1-Page Summary

Why do certain organizations become greater than the sum of their parts while other groups fall short?

The solution to this problem rests not in the intellect or experience of your team, but rather in their ability to work together as a unit. Think of group culture like a machine. If all of the cogs are intricate but don’t operate with the other cogs, the machine won’t run. You’re left with an expensive, but useless piece of junk. On the other hand, if all of the cogs operate smoothly with one another, the machine runs efficiently—even if some of the cogs aren’t as developed as the others.

Successful group cultures are built on the development of three foundational concepts: safety (you belong here), vulnerability (you can take risks), and purpose (you are here for a reason).

Safety: The Cornerstone of Interconnectivity

What Is Safety and Why Does It Matter?

Key Attributes: A safe work culture creates an environment in which team members feel like valued members of the organization. No one wants to feel like they’re not appreciated. Safety in the workplace lets team members feel like they belong in the group, are connected to other members of the organization, and are comfortable in their position.

Benefit #1: When team members feel safe, they develop strong chemistry with one another. Team members communicate efficiently, contribute new ideas regularly, and give their input energetically. This allows them to work as a cohesive unit.

Benefit #2: When employees feel valued and supported in the workplace, they are willing to go above and beyond, even if the problem at hand is not technically their responsibility. Rather than spending a significant amount of time and energy strategizing, teams dive into issues head-first. They’re even more willing to work after hours to resolve the issues.

Benefit #3: Through a communal sense of belonging, employees develop and maintain interconnectivity even in times of tension. Groups will experience highs and lows—that’s just a fact of life. If team members feel safe, they’ll stick together and acknowledge their shared humanity, even in the most volatile of times.

What Are the Consequences of an Unsafe Work Environment?

Consequence #1: When an organization lacks safety, team members develop insecurity. They consistently ask themselves: Do I belong here? Is my work any good? Do other people want me here? When insecurity dictates behavior, team members struggle to connect.

Consequence #2: When team members begin to resent their environment, negativity infects the workplace. It spreads quickly between employees and disrupts productive workflow. When team members begin to collapse under the pressures of negativity, they make mistakes.

How Can You Develop Safety?

You can cultivate safety by using behaviors and actions known as belonging cues. These cues make team members feel safe and comfortable in the workplace and address three specific topics: connection, future, and security:

Connection
Future
Security

In addition to using belonging cues, here are a few other methods to help you develop a safe environment:

Create a “collision-rich” workspace. “Collisions” are personal interactions between team members that promote connection through community. To create a “collision-rich” workplace:

Promote a vocal workforce. Team members must feel comfortable speaking up and providing input. To promote open communication:

Let yourself (and your team) have fun. This may sound trivial, but genuine enjoyment is essential to developing psychological safety. In fact, laughter is a key indicator of a safe and well-connected workplace. Take the time to create engaging and entertaining activities through which you and your team can simply have a good time and bond.

Vulnerability: The Foundation of Teamwork

What Is Vulnerability and Why Does It Matter?

Key Attributes: Vulnerability is the exposure of personal weakness followed by a request for help or support. This exposure develops a collective sense of trust: We can show the areas where we struggle and help strengthen each other.

Team members develop relationships through the exchange of vulnerability—a process known as the Vulnerability Loop:

Benefit #1: When team members trust one another enough to be vulnerable, they can communicate openly and honestly. Discussions surrounding failure are not always comfortable, but they’re essential. By directly asking for help, team members can locate flaws and either solve them before they escalate or plan for them in the future.

Benefit #2: When team members are vulnerable and trust one another, they can act quickly and cooperatively, even in high-pressure situations. They rely on each member of the group to do their job accurately and ask for assistance if necessary. The group is able to move as if part of a well-oiled machine, with each cog of the machine fulfilling its purpose and relying on the other cogs to fulfill theirs.

Benefit #3: Teams can collectively discover the best solutions to problems through feedback. Vulnerability often reveals problem areas. Team members with different backgrounds, experiences, and expertise can develop solutions to these issues through feedback sessions and collective insight.

What Are the Consequences of an Unwillingness to Show Vulnerability?

Consequence #1: Insecurity takes over. A culture that prohibits vulnerability tends to punish people for showing weakness. As a result, team members get insecure about their performance and become defensive. They reject feedback and fail to see errors in their own logic, robbing the group of the opportunity to fix issues.

Consequence #2: People don’t notice issues. If the work environment does not allow team members to ask for help, the team won’t find potential issues in proposals or projects. Without feedback, the team robs themselves of the opportunity to fix these issues.

How Can You Develop Vulnerability?

Lead by example. No signal of vulnerability is more powerful than one that comes from a leader. When team members see a high-level member of the group admit to a mistake, they immediately feel more comfortable owning up to their own mistakes and concerns. Accepting imperfection and opening yourself up to scrutiny develops trust.

Be a better listener. Team members want to feel heard, especially when expressing vulnerability. Make sure that your team members know that you are listening closely and care about what they have to say. The most effective listeners:

Be candid, not brutal. You don’t want to demoralize or embarrass the person you are giving feedback to, but, at the same time, you need to be straightforward with your feedback. The best approach is to aim for candor: make your feedback specific and avoid making it personal or judgmental.

Give bad news or negative feedback in person. When bad news is sent digitally, it feels cold and can easily be misunderstood. Speaking in person allows for team members to connect on a personal level, even when the conversation is inherently negative.

Design activities that promote honest feedback. As you begin developing feedback meetings, standardize them and schedule them consistently. The more often you hold these meetings, the more comfortable the team will become sharing vulnerability and developing solutions.

Purpose: The Core of Decision-Making

What Is Purpose and Why Does It Matter?

Key Attributes: Purpose creates a central message that guides the direction of the company. Purpose answers the question: why do we do what we do? Leaders use purpose to focus the attention of the group towards a singular goal through a set of small signals. These signals can include direct reminders of purpose or indirect symbols such as catchphrases, iconography, and mission statements.

Benefit #1: Giving team members a sense of purpose changes their perspective on their work. When someone feels as though they are working on something that matters, their entire approach changes, typically increasing the quality of the work.

Benefit #2: People with purpose learn faster. Connecting the process of learning a new skill to the importance of that skill helps team members understand the purpose of their efforts. Consequently, they’ll devote energy and attention to understanding that skill. This energy improves “learning velocity” (the speed at which a team improves upon a new skill).

What Are the Consequences of a Lack of Purpose?

Consequence #1: Without constant reminders of purpose as motivation and guidance, teams fail to perform up to standard because they don’t grasp the big-picture framework of their actions. Work becomes tedious and work ethic, product quality, and communication tend to decrease.

Consequence #2: Without a unified purpose, team members make inconsistent (and often harmful) decisions that don’t fall in line with the company’s philosophy—often without even realizing it.

How Can You Develop Purpose?

Give priorities a name and rank. Focus on what’s important to your organization. Clear priorities allow team members to make decisions with consistency, even without direct instruction.

Develop a unified language through the use of catchphrases. Catchphrases make company ideals easy to remember and immediately actionable. Keep them simple and straightforward:

Use mental contrasting. Mental contrasting is the process of visualizing an attainable goal, then visualizing the obstacles. This process creates a story that reminds teams of where they are, where they are going and why:

High-Proficiency vs High-Creativity Environments

Different groups have different priorities. When developing a high-purpose environment, you must determine if your organization requires a high-proficiency or a high-creativity environment.

High-Proficiency Environments

Environments in which failure must be avoided require a high-level of proficiency. Think of a military organization or a restaurant. Failure results in severe consequences and often takes significant effort to remedy.

The purpose of a high-proficiency workplace is to create an environment in which team members can make quick and appropriate decisions while working as a singular unit. The goal of a leader in a high-proficiency environment is to lead the team from point A to point B in the most efficient way possible, while adhering to the standards and ethics of the organization. The leader does this by creating a clear central message that allows employees to make consistent decisions based on the principles of the company.

When crafting a high-proficiency environment, train your team members using repetition and feedback. Reinforce standards, practices, and processes. The more a team is reminded of procedures, the faster they become routine. Also, remind team members of the importance of their positions by explaining the purpose of their roles as well as what they bring to the team.

High-Creativity Environments

On the other hand, environments in which failure is a necessary component to development require a high-level of creativity. Think of a design company or a movie studio. The process of creation requires a degree of failure as the improvement of a new concept develops through trial and error.

The purpose of a high-creativity workplace is to create a space in which artists and creative people can discover their work for themselves. When a company’s core purpose is to promote creation, teams have the freedom to fail quickly and often. Even if 90% percent of the ideas end up failing, the 10% that work can lead to incredible discoveries or advancements. The goal of a leader in a high-creativity environment is to lead the team into the unknown by giving them the tools to explore without hindering their journey.

When crafting a high-creativity environment, safeguard creative freedom and embrace failure. Autonomy is essential to the creative process. Without it, teams feel as though they have no ownership over their process. Give teams a framework, but avoid taking too much direct control of the process or taking over when failure occurs. Instead, be prepared to have a conversation about what that failure taught the group by creating activities and environments in which feedback can be given routinely and honestly.

Introduction

Why do certain organizations become greater than the sum of their parts while other groups fall short?

This question has plagued the business world for centuries. Many companies have attempted to solve the problem by hiring experienced employees, enforcing strict performance standards, or taking direct control of projects. Unfortunately, none of these produce consistent results. While the skills of individual team members have obvious implications in the workplace, they are not indicators of success.

The solution to this problem rests not in the intellect or experience of your team, but rather in their ability to work together as a unit. Think of group culture like a machine. If all of the cogs are intricate but don’t operate with the other cogs, the machine won’t run. You’re left with an expensive, but useless piece of junk. On the other hand, if all of the cogs operate smoothly with one another, the machine runs efficiently, even if some of the cogs aren’t as developed as the others.

Kindergarteners vs. Business School Students

Peter Skillman, a designer and engineer, developed a test to determine how synergy impacted success. He asked teams to build the tallest structure possible using uncooked spaghetti, tape, string, and a marshmallow. Half of the teams consisted of MBA students. The other half consisted of kindergarteners. The MBA students built structures that averaged about 10 inches. However, the kindergarteners built structures that averaged 26 inches. How did kindergarteners outperform MBA students?

The MBA students got caught up in a process known as status management. Status management is when team members attempt to figure out who’s in charge, where they fit into the group, and how they are supposed to interact with their fellow team members. The MBA students spent so much time trying to figure all of this out that they failed to effectively solve the problem in time.

The kindergarteners, on the other hand, had no concerns about their place in the group. Instead, they immediately began experimenting, playing with different methods of construction, calling out issues as they saw them, and offering assistance to their team members without hesitation. Though their efforts seemed chaotic, they were actually working in a more efficient way than their business school counterparts. The kindergarteners may not have had the education, experience, or skills that the MBA students possessed, but their interactions were informed by a group culture that allowed them to work without fear.

Teams that excel beyond the skill sets or education of their individual team members develop strong internal cultures that promote selfless behavior and experimental thinking. The establishment of this culture depends upon the development of three foundational concepts: safety (you belong here), vulnerability (you can take risks), and purpose (you are here for a reason).

In this summary, we’ll discuss the key attributes and benefits of each of these concepts as well as the consequences of their absence. Once you have an idea of what each of these entails, we’ll break down different ways you can implement these ideas into your workplace.

(Shortform note: the original text develops the attributes, benefits, costs, and tips for each concept (safety, vulnerability, and purpose) over several chapters and anecdotes. For the sake of clarity, we’ve reorganized the content to highlight the core concepts of the text, with the anecdotes acting as support.)

Part 1: Safety | Chapters 1-5: What Is Safety and Why Does It Matter?

Safety is the cornerstone of interconnection. It develops direct communication, honest feedback, and a willingness to go above and beyond through constant signals of belonging. In this section, we’ll discuss the key attributes of safety, why it's good for workplace culture, and problems that arise when it's missing.

The Key Attributes of Safety

Open and Honest Communication

In a safe work environment, employees are willing and able to speak out, regardless of the hierarchy of the company. The group is concerned with one task: solving problems to promote success. This means that even the low-level intern has the ability to speak to the CEO, which makes them feel secure in their importance to the team. Though they may be a small cog in the machine, they are essential to its operation.

In a safe environment, team members feel valued. No one wants to feel like they’re not appreciated. Safety lets team members feel like they belong in the group and have something substantial to contribute.

Note: safety does not imply niceness. Sometimes, courtesy must be put aside to allow for direct, unadulterated feedback. However, in a safe work environment, this bluntness comes from a place of care and a genuine desire to develop success.

Belonging Cues

Safe working cultures are full of behaviors and actions known as belonging cues. These cues create a feeling of safety and comfort within the workplace and address three specific topics: connection, future, and security:

Examples of belonging cues include:

The Benefits of Safety

Benefit #1: Chemistry

When team members repeatedly use belonging cues, they develop strong chemistry with one another. It sends a message to team members: you are a part of this team and you belong. This creates magnetic workplaces that nurture efficiency and cohesion. Team members communicate quickly, contribute new ideas regularly, and give their input energetically.

The Allen Curve

Thomas Allen, a professor from MIT, wanted to understand the science behind group chemistry. Through his research, he discovered that successful groups had one thing in common: their desks were in close proximity to one another.

As a result of this discovery, Allen developed a concept he called the “Allen Curve.” The Allen Curve displays the correlation between physical proximity to frequency of communication. Essentially, the closer team members are to one another, the stronger their chemistry and their resulting work.

culture-code-allen-curve.png

Benefit #2: Willingness to Go Above and Beyond

When employees feel valued and supported in the workplace, they are willing to go above and beyond, even if the problem at hand is not technically their responsibility. Rather than spending a significant amount of time and energy strategizing, teams dive into issues head-first. They’re even more willing to work after hours to resolve the issues.

The Targeted Advertisements Race

At the start of the 21st century, software engineering companies were in a race to discover the best way to deliver targeted advertisements to consumers—a discovery that could potentially jumpstart a multi-billion dollar industry. The clear favorite was a company called Overture. Valued at a billion dollars, the company was already thriving and hired some of the most intelligent minds in the software and advertising industries.

However, this powerhouse company lost the race to a small company called Google. Though they did not have nearly the same amount of funding or experience and were relatively unknown at the time, Google managed to come out on top and dominate the industry.

How did a company with an obscene amount of talent and seemingly endless funds lose out to a young startup? The small upstart used belonging cues in their day-to-day operations. For instance, they developed connection through full-contact hockey games and developed security through open discussion forums. Employees were willing to go above and beyond for the organization because they felt intrinsically connected to the group. Individuals felt empowered to solve problems that weren’t explicitly assigned to them—one person personally took on a challenge of mismatched ads.

At Overture, on the other hand, employees had no desire to perform outside of their given positions because the leadership failed to develop a safe and connected work environment.

Google won, not because it was the more intelligent company, but because it was the culturally safer company.

Benefit #3: Connection Despite Tension

Even in times of incredible tension, employees can develop and maintain interconnection. Groups will experience highs and lows—that’s just a fact of life. But if safety has been established in the workplace, team members will stick together even in the most volatile of times.

The Christmas Truce of 1914

The Flanders trenches of WWI produced some of the most violent fighting in military history. Despite this, soldiers on both sides along the trench came together on Christmas Eve, sharing food, music, and laughter, leading to one of the largest unsanctioned cease-fires in military history.

This unofficial truce did not happen overnight. It was the result of months of small interactions between the two sides through belonging cues:

These “mini-truces” fostered a sense of empathy between the warring soldiers as they were reminded of the humanity of the opposing side. Though this is an extreme example, it clearly demonstrates the ways in which belonging cues significantly impact people’s perception of safety.

The Consequences of an Unsafe Environment

The Absence of Belonging Cues

When belonging cues are not present in the workplace, safety quickly disappears and efficiency drops drastically:

Belonging Cue When Present When Absent
Connection The team works together towards a common goal through support and input. Cohesion dissipates as team members have no sense of support or camaraderie.
Indication of Future Work ethic increases as the promise of a long-term future incentivizes effort. Work ethic deteriorates as employees have no long-term incentives in sight.
Security Team members willingly contribute ideas without fear of retaliation. Employees begin to cut corners and only contribute the bare minimum out of fear.

Consequence #1: Negativity Infects the Workplace

When team members begin to resent their environment, they work with a lingering sense of insecurity: Do I belong here? Is my work any good? Do other people want me here? These insecurities lead to the development of negative behaviors such as:

Negativity is contagious. It spreads quickly between employees and disrupts productive workflow.

The Bad Apple Experiment

Forty 4-person groups attempted to develop a marketing plan for a startup. An actor was placed within each of these teams with the task of disrupting performance by injecting a negative behavior into the group (aggression, laziness, or depression). In almost all of the teams, the actor’s bad behavior corrupted the other team members, often leading the other members of the group to behave in a similar way to the actor.

On the sole productive team, a leader figure managed to defuse the actor’s negative behavior by responding to his hostility with non-biting humor and by navigating the group back to the task at hand. They managed to excel thanks to the leader’s ability to create a safe working environment as the actor disrupted the volatile behavior.

Consequence #2: People Make Mistakes

An unsafe environment causes mistakes in a number of ways:

You may try to fix these mistakes with aggressive, proactive discipline. However, discipline without connection creates resentment. Employees feel attacked as the intentions behind the feedback are unclear. Discipline in this manner demoralizes the team and makes even the most capable employees ineffective.

The Minuteman Missileers

The Minuteman Missileers oversee the protection and day-to-day upkeep of some of the most powerful weapons in the world. Despite their dangerous and powerful position, the Missileers have regularly made significant errors within recent years, including (but not limited to):

What is causing some of the most well-trained members of the military to fail so regularly? Their work environment lacks safety. If you look at their company culture within the framework of belonging cues, the reasons for their mistakes become abundantly clear:

Exercise: How Safe Is Your Workplace?

Safety in the workplace requires the presence of constant belonging cues. Identify experiences in your work life that could benefit from the development of safety.

Chapter 6: How Can You Develop Safety?

Now that you understand the key attributes of safety and the importance of its development, let’s discuss ways you can implement safety in your workplace.

Communication and Interaction

Belonging Cues

Deliver a constant stream of belonging cues. Trust is difficult to develop and requires persistence. On their own, individual belonging cues do not make much of a difference. Giving constant reminders of belonging allows team members to gradually feel more comfortable and safe. Here are a few methods to develop each aspect of belonging cues:

Feedback

Use belonging cues in your feedback. Belonging cues remind people that your feedback is meant to be constructive and helpful. When team members know they are appreciated and cared for, they are much more receptive to critique.

Use “Magical Feedback” When giving feedback, ensure that team members know the following:

An Ivy League study shows that the use of this “magical feedback” drastically improves response and performance.

Avoid “Sandwich Feedback.” “Sandwich Feedback” is the process of delivering feedback in a “positive-negative-positive” format (start with a positive comment, give an area of improvement, and end with another positive comment). This style of feedback can be confusing and doesn’t communicate the information clearly. Give positive and negative feedback separately:

The Spurs

Gregg Popovich (head coach of the San Antonio Spurs) is known to have a temper, often going off on his star players. However, he is also statistically one of the most successful coaches in the history of the NBA. How does someone express so much anger, yet still yield results? Even through his frustration, Popovich uses belonging cues within his feedback:

Listening and Defusal

Magnify your listening cues. Even small interjections such as “uh-huh” or “yes” make a difference. This encourages and energizes employees as they communicate their ideas and concepts. With this in mind, do not mistake interruption for engagement. Interrupting someone while they are attempting to communicate destroys any sense of connection that had been developed throughout the conversation.

Defuse negative behaviors and remove antagonistic employees. Negativity disrupts productive workflow. Methods of defusal include:

The Hiring Process and “Threshold Moments”

Be methodical and specific when hiring. Take the time to determine work ethic, ability to perform, and chemistry. This will save you a lot of energy down the line as you can more accurately determine proficiency and fit before an employee becomes a part of the company culture:

Use belonging cues in your hiring and onboarding process. The sooner employees feel connected to the group, the sooner they can become a productive member of your company’s culture. Start this process as soon as you meet potential employees:

Take advantage of “threshold moments,” which are first impressions, either the first day that someone joins or the first moment you meet each day. Use belonging cues in threshold moments.

The Call Center That Cared

In Bangalore, India, a call-center called WIPRO (pronounced WHIP-row) was having issues with turn-over. At the end of each year, 50-70% of employees were leaving the company. They tried introducing financial incentives and employee benefits, but nothing seemed to work.

WIPRO leadership decided to bring on a research team to try to help them solve the problem. The research team developed an experiment. During onboarding, they split new employees into three groups:

A year after the experiment was completed, the data showed that members of Group Two were significantly more likely to stay on-board compared to Group One or Group Three. By making a personal connection with the new hires, WIPRO saw a drastic rise in retention as employees were more inclined to stay on board with a company that took the time to connect with them.

Leadership

Promote a Vocal Workforce

Promote honesty and directness, especially surrounding feedback and “bad news.” When you receive news from someone, be sure to thank them. If people don’t feel safe delivering bad news, you often won’t get the information—even if it’s essential.

Seek out connection and create environments in which people can have a voice. Until given a platform or permission, many team members will not feel comfortable speaking up out of fear or insecurity. Ways to ensure team members are voicing their opinions or concerns include:

Interaction and Community

Create an environment that promotes interaction through “collision-rich” workspaces. “Collisions” are personal interactions between team members that promote connection through community. These interactions develop chemistry between team members and create an environment in which you and your team can use belonging cues to their fullest extent. To create a “collision-rich” workplace:

Serve the group, even in seemingly small ways. Participating in small tasks sends a powerful message: I am not above you; I am in this with you. This message promotes connection between you and your team and develops mutual respect. Some ways you can begin to serve the group include:

Let yourself (and your team) have fun. This may sound trivial, but genuine enjoyment is essential to developing psychological safety. In fact, laughter is a key indicator of a safe and well-connected workplace. Take the time to create engaging and entertaining activities through which you and your team can simply have a good time and bond. These can be workplace activities (a group lunch once a week or a friendly contest) or external events (sporting events or team retreats).

Exercise: Develop Safety in Your Workplace

Developing safety in the workplace takes time, effort, and planning. The sooner you implement core concepts of safety into your company culture, the sooner you will see a change in your organization.

Exercise: Implement Belonging Cues

Belonging cues are the foundation of developing safety in the workplace. Consider your current workplace and think about how you can apply belonging cues into the day-to-day operations of your office.

Part 2: Vulnerability | Chapters 7-11: What Is Vulnerability and Why Does It Matter?

Once a team feels like a connected unit, team members must feel comfortable showing vulnerability. Vulnerability is the cornerstone of teamwork in the workplace. In this section, we’ll discuss the key attributes of vulnerability, why it's good for workplace culture, and problems that arise when it's missing.

The Key Attributes of Vulnerability

Vulnerability is the exposure of personal weakness followed by a call for help or support. This develops a collective sense of trust: We can show the areas where we struggle and help strengthen each other.

Vulnerability requires humility. All team members (but leaders in particular) must be willing to admit when they’ve made mistakes. It sends a message: I am not perfect, and I know that your feedback can help me.

The Three Tools of Vulnerability

Tool #1: Using Notifications

Notifications are quick bursts of communication in which information is shared. They are observations, not commands, and provide context through which the team may operate more efficiently. They remove the “fluff” from a conversation and focus solely on the task at hand. When exchanging notifications, team members address issues and explain actions. For example, a pilot in a “mayday situation” may call out “we don’t have brakes” or “I’m turning the plane now.”

United Airlines Flight 232

On July 10, 1989, United Airlines Flight 232 experienced what the National Transportation Safety Board describes as a catastrophic failure. They lost control of the plane after an engine exploded and cut through both the main and backup hydraulic control lines.

Though flying blind, the pilot, co-pilot and an emergency flight simulation expert managed to get the plane to the ground. When simulations were run after the incident, every test crew failed under the same circumstances.

How did the crew aboard Flight 232 manage to overcome unbeatable odds? The team communicated via notifications at triple the rate of the average airline crew as they revealed issues, explained actions and responded to questions. Because of the increased communication, the pilots managed to save the lives of 185 people.

Tool #2: The Vulnerability Loop

The Vulnerability Loop is the exchange of vulnerability between two or more parties. This requires the introduction of vulnerability by one party and typically follows the following steps:

When this process is repeated throughout an entire organization, groups can build a support system through which they collaborate and problem-solve.

The Give Some Game

The game:

On average, people give away 2.5 tokens, leaning towards cooperation without going to extremes. However, when researchers added the vulnerability loop to this game, tendencies changed.

Participants in one study were asked to perform a lengthy activity on a computer that had been set to crash just as they were about to finish. After the computer crashed, another participant (who was actually secretly one of the researchers running the project) would graciously spend time “repairing” the computer. They would succeed after a bit of time, saving the participant from having to restart the task.

After this experience, the participants were asked to play the Give-Some game. The participants who had been helped were significantly more generous—not only with the individual who supported them but with total strangers. The show of vulnerability and the support that followed created a bond of trust that permeated throughout every interaction in the game.

Tool #3: Active Listening

Active listening forces the listener to put their ego aside and create an environment in which vulnerability can be expressed. While they may speak up occasionally to ask a clarifying question or offer guidance, good listeners keep their focus on the other person. In contrast, constantly thinking of what you’re going to say next prevents you from taking in and processing the words of the other person.

Concordances

Dr. Carl Marci developed a method through which he could scientifically track the connection between people via galvanic skin response (an indicator of emotional response determined by a change in electrical resistance in the skin). In his experiments, Marci noticed moments in which the responses in the skin of both the speaker and the listener would sync up. He called these moments concordances. Concordances typically occurred when one of the individuals involved in the conversation stopped speaking and put all of their energy into listening to the other party.

In a specific example, Marci recorded a session between himself and his therapist in which he spoke about his experience proposing to his then-girlfriend. While Marci spoke, his therapist only responded in affirmative nods, smiles, and noises. Despite his lack of speech, the data showed that the session contained several moments of concordance. Instead of speaking, his therapist listened. Rather than interrupt or intervene, he tried to process and understand Marci’s point of view. Through active listening, Marci’s therapist connected to Marci without saying a word.

The Benefits of Vulnerability

Benefit #1: The Development of Trust and the Removal of Insecurity

Once team members are willing to express a need for assistance, they develop trust and are able to address issues head-on without the obstacles of self-doubt or competition.

The Red Balloons

In 2009, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) created a challenge to explore the best ways to prepare for potential future attacks. They released 10 red balloons in secret locations throughout the United States and offered $40,000 to the first team that could locate all of them.

Across the country, various teams began preparing, creating new search engine software, constructing teams of software engineers and hackers, and tapping into existing information networks. One team from MIT, however, did none of the above, had next to no funding, and only began preparing mere days before the challenge launched, yet managed to win the challenge within 9 hours.

How did an underfunded, underprepared team win a near impossible challenge in mere hours? The team at MIT created a website that invited people to join their team with the promise of $2,000 to the person who found each balloon, $1,000 to the person who invited that person, $500 to the person who invited the person who invited that person, and so on. When all was said and done, 4,665 people aided in MIT’s effort to find the balloons.

The team succeeded through the promotion of the vulnerability loop. By granting payouts to the people who made the invites as well as the individual who made the discovery, they created a vulnerability loop driven by financial incentives. It promoted asking for help as a prize was available even if you did not make the actual discovery.

On other teams, financial incentives were only given to people who made the actual discovery. This led to selfish behavior as inviting friends to help with the process could cost participants a payout.

Benefit #2: Quick and Cooperative Decision-Making

Vulnerability develops trust. With trust, team members can act quickly and cooperatively, even in high-pressure situations. The group is able to move as if part of a well-oiled machine, with each cog of the machine fulfilling its purpose and relying on the other cogs to fulfill theirs.

Log PT

In training, the Navy SEALs go through a series of exercises known as Log Physical Training (Log PT). In Log PT, a team of six trainees gets pushed to their limits through a variety of exercises in which they carry an unwieldy telephone pole.

Success in these exercises relies on coordination and cooperation. When Log PT succeeds, the movement between exercises seems simple and fluid. When one teammate struggles, the team takes on additional weight to support them until they regain balance. Each trainee relies on their teammates to support them in their times of weakness and vice versa.

Log PT forces trainees to make choices for the betterment of the group instead of personal advancements. This lesson applies to battlefield demeanor as SEALs must be able to work as a singular unit and support one another in life-or-death situations.

Benefit #3: Collective Problem-Solving

Vulnerability often reveals problem areas, and open feedback produces a variety of potential solutions through collective insight. Feedback via committee curates opinions from team members with different backgrounds, expertise, and experience that allow the group to determine the best route forward.

Inspirational team members can help individual projects flourish through surfacing. Surfacing is the process of bringing tensions and solutions to the surface through a series of questions and conversations. Through surfacing, team members can begin to look at the problem in different ways and spot different directions for their projects.

BrainTrusts: Feedback via Committee

At Pixar, the director of a project receives feedback through a series of meetings called BrainTrust meetings. In these meetings, producers and other directors pick apart the film in detail. Through an analysis of the film’s flaws, the team begins to determine the best ways in which the film can improve.

BrainTrust meetings require extreme levels of trust and vulnerability. Directors must be comfortable exposing a project they are passionate about to intense scrutiny. Though the process is often frustrating and painful, the resulting product improves drastically.

Givechi: Surfacing

Roshi Givechi works for IDEO, one of the most successful design companies in the world. Givechi moves between teams, asking the challenging questions and pushing team members to think beyond their current frame of mind.

Givechi (who coined the term “surfacing”) is never confrontational. Rather, she sparks conversation through questions such as:

While some of her questions may seem simplistic or obvious, they allow for team members to unearth issues or potential solutions they may not have recognized before.

Benefit #4: Preparation for Future Issues

Vulnerability does not only apply to immediate issues or projects. Through a willingness to have plans picked apart, team members can make future obstacles easier to overcome by planning for problems before they occur.

SEAL Team Six

In its 2011 operation to kill Osama Bin Laden, SEAL Team Six rehearsed multiple downed helicopter scenarios in preparation for their raid. The officer in charge of the mission showed vulnerability by admitting there were potential issues with the initial plan—particularly surrounding the use of untested stealth helicopters.

This was ultimately the saving grace of the mission. When invading the compound, one of the helicopters crashed, but the soldiers managed to adapt and succeed. Thanks to the vulnerability exhibited by the officer in charge before the mission, the soldiers were prepared.

The Consequences of a Lack of Vulnerability

Human nature pushes us to hide our flaws. When team members hide flaws, they put all of their energy into that concealment, leading to insecurity and defensiveness.

When Vulnerability Is Present When Vulnerability Is Absent
Communication Team members work openly and cooperatively, freely exchanging ideas and concepts. Team members work in isolation, keeping their ideas to themselves.
Feedback Team members are willing to accept and invite feedback, thus improving their output. Team members grow defensive when receiving feedback, thus leading to errors in their output.
Cohesiveness Team members support one another, embracing responsibility when at fault and helping coworkers when they falter. Team members blame one another for issues, unwilling to admit personal fault or support others in their hardship.

Consequence #1: Insecurity Takes Over

When team members fear vulnerability, they allow their insecurity to dictate their behavior. A culture that prohibits vulnerability tends to punish people for showing weakness. As a result, team members get insecure about their performance and become defensive. They reject feedback and fail to see errors in their own logic, robbing the group of the opportunity to fix issues.

The Ambush

After completing an arduous journey, Dave Cooper, a former Navy SEAL, received an order from his superior that required their team to travel back to base in the middle of the night. Cooper objected as nightfall would exacerbate the dangers of potential ambush points and mine-laden stretches of the route. After a screaming match between the officer and Cooper, the officer eventually used his rank to end the conversation, rejecting Cooper’s feedback in the process.

On their way back to base, the vehicle was ambushed. Overwhelmed and left with no other choice, the team had to surrender—fully expecting to be killed by their attackers. Much to the surprise of the team, the attackers decided not to execute the American soldiers, but took their weapons and disappeared into the night.

The mission almost resulted in the deaths of four soldiers because the commanding officer allowed his insecurity to dictate his behavior. He became defensive and treated feedback as an attack on his competence as a commander. Had he been comfortable with vulnerability, he would have accepted feedback and planned for potential issues, and they may have avoided the incident.

Consequence #2: People Don’t Notice Issues

When vulnerability is punished, team members do not seek out feedback. Without the use of feedback, the team robs themselves of the opportunity to fix issues that they had not noticed before.

The Ad Proposal

Kyle is on the brink of a promotion and has an idea for a new ad campaign. He has spent weeks developing materials and believes that this package will be the final key to the promotion he’s been after for quite some time. He wants to get some feedback on his work before he takes the proposal before the executive team, but the advertising team hasn’t developed a work environment in which vulnerability is permitted. In fact, the last time Kyle asked for help, he was berated by his boss and told that he should know how to do his job by now.

With this in mind, Kyle decides to take his proposal straight to the executives of the company. The CEO of the company opens to the first page and immediately notes that there’s a clear misspelling on the proposed marketing material. He then states that, if the advertising team won’t even take the time to review their own work, he won’t take the time to read through it. This slip-up ultimately costs Kyle the promotion and hurts his relationship with the executive team. Had Kyle’s team been more accepting of vulnerability, he may have asked for feedback that likely would have revealed something as simple as a spelling error.

Exercise: Is Vulnerability Present in Your Workplace?

Vulnerability is scary. It requires openness and requires the admission of errors or weaknesses.

Chapter 12: How Can You Develop Vulnerability?

Now that you understand the key attributes of safety and the importance of its development, let’s discuss ways you can encourage vulnerability in your workplace.

Communication and Interaction

Listening and Communication

Increase your responsiveness when listening. It allows the speaker to feel heard and supported as they express their concerns and fears. The most effective listeners:

Avoid prematurely offering suggestions when discussing issues. Encourage the speaker to explain their stances and develop their logic by asking them to tell you more about their current situation.

Accept discomfort. Vulnerable conversations require diving into painful experiences and facing nasty realities. Though they are not always pleasant, they are essential for discovering ways to improve effectiveness and develop solutions to problems. Be willing to have the difficult conversations and be supportive of the team members you have them with.

Interconnection

Use language that promotes connection and collaboration. For example, rather than having a “notes session,” consider calling it a “solution session.” A “notes session” sounds judgmental and one-sided. A “solution session” sounds supportive and reciprocal. These are seemingly small adjustments, but they bolster the group’s sense of togetherness.

Use “flash mentoring.” “Flash mentoring” follows the same principles as traditional mentoring (find someone you respect in the group and shadow them), but instead of taking months or years to follow them, take a few hours. This allows you to quickly build relationships with other team members and understand their work process. Once you understand how a fellow team member operates, it becomes much easier to develop behaviors of cooperation.

Feedback

Be candid, not brutal. You don’t want to demoralize or embarrass the person you are giving feedback to, but, at the same time, you need to be straightforward with your feedback. The best approach is to aim for candor: make your feedback specific and avoid making it personal or judgmental.

Give bad news in person. When bad news is sent digitally, it feels cold and can easily be misunderstood. Speaking in person allows for team members to connect on a personal level, even when the conversation is inherently negative.

Chicago Cubs

When Joe Maddon (a coach for the Chicago Cubs) needs to discipline a player, he calls them into his office, has them draw a piece of paper with the name of an expensive wine out of a glass bowl, has them purchase the wine, then shares the bottle of wine with them while he speaks with them. This disciplines the player while opening the door for reconnection.

Separate performance and development discussions. Often, performance and development feedback are grouped into one discussion. Combining these two conversations blurs your intentions and lessens impact because the conversations, though similar, occur under different pretenses:

Leadership

Set an Example

No signal of vulnerability is more powerful than one that comes from a leader. When team members see a high-level member of the group admit to a mistake, they immediately feel more comfortable owning up to their own areas of concern. Accepting imperfection and opening yourself up to scrutiny sends a message: I am not perfect, and I know that your feedback can help solve this problem.

Leave the group to their own devices on occasion—especially if you’re in a leadership position. Stepping away shows immense vulnerability as you let go of the reins and trust your team to perform. This allows the team to figure out what they need to do to cooperate and succeed themselves, thus increasing their coordination and effectiveness.

Encourage Vulnerability From Your Employees

Encourage team members to speak up. Remind team members that the more complicated the project, the more open dialogue becomes essential. If team members aren’t expressing their concerns, there is no way to build a web of support.

Create activities that promote honest feedback. Invite team members to provide their insight on projects or operations through the development of regular, standardized feedback sessions. The more often you hold these meetings, the more comfortable the team will become. Sharing and delivering vulnerability will become part of the norm.

AARS

After each mission or training session, members of Navy SEAL teams sit down for an After-Action Review (AAR). AARs are not inherently comfortable as these sessions expose errors in execution and introduce methods through which to improve.

Each session is structured the same way, with the same questions guiding discussion:

Within these sessions, soldiers are expected to reveal and analyze their own personal failures as well as those of the group. A willingness to express and discuss failure allows for the team to grow stronger and increase preparedness for the next mission or training activity.

Focus on the first show of vulnerability and the first disagreement within newly formed groups. When groups first develop, their interactions will likely follow one of two paths:

As a leader, you need to pay attention to these critical moments within new groups. If they begin to lean toward defensiveness, step in and introduce vulnerability into the group by leading through example.

Exercise: Develop Vulnerability in Your Workplace

Developing vulnerability and cooperation in the workplace takes time, practice, and a little bit of pain. Learn how to show vulnerability and promote cooperation in your workplace.

Exercise: Craft Feedback Sessions

Successful leaders invite open feedback from the team. Creating organized and recurring team sessions is one of the most effective ways to encourage feedback and open dialogue.

Part 3: Purpose | Chapters 13-16: What Is Purpose and Why Does It Matter?

Once a cohesive group feels as though it can take risks and make decisions, it must focus its collective energy towards a shared purpose. Purpose is the cornerstone of decision-making in the workplace. In this section, we’ll discuss the key attributes of purpose, why it's good for workplace culture, and problems that arise when it's missing.

The Key Attributes of Purpose

A clear purpose allows for consistent decision-making, effective prioritizing, and elevated performance through interaction. Purpose answers the question: why do we do what we do? Leaders use purpose to focus the attention of the group towards a singular goal through a set of small signals. These signals can include direct reminders of the company’s goals or indirect symbols such as catchphrases, iconography, and mission statements.

High-purpose environments are spaces in which the mission of a company drives the actions of team members. Think of purpose like the trunk of a tree, with decisions and projects forming the branches and products forming the leaves. All actions connect back to the central motives of the company.

Team members make choices based upon future goals. If a member of the organization can visualize the direction the team is going, they can make decisions and choices to support that vision. For example, if your organization redevelops abandoned buildings with the goal of supporting small businesses to ignite the local economy, team members will make decisions that encourage small, local businesses to rent out their spaces instead of multinational corporations (think of a local coffee shop instead of a Starbucks). The clear purpose of supporting small business to ignite the local economy informs the decisions that team members make on a day-to-day basis.

The Benefits of Purpose

Benefit #1: Change of Perspective

Perspective is everything. When dedicated team members perceive a task as important, they will put significant amounts of energy and attention into that task, typically increasing the quality of the work.

The Gifted Students

In 1964, a Harvard psychologist led an experiment in which he tested 1st and 2nd graders in a local public school for their potential for academic success. He gave the teachers the results, designating certain students as “gifted.” The students, however, were never informed of their designation. At the end of the year, the “gifted” students excelled just as the researchers had predicted. They tested well above their peers and had better relationships with their teachers.

The twist? The test the psychologist gave the students was a placebo. It did not determine which students had a higher potential. In fact, the “gifted” students were chosen at random.

The true subject of the experiment was the teachers. The researchers wanted to see how teachers would interact with students differently if they were given a newly defined purpose: guide these gifted students to excellence. The experiment revealed that the teachers treated the “gifted” students differently:

Each of these interactions was small on its own, but, combined over the course of a school year, they allowed for an increased rate of success despite the fact that these students were not any different than their peers. This shows how a clear purpose can impact perspective.

Benefit #2: Improved Learning Velocity

People with purpose learn faster. Make it clear how a particular skill will connects to the team’s purpose. When team members understand the significance of a new skill, they will devote energy and attention into understanding that skill, improving their “learning velocity” (the speed at which a team improves upon a new concept).

Mountain Medical Center

In 1998, Harvard researchers studied the learning velocity of 16 surgical teams learning a new method of heart surgery called MICS. Though some of the teams were expected to excel, the team from Mountain Medical Center was expected to struggle. The team came from a lesser-known hospital that did not have an instructional background or significant resources. Despite this, Mountain Medical Center ended up performing very well, finishing in 2nd place.

How did a hospital like Mountain Medical Center perform effectively? Their team had an established and consistently reinforced purpose: we are learning this new method because it will increase efficiency and benefit our patients. The study showed that teams that received constant reminders of the purpose of their training far outperformed teams that did not.

(Shortform note: the Harvard study changed the names of the hospitals and doctors.)

Benefit #3: Deeper Connection with Both Teammates and External Clients

A central purpose allows for connection and empathy to run through the company and extend to the intended client base. If a group’s purpose is clear, team members can more deeply connect with fellow group members as well as the demographic that the group serves.

The English Soccer Hooligans

Before they hosted the 2004 European Championships, Portugal sought out Clifford Stott, a crowd violence specialist, to help them prepare for a group known as the “English soccer hooligans,” a group of extreme fans known to riot following soccer matches.

Based on his research, Stott recommended seemingly paradoxical advice: the best way to police violent crowds was to stop policing violent crowds. He had certain sections of the police force ditch the riot gear for yellow vests and instructed them to begin educating themselves on soccer. He hoped that removing the riot gear would make the officers appear less intimidating and that the soccer knowledge would create an opportunity for the officers and fans to bond.

When the tournament began, sections of the police force that changed over to Stott’s method experienced an extreme drop in violent crime, with only one English fan being arrested. Fans felt as though the police were there to protect them, not to punish them. In areas that did not use Stott’s approach, violent outbursts continued.

Stott’s direction sent a clear message: we are here to help you, not to hurt you. This message immediately improved relations between the fans and authorities as the clarity of purpose showed fans that they had nothing to fear.

The Consequences of a Lack of Purpose

Consequence #1: Subpar Performance

Without constant reminders of purpose as motivation and guidance, teams fail to perform up to standard because they don’t grasp the big-picture framework of their actions. Work becomes tedious and work ethic, product quality, and communication tend to decrease.

Chelsea Hospital

In the Harvard MICS study, the team from Chelsea Hospital was one of the favorites to come out on top. The team came from an elite hospital with a focus on teaching and had a vast array of resources at their disposal. However, Chelsea Hospital performed poorly, ending up 14th out of 16 teams.

How did a hospital with all of these resources at their disposal perform so poorly? Leadership never explained the central reasoning behind the training or the purpose of the new operation. Because of this, the team did not understand the importance of their work and did not put forth significant effort to understand the process.

The study showed a clear divide—either a team worked well, or they didn’t. The success/failure of a team was linked to the ways in which their leadership addressed different areas of purpose:

Successful Teams Unsuccessful Teams
Framing

(Why are we doing this?)

Framed as an independent operation to benefit the hospital and its patients. Framed as an add-on to current procedures.
Roles

(Why am I here?)

Individuals were explicitly told their purpose within the team, from their individual skills to their contribution within the group. Individuals were never told why they were a part of the team.
Practice

(Why are we taking the time to rehearse this?)

Dry runs were practiced frequently to prepare new practitioners for new protocols and communication. Dry runs were rarely (if ever) practiced.
Feedback

(Why do we need to discuss this?)

Communication was promoted, and the purpose of feedback was explained in depth. Communication was not promoted, and the purpose of feedback was never expressed.
Reflection

(Why do we need to continue to do this?)

Teams would take the opportunity to reflect on surgeries to discuss performance, future implication, and improvements. Teams never took the time to reflect.

Consequence #2: Misinterpreted Intentions

When a group is not explicit about its purpose, others often misconstrue the reasons behind their actions. People fear that which they don’t understand, and a lack of a clear purpose can lead to a disconnect between team members and hesitancy or hostility from outsiders.

The Belgian Riot Police

In 2003, Belgium hosted one of the largest sporting events in the globe. In an attempt to keep the peace, Belgian police tried to quell tensions by using a show-of-force. The Belgian authorities spent millions on riot gear and surveillance systems then put their officers through intensive training. They believed that, by showing their power, rioters would be discouraged from misbehaving.

It didn’t work. Rioters destroyed shops, assaulted bystanders and fought riot-gear clad police officers. The authorities wanted to cultivate peace. However, because they failed to show the public the peaceful core of their mission, outsiders misconstrued their actions as aggressive and responded accordingly. The people believed that the police were there to punish them, not to protect them, thus sparking mob mentality.

Consequence #3: Inconsistency in Decision-Making

Without a unified purpose, team members make inconsistent (and often harmful) decisions without even realizing it.

Send Back the Salmon

At a restaurant in NYC, a regular customer ordered salmon. After eating about half of the dish, she asked if she would be able to have something else as she didn’t enjoy the fish. At the end of the meal, the customer was charged for the salmon and was given a take-out bag with the remains of the dish that she did not enjoy.

She contacted the owner of the restaurant, claiming that this behavior was petty and beneath what she expected from one of the owner’s restaurants. The owner, who believed his business existed to serve the customer first and foremost, was surprised by this decision and asked his manager why he made the choice he did. The manager said that he thought he had made the “right” choice.

Because the owner had not been clear about the company’s core purpose (to serve the customer), the manager had no guidance in his decision-making process—leading him to make a choice that did not line up with the philosophy of the organization.

Exercise: What Is Your Group’s Purpose?

Purpose sparks motivation. Without it, people quickly become disinterested in their work, leading to a decrease in quality and efficiency.

Chapter 17: How Can You Develop Purpose?

Now that you understand the key attributes of safety and the importance of its development, let’s discuss ways you can develop purpose in your workplace.

Communication and Interaction

Priorities

Give priorities a name and rank. Clear priorities allow team members to make decisions with consistency—even without direct instruction.

The Lost Receipt

A retail store has the following priority ranking:

  1. Protect co-workers

  2. Serve guests

  3. Make strong relationships with suppliers

  4. Listen to corporate policies

An employee at the store is approached by a regular customer wanting to return an item that they lost the receipt for, but corporate has a policy that refunds cannot be issued without a receipt. The employee refers to the company’s priorities and offers the customer store credit because she knows that serving customers is a higher priority than following corporate policies. The employee made a decision based around the core priorities of the group and has adhered to the company standards without needing direct guidance or instruction.

Clarify your priorities more than you think you need to. Often, leaders think that the priorities of the company are clear and apparent to all employees. Unfortunately, this is not typically the case. Repetition builds routine, so constantly remind team members about the priorities of the company.

Inc. Magazine

Inc. magazine asked employees at 600 different companies to name the top three priorities of their respective companies. Management predicted that 64% of their employees would know the priorities of the company. However, Inc. discovered that only 2% of employees actually knew the priorities of their company.

Signals of Purpose

Develop a unified language through catchphrases. Catchphrases may seem corny, but their cheesiness gives them power. Ridiculous phrases stick in the minds of team members. Catchphrases make company ideals easy to remember and immediately actionable. Keep it simple and straightforward:

Use iconography and items to solidify your company’s purpose. Put identifiable company objects and icons around the workspace. Such iconography could include awards, team photos, gear, or sketches. These items serve as a constant reminder to team members: this is why we do what we do.

Leadership

Focus on what’s important to your organization. Develop standards and language around the core principles of your company. Incentivizing certain behavior allows you to build consistency in your workforce’s decision-making process.

Zappo’s Call Center

Tony Hsieh (the president of Zappo’s) noticed that employees in the call center were held to a “calls per hour” standard to determine proficiency. This standard promoted ideals that the company did not believe in (namely brevity and impersonal connection).

Hsieh decided to change the standard to a new metric called “Personal Emotional Connections” (PECs). PECs promoted creating a bond with the customer by giving personalized attention and care. While there was no clear way to measure this standard, it focused the actions of employees into the company’s framework.

Set the bar, and set it high, especially with seemingly small tasks. If the small things are treated with the utmost care, this behavior will typically seep into larger tasks. To encourage these standards, develop phrases to translate your purpose into expectations. For example, if you’re coaching basketball, and you want your players to give 100%, you may use the phrase “Backline-to-Backline,” implying that you expect them to sprint on every change of possession.

Use mental contrasting. Mental contrasting is the process through which you visualize an attainable goal, then visualize the obstacles:

This process acts as a constant reminder of the purpose of your journey, the obstacles in your way, and the progress you’ve already made.

Exercise: Develop Purpose in Your Workplace

Creating purpose in the workplace requires clarity, dedication, and focus. Start developing priorities and focusing your team towards the core principles of your organization.

High-Proficiency vs. High-Creativity Environments

The standards for high-purpose environments change based on the overall goals of the company. When looking at their product and process, teams must determine if they want an environment that encourages proficiency or one that promotes creativity.

High Proficiency Environments

The Key Attributes of a High-Proficiency Environment

Environments in which failure must be avoided require a high-level of proficiency. Think of a military organization or a restaurant. Failure results in swift and severe consequences.

The purpose of a high-proficiency workplace is to create an environment in which team members can make quick and appropriate decisions while working as a single unit.

A high-proficiency environment doubles down on clear priorities. Team members must know what takes precedent in their day-to-day activities. Priorities allow employees to make decisions based on a hierarchy of focus or attention.

These priorities are often emphasized by catchphrases that show causality (if X, then Y). These simple rules of thumb (known as heuristics) include easy-to-remember phrases that dictate how team members should behave in certain situations. For example, if a restauranteur wants to ensure that servers are allowing guests to send back food without charging them, they may use a phrase such as “if they don’t like the souffle, they don’t have to pay.”

The goal of a leader in a high-proficiency environment is to lead the team from point A to point B in the most efficient way possible while adhering to the standards and ethics of the organization.

The Benefits of a High-Proficiency Environment

A clear central message allows for a streamlined and consistent decision-making process. Even without explicitly setting processes or guidelines, team members can make consistent decisions if given a magnetic core on which to base their choices.

The $100 Millon Recall

In 1982, tragedy struck. Someone had laced packages of Extra-Strength Tylenol with cyanide, leading to the deaths of 6 people in Chicago. John Burke (the president of Johnson & Johnson, the parent company of Tylenol) met with law enforcement to discuss the best route forward. The FBI and FDA recommended that he hold off on a nationwide recall as such an action could cause hysteria and would cost Johnson & Johnson millions of dollars. Burke ignored this recommendation and called for a total recall of the product—costing the company $100 million.

When asked why he went forward with the recall, his immediate response was to quote the company credo, which stated that the company’s first responsibility was to protect the people using their product. Thousands of decisions were made by Johnson & Johnson’s employees, all centered around the central purpose of the company. Because of these decisions, Tylenol’s market share (which had hit zero following the crisis) ultimately recovered and thrived.

Developing a High-Proficiency Environment

Create a model of success. Show team members what success looks like. Use successful team members, projects, and initiatives to promote a certain action or behavior.

Train your team members using repetition and feedback. Continually remind team members of the nature and importance of their position. Explain their purpose in the role as well as what they bring to the team. Reinforce standards, practices, and processes. The more a team is told what to do, the faster it becomes routine.

Develop a clear language. Use catchphrases that show causality (if X, then Y):

Praise the practice of fundamentals. High-proficiency environments require the precise execution of particular skill sets. When you see an employee consistently use the foundational skills of the position, point it out. This serves as a constant reminder to team members that their efforts are being noticed, and that their attention to detail is important.

High-Creativity Environments

The Key Attributes of a High-Creativity Environment

Environments in which failure is a necessary component to development require a high-level of creativity. Think of a design company or a movie studio. The process of creation requires a degree of failure as the improvement of a new concept develops through trial and error. The purpose of a high-creativity workplace is to create a space in which artists and creative people can discover their work for themselves.

High-creativity environments necessitate the ability to parse through large quantities of concepts. Leaders need to develop processes to give teams honest feedback and set deadlines to ensure that projects stay on-task. These sessions help teams look at their ideas in new ways and cut out concepts that aren’t working while remaining in a reasonable timeframe.

Creative control stays in the hands of the creators. Teams need the freedom to make decisions and explore new avenues without the constant fear and frustration of losing control of their project.

The goal of a leader in a high-creativity environment is to lead the team into the unknown by giving them the tools to explore without hindering their journey.

The Benefits of a High-Creativity Environment

In high-creativity environments, purpose gets people to develop new works more efficiently. Even if 90% percent of the discussed concepts end up failing, the 10% that work can lead to incredible discoveries or advancements.

Pixar’s Process

Ed Catmull (president of Pixar) has created a space in which artists have developed some of the greatest animated films in cinematic history. However, by his own admission, most projects at Pixar start out as disasters.

How does Catmull bring a project from failure to acclaim? He acts in accordance with the central purpose of Pixar’s existence: to create an environment in which artists feel they have ownership of their creations while receiving guidance and feedback to help them grow.

He uses a series of routine meetings and activities through which artists can develop their projects and allows creators to choose their own projects. When giving feedback, he rarely makes any creative decisions. He says that the creators know their projects better than he does and that his suggestions would likely only be followed because he’s in a position of power, not because it’s the best creative choice for the project.

Catmull’s process allows creative teams to maintain control of their projects while accessing the collective intellect of the company as a whole to improve the product and guide the process.

Developing a High-Creativity Environment

Pay close attention to team interaction. Creativity relies on collaboration. When a team works well together, new ideas and concepts can be generated at a high rate. When a team does not work well together, incoherence can destroy the creative processes. If this occurs, step in and attempt to problem-solve. You may need to change the group makeup, adjust the focus of the team or change the roles of the team members.

Safeguard creative freedom and self-sufficiency. Autonomy is essential to the creative process. Without it, teams feel as though they have no ownership over their projects. Give teams a framework to work in and the resources they need to succeed, but try to avoid taking direct control.

Embrace failure and promote feedback. Failure will occur, and, when it does, be prepared to have a conversation about what that failure taught the group. Create activities and environments in which feedback can be given routinely and honestly. Schedule daily, weekly, and/or monthly meetings in which you can openly discuss projects and give direction.

Praise initiative, especially when it arises without prompting. When a team takes the initiative and moves forward on an idea, applaud them—even if that route ends in failure. This action will make your team want to explore and will increase the volume of ideas they can sift through on their search for the “right” one.

Exercise: High-Proficiency Vs. High-Creativity: Which Is Right For You?

When developing activities and structures surrounding purpose, you must decide if you want to develop a high-proficiency or high-creativity work environment.

Exercise: Develop a Successful Group Culture for Your Team

Successful group cultures rely on the development of the three foundations discussed in this summary (safety, vulnerability, and purpose). As you respond to these questions, think about what you’ve learned throughout this summary and refer to the “How Can You Develop... “ chapters of each part for inspiration.