Transparency and Curiosity: Creating a Common Pool of Understanding

Together, transparency and curiosity help you create a common pool of information and understanding between yourself and the group you're helping. Everything you do relies on combining the two. When you're transparent, the group understands what you're doing and why. When you're curious, you learn what group members are thinking and feeling and why.

Transparency means sharing all relevant information, including your thoughts, feelings, and strategies with the appropriate people at the appropriate time. It means explaining why you're saying what you're saying, why you're asking what you're asking, and why you're doing what you're doing.

If you think a meeting is going off track and you want to bring it back on track, rather than just unilaterally switching the topic back to what you think it should be, you may say this to the team: “Once you started talking about staffing levels, it looked like you moved from identifying and agreeing on the key goals for this year to discussing how to achieve one of the goals. Does anyone see that differently? If not, my understanding is that you agreed that in this meeting you wouldn't address how to achieve the goals. Does anyone have a different understanding?”

If you're thinking that one member is being interrupted, you say something like what Barbara says in the redesigned CIO case: “Sandy, it looked like you weren't finished talking when Joe started to talk, yes?”

If you're asking a group whether they want to take a break, you explain why you're asking. You may say, “I'm asking because I noticed a number of you—Ellie, Bruce, and Quinn—standing up and walking around.”

You value transparency because you realize that when others understand what you're thinking, you increase trust and others can respond to you more effectively. When everyone is transparent, you and the group create a common pool of information and can move forward together. This is true especially when people hold different views.

It's difficult to be transparent when you're using a unilateral control mindset; you have to share information that doesn't support your solutions, disclose why you really want to know what you're asking, and reveal that you are, in fact, trying to unilaterally control the situation. Sharing this information would undermine your approach and your ability to win. But being transparent when using a mutual learning mindset actually increases your effectiveness and your strategy because your strategy is to learn and move forward together rather than to control the situation.

But transparency isn't simply sharing exactly what you're thinking. You have to be thinking in a form that's useful to share. At times, each of us has thoughts and feelings about the people we work with that wouldn't be helpful to share in the way we're thinking or feeling. Sharing these thoughts isn't being transparent; it's a recipe for creating defensiveness in others and unproductive conflict. In Barbara's original case, her problem wasn't that she was withholding her thoughts that Fred was hopeless; it was that she was thinking in a way that was unproductive and that she couldn't share. Until Barbara shifts her mindset to mutual learning, she will continue thinking in a way that blocks her from being able to be transparent.

Curiosity is the partner of transparency. When you're transparent, you share information so others can learn about your thinking. When you're curious, you ask questions to learn about others' thinking.

If you realize that you have only some of the pieces of the puzzle and that people you're working with have other pieces, you'll be curious to know more. You'll realize that much of what you think you know about others is just an educated guess at best; to really know, you need to ask them.

The mechanics of curiosity are simple: You ask questions that you don't already know the answers to. Sometimes, you're simply asking team members what choice they want to make, as when Barbara asks, “Then, what do each of you think—do you want to continue the conversation now, save it for later, or take another approach?” Other times you're asking a question to understand what's leading someone to ask you a question. If you're wondering why a team member is asking what you think about team members who don't follow through, instead of simply answering the question, you might say, “What leads you to ask? This way I can answer your question better.”

Developing a mindset of curiosity is more difficult than understanding the mechanics. In challenging situations, we usually believe that we understand and are right; those who disagree don't understand and are wrong. As experts hired to help others, our difficulty seeing others' perspectives can be compounded by the curse of knowledge.¹ Our expert knowledge makes it more difficult to think about issues from a nonexpert perspective.

I know this curse well. I've written three different books on increasing team effectiveness. The book in your hands—or on your screen—is the third edition of one of these books. I think I'm pretty expert about what makes teams effective and how to help them. So, I have to work to be genuinely curious when my clients have different views about how to increase their effectiveness. There is a Talmudic expression: “Who is wise? He who learns from everyone.” I keep that in mind, asking myself, “What can I learn from my clients in this situation—about my work, myself, and how to better help them?”

When we're not curious, we can easily become frustrated, as we wonder why others don't understand what is obvious to us. That leads us to ask uncurious, rhetorical “questions” to make a point, such as, “Do you really think employees will accept your not releasing the results?”

Informed Choice and Accountability: For Better Decisions and Commitment

The common pool of information you create through transparency and curiosity is necessary but not sufficient. You and those you work with need to transform that information into high-quality decisions that generate commitment. That's the role of informed choice and accountability.

Informed choice means making decisions and maximizing others' abilities to make decisions based on relevant information in a way that builds commitment. When you value informed choice, you create situations in which decisions are based on information you and the group have pooled together. Not only are you informed, but so, too, are those with whom you're working. When people make informed choices, they're more committed to the decisions.

When you're working with a group, many of the decisions you make are made jointly with the group because you're a third party and the group is ultimately responsible for choices that affect them. However, informed choice doesn't mean that the team needs to make its decisions by consensus. The field of facilitation has some of its roots in participative decision making. This has led some facilitators to consider consensus decision making as an end in itself. They have advocated, unrealistically, that teams make all of their decisions by consensus. I used to hold that view. Over time, I realized that requiring teams to make all their decisions using the same decision-making rule—no matter what that rule is—fails to take into account the complexity of teams. Some decisions don't require consensus to be implemented effectively. And there are times when even high-performing teams are unable to reach consensus and the team needs a decision to move forward.

The mutual learning approach doesn't require the group you are working with to use any particular decision-making rule. The group can use the full range of decision-making options, ranging from the leader making the decision himself or herself without consulting with others to the group making decisions by consensus. What distinguishes mutual learning from unilateral control is not the decision-making rule that a group uses—it is the mindset that the group leader and members operate from before, during, and after the decision making. Mutual learning seeks to maximize informed choice, along with transparency, curiosity, accountability, and compassion.

When you operate from a unilateral control mindset, you think informed choice threatens your chances of winning: If people get to make informed choices, they may choose differently from the way you want. But when you operate from a mutual learning mindset, you see that maximizing informed choice for all increases the chances of a high-quality decision you and the team will commit to.

In your facilitative role, you're providing the group with informed choices throughout the conversation, not simply at the end of conversation. In the CIO survey feedback case earlier in this chapter (Exhibit 4.1), Barbara offers the group an informed choice each time she shares her thoughts about possible next steps and then asks the group how they want to proceed. If you value informed choice, you build it into these “small” decisions along the way.

Accountability is the partner of informed choice. When people make informed choices or when they make decisions with others, they're also accountable to others for those choices. In your facilitative role, you're accountable to the group for the decisions you make by yourself and with them. When you're accountable, you meet several expectations:

• You willingly accept the responsibilities inherent in your position to serve the well-being of the organization. You're expected to serve the well-being of the client and the larger organization or context in which it functions.
• You expect that your name will be publicly linked to your actions, words, or reactions.
• You expect to be asked to explain your beliefs, decisions, commitments, or actions to your team and others you work with.²²

Having your name publicly linked to your actions, words, or reactions means that people can easily know that what was said, done, or decided was what you said, did, or decided. This kind of accountability shows up in small but powerful ways. It's the difference between saying, “It was decided” and “I decided.” It's the difference between saying, “Don't tell anyone I said this” and “If you talk to anyone about this, please let them know what I said.”

Accountability also means that you're expected to explain your reasoning, decisions, and actions to others. It's not sufficient to simply tell the group what you said, what you did, or what you decided. It's necessary to explain what led you to say what you said, do what you did, or decide what you decided. Barbara demonstrates this when she explains to Mike why she can't simply offer her recommendation without first getting agreement to do so from the full group. By helping others understand your thinking, you reduce the chance that people will make up inaccurate stories about your intent.

Someone once said, “To those who have more power than us, we give explanations; to those who have less power, we don't. And those with less power can tell the difference.”²³ In your facilitative role, you owe your explanations not only to the person paying for your services, the formal group leader, or your boss, but also to the other team members.

When you operate from a unilateral control mindset, you may try to hold others accountable without making yourself accountable. Or you may not even ask team members to be accountable because you don't want them to hold you accountable. But when your mindset is mutual learning, not only do you want to hold others accountable, but also you want to be held accountable. You don't see accountability as a burden, but rather as a way to honor commitments you've made that will help you and others achieve results. When Barbara was transparent about how answering Mike's question would be inconsistent with the agreement she had with the group, she was also being accountable to the group and enabling the group to make an informed choice about the role it wanted her to play.

Compassion

Compassion is the fifth core value. It's also the emotional glue that holds all the core values together. Compassion has three parts. When you operate from compassion:

1. You are aware of the suffering that people you work with face.
2. You internally connect to their suffering, cognitively and emotionally.
3. You respond to the suffering.

When I say suffering, I'm talking about the daily frustrations and challenges people encounter, the emotionally difficult decisions they need to make, and the stress that results from this. Compassion means temporarily suspending judgment so that you can genuinely understand others and appreciate their situation. It doesn't mean taking responsibility for solving other people's problems or pitying them.

In your facilitative role, compassion enables you to help the group in situations when you might otherwise withdraw or act out in frustration. Without compassion, the mutual learning approach feels hollow and robotic. People see you as just going through the motions, using the right words but not seeming genuine. But when you're compassionate, others experience you as being genuinely concerned and operating from a spirit of generosity. This enables you to give clients very difficult feedback and still have them see you as supportive.

Compassion affects how you use the other core values. When you operate with compassion:

• You're transparent not because you simply want to tell people what you think, but because you want them to be able to make sense of your behavior.
• You're curious about others not because you want to use their responses to show them how they're wrong, but because you want to appreciate the situation from their perspective.
• You create informed choice for others not only because informed choice leads to greater commitment but also because informed choice is a fundamental way of respecting others.
• You hold others and yourself accountable not because you believe that people won't follow through unless you do so, but because accountability is a way of honoring one's commitment to others and the results you jointly seek to achieve.

Being compassionate doesn't mean rescuing people—doing things for them that they could and should do for themselves. That's what Barbara did in her original case when she tried to protect Sandy from others in the group instead of helping Sandy protect herself, if necessary. Nor does it mean avoiding transparency and accountability, and preventing informed choices—by ducking important but difficult conversations because you don't want people to feel bad. Withholding information from others because it may be difficult for them to hear isn't being compassionate; it's being cruel. Genuine compassion includes sharing information that is difficult to hear and even difficult to share, because you want to make an informed choice with others that will improve performance, working relationships, and well-being. In this way, compassion means temporarily suspending judgment about others, including their lack of ability to hear difficult information or feedback even as you hold each other accountable.

The first clients to whom I introduced the core value of compassion were high-tech leader-engineers developing computer chips. Their organization had come to dominate its market though logical, analytic research and development. Its culture drove hard. I was concerned that these leaders would summarily dismiss the idea of compassion. To my surprise—and great relief—they applauded compassion. They had seen how focusing purely on logic without compassion led to a workplace in which strained, mistrustful relationships made working together more difficult.

I have purposely chosen the word compassion over words like empathy or understanding because I want to emphasize the value of the heart—or more precisely, feelings—in decision making. Until recently, many people (myself included) believed that thoughts and feelings were in a battle over the quality of decision making. Our thoughts represented logic and analysis, which we considered the pure elements of decision making. Our feelings were merely distractions or contaminations of thought. In that model, considering what we or others were feeling only compromised the quality of purely logical-based decision making.

There were some people who believed that integrating thoughts and feelings into decision making generated better decisions than focusing only on logic, but the research wasn't there to support their views. Now we know they were right. Recent neuroscience research shows that leaders and teams make better decisions when they pay attention to thoughts and feelings. The seventeenth-century mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal was ahead of his time when he said, “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.…We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.”

I Have Information; So Do Others

With this assumption, you recognize that others are likely to have relevant information. Unlike in the unilateral control mindset, in which you assume you have all the information you need, in the mutual learning mindset, you assume that, because people have different responsibilities and experiences, they'll naturally have different information. That information may be the same as or consistent with the information you have, it may be complementary, or it may even be at odds with your current information. Operating from this assumption leads you to help the group get all the relevant information on the table.

Each of Us Sees Things Others Don't

If each of us may have different information because of our different expertise, responsibilities, and experiences, then it makes sense that we may see things that others don't. Even when you and the group are in the same meeting and hear the same information, the mutual learning mindset recognizes that each of you may see different implications or consequences. Operating from this assumption leads you to help the group identify the places in which people see things others miss.

One problem teams face is that they don't give enough consideration to information that only one member has. Teams tend to give more weight to information that more than one member holds. But teams make higher-quality decisions when they incorporate information that only one person holds.⁴¹ Helping groups to integrate all knowledge in their decisions is an important part of your facilitative role.

Differences Are Opportunities for Learning

With a unilateral control mindset, you're either reluctant to explore differences because you know you're right and see nothing to be gained from it, or you want to engage others to show they are wrong. But with the mutual learning mindset, when you realize that you're seeing things differently from others, you become curious and explore what has led to your different views. Your curiosity leads to learning that generates better results and relationships. Whether you're identifying differences between you and the group or within the group, you recognize that this is the beginning of a creative process that will lead to better solutions. The sooner you're able to identify differences, the more time you have to help explore and resolve them.

People May Disagree with Me and Still Have Pure Motives

Because you assume that different views are natural and lead to better results, you can have significant disagreements with others and still believe that each person is approaching the situation with pure motives. This assumption works together with the core value of compassion; both are essentially about suspending judgment in order to learn. As a result, unlike the unilateral control mindset, you're not spending time and energy wondering about and trying to protect against the possible harmful motives of others. Notice that, in Barbara's revised case, unlike in her initial case, she doesn't make attributions about Joe being real trouble and Frank being absolutely hopeless because he doesn't want to release the documents.

When you operate from this assumption, something wonderful happens—there are fewer difficult people in the world. This isn't a naive mind game in which you wish away people you don't like. It's that when you change your mindset, it changes your behavior, and that can change how others respond to you.

I May Be Contributing to the Problem

In the mutual learning mindset, you recognize that you may be contributing to the very problems that you're complaining about. You see the working relationships between you and the group as a complex set of causal relationships rather than as a one-way street in which others act ineffectively and you respond effectively. Just as others may be thinking and acting ineffectively, so too may you. You recognize that others' ineffective behavior may actually be a result of (and reaction to) your ineffective mindset and behavior, and you realize your reactions to others' ineffective behaviors either aid or impede mutual learning.

In a unilateral control mindset, only others need to change. In a mutual learning mindset, you realize that everyone may play a role that prevents the team from achieving its goals. Consequently, everyone—including you—may need to change.

Better Team Performance

Whatever your facilitative role, if you're working with groups, they're almost always seeking better performance. Even if group members are concerned about their working relationships or individual members' well-being, it is often because these either are now or may soon negatively affect performance. With the mutual learning mindset and behaviors, you help the group improve performance in several ways: higher-quality decisions, increased innovation, faster decision-plus-implementation, and lower costs.

Better Working Relationships

The second area of results is working relationships. Here mutual learning generates greater commitment, increased trust, increased learning, and appropriate dependence on others. It also reduces defensiveness and makes conflict more productive.

Greater Individual Well-Being

The third type of result is well-being, which includes a sense of satisfaction, motivation, and a lower level of stress. Because mutual learning improves working relationships with groups you are trying to help, you experience your work as more satisfying and motivating, and so do group members.

Mutual learning also reduces your stress and anxiety. The mutual learning approach enables you to share what you're thinking in the form you're thinking it, rather than spending time and energy figuring out how to say what you're thinking without making your clients defensive. Instead of becoming anxious about what group members might think about you, mutual learning enables you to learn what they're thinking—and to reduce the stories you tell yourself that make you anxious in the first place. Even though facilitation is challenging work, it should maintain or enhance your mental health, not reduce it.