. I think the way that you explained that was super helpful. Lots to take away, will make sure that Alicia puts some of the books and the authors down there too. But my final question, as we wrap up, your book, Be More Wrong, correct? Is that the title?
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: Tell me a little bit about how you picked that title, what the real theme is there in the book, and how that translates to your hopes for teams in the future of work.
Colin: So I'm a big fan of a guy called Ozan Varol, and I hadn't discovered him really before I got the book. But failure, fail fast, fail early, fail often and fail forward was always a principle from design thinking. What I realized in my career is I'd screwed up majorly on a regular basis, and I seemed to be still reasonably successful. So I was thinking, oh, and saying, " There's something in this." He coins, from Think Like a Rocket Scientist, he hates the word failure, but he coined the phrase, " Learn fast." And therefore for me, Be More Wrong is, if we constantly are pushing the boundaries, if we're sailing the ship out the harbor, stretching all the time, we're going to fail anyway. But if we fail consciously towards something, we're learning from it. And particularly as teams, if you think about the great sports teams, the great business teams, they've got that ability to be almost regenerative in their own way. They learn, they can bring new people in, they learn, they generate new ideas, they have a go, they fail, they learn. So for teams, for me, learn fast is the principle of Be More Wrong. Which is, today, what are we going to screw up today? And what are we going to learn from, is design thinking 101, but it's great for teams as well. Yeah.
Dane: I love that. And regenerative, I particularly appreciate your choice of that word, is AI's here, more technology's coming. So people in teams are going to have to be regenerating their own skills and energies and passions. So being more wrong, learning fast, it creates opportunities for teams to help each other keep moving, as the world continues to go at a fast pace, without forgetting that inner child too.
Colin: Well, it's just, but the inner child is the one that learns.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: As a final comment, if I can, but it's the-
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: Jamie Smart always said it to me. He said, " When we've got a mind of a child, it's like the Colorado River cutting through the Grand Canyon." Doing all of that piece, really powerful. But as we grow as adults, we get frozen thinking. So by the time we get to a certain age, there's just this trickle of power. So our river is frozen. So his whole concept of the inner child was, how do you fall out your own thinking to release your mind and your potential? And that's the learn fast, play and be your inner child.
Dane: Yeah. That's an awesome point to end on, Colin. This has been a wonderful conversation. I've enjoyed it. I think there's so much to take away. So, I'll be listening to this again pretty soon.
Colin: Thank you for having me on, Dane. It's been a joy. Yeah.
Dane: How do people best find you, the book, the business, the coaching?
Colin: So I've got two handles, and this is going to sound arrogant, but there's a story behind it, @ thecolinhunter. And the Colin Hunter was a mental reminder for me of just, I'm not Colin Hunter, and quiet and shy. I'm the Colin Hunter, to remember that I have my own power in there.
Dane: Yeah.
Colin: Or Be More Wrong, bemorewrong. com. You can find me. But you can also find me in LinkedIn, at Colin Hunter, to find us there. And the work we do and the business, potential2. com, potentialsquared.com, if you want to find us there.
Dane: Great.
Colin: Yeah.
Dane: Very cool. Well, thanks again for your time today.
Colin: Pleasure, Dane. Look forward to speaking soon.
Dane: Yeah.
DESCRIPTION
Today's The Future of Teamwork episode features Colin Hunter, CEO of Potential Squared International and author of 'Be More Wrong,' a book about learning fast and embracing mistakes. Show host and HUDDL3 CEO Dane Groeneveld speaks with Colin about his work coaching teams and a central mantra in those efforts: "dance with the music they bring you." Throughout the conversation, the two discuss various topics affecting the workplace, including immersive learning technologies, design thinking, feedback loops, the habits feeding your daily systems, and team development with an emphasis on creating psychological safety.
Today's Host

Dane Groeneveld
Today's Guests
