CHAPTER 
Build Tribal Agility
Help your team build trust and keep the change going, and increase emotional agility in yourself and others.
Figure 8.1 The Resilience Cycle: Build Tribal Agility
PROBLEM
This legendary manufacturing organization’s product is a commodity, yet the company refuses to be lumped into the dreaded “vendor” bucket. Vendors compete on price, vendors have no leverage, and vendors don’t have intellectual property. The team at this family business had built a solid nine figures in annual revenue, with a profit margin that would make any CFO celebrate. Sure, members of the team dive into Critter State sometimes, but they bounce back higher and harder and faster than their competitors do because they are quick to name their emotions due to learned self-awareness and they regulate their emotions as well.
What was the “problem”? There wasn’t really one per se. The CEO had reached out to us because he feared complacency—things had been going so well that he wanted to keep his team hungry, eager, and excited to grow. They had made a few high-profile new hires who had felt excluded from the “in” crowd and who had a hard time belonging in this somewhat closed culture. The old-timers figured they had created all the success that the “newbies” were now enjoying. The division into camps had started. To make matters more interesting, one of the top producers in the organization had a borderline personality—he had a tremendous sense of entitlement, even beyond that of the in crowd. This further alienated the new team members and made trust tricky.
PROMISE
Do old-timers get special treatment at your organization? Have you ever had such a great run of success that you thought your team might be getting complacent? The only thing we saw missing was some cultural optimization, which we could address with a little executive coaching.
Since the organization was now headed to the $250 million revenue inflection point, they’d be hiring a lot of new staff. How would they integrate with this culture of cowboys and cowgirls? They had historically hired people “like them.” Now, for the organization’s health, some diversity would be essential with the help of Bias Navigation tools. Also, it was time to address the challenging personality of the top producer. We’d use the Borderline Behavior Quiz and Decoder, and we’d reinforce trust and tribe with a Cultural GAME Plan.
RESULT
Fast-forward nine months, and many of the key components of the GAME Plan are in place. Fifteen percent of the organization is composed of new hires, so it is essential to keep the GAME Plan in place going forward. Communication is high, and team members and leaders check in with each other often, using SBM tools and the Outcome Frame to make sure relationships are strong, trusting, and on track. They know communication can get them through anything—so they talk through their challenges to keep them from getting blown out of proportion. They know that the differences and diversity among the employees who make up the tribe are essential in order for the organization as a whole to see new points of view, to expose blind spots, and to expand vision. They make lemons into lemonade, and they make the meaning they want constantly.
They talk about leadership all the time. The most promising managers are cultivated in a Leadership Development Program we customized for their culture. If a crisis arises, they form a SWAT team and deal with it swiftly. They know they have one another’s back. They are in this together. They exude tribal agility.
Even when the most emotionally agile people come together, they sometimes have conflicts or challenges. Sometimes we bump up against one another or rub each other the wrong way. This is one way we grow. Steve Jobs had a story that illustrated this well:
When I was a young kid there was a widowed man that lived up the street. He was in his eighties. He was a little scary looking. And I got to know him a little bit. I think he may have paid me to mow his lawn or something.
And one day he said to me, “Come on into my garage, I want to show you something.” And he pulled out this dusty old rock tumbler. It was a motor and a coffee can and a little band between them. And he said, “Come on with me.” We went out into the back, and we got just some rocks. Some regular old ugly rocks. And we put them in the can with a little bit of liquid and a little bit of grit powder, and we closed the can up and he turned this motor on, and he said, “Come back tomorrow.”
And this can was making a racket as the stones went around.
And I came back the next day, and we opened the can. And we took out these amazingly beautiful polished rocks. The same common stones that had gone in, through rubbing against each other like this [clapping his hands], creating a little bit of friction, creating a little bit of noise, had come out these beautiful polished rocks.
That’s always been in my mind my metaphor for a team working really hard on something they’re passionate about. It’s that through the team, through that group of incredibly talented people bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise, and working together they polish each other and they polish the ideas, and what comes out are these really beautiful stones.1
To stick together and build tribal agility through this sometimes uncomfortable process, we’ll need some tools to help us. And we’ll start with Bias Navigation.
BIAS NAVIGATION: WE’RE ALL A LITTLE BIT BIASED
Before we dive into this key topic, let’s do a little lab we learned from Scott Horton.2
Make a vertical list of the top 10 people you trust most in your life. Try to list as many as possible from work, and then if or when you run out, list family and friends. Now, next to their name (see the template in Table 8.1), list their gender, race or ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, whether they have a physical disability, and their marital status. Now note the degree of “sameness” across the rows. This is what we call the like-me bias.
TABLE 8.1 The Trusted 10
The Like-Me Bias
The like-me bias is one of the prevalent unconscious biases we see in organizations, and it simply means we feel more safety, belonging, and mattering with people who are like us. That’s reasonable; we share the same tribe.
All human beings are biased. It’s a natural state of the brain that evolved from the days when we needed to be able to calculate very quickly if someone was like us and thus friendly or unlike us and possibly dangerous. In fact, the brain has far more (three to four times as much!) real estate devoted to identifying threats than to identifying opportunities and rewards. There are over 150 different types of biases—and all have their roots in the structure of the brain.
Biases are part of what keeps us sane and able to process the enormous amount of information we are bombarded with at any point in time. If we were not able to form unconscious biases and delete, distort, and generalize accordingly, we would probably go crazy pretty darned fast.
Since we are all naturally biased, there’s no need to feel ashamed of it. However, there’s a very profound business case for ensuring that we mitigate or entirely remove our biases in certain situations. That’s where Bias Navigation can help.
For example, think about how people moved into your inner circle, your “trusted 10.” What made you trust them? Shared experiences? Similarity? What else?
Stepping back a bit, think about the organizational effect of the like-me bias over time. Are we more likely to hire people like us? Being “same as” increases our sense of belonging, but what happens when everyone is like us? How do we get profoundly different perspectives? How do we innovate? Will we be able to “bump up against one another” to grow? Or will we get along too well to challenge our growth and status quo? How does bias affect emotional agility?
The Importance of Inclusion
Many people think that diversity is simply about having a diverse team, one that has representatives from different genders, races, and ethnicities. Although that is a start, according to Vernā Myers, “Diversity is being invited to the party. Inclusion is being asked to dance.”3
Let’s take a look at this issue from the perspective of your “not-like-you” team members. Human infants have a very long period of being dependent on the adults of their “tribe.” We instinctually mirror the behaviors of others from birth in order to belong and therefore survive, and if we are socially ostracized from the group, we feel physical pain.
When our belonging is threatened, when we are ostracized or excluded, we enter Critter State—our brain literally cannot function the way it does when it feels safe and is in Smart State. Specifically, we release an enzyme that attacks the hippocampus, which is responsible for regulating synapses,4 and as a result our brain does the following:
• Reduces the field of view and focuses only on a narrow span of what it must do to survive. Myelin sheathing (see Chapter 9) increases on existing neural pathways, and we are less likely to try new solutions.
• Shrinks its working memory so that it is not distracted by other ideas, bits of information, or stray thoughts. This means we can’t problem solve optimally. Think of students panicked by a pop quiz: the information is there, but they cannot access it.
• Is less creative. With less gray matter and modified synapses, we experience fewer ideas, thoughts, and information available to “bump into each other,” so our capacity to create is reduced.
• Increases cell density in the amygdala, the area of the brain responsible for fear processing and threat perception, making us more likely to be reactive rather than self-controlled.
• Is less likely to connect with others. Fight, flight, freeze, or faint is not a “sharing” type of activity. When the synapses have been modified in this way, we appear grumpy and unsociable.
What’s the return on investment (ROI) of diversity and inclusion?
• Increased safety, belonging, and mattering
• Increased collective intelligence
• Greater innovation from diverse points of view
• Easier and more diverse recruiting
• A culture of meritocracy that creates empowerment
Neuroscientists have repeatedly proven that teams with diversity and inclusion vastly outperform homogeneous teams. Period.
As leaders, we must promote everyone’s Smart State by not just hiring diverse team members but including them. If your not-like-you team members don’t feel included, they’ll end up in Critter State, and no one gets the benefits of diversity. But here’s the catch:
Humans rarely communicate as clearly as they think they do!
We addressed this topic in Chapter 7, when we discussed the experience of “same as” and Meta Programs. It’s actually quite a miracle that we understand anything about each other. How many times a week, a day, or even an hour have you thought you were understood but later discovered a complete disconnect?
Everyone has his or her unique way of communicating. To truly promote diversity and inclusion, it is absolutely critical to train your team in effective communication skills. Awareness alone doesn’t work, but structures that prevent biases and build effective communication patterns and habits do. That’s what will allow people to get to know one another as individuals, not as ethnic, racial, or gender groups. That’s what will bust the like-me bias.
Here are some specific Like-Me Bias Navigation tools.
Tool: Three-Minute Journal
Think of a person who is different from you and on the outside of a group you are in. For one week, journal for three minutes every day about how that person is like you. At the end of the week, reflect for a few moments on how your perspective might have changed.
Tool: Add Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Structures
Assess your organization’s current structures: How do you choose who gets what assignment? Who gets promoted? Who is invited to meetings? Consider developing someone who is not like you by giving that person explicit opportunities:
• Example 1: Some orchestras now hold auditions behind screens, after they noticed that many people selected were similar to one another in ways that were irrelevant to their musical talents and proficiencies.
• Example 2: When making project assignments, pay attention to who gets picked based on what criteria and then level the playing field. Also, consider providing mentoring programs people may apply for.
Cognitive Biases
In addition to the like-me bias, there is a handful of other prevalent unconscious biases we categorize as cognitive biases. Cognitive bias refers to the systematic pattern of deviation from norms or rationales in making judgments. These biases cause conclusions, inferences, and assumptions about people and situations to be drawn in a less than logical fashion. We all create our own “subjective social reality” from our perception of the input we receive—both from outside of us and from inside of us. The trouble is that biases, whether cognitive or like me, damage safety, belonging, and mattering, and they create the experience of unfairness. Unfairness then leads to Critter State, and emotional agility is dramatically reduced.
Neil Jacobstein, an expert in artificial intelligence, notes that we use artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms to address many cognitive biases, such as the following:
• Anchoring bias: Inclination to focus on a specific piece of information or attribute when making decisions. This information or attribute becomes one’s “anchor.”
• Availability bias: Inclination to overemphasize the probability of certain events. Whatever is overemphasized has greater “availability” in one’s memory, whether it is positive or negative.
• Bandwagon effect: Inclination to “jump on the bandwagon” and respond with herd mentality. One does or believes something because many people do.
• Hindsight bias: Inclination to see past events as having been predictable at the time those events occurred. This has an “I knew it all along” effect.
• Normalcy bias: Inclination to resist reacting to or planning for a disaster. One of the contributors to denial, this bias results in one “normalizing” something that is not normal.
• Optimism bias: Inclination toward expecting favorable and pleasing outcomes. This bias causes people to be overly optimistic without data to back up that expectation.
• Planning fallacy bias: Inclination to underestimate costs and timelines and overestimate benefits. Consequently, planning is incomplete or inaccurate.
• Sunk-cost or loss-aversion bias: Inclination to see more value in giving something up than in acquiring it. Thus, one might quit too soon or miss opportunities.5
Which of those biases do you recognize in yourself?
Tool: Cognitive Bias Navigation
To optimize emotional agility, innovation, and business growth, first notice where your biases often are, then recognize which ones are relevant in a given scenario, and then use practical strategies to navigate those biases. Check out this challenge an executive coaching client recently had, and then we’ll summarize the steps for navigating cognitive bias.
Our client needed to hire a VP of marketing to take the organization to the next level. He had four candidates who had made it to the interview stage, and one had even made an on-site visit to meet with four different key stakeholders in the organization. I asked the VP why he favored this one candidate by such a long shot. As I listened, I heard the following biases:
• Planning fallacy bias: The client underestimated how long the process would take and what a great hire would cost (that is, he was thinking the process would take a few weeks versus a few months).
• Anchoring bias: This client focused on one piece of information (the candidate’s current job accomplishments) rather than the big picture (his résumé had two decades of one- to two-year roles—a red flag that our client’s bias missed).
• Availability bias: Because the candidate was successful in his current situation (a huge organization with tons of resources available), the client assumed he’d be successful in a much smaller organization (with about one-sixth of the resources the candidate was accustomed to).
• Optimism bias: Yep, some of this too. The client thought he’d have a solid candidate identified, screened, and hired within six weeks.
I expressed these concerns, and I explained how cognitive biases can be busted:
1. Take your time. You will make better decisions when you aren’t hungry, tired, or stressed. Taking time before making a decision allows you to think about the future and the impact of your decision.
2. Get an outside view. Ask trusted advisors or peers for their opinion.
3. Consider other options. What else could you do?
Then the VP asked me to interview the candidate. I deeply questioned the candidate in each of the bias areas our client had. The result? This candidate was not the right fit for the organization. Not by a long shot. The good news was that our client avoided a costly hiring mistake, and the better news was that he still had three candidates who could fit the bill.
The story ended with him hiring a candidate who was not like the VP (thereby effectively busting this bias too!). She is doing a great job, and all are thrilled with the good hire.
• • •
Once we create a base of trust with Bias Navigation, we can then build on that trust by addressing any borderline behavior.
BORDERLINE BEHAVIOR NAVIGATION: HOW TO SURVIVE BULLIES AND NARCISSISTS AT WORK
We’re hearing a lot about psychological safety, narcissism, and subconscious bias in the workplace lately. But what’s beneath many of these challenges is the borderline personality disorder (BPD)—a topic many tread lightly around. We do so because unlike anxiety, depression, bipolar, or other diagnoses, borderline isn’t easily treatable or curable. I do not profess to be an expert here, so please note that diagnosis should be left to the appropriate medical professionals.
Very few people are diagnosed with this very difficult condition as “true” borderlines. The truth is that we all exhibit some borderline behavior, especially when we are under great stress. So bear this in mind as you read on.
Here’s what BPD is and how it’s part of your work and life. Then we’ll talk about how to deal with BPD and borderline behavior in the workplace.
What Is Borderline Personality Disorder?
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has a long list of criteria for BPD. Here are the ones you’ll most likely see in the workplace:
1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
2. A pattern of unstable and intense relationships
3. Unstable self-image or sense of self
4. Intense moodiness or rapid mood changes
5. Inappropriate, intense anger
6. Stress-induced paranoid thoughts or dissociative symptoms (loses touch with reality)
We all know someone who fits those criteria. According to Christine Ann Lawson’s work, people suffering from BPD have suffered one or more of the following traumas in their past:
• Inadequate emotional support following parental abandonment (through death or divorce)
• Parental abuse, emotional neglect, or chronic denigration
• Being labeled as the “no good” child by a borderline mother6
When children suffer one of the above, their ability to attach in a healthy way is damaged. Then we’ll see anxiety, avoidance, ambivalence or resistance, or disorganization in their experience of attaching to others. According to Christine Lawson, there are four types of borderline personalities:
1. Waif: This person is helpless, sad, and lonely and feels like a victim. Waifs try to get others to give them sympathy and caregiving. They can be socially engaging, then turn on you, seek help and then reject it, and give away, lose, or destroy good things. Their mantra is “Life is way too hard.” When you have Waifs in the office, they’ll be emotionally exhausting and frustrating to be around.
2. Hermit: This person lives in fear of threat and persecution from a dangerous world. Hermits try to get others to share their anxiety and need for protection. They are perfectionists and worriers, and if you misstep, they’ll shut you out. Their mantra is “Life is too dangerous.” When you have Hermits in the workplace, you’ll want to follow in their path in order to clear up the fear they are spreading before your team’s performance is affected.
3. Queen or King: This person feels empty, deprived, and angry and has an insatiable longing that cannot be fulfilled. Kings and Queens are demanding, flamboyant, and intimidating, and they feel entitled to invade the boundaries of others. They can appear all-powerful, and they do not like it when others question them. They want others to comply. Period. Their mantra is “Life is all about me and should be even more about me. I am important, and you are not.” Having Queens or Kings in the office is tough—they’ll make others feel inferior and dismissed.
4. Witch or Warlock: This person feels self-hatred and the conviction that he or she is evil. Witches and Warlocks need power and control over others in order to prop up their basic self-esteem. The more fear and submission they can get from others, the more self-importance they derive. They are domineering; you’ll see them rage and violate the boundaries of others. Hostility masks their fear. Their mantra is “Life is war.” Witches and Warlocks are often the trickiest personalities to deal with because they’re just plain dark and emotionally volatile.7
I’ll bet you’ve seen some of these qualities in many people you know—including yourself. That’s because we’re all a little borderline.
We’re All a Little Bit Borderline
In borderline behavior, there are always two roles: the borderline primary (they’re “pitching”) and the borderline secondary (they’re “catching”). In families, parents usually are primary and kids are secondary. At work, the roles aren’t always as clear.
Who exhibits borderline behavior in your life? Do you slide into the secondary role and get swept up in their drama? When are you the primary?
The tricky part about primary borderline behavior is the stance of perpetual innocence, as well as the need to win no matter what—even at the risk of damaging relationships. That’s the system you’re working in when you play on this field. Borderlines will also try to “recruit” you to play with them, to try to push your buttons and make you angry, to get you to sympathize and take sides, even to try to get you to fire them in extreme cases.
Bullies who are truly borderline are often the most severe cases you can deal with. So it is wise to be cautious here. We cannot simply provide more safety, belonging, and mattering to help shift them from tension to empowerment. For true borderlines, it is unavailable.
Tool: Borderline Behavior Quiz
Table 8.2 is a quiz we use to guesstimate the type of borderline personalities our clients are dealing with. For each significant relationship in your workplace (for example, your boss or a colleague), put a check mark by any of the statements that seem to characterize the person’s behavior. And in addition, if you say or think any of these things, put an X mark by it. Then you can reflect on where you learned this behavior.
TABLE 8.2 Borderline Behavior Quiz
Source: Derived from Christine Lawson’s work with additions by NLP Marin and SmartTribes Institute.
Tool: Borderline Behavior Decoder
Table 8.3 is the Borderline Behavior Decoder for the quiz in Table 8.2. This decoder isn’t intended to label or ostracize. It’s about understanding. Approach these scenarios with compassion, kindness, and, yes, caution.
TABLE 8.3 Borderline Behavior Decoder
Source: Derived from Christine Lawson’s work with additions by NLP Marin and SmartTribes Institute.
Tool: Borderline Behavior Navigation
If you are dealing with true borderlines (people who live permanently in the primary position), here’s the bad news: they will always perceive themselves as innocent. They simply cannot be wrong or guilty, as they cling to innocence for dear life.
Here’s the good news: as the secondary, you have a lot more flexibility in your behavior, meaning you get to choose what you’re willing to be guilty of. Yes, you’ll likely have an adaptation pattern of behavior in which you sometimes exhibit behaviors similar to those of the primary, but you won’t be “all in.”
1. Say OWOW
First, the borderlines will likely push many of your buttons at the same time, as that’s one of their special gifts. I learned a tool from my mentor Carl Buchheit that’s very helpful when dealing with borderline behavior. The acronym is OWOW because when dealing with the at-times-shocking cruelty of borderlines, you’re likely saying, “Oh! Wow!”
O = Oh, my God! (Yes, it’s shocking.)
W = What the f*&%! (Yes, it’s hurtful.)
O = OK. (Here you are consenting to the fact that this is actually happening.)
W = What would you like? (Complete an Outcome Frame to restore choice to your behavior.)8
Now that we have a basic coping strategy in OWOW, let’s look at the second strategy: choosing your realm of guilt.
2. Choose Your Realm of Guilt
Let’s acknowledge that (until we learn to manage it) the ego is always seeking control or approval. Both of these cause us pain because there is very little one can actually control in life, and seeking approval puts your self-worth in the hands of another. Lose-lose. So let go of having either with a borderline. All you can do is choose your realm of guilt.
To survive and ultimately thrive with a borderline primary (if you can’t quit or get transferred to another department), you’ll likely be guilty of many things. The key is to retain your sense of self-respect and integrity. Here are some examples of what you’ll be “guilty” of in the presence of primary borderlines:
• Standing up for yourself.
• Having healthy boundaries.
• Not responding fast enough: pausing and saying you need time to think. If you continually do not give the primary borderlines immediate gratification, they will find someone else who will!
• Giving in. You may need to do this—be kind to yourself—because it’s an unwinnable situation.
• Disengaging. If they are raging, this is your only option—let them wear themselves out.
• Find a way for them to get rid of you while maintaining your integrity (and hopefully getting a nice severance package).
A helpful way to choose your realm or realms of guilt is to select the one or ones that feel OK to you. You may want to start with one and then add another as you learn to navigate interactions with the borderlines. Then it’ll get easier, especially the more curious you become.
3. Be Curious
This is like the Anthropologist stance that I described in SmartTribes.9 You are fascinated by the behavior of the borderlines and you want to understand what it’s like to be them. Then you can ask one of two questions (or both), taught to me by Matt Kahn (TrueDivineNature.com):
• How may I serve you?
• How may I give you a better experience of me?
In either case, the borderline probably will tell you all the ways you need to change for his or her life to work. This is when you can kindly say something like “Thank you for your feedback” and leave. The list they gave you is what they want to change in themselves. You’ve just experienced a projection. Send them love and step away. They’ll get help if or when they want to, but often they don’t want to because for primary borderlines, everyone “is messed up” but them.
It’s key to remember with compassion that all borderline behavior is an unworkable attempt to manage loss and damage related to low or no love, safety, belonging, or mattering. That’s why true borderlines are not capable of deep long-term relationships and cannot be present during intense emotion.
• • •
To sum up: Remember that the behaviors of borderline primaries are designed to push people’s buttons (anger, helplessness, persuasive charm) in an attempt to avoid real or imagined abandonment. They will draw you in because to them, their life depends on it. Although their attacks will feel personal, it’s best not to take it that way or you’ll find yourself in Critter State before you know it. In Chapter 4, we covered how important it is to distinguish behavior from the intention of the behavior so that we can have more choices about how we respond to primary borderlines.
If you ever find your buttons pushed, just take a breath and use OWOW or the Maneuvers of Consciousness process we discussed in Chapter 3 so that you can quickly shift from Critter to Smart State.
Once you use the tools and strategies to become present to any borderline challenges, you’re ready for the final piece in your tribal agility strategy: a Cultural GAME Plan to solidify trust and scale your staff.
THE CULTURAL GAME PLAN: CREATE A PASSIONATELY ENGAGED CULTURE
The issue of trust can make or break an organization. A Harvard Business Review article states, “People crave transparency, openness, and honesty from their leaders. Unfortunately, business leaders continue to face issues of trust. According to a survey by the American Psychological Association, a quarter of workers say they don’t trust their employer, and only about half believe their employer is open and up front with them.”10
Handling individual bias and borderline issues goes a long way toward building trust. Now it’s time to build a culture of trust with a strong tribal identity.
The best way to boost revenue, profits, fulfillment, fun, and performance in general is to create an emotionally engaged and emotionally agile cultural identity. If you don’t have specific structures to create it, you might be unintentionally disengaging your tribe without even realizing it.
But first: How exactly does engagement work? What happens in the brain when we are engaged?
Engagement comes from feeling good, from passion for the organization, from meaningful work, and from attaching part of one’s identity to one’s job. And this experience is physiologically created by two neurotransmitters and one hormone:
• Oxytocin: A hormone that contributes to the feeling of bonding and connectedness to others
• Dopamine: A neurotransmitter with many roles, including signaling cells when the anticipation of reward is present and driving reward-motivated behavior
• Serotonin: A neurotransmitter that contributes to good feelings and general well-being
As leaders when we intentionally help the brains of our employees to generate dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, we create good feelings for the organization. We create these good feelings via a number of programs in your Cultural GAME Plan which we’ll cover in a moment.
First, having a strong mission, vision, and values sets the tone for your tribal purpose and code of conduct (oxytocin). Next, acknowledging employees for being models of your values creates social validation (dopamine and serotonin).
Let’s return to the fact that the brain needs structures to connect the heart to the workplace, to bring emotion in, so our teams know we care about them. It’s time to dive into your Cultural GAME Plan.
GAME stands for the following:
Growth: How are you helping your team aspire to greater knowledge and capabilities?
Appreciation: How are helping your team feel appreciated and valued?
Measurement: How are you ensuring that your team performs and understands your expectations?
Engagement: How are you helping keep everyone’s heart and mind focused on how much they love your organization?
A Cultural GAME Plan provides clear “rules” about how to stay in the tribe (be safe and belong) and gain status (matter) in each of these four key areas. It not only establishes trust at the cultural level, it also provides the most fulfilling work experience, which will yield the happiest and most committed, productive, loyal, long-term, constantly evolving emotionally agile team members. You deserve this. So do they.
Tool: Cultural GAME Plan
Here’s the recipe for your Cultural GAME Plan:
1. Work through an SBM Index to find what your tribe needs (see Chapter 7).
2. Create your GAME Plan based on your SBM Index findings. Your Cultural GAME Plan needs to encompass safety, belonging, and mattering throughout the entire employee experience (EX), which means you’ll want to include recruiting and onboarding, performance motivation, and ongoing talent optimization. This is how so many of our clients earn Best Places to Work awards—which make a huge difference in recruiting, retention, performance, and employee happiness overall.
What you include in your plan will be customized to your needs, but here are some examples of how to increase SBM through specific structures, tools, and rituals for growth, appreciation, measurement, and engagement. Note how each part of the plan maps to SBM Index results (S for safety, B for belonging, and M for mattering):
• Growth: How are you helping your team aspire to greater knowledge and capabilities?
Individual Development
Plans (S, B, M)
Leadership Lunches (B)
Annual (Organization-wide) Learning and Development Plans (S, B, M)
Feedback Frames (S, B, M)
Turnaround Processes (S, B, M)
• Appreciation: How are helping your team feel appreciated and valued?
High Fives (M, B)
Rock Star of the Month [M, B]
Weekly Wins (S, B, M)
Friday Toasts (M, B)
Merit Money and/or peer-based bonus programs11 (B, M)
• Measurement: How are you ensuring that your team performs and understands your expectations?
Accountability Structures (S, B, M)
Weekly Status (S, M)
Dashboards (S, B, M)
Performance Self-Evaluations (S, B, M)
Engagement Surveys (such as the SBM Index) (S, B, M)
• Engagement: How are you helping keep everyone’s heart and mind focused on how much they love your organization?
Engaging mission, vision, and values statements (S, B, M)
Impact Descriptions (S, B, M)
Coffee with the CEO program (B, M)
Organization-wide contests (M, B)
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Structures (S, B)
Optimal recruiting processes (to ensure value alignment) (B)
Optimal onboarding processes (S, B, M)
Visual, auditory, and kinesthetic goals (goals you show that people are progressing toward V, talk about A, and anchor in an activity K) (S, B, M)
3. Implement your GAME Plan on a monthly basis. After the initial programs have been in place for six to nine months, complete a new SBM Index to assess results. A GAME Plan will span many months or even years as an organization rolls out relevant programs.
For example, you’ll recall the SBM Index results shared in Chapter 7 (Table 7.2). Table 8.4 gives the first month’s programs from the client’s GAME Plan based on those SBM Index results.
TABLE 8.4 The First Month’s SBM Index Programs from the Client’s GAME Plan Based on the SBM Index Results in Table 7.2
Note (from Chapter 7) that what the organization craved most overall was belonging, so we put cultural rituals in place first to create connection and tribe. In the following months we would address safety and mattering as the experience of belonging was strengthened. In addition to the initial programs, we coached the investments leader to bring more safety to his team.
4. As you continue to implement your plan, you’ll enjoy increasing amounts of the benefits our clients love:
• Increased employee retention by more than 90 percent
• Increased profit per employee by over 22 percent
• Increased performance by 35 to 50 percent
• Increased emotional engagement, agility, and morale by 67 to 100 percent
• Decreased time to recruit for open positions by more than 50 percent
For our proven templates on all aspects of a GAME Plan (and all the other key best practices and tools for creating a SmartTribe), see the SmartTribes Playbook at www.SmartTribesInstitute.com/STP.
Once you have your cultural framework, you can further deepen your emotional framework beneath your GAME Plan. When you’re ready to do so, check out the Tribal Identity resource for this chapter on PowerYourTribe.com.
When we have strategies in place to address bias, foster inclusion, and navigate borderline personality disorder issues, and when those strategies are supported by a rich Cultural GAME Plan and growing tribal identity, we get team members who say, “I love my job, I trust my leader, and I’m ready to rock today!” This is true emotional agility and engagement.
1. Working together is like polishing rocks. Team members won’t always agree or get along, but in high-performing teams, they bounce back to the Smart State higher, harder, and faster than their competitors do.
2. All human beings are biased. It’s a natural state of the brain that evolved from the days when we needed to be able to calculate very quickly if someone was like us and thus friendly or unlike us and possibly dangerous.
3. A diverse group consistently performs better, making it clearly worth our while to figure out the bias conundrum.
4. We all exhibit some borderline behavior, especially when we are under great stress. Dealing with true borderlines requires navigation and survival strategies.
5. The Cultural GAME Plan helps us provide a fulfilling work experience, which will yield the happiest and most committed, productive, loyal, long-term, constantly evolving, and emotionally agile team members.
6. Unpacking the SBM Index results help us create an appropriate GAME Plan. The GAME Plan helps us forge the “rules” for how to belong to the tribe and thus be safe and the “rules” for how to matter and thus gain status in our tribe.
• To truly promote diversity and inclusion, it is absolutely critical to train your team in effective communication skills.
• Neuroscientists have repeatedly proven that teams with diversity and inclusion vastly outperform homogeneous teams. Period.
• All borderline behavior is an unworkable attempt to manage loss and damage related to the lack of love, safety, belonging, or mattering.
• The best way to boost revenue, profits, fulfillment, fun, and performance in general is to create an emotionally engaged culture.
• Are you unintentionally disengaging your tribe? The brain needs structures to connect the heart to the workplace.
See this chapter’s section on www.PowerYourTribe.com for the following:
• Chapter Quick Take video
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Optimization: Helpful Practices and Processes
• Tribal Identity Process: How to Forge a Company Personality
• STI Recruiting Process: This will save you over 60 hours per candidate.
• Values Examples