Teams: The Magic Between Us — my conversation with Karolynn Hardy

I recently joined Karolynn Hardy, a long-time thought partner of mine, on the Inside Perspective podcast for a conversation about teams (we shared a quick note when it went live). Karolynn always stretches my thinking, and this one was no exception.

We covered a lot of ground: why so much development money goes to leaders and so little to teams, what our research with the University of Newcastle found, why Learning came out as the strongest predictor of team effectiveness, and where teams might go next as AI takes on more of our task work.

The full conversation is below, lightly edited for readability. If you'd rather listen, the episode is on Spotify.

The conversation

Karolynn: Welcome to In Conversation with Inside Perspective, the podcast with exceptional leaders talking about everyday leadership experiences. Let's jump in. So today, here we are with Kimberly Luffman. Thank you so much for joining us, Kimberly.

Kimberly: It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Karolynn: What a pleasure. Now, Kimberly, you have spent more than 20 years helping organisations grow, develop leaders and improve performance. Things very close to my heart as well. But more recently, you've co-founded a venture called TeamHive. So I'm really excited to speak about that a little bit more later on as well. But today we're really diving deep on teams. And I'm kind of keen to know because, you know, when we talk about high performance, which is what we normally talk about when we're talking about teams, high performance. Then we go, huh, what about leaders? And then we go, huh, what about the individuals within a team?

But I feel like having spoken to you about this, that's only part of the story. So I don't know. Like I'm keen to know. Before we really kind of delve into this. Why teams?

Kimberly: I have to say, Karolynn, you're more progressive than most because most people just stop at leaders and don't go. And what about the individuals in the teams? And if you look at how, you know, leadership and team performance gets invested in, that's usually the case, right? We want team performance, leaders, leaders, leaders. So it's a bit of a leader centric, which is why the curiosity about teams, because you see all of this, I mean, it's a billion dollars, you know, in the industry being invested into development. And it's not necessarily generating the team performance outcomes that the theory suggested it might. So in practice, something has to be thought about and acted on differently if we really want to support teams to perform.

Karolynn: This is fascinating, isn't it? So I don't feel progressive. I mean, I get told that regularly, but I don't feel progressive. And yet, what you're saying is that it was a consistent observation that people were focused on the leadership.

Kimberly: Constantly.

Karolynn: Constantly. And therefore, what's the gap? What does that create?

Kimberly: Well, it's interesting because the theory is, and it's been reinforced, there's loads of stats that come out from, you know, surveys like Gallup that tell us leaders, influence, you know, culture by 70%. And so there's a lot of data telling people, invest in leaders, invest in leaders, invest in leaders. My proposition and what the research that we did was showing us is that actually team dynamics and interactions and team behaviours matter a lot more than individual leadership characteristics. And they're much more strongly correlated with both effectiveness of teams and performance of teams. It's hard though, right, to act on, to develop teams. You think about the way organisations of any kind, institutions of any kind, focus on development, it's so much easier to run a program.

Tick, we've put all of our leaders to a program. We've got to pick someone to invest in. We can't do everyone. So who do we choose? So in some ways, we're continuing to do what is easy to do, but we're not necessarily seeing the results of it. And a lot of organisations still don't even measure that. So they don't even know they need to change.

Karolynn: Wow. So they're spending all of this money on development, and yet they're not measuring the outcomes. That seems, I mean, I know that that's the reality, but it just seems fascinating to me.

Kimberly: We think we're measuring the outcome some of the time. You see, it's much more common to see culture and engagement being measured in organisations now. And that's a good thing. But we're not necessarily measuring the things that really impact team effectiveness and team performance. And I think we're starting to see it. We're starting to feel it. Like, research has told us this for a while. But I think when you were, and you know yourself with the work you do, the people you coach, the organisations you've been part of, you can start to feel that individuals are putting a lot in and it's not necessarily resulting in them feeling like they're getting the outcomes that they want or the workplace that they want to be involved in.

And you can certainly see it in leaders. I mean, there was that McKinsey research that I think I shared on LinkedIn recently about leaders burning out, those roles, you know, leader, leader, leader, right? The leader that approach. It has consequences. It's putting a lot of expectation onto individual leaders. And they're not ultimately delivering the result. If anything, they're sort of getting burdened with the responsibility of the whole, the whole kit and caboodle.

Karolynn: I think that whole leader-led conversation is almost like a minefield that I feel like we could spend the whole conversation on. But it's interesting, isn't it? For years we have said, the leaders are responsible for developing their teams. The leaders are responsible for policy implementation. They're responsible for, you know, performance and disciplinary conversations. And it's like most of us are not skilled in all of those things. And I'm not saying that that there isn't a level of responsibility and contribution that leaders need to make. But it's pretty hard to be great at all of those things at once.

Kimberly: Yeah, it's really difficult. And you can see why then people keep focusing on skill development, skill development, skill development. I like the delineation of, yes, you might be a people manager or a team manager. And you've got authority in that role. You've got to deliver on some elements of managing the team, the performance, the goals, etc. You definitely play a role in creating the conditions for a team and for the people in your team to succeed. There's no doubt about that. But leadership is everybody's work. But leadership is not what's written on your job description. It's the way that we solve complex problems, the way that humans get work done together.

And that is a team sport. That cannot sit in one role. I mean, it can. And we constantly tell it that it should, right? And if you look at the current state, but it doesn't get you the outcomes that you want. It doesn't make it easy for leaders. And you've got these teams with all this under-utilised potential. So the first thing I notice when I walk into most teams where we've been invited to support them, it's just the under-utilised potential because everything's hanging on this one role, orchestrating it all.

Karolynn: Let's go to the research then, Kimberly. So you started to have these observations. What took you down the path of actually starting to research? Because they're two different things, right? Oh, I'm observing this. I'm curious about it. And actually, I really want to get underneath this and understand it more.

Kimberly: The research in many ways for me personally started about a decade before the actual research project happened. So one of the first big culture transformations that we did was with a not-for-profit company. And it was a very, you know, quick, fast, progressive piece of work that needed to be done. And we were really lucky to be partnering with a very progressive P&C team at the time. And when we were working with them, because of the speed that they needed to change the culture, we worked with them at every layer of the system, right? So individuals, teams, leaders at the organisational level. And I was curious for our culture transformation work, what actually makes the difference?

So we do all of these things, but I was just curious. What really increased self-awareness in these people? Because that's ultimately how you kind of enable change. And what resulted in behaviour change over time. Of all these things we did, what had the biggest difference. And we did loads of different interventions over the course of that project, you know, leadership workshops. There was even a peer buddy system. It was quite a progressive organisation. We did team sessions. And then there was a bunch of people that didn't actually get involved in anything. So we were able to sort of measure things over time. And it was really interesting to see that the number one thing of all those interventions that outperformed all the others in both self-awareness and behaviour change over time was the team sessions.

And that was the beginning for me of thinking, hmm, isn't that interesting? Because some of these people have had had one-on-one coaching. They've done 360s on themselves. What was it about the power of the team interactions that was giving them greater self-awareness and helping them change their behaviour over time? It was something quite special about that. So that was where the curiosity actually kicked off. We were doing leadership team coaching work at the time. And we would come in. And over time, you work with enough teams, you start to see the same patterns playing out over and over again. You get quicker at identifying them and moving the group to where they needed to be.

Then I started to think, how do you do this for more teams? Because it's quite expensive to bring an external consultant in. They've got to have a really high level of skill to do that type of work where you actually get to the heart of what's really going on in this team that needs to change. But you can spend a lot of time changing a lot of things in teams and have very little effect. The real, the skill is working out what small things are going to have the biggest impact for that particular team. That's really hard to do. And for most of us, it's because we've built that experience over time.

We've done loads of training. The chances of getting that at scale is very hard. Then the chance of people being able to afford it is really hard to do. And I just thought there's got to be a better way. And that was what kicked off the official research project, which for me was about understanding what are the few things, because there's loads of research out there, but what are the few things if we had to direct a team's attention would have the biggest effect, right? Would help them really unlock their collective potential as a team. And if we could only have a few things, where would we place their attention?

What should, what would it be? And it was really important for me that those things were evidence-based, that they were valid. Because if we're going to place people's attention there, everyone's got really important work to do when everyone's busy doing it, let's make sure that it is actually going to predict effectiveness and performance. And that was why the research part of this was really important to me.

Karolynn: And I know that through the research, you know, you went in with a really clear goal of what you were hoping to identify. Like, you may not have known how you were going to do it. But you knew what you were looking for. How did you, how did you kind of get to where, to where you were, to where you are now where you've identified some really key behaviour themes in teams.

Kimberly: So over 20 years of experience was a lot of possible things that we thought impact when you collate all of that. And we did that with our broader team as well. But when you collate all of that, it's a lot of things that could impact. And so essentially what we did is we went through the process of collating all of that, sense checking that with the research that was already out there to make sure we hadn't missed any obvious gaps. And then we literally took hundreds and hundreds of possible items into the research process. And then with the University of Newcastle, it's two great research partners there who independently validated that through their, you know, smarter people than me that used lots of statistical modelling processes to get to the core of what really made the difference.

But ultimately, where we landed was that there were these four things that were going to have the greatest likely to have the greatest effect on team effectiveness and performance. Yeah, and that journey was really interesting because we had been through like years of gathering what we thought would make a difference. We'd tested it ourselves. We'd had experts and colleagues across the sector review and give us their feedback. But the research process was brilliant because even that further disrupted us to go, wow, it's even more focused than we thought. We thought there were going to be five things that really impacted team effectiveness. Overwhelmingly, it was four.

Karolynn: And so what are those four things?

Kimberly: So the four that emerged from the research were purpose, learning, unity, and shared leadership.

Karolynn: This is fascinating, isn't it? So, I mean, each of those play a role in how our teams are functioning. Is there something that really surprised you in the research along the way? Because I imagine this wasn't, you know, an evolving kind of situation over these years.

Kimberly: It shouldn't have surprised me because given the profession and all of the wonderful conversations you and I have had over the years about our passion for this thing, what I was absolutely delighted to see came out of the research, which I didn't expect, was that learning was the single biggest predictor of team effectiveness. So not learning in the traditional sense that we might think about individuals going on courses or formal education, but the team's practice of learning, the way they set goals and reflected on themselves and how they worked as a team, overwhelmingly what the strongest single predictor team effectiveness, that was really closely followed, which is what I expected would have come out as the strongest was purpose.

It was most strongly correlated with performance. So for me, I took away from that, oh, wow, this is fabulous. And it's what we see with teams we've worked with. The ability for the team to integrate into the way that they work, this capacity to learn and reflect on themselves, that makes them a great team. And their focus on purpose and goals and the value they're there to deliver, that points them in the right direction. And those two things together give you, you know, great effectiveness and performance. And then unity is kind of like the glue and shared leadership is like the multiplier effect. Right? When you can get that going in a team, all of a sudden the potential of what you can actually create…

Karolynn: It's got me wondering. So, I mean, this all sounds fantastic in research. And then I'm wondering, what are the behaviours that we see in a team where that learning, that shared learning is taking place? Is it productive conflict? Is it the debate? Is it the challenge? Like, what is it that's actually happening in the behaviour when that's happening well?

Kimberly: Some of the best teams I've worked with have the simplest learning practices. So one executive team that I partnered with that I just saw incredible progress in the time that we worked with them. And I thought, you know, it's funny when I reflected, because this is post, like, the research came out after I'd worked with this team. And I was reflecting on that team. And I thought, isn't that funny? Because learning is not often the thing that takes up enormous amounts of time when that team was together. But they had two really simple behaviours. One was a check-in. So they would check in every individual member of the team at the beginning of a meeting or any time they got together would check in.

And they would just listen to each other, check in, how am I, what's going on for me, how I'm showing up today? Really simple things, right? But they were learning about each other. They were sort of creating a bit of a sense of reflection of and of themselves in that really simple process. And then the only other thing they really did in the learning component was a post-meeting review. Every time they got together as an exec team, they would quiet, the CEO would just say, right, what did we do well? What do we need to focus on more? It was that simple. And watching them change over the, oh, it must have been 12 months that we worked with that team.

It was phenomenal. I honestly think that they were the two simplest learning practices.

Karolynn: It's always the way, isn't it? It's the simple things that work best. And it's kind of got my mind going at a million miles an hour right now because it's then got me wondering all of these other things. And the first thing that's coming up is if it is this simple, is this why the self-awareness is so correlated to, you know, right back at the beginning you were saying the most effective learning was, right? And so it's got me wondering, is that why? Because there's this reflection and almost like mirrors being held up for each other.

Kimberly: I think you're right on the mirror component because I was reflecting on that myself thinking, what was it about that, the team sessions? Because I was just really shocked that that was the, I really believed that coaching was going to be the biggest self-awareness contributor in that early piece of transformation work and it really wasn't. I thought, oh, it's funny. I wonder what it was about the team component. And I think when you're sitting there reflecting on yourself, you're sort of deluded by your own view of the world, right? And it's very easy to be distracted or focus on the thing that's important for you right now.

And that may not be what's important in the team dynamic. I think when you're in a team environment, every time you interact, you're getting immediate data or feedback points that tell you what's working, what's not, what's needed, what's not. So I think your ability to get immediate feedback through those responses gives you much more self-awareness than just sort of, you know, sitting around navel-gazing about ourselves, which I also love to do.

Karolynn: Don't we all like to do that sometimes? It's got me also thinking about, you know, we say that it's different when you work on your own versus in a team. And as we sit here, I'm actually wondering, is it different? Like, if we stopped thinking about it as different, would it change how we interacted with people, whether it's a fixed team or, you know, sometimes teams can be a little bit more fluid, you know, like maybe they're cross-functional teams or, you know, teams that come together for a certain purpose? I don't know that my question's been clear so far, Kimberly, but what I mean is, you know, would it make a difference if we were not thinking about ourselves as an individual in the team, but actually thinking more about us as a team.

Kimberly: I think there's, what you're pulling out there is there's a mindset shift required. And I think there's a mindset shift required on at least three levels. I think if you're an individual member of a team or an individual contributor in an organisation who's part of a team, I think you're absolutely right. We need to start thinking about actually, where does the work get done? What's essential for the work I've got to deliver? Or, you know, and I don't just mean corporate work. Like any team you're part of, why are we here? What are we doing? And how do I be a part of this team as an active way?

We don't think about that as our work. We think about the tasks written on our job descriptions as our work. But why are we bringing groups of human beings together to do these, solve these complex problems or do these things in organisations? It's because we're better when we are leveraging that kind of collective capacity of people. So I think you're right. There's a piece of work there, and I don't mean work in the like paid employment sense. I mean, work to be done by every member of a team, that that is part of the work we do. We have to tend to a team, be an active contributor in a team because we're all influencing the teams we're part of.

And most of us don't even realise that. I think we underestimate the impact we can have as individuals in a team.

Karolynn: You've got me thinking about a team that I led at one point. And the team was disparate only in context of the roles that each person played. And I remember that was some of the feedback we used to talk about as a team quite often was, you know, we want to be more of a team. We want to come together more collectively. But our roles are so unrelated. We're finding it hard to find the common ground. And now with this context of what you're talking about, I feel like I'm starting to create a different view of what that could have looked like. But I'm keen to hear, have you come across that in other teams?

I was going to ask you, what did you do? You first.

Kimberly: Yeah, I mean, it's really common. One of the first things I do with a team where you can see that they haven't connected to why, what is the value of them being a team, is get them connected to their stakeholders really quickly. Because the minute you put a stakeholder lens on, why does this team exist? Who are we here to serve? What value do these people that we're here to serve require of us as a team, all of a sudden the shared work is clear. And the really fascinating thing, I've walked into teams where there's high conflict, really patch protecting, you know, strong silo type behaviour, all with good intentions on everybody's part.

Right? No judgment. It happens. The thing that I find almost always unhooks them from that individual lens is when we do the stakeholder work. Because all of a sudden it lifts everyone out of themselves and we're, oh, there's this bigger reason that we exist. We're actually here to serve these stakeholders, these people. Sometimes they're internal, sometimes they're external. And for some of our clients, they're in the community. Like, it's about public value. So when you connect people to that, all of a sudden the shared work of disparate roles becomes really clear. And even if the task work is still different, everybody benefits from having a support network in their team.

Right. And that's actually the other components of learning that surface is that peers are supporting each other when there are challenges, the way the team come together with a sort of learning mindset to, wow, how do we overcome that? What could we do? And sometimes you don't want someone with your same technical expertise having that conversation with you. You want people coming at it from different angles and you want different perspectives. So if you can harness that in a team, it doesn't matter that you've got disparate roles or you don't have shared tasks.

Karolynn: That is fascinating. I wish I'd known that, you know, previously. That would have been helpful.

Kimberly: It's a really simple activity. Isn't it funny you say the simple things have the biggest impact. Right. Often we run it with teams and I think, oh, it's so effective. This is so simple to do.

Karolynn: Well, and what it's done for me is bring to life in a real life situation. What you talked about with the research was number one and two were learning and purpose. And there it was in action, how you've just described that, showed those two things coming together. Yeah, really clever. So I'm thinking about the most famous research in teams, you know, storming, norming, forming, performing, oh my goodness, you know what I'm trying to say.

Kimberly: Is it Tuckman's model?

Karolynn: Tuckman model, thank you. Team formation. Team formation. I feel like that has been the most solid team research for a long time. And I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but what I'm feeling like you're describing feels more, flows more with how teams work now.

Kimberly: Yeah, I mean, there's lots of good teams research out there, you know, like Wageman, Hackman. They've done some beautiful research in this space. So there's loads of good people contributing to this field and in this work. I guess what we wanted to do, because of the background, I'd had in real work-based teams and even in community, volunteer teams, sports teams. I felt like what was needed was something that was very simple and accessible for any person in a team or leading a team to understand and really quickly work out what is needed. Like if this team was going to be at its best or just better in any way, shape or form, what could we actually do?

And I think it's very hard to work that out, has been hard to work that out, without having sort of an expert team coach facilitator, leadership practitioner, whatever might be the kind of support that you draw. It's been very hard to work that out without those people in the room. And even when we're in the room, sometimes it's still hard to work it out. I can't tell you how many times, Karolynn, I've just spent two or three sessions even with a team. And their whole conversation is convincing me that role clarity is the real problem that they have. And then we work through role clarity because it's the most important thing that they believe they need to solve only to work out.

Role clarity didn't solve any of the challenges that we raised in the first session. And so what I had found is even when as the practitioner in the room with the expertise, you were saying to them, it's not role clarity. I can assure you this is actually the thing we need to pay attention to is communication. Even with that, people find it really hard to digest and go, oh yeah, that is what needs attention. And so by having something measurable, having something that is behaviour-based, teams can just really quickly go, oh, that's what we need to do. Okay. It just makes it easier, right? So lots of good research, but I wanted to contribute something that was really practical and actionable for any team to put into practice.

Karolynn: What is the biggest barrier to teams being effective? Learning to be a team? But I'm wondering, is it because, people have their own kind of area of work and that's where they feel comfortable. Like, I guess where I'm going in my head is, is behaviour, you know. And I guess to some degree, we all have ego. Right. So the question is, you know, to what extent does the individual ego stop us from being a team or contributing to a team?

Kimberly: I think that's a great question. Yeah, like you're probably right. I don't think it's the biggest barrier. I am constantly surprised and delighted at the capacity with which individuals come to the table in team sessions and are willing to show up in service of the team and its goals. So I genuinely don't believe it's the biggest barrier. Now, there's always the odd exception, right? But I've even seen highly effective teams manage those people in their teams when that happens. So I don't think it's the biggest barrier. I think, I honestly believe the biggest barrier is they, don't know where to start. The space is not being created for those types of conversations to happen.

And if you want to, you know, the big inconvenient truth is if you are in a workplace organisational institution that's developing its people, they're not developing teams. They're spending enormous amounts of money, measuring culture and engagement, developing individuals and leaders. And if we really want high performing, performing effective teams, then we have to start developing them together, not individuals in isolation, right? It's the whole sum of the parts. We keep developing individuals and expecting that there's going to be a sum of the parts effect. And it's actually not how it happens because it's the wrong type of development.

Karolynn: The analogy that's coming up for me is in sport. You know, when they say a team of stars does not make the best team. You know, it feels like that's what you're describing in the workplace.

Kimberly: It's been in workplaces all the time. Individually, how is this team not absolutely killing it? I couldn't find a more impressive group of individuals to put together. And it's almost always because they cannot work out how to be a team. And if you can help them do that, it's amazing to see how quickly those capable individuals can create a different outcome. And they do. But they've got to work out where to start. And I feel like that's the thing that's been missing. People don't know where to start. So even if they've gone through, some were going to, organisations are really progressive in this space. They start to create space for team development.

The teams then have this time together as teams. And then there's still the barrier of, well, what do we focus on? Where do we start? How do we work out something that is currently impacting us? We're all part of it. We're sort of, we're subject to it, right? We don't really even realise the things we're doing that are getting in our own way. So how do we reveal that to teams more simply, more quickly, so that they can work out where to pay attention?

Karolynn: Which kind of feels like it comes back to that initial problem that we identified earlier, which is, and then it comes back to the responsibility of the leader. Oh, well, now it's the leader's responsibility to fix this because we don't really know where to start. Right? It feels like we've gone full circle.

Kimberly: We used to do a process. We still do the process occasionally. We would call it discovery, and we would meet each of the individuals in a team. Mostly this would happen in leadership teams. Very few organisations invest in that type of development outside of the leadership team. And we would meet every individual in the team in order to look for what are the collectives, patterns and dynamics that are occurring, and so then we can make sure that when we get into the room with the team, we know where to help them pay attention, which conversations might be helpful. And I just cannot tell you how many times the overwhelming theme has been, well, if the leader just, if the leader just, and it's like, oh, this one person is so powerful that all of our effectiveness and performance is impacted by just that person?

It's never the case. But it's an easy story to tell ourselves that sort of, you know, frees us up from having to take any responsibility for the work of being a team.

Karolynn: It's funny. I mean, I hear quite often, you know, this thing around, oh, leaders need to hold people more accountable. And I feel like that's what you're describing is, I mean, that can be true sometimes. I don't dispute that. But what I've heard you just talking about is, and sometimes it's actually not the role of one person to be able to create accountability in everyone.

Kimberly: And sometimes they're not the right person. I mean, sometimes you can walk into a team and there's someone who's really influential, has no authority at all, officially in their role, but if they say to you, hey, Karolynn, it'd be really great if next time you come to the meeting, you were prepared, everyone in that team would go, okay, because what they say really matters. So it's not, they're not, the leader's not always the right person. You know, often it's the peer feedback that you get, you know, it doesn't feel as threatening for some people, right? It's not about performance review. It's just, I actually care enough to tell you something that I think needs attention.

And if I've gone to that, you know, if I've got taken that risk to tell you, then your peer's probably going to listen. Whereas your leader, you almost expect it. It's their job. They're forced to give feedback.

Karolynn: Well, that and also, I think, you know, sometimes when a leader does that, publicly, you're like, oh, now they're in trouble, you know, versus, it's not safe.

Kimberly: It's not safe, exactly.

Karolynn: And now all of a sudden, without intending, we've now got psychological safety being rattled, you know, it's…

Kimberly: Yeah, which is important. One of the four factors is unity, and that covers off connection, that sort of sense of psychological safety. And it is, it is important, and that's got to be built up as a team. I remember working with a team once where there was no psychological safety because of the leader of the team. So the view of the team was, oh, this person was very aggressive and you couldn't say anything in front of them and they would take you down in a team meeting. And so it was really, really fascinating to see that you're absolutely right. The leader was not the right person in that instance to move that team forward.

People didn't feel safe that they could. Yet, as peers, they had started to help each other around the edges. So they would give each other feedback. They've almost started to take up the role. And there's some really good research and shared leadership about this where actually a team is powerful enough to work around a leader. If they're experiencing toxicity of leadership, they will buffer themselves and support each other and get themselves through that. So there's this incredible power that exists at the team level. And I think most of the time, the narrative we get about leadership sort of disempowers that. Like, oh, we're all subject to whether we get a good leader or a bad leader.

But there's a lot of research emerging, you know, ours included saying, well, actually, the collective is pretty powerful if you know the leadership work and if you are able to do it together as a team.

Karolynn: This is, I mean, I just find this fascinating. So if we think about high performing teams then, assuming that the leader is also a supportive part of the team, what do you see as the key difference in a team like that?

Kimberly: The key difference of how the team functions. Well, I mean, it's the four factors that the research tells us like there. But when you're in those teams, you can feel it. Like, they have an energy. They're purpose aligned. You've got this sense of they're not taking things personally. They're very focused on their collective performance. They discuss issues openly. You know, I'm always more worried about the teams I walk into where everybody's really nice. Because they're much harder to change. They're not having the robust conversations that really high-performing and effective teams are often having, and everyone's contributing. In fact, I remember I worked with this one team, and it was a leader at the time, and she was quite quiet in a team session.

And I remember thinking, this is very early on in my career, and I was completely ignorant. And I remember leaving the room and thinking, well, there's no leadership in that room. And only to learn to be very humbled. That team, I've worked out later, I'd only just met them, that team had the highest engagement results of any other team in the function I was supporting. And I thought, oh, I wonder what's going on. Anyway, then I thought, I got really curious about it. And I thought I'd have to go and watch that team again. Because to me, what was missing, right, in my ignorant view of leadership at the time was this charismatic heroic leader directing the whole team conversation.

And that just wasn't there. And what I realised was, was, ah, leadership was everywhere. What that leader was doing was being a part of a high-performing team and supporting it where they were all stepping up and taking leadership. They were driving the conversation. And sure, you could see her putting in little guardrails here and there to keep the conversation productive. But she wasn't the, she wasn't the dictator, orchestrator, kind of charismatic controlling leader that so much of history has told us is what leadership looks like. Wasn't that at all.

Karolynn: That fascinates me because I'm sure we've all had a similar experience along our journey, similar to that where, you know, something surprises us around what leadership can look like. We have a high-performing team, whatever that looks like for the group. What are they capable of that a dysfunctional team are not?

Kimberly: Getting the best out of everyone in the team. But there's a potential that is utilised in a high-performing, highly effective team that is not utilised in a team. That isn't like that. You know, everyone is literally doing the best they can, but even what the best they're capable of is limited by the team dynamic. In a high-performing team, you can almost see the individuals are outperforming their own potential because they're all lifting each other's potential up. So it is very much the sum of the parts. I mean, those are the teams you want to put on complex problem solving. They will look at things from every angle.

They will have really robust conversations to get to the heart of things. They will show up in service of what is the team's work and not themselves. They will get those complex tasks or problems, you know, solved in ways that are less functional team will not. Less functional team will get really internally focused. You know, some of the scenarios that I've walked in too. There's perceived interpersonal conflicts. People can't get the basics of communication right. So much time is wasted in the dysfunction. And that's not to say that I walk into those teams and say, well, let's solve all of the dysfunction, because that's a waste of time too, right?

It's a bit like families. They can cope with a certain amount of dysfunction, right? Human systems are beautifully designed to deal with dysfunction. So it's not about creating the perfect team, either, those high-performing teams, sure, there's things that aren't going perfectly and there's a little bit of dysfunction, and some people's personalities might rub up against each other in ways that it cause a little bit of friction, but it doesn't hold them back. It doesn't limit their potential. So I wouldn't want anyone to listen to this and think, oh, we've got to get rid of all the dysfunction out of our team. Often, that's a huge waste of time that makes you more internally focused, which is, again, why we wanted to work out.

Well, say you do walk into a team or you're part of a team that's experienced in lots of dysfunction, could take years to muddle through all of that, right? What do you want to get that team focused on? What do you want them moving towards that's going to help resolve some of that? I mean, we've been fascinated in some teams to see where there's been quite a lot of dysfunction. We've gotten them focused on one or two things that we know contribute to their effectiveness. And it's amazing to watch how those things just resolve all the little dysfunctions get left behind. It's like, we didn't even talk about those things.

They just dissipated once we got the team paying attention to the things that needed attention.

Karolynn: Interesting, isn't it? How often we think we have to get along with people to be functional with them. And I don't know, I remember a leader that I had had a bit of a catchphrase. And he would often say, I don't need everybody to agree. I do need everybody to commit. So anyone here not able to commit to this decision. And I feel like that's kind of what you've just described, is get people focused on, on, you know, what's going to be productive rather than maybe what would be a distraction.

Kimberly: You're also describing what alignment looks like in a high performing team. Right. Which is quite different to a team that are all agreeing is harmony. But actually in a high performing team, they might not be harmony. I remember one team I partnered with, which I would describe as incredibly high performing, they had a saying, many voices inside the team. One voice outside the team.

Karolynn: I like that.

Kimberly: So they'd have these really robust conversations that's thrown out of the table and then they would agree, well, what are we lining behind? And it was okay if their view didn't get up. As long as they'd had the robust conversation towards alignment. And then you're right, the commitment. Once we've made that decision, now we commit.

Karolynn: Amazing. That is cool. I like that. So this has got me thinking about the future of teams and perhaps a little controversially because I've heard you, earlier talking about functional teams versus a problem solving team. And I'm wondering, I'm wondering if it's time for a shift in the purpose of teams.

Kimberly: I think it's already shifting. I wouldn't be surprised if we see in the coming years, you know, and I know, everyone wants to connect everything to AI now. But it really is having an impact. Like, it's going to be one of the biggest transformative things in sort of our working lives. You see AI is starting to become so good at doing so much of our task work that actually the collective potential of teams might just become the superpower of solving those big complex problems when we're not distracted by our task work. So I'm personally very excited to see, wow, if we can get high performing, highly effective teams working on more complex problems because all of this task work is getting done in another way, what might be possible?

What might humans do?

Karolynn: That is.

Kimberly: Teams will play a key role in that. That's my hunch.

Karolynn: I've heard this theory that the future of teams going along this track would be not only the problem solving, but we would, we would not hire an individual anymore. We would hire the team. You know, we would identify this group of people that are high performing when they come together to solve problems or whatever the purpose of that team is and that we would then start hiring a team. I mean, I love that idea.

Kimberly: Yes. I love that. I've never heard that, but I really like that idea. I mean, that probably hints to the fact that this collective problem solving potential of groups of people will become that asset. And it's actually this idea of the individual being able to solve the problems. I mean, you're already seeing that, right? Like in the health sector, it's becoming really common to get multidisciplinary teams to get that to solve complex problems. So yeah, I can see that happening. I love that. I hope that's the case. I hope we can contribute by helping those teams be really effective.

Karolynn: Well, I hope so too. You know, what's really interesting is you've just reminded me talking about the health sector there. I remember, I mean, my father had a triple bypass, gee, it would have been 2006, so a long time ago. And I remember him saying that the date was chosen because they needed the team to come. Like that surgeon would only ever operate with his team. His anaesthetist, the, you know, the nurse, the support, whatever. And I kind of, it feels like this is what we're talking about here now too. It feels like the perfect example of what you just described that you'd heard that people would hire a team.

It was like that's, in that scenario, it sounds like, that's already happening.

Kimberly: When it, when the stakes are high, isn't that interesting? When the stakes are high. I need to be able to rely on that team. And that's the team that I know are going to deliver under pressure when the stakes are high.

Karolynn: So there's your working example. I've just got goosebumps. How weird is that?

Kimberly: Yeah. So I wonder what high stakes challenges these intact teams might end up solving. Or will they be more multidisciplinary? And actually we can start, I wonder, and I don't know, we're like in the future now. But I wonder if we might be able to start to bring people together to form that team more quickly than we have in the past. Because in the past, I imagine, I'm interested to chat to the health professional that you're referring to. I wonder how long it took for that team to become the team. It could be years to build that kind of trust. I wonder how we might accelerate that.

Karolynn: Well, and I feel like I'm going on a completely different track here as well. But one of the things, I'm sure you hear this all the time too, is it is so hard to recruit the right, right people for the right role, you know, with the right skills. And it almost feels like what we're describing is a bit of a cut through on that as well, because you would have this team that…

Kimberly: I mean, I just think it gives me a bit of a giggle because I often think, who, like, you know, think about how long we've been around, right? We've been saying 20 years working for probably a long time now. So it's probably a bit longer than that. Think about how many times you actually got the luxury of assembling your team.

Karolynn: Not very often.

Kimberly: Honestly, I don't even think I can think of once and a, where I, like, oh, maybe once, actually, where I got to assemble a team from scratch. It's pretty rare. And mostly as I work with, don't get that luxury. So this idea that it's about the right mix of people, I mean, I mean, if you've got five years, but you show me someone who's got five years in any workplace at the moment, like people are trying to move at a much faster pace. You can't wait for natural attrition to occur. Attrition and then that other person that you're hoping to be available and ready and the, you know, the venue's right and the money's right and the packages right and the opportunity's right.

You hire the perfect person and they get ejected from the team system anyway because the fit just doesn't work out how you might have hoped. It's funny on that. It's a complete tangent. You can edit this out later. I was working with a leadership team and they'd been really, really progressive doing a lot of this stuff that we've been chatting about. And they were bringing their first female in. And one of the leaders rang me and he said, oh, could you coach a female that's coming into our executive team? And I said, no. I said, but I'll coach the executive team on how they will absorb their first and induct and work productively with their first female executive member.

Karolynn: Interesting. So even back then, you were thinking about the team system, not the individual.

Kimberly: Well, because the team was going to have a much greater capacity for that one person to succeed, then that one person coming in and having to be, you know, do everything right and see every dynamic at play. If we could help the team see the way in which it might be hard for the first female of the team to integrate into the team, they can go about interacting with that person with way more awareness. Right. Whereas you're a brand new team member. It doesn't matter what gender you are. You know how difficult it is when you walk into a team to read all of the dynamics that are playing out.

You don't have the history of the team. You're flying blind the first sort of three to six months.

Karolynn: It's true.

Kimberly: So why would, I mean, yes, we can coach them and support them into those roles. But the real work was going to be much more effectively done at the team level.

Karolynn: I love that. That is a much more supportive way. You know, like thinking about how does everyone support each other and goes back to your philosophy of how the team learned together. Which brings us to TeamHive. I know that you've used everything that you've learned through your research, through your work with teams, and you've created TeamHive. Tell us about that.

Kimberly: So TeamHive is the outcome of the research. And so what we've managed to build is an evidence-based, reliable assessment that essentially helps teams get a view of, well, how is our team effectiveness and performance likely to be affected by our current way of behaving together. So it helps the team look at how they work. It's like an X-ray on the team dynamics.

Karolynn: That's so cool.

Kimberly: Yeah. And it's, we've got a 500 plus norm group. So you get this benchmarking data for your own team view. And then it's a full 360. In addition to the team view, you have the stakeholder view. And that's been really fascinating to see that working with teams. And so what I'm finding with the being able to use a diagnostic like that in the work now is that you can really quickly get to the heart of, ah, that's the thing we should focus on. Right. Let's set about doing that. To put a few practices in place and get the team moving in that direction. It's accelerating the process of becoming aware of what is the opportunity for this team.

And then we've got a free version as well that we've built. So you can get your own view of your team. If you want to jump on, have a quick look at how does my team compare to the benchmark? It's a really short sort of, I think less than 10 minutes to fill out the self-view.

Karolynn: Oh, cool. So anybody can jump on, fill it in and get a view on their team.

Kimberly: Anyone can get access to the free version. I mean, anyone can use the 360. So it's been designed in a way that makes it really easy to understand and accessible. It talks you through the process in terms of how you understand the data and how you might use it with your team. And then obviously because AI is so fabulous now, we've got AI built into our platform as well to help, you know, understand the data and ask questions and work out, or what might I try to experiment with my team? So yeah, whether you're a leader, a practitioner or an OD person, there's ways that you can now start to help either teams or organisations look at the team level with a bit more clarity.

Karolynn: And the paid version, how is that different? Like, what does that offer?

Kimberly: So it gives you a whole 360 view. So in the paid version, you'll get your whole team's view and you get stakeholders of the team. And yeah, that's been super enlightening for some teams to see, you know, we've got our internal view, oh, we think we're doing great. And then the stakeholder view is quite different. And even that awareness of, oh, there's a disconnect between how we experience ourselves and how our stakeholders experience us can lead to a fair bit of awareness for the team and development.

Karolynn: What do you find people are most surprised by when they're, you know, completing this kind of survey, if that's the right diagnostic, it might be a better word. What do you find people are most surprised about?

Kimberly: The difference between their view of themselves as a team and their stakeholders' view. That's the most common surprise. Yeah, the other interesting thing is people can often feel that they are a good team. And then when you actually look at the practices that make you really effective, and performing, they become more aware of, oh, we're actually not doing those things. Like, they're just, it shows you gaps in what effective and high-performing teams are doing that your team might feel like a good team. It's a nice team to be part of. But it almost reveals to you, oh, there's this under-utilised potential that you've got as a team that if you did these things, you know, you'd be likely to predict you to be more effective and higher-performing.

Karolynn: Wow. It's interesting, isn't it? I feel like I mean, we've kind of alluded to this already, but it feels like we just haven't been paying any attention to the team. I mean, we've talked about high performance teams, but I don't think we've really been having the right conversation about teams. I think we've been thinking about it, like skill development, right? I mean, if at all.

Kimberly: I mean, I think you're right. I think most people aren't thinking about it at all. I think it's been difficult to think about because even if you understand it. And I think a lot of people do understand it. They don't know how to do it or where to start. It can be trickier in an organisation. Like, it's much easier to kind of put all of your leaders through a program experience. It's much harder to get to every team. And that's why, thinking about, well, how do you help teams do this themselves? So you don't need to send them on a program. They can actually just get more aware of what they need to pay attention to.

They can work together to set goals. They can start to have different conversations. We're not teaching that stuff often. Even in leadership programs, when you cover a high performing team, you might talk about what makes a high performing team. But we don't talk about how.

Karolynn: No. It's really interesting. I'm reflecting on two different situations as you're talking. Both personal for me. The first was years ago. And I was in a team with somebody that we were constantly in misalignment with each other. And eventually our leader, spoke to both of us and said, I'd love for you two to work this out. Otherwise, trust me, we'll work it out together. I was like, hint, hint, you don't want me involved as the leader's message. And so we worked it out. Okay. And ironically, we have become incredible colleagues. Like years on, we haven't worked together for years, but we would still call each other and share ideas now.

The other situation was one where, again, there was, um, there was, a situation where, you know, one team member was probably not immersed in the same way. And, and again, I think it was a fair reflection of the leader to say, I'm probably not the one that can sort this out. Like, I've actually got a good relationship with each of you, but collectively as a group, there's some challenges. I need you to go and, you know, kind of see what you can do to, you know, create a bridge.

Kimberly: So you're a member of the team in that scenario.

Karolynn: I'm a member of the team in that scenario.

Kimberly: And he was asking you to take up your leadership work as a member of the team.

Karolynn: Right. So, and so what I'm hearing now is shared leadership, right? And again, I'm going, huh, and there's still this kind of like this individual kind of piece that brings everyone together, but not many people are thinking about view of team. Most, I think, would go, oh, well, you've got a conflict with that person. So, you know, what do we do about that versus how do we just be adults? And again, back to we don't need to be best friends. How do we find ways to be effective together? And when there's leadership changes, what happens? People get a little bit nervous about, am I adding enough value?

What might, you know, what might happen to my role if I'm not perceived as being valuable enough? So these conditions around them…

Kimberly: But I think you're right, we get distracted by the noise of individual things. I think they're easier for us to understand, maybe. Whereas if we think at a team level, we've got to stop thinking about the individuals in the team and start thinking about the spaces between them.

Karolynn: Oh, I like that. In dance, we talk about the music and then the space in between, right? And I feel like it's the same thing that you've just talked about there is the nuance is not in the, in the concrete, it's in the, it's in the, it's in the piece in between.

Kimberly: And that would be the first thing when a leader comes to me and says, oh, this is going on, these individuals in my team, the minute I hear individuals, my first thought is, what's going on around them, what's going on between them? And it's so easy to scapegoat an individual or a personal conflict is the problem. But usually it's, there's, actually there's team work to do.

Karolynn: Environment and space. Amazing. Kimberly, what do we need to talk about teams that we haven't yet spoken about?

Kimberly: Yeah, I guess if I had, I mentioned earlier, like, there was sort of three mindsets that needed to shift. And so from my perspective, that's if you're a member of a team, there is leadership work to do for every member of a team. If you are a leader of a team, you've got to start to create the conditions where the team can do the leadership work together. You know, and these four factors that we've come up with are a nice way to start. So we try to offer people a way to start that conversation. And if you're in any organisational institution that's trying to develop people towards more effectiveness and performance, and you think that the work that's happening in teams is important to that, and you've got to start looking at how you develop teams and stop trying to develop the individuals in them.

Karolynn: I hear what you're saying, 100%. And so if there's people in our audience here wanting to learn more about you, want to learn more about TeamHive. Where do they find you?

Kimberly: You can find me on LinkedIn, Kimberly Luffman, and not the actor. There is a wonderful actress with the same name. I'm not her.

Karolynn: Wow, there we go.

Kimberly: I know, yeah, there you go.

Karolynn: I mean, you could act.

Kimberly: I don't know about that, but thank you for believing in me. And then the TeamHive website is the best spot to have a look at the tool. Jump on, see how your team compares to the benchmark. You can complete your own view of your team in, I think it's less than 10 minutes now.

Karolynn: Amazing. Well, this has been an absolute gift to have this conversation today. I just feel like we are on the cusp of genuine change in the workplace in so many ways. And I think teams and how we operate in a team is going to be a big part of that. So I think you're right. I'm excited to see how your research continues to evolve through not just the research and the theory, but as it's continuing to be implemented, I think you're doing incredible work. And thank you for having this conversation today, sharing your observations, but more importantly, your wisdom.

Kimberly: Thank you. Thanks, Karolynn. It's been beautiful to be part of the conversation. Thanks for your insightful questions. It's so nice to talk and think about these things.

Karolynn: My pleasure. Thank you, Kimberly.

If you'd like to see how your own team looks on the four PLUS factors, the Free Team Effectiveness Indicator takes under ten minutes. Thank you to Karolynn Hardy for a generous, curious conversation. Listen to the full episode on Spotify.