The Courage to Care

Bart Bailey: I want to make it comfortable for folks, right? Now I don't, and I'll tell people I don't have any any problem with discomfort. I do have a problem with harm. I don't want people in the states of harm, but being discomfort is okay. Devon Morris: This is The Lagging Team. Falling behind is a position, not a verdict. Every week, we work to change that outcome. That right there is Bart Bailey. He spent years running rooms where a mistake doesn't just cost you a deadline; it could cost somebody a trip back home to their family. And he just drew the line most of us blur every single week. Discomfort is not harm. We treat them like they're the same thing, so we protect people from the first one and hand them the second one without even noticing. See, at this point, you're probably on a team that's behind, or at least no other team that's behind, and whatever kind of week they just had, they're likely tired. They're likely done with it. They're likely through. So the kind of leader in the room that says, "Hey, now's not the time to actually push. Go easy. Don't pile on when it comes to this work, saves the hard conversation for later. You got to find ways to be fair. See, that's a decent instinct. It actually comes from a really special place, and what we notice, what Bart was telling us as a through line all through the entire conversation, it comes from care. Most of us have said it and meant it, but watch what it assumes. It assumes the hard conversation is hard, so the conversation waits and it waits and it waits and it waits and the deadline doesn't wait is the problem and the pressure shows up anyway later louder than ever from somebody who cares less. This is The Lagging Team. See, falling behind is a position, not a verdict. I'm Dr. Devon Morris, and this right here is a Sidebar. See, on Tuesdays I sit down with somebody. On Thursdays I take one thing they said and go all the way in on it. Today is two words that we treat like one: discomfort and harm. See, my first question to Bart on Tuesday was when a team falls behind, leaders reach for fear, and then they call it urgency. I said like that, like fear and urgency were the same move in in two really different names. Bart didn't let me have that, man. He didn't let me have that at all. He literally said during the conversation, "I think urgency is healthy." Hmm, already throws me for a loop, right? Because the problem isn't urgency is what you put on top of that actual urgency. So I'll have to concede. I'll have to give him that one, right? Because I lumped those things together, and he was right to actually split them, to actually separate them. See, half of the episode was about that split. So here's the problem with now not the time to push. It's the wrong argument, not because rest doesn't matter, because it's asking whether to be uncomfortable, when the real question is whether you're about to truly cause harm, and there's a big distinction between those things. See, avoiding the hard feelings is like protection. It's like giving someone a loan. The team pays it back later with interest. Upon interest, when the problem gets bigger, and the people that are delivering that they're delivering for cares even less, the cost of the truth is discomfort. The cost of no truth is harm. They found out late. They found out from someone else. They find out after the decision has actually been made. See, the courage to care is choosing the first cost on purpose, so they don't have to pay the second cost. See what you have to understand, and I'm gonna have to give it to you, right? Discomfort is the feeling of hearing something true that you didn't want to hear. It's temporary. It's information. Harm is damage. It's somebody's safety. It's their standing. It's their dignity. It's their ability to actually do the work, and that that stuff right there last long after this comes to pass. We use the both of them like they're one word. I don't want to upset the team. I don't want to hurt anybody. Two different sentences, right? And you can't protect people from both because avoiding the first one is usually how you cause the second one. See, Harvard's Amy Edmondson, right, the researcher who gave us really psychological safety. Oh, I'm gonna say put it on the map. Wrote this year with Michaela Kerrissey, right, that the biggest thing people get wrong in thinking it means comfortable. Their line is this: in psychologically safe teams, people expect hard truths. It doesn't mean that participants find debates comfortable. And when Google studied 180 plus teams of its own teams, psychological safety came out as far and away the most important thing that's good. Not comfort, not safety in general. So you got to understand that these things are different words. You know, Kim Scott has a name for failure: ruinous empathy, caring without challenging. Let me say it again: ruinous empathy. Caring without challenging. You spare someone's feelings, and they don't get told what they'd be better off knowing. See, Bart's version is better because he presented it in the physical world, I'm not going to tell people not to be afraid. But can you be generous about it enough to care for this other person's humanity? Is the the word that he used. See, the guardrail, right? This is not be harsh. Like that's not good for them. Harm is real. Bart said it this way. I do have a problem with harm. He said it specifically. The skill is knowing which one you're about to actually cause. Bart Bailey: With the urgency, you're paying more attention to the process because it's all about the process. And I would say that that that for anything, if you if you find that urgency and you are not focused on the process, the likelihood of something non-positive happening is greater. Devon Morris: Urgency doesn't mean go faster; it means watch closer. You heard him say it. That leads me to the second pair that I want to tell you about, and it's how harm sneaks on to a team from behind, and that's urgency and pressure. You heard Bart really bring it up. See, urgency is attention on the process. Pressure is attention on the person. Attention on the process. Attention on a purpose. Person. Same deadline. Completely different room, y'all. Urgency is discomfort aimed at the work. We're behind, so we check steps twice. Pressure is harm aimed at people. We're behind. Somebody better start sweating right now. Better start putting in that double overtime. Bart's own data point, right? When you layer pressure on top of work, the error rate is going to go up. Defects, it's going to go up, even on things that you do every single day. You know, he mentioned about tying shoes wrong when you're rushing. That was very specific. Something that he called out. See, John Kotter, who's written on organizational change at Harvard for decades upon decades. If you haven't heard of Kotter, go look him up. Right, he has a book on this. Right, called A Sense of Urgency. He splits true urgency focused on critical issues from false urgency. You know that frantic activity driven by anxiety. His argument is that false urgency can be absolutely more destructive than complacency itself, and it shows up in work itself. See, Teresa Amabile's team at Harvard went through about 9000 daily diary entries from people doing creative work. Extreme time pressure most likely killed the creative thinking, the creative process. People felt like they were on a treadmill or running in one of those little circles that those hamsters run into run in. The exception was when the pressure came with focus. They felt like they were on a a mission. Even the U.S. Department of Energy's on Human Performance Handbook actually says it flat. People tend to perform poorly under high stress and time pressure. It's important for you to distinguish that. See, I asked Bart where teams actually break down. He drew a line that I never heard anybody draw as clean. Bart Bailey: Teamwork is the ability to have somebody's back, being willing to fill in the gaps when I may be a little off, being willing to uplift and encourage each other. Right, that's a little bit different. Yeah, right. That's having somebody's back. Collaboration is the ability to understand the both ends. Right, so I may have this vision to get X, Y, Z done. Dev, you're coming. You'd be like, "Hey, Bart, what about this thing?" And my my the collaboration is my ability to affirm what you said, listen to what you said, process, and understand the benefits of what you said, Devon Morris: You heard it. Having somebody's back is comfortable, right? It's comfortable. Taking the idea you didn't have seriously that's uncomfortable. Last pair here, and it's it's the fix, right? Teamwork, collaboration. I was very specific in talking to Bart about this, right? See, teamwork. I got your back. I'll fill in the gaps. I'll pick you up when I need to pick you up. Teams that are behind usually have plenty of that. It's loyalty, collaboration. Your ideas changing what I do. It costs me something. My plan, my certainty, my airtime. Right. That's why it's the fix. See, collaboration is where discomfort becomes useful instead of harmful. The thing gets said and actually heard. See, there's a study that dates back to 2010. I think in a magazine called Science, where Anita Woolley and colleagues at MIT and Carnegie Mellon. Put about 7000 people in the groups and gave them problems to actually solve. The smartest groups weren't the ones with the smartest people. Did you hear that? They were the groups where people took turns actually talking and could read each other along the way. Call that social sensitivity. Google landed in the same place with its own teams. Who's on the team? It matters less than how you interact. Than how they actually interact. Okay, so it's important to think about. Okay, so here's the deal: three things before we get into next week. None of them cost you any money. None of them you need any permission for. Number one, name the actual discomfort out loud before you deliver it. This is going to be uncomfortable. It's not meant to harm you, and if it does, please, please, please tell me about it. That one sentence right there, however you chop it up, use your own words. Right, tells the room which one you're actually doing, and gives them away, gives them an out. If you are wrong about that, two. Run the urgency test. Next time you say we need to move faster, finish the sentence. So the process. We need to watch that more closely. Name that particular process. Acknowledge it to them. If you can't fill in whatever that process is, that blank right there, then it's not urgency. It's pressure. I'm moving where that attention is actually placed. Do that, okay? Three. Make one collaboration move in a meeting. Take one idea that you didn't have before you decide anything. Say back what's good in it. Bart's version was this: affirm it, listen to it, process it. Affirm it, listen to it, process it. Okay. Then take a look at the people that's quiet. What Bart said is, how often do we pay attention to that quiet person who's really listening. See, here's the deal, and here's where I always have to say to you: I could be wrong about this, and if I am, I take it on the chin. I'd rather for you to check this instead of just use my words, right? I'd rather for you to experiment with this than just to use my words, which is absolutely critical and important for you to do. Okay, and here's the deal: do more, do more than one move this week. Watch one thing: Do people speak up after a hard conversation, or they don't? If it's more, it was discomfort. Keep going. If it's less, and people are just getting quiet, and cameras are turning off, and pushback is happening. Then, whatever you're calling discomfort, truly may be landing as harm. And Bart really told us on Tuesday when people stop reporting near misses, fear is present. That's the test. It's not a verdict on you. It's data. It's data. Remember, fear is data. It was the title of the episode. See, what you have to understand is falling behind is a position, not a verdict. And a lot of teams are sitting in that position right now with leaders who love them and won't actually tell them the truth because they're confused about discomfort and harm. They're confusing discomfort with harm. See, discomfort is what the truth costs. Harm is what it costs when you don't say it, or when you say it with pressure instead of urgency, the courage to actually care is choosing the cost that protects people. See, if you want to talk about what this looks like with your team, go to thelaggingteam.com/start. That's thelaggingteam.com/start. That's a Sidebar. Now you know where to look. Thank you for joining us. Where every Tuesday and Thursday we work toward bridging the gap for teams that are behind.