Common Threads to Teambuilding and Core Connection with Eric Coryell

Dan Groeneveld: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork Podcast. My name's Dan Groeneveld CEO of HUDDL3 Group and I'm glad to have Eric Coryell from Core Connection. Joining me today. Welcome Eric.

Eric Coryell: Oh, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Dan Groeneveld: You bet. I met you years ago. I think you were talking to my Vistage group and just love the way that you shared your learnings and insights. So perhaps before we go deeper into your area of work and passion, you can give our listeners a little bit of a background story on who you are personally, and the journey that you've taken through life and business.

Eric Coryell: Sure. Well in a nutshell, I got out of college with an economics degree, had no idea what to do with it. So I got a job as a buyer, which turned out to be a really important job, right? Because I came in everyday, I bought things. I missed a day, things didn't get bought, lines went down into chaos, anarchy, right? Well I was a good suck up, so I kind of worked my way up the organizational chart. Totally in over my head as a leader, but just told to do it, right? And next thing you know, I became president of this small medical device manufacturer with about 215 employees. And as I got in that role, I discovered gee, everyone was looking to me and looking for me to make the decisions and solve all the problems. And I'm like," Guys, I'm not that good, you're going to have to say what you feel and weighing in too." And they hesitated and that was kind of when I started to realize that organizations around teams, they're very rarely teams. It's groups of individuals that are just trying to look good to the boss when the boss is paying attention. So I set forth to try and fix that. Moved on to another company, ran that company for a number of years, similar issues. Tried different things and eventually I kind of figured out, all right, how do you get people to say what they really feel? And teams to become accountable to each other and not just the boss. And that's when I became hooked. Then asked to run a startup, did that for a number of years, I was in the high end cabinetry business. Took this business from three employees to 35. Things are going great then 2008 came and the high end home market just evaporated. So I went back to the owner. I'm like,"You know what? We got to scale this back." He's like," You're right. Let's start with you." And it was at that point, I moved out on my own and now for the past 15 years, get to work with hundreds of different organizations, kind of just sharing all the things that I had to learn the hard way, around how do you change around accountability's managed inside our organization? I think in most organizations, that's that I call leader led accountability. If the desired results aren't happening, the leader steps in and addresses it. So my mission is to create what I'll call more adult organizations. Where people learn to manage their own accountability and if not, teams start to take on that accountability, so we're not all looking up the org chart. That's what brings me here today.

Dan Groeneveld: No, that's neat. I remember the statement that you made about when the leader jumps in, when there's an accountability problem and starts grabbing things that they're really taking all elements of accountability away from their team, not holding the team accountable for solving those problems. And it was, I think in that original discussion where that light bulb went off in my head and I was like," Yeah, I'm guilty of that as a leader."

Eric Coryell: So was I.

Dan Groeneveld: So you made a great statement there, Eric on people are rarely working as teams and this concept of individuals just trying to look good to the boss. And that's been seen through all time, but particularly through COVID, it's probably been stretched in some different ways and shapes. What do you see as a good team experience that you drew on that made you realize that that was the case? Where did you see a team really firing and say," Hey, this is how we should be working instead of this group of individuals."

Eric Coryell: Yeah. It's interesting you say that. So the first great team in the work environment I got to experience was my second job. It was a metal fabricator. I mean, we made metal parts, like who cares, right? But we just had this group of people and we were just going to take over the world and it was different and it was fun. I couldn't wait to go to work every day. And so I started thinking," Okay, what's so different about this team than the other teams I'd been in?" And then later went on different team and had a similar experience. And I'm like," All right." I started to see common threads between this new team and that other great team I was on. And the more I just started paying attention, the more I just started to realize there was just inherent commonalities amongst these high functioning, highly accountable teams that just were absent on the rest. And that's really when I started to formulate all this. And then I'm like," Okay, now that I know this, can I, as a leader, make this a reality on any given team?" And that's really when I discovered that especially inside business organizations, teams are teams and name only. We usually define a team as a group of individuals that report to somebody, we call them a team and expect them to function like a team, but rarely do they. If you just objectively observe them, you'd say," That's not a team."

Dan Groeneveld: So that team in their metal fabrication shop, that first team and then you said the second team you saw the common threads. What were a couple of those common threads that you started to identify?

Eric Coryell: Yeah. So there were five things really that separated them. Four of them are what I'll call structural and they're obvious when you think about it. But the first piece is that we just knew exactly what we were there to achieve. We had a clear purpose and that's what makes kind of team sports different because you know what you're there to achieve, it's just kind of given. But in business and I do this exercise a lot, I'll meet with a team, have everybody put on a blank sheet of paper and say," Okay, write down the purpose of this team." And I will tell you very rarely do the answers match. So step number one is to create that purpose. Step number two is you got to have a way of measuring whether or not we're on track or not. Again, team sports. We got a scoreboard, we got wins and losses. Yet in most teams inside business organizations, we don't know how well the team is doing. The third structural difference and actually believe it or not, this is common on a lot of groups is that we have competent people in capable process. Yet, that's where leaders tend to spend the vast majority of the time. That's where I spent my time trying to work on employee development and lean and all this kind of stuff and put all my energy there and that's common on most teams. Yet, that's where we tend to spend most of our time. But the big thing that I figured out, which was different was what I would call there was a shared fate. And in other words, there was an experience of what happened to one happened to all. And that now is my working definition of a team. A team is a group of individuals that has what I will call a real and meaningful shared fate. Any group of people can function well together, low stress, low anxiety environments. But if there isn't that shared fate, that experience of what's going to happen to you is going to happen to me. Under times of pressure and duress, you literally watch that team fracture. So those were the four structural things that I could clearly see were in place here, but not so much on other teams. But the big thing then was what was different, and this is kind of what I noticed first, on accountable teams. We deal with our real issues together. In other words, something's getting in the way that's getting in the way of the team being successful. On other teams I'd been on, I watched a pattern, we ignored those issues. Then we talked behind each other's back and then we looked at the leader to solve it. If the leader solved it, great, we moved on. If the leader didn't solve it, now we complained about the leader. And if only the boss would deal with these issues, all our problems would go away. And that was the pattern. The more I watched, the more I realized was the way we did things on other teams, but not on these two teams. Instead when a real issue rose in these two teams, we just talked about it, whether it was one on one or a group. And what occurred to me is that's the point where a team becomes accountable. Because the definition of accountability to me is if you're not getting the desired results, you do something different. So if the team was failing, we dealt with it. We didn't look to the leader to deal with it. And that's when a team became accountable. And at that point, all the great things start to happen because you have to work through the tough issues. You start to trust each other, you have each other's back, you develop a sense of respect for each other. It's fun. You're just not as anxious every day, because you kind of get this feeling of no matter what happens, we got this and that's kind of how I kind of broke it all down. That's what I saw as different. Then the question is can you take that formula then and inject that any given team and make that team functional and then ultimately accountable.

Dan Groeneveld: Yeah, the trust, respect and fun elements, it's funny Eric, the way you shape those first three or four structural items is commonplace in team sports. If I think back to a high school rugby team I played in, we were a bunch of middling players that just found a way to play well as a team. And I think it was that the fact that you all trusted each other and respected each other enough on the field, that you would do each role and you didn't have to be backing each other up all the time, so everyone was kind of playing their best level of the game. And then when things went wrong, you would talk about it right there in the field. You wouldn't wait till you got into the locker room for the coach to come in and you'd make that adjustment. And then the game would start to go your way again. So it's a cool vibe.

Eric Coryell: And almost everyone knows trust is a foundation of a team. You read Len's book, Trust is a... and the problem was I, like so many leaders started with that. I brought my team together and I literally said things like," Guys, trust each other." And we did ropes courses and trust falls and finally realized, that doesn't work that way, okay?" You got to do this other work first. And if you do that work, the trust comes and that was a huge aha.

Dan Groeneveld: Yeah. It's funny with COVID there's a lot of talk about employee engagement. The great resignation and what are you doing to drive engagement? There's a lot of perks. We're investing in lots of different things to try and get our people sharing time, but when you stop and think about that thread dealing with issues in person, you can't really build an app for that or put a budget together for it. It takes a lot of sweat and tears, I would imagine to get teams into that muscle memory of having the conversation in real time or with the right people.

Eric Coryell: Absolutely. It is a huge issue. Is at the core of what I learned is I started to research some of this, a lot of groundbreaking work had been done decades ago and probably the most influential piece of work I came across was Wilford Bion's work on why do humans behave the way they do in group settings? And what he came out of there realizing was that as human beings, our greatest biological need is our need to be connected to the people. For a baby, if a baby isn't physically held enough, they will perish from a condition called anaclitic depression. As adults, we need to main maintain mental connection to other people if we are to survive as well. And so his conclusion was we tend to say and do things often contrary to what we really feel. And if it's we deem in our best way to stay connected to a group. So I'm not going to say what I really feel to the boss, because I'm afraid of getting fired or I'm afraid of being ostracized or deemed a non- team player. And what's happened now as we go virtual, that need for connection is still there, but it's not as natural, as not as easy. And it's what's leading to, if you pay attention to the national numbers, dramatically higher rates of suicide and depression, and I'm convinced it stems from that lack of connection that we naturally get just by being together, right? And as it comes to work teams and how do you get those work teams to function? You're absolutely right. It's much harder to deal with issues on a video call than it is when you're face to face. And you have to just redouble your efforts and literally force those conversations to happen in virtual world, if that's the world you're choosing to operate in, that would tend to more naturally take place if you're in person.

Dan Groeneveld: Yeah. Are you seeing any technologies? Obviously you can use a Zoom call, but is there anything that you are seeing emerging through COVID in your field of work that helps people go through a formulaic approach to problem solving issue resolution?

Eric Coryell: Yeah. There's some really cool softwares that'll let you do brainstorming or Affinity, so you can get on screen and do that. So there's some good problem solving software out there. And obviously the video conferencing calls are good. Things like Slack that allows us to stay connected all the time and organize those communications. Those are all good. So I'm a big fan of all of them. None of it will ever replace face to face. And you may remember my whole thing is when teams really get clicking at work pre- COVID, I mean, we put our desks right next to each other. I mean, we'd hear each other's conversations. You'd turn around and talk to each other just like you would at a sports field, right? You're right there and you just have those conversations. So yes, the technological tools have gotten better. I just can't imagine anything nor have I seen anything that can replicate that. But at the same time, I will tell you if you want the team to function, you've got get as many those things in place as you can. You got to force the time for us to spend time together. When COVID first started, you may remember, everyone did Zoom coffee hours or happy hours and it was important, because it forced us to stay connected. And after a while, that kind of got old, so we stopped. But that lack of connection is still a problem.

Dan Groeneveld: Yeah, yeah. The Daniel Pink conference I was at recently, he talked about what is an office for? And it was really interesting the way he said well offices were once warehouses for people and tools to do work. And in the future, they need to be clubhouses. But when you put his viewpoint and your viewpoint together, they should be clubhouses but people also need to be coming and not just playing cards and socializing, they need to be actually doing some work in the clubhouse, doing some issue resolution and some debriefing.

Eric Coryell: Have to.

Dan Groeneveld: Yeah.

Eric Coryell: Yes and Pat Murray, who was one of my mentors, one of the really brilliant things he pointed out to me was that any work on the team that doesn't deal with real issues is just entertainment. Not that it's bad. I mean, go have a drink together, go do a river, climb a mountain, whatever you need to do. But the only real work on teams will take place if we are working through a real issue. And it's when you work through those real issues, that teams truly get stronger. So the entertainment's great. The clubhouse is great. I'm all for it. But you can't replace the work that's done when we work through the tough stuff together. Like someone's not upholding there end of the deal or someone's not performing or behaving the way we agreed to, right? So yeah, I concur wholeheartedly with you and I'm a huge Dan Pink fan, so I can see the mind shift, but I don't know that the way I interpret clubhouse, it needs to be a little bit more than that.

Dan Groeneveld: Yeah. Given that we're so virtual, it needs to be some of the entertainment because that's not going to go away. And I love the way that Pat described that. But I think getting into the real work too, maybe you got to sandwich it. A bit of entertainment, a lot of real work and then finish with a bit of entertainment.

Eric Coryell: Yes. Agreed. I think doing real work leads to entertainment, because I get to work with clients working on real issues, right? And when they successfully get through some real issues, the entertainment afterwards is just awesome, because there's a connection that they'd never had before. And I think it's a natural offset of that.

Dan Groeneveld: And you talked about fun earlier, once they've effectively worked through something together, the guard goes down a little bit more. The trust is there, but you're also willing to poke a bit more fun at each other or be human.

Eric Coryell: Totally. Yeah, I agree.

Dan Groeneveld: You just mentioned there Eric, working with some of your customers to do the real work. One of my challenges has always been there's always issues in a business. How do you go and find which issue to start working on, which team. Like if you've got any particular key approaches to going in and finding that with some of your customers and partners.

Eric Coryell: Yeah, so we have an hour. I can kind of outlay them all, but let me at least give you the high level. So almost every team has real issues. And by that, I mean some issue that we've not dealt with that affects our ability to be successful, right? Whether it's someone not performing or whatever it is. And most teams will choose to ignore it or they'll make a joke about it, pay attention at work, how often we use humor to at least acknowledge the existence of a real issue, but we don't address it, right? We'll talk behind each other's back, all that kind of stuff. So the question is then how do you get a team dealing with those things? That's why I express the importance of getting the right structure in place because once you have a clear purpose and once you have a clear set of metrics, now the team is accountable for delivering those metrics. And that's the key. So often a team is well you have sales, you have employee happiness, you have getting the numbers right, you have going out and getting new customers. Well if that's going to be a team, no. We as a team now are accountable for the sustainable, profitable growth of the organization. So if sales are down, we're all getting our heads together and we're solving this. Well HR is like," Well I don't want to fix sales." Yeah you do. CFO's like," I don't fix sales." Yeah, you do, right? So the very first step is to get a team accountable around those set of metrics. So once a metric isn't meeting your expectation, the team gets together and has got to problem solve it. And what that process will do will get us to start identifying real issues. So what are the real issues that are leading to sales being down or us not being as profitable as we expect to be or why are employees leaving at such a high rate? So that's what I'll call the default route for me is to get a team to clearly know what they're accountable for, get the measurements in place, get them working in those measurements and then creating a shared fate around success or failure on those measurements. So there's got to be that experience or what happens to one, happens to all. That is one that that's what I'll call the default route for me is to get a team to clearly know what they're accountable for, get the measurements in place, get them working those measurements and then creating a shared fate around success or failure on those measurements. So there's got to be that experience of what happens to one happens to all. So I used to do this with my leadership team is as we would chart these things and things would fall short of expectation, which they're always going to at some point in time. My deal with them was simple. You have 10 days to present me with a corrective action plan, right? So I need to know what's going on, you got to plan to fix it. Because that's what it means to be accountable. And then my job, although I never told them, this was to poke holes at whatever their solution was. And I really didn't care. I mean, six heads were much better than my head was ever going to be. I just needed to know they were all on the same page. So if I pressed and they all defended it and felt strongly about it, I'm like," I know they got this." But if I could fracture them a little bit, I'm like,"Yeah, it's not a good solution." Right? So the way I treat them created this sense of shared fate of we got to convince Eric, this is a good idea, right? So you got to create the shared fate that will then drive this behavior. So that's what I would call my default way. Now there are times where teams are in trouble and they don't have time. Because that takes time to establish all that. In which case we got to get to our real issues now. And almost always those issues center around performance or non- performance or interpersonal sticking points that have gotten so great that these two people can't function well together. We all know what the real issues are. We're just not dealing with them. And the reason we don't deal with them is I'm afraid if I raise a real issue about you, you can do the same to me. So I'm not going to break that psychological contract that says we don't do this. So in situations where teams are in trouble, then I take a much more aggressive approach. So it's okay guys, let's get these to the table. And my job is to make sure there's no blood on the floor, all right? And so I literally have to teach them how to work through a real issue together. And some of those things are, how do you break the issue down into its components? How do you talk to each other? So you may remember I teach you can't use group pronouns, you can't use we, or they our, your conversation, you can't ask questions unless you make a statement first, right? So in situations were it's much more intense, you kind of come in and you do surgery. And my job's just make sure the patient lives. But they got to do the work to get through the stuff they've adhere to far than avoiding.

Dan Groeneveld: Yeah. That piece on saying I, rather than we and making a statement before the question's very powerful. We've used that a little bit after we had you in for one of the workshops and we still use it a lot in my Vistage group, because it creates a lot of clarity. Yeah.

Eric Coryell: Yep.

Dan Groeneveld: Yeah. That's a big one.

Eric Coryell: It is.

Dan Groeneveld: With the psychological safety you talked about at this contract about not saying things about people that maybe conveyed negatively. Are there any key methods that you use to break that contract early when you get a new customer in the door?

Eric Coryell: Okay. So you just actually talked about three different concepts there,

Dan Groeneveld: Oh, right.

Eric Coryell: So psychological safety and that's going to be the new buzzword, pay attention, you'll hear it all the time. It's what came out of Google's internal research, trying to figure out what separated their high performing teams from the non high performing teams. And they came out with five, but honestly there was only one and that was the high performing teams had high levels of psychological safety. Ironically that's what Wilford Bion figured out 50 years ago, he put it in different terms. He said the high performing teams had low levels of fear of separation, low levels of fear of separation. High levels of psychological safety, exact same thing. If you want a team to perform, you've got to minimize fear or separation or maximize psychological safety. So the way to do that and the only way to do that, and this is where Bion literally spent 20 years trying to figure out then how do you increase psychological safety? Is to get a team dealing with their real issues together. But that is the only way safety can be found any other way of dealing with real issues. What we've talked about, ignoring, talking behind each other's back or becoming kind of the leader, all those destroy trust. So to create psychological safety, you've got to get a team good at doing that. The hurdle in doing that is what I'll call the psychological contract, which most teams create without talking to each other. But it's an unwritten rule. It is simple. It basically says," Look, I won't talk about you and your non- performance or you and your department's non performance. You just don't talk about mine." And I'm willing to bet no one has ever turned to their teammates said," Look, I won't talk about you just don't talk about me, okay?" But it is a contract that I guarantee exists on most teams. And I know that's the case, because I can walk into a team and say," Okay, pretend I'm your teammate." now let's just say, I started talking about your non- performance in front of everybody. How are you going to feel? And almost always, everyone's going to say, I'm going to feel betrayed. Well you couldn't feel betrayed unless we had set a deal. You just violated the deal Eric, you've talked about my non- performance in front of everybody and now my only choice is to declare thermonuclear war and here we go, right? I'm coming back at you because it's fair game, because you just came at me, which is in violation of the deal, right? So to get a team quickly to break the psychological contract, unfortunately, requires you kind of lay the foundation. And the most important piece is creating that shared fate, because people aren't going to have those difficult conversations with each other unless there is that. But the second piece that separates it as trust and this is the chicken and the egg dilemma, right? Because you're not going to trust each other until you deal with your real issues in a healthy way, but you're not going to deal with your real issues in a healthy way until you trust each other. So the only way I know to get people to do this, it's kind of like when you learned to play football or rugby. You didn't talk about routes. You didn't talk about plays. You talked about blocking and tackling and every coach can say," Until you all can block, until you all can tackle. We're not going to talk about anything else." Well I'm not going to encourage you to break the psychological contract until you know how to talk to each other and how to process an issue. And those come back to the two tools I talked about, right? Every real issue is always a conversation about the gap between expectation and reality. So we have to learn to take whatever that issue is, agree on different expectations that exist in the room, agree on, or sometimes we'll see reality different, or we agree there's a gap. We just disagree in the impact. So part of is learning how to take the issue and break it down. But the most important part is why I talked about is the law of speaking for yourself. That whenever anyone talks, they can only speak on their own behalf because to violate that deal destroys trust instantly. So for me, I got to come in and teach those behaviors and get them to do that until it becomes habit. Got to work with a leader to build a shared fate. Once there's a shared fate, once they're for speaking for themselves, now we go break the psychological contract. And usually the way I do that is to get the team members talking to each other about performance. And so we have to establish expectations around performance for everybody in the room and then we have to talk to each other or where were those gaps between those expectations and my perceived reality. So I've got variety of different processes to use depending upon the state of the team, but we got to invest the time. So for the first time we are having real issue conversations with each other, because on most teams, the only person I'm really concerned about is the boss. As long as I'm looking good when the boss is paying attention, 10% of the time.

Dan Groeneveld: You can get away with the rest of it.

Eric Coryell: I'll throw my teammates under the bus if I have to, but I'm not really worried about their opinion.

Dan Groeneveld: Yeah. On that topic. What's your view on this emerging terminology of quiet quitting?

Eric Coryell: Oh gosh. I don't know what I think about it. Although I'm seeing it and it's...

Dan Groeneveld: Everyone seems to be grabbing onto it.

Eric Coryell: Yeah, I know. And it's almost like a way of saying it's okay, right? And I'm going to start to sound like an old man pretty quick here, but it's funny because what the Millennials and Gen Z's first showed up. I was an old man. I'm like, oh my gosh, we're doomed. But as I've gotten to work with them, my opinion has changed. I think their approach to work and in a lot of ways is healthier than at least mine was. I mean I grew up, you work 80 hours a week. You start here, you work your way up the organizational chart make all sorts of money, around age 50 start giving back, right? I think for a lot of these kids, they've learned some of this a lot quicker than I did. They're coming into the workforce, wanting to give back in a lot of ways are much more aware than I was. I was much more selfish at that age. So I think there's a lot of good things about the energy and the focus, their bringing to the table. And I'm not saying that quiet quitting is in that generation, but I'm seeing a lot of it in that generation. Honestly, Dana and we talked real quickly about before we started. My work for the first time slowed down during COVID and all of sudden I realized," Hey, it's okay not to work all the time." And so I think there's a balance out there that needs to be achieved. And I think organizations have to find ways to allow people to work in ways that they work best. But at the same time you still got to work. You're getting paid to do work, right? So the whole notion of quiet quitting doesn't sit well with me. So the world doesn't work where you get paid and you don't have to work in return for that. So the challenge, especially in the virtual world is it's pretty easy for a lot of people to not work and still get paid.

Dan Groeneveld: Particularly if the team's not addressing those issues. Yeah.

Eric Coryell: And they're not going to because I'm not seeing it. So yeah, we'll see. I'm hoping it's a bad short term issue.

Dan Groeneveld: In many ways, the focus that we've had through the backend of COVID on the great resignation, quiet quitting and a little nature of other I'm topics in the whole employer, employee relationship. It's a good thing there's finally enough pain for people to want to make changes, because workplaces have been a little bit static for a long time.

Eric Coryell: Totally agree. Totally, totally agree.

Dan Groeneveld: That's a big reason we started this podcast is we hope, the team here, we hope that in the future, humans are working in teams that they working in teams that they enjoy working. And that they're sending time using their bet skills, not filling 20 out of their 40 hours a weekend with some pretty medial tasks. Just because had to create a 40 hour a week job to get that salary signed off.

Eric Coryell: Totally agree with that. Two thoughts that kind of fall in... I've always felt that, and myself included, so this is not pointing at anyone else. But I think to a great degree, organizations, organizational leaders have treated their employees like children and then gotten frustrated when they didn't act like adults. So to your opening point, I think we needed a wake up call around how do we change the way we lead people and put people in positions to do the work they got to do? And I agree. I think so much focus was put on hours worked, as opposed to results delivered. I also am convinced that the hierarchical model is going to be gone in 30 years. And I don't know why I said 30, just sounds good. But I do believe when companies started in the early 1920s, as we started to scale, we had to figure how to organize everybody. We didn't have the level of knowledge, awareness that we do now. So we adapted the military model because it allowed us if sales are wrong, I know where to look, so I could organize work. And that hierarchical model, I do believe is going to die. For decades now, companies have tried to break from it. They've done the matrix thing or holacracy. None of those work because they don't manage accountability very well. But once we get good at creating accountable teams, then we can destroy the hierarchy. Now we can build organizations around the way workflows and manage accountability along those teams along the way. And I really genuinely believe, I don't know how long, 30 years sounds good that the hierarchical model really is going to be a thing of the past to a great degree. Instead, we're going to organize our businesses in a radically different way. That is going to promote exactly what you just said, it's no longer going to put the focus on hours, instead its results. And people will be doing real work and limiting the waste much easier, because right now, so many decisions have to go up the ladder and it creates all sorts of ick. It's just waste. Doesn't need to happen.

Dan Groeneveld: Yeah, I agree. I agree. And the message gets distorted and people don't build that muscle memory of," Hey, I had a really good idea. We executed and it worked." So everyone's constantly guessing and second guessing themselves. Actually, that reminds me of a conversation and I think it was, I don't know if it was Harley Davidson or a business that you'd work with that almost graded out some decisions, as they deployed with the team and said," Hey, you can make this decision on your own or this decision I need to be consulted on before you execute." That's probably pointing somewhat in the direction of where the future of teamwork should be.

Eric Coryell: Absolutely. And yeah, I wasn't Harley, but that's a model I've... and there's been models out there. Harley uses Drive. I mean a lot of the companies there's racey and different ones. I've kind of developed a tweak of that just because I think it's a super important thing to do. Especially as you transition from what I'll call a leader led accountable environment to a team accountable environment, because if a leader comes and says," Okay guys, I want you to be accountable to each other." What they don't know is which decisions can they truly make, because the leader's always going to hold on to certain things and not give it up to the team. And that's the hardest part for a leader is to let go of control. So I think mapping that out is one of the most critical steps on this journey of saying," Okay, these particular decisions are still going to be mine as a leader. These are yours either as a team or as an individual, but they fall into one of three categories, right? Either you have to run it past me, just because I want to weigh in. But honestly I trust you to make whatever decision you need to make. I just want make sure because I've been on the block longer than you have. So I want to make sure you're thinking about the things that I had to learn the hard way. But honestly, even if you disagree with me, I trust you to make it. Or those decisions where you just kind of let me know about it, right? I don't want to show up at the holiday party, only to find out Harvey's been fired. I didn't know about it, right? So these kinds of decisions. Just got to keep me in the loop on." And then the decision I don't need to know about and doing that process then creates a great picture. It gives the team context around what decisions they can and cannot make. It allows you as a leader then to really get good at letting go the three and fours, they're not mine, so stop taking them, right? And it also ensures that the team that you're asking to be accountable for something, truly has authority over those decisions that enable them to achieve their accountability. Because if I'm going to say to the team," Look, you're accountable for profitability, yet I get to do all the pricing? Not going to work."

Dan Groeneveld: Doesn't work.

Eric Coryell: Yeah. So once you map it out, it becomes really easy to say," Hey, are we on track?" Right? And I can also now see is hey, as the team gets more accountable, am I giving them more? Yeah, if I'm not over time giving them more and more and more, it's a sign that either they're not able to be accountable or I'm such a control freak. I can't let it go. So that's a good tool.

Dan Groeneveld: It really is. And actually thinking about that and the future of teamwork, we're going to see more companies partnering. So we're already seeing this kind of gig economy emerging where people aren't always employees. They're not always on one team by nature of who they get their W2 from. So as you start to think about teams across different companies, you probably saw that early in your career with medical device, because I know the supply chain for medical device is fairly broad, similar concepts or any particular differences of approach when you're trying to get a team that's multi organization?

Eric Coryell: Yeah. I don't have a silver bullet for this one. So I've seen a few of these. I haven't seen a lot of them right, but it's really hard to get them to function like a team. So my kind of viewpoint is okay, I get it. I understand why you're doing what you're doing. It optimizes resources did lots of stuff. But I more often not look at it as a work group. So we all have clearly assigned roles and responsibilities. If we can make that very clear, we can get this work group to function at a high level, but someone ultimately is going to have to manage the accountability. Rarely are they going to do that with each other. Because one of the things that's really hard is for any individual to be accountable to multiple places, right? So I'm accountable to you and I'm accountable to you and I'm accountable to you. It just doesn't work and that's why the matrix model doesn't work either. You bring people on cross- functional teams saying be accountable to each other. But at the end of the day, they're accountable to different bosses and that I've never seen it work, right? So I think a lot of that same struggles applies to that model. Not that that model's bad. I don't expect the team to ever function when you create that.

Dan Groeneveld: That probably explains why I get in trouble at home with my wife, Claire so often because it's hard to be accountable at work and then go home and be accountable.

Eric Coryell: Yes, that's good. I never thought about that.

Dan Groeneveld: I keep pushing a lot of those chores and things out till the weekend on next month.

Eric Coryell: Right. That's right. I got work. And then at work, oh I got home, right?

Dan Groeneveld: I know. I know. But it is interesting what you say and I like the way you frame it as a work group versus an accountable team, because we are seeing this whole shift to the gig economy and side hustles and there's a lot more leaders in fractional roles, particularly in smaller and startup businesses. So we are seeing a more decentralized way of work. And it sounds like from everything that we've discussed today, teams hadn't even worked it out how to really nail it from a centralized capacity. So moving into the decentralized world brings about a whole host of additional challenges.

Eric Coryell: Whole host of issues, you know?

Dan Groeneveld: Well that could be an interesting future episode as well. Bring someone in who's seeing, how it works a little bit more in that particular realm, probably more in the tech world.

Eric Coryell: That would be interesting.

Dan Groeneveld: Yeah. If you look at the future, you said 30 years earlier, what are your hopes for teamwork and the following generations to be able to enjoy from teamwork?

Eric Coryell: Yeah. Well and because that's my focus, you see it all the time. So of course. I would have you convinced all the world's problems would be solved if we just function as teams. So I got to scale it back a little bit, but I will tell you this. What I see is I think so often at work, as a leader, you're looking for people's discretionary effort. And I love Dan Pink's model around people aren't necessarily motive by my money, instead it's more about autonomy and mastery and purpose. And that's one of the things I love about teams is they give you the opportunity to create all three. I can. And I think as human beings, we all have varying levels of those needs, right? I have a high purpose need and a higher autonomy need, not as much of a mastering need, right? But a team will give you all three of those things. I can be part of something bigger than myself. I can play a role and get better and better on that team and on a highly functioning team, we have autonomy, right? So I think the happiest, healthiest work environments I see are where we have really functional accountable teams going and people look forward to coming to work, right? I love it for me because I love work and my wife loves work, so we're happy in all phases of our life. And I want for everybody to have a similar work experience where work isn't this thing I dread Sunday night, whether it's a chance I can be a part of something and I can contribute and I can get needs met there that maybe I even can't get met at home. So it kind of goes back to my thesis. I want organizations to allow people to be the best versions of themself, right? And I don't think teams is the panacea that solves it all, but I think it's the structure that really gives you a chance because the hierarchical model is such a parent child model and doesn't naturally allow for that. So then you're really dependent on that extraordinary leader who just creates that environment and those are rare. I mean, in order to lead really well inside that environment, you've got to get past yourself, right? And so I have to stand for something other than myself and for a lot of people, I mean it takes a lot of life experience to get to that point. Because I would've told you all the time I stood for something, but under pressure, I worried about keeping my job, getting the next stock option, whatever it was. And I really wasn't a leader. I don't think that many people at first came to work to follow me up a hill. I mean, I was a nice guy and semi- competent, but I didn't stand for something other than myself. And in the hierarchical model, I put such onus on that extraordinary leader to create the environment where hey, we're adults. But that's kind of my hope and I honestly think it fits this next generation, that's what they want. I grew up that way. I was told you," Eric, you start here and you work as hard as you can and work your way up, and then you get your kid to do the same darn thing." And the younger generation's like," I don't want to do that." I'm like," You know, good for you." And I want to work and I want to make a difference right away. However, they have different needs. In my day. You got feedback once a year if you're lucky, right? They grew up in a world playing games where you got feedback every second, right? Yes. And that's one of the values of playing on a team that has a score. We can see all the time, how are we doing? How are we doing? And we can make adjustments. And they do, problem is in the traditional business structure. We don't give them that kind of feedback and they get frustrated and quit. I'm like," I don't blame them because it's not what they're used to." Right? So I think the generational need, I think the drive to eliminate waste, I think all these and the lack of people, all these things are converging. That's really going to put the onus on high levels of teamwork, high levels of efficiency and effectiveness inside organizations. But you got to get the team to function and most teams really don't.

Dan Groeneveld: No, I think convergence is a great word because we are seeing it and it's the social, it's the generational, it's the environmental and technologically as well. I mean, if we're going to continue to innovate and solve a lot of these problems, we're going to need to have a lot more small teams that can just go out and start troubleshooting and finding their way through. Yeah, absolutely.

Eric Coryell: That's it.

Dan Groeneveld: Well it's been great having you on today Eric, there's far too much material to summarize easily. But I really liked your early piece of the five common threads of a good team, an accountable team. Obviously the first four, having that purpose, measuring how you're going to achieve that purpose, having the competent people and processes and then having that shared fate and particularly that fifth one, dealing with issues. That's my absolute biggest takeaway. In fact, I'm going to have to call you back in to help work with my new team here because that's something that you're just never good enough. You can always do a bit more.

Eric Coryell: Always get better. I'll leave you with this just because it's kind of a fun little tip and that is a lot of people say,"How do I know what my real issues are?" And I'm like," Pretty simple. Pull a blank sheet of paper and write down every topic that's just thinking about actually talking about it with your team, makes your stomach go. Yep, those are your real issues, right?" And continue to ignore those at your own peril, right? So a good starting point is just to spend five, 10 minutes alone with yourself and say," Okay, what are the topics that I really cringe just thinking about dealing with? And that gives you a good start as to," Okay. These are the things that as a leader, especially I'm going to have to get on the table at some point, right?"

Dan Groeneveld: That's a great takeaway action too and there's science now that shows that if you're sitting on those tensions and stresses at work, that's hurting your health and it's hurting your home life and your relationships. So you don't just have to do it for your team at work. You got to do it for your team at home.

Eric Coryell: Oh, I agree with that. Absolutely.

Dan Groeneveld: No, that's neat. So best way for people to find you Eric, if they want to do some work with you?

Eric Coryell: Oh gosh, I have been lucky. I've had plenty of work. I've never even created a website, although I'm in the process of it. So there will be a website at accountableteams. com. As soon as I get it done. A publishing firm came to me and said,"We want you to write a book." So you can buy that at Amazon for eight bucks called Revolutionize Teamwork. Otherwise, best way to get ahold of me is just email me. You can email me at Eric E- R- I- C @ accountableteams. com, so it's all one world, plural. Accountableteams, no space. com.

Dan Groeneveld: Excellent. Well thanks so much Eric, it's been great connecting.

Eric Coryell: Oh, it's been good connecting with you as well.