In 2021 we worked with the leadership team of a global business unit within a larger retail company. We designed a challenging outdoor journey together to help them get to know each other better and leverage their differences. These are the basic team conditions required to develop a safe environment for unsafe conversations. Fireside conversations helped team members to explore: Why do I want to be part of this team? What do I bring to the team? How can I grow my leadership capability in this team? What do I need from others to do so? The fireside, outdoor and Covid circumstances made these conversations honest and symbolic: The team will not always be in the comfort and convenience of a boardroom with all the support and facilities they need at hand. Sometimes it gets cold. Sometimes the smoke blows into their faces. Sometimes a question is asked for more honesty, disclosure and connection. A few running gags developed as the team members came back from a ‘16 hour-no food’ vision quest. Everyone’s preoccupation with their own (dys)functional food habits, popped up. And that’s how it works with habits. Like the habit to avoid difficult conversations, or the joke to decompress a serious topic. A year later the client decided to spend another day around ‘courageous conversations’. It still was not part of their team habits & DNA. All ingredients seemed in place. It was a matter of: ‘just do it’. So, we decided to take their biggest, ugliest real topic of disagreement. Such that it was avoided regularly or only discussed at an operational level: The Merger & Acquisition strategy. They had focused on one large acquisition for more than 18 months and they had not been successful. Everyone felt that it would be difficult, nearly impossible to realize the M&A strategy in the two years to come. I asked them not to prepare anything in advance. “You know your stuff and you can look up the facts right there if you need them”, I said. We agreed on a ‘fishbowl set up’ with the four team members that had been least involved in the M&A strategy in the middle. These four would have the courageous conversation with each other. The four key actors would just observe and listen to the M&A strategy discussion unfolding. They would pick up the conversation after half an hour, switching roles with the inner fishbowl circle. The four ‘least involved’ did a fantastic job. They summarized the ‘hot potatoe’ topic in all its dimensions, tensions and emotions in such a way, that I saw the outer circle of key actor’s nod, smile and non-verbally confirm what was being said. After 30 minutes the first team had decided to shift the M&A strategy from one big acquisition to three smaller ones to increase speed and chances for success. When the outer group of key actors became the inner circle, their task was to first summarize what the previous group had said and then continue the courageous conversation. After 5 minutes they asked each other: did we just agree to change our M&A strategy all together?
Learnings
The journey of this leadership team within a global business unit highlights the significance of creating a safe environment for open and honest conversations. The outdoor journey facilitated deeper connections among team members, which are essential for fostering trust and collaboration. The experience demonstrated that embracing discomfort and addressing difficult topics head-on can lead to strategic shifts and better outcomes.
Case study was derived and anonimized from our work practice.
