CHAPTER 14

Honor and Accelerate Team Magic. Elevate and Propel Them.

We are better together when we show up.

You’re positively contagious, your leadership is humming, and you’re creating the impact you desire. Now what about your team? Team dynamics are a whole new ball game. How do you play this one? No worries; you’ve worked hard to get to this point, and if you’ve been showing up positively contagious and in service of the people you lead, your team will be right behind you with these practices and ways of being. If you’ve been reading this book with your team, this will be even easier. If not, you’ve still got this.

Remember, it only takes one person to shift the tone. And that’s you. Your presence is your impact, so do a reboot, take a breath, set your intention to be in service of your team and its magic, and let’s go.

Your Highly Contagious Team

The people on your team are contagious just like you are. They’re contagious inside the team as they infect each other. And they’re contagious outside the team as they influence the people around them who are constantly deciding if they want to work with, follow, trust, and model your team.

What kind of team do you have?

The Story of Two Teams: Team Chaos and Team Calm

Once upon a time there was a team, we’ll call it Team Chaos.

The people on your Team Chaos showed up late for meetings, always had their phones in hand, talked behind each other’s backs, hoarded information that would support others (because they wanted to have the upper hand), and ran from meeting to meeting without pause. They lived in the Drama Triangle (taking turns being Hero, Victim, and Perpetrator with each other), had wildly unproductive meetings, complained to others about their team, stayed late at work (because they weren’t productive during the day), and turned into martyrs the next morning for being at work so late the night before.

Team Chaos’s engagement scores were the lowest in the company, customer complaints about the team members were the highest, and their families were exhausted by the complaints their loved ones came home with every night.

When Team Chaos met with another team in the organization, the other team knew not to worry about being on time—so it too showed up late. It knew not to take the meeting too seriously—so its members were unprepared. And these members knew presence wasn’t a big deal with Team Chaos—so they multitasked throughout. Everyone left the meeting unproductive, low vibe, and toxically contagious.

There was another team in the organization; we’ll call it Team Calm.

The members of Team Calm set themselves up for success from the beginning. They got clear on the purpose of the team, why each was on the team, the core values of the team, and the value (and values) of each person. They were also clear on their energetic preferences on how they liked to work, their goals and intentions as a team, and their team agreements.

They had agreements for navigating conflict and for when agreements were broken. They integrated energy checks to tune in with each other and used the Five Steps to Intentional Impact to prepare for meetings and projects.

Finally, they got clear on the intended impact they wanted to have on each other, their clients, the teams around them, and even their families. They frequently asked themselves: “How do we want our families to experience us when we go home at night? What kind of container do we need to create as a team to make that so?”

It worked.

Team Calm showed up on time and present, phones were off, agreements were honored, and meetings were intentional and productive. The team started each meeting with an energy check, a quick review of core values and purpose, and a confirmation of the agenda and intended outcomes.

When the members of Team Calm had conflict, they went to each other directly. They wasted no time on triangulation or drama (if one of them tried to pull another team member into drama, the team member would remind him or her of their agreements and then support the person in “dialing direct”).

They built in breaks between meetings and made their meetings 50 minutes long instead of 60 (they were so efficient, they often didn’t need the full 50).

They sought ways to be helpful to other teams and each other providing information and opportunities that would make others shine.

And when they went home at night, they went home at night to be fully present with their lives.

Their engagement scores were the highest in the company, their complaints the lowest, their results on point, and when you asked people which team they trusted or would like to work with, Team Calm was named.

This is a composite of these teams; it doesn’t always work out to these extremes on either side, and it paints a powerful picture.

Which team do you want to be?

If we put these two teams together, who would win? The lower-vibration team or the higher? You bet, Team Calm. The members are more grounded. If they hold their space, stay clear on their intent, model the behaviors they wish to see, and invite the other team to step up, Team Chaos will match them.

You create a strong and positively contagious team when, first, you do the work yourself personally, and second, you set your team up with foundational practices to support team health and the container. And when you work with a low-vibe team? You can change the tone—if you’re willing to set it.

Any time is a great time to start this. If you’re starting fresh as a new team, do this now. If your team has been together for years and no one is happy—do this now. A lovely way to enter this conversation is simply by asking the people on your team how they feel about the team dynamics, the quality of your meetings, and their state of being going home each night. This will likely open up a new level of conversation where you can bring these elements in.

Creating a Positively Contagious Team

There are several components I’ve found helpful in creating a positively contagious team. You can do one or all, and the more you do, the more impact there will be. This takes a bit of work up front and requires “going slow to go fast” at first. A pound of proactiveness now is worth a ton of cleaning stuff up later.

1.   The team’s Essential You. Just as we start your individual leadership from the inside out, the team works the same way. Is the vision of the team clear (do you all know where you’re going)? Are your values clear, understood, and honored? Is your purpose clear, and is everyone on board and energized by it? Who are you as a team? The Essential You is at the core of the team; this is the team’s identity. Every company I’ve known that has a strong core and positively contagious culture is very much in touch with the values and purpose of the team and organization. (Some even start meetings with a review of their values and purpose.) As you explore the Essential You, look at the team’s presence and “brand.” What’s your identity? How do others think of you? How do they experience you? What do you want to be known for? Why are you all together? And in service of what?

2.   The composition of the team. Who’s on the team and why? Are people in their best-suited roles doing what they have the energy, drive, competency, and capacity for? Are the roles and responsibilities clear? Does everyone know what he or she is accountable for and who’s leading what? Does everyone know the charter of the team and the priorities? Whether you use a formal system or not, this element comes down to being super-clear about what and who the team is.

3.   The energy of the team. What is the energy of the team? When your team comes together and all the team members are working their IEP and being conscious about how they show up, this is already being handled. You can rarely go wrong with people in their authentic energy, present, and holding positive intent. To support the energy of the team, there are assessments to help members identify qualities, preferences, and strengths that will help them do their best work and feel good doing it. You can look at the personality types, skills, competencies, and energetic preferences of each member individually and as a collective. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator^® (MBTI^®), DiSC^®, StrengthsFinder^®, Kolbe Indexes, WorkPlace Big Five Profile™, and many others are designed to help the individual and the team learn more about themselves and how to work together better. One of my favorites is the Simpli5^® Assessment (by 5 Dynamics^®, LLC)¹ as it measures the energetic preferences of the individual(s), and the team, doing the work. It’s not about competence or personality, but rather supporting people to be optimized in their energetic preferences for thinking, working, and getting things done.

4.   The emotional health and safety of the team. To set your team up beautifully, make sure you’re addressing the emotional well-being and safety of the team. This is key if you want your people performing well and being positively contagious. This includes physical safety and ensuring your work environment supports you mentally. It also includes emotional safety to ensure you all support each other. This is where naming team dynamics and creating healthy agreements come in. This is also where direct engagement, open and honest communication, productive feedback, and clean conflict navigation become extra important. The tools offered in Chapter 13 (and throughout Part 3) are all designed to support this element of teaming. Do not underestimate the importance of safety on your team. It is everything.

5.   The IEP of the team. The IEP, the intentions, energy, and presence of the team, is fundamental to your team’s well-being. You’ll want to explore the following (see Chapters 5 and 6 for more on these):

•   The team’s Physical and Environmental Energy (Quadrant 1 of the IEP Model as referenced in Chapter 5): Are you set up for self-care, healthy food at meetings, an energizing environment? Are scheduling allowances to honor jet lag and personal care taken into account when the team travels? How do you intentionally handle the craziness of calendaring?

•   The team’s Mental and Emotional Energy (Quadrant 2): Is there safety for dialogue? Do you check your assumptions? Are you curious? Are you kind? Do you set intentions together, use conscious language, assume good, and believe in each other?

•   The team’s Vibrational Energy (Quadrant 3): Are you conscious of your presence? Do you do presence reboots? Are the teammates each responsible for the energy they bring into the room? Do you use the Energetic Xylophone to support team dynamics?

•   The team’s Relational Energy (Quadrant 4): Do you have agreements? Have you decided to be a team? Do you proactively design your relationships, love your nemesis, and navigate conflict with care?

6.   The structures of the team. What structures do you use as a team to set yourself up for staying on track, staying connected, measuring impact, and being the most productive and effective possible? Structures include the quality of your team meetings, measurements and rewards (see “Structures That Support” below), using the IEP Sheet and the Five Steps to Intentional Impact framework as a team, building IEP moments into team meetings to support ongoing integration, scheduling and calendaring, and of course online systems like Slack, Dropbox, Evernote, Trello, 15Five^®, Google, Todoist, and the many other platforms we have to support us in teaming. Choose the ones that work for you, agree upon them, stick with the plan, and be ready to up-level when they no longer serve you all now.

Structures That Support

Be intentional about the structures you create to measure results and how they’ll impact your team dynamics. Are the rewards and measurement systems of your team and organization creating a culture of collaboration and care? Or a culture of competition and self-preservation? Do they motivate teams to succeed together or to watch their own back? Build your measurement systems so they reward and foster people supporting each other and helping them do well versus competing and working against each other. (More on this can be found in my book Contagious Culture in the Super 7 of Cultural Health.)

7.   The magic of the team. What practices, rituals, or structures can you put in place to support the unique magic of your team? This may include meeting and team rituals, secret names, energizing competitions, shared impact goals, team events, and more. I’ve seen teams have secret names for each member (that only the team knows) to reflect what the individual teammates care most about and what they want to step into every day. I’ve seen secret handshakes, regularly scheduled team outings, appreciation moments built into the last five minutes of the meeting to close on a great note, and Walls of Gratitude displayed on office walls (virtual and in person), and more. “Magic sauce” can be anything that is designed by your team that is life-giving and pleasurable and means something to each of you.

How Is Your Team Wired?

Since we’re talking about energy and contagiousness throughout this book, I thought it’d be great to speak with Karen Gordon, CEO of 5 Dynamics, LLC,² an organization devoted to helping teams optimize their collective energy together by working in their energetic zones of ease through a suite of tools that essentially measures how we’re wired and prefer to use our energy. I’ve shared 5 Dynamics (now named Simpli5) with clients since 2004 in this work, as it effectively helps people understand where they prefer to show up in any project or process.

When I asked Karen about her perspective on “being contagious” and the energetic dynamics at play, here’s what she shared:

There are elements of leadership that come more naturally for some than for others. The key is in understanding your baseline and taking small, intentional steps to increase your focus in areas that do not come as naturally for you. For example, some people are naturally drawn to ideas and action and have lower energy for people and planning. Some are drawn to people and planning and have lower energy for ideas and action. None of us show up with high energy in all areas; however, all areas are equally important for optimal impact. If we truly want to be positively contagious, we need to be intentional about showing up in the areas that do not come as naturally, and we need to appreciate others who show up in ways that we don’t.

One of the things Karen is speaking to here is part of what happens with the dynamics of “George” and “Mary.” We all have different wiring and combinations of energetic flows for how we show up. The more we understand this about ourselves and appreciate it in others, the better we can all work together in positively contagious ways. We want to be conscious of the energetic dynamics and physiological processes at play. We all bring our own magic. Sometimes appreciating this requires a bit more curiosity, awareness, and rebooting to understand the different forms. Karen offers another way of framing this from a 5 Dynamics perspective:

When we understand how our energy flows through any project cycle: from idea, to engagement, to planning, to execution (the four areas), with evaluation taking place throughout each phase and at the end of the cycle, we are able to fine-tune our approach by being intentional in areas where we have lower natural energy flow. When we are intentional about showing up in all of the phases, we no longer dismiss others. We listen for all perspectives, and we begin to value cognitive diversity. We see people for who they are and value them for the gifts they bring.

When talking about the impact of IEP and some of the principles I’ve shared in this book as related to energetic preferences and contagiousness, Karen shares, “I know I set the tone for my team. I’m contagious. If my high-execute energy goes unchecked, I can bulldoze others. So, I need to be intentional about slowing down and being aware of what is happening in the room. From here I can create more of the impact I want.”

What Karen is doing here is modeling awarenes and intention and working with her natural authentic energies in a way that enables her to bring all of herself to the table while meeting people where they are and honoring them—another act of leadership and being positively contagious.

Bringing Up the Lowest Vibration in the Room

I’m often asked, “How do I bring up the lowest vibration in the room when’G’ is devoted to bringing us down?”

You may avoid this issue all together if you and your team apply what I’m sharing in this book. You can also avoid it by starting your meeting with an energy check to get people “in the room,” present, and aware of how they’re showing up. (See “IEP Team Energy Check” below.)

If an energy check doesn’t take care of it (or you choose to skip the check-in altogether), the answer to this question comes in five steps.

Step 1: Just Notice It: Hold Your Space and Don’t Get Hooked

Your presence is your impact. Your mirror neurons are doing their thing—so staying congruent, high vibe, and present is your best bet of inviting others on your team to step up. Do not match the lowest vibration in the room (if you do, you’ll lose the others quickly as well). Instead use your energetic presence as an invitation for others to match you. This often works, as presence begets presence. If this doesn’t work, go to Step 2.

Step 2: Do the Energy Check

If it’s not already part of your culture, simply say, “Let’s give ourselves a minute to breathe, check in, and see where we are.” Then do the check. If someone is at a “2” (low) and “not feeling it,” or the person is fine being a “2” and doesn’t want to change it, let that be OK. Don’t try to fix it, talk the person out of it, or put any drama around it. Simply invite the person to take care, and if he or she would like support to ask for it. Remind people to notice their impact on the room and to be responsible (and “response-able”) for it. This in itself will often shift the entire dynamic. If it doesn’t, move to Step 3.

Step 3: Name It and Get Curious

“Hey G, how you doing? I’m noticing you’re a little off. You OK? Need anything?” This inquiry, offered with genuine care and curiosity (not snark), can shift the energy in the room. People will either tell you what’s up and what they need or say “Nope, all good,” and shift. If that doesn’t happen, on to Step 4.

Step 4: Call a Time-Out

If G is having a negative impact on the room and seemingly devoted to continue doing so, take a break. Check on G privately, give feedback, and see what’s up. Is G aware of his or her impact? Is this the impact G wants to have on the room? What does G need in order to shift? This may do it. In the rare case that G is intent on having a negative impact on the room, or he or she is not able to shift . . . go to Step 5.

Step 5: Name It and Schedule the Bigger Conversation for Later

“G, we have a meeting to get back to. I’d really like you to be with us and contribute. We need you. I can’t talk you into showing up well. If you choose to show up this way, that’s your call, and be aware that it has impact. Your leadership credibility and influence are at stake. After this meeting let’s sit down to talk about the bigger things at play here because I am pretty sure something else is going on. Let’s explore that together.” And then go back in (with or without G as you both decide).

Note: I’ve only seen this play to Step 5 twice. Both times great wisdom unfolded. Once, the employee needed support beyond what the organization could give, and was able to get that support after. The other time, there was a major issue with one of the team’s projects, and while this situation was messy and uncomfortable, the conversation and learning for that team were priceless.

IEP Team Energy Check

Want to get your team present, “in the room,” and conscious of how the team is showing up?

IEP Energy Check (5–10 minutes)

Everyone takes a breath, gets present, and gives himself or herself a minute for silence. Then, check in. (For a large group, have the individual members do this in silence or with a partner. If it’s a small team, have each of the members share.)

Ask: “How’s your energy on a scale of 0–10?” (0 being low and 10 being high)

•   Physical energy. How are you feeling? How’s your body?

•   Environmental energy. How energized are you by this environment?

•   Mental energy. How mentally present are you right now?

•   Emotional energy. How is your emotional energy?

•   Vibrational energy. What’s your vibe? The quality of energy you’ve brought into this room?

•   Team energy. How’s it feel in here together? What’s the energy of the team/group?

And then: “What’s one thing you can do right now to bring it up?” From here you can do a presence reboot or take a break or whatever you sense best. Often just checking the energy and naming it is the reboot.

Quick IEP Energy Check (3 minutes)

Everyone takes a breath, gets present, and has 30 seconds to drop in. Then, check in:

•   What’s the quality of your energetic presence right now? How present are you? How’s your energy? What are you bringing to this room? How are you showing up?

•   What do you need to do, be, or believe to bring it up? Breathe, change my posture, change my mind, believe in this team and our work, set my intention, drink some water, etc.

They’ll answer 0–10, share one thing to bring it up (often you’ll hear, “Actually just naming it has made me more present!”), and then you’re off!

TEAM MEETINGS THAT ROCK

Want to rock your next meeting? Follow this:

Before:

•   Set the agenda; be clear on outcomes and who needs to be there.

•   Set the environment up so it supports you to be present and humming on all cylinders: location, food, lighting, time zone/travel considerations, breaks, swag that supports (water bottles, flowers, good pens), and anything else that will impact the energy of the container.

•   Send a reminder out 48 hours before and include: the agenda, outcomes, who’s going to be there, and the dress code (if there is one), along with asking people to be on time, come prepared (do your Five Steps and any prep), be well rested—and anything else that will help people show up fully without the stress of ambiguity.

During:

•   Get there on time! Start on time! Put phones away!

•   Do an energy check.

•   Do the Five Steps to Intentional Impact framework as a team (ideally they all did it for themselves before, and it’s useful to check in on as a team to ground your IEP and the desired outcomes).

•   Check agreements (or create them if you haven’t already)

•   Confirm finish time to ease any ambiguity or anxiety of running over.

•   Go! Note: Make sure you table issues that are off-topic, saving them for a later date. You might use a “parking lot” system, have someone write things down as they come up, or have each person put their “off-topics” on Post-its as they go (to be collected and organized at the end). This will help you stay on track, honor time, stay present, and reboot as needed, without the anxiety of something important being missed.

•   Recap next steps, agreements, and what needs to happen before the next meeting (including capturing any issues or off-topics that came up during this one).

•   Close with appreciations and/or an IEP Moment that speaks to something in the IEP work you can all focus on for the week or something you’re excited about (this can also be done at the beginning of the meeting).

After:

•   Lock in what worked, what felt great, and what you want to do different or better next time.

•   Follow through on action items and agreements.

•   Continue your becoming as a team.

Fieldwork: Make It Real

Flag the ideas and practices from this chapter that you sense will support your team. Then, take both parts of this quiz. Your answers will point you to the areas that need extra TLC. (To accelerate results, do this as a team.)

Quiz: How Positively Contagious Is Our Team?

Your team is YOU and your team of people, so let’s look at both.

Our Team

Rate 0–10 here (where 0 is nonexistent or totally unhealthy, and 10 is "We are rocking this!”).

Me on Our Team

Rate 0–10 here (where 0 is not true at all, and 10 is "so true and I am loving it!”).

Notes: (Noticings, where we're rocking it, TLC areas identified, next steps, etc.)

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