How To Fix a Toxic Workplace

Is workplace drama standing in the way of productivity? Do colleagues fight over petty issues? Are teams more concerned about protecting their territory than getting the job done? Is bad behavior being tolerated? These are just a few of the signs that a toxic workplace is impeding organizational success, says Richard Hawkes, author of NAVIGATE THE SWIRL and CEO of the consulting firm Growth River. These behaviors are part of “the Swirl” — the daily mix of problems, turf battles, and drama that block an organization’s ability to focus on the real issues that result in transformation and growth.

 

 

In his forthcoming book, Hawkes presents a step-by-step guide for building highly engaged, high-performing teams and organizations, despite the Swirl. His playbook centers on Seven Crucial Conversations, a series of ongoing, intentional conversations that help people align and re-imagine the “social systems” in which they work.

 

In this podcast, Jim Stroud, VP of Marketing at Proactive Talent interviews Hawkes on...

• What the Swirl is, and how it holds companies back
• The signs of a toxic workplace • What leaders should do to “detox” a toxic workplace
• The Seven Crucial Conversations that help organizations build highly effective teams and workplaces
• How to build high-performing teams in today’s hybrid workplace

Hawkes’ insights in NAVIGATE THE SWIRL will help organizations break free of unnecessary constraints. The book provides a roadmap for wielding influence in the complex, adaptive social systems of today’s workplace.

 

 

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Jim Stroud (0s):
It is workplace drama standing in the way of productivity? Do colleagues fight over petty issues? Are teams more concerned about protecting their territory than getting the job done? Is bad behavior being tolerated? If you answered yes to any of these questions, this episode of TribePod is meant for you. Today I interview Richard Hawkes, author of NAVIGATE THE SWIRL and in our chat, we discussed, what The Swirl is and how it holds companies back? The signs of a toxic workplace? What leaders should do to “detox” a toxic workplace? The Seven Crucial Conversations that help organizations build highly effective teams and workplaces?

Jim Stroud (45s):
And how to build high-performing teams in today's hybrid workplaces? Do yourself a favor and grab a pad and pencil because you will want to take notes on this. And it all begins next on TribePod.

Jim Stroud (Intro) (1m 6s):
You are listening to TribePod, a podcast series of interviews of interests to the HR community. It is hosted by Jim Stroud, sponsored by Proactive Talent and enjoyed by you. Today's episode begins right after this.

Will Staney (1m 31s):
Let's face it. We're in a whole new world now. We know that the reactive old way of hiring in the post and pray model is expensive, and it's getting more expensive every year. What employer brand does is it is a long-term strategy that will help you get better at hiring faster and at a higher quality.

Vanessa Martin (1m 50s):
Seventy-five percent of candidates will research a company before even applying, and 86% of candidates will not work for a company that has a bad or non-existent employer brand. Some of the many benefits of having an effective and strong employer brand include doubling the amount of applicants you get per job post, decreasing your cost per hire by 40%, improving employee retention by 60%, and overall, just yield better Glassdoor reviews.

Will Staney (2m 18s):
We know that companies with stronger employer brands spend about 10% less overall for talent.

Alex Her (2m 24s):
Proactive Talent helps out clients with their employer brand by going in and working with them in several phases to learn more about the culture, the people. What are the important values to each and every employee, and then to share that story and refresh the employer brand, or build it from the ground. The benefit of having an effective employer brand is that you're going to be able to attract the talent that you really want to join your company, and not just people who would be simply applying for whatever requisitions you have out there. They generally love your message, love your culture, and are there to be with you for the long haul.

Jim Stroud (Ad) (2m 58s):
For more information on Proactive Talent, visit them online at proactivetalent.com or click the link in the podcast description.

Jim Stroud (3m 6s):
Thank you, sir, for joining us on TribePod. If you would, please tell us who you are and what you do.

Richard Hawkes (3m 13s):
My name is Richard Hawkes. I help executive teams navigate transformational journeys. I've been doing it for about 30 years.

Jim Stroud (3m 24s):
Transformational journeys. I like how that sounds. Now, I understand that you have a new book called Navigate the Swirl. What is the swirl? And how common is it in today's organizations?

Richard Hawkes (3m 39s):
So, what I like about the term “the swirl” is everybody sort of gets it, immediately. And we didn't really create it. We actually just noticed that it was a term that a lot of the folks who are working with are just using naturally. So, the swirl describes an absorbing state of inertia in an organization, that's kind of organizational level. And individually, it describes that gnawing feeling of sort of busy purposelessness in your job. You know, isn't going anywhere? And for executives, it's the thing that keeps them up at night because they feel unequipped especially in a rapidly changing world to resolve the social swirl around business decisions.

Richard Hawkes (4m 21s):
So, the title for the book just sort of fell out.

Jim Stroud (4m 26s):
Hmm, interesting, interesting. How can people tell their company is caught in this so-called swirl? What are the telltale signs?

Richard Hawkes (4m 35s):
So they’re four. And, you know, we talked to a lot of folks, actually hundreds of people, and that same four things kind of came up. So, the first is, there's always an urgent problem to solve or a drama to address.

Jim Stroud (4m 51s):
So true. So true.

Richard Hawkes (4m 51s):
Like we all know. The second is, is it all seems to be going nowhere. That's that gnawing feeling. You just don't, you know, how do you get your head above the water? Where are we going? Are we on a journey somewhere? The third is that you personally long to connect this a compelling purpose and your job. You want it to matter, the job, your team, your business, you want it to have a destination. And the fourth thing is that, you feel trapped. You're unsure how to proceed. You don't know how to get out of it. So, that's how, you know at an individual level, and that's also how you know at a team level or company level.

Jim Stroud (5m 26s):
Wow, wow. That sounds like an excuse for group therapy.

Richard Hawkes (5m 36s):
Sorta, yeah. That's a good segue.

Jim Stroud (5m 37s):
Wow.

Richard Hawkes (5m 37s):
Yeah.

Jim Stroud (5m 38s):
Now, you point out that many of the approaches to getting companies unstuck, treat businesses like machines. What's wrong with that approach?

Richard Hawkes (5m 48s):
So when you treat a business like a machine, this is how your thinking goes. You think managers need to be engineers. They need to be the decision makers, and they need to be the order givers because it's a machine, right? And everyone else needs to play these narrowly defined roles. They need to be order takers, and what you really want it to be as quality machine parts.

Jim Stroud (6m 13s):
Yeah.

Richard Hawkes (6m 14s):
You know that's the worldview. Now, that this has, you know, really two significant weak points. The first is, is as complexity and speed increase, centralized decision making in that way just gets overwhelmed, it becomes a bottleneck, and that creates the swirl. The other thing is that it, and that causes teams and companies to stagnate. And the other thing is that when you pigeonhole people, that way, you kind of back them into a corner, because they really have no choice. The only way, the only option that they have is to resist change, as a way of demanding respect. Because there's not a lot of respect you have when you're apart in a machine.

Richard Hawkes (6m 56s):
Now, this dynamic is not about bad actors is not about evil intentions. It's just a dynamic that's caused by a system. And one of the things that we talked about, I talked about in the book is, you know, once you understand this dynamic, you begin to see that it's not the people, it's the system. That's why it all fails. And so you can put sort of the humanity in context, by understanding it's not a machine.

Jim Stroud (7m 24s):
That’s interesting, because it makes me -- as you said, I think about earlier generations, where they work on a factory job for 20 years, and they get the gold watch, and they go on with their lives. And I know, those days are long gone, where someone was saying to companies for so long. But if someone of a company could maintain or retain their workforce longer, not 20 years, but I will say 5, 6, 7 years, and their workforce pretty much stays in the same position they were originally hired for. Is that a failure of the company or a failure the individual not to progress in their own career? Or is it a little bit of both? Because it's, I can imagine, like, from a manager perspective, you got a good worker, they're doing their job, and things are going great, and you want things to stay like this, because that's predictable.

Jim Stroud (8m 14s):
And I can see where I'm going. But the same time, I also got to think about, I want them to progress as an individual, which would suggest that there'll be promoted, and I gotta find another person to put in a job who may not do as well. So, I really want to keep that person in that spot. Is that sort of like a swirl of way of thinking?

Richard Hawkes (8m 37s):
It is, it is. So, there's a really famous guy who said a lot about that. His name was Peter Drucker. You probably heard Peter Drucker.

Jim Stroud (8m 43s):
Oh, yeah.

Richard Hawkes (8m 43s):
So, right. So, Peter Drucker came on the scene. There was a time when everything was manufacturing. So, you know, your role on an assembly line, or in a, you don't want the role to change, you want the role to be a part. But the challenge is, is knowledge workers. Because knowledge just doesn't work that way. Right?

Jim Stroud (9m 6s):
Mm-hmm.

Richard Hawkes (9m 6s):
Not a linear thing. It's a conversation back and forth between people. And so, the challenge with knowledge workers, so imagine I've got a shoe manufacturing, right. So, I have very simple. I've got a table. It's got the soles on it, another table, it's got the uppers, and then people have to pull it together, and the really great thing about that is every day, you can end the work and everyone can go home. And when they come back, they can pick up the work exactly where they started. And you don't lose any time. Problem with knowledge workers is they spend most of their time figuring out how to organize the work in the first place. And every time they pick it up, they start in a different place.

Richard Hawkes (9m 47s):
And so, there are these enormous conversations up front that need to happen about just how do we plan. And so, what you have to do is, you can't tell people what the process is. Finding the process that you're in together is the journey you're in together. So, you have to have all of those conversations. And so, it can't be a machine. And the thing is, is the process you're in is personal. It's not just going to be, it's going to be, "Well, what are my skills? What do I like? Hey, I don't like it that way. It doesn't work for me." I'm working at home, like you and I were on a video right now, right? I'm working at home. And I've got all this stuff. I have my own environment.

Richard Hawkes (10m 28s):
That it, we're in a much more personalized conversation now. And the conversation is the social system. There's a lot to that. But that's the challenge. And it's the challenge of knowledge workers. And it's fundamentally what Peter Drucker pointed out.

Jim Stroud (10m 49s):
Interesting. Interesting. Okay. You identified several key stages of growth that companies move through your book. Tell us, tell the audience, what are those stages and what are the pain points, common to advancing from stage to stage?

Richard Hawkes (11m 7s):
Okay. Yeah, yeah, this is really important. So, it goes to the journey.

Jim Stroud (11m 11s):
Mm-hmm.

Richard Hawkes (11m 12s):
Alright. So, you're on your journey and your role, and your team is on its journey to becoming a team but your company is on a journey. And if you're not clear about your company's journey, and where it is, it becomes really hard to align your role with your team, and your team with your company. Right. Because it's it, these are frames that cascade and you got to understand all the levels, right? If you're going to play your role full out for the good of the whole, you got to understand the whole.

Jim Stroud (11m 47s):
Sure.

Richard Hawkes (11m 47s):
Otherwise, it's just about you, right, it's not about being in it together. So, understanding the journey is essential. And everybody in an organization needs to know where on the journey their organization is, and where their organization is on the journey as a social system. Okay, let me just pause at that for a second.

Jim Stroud (12m 5s):
Okay.

Richard Hawkes (12m 5s):
So, I want to say is there when you think of things as a social system, they're kind of three parts. There's, you know, leadership and culture. Like, right, that's kind of above. Right. That's changing.

Jim Stroud (12m 17s):
Mm-hmm.

Richard Hawkes (12m 17s):
And the next part is the system of capabilities and roles in the middle. What you can do, and how many people you have, right? Totally different in a small company versus a big company. And then the bottom layer of it is strategies and your customer experience. And so those three levels are changing. They're like, you know, layers in an onion, they're changing. Okay. So how do they change? And how do you know where you are, your company is, so that you can put your job in context? The first stage is what we call independent contributors. It's where most companies started, it's a bunch of guys get together, and they're all, they're basically a loose alliance. And what they're really about is, you know, I'm going to do my thing, you're gonna do your thing, and maybe we'll help each other out.

Richard Hawkes (13m 6s):
Maybe we'll combine the back office, maybe we'll share some marketing, but we're really kind of independent contributors. And the way we make decisions is by consensus, power, this kind of thing, and then something happens. You get a big customer. You need to bring up job, or product, or service, something happens. An event happens, and you realize somebody's got to be in charge. You just can't operate that way. Right? And so, I've worked with lots of partnerships where they've hit that wall. We need a managing partner. We can't just pretend anymore. So that's the event. That's the pain point. And that takes you to another stage, which is called directive leadership. This is where you've got one core business model.

Richard Hawkes (13m 46s):
And your goal is to nail and scale it. Now a lot of organizations like their startups, they got a lot of money, they jumped right to stage two, because they bring all the resources together. And they say, “We're gonna nail and scale a one single business model. Because that's where the money is, frankly. And so, you start to do that. And you can grow quite a long, long time in that stage. But then you also hit inevitably hit kind of a constraint and inflection point. And that's when this everything centralized because it's directive leadership, it's back to what we were talking about before. It's all centralized at the top. So, you hit a wall. You can't keep up. You can't keep up with your competitors. The innovation is going too fast, the environments going too fast, because you've got silos reporting into one top team that's taking all the decisions.

Richard Hawkes (14m 34s):
And it's sort of like a monarchy, with all of the drama within a monarchy. So that you hit that wall. And now you need to move to something called distributed leadership. Distributed leadership is where you move from silos to a matrix. This is where you move to a leader led team-based matrix. And the biggest issue with us is when you go from this stage to the next one, in the directive leadership, you got one business model. In distributed leadership, you can have multiple businesses in parallel sharing shared capabilities. And each of those businesses has to have a leader in a team.

Richard Hawkes (15m 16s):
So, you end up, suddenly, you've got a board of directors usually, an enterprise team, then you've got multiple business teams, they're interacting with multiple functional leadership teams, you end up with a network of teams. And that's where the game really amps up. That's where you have to have a shared language and approach. A lot of the book really focuses on that transition, because it's incredibly painful for most organizations. And we've done it with organizations as large as you know, 50,000 people. And we've done the transition with companies as small as 20 people, right? It's but it's the same kind of issues. Same kind of.

Jim Stroud (15m 51s):
Sure. It is you were saying, I was thinking, that would be painful. Do people, in your experience, they are forced into those decisions to change the leadership's style of the company? Or do you see that they tend to be proactive, and they just don't know how to go about it, which is why they seek you out?

Richard Hawkes (16m 9s):
Well, they tend to be in the maze wandering along. And then they're just getting hit by incoming, and they don't know why. They're not conscious of that it is a process. And they need to understand it, which is why you need to understand it because a lot of the swirl is going to be generated - the nature, the flavor, that kinds of things that are coming at you, are going to be generated by where your company is on that. And if you know that, then let's say you're, three levels down in the organization, you can influence up. You can kind of say, “Hey, look, this is where we are. Here's how I can help my leader, my team, my business. Here's what they need to know.” And it allows you to be in service of them around that.

Richard Hawkes (16m 55s):
But most folks aren't taking choices. When they know what the journey is, then they're set up to actually take very specific and pointed choices because no understanding the journey and how its unfolding on those levels I talked about…

Jim Stroud (17m 20s):
Mm.

Richard Hawkes (17m 22s):
Makes it kind of obvious.

Jim Stroud (17m 23s):
Mm. I'm thinking, the audience we have booked the most receptive audience, I think would be executives, the board level, board directors, CEOs, CTOs, that kind of thing. But you mentioned about managing up. So, before you said that, I was thinking that. As you mentioned about managing up. I see it as people who are not a good party artist would be people who are aspiring up to those levels, people climbing up the career ladder, is that correct? Am I seeing right?

Richard Hawkes (17m 55s):
Yeah, it's absolutely correct. But it's also, so that -- I imagine you're an executive in an organization, and you had a lead this whole thing.

Jim Stroud (18m 4s):
Mm-hmm.

Richard Hawkes (18m 4s):
You need everybody in the organization to know how to manage up. So, what this does is it tells you everything your boss actually wants you to know.

Jim Stroud (18m 16s):
Mm-hmm.

Richard Hawkes (18m 16s):
What you want, what they want to hear you showing up with. How they want in it? Because you want everybody to show up powerfully. You don't want… Right? So, this is both sides of that coin, and it explains how they work together. So yeah, it's the whole, it's all the roles within the system of roles, and how they all play full out for the good of the whole from their perspective in the system.

Jim Stroud (18m 49s):
Okay, I get that. I get that. Your approach to getting free of the swirl is built around seven, I think, crucial conversations. I think you described it that way. Why are these conversations so important? What's the goal of these conversations?

Richard Hawkes (19m 2s):
So, I want you to – so you are in the swirl, you're <inaudible>

Jim Stroud (19m 7s):
Mm-hmm.

Richard Hawkes (19m 7s):
Imagine it is a, I don't know, what, a whirlpool. <crosstalk> You're just going around.

Jim Stroud (19m 14s):
Yeah.

Richard Hawkes (19m 14s):
So the Seven Crucial Conversations, think of them as like, a rope or a rope ladder out. Right? Okay.

Jim Stroud (19m 21s):
Yeah.

Richard Hawkes (19m 21s):
So just, how do you get out? And not only how do you get out alone, because you can't navigate the swirl alone. It's a team sport. How do you get out with your manager? How do you get out with your teammates? What conversations do you need to have to have each other's back in a way that actually matters to get out of the swirl? So, think of the rope. I tying up not at the top of the rope. That's a conversation called activate purpose. A tie a note not at the bottom of the rope. That's a conversation called implement initiatives. Now, if you don't have those two things, why bother? If it's not connected to a purpose, and it doesn't connect to your own purpose, so it speaks to you. Why are you showing up?

Richard Hawkes (20m 2s):
Why are you even there? And if it doesn't connect to implementation, where you're actually getting real things done in the real world, not worth bothering either. So, it's got to have those two things. Those are the conversations one and seven. The five ones in between are the handholds all the way up. And here they are. I'm going to start with one and I'll go through. First one is activate purpose. The second one is driving focus. The third one is shifting mindset. The fourth one is specifying capabilities and roles. We're in the swirls conversation. The fifth one is streamlining interdependencies.

Richard Hawkes (20m 42s):
The sixth one is aligning strategies. And the seventh one is implementing initiatives. Those conversations are, they allow you to start anywhere with any issue in this swirl, and figure out how it's related to the other issues, and link it back up to purpose. So, it's a way out. And it's a way out, not just for you alone, their conversations. It's what do you need to talk to about the person with the person next to you, in order to get it all calm down, focus, purposeful, human centric, right? It's how do you get the chaos out of your collective lives and all the insanity out of your business, and it goes back to that knowledge worker piece, right?

Jim Stroud (21m 22s):
Mm-hmm.

Richard Hawkes (21m 23s):
Those are the conversations that you have to get clear about so you can sit down every day and show up, and just be productive. And not spend all your time trying to figure out, “Well, what are we even up to?” Yeah, just burn and all that extra time. So, that's what they are.

Jim Stroud (21m 43s):
It's really a process. It's not an overnight flip of a switch kind of thing, either. I'm noticing. It’s gonna big time.

Richard Hawkes (21m 53s):
It was a developmental journey, yeah.

Jim Stroud (21m 54s):
Sure. Sure.

Richard Hawkes (21m 55s):
That’s right.

Jim Stroud (21m 55s):
Something you book. I like maybe because I'm a James Bond fan. It says that, “High performing teams are the secret agents of transformation.” What do you mean by that? Can you tell? And how can we tell if our own team is high performing?

Richard Hawkes (22m 14s):
So, let me tell you, about a team. I'm not good of this.

Jim Stroud (22m 18s):
Okay.

Richard Hawkes (22m 20s):
But so, I was working with this team. That was a business team that was running a division for a pharma company in Europe. And their biggest issue was they were not getting the resources that they needed in this company, because they were in competition with a US division. The parent company was down under and one of the down under country. So, it was, you know, complicated equation. So, their question was, how do we, from us to over here in Europe, how do we influence the whole organization? How do we take this oil tanker? And how can we be the little teeny rudder that moves the entire thing?

Richard Hawkes (23m 3s):
The entire thing.” right? So basically, how do I, how am I, how are we the secret agents of change? How are we the mouse that roar?”

Jim Stroud (23m 8s):
Right.

Richard Hawkes (23m 8s):
And the Seven CC, Seven Crucial Conversations are roadmap for doing that. Because what happens is, as you go through them, you really clear as a team. Here's our purpose, as a team, for us as a team, and the purpose in the context of your organization. Here's our focus. What journey are we on? Where are we on that journey? What do we need to solve? What are our gaps? You get totally clear about that. You get completely clear about the mindset. How are we in it for each other? How do we solve conflicts? How do we hold each other accountable? Right? How do we build trust? Right that. So now, you're there. Now here's what happens in the conversation that derails everybody, derails every organization's, conversation for its capabilities and roles?

Richard Hawkes (23m 52s):
And why? Because it has to do with power. The minute you start talking about my role, your role, you're in this space where it's like, is it the needs of the business or is it my needs, right? You're in the space. And that's, it's the most dangerous place for any leader to lead. So those first three conversations set you up for that. But here's what happens for teams that follow it, who are down in the organization. They get totally in it together and they start to influence, they start to say, “Look, our needs around the roles are this. This isn't what's working for us. Our needs around strategy, or interdependencies, or implementation are this.” And they now are able to speak with one voice. And going back to that team in Europe, we got aligned around that. They wrote a narrative that was so powerful that the head of that business became the head of the entire organization. Okay. That narrative, his clarity around the needs of the European business, resolved all the conflicts through the needs with the US business. And then he ended up being next CEO of the whole company, because he was from the bottom up influencing. So, it's a roadmap for that. It's a roadmap out, and it's a roadmap for everybody to be able to play. Full out with integrity, right? Powerfully. That's the goal.

Jim Stroud (24m 17s):
Nice, nice. Is it up to business leadership to navigate the company out of the swirl? What's the role of managers and team members?

Richard Hawkes (24m 17s):
So, the role of any leader or manager has to create the conditions for the organization to be successful. And when you look at it through the lens of a machine, you know, your conditions are telling what people want to do. But that's really kinda not a very powerful or high leverage way to work. But if you step back, and you think through the conditions, through this lens of a social system, use the Seven Crucial Conversations to kind of figure out what those conditions are, then that's the role. So basically, the role of leaders is to create the conditions so that the whole organism the whole can be successful. And this is a way to do that. And you can't do it alone, right? These are, with all the messiness of us being human beings, and in all the chaos, it's about real conversations and being able to get down to the, you know, agreements. You know agreements on how we're going to work together. Because that's ultimately the only way to create higher performance.

Jim Stroud (24m 17s):
Sure. And speaking of messy human beings, we hear a lot about toxic workplaces these days. How does workplace toxicity connect to the swirl? And why is it a mistake to put up with toxic behavior from high performers?

Richard Hawkes (24m 17s):
Wow, yeah, that's, um, toxic workplaces are really stressful.

Jim Stroud (24m 17s):
Sure.

Richard Hawkes (24m 17s):
Yeah, I mean It is really stressful. And the reason they're stressful is you have unchecked rumor mills, gossip, you have people positioning themselves that expense of others.

Jim Stroud (24m 17s):
Mm-hmm.

Richard Hawkes (24m 17s):
And these exactly where this swirl is out of control and harmful. Drama. Target rich. You aren’t.

Jim Stroud (24m 17s):
You know, I'm not thinking of a specific company. I'm actually thinking of a TV show. There was a show on TV called House. And he was a brilliant doctor.

Richard Hawkes (24m 17s):
Yeah.

Jim Stroud (24m 17s):
But he had such a nasty attitude. And he was narcissistic manipulator, but he was so good at his job. They would not fire him. He drove everybody around him crazy. That's the kind of atmosphere I'm thinking of when I when asked the question about toxic workplace.

Richard Hawkes (24m 17s):
Well, he's what we would call a toxic rockstar. And toxic rockstars are, they thrive in environments where the swirl is out of control. And these are people they play a critical role.

Jim Stroud (24m 17s):
Mm-hmm.

Richard Hawkes (24m 17s):
Right? But and they have a negative impact on everyone around them, and on the organizational culture. And the excuses always, we can't get rid of them because it's going to tank performance. But the reality is, you can't build a high performing culture if you tolerate their behaviors.

Jim Stroud (24m 17s):
Right.

Richard Hawkes (24m 17s):
And one of the big things that happens from I talked about going from directive leadership to distributed leadership…

Jim Stroud (24m 17s):
Mm-hmm.

Richard Hawkes (24m 17s):
You can tolerate some toxic rockstars under directive leadership, because they're kind of under the protection of the king or queen. But the moment you move to distributed leadership, honestly, they have to clean up their interpersonal relationships, so they have to go because they undermine the entire ability of everyone else to work that way. And that's probably the hardest part when people companies are going through that transition, because leadership has to just step up and say, “No. You know, we can't tolerate any of that anymore.” That the idea of distributed leadership, diversity, inclusion, leveraging creative tensions, these are all distributed leadership ideas. There's no room for toxic rockstars in those worlds.

Jim Stroud (24m 17s):
Yeah. Yeah. No matter how much of a rockstar they are, it'll take the whole enterprise.

Richard Hawkes (24m 17s):
Yeah.

Jim Stroud (24m 17s):
I totally get it. And eventually to get rid of House on the show too. That’s okay.

Richard Hawkes (24m 21s):
Yeah.

Jim Stroud (24m 22s):
Totally get it. Can you give us an example or two of how a company has successfully broken free from problems, turf battles, and drama?

Jim Stroud (29m 55s):
Drama like House.

Richard Hawkes (29m 56s):
Yeah, drama like House. So, you don't -- Alright, so I'm going to use an old expression which is cheesy. But you know, it's the expression you know, before enlightenment, you chop wood and you know, collect water and after enlightenment, you chop wood.

Jim Stroud (30m 13s):
Sure.

Richard Hawkes (30m 13s):
Collect water. It's the exact same kind of idea. The drama never goes away. The people problems never go. They don't go away. It's just you are now skilled together at recognizing them and redirecting the energy towards something that's positive. Like, you know, as opposed to one big explosion by lighting your gas tank, it's actually going into an engine and creating forward momentum. So, it never really, you never get free, you just harness the energy of it. Now, there are lots of companies that we've worked with. I'll say that every day we've worked with and at this point, it's hundreds, takes them.

Richard Hawkes (30m 56s):
They notice a significant change almost immediately, but really, within about three or four months, and the team. They get, they reach a kind of a level of, I'd say mastery enough that they're able to be self-sustaining, usually takes about seven months. You know, you kind of practice. And I'm not talking about… It's just, you know, this is once a month meeting and kind of really practicing these skills. It's like learning a language does that. And then with teams, what happens with these teams is that they're high performing teams, and they become, they go viral. Like, they, when you have multiple teams on this journey in parallel, they begin to lock, sync up with each other, and they begin to actually create high performing organizations.

Richard Hawkes (31m 43s):
They'll start to recognize, well, this, we're on a journey towards competitive advantage. How do we align in that direction for the good of our business, as opposed for their function, right?

Jim Stroud (31m 58s):
Right.

Richard Hawkes (31m 58s):
They come together. This gives them not only how they align with each other, but how they align across teams. And so, as the team gets good at it, this role gets under control. As teams bind together, and it begins to spread, the whole organization gets it under control. And the length of that journeys can be radically different, depending on the complexity of an organization. What I'm working with right now, they have 50,000 employees. We are really on the journey with maybe the top 400-500 people right now. We're working with, I don't know, if there may be 30 teams that are doing some part of that on this journey.

Richard Hawkes (32m 38s):
And it's been about three years. And now, they're really, I mean, they're really, it's led them at individual team level on the journey. But now, they're really taking tough choices. And some of these choices have been choices they put off for 30 years, 40 years, they're now really taking them on. You know, how are they going to compete in the digital world? You know, how are they going to do it with integrity of purpose and integrity of values? Right? Right. All of these conversations, but that's what happens. And that's when, but it all happens because you kind of have, you have an operating system, that allows everybody in the system to play full out, talk to each other, and kind of engage anywhere they need to engage.

Richard Hawkes (33m 25s):
And that's the opposite of thinking of it as a machine. It's thinking of it as, you know, human beings in relationship with each other playing full out. So, did I answer your question?

Jim Stroud (33m 35s):
Yes, you did. You did. I'm just thinking, as someone who's listening to the podcast, even though I'm on the podcast. Someone's thinking, “You know what, this is a lot to take in.” What is like, baby step me through it?" Like, hold my hand and baby step me through it. What's the first step someone needs to take to recognize that the organization is caught up in the swirl? What’s that baby step, first they need to do?

Richard Hawkes (33m 59s):
So, getting out of the swirls an inside out journey. Right?

Jim Stroud (34m 6s):
Yeah.

Richard Hawkes (34m 6s):
Like, so, the first step is actually to choose to engage with the swirl. And it's recognized, you got four choices. You really do. We all have four choices, just like when you confront anything, you have four choices.

Jim Stroud (34m 24s):
Okay.

Richard Hawkes (34m 26s):
Three of them are healthy, and one of them is completely toxic. So, the first choice, the first move, that you can make, is you decide that you're okay with it and you can live with it. So, you're get, this is kind of the Gandhi choice or the whatever, like. You know, what, you learn to meditate, detach, you're gonna be fine. Right? That's one choice. I don't know how many people can do it, but it's one choice, right?

Jim Stroud (34m 54s):
I’m thinking. Well, for some reason. I'm thinking that's a marriage analogy, but go ahead.

Richard Hawkes (35m 1s):
Yeah, that will <inaudible> right? So, the second choice is you could actually leave. You could leave the organization. Go somewhere else where the swirl is not so horrendous, right? That's a completely legitimate choice. It's often the only healthy choice for people. It's not the one that company wants for their people. It's not the one and executive would want. But for you, that might be the absolute best thing for you. Right? Get clear about it. Clean, break, go find a better place. Those are two healthy choices. The third choice is the toxic one. You pretend like you're okay and you're not. You continue to struggle with all the nonsense, and it wears you down, and it makes you bitter. And for some people, they act in a victimized way, like, you just start resonating with the gossip mill and the rumor mill.

Richard Hawkes (35m 46s):
Guess what, you just became a source for the swirl. You're just driving it. So, you, get it one, that's choice three. For the fourth choice, which is the one actually the book is written for, for people who take this choice. And then other ones, I would say, then read the book. It's to engage with it. And engaging with it means you actually come to the conclusion that you can't do it alone. And you're tired of struggling alone. And you come to the conclusion, that you're not waiting for somebody to give you a team that has your back. You're gonna build your own team that has your back, and you're gonna get insistent on it.

Richard Hawkes (36m 29s):
And you're gonna get very insistent that your needs are met, so you can show up with everyone else in a powerful way. And that's the choice that unlocks all of it. Right? And then everything else, you know, all the stuff that I've described, and the complexity of it, you know, it's like learning a language. It just is a lot. But if you take that choice, you then are on a journey that makes all of that really, very kind of, you just, you can digest it, step by step.

Jim Stroud (37m 0s):
Well, I think a lot of HR leaders can take advantage of the wisdom, the sage wisdom in your book, navigate the swirl. Where can they pick it up? Is it on Amazon?

Richard Hawkes (37m 11s):
It's on Amazon. Yeah.

Jim Stroud (37m 12s):
Okay. Okay. Very good. Very good. Is there anything that I should have asked you that I did not ask you that you want to just deliberate on right now? But yeah? So, I just want to be sure I get it all of that.

Richard Hawkes (37m 29s):
Yeah, I want to I want to ask you…

Jim Stroud (37m 31s):
Okay.

Richard Hawkes (37m 33s):
Right. We're looking at each other. Human being, human being. So, and you brought up, “Hey, you know, there's all this complexity and all this.” So, how does, what we just talked about, you know, what is your heart say? What is your… You know what? You look at this stuff all the time. How do you? What we're talking about, is this the kind of thing you…? I'm not saying believe me, because you gotta read it, right? To believe me.

Jim Stroud (38m 2s):
Right.

Richard Hawkes (38m 3s):
But I am saying, is this the kind of path through this, that you feel like in your life, it's something you would want?

Jim Stroud (38m 10s):
Oh, definitely. I think at a gut level that resonates with me personally. And I think it also resonates with a lot of listeners right now. Because even if someone doesn't accept your solutions, they do recognize that a gut level that they do have issues that have to be resolved. And I think that if they read your book, they will get at least some ideas on how to deal with things and maybe they'll come around to your way of thinking or not. But I think at a gut level, most companies organization, everyone listening at a gut level understands that the things you're talking about, they're dealing with whether they want to admit it or not, on some level.

Richard Hawkes (38m 52s):
Yeah, we're all on a journey. Right?

Jim Stroud (38m 57s):
For sure.

Richard Hawkes (38m 55s):
We're all trying to share it out. And I guess all we can really do is offer each other what we're learning?

Jim Stroud (38m 53s):
Yes.

Richard Hawkes (38m 52s):
Okay?

Jim Stroud (38m 53s):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, very much. So, Richard Hawkes. Thanks so much for your time. You are appreciated. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for being on TribePod.

Richard Hawkes (38m 52s):
Thank you.

Jim Stroud (38m 51s):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you for listening and subscribing to our podcast. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please send them to us. You can reach us at TribePod, that's T-R-I-B-E-P-O-D@proactivetalent.com. We look forward to hearing from you.