Creative Business Podcast
Episode Transcript: Using Workplace Conflict as a Catalyst for Cultural Change
Host: Brad Eather (Digital Marketing Consultant)
Guest: Kate Russell (Conflict Transformation Consultant)
Duration: 42 Minutes
– Introduction & Underlying Causes of Conflict
Kate Russell (00:00):
leaders unintentionally contribute to these conflicts
They might be tolerating behaviours from some people that they wouldn't tolerate from other people. There might be perceived favouritism
when I get told there's a conflict between two people, that is a really significant symptom of a much deeper problem.
Brad Eather (00:18):
Hello and welcome to the Creative Business Podcast, the podcast where creativity meets commerce. I'm Brad Eather a digital marketing consultant helping professional services build a marketing function that supports their business. In today's episode, we're going to be exploring how workplace conflict can be used as a catalyst for cultural change. Whenever workplace tensions bubble to the surface, it's easy for people managers to fall into firefighting mode.
But what if resolving conflict quickly isn't actually the goal? What if spending more time exploring the problem is actually the catalyst needed for innovation? Today, we're going to get into what's really underneath workplace conflict and how leaders can turn organizational friction into a tool for productive change. My guest today has spent over three decades on the front lines of mediation and workplace change.
From overseeing government tribunals to leading her own conflict transformation consultancy, she helps leaders turn team friction into a space for growth. Please welcome to the show, Kate Russell.
Kate Russell (01:29):
Thank you so much for having me, Brad. I'm very pleased to be here.
Brad Eather (01:33):
Thanks for thank you for coming on the show. Kate, to kick things off, you mentioned to me previously that organizations engage you to address conflicts. Can you tell me what they typically think they're fixing and what you actually find yourself doing?
Kate Russell (01:51):
They often think they are fixing a clash of personalities. So they think it's a problem with personality or they think it's a problem person. So they generally think the problem's not them. The problem is out there, it's a problem on the floor, it's a problem with somebody else. And what I typically find is that...
leaders unintentionally contribute to these conflicts and I'd say unintentionally deliberately because nobody means to ever cause harm.
but they do it because we're all fallible and they might have been not very clear about roles and responsibilities or vision. They might be tolerating behaviours from some people that they wouldn't tolerate from other people. There might be perceived favouritism like you're friendlier to this person than that person. Like there can be a whole range of different reasons why people end up in conflict. And so if we put a lens on the broader
team or the organisation rather than just focusing on the conflict, we can then generally unpack things in a way that they had not anticipated. And I also generally find that when I get told there's a conflict between two people, that is just a really significant symptom of a much deeper problem.
And so we don't want to start there because if we start there, those two people are likely to leave because they feel like they've been held responsible for something which they know is not theirs completely. so I tend to go back and really try and unpack what is causing this conflict.
– Individual Consultations vs. Group Settings
Brad Eather (03:25):
When you approach leaders, are you approaching people as individuals i initially or do you do you start in a group setting?
Kate Russell (03:34):
no, individually, individually. So I just...
I talk to the leaders, I talk to the people who are in the conflict because they've got a very important story to tell and also because they're in the conflict, they will also tell me all the other things that are happening that have contributed to this conflict. So that's really useful, but also they need to be able to speak their truth and have somebody believe them. So that just takes the temperature out of the room. And then I like to talk to other people within the team to better understand their lived experience. Like what's working really well here and what's not. So we don't have to even talk about the conflict. Just tell me.
what is working well and what is not. And when we explore that, that will always bring up, there's usually a very short list of what's working well. And it doesn't matter if the place is going well or badly. It's just, it's always a short list of things that are going well and a much longer list of things that are not going well. And I just individually, let's have a chat. You can have a winge whatever you like. But when we get together as a group, we are focusing on solutions and we're not doing public wingeing because we never publicly shame people. So yeah.
Never start with the group, always start with the individuals and just let people vent.
– Navigating Personal Emotions & Creating a Safety-to-Fail Culture
Brad Eather (04:38):
I'm sure you find that there's a a challenge that is understandably human, that most people take things personally. Wherein where in a in a group context like a workplace, a lot of the discussions that we're having are are not personal discussions, they're work-related.
Kate Russell (04:56):
Mm-hmm.
Brad Eather (04:57):
how do you interpret that challenge from people? How how do you make them understand that sometimes
Well, I'm presuming sometimes conflict isn't necessarily directed at someone. It's just a frustration of a role.
Kate Russell (05:11):
Yeah, that's right. So I suppose in the listening, understand what's going on and then we can reframe it. And I also lean on my own fallibility. So I'm human. I stuff up all the time. And so if I can one, can validate their experiences, stressful or whatever, know, frustration, whatever it might be.
And then once we've built up trust, then I can ask that question like, so, you know, if you could do something differently, what would it look like? Or how might you have unintentionally also been part of this? And it's much easier once they've got it off their chest and we've vented. Now we've built up some trust because I believe them and I understand that they're stressed or they're frustrated or whatever is going on. And now it's sort of like now we can look at the problem from sort of above from the balcony and go, what would what would we do differently? And which would you own? Because if everybody just owns their
bit it's much easier to resolve the conflict if I have to be perfect and right.
then the other person has to be wrong and that creates that blame culture. if I am always perfect and this is a really important thing for leaders, but if you are always right and you are always the perfect person, there's no scope for the other person to be anything but wrong. They have to be the person that's being held responsible for whatever has occurred. And that's just an unfair position to be in because we all know it takes two to tango and we can all just unintentionally contribute to something.
stop looking at problems in the workplace as problems but as learnings and as opportunities, we can then all own our bit and it's much safer. And I think you can turn to professional sport and a whole range of different places where they are constantly looking for feedback of what didn't work so that they can improve. And in corporate and in other workplaces, we're not very good at doing that. We want to get better and let's explore how we could make this work better.
We do tend to take things personally. We haven't really fostered a very good world of feedback where it's okay to fail. And I think that's something that if we're going to create more resilient workplaces, we need to get much better at accepting that we all contribute to something going wrong and we need to make it safe to fail.
– Reframing Conflict: "Conflict is a Gift"
Brad Eather (07:25):
I'm wondering if you do a lot of public speaking as well, and obviously in
Kate Russell (07:31):
No.
Brad Eather (07:32):
those environments you're talking about conflict, but you're not addressing the actual conflict. To sum
Kate Russell (07:35):
Anything specific.
Brad Eather (07:38):
up what you've just said, is there a statement or a headline that you like to present to your audience to help them reframe conflict as an opportunity?
Kate Russell (07:48):
Yeah, so I think it is, well, I always say conflict is a gift.
because I mean I think literally conflict is a gift. It is telling you there's a problem and if you can look at that problem without all of the emotion and the emotion is just telling us it's just our body's response to some thoughts that we're having but if we can if we can look at that that problem and go I wonder how that happened and sort of analyse it intellectually rather than emotionally we can then have extraordinary conversations. So I think conflict is a gift and the other the other head
is if we move from me to we conversations, so we stop this being about me and having to protect myself, but recognise that we are all part of this and so let's explore how we can have a conversation and work together to resolve whatever is happening, then suddenly it's a whole lot safer.
Brad Eather (08:42):
Yeah. I like that. That's great. I really
Kate Russell (08:45):
Hmm.
Brad Eather (08:46):
appreciate you sharing that wisdom.
Kate Russell (08:48):
Hmm.
– Accountability: Ask More, Tell Less
Brad Eather (08:49):
As we move through your process of conflict management,
Kate Russell (08:53):
Mm-hmm.
Brad Eather (08:54):
if if you were in a if you were in a lead a room of leaders at the moment, what advice would
Kate Russell (08:58):
Hmm.
Brad Eather (08:59):
you give them to create clearer boundaries of accountability within their team so that was so that their team feels supported?
Kate Russell (09:07):
Yeah, if you're going to create greater accountability, there's a few ways you can do it. So.
First and foremost, get the team together and get them to collectively create their own rules of engagement so that you're not telling. Because the more you can stop telling as a leader and do more asking, you're going to get better outcomes. So a really simple thing that I do and I do a lot is work with teams around, let's just work out how we're to work together. And then accountability always comes up in that space. And we talk about how we're going to communicate
when something goes wrong and all of those things. So I think use the team to resolve the issues and then it's also use the team to explore accountability and you can do that in your one-on-one sessions. You need to be really clear about roles and responsibilities and a way to find out whether or not you're clear or not is to ask and so in one-on-ones help me understand
your role, like get the person to tell you what's my role. And then and you'll get clarity from having that conversation about what is somebody's role and their responsibilities. Where do you think you're unclear? And I'd love to better understand where you think you're unclear, because I think so many leaders think they are great communicators. We all think that we have communicated something effectively, and often we haven't because we've communicated it in a way that we like to receive information. But we can't assume that everybody else receives information in the same way.
And we can also make assumptions that something is obvious and it might not be obvious. It might not be obvious to the person. So we should just ask more and we should tell less. And if we want greater accountability, we get really clear about those things and we can ask in a one-on-one session and we can ask in a team group session how are going to hold ourselves accountable? What would accountability look like if I've done my job well? What would accountability look like?
If
I don't do something, will we call that out? What would that look like? think it's accountability is what everybody wants, but you can't have accountability in a blame culture because everybody's defending themselves. And then they're not going to speak up. They're not going to necessarily own that something went wrong before everybody else. It's sort of like you find it out later and it's like, yeah, sorry, I did that. We don't want to blame culture. We want people to say upfront, look, I think I did this today and I...
I don't think that was actually within scope or whatever. Let's work out how we're going to address that. Like you want to create that space, but you can only do that through asking, not telling. You cannot tell people every single part of the job and never ask a question. You need to ask if somebody understands it, you need to ask whether or not that person thinks there's a better way of doing this. Like there's a whole, you just get so much better outcomes if you ask more and tell less.
– Working ON the Business vs. IN the Business
Brad Eather (11:56):
It's it's funny, the the parallel that I'm drawing there is that quite often when especially in in sales discussions or people that are client facing, leaders are off are asking those questions of their team. They're saying, you know,
We're not there to tell the client what they need. We need to ask questions so that we can delineate
Kate Russell (12:13):
Mm. Yep. Yep.
Brad Eather (12:16):
what it is they actually need. we're not working on assumptions we need to ask so that we can have better conversations. and the overall thing that sort of wraps it all up is this idea that you know, the old saying.
you need to work on your business, not in your business. And it feels
Kate Russell (12:33):
Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Eather (12:36):
like that conversation that leaders have quite regularly in a different context fits within that realm of working on your business rather than in your business.
Kate Russell (12:45):
Correct.
Brad Eather (12:46):
have you have you seen that parallel as well come through and where leaders clicked and gone, hang on a second, I need to be accountable for for the things that I'm asking of my
Kate Russell (12:54):
Yes.
Brad Eather (12:55):
team as well.
Kate Russell (12:56):
Yeah, look, I have and it comes out more when we do teamwork together. So when we explore what does good look like, it is extraordinary how when you have, because I always include leaders with the team because they are part of the team and they said, should I attend? It's like, of course you should attend because you are the leader of the team. You're part of the team. You need to be there. You need to hear these conversations. They need to know that you're human and that you've got ideas and you're all in this together. You must be there.
And when they had these conversations, yes, they can see, you can see those parallels happening about ask, don't tell. And it's interesting, it is really interesting because what is expected of staff and what leaders expect, know, the staff are to do ask lots of questions and be curious and that the leaders are living in a world of stress and pressure
to tick boxes and to generate income and do all the things. And I think it is that fear and the stress that then gets them into telling mode because they think that the way to control something is to tell.
but they actually generally lose more control when they do telling rather than asking because they don't have buy-in. They don't have the same level of engagement. And so, yeah, I think it's spot on. It is a parallel. Work on the business. Spending time with your team is working on the business. It's not a luxury. It's an important part of nurturing your business.
– Slowing Down & Self-Care for Leaders
Brad Eather (14:30):
So you mentioned there that leaders at least at the time that you find them, are feeling overwhelmed and are acting the way that they're that they are in as reactive to the situation that they're in.
Kate Russell (14:45):
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brad Eather (14:48):
How do we get from that point of
being in a reactive situation to being able to sort of slow down and get w whatever the fundamentals are so that we can build a build that culture, you know, how what's the process of actually taking the step back to the point that this is the beginning and now we're building towards something?
Kate Russell (15:11):
Yeah, so again, it goes back just often when I go in, is I slow everything down. I make everybody do a one on one. I make everybody come to this workshop and we slow things down and we do lots of asking.
And there's never blame. It's always like, it's always like, let's explore what would good look like and how are we going to get there. And one of the things that I focus on a lot in my work is how can we reduce everybody's stress levels so that we don't end up in this reactionary state? Because the more we react to things, the more likely we are to engage in behaviours that is not going to serve us. So how can we collectively and individually as a leader in particular, think about ways in which we can reduce
our stress. And so the team workshop, the team huddle that I do is very, important for identifying what's important to the team that would reduce the team stress.
And then the leader needs to think about what are the boundaries that they need to personally set to let the team know so that they can also better manage their workload and their overwhelm so that they can bring their best person to work, their best self to work. And often that is things that leaders are not thinking about because they are already so reactionary. And it's things like not making yourself available
every moment of every day to answer any query, but limiting certain, you making certain times of the day self available, working from home one day a week specifically to just work, get that other work done, whatever it might be. But it is also the self care component. It is all of those simple things. It's like I often ask leaders, how are you looking after you? This feels like it's, this is a lot right now. How are you looking after you? And that often triggers tears and big sigh.
and because they're not they're not looking after themselves and it's it's like how can you nurture yourself because if you don't nurture yourself it's really hard to nurture others and the more we get reactionary the less we look after self so sometimes it's like I give you permission and I can't tell you the number of times I've had to give people permission I give you permission to go home early to go for a walk to go to the gym to
take a day off, just take a day off and go and stand at the beach if you need to and put your feet in the sea, like do something for you because you have to look after you so you can look after everybody else, you cannot do it from an empty cup and it seems so obvious and everybody talks about it but it is it is so true and I see
very, very tired, stressed out reactionary leaders who are just the more reactionary they become, the bigger their problems become. And then you've got leaders who are then increasingly creating more work for themselves because they're reactionary. And they don't want that. So sometimes it's just having a third person come in and giving them permission. I'm giving you permission today to take the rest of the week off or to...
Go home at four o'clock today and go to the beach or do whatever you need to do but look after you.
– Psychological Safety & Leadership Behavior
Brad Eather (18:15):
I I think this is maybe a a a misconception about a societal misconception. We we we quite
Kate Russell (18:22):
Mm-hmm.
Brad Eather (18:23):
often separate work from home life and we we treat them in two different buckets. But the
Kate Russell (18:29):
Yeah.
Brad Eather (18:30):
more and more I have conversations with people on this podcast about psychological safety,
Kate Russell (18:36):
Mm-hmm.
Brad Eather (18:36):
the premise that keeps coming up is that
psychological safety when you implement it comes down to flexibility so that you can have those conversations, you can recognize the self, the per the challenges that you're going through, and then have the flexibility to
Kate Russell (18:52):
and
Brad Eather (18:53):
you know, look after yourself in those moments of vulnerability.
is that how you see psychological safety in the workplace? How w what's the framework that you work within?
Kate Russell (19:05):
It's multiple things. I think psychological safety is a really interesting topic right now and it can be weaponised. And I know that because we haven't created environments where people feel comfortable to receive feedback or to talk about things going wrong, then when we do get feedback, it can be like, well, I don't feel safe
receiving the feedback because I'm now being told off. I think we have to start looking at, am I feeling uncomfortable or am I actually feeling unsafe? And I think they're two different things. I increasingly come across people who are feeling very uncomfortable because something's not working well and they've been given some feedback that they feel uncomfortable with. But it doesn't actually make them unsafe. Psychological safety, where I see
problems with psychological safety is more when I'm dealing with organisations that do tolerate poor behaviour over long periods of time. So allowing somebody to constantly come into team meetings and sigh loudly and sort of just be disgruntled or yell in a meeting or whatever. And particularly when I see leaders who find it difficult to regulate their emotions. And I think the most...
Some of the most unsafe workplaces are where leaders are a bit like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One day they're fantastic and the next day they're just losing their cool. And people go, don't know which person is going to turn up today. I don't know how to manage this. I had one client, a leader who got so stressed out. She sat in a glass office and she was quite passive, passive aggressive in her behavior. But she sat in a glass office and sort of glared at people
during the day because she was feeling really uncomfortable about their performance but didn't know how to hold boundaries and didn't know how to give feedback. And they're sitting outside the office and she's of grumpy in the office and then they're meant to go in there for a performance review and they're telling me, no way, I am not walking into that office. And she's saying they just, they're dismissive, they're rude, they're all these things and like she's sitting there, you know, looking like thunder. That's an unsafe workplace because she's not
she's not providing a safe environment, she's behaving in a threatening manner. And so I think that psychological safety is important and it's how do we speak to each other. And therefore I think that it is critical that we find ways to become less reactionary because I think some of those reactionary behaviours are the ones that are actually triggering a whole lot of issues around psychological safety. And there are other elements that go to it, like when we overwork people, when, I mean, there's just...
There are so many things that relate to what are deemed bullying behaviours or unsafe workplaces, which leaders have control over rather than something that other people are doing. And the research is really clear on that, like bullying behaviour or whatever is because people are feeling stretched or undervalued or they're just, we're tolerating poor behaviour and so they feel like I've got to fix this problem because the leader won't fix the problem, so I'm going to go in and fix the problem.
So when you have poor leadership, leaders who are not holding boundaries and not giving positive feedback and behaving in a manner that's supportive, they are unintentionally creating unsafe workplaces. They don't mean to, but people are responding to the fear about an environment that doesn't have enough rules and regulations. People like rules. They can set their own rules, but we all like a boundary, like to know where we stand.
– Executive Alignment & Preventing Silos
Brad Eather (22:45):
The thing that's a spring to mind is that r reactive behavior that you described is not
Kate Russell (22:51):
Hmm.
Brad Eather (22:52):
it doesn't fit within the definition of leadership. However,
Kate Russell (22:58):
No.
Brad Eather (22:59):
people often find themselves in a position of leadership
And understandably, you know, haven't been trained and don't understand the expectations.
Kate Russell (23:07):
Mm-hmm.
Brad Eather (23:09):
And that leads to stress, which leads to that kind of reactionary behavior.
Kate Russell (23:11):
Mm-hmm.
Brad Eather (23:15):
If you were to go into a business that is freshly starting to build a leadership hierarchy,
Kate Russell (23:22):
Mm-hmm.
Brad Eather (23:23):
What would be your advice to them to avoid putting themselves in in a position where they're dealing with the problems that you were dealing with around conflict?
Kate Russell (23:34):
I would strongly encourage them to get a third party to come in and help them see what they can't see in their current structure. So, and to assist them to get some alignment about how they want to think about going forward. But also, I think one of the things that leaders often don't take into consideration because they're building something, they're excited about what they're building, but they don't always create the environment where they can have honest conversations
and so they have meetings after the meetings. know, we constantly hear, we'll agree to disagree on this. And when we're growing,
Brad Eather (24:07):
Mm.
Kate Russell (24:08):
that's when you're going to feel a lot of pain points and we might have lots of agree to disagree moments. And that's a dangerous space to be in because as soon as you have agreed, you agree to disagree, we don't have alignment. And what you desperately need as you're growing is alignment. We need to be on the same page. We need to be singing from the same hymn book because we need to be messaging this to
our team as we grow, we need to be able to pick up any challenges that are coming from teams that are growing, because there will be pain points, there'll be whose role is this, we need to be really working on the business a lot when we're growing. And often growth is a time where we're working a lot in the business, because we don't have the resources to be able to bring on enough additional people to help with the workload.
So it's a really difficult time. So I would definitely encourage you to get a business coach or somebody with a consultant of some sort to assist you with one, developing leaders, but also developing your communication skills and building trust and being able to have really difficult, open conversations where you unpack when you agree to disagree. Like if you disagree on something, let's explore why we disagree on it
and keep working on it until we can find a middle ground and not have those meetings before and after the meetings or in car parks or behind people's backs. Because if one of the things that often happens in most organisations is that they end up with a senior leadership team or an executive team and then they've got different departments and every person who has a department manages their own department and they become these silos and yet the senior leadership team is the
is the most important team. That's where you need the alignment. You might get alignment vertically, but what we need is alignment horizontally. And when we don't see that, when that doesn't happen, we, the people down the food chain go, well, they don't do that. You're expecting us to do certain things, but you're actually not, you don't have integrity at that level because you don't hold the boundaries. You tolerate things that other leaders don't do and it all becomes very competitive. This team.
needs to be the most important team. They need alignment, they need to be able to have frank, open, challenging conversations and really, you know, they need to be able to have conflict, healthy conflict together to work through issues and not protect their patch because they need to work to the one vision, not I'm the most successful CFO in the world or I run operations really well and this department is a bugbear to me and they make our lives difficult over here. No.
the executive team, the senior leadership team is the most important team.
Brad Eather (26:45):
Yeah, that's really interesting. I find it interesting because the process that you'described, you've just pointed towards the C suite, but
Kate Russell (26:55):
Yeah.
Brad Eather (26:56):
the process is really bottom up where you've
Kate Russell (26:59):
Yeah.
Brad Eather (26:59):
where you're collecting the feedback to align the
Kate Russell (27:02):
Yeah,
Brad Eather (27:02):
sea level.
Kate Russell (27:03):
yeah, yeah. Well, I think it's both. Everybody's always looking to the sea suite. Are we OK? How are we functioning? Because that's what we do. We look to our leaders. Are we OK? So everyone's always looking to leadership. So this is where leadership is all about you and it's not about you. And so you have to always think about how what what are the optics? What does it look like? What are people seeing?
Are we creating an environment where people feel safe and all of those things? Are we acting with integrity? Do we have alignment? At the same time, it's not about you because if you make it about you, then you're not developing your people because your role as a leader is to develop other people within your team and your organization. Yes, it's to get some things done, but it's not for you to get these things done. It's to get your team to get these things done. So you need to work with your team. So it's really useful to listen to the information from the bottom up
because they've got incredible information to provide. They are living the decisions that you make. They're the ones experiencing the impact of your decisions. So you want to know, are we doing what we said we were going to do and own it? And then they need to take accountability about, if this group are not having a great time, if their lived experience is not great, then what are we going to do about it? Because our duty of care is to the people that report to us.
– Sustaining Change & The Need for Connection
Brad Eather (28:21):
You mentioned th this word lived experience and I I I love it from a canvassing perspective because
Kate Russell (28:29):
room.
Brad Eather (28:30):
without having that business intelligence of lived experience you don't know what you're changing. But
Kate Russell (28:38):
Hmm.
Brad Eather (28:39):
change is always difficult. and you I'm presuming you go into an environment and you're running a workshop which
Kate Russell (28:49):
Mm.
Brad Eather (28:50):
if if I'm paraphrasing the objective of this workshop is to define what good looks like so that we can so that we can
Kate Russell (28:56):
Yeah.
Brad Eather (28:57):
get this the baseline.
Kate Russell (28:59):
Yeah.
Brad Eather (29:00):
One of the challenges with change mana however is that we go in with all these good intentions around a workshop but then we fall back into bad habits, bad behaviors. how do you
address the in-between. What are the what are some of the little steps that you put in place to address the the in-between stages between a formalized meeting?
Kate Russell (29:24):
Yeah, so I suppose what you're absolutely right. can, you bring everybody together. We have a team huddle. Everyone goes away excited and aligned and we know what we want. And then very easily it can fall back into BAU because you know business as usual because we're human and we like certainty. So that even if that certainty is terrible, we can go back to that. So then it's how do you have eyes on and hands off?
And so what I do is after that, I work with the leaders about you've captured all this information. So what are you going to do with it? And you need to be able to demonstrate to your team that this is that you are acting on this. And this is this is the schedule. So I work with them on that. And that that might be some coaching and some other things that come from that. And then there's check ins. So I like to do sort of mini team huddles, sort of six weeks, 12 weeks, whatever age, know, just
a few extra little team huddles, let's get back together. What have we done? Have we done what we said we were going to do? Where can we see the change? Is that happening? Because we have to implement the change, not just identify that we need change, we need to implement it. And we need to also better understand, did the change achieve what we wanted to achieve? Is that what it is? I can tell you that in nearly every organisation I've ever worked in,
The number one thing that teams want more than anything else, and it's not hard, it's connection. It's just connection. It's finding time to spend together that's not sort of just a pizza, lunch or whatever, but it's about finding a way that we can work together where we can have proper conversations so that we can be more effective, but also we can trust each other more. Like it's
Brad Eather (31:07):
Mm.
Kate Russell (31:09):
simple things. And in some organisations that looks like just setting up that we allow...
you to take an hour a week to go and have coffee with somebody from another team or whatever. Like it's just simple little things, but people want connection because if I trust you, then we can have difficult conversations. We can explore why this didn't work. We can do all of those things. So it's not always task. It's also how do we balance the peopleing with the tasks? And in business, we often...
don't do the peopling nearly as well as we do the task. We focus a lot of energy on the tasks that need to be done to achieve the result. We forget that peopling is a really important part of productivity and performance, and you can't have one without the other. And so yes, you have to do some coaching, but the leadership team need to respect the voice and the information that their team has provided them, and they need to act on it
with the team. So they go on that journey with the team. It becomes part of their regular meetings. This is part of the agenda. We're going to lean in to this change. It has to be implemented. Because otherwise, it's just, we're so human. And we all know it takes a long time to change our habit. So you're not going to do one workshop. We'll never magic away the problem.
– Parallel Speaking & Walking Meetings
Brad Eather (32:27):
it's so ironic that business is is so focused on productivity when in the reality it's quite often the the just the process of slowing down, giving each other each other time and space to reflect on discussions, build team
Kate Russell (32:38):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Eather (32:44):
culture that actually drives productivity. Because when you do
Kate Russell (32:47):
Yeah.
Brad Eather (32:47):
give yourself time to think,
that's when little ideas pop up about productivity,
Kate Russell (32:54):
some
Brad Eather (32:54):
about efficiencies, about new products, about you know, different ways of doing things. It's all in the space in between.
Kate Russell (33:02):
Yes.
Brad Eather (33:04):
One of the
things that I like to draw attention to is is in a previous episode Erin Fairman actually mentioned this and I found it really powerful.
Kate Russell (33:11):
Yeah.
Brad Eather (33:13):
and you just talked about it like spending time with other people but
think she referred to it as parallel speaking and the idea being that when we're not facing one another directly when we're walking beside one another it creates an environment where we do feel safer to share things and I
Kate Russell (33:30):
Yep. Yep.
Brad Eather (33:31):
think I think that something simple that a lot of leaders
Kate Russell (33:34):
Mmm.
Brad Eather (33:35):
could could implement is something as simple as going for a walk right
Kate Russell (33:40):
Absolutely.
Brad Eather (33:42):
having that team meeting on a walk. yeah. And
Kate Russell (33:44):
Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Eather (33:46):
did you have something to add there?
Kate Russell (33:48):
Well, no, I just think it's, I think you're spot on. And I did a workshop with a group of leaders, senior leaders after COVID, like they hadn't seen each other for nearly two years just because of COVID. And it was a national company. They came together. And the first thing I got them to do was go and find somebody you hadn't seen and go for a walk. And they basically just, gave them all 10 minute walks and you come find somebody else and go for, we just spent the morning just walking meetings to start with so they could just rebuild relationship again.
because it all been online. So yeah, agreed.
– Defining Workplace Creativity & Play
Brad Eather (34:21):
I love having these conversations with this idea of creativity in the background. Because
Kate Russell (34:26):
Hmm.
Brad Eather (34:26):
quite often what we f what I think is i the idea of creativity gets conflated. And really it's in the fundamentals, the the human experience, the simple things where creativity actually exists and where change actually
Kate Russell (34:39):
Yeah.
Brad Eather (34:40):
happens.
Kate Russell (34:41):
Yeah.
Brad Eather (34:41):
So with saying that, I I'm curious to hear what your definition of creativity is.
Kate Russell (34:50):
I think creativity is being able to see something and then turn it into something else. I often look at this, so there's only so many ideas, but I look at things and I think to myself, at one stage we had ghetto blasters on our shoulders and the next minute we've got these tiny iPods and I look at that and I just think of the brilliance
of a mind that goes from enormous to small. I love the arts for how we can often share information in a simple way, but it just gets that cut through that is so incredibly powerful. So for me, creativity in the workspace is...
there's always challenges that come up all the time. And it's creating the space to allow us to explore that and not be held captive to we've always done it this way thinking or whatever it is. It's allowing people to have the space to think of something better. Because that's what creativity does. It creates opportunities for us to live better. And I think we've...
have extraordinary lives now due to so many people's creativity. And this is where I think listening to all the voices and the lived experiences is so powerful and not being scared of people being unhappy or in conflict because chances are there's some information in there that's going to then help you think about an issue differently. And every single person in a workplace would, I know they do, they all have
thoughts about how you could improve this workplace. Now we won't necessarily agree on all of that but that's okay. But everybody has thoughts and they love it when you ask them for their input in how we could make this better. But you have to do it in a meaningful way. So having a box that says suggestions is not a meaningful way of getting that. A meaningful way is having conversations and creating a space to have those conversations and in fact inviting people to think outside the box which is completely
outrageous, which is, know, challenging and it's like, what if, what if, and that's what this workshop, this is what does good look like, it's what if. If we were the best team in the world, we had the best culture in the world, what if. And so this is why I love conflict, because conflict just gets me in the door and it's like, the conflict we can resolve pretty quickly. It's where we take people, it's how we use this energy
to motivate us to do something different and to do it long-term different, not just put a band-aid on this problem and hope it goes away, because it won't go away. Band-aids don't hold on conflict. How are we going to do this differently? How can we see this differently through a different lens and feel comfortable with it? What are we going to do with it? So I love creative thinking. I love the opportunity for people to play in that space.
I just read Ben Crow's book, When the Light Gets In, and he's Ash Barty's coach. And he talks about the School of Psychology, which says there's basically two base emotions, fear and love. And he says most of us can't cope with the word love, so he put play in there instead. And what I love doing is taking people from a state of fear, which is the conflict, and let's move that into a state of play.
Because the fear is going to get us nowhere. It just, it is a race to the bottom if we stay there. But what if, what if we can use the energy of that fear to explore what good looks like and to play and to bring about real meaningful change? That's what I think is so exciting about conflict. It's so uncomfortable we can't stay here any longer. We have to do something. It's like, okay, well let's do it. Let's really do something exciting. That's what I like.
– Conversation Compass Cards & Closing
Brad Eather (38:45):
Kate, I know you've got some Playcards
Kate Russell (38:48):
Yes.
Brad Eather (38:49):
where where t tell tell us what you've got going on, where people can find you and I'd love to hear about your play cards.
Kate Russell (38:56):
Yeah, yeah. So my cards, my conversation compass cards, I've created those because so many people want to be able to have more meaningful conversations, but they don't know how to have them. They don't know how to give feedback. They don't know how to start a performance feedback conversation. They're terrified of conflict. And I wanted to provide particularly leaders with some tools to be able to do that more confidently.
And so there are a bunch of questions and so it's not, there are some mini scripts in here, but basically it's not telling leaders what to say. It's assisting leaders to slow down their thinking and to move from a me conversation to a we conversation. Because when a leader makes the problem all about the other person, you've got to get this right because you're the problem and I'm okay, but you're the problem. That conversation never goes well. So...
these cards assist people to prepare themselves. What am I thinking? What are my assumptions? What's my bias here? What am I feeling? So slow that down. What is the other person? What's going on for the other person? What do I actually know? Like chances are you don't know very much at all. And how can I start this conversation and make this person feel safe? How can I validate their stressed experience? And how can we then, what does good look like? If this conversation goes really well, what would be an outcome that would be good for both of us?
So the cards do that and you can just choose a card and it starts you thinking or you can work through them or there's a whole different ways in which you can use them. You can also use them as an accountability tool. So once you've got training within an organisation, you can just sort of literally have the card sitting there and it's like if something starts becoming a me conversation, you can sort of go, well, let's go back to the cards. Let's remember, let's make this a we conversation. Let's think about it.
So the way you can contact me is through my website, which is Kate Russell dot co. You can buy the cards there or you'll be able to very shortly. And then I do workshops, lunch and learns using the cards, assisting people to develop their skills around communication and just become a lot more self aware about how we show up to these conversations, what impact we're having. Because if we do that.
That's almost half of the work done. That's the majority of the work done. If you turn up being aware that you've made assumptions that you might not have been clear, that you can own some stuff, just the whole conversation becomes easier every time.
Brad Eather (41:18):
Amazing. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast, Kate. I love how how many times you returned to certain concepts, the assumptions, me, we, these things, it it really makes it clear how complex problems, you know, have
oftentimes simple s solutions if you've thought about things and unpack them like you have. So
Kate Russell (41:44):
Yeah. Yeah, fantastic. Thank you.
Brad Eather (41:47):
so thanks for listening to the creative business podcast. If you've if you've taken some different thinking away from this conversation, I'd love for you to subscribe wherever you're listening. and in the meantime, stay creative.
Kate Russell (42:01):
Thank you so much, Brad, it's been great.
Brad Eather (42:04):
Cheers.
