#16: Reignite Alignment When Your Team Feels Disengaged (Without Starting Over)

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eric:  We are recording. All right, episode three. Feeling misunderstood by your team. Here we go. Alright, so you're a leader. And you've cast vision and you've clarified your core values and you've set clear objectives and goals for your team, and you've set clear metrics for what success might look like. These are all really, really valuable things for us as leaders to provide for our teams to maximize and optimize our success.

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And before you know it, as a leader, it's so easy to start feeling like people just aren't with you or. Keeping up with you. And it's so important for us as leaders to understand that very often  we interpret the experience of our teams and yet fail to consider how we're impacting our teams That may be leading to the experience that we're having.

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You might be a terrible leader you might not be communicating clearly, but for those  of us who have. For those of us who have done our best to communicate clearly. But when our teams are lagging behind, seem disinterested or disengaged, the temptation is either to think I'm a terrible leader, I don't know how to do this.

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This experience is far simpler, not easy, but simpler than I think we can imagine. So for, for a lot of leaders, don leaders assume that clarity equals connection. Mm-hmm. We have to remember that business is a team sport. That's right. That people are the engine of that business. How people operate individually and collectively together is what's either going to give us the kind of power and and endurance that we need  or is going to create a sap in our power.

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They don't care. They're not as passionate as I am. They're all they're here to  do is collect a paycheck. I mean, the the number of times we've heard leaders, you know, ventilate these kinds of suspicions about their team. Is is obviously more than, you know, more often than we care to think about, but that's why we're doing a podcast episode of this.

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And so just, you know, here's a couple of thoughts. Number one. As leaders,  we have to remember that part of our great privilege and responsibility is that we create the culture of our environments. Mm-hmm. And we do that more than by what we say, but by how we operate. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

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Yes. And I just want our listener to just for a pause for a moment and let that sink in. As leaders, we cannot ask anything of our team with  integrity that we are not first prepared to do for them. So if we, if we want respect and honor, we want ownership, we want a sense of, I'm in this with you.

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How aware are we? Are we practicing conscientious, intentional awareness? Right, of the people around us, the environment, how people are experiencing the environment. Because very  often as leaders we're so caught up in what we're trying to accomplish, that we're not paying a lot of attention into the, the culture and the environment that we want to drive that accomplishment.

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All of which are the antidote to the problem we started with. That's right. This is the antidote that we're offering to our listeners to say if we learn to practice empathy, listening and belief in any context in your  marriage, with your kids, with your coworkers, with your boss, with your team members that you're leading with your customers and clients, it has this amazing effect.

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dawn: Whew. Yeah, I mean that's hitting deep and I think it reminds me  again of why the main struggle with leadership and in any context it is that we are so tempted to find fault or, or when we're experiencing any sort of disruption, just human nature is to look at why that is somebody else's fault.

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Yeah. Yeah. And yet the antidote, as you said, is almost always to first stop and try to understand how you are contributing to that situation. Yeah. And what actions you can take that are going to alleviate that experience. This, this plays out daily in our families, in our workplaces, and we are much better at under or at least observing and experiencing the behaviors and the reactions of others. And we often are incredibly anemic at doing that for  ourselves. That's right. We do not take the time, we do not have the practice to say, wow, how did I come across in that situation? Or, what did, what am I doing that's contributing to this va, this vicious cycle that we're experiencing?

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People that we're partnering  with who seem disengaged, disinterested, distrusting, whatever. Aloof resistant is the temptation is it's like a is to pull on that chain. Harder.

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When we will have team members who are lagging. And it's not our fault. There will be times when people, team members are resistant or difficult. And, and that may not be  because of us as leaders, but the first thing we have to do as leaders is to consider am I creating an environment or what we call a culture, the air we breathe in, which people feel like they can participate in.

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dawn:  Right?

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These are mentors, these are people even in their workspace that they really trust to say, Hey, help me. Where am I practicing empathy, listening and belief really well with my team? Where am I potentially struggling  or not doing that well? Because more often than not, that's the, that's, that's where the problem lies, right?

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Considering how we're being experienced. Right, because very often our feeling of feeling misunderstood, I know in my own marriage and with, with other important relationships more often than not is a result of how I am engaging in those relationships. Right? So just  considering the possibility that, that maybe they're not misunderstanding us, but we're operating in a way that's making it difficult for them and to not only understand us, but to, to get on our side, to be our advocates, to be on our team.

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dawn: feedback, criticism.  Yes, absolutely.

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We want to just kinda move on to the next thing that I think we don't measure twice. We don't really try to understand the situation and therefore we oftentimes will. In our reactive posture, make  decisions, bark orders, challenge people, command and control. We operate in a way that is actually counterproductive to what we're trying to achieve.

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We don't get it perfect, but we are committed to living these things out. And so it makes me think of a time that you and I actually got stuck in this pattern where, we weren't communicating well and we both started making up stories. You started wondering if I was pulling my weight. I started  wondering if I had any longevity with the company.

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Yeah. And we had to have a hard conversation and there was. Opportunity for both listening and sharing criticisms and all of that. But the action of coming together and actually considering how we were being experienced  Yeah. By the other person, yeah. Led us to a place of being able to reconnect and commit to how we were going to move forward together.

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And that was a real, that was really helpful for me to learn more about. One of my leadership deficiencies.  But also as you shared it, it actually increased my sense of compassion and understanding and appreciation for what you were fighting through. Mm-hmm. And, and I think coming out on the back end of that conversation, feeling, what, here's what I experienced, which is what we're constantly coaching our leaders in. Yeah. I think what happened is we found a reconnection at a human level. Yes. We talk a lot about the importance of prioritizing human connection. 'cause business is a team sport and so how people connect together, which is no different to any other team engagement it, we reconnected at a human level and we could see and appreciate each other and value one another in a new and fresh way.

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It also undid or what's the right word? Um, it like, I, it undid the distorted views, at least for me, that I had developed subconsciously because of how I was just projecting onto you  what I was, from, what my experience was. Yeah. And so it, and it just, it crushed those, which has happened how many times that's happened in my marriage where.

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One another. And it  also led to some really powerful changes in how we work together. And me knowing how to say, okay, I don't want to change direction anymore. Like, you know, you hold the steering wheel and keep us going in the right direction. I trust you. And that's when Aura came in. But just so many benefits that came out of one conversation.

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eric: Oh gosh. And is it humbling as ever? It'd be so much easier to just be the like, answer people. Like, we've got these principles and tools and they're amazing and you can do it too, and mm-hmm. The, this journey of how we've chosen to operate as a business and as a culture is to say, Hey,  we're, we wanna make sure that we're leading and coaching outta the overflow of our own experiences and journey, which is really powerful.

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At some level we want  buy-in. We want people to have ownership of the, within their part of the partnership. And that is driven by our willingness to prioritize human connection. Mm-hmm. Which quite frankly. Is for generations has not been promoted or encouraged within the workplace? Absolutely.

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And yeah, and I just think. That there is a revolution happening within all workspaces. Where the younger generation is pushing the older generations to say, Hey relationship matters. Human connection matters. How you make me feel. Now, again, I know that's double sided, right?  Both parties are responsible in that.

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dawn: It is and it's because when everything is said and done, the only thing that we actually have control over is how we choose to show up. Yeah. And it's, that starts with understanding how we currently are showing up and then making choices. To  change, to make that, to show up differently for our people and for our families.

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Dare to ask for feedback from those that you trust. And it's scary, but dare to ask for some feedback to check your blind spots and ask other people, Hey, how am I operating? Where is it helpful? Where is it unhelpful? Or specifically  talking about, you know, empathy, listening and belief. Where do you feel like I practice these well in, in our, in our partnership?

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dawn: Yeah, absolutely. Well. We, to be quite honest with our listeners, we took this episode in a slightly different direction, but I love where, I love, I love where that personal story kind of took us in  this. So as always, thank you for joining us and if this episode gave you something to think about, pass it along to a leader who's working through the same thing.