Who to share this week’s post with:

• Everyone you manage

• Everyone who you need to collaborate better with

(If you get this via email, you HAVE to click to view this on the web because I found the most perfect GIF ever for the header. Thank you, internet.)

How collaborative is your team? Really…

Of all the things groups of humans struggle with, knowing how to work together best has to be near the top of the list. It’s actually not intuitive, given how different we all are. We do have access to all sorts of books, theories, processes, and frameworks that can help us collaborate and think better as a team, and some of these things do help. But these only do so much because our real challenges are deeper, inside of people’s minds.

Deeper in their own heads, most human beings cling to mental models, beliefs, and personal needs that are directly at odds with high-performance collaboration. And a fresh coat of paint at the surface level, using a helpful framework or exercise, doesn’t even begin to touch this deeper stuff. Some frameworks, believe it or not, are actually designed to reinforce people’s deeper issues, validating them instead of helping people tame them. If you truly want an authentically-collaborative team working at your full potential, this stuff doesn’t get you there.

I don’t blame people for trying to solve deep issues with surface level solutions. It’s not like we are all psychologists, and at least it shows that we’re trying. And I also don’t blame people for thinking that they are a high-functioning team because they have a fresh coat of paint on their hull. In fact, over 80% of teams I start working with believe they are a high-functioning team the first time I ask.

Then, I show them these charts:

After they see that, less than 10% consider themselves a high-performing team. And that’s a great reality check, even if it stings a little bit, because now we actually know what’s possible and where we stand within the range of individual and team performance. There’s nothing in those charts that is out of reach. Real people and real teams are doing those things in the high and peak performance columns today. And so can you.

Fortunately, we’re living in a new era where we have access to scientific knowledge and proven tools that clear up exactly how to get there, making it so much easier for us to drive deep improvements and health in teams. And these tools are much easier to understand and use than most people think, which I’ll illustrate in this post (and every post).

I believe that there is no bigger competitive advantage than to be a deeply, authentically-healthy team. If you’ve ever been on one, you know exactly what I mean. And if you have been on dysfunctional, low-functioning, or even functional teams, you’ve seen just how hard it can be (and how long it can take) to do simple things.

Understanding the root of collaboration issues

Any team that wants to be authentically-healthy must actually comprehend what they are going to be doing and why it’s going to be working. In the culinary school metaphor, you can’t become a chef by just learning how to go through the motions and collecting recipes. You must actually understand what is happening. So we’ll start there.

The deeper issue inside of people’s minds is what we will understand first. Then, we’ll understand exactly what the consequences of these issues are. And then, we will walk through the fixes and what it takes to enter the world of high/peak performance.

The issues in people’s minds are probably clearest through the lens of a tool like Enneagram, which does a very cool thing. It measures people’s deepest personal needs.

Sidebar: while I don’t consider the Enneagram a good “personality” test, it is an excellent, actionable tool to understand someone’s deepest need and what happens when they don’t get needs met. For a full personality analysis, you should be using the Big 5 or Hogan. I would encourage you to go through both of these (deepest needs and personalities) with your team to build a specific strategy, unique to you. Email me if you want a guide for how to do this yourself or if you want some professional help.

According to Truity, almost a million people take the Enneagram on their site every 30 days, and their data is clear that people overwhelmingly agree with the results they get. These needs are very real things, and I think it’ll be clear why they are such a big factor in why teams struggle as you digest the bullets below.

Let’s take a look at the 9 needs that Enneagram identifies:

• Enneagram Type 1’s need to protect the integrity of the solution

  • …or they feel like a fraudulent, unethical, bad person.

• Type 2’s need to feel helpful, appreciated, and loved

  • …or they feel unloved, unlovable, rejected, and depressed.

• 3’s need to win, outperform others, and be recognized

  • …or they feel like failures and waste mental cycles beating themselves up.

• 4’s need creative expression and freedom

  • …or they feel like an unspecial clone.

• 5’s need to be subject matter experts, respected for their knowledge

  • …or they feel useless, worthless, and dumb.

• 6’s need safety and security

  • …or they feel like the world is collapsing around them.

• 7’s need fun, positive, fulfilling experiences

  • …or they feel like they have chosen poorly and need to escape.

• 8’s need control

  • …or they feel weak, powerless, vulnerable, and exposed.

• 9’s need harmony

  • …or they feel there is hostility they need to resolve or escape from.

Human beings have issues with collaboration because genuinely-great collaboration forces us to manage or suppress the very needs and fears that are central to our existence.

I think it is critical to understand this. Without wrapping your head around the magnitude of these forces, people are totally unprepared to navigate these challenges.

Those 8’s need to run things and be in charge. They are deeply-uncomfortable with turning the reins over, with being vulnerable, and with threats to their position. Those 5’s need people to respect their expertise and not challenge their knowledge or competence. They are devastated when flaws are found in their thinking. The 3’s are competitive and need to outperform other people, even in collaboration. Losing a debate presents them with their least-favorite idea: that they are a loser. Those 9’s get so uncomfortable in debate and disagreement that they will shut down a perfectly good discussion just to eliminate the discomfort. Almost everyone brings deep and counterproductive needs into every collaboration, minus a few types of people who more naturally put the outcomes of collaboration above their own needs.

It might be tempting to read this and feel that people should be able to get over their need for power, love, recognition, or harmony, setting it aside so we can get to work. And it might be tempting to believe that people should suppress their feelings of worthlessness, unlovability, vulnerability, or failure and “be professionals.”

I say this with love…you need to get a grip on this: that isn’t how it’s going to go.

That is at least until we methodically train people the better way. The overwhelming majority of people need help seeing what lies beyond their needs and fears, and they need to see and experience a better alternative. We’re going to give them both. And once it clicks, they never go back to being the person they used to be.

This is why people describe coaching and therapy as transformative and life-changing. Once people get help seeing the alternative way of doing things, especially in collaborating…they are changed forever.

It isn’t weakness to get this help. I think it’s actually pretty dumb not to: to embark on overcoming your deepest needs with no qualified wingman is probably the second worst strategy you could pick (the worst being choosing someone who gives bad advice and actually takes you backwards).

It’s a heavy form of cognitive dissonance to set a goal for yourself and then choose the least effective approach of achieving it. Pride will make us do that, sometimes.

Instead of assuming or insisting people will get there on their own, assume instead that things will stay the same until we do something powerful and precise enough that they see the light and change. If you want to have a high-performance, collaborative team, I strongly recommend hot swapping any “hope-based” and “should-based” strategies with a strategy of precise, effective action.

Pause here and reflect. Have you seen these needs? Which one resonates most with you? How relevant is this to your day-to-day work? What is your current strategy?

Remember: only a small percentage of people intuitively understand peak-performance collaboration (maybe you are one of them). We must grasp that the vast majority of humans struggle, and will continue to, leaving them with a the very issue that makes collaboration and high performance impossible: they cannot see the difference between what their mind wants and what is objectively best.

What this turns into…

On to the next thing to understand: the logical connection between these causes and the effects that form. These mechanics are key to understand, because this is exactly what you will be addressing.

What do people do when they trust their deepest need, instead of being objective?

• 3’s, 5’s and 8’s (focused on winning, being experts, and having power):

  • Want others to be dependent on them (you shouldn’t make a decision without asking them).

  • But they want to be independent of others (they will 100% make decisions without asking you and looking weak).

• 2’s, 6’s and 9’s (focused on service, safety, and harmony):

  • Want to be dependent

  • It is extremely uncomfortable for people most-deeply needing love, stability, or harmony to make a decision without making sure it’s okay with other people first.

These deep needs systematically drive the human collaboration dynamics we see in organizations. They are the root cause and true reason that most people and teams create systems of dependence and independence.

We all know what dependence looks like. It’s the feeling that we should not do something without someone else’s review and approval. Dependence is the norm for consensus-driven decisions, many deliverable and approval workflows, and even little things like expenses (have you gotten approval to subscribe to CORE Concepts yet???). Dependence summed up: It’s not good to proceed without help.

And we all know what independence looks like. The whole hire great people and leave them alone to do their jobs mantra is an example of independence. Swim lanes (and encouraging people to stay in them) is rooted in independence. Taking offense at feedback and improvements to the ideas and output you share is also rooted in independence. Independence summed up: It’s not good to need help to proceed.

Clearly (or at least hopefully clearly), neither of these is the approach that will lead to the best team dynamics or results. And to make matters worse, most teams blend the two, trying to operate somewhere on the spectrum between independence and dependence, finding a fairly-ambiguous balance between the things we are dependent about and the things we are independent about. But all that this “balance” does is scramble everyone’s brains, creating an environment where is it not good to need help and it is also not good to proceed without help.

That’s a real mess for people to deal with, and it spirals into all sorts of dysfunction (summarized in the PDF at the top of this post).

To find our way out of these woods, let’s be objective and logical here. Does any of this drive the best outcomes? I’ll be a little thorough here, in hopes this resonates across a broader audience…

• Is our dependent need for consensus objectively driving the best outcomes, or is it a function of these deeper needs?

• Is our SME’s defensiveness when people ask questions objectively driving the best outcomes, or is it a function of these needs?

• Is our hesitation to speak truth to power objectively driving the best outcomes, or is it a function of these needs?

• Is our fake niceness toward ideas that we actually dislike (The Abilene Paradox) objectively driving the best outcomes, or is it a function of these needs?

• Is our Dunning-Kruger need to do things ourselves instead of tapping into true expertise objectively driving the best outcomes, or is it a function of these needs?

• Is our pattern of choosing realistic ideas instead of great ideas (The Overton Window) objectively driving the best outcomes, or is it a function of these needs?

• Is our belief that people should stay in their lane objectively driving the best outcomes, or is it a function of these needs?

These needs in our brains are illogical. They are not causal of best outcomes. They are causal of dysfunction. So let’s do something about it.

This is totally fixable.

Let’s clear the air. There’s nothing wrong with you if you have any of these needs. They are the perfectly-natural baggage that comes with being a human being. We are not perfect creatures by any stretch of the imagination.

But we are also not stuck with the problems that come from our imperfections.

All human beings have two levels of mental performance they can tap into. People can be self-unaware and instinctive (doing the things their brain feels like doing), or they can be self-aware and intelligent (doing the things they must do to get the best outcome, even when their brain doesn’t like it). Think of it as having two separate brains in your head. One operates on your needs and trusts your initial reactions to things. The other operates on logic and tries to figure out the best solutions. This is almost exactly how the human brain works (I’m just simplifying things here a bit for clarity), and a staggeringly-small percentage of human beings have learned how to fully-activate their second brain and have it negotiate with their first brain.

85-90% of people are self-unaware and instinctive, which is why so few teams are truly high-performing teams. Instead of using their second brain to do things best, they are using their first brain’s reactions, forming painful and inefficient systems of dependence and independence in groups. It’s literally impossible to be self-unaware and high performing at the same time, because self-unaware people can’t tell the difference between what their brain feels is right and what actually is right.

So, where does that leave us?

The good news. We can actually make incredible collaboration dead simple. I mean really, really simple.

The bad news. To get there, the team will have to do something they believe is hard (or even impossible) to do. They are going to learn how to intentionally leave their needs unmet, allowing them to see and experience what happens when they do. And after they do this, they will all realize that it was much easier and much better than they expected.

Getting your team across the threshold of self-awareness reveals your prize: Interdependence.

Interdependence is the enlightened way of working. It might sound like interdependence is the ideal balance point between dependence and independence.

But it isn’t.

It’s the alternative to the entire spectrum, where nobody feels dependent and nobody feels independent, knowing that both produce inferior results.

How to Make Interdependence Work

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