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Exploring how humans connect and get stuff done together, with Dan Hammond and Pia Lee from Squadify.
We need groups of humans to help navigate the world of opportunities and challenges, but we don't always work together effectively. This podcast tackles questions such as "What makes a rockstar team?" "How can we work from anywhere?" "What part does connection play in today's world?"
You'll also hear the thoughts and views of those who are running and leading teams across the world.
[00:00:00] Dan: Treat them mean, keep 'em keen. Am I right? It sounds funny now, but they persist. This idea that to get things done, especially when lies are at stake, you may need to abandon the niceties and go for a bit of good old fashioned JFDI leadership. Our guest on this episode of We Not Me, is Chris Turner, and he bakes to disagree.
[00:00:21] Dan: Chris is a consultant in emergency medicine and a founder of Civility saves lives. His research and experience shows that whatever the received wisdom being civil will lead to more stuff getting done and less blood on the floor, both real and emotional.
[00:00:41] Dan: Hello and welcome back to We, not Me, the podcast where we explore how humans connect to get stuff done together. I'm Dan Hammond.
[00:00:48] Pia: And I am Pia Lee.
[00:00:50] Dan: whenever I see a new story that's in the slightest bit, sort of salacious or fascinating or involves human interest of any sort, I just think that.
[00:01:00] Dan: A peer story and, um, I know you, you've loved a few of these along the way, the, um, um, Malaysian Airlines plane going down and all those sorts of things, but
[00:01:09] Pia: And all my infinite theories of what happened, which is
[00:01:13] Dan: we were, we were traveling a lot together then, and oh, my word, every time we sat a plane, right? Here's, here's the latest. Did you know it was, it always entertained me, but I think you have a new. A human interest, but also one that sort of brings it close to home, don't you? That's happened in Australia recently.
[00:01:29] Pia: I abso Yeah, no, I, I, before I dive into that, I will actually let you know they are carrying out another search for MH three 70. It's a whole brand new search
[00:01:41] Dan: this is what I'm missing. This is it.
[00:01:43] Pia: seriously, like, you know, we may be having a few, few US politics and geopolitical,
[00:01:49] Dan: you you are keeping an eye on the main story. I know. Yeah.
[00:01:52] Pia: I am looking. I'm looking for the holes where the real news is happening.
[00:01:57] Pia: The
[00:01:57] Pia: second piece of news listeners, and I know that seriously you will be waiting for this one, is that Valerie, the dash hound was found after straying from her owners. And being in the wilderness on Kangaroo Island for 529 days, which is a very long time for a little small mini dash hand. I have one. I know that would be a very long period of time.
[00:02:22] Pia: it, and I think that we were in the middle of about to have a general election, but by God it really hit the news over here. It was like, we need something different to Li Lighten. You know, where is she? We'd seen these little light, you know. Like the sort of shadows of dark black and tan disappearing into the bush. So she was in there and anyway, they managed to capture her and
[00:02:42] Dan: it's wonderful. And it was a team of, of human volunteers. I mean, I suppose unlikely to be canine volunteers doing that, I guess, but yeah, actual
[00:02:51] Pia: For a year and a half near this Dashan was wandering around, wandering around the island and dedicated a lot of their time and actually said, 'cause I read the article that they actually felt quite sad saying goodbye because they'd actually got very
[00:03:02] Dan: Oh, isn't that great? You just need to release other things in the wild so they've got a job to do or allocate them to something else. Yeah. I love it. The, the thing I loved about that was knowing, and we call them dins, I think in the uk, don't we? But, um, the, but that breed I always think is hilarious 'cause they are so, you know, you have two, but they are so self-confident.
[00:03:22] Dan: So I sort of, you know, you see them going along and they're barking at these massive great Danes on the other street. Let me add him, let me, so I sort of imagined this Dax and not sort of just. Yeah, I've got this. I'm cool. I'm, I'm trotting along. I, I love the vision of Valerie, just with all her built in confidence getting through this ordeal.
[00:03:39] Pia: other thing that did make me laugh was, is that the, the quote from the owners was she had never left our side and then she spent 529 days on an island on her own. She just nipped off, I dunno where she went. She just nipped off and then she just thought, I'm gonna carry on
[00:03:52] Dan: I think it just shows what we're all capable of. Um, and, uh, Pia, I defy you to come up with a smooth segue into our guest, but there was definitely some kindness and probably civility, a lot of civility in that team.
[00:04:06] Pia: Good civil action actually by the whole of the Kangaroo Island,
[00:04:10] Dan: even if the dog probably isn't civil bark barking at everyone. But, uh, but yes, civility is the subject of today and actually a little pairing with our, uh, episode, last episode with Graham Kott. But this is, um, talking to Chris Turner, um, who runs an organization as well as being an emergency, um, medicine consultant, called Civility Saves Lives.
[00:04:32] Dan: So this is what he gives a lot of his time to. And um, a. Fascinating conversation. and while despite the media we face, it seems like an obvious thing that we should be civil. It's actually a little bit more subtle than we might think. A little bit harder a problem to solve. So let's go and hear from Chris now.
[00:04:52] Pia: And a very warm welcome to you, Chris. Welcome to We, not Me.
[00:04:56] Chris: Oh, it's lovely to be here. Thank you Pia.
[00:04:58] Pia: And, um, it's a great topic that we're going to be talking about. Um, you probably heard about, uh, the Conversation starter card. So that's the, the first initiation we have to get through before we move on to our topic. So I'm gonna hand you over to Dan.
[00:05:12] Dan: Thank you. And the card I have randomly selected. Chris, is, um, is this one the job I would be terrible at is what would you, you, you, as we we're about to hear you, you're very good at certain jobs, what would you be terrible at?
[00:05:27] Chris: Academic rating. writing one of those papers that has 3 million references that you can't read a sentence in that feels like is deliberately designed to make you sound clever by excluding other people from understanding what's going on. Now, I maybe having ae slight go at people by saying that, but I am terrible at it.
[00:05:47] Chris: and I know I'm terrible at it. and I do some academic writing, but I've long since,
[00:05:53] Dan: you've had to do some, haven't you, in your time.
[00:05:55] Chris: Uh, but I've long since learned that I am not the guy to be doing the actual writing up. Bit of it, just not my skillset.
[00:06:01] Pia: do you read a lot, Chris?
[00:06:03] Chris: yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Loads, uh, read academic stuff, read non-academic stuff. Can't sleep without reading. my writing is, I'm just glacially slow and it, it's unfair on other people when you're working with them.
[00:06:17] Dan: and you, it, it's good to observe that, isn't it? When you just think this is not working, uh, at all. Yes. And, and, and change and making, yeah. There are strengths, but also spotting those derailers for you and others. It's um, it's a smart move. Sounds like you've learned it the, the hard way, Chris. Um, but let's hear a little bit about that hard way or the easy ways as well. What, tell, give us a bit of a bio in the box of, of Chris. How did you get here today?
[00:06:42] Chris: So I'm Chris Turner. I am an emergency medicine consultant in Coventry in England, where I've worked for the last 14 years. As a consultant, and I worked in a couple of other places before that and I never thought that at this stage in my career, what I'd be doing is speaking to lovely people like you guys.
[00:07:01] Chris: I thought, if I'm honest, I thought I'd be one of those, old white blokes in a gray suit with gray hair, um, running something. And what happened is that, I got involved in something which was one of those NHS healthcare disasters. In fact, in some respects, it's widely regarded as being the first of the NHS healthcare disasters.
[00:07:23] Chris: It's not, but it's regards to that. And that's mid staffs. Now. Mid staffs was a a, a catastrophe in terms of patient care, patients coming to unnecessary harm. And
[00:07:34] Chris: The thing about mids staffs is I, I was the clinical lead for emergency medicine there when the report came out on it. And the report was headline news across the country and across bits of the world.
[00:07:44] Chris: And it really drove a lot of change in culture in the NHS. but working within that environment made me stop and think a lot about governance, and particularly clinical governance and how we help teams to perform at a better level. And I became a governance lead. Um, I did that for a few years.
[00:08:02] Chris: I never took any further clinical leads in terms of having an operational lead for a department. I never got offered any, and that may be because I became slightly untouchable. Because in in the Healthcare Commission report, well not in that, but in the Francis Inquiries, and there's two massive inquiries about mids staffs, I am mentioned 30 or 40 times in them, it's always in a positive light as somebody who spoke truth to power or tried to speak truth to power, and you know what?
[00:08:32] Chris: I'm not sure organizations particularly want that sometimes. Um, maybe it was just crap at it. Of course. I mean, it is entirely possible. It was just a crap leader, stroke manager. but I, I got into governance and. Somewhere along the line, we started noticing that how people treated each other seemed to be significant in the background for things that were going wrong.
[00:08:54] Chris: And then we started to find that there was some evidence out there, and I decided to give one talk, one little talk. it was in a place called Redditch. I went and gave the talk. There would be 20 or 30 people in the room, and it's why behavior matters. That was it. And I thought that'd be, and I'd go back to talking about trauma and cardiac arrest and stuff afterwards, gave the talk, only 20 people in the room, but three of them wanted me to come and do it at their department.
[00:09:16] Chris: I. And I did, and every time I went somewhere else, they asked for more and more and more of this, and it became this sort of viral phenomenon. Turned out one day, didn't have my slide deck, died on me, gave a talk. Somebody from Ted was in the audience, heard me give a talk, then I got invited to give a TEDx talk. Then another one. And once you've given those kind of talks, if. If they get traction, they work as a massive advert. And so I, I became this guy who talks about the impact of behavior in healthcare,
[00:09:46] Dan: And how do you split your time? You are still serving this, are you just super busy spending time in the hospital and, uh, and all your, what do they call it, s SaaS jobs, your Saturdays and Sundays doing, uh, doing these talks, et cetera. What does your life look like?
[00:10:01] Chris: Well, uh, I'm still an emergency medicine consultant. I am about 70% of an emergency medicine, of a full-time emergency medicine consultant, but it's a shift job, so it means that can fit a lot of stuff in around it. And, um, the other half of my life, I, I spend talking to people about the impact of behavior on performance and, Both are rewarding in different ways. Both are frustrating in different ways as well.
[00:10:27] Pia: so Chris, What are the key insights that you've, that you've gained about these behaviors? So when you're like, what, what's on, what's on the, on the top list of things and the biggest impact they have?
[00:10:40] Chris: All right, so the single biggest impact, the biggest ticket here is just talking to people about the evidence base that sits behind the impact of behavioral and performance. And the reason it's important is because many of us, we, we feel. That when we are treated badly, we don't perform so well, but we hold that as a personal failing.
[00:11:02] Chris: We go, maybe I'm just not tough enough to work around here. Maybe I need to, I need to toughen up. I, this is me not being able to cope. Well, it turns out it's not you as an individual. It's not me as an individual. Once you start looking at the evidence, almost all of us have negative performance impact when we feel that we have been treated badly. And once we start to talk about that, we take this from being something that we hold inside our chest as being a, a personal issue, a personal failing, and we start to make this something different. It's relational. It's about us, it's about the culture that we work in. It's about the way that we treat each other, what's normalized, what's acceptable, what's not acceptable. once it starts to become about all of us, We don't feel so bad about it. We don't feel as though we have to fix ourselves. We actually do much better if we start thinking about the sort of culture we're work in and what can we do to nudge that in a direction that helps people to perform at the best.
[00:12:02] Chris: And that's kind. That is. By a mile, the biggest ticket, on their peer. I mean, we know that when, when you go into departments and you start talking to, this is within healthcare, you start talking to people how, what percentage of people believe that behavior has a significant impact on performance. It sits about 60%. If you can take the percentage of people who believe that it, it's that significantly important. From 60 to a hundred, you drive down the number of people who are behaving in ways that are felt to be disrespectful to people around them. And what that says to me is that people behave in certain ways because they think that's what gets, gets results. Now, once we know that our behaviors might actually be resulting in people performing less well in our teams, Actually what people end up doing is they go, well, hang on a second, what's my behavior like? Uh, of course we're relying on people having a degree of insight and emotional intelligence there, but a lot of people do.
[00:12:59] Chris: So just getting people on board with the idea that behavior really matters to all of us. Just about, um, is the big ticket item.
[00:13:08] Pia: I mean that requires, um, a sort of combination of self-awareness and self-regulation, doesn't it? Because.
[00:13:15] Pia: Of course it, it, it does matter, but you've gotta be able to catch yourself in the moment rather than, um, uh, and that, and that does rely on a degree, I guess, of emotional intelligence to have an understanding of where behavior's coming from or, or to see yourself in the, in the flow when you're about to lose it or the impact of, um, certain styles of behavior. Uh,
[00:13:36] Chris: Uh, yes. Um, it, it, it. When, when we're in the moment, there's, so what the evidence tells us about this is that if you know about this stuff, you tend to self-regulate a little bit better. But that's not to say that we are always going to be able to self-regulate. I mean, there can't be many people that spend more time in their life talking about this stuff than me, and I will still screw this up sometimes. I get this wrong sometimes, and I, I did.
[00:14:03] Chris: A couple of weeks ago, um, I was at work and it was, I was seven hours into a shift. I'd had a really brief break. My colleague had spent the entire shift in recess because he was trying to stop people dying. But I was in majors and majors where there's a lot of sick people in majors and we had new doctors, new doctors to the department, but they've never done emergency medicine before.
[00:14:23] Chris: I've got 12 of them, and they are in this constant queue of coming to talk to me about patients and. I'm seven hours into an eight hour shift. I've had 15 minutes of a break. I'm probably dehydrated. I am definitely tired and my Scottish middle aged brain is a bit dehydrated and I am, I'm beginning to recognize, I'm not thinking so well.
[00:14:47] Chris: I know across the other side of the department, the psychiatrist and the psychiatric nurse came in to go and see a patient. I see the other side departments three or four meters away, and they turned on, we have these translators on a stick. They're like, they're like, there's a face on. And it's basically just you.
[00:15:03] Chris: You connect to somebody online and they do a translation and they were, they turned this on to get the people to do the translation. They turned it on. The thing was so bloody loud. Oh my God. It was so loud. I couldn't hear myself think it was so loud I couldn't hear the person talking to me who was next to me.
[00:15:22] Chris: These guys are four or five meters away, and I must have waited the sum total of about 15 to 20 seconds before raising my voice and going, can you please turn that down? And. They both glanced at me, one of them glared at me, and then they went and they saw the patient afterwards. The, the psychiatrist came across and he was really pissed off and he had every ride to be pissed off. He's going, that was really un unhelpful what you did. We were just trying to see the patient.
[00:15:51] Chris: We're just trying to get this stuff sorted out. And of course he was completely right about it in my head. I was still self righteously, pissed off, to be honest. And then he went away and I got in the car after my shift and I'm driving home and I thought, do you know Chris? There's no way. They were trying to hack you off with that.
[00:16:09] Chris: And there's every chance they were trying to turn the bloody thing down. And I then spent a huge chunk of the weekend thinking about it, and then I wrote to the guy and apologized. Now, um, I don't mind a, a written apology. I prefer a face-to-face one I wrote to him and apologized for it. And the, the point of this, I mean, there's a whole other thing happened as a consequence of it, but the point of that is that. Here's me talking about this day in, day out, and I still screw it up.
[00:16:36] Chris: And I think one of the things I would say about this is once you know the impact that behavior has on performance, and once you recognize that, that that doesn't inoculate you from, from being a dick sometimes, but. If you recognize you've done it and you own it, and you do something about it, then that can be incredibly powerful, and my apology to him resulted in a lovely. Email back from him. And the, the next time I was at work, I saw the nurse that he was working with and I walked up to her and she was talking to two other people at the time and I said, do you guys mind if I just button for a second? And then I apologized to her. I said, I was totally out of order.
[00:17:14] Chris: Totally unfair, unreasonable. I know you guys are just trying to do your job. And she said she was so gracious. She said, thank you. I turned and I walked away and I heard her say that was really big of him.
[00:17:26] Chris: Then the next day I was on a shift. I'm standing in the middle of the department getting pretty frazzled 'cause there's a lot of stuff going on.
[00:17:34] Chris: I see her, she walks into the department now. I don't know her, don't even know her name. She walks into the department. I'm doing my thing. She walks all the way across the department. She walks into the space. Simon puts her arms around me, gives me a big hug, and said, good day. hope you're okay. And off she went.
[00:17:51] Dan: you got, you actually ended up above the point you were at at the start.
[00:17:54] Chris: yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and that's what the evidence says. a heartfelt apology that people accept is really meant, and that's, that can be tricky, um, raises you in the opinion of other people.
[00:18:06] Dan: Yes, that's exactly, well, I think she, they probably felt privileged to have been shouted out by international, uh, advocate for civility, I think I should say. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. They pushed me over the cliff, man.
[00:18:18] Dan: it's a high, it's gold star there. Um, so this is getting into the nitty gritty, Chris, but what, when we talk about incivility, that's an example. What are we talking about? What are the classic ways in which people are uncivil?
[00:18:31] Chris: So their behaviors that leave people feeling, Disrespected and not valued or not seen. Now, the, the really crucial thing about a lot of the research on incivility is these behaviors are liminal. That is to say they're interpretable and they may not be interpreted by the recipient in the way that they were intended.
[00:18:52] Chris: That's uncomfortable for all of us, but the sort of things. Uh, I'm talking about here, the, sort of the classic stuff is somebody who taught when you're speaking, somebody speaks over the end of you. Somebody finishes your sentence off for you when they couldn't possibly know what you were actually going to say.
[00:19:09] Chris: and then there's other, yeah. And well done.
[00:19:11] Dan: I had to go, yes,
[00:19:12] Dan: I knew you were. I knew you were waiting for it.
[00:19:15] Chris: and then, then there's the eye rolling and eye rolling's probably a little bit more overt. But, uh, is stuff like that. And when we hear, when, when we think that someone's doing it to us, it, it probably triggers the beginnings of a threat response. And we become primed for what's coming next. And our, our, our cognitive ability gets switched into a bit of defense and getting ready to rumble when actually what we want is people who are feeling in that.
[00:19:45] Chris: Good psychologically safe space where they're able to think, where they're able to be creative, come up with the great solutions to the complex, messy stuff that we are dealing with at work every day. So it's, it is, that's the subtle stuff that, that I am thinking about. What, and that's what the research has done on, when people talk about civility within the research, it, it tends to be those kind of liminal behaviors. Often in high stress situations. And just to, if I might just talk about one tiny thing alongside it is, is shouting. and I, what I would say about shouting at work is shoutings a really important barometer of where we are in our workplace. If we work in a place and somebody shouts. That doesn't mean we've got a toxic workplace.
[00:20:31] Chris: If somebody shouts and everybody goes, oh, that's just Chris Turner. That's just him. Yeah. He's like that. You've got a toxic workplace because you've normalized it. If on the other hand, somebody shouts and what happens next is somebody goes, who's gonna go and chat with Chris and make sure he is okay? That's not toxic. That's a workplace that responds to somebody's distress in the, in the workplace, accepts that it's not okay. The person's probably not okay, and that they look after each other in that setting.
[00:20:59] Pia: And, Chris, is your, view on this, this civility, is this just within the NNHS or is this now across all workplaces?
[00:21:08] Chris: There's a lot of research done in healthcare because healthcare is quite a nice environment to look at the impact of this. It's complicated, it's complex. You've got lots of different perspectives. You also have measurable outcomes, particularly if you do simulation studies on things.
[00:21:22] Chris: So you can, you can control for a lot of the variables and saying, the thing we have changed here is how people treat each other. But it, it's absolutely true in lots of different environments that. When we see people treating each other less well, it has an impact on our ability to think. It changes how we think and also changes.
[00:21:42] Chris: For example, um, how likely we are to be a promoter of an organization's. A really neat piece of work from many years ago that looking at banks, so if you go into a bank, 80% of people who choose to go into the bank are net promoters of that bank. cause you've chosen this, this is your bank. You wanna believe your bank is good as wee bit like healthcare in that respect.
[00:22:02] Chris: If they go into the bank and then there is a single uncivil interaction between two members of staff, whether or not they think it was merited. After seeing a single uncivil interaction between two members of staff, the percentage of people who are net promoters of the bank go from 80% to 20%. We just don't like being in environments where people normalize treating each other in a crappy way, that now this stuff works across all sorts of different spheres now, and I do work with, um, I do work with premiership rugby clubs.
[00:22:34] Chris: I'm about to do a bit of work with England rugby, which, which causes me some distress. I have to tell you, um, I, I'm, I'm torn about, you know, about the bit of work with England rugby,
[00:22:43] Pia: take one for the team.
[00:22:45] Chris: Yeah, exactly that. and, and with universities, with councils, I do work with the police. and, and with businesses, so no, there's, there's lots of people who are really interested in the, the impact of, uh, behavior on performance.
[00:23:01] Dan: it's sort of this subject, uh, inherently sort of seems to appeal to people who try to be civil at work potentially. How do you reach the uncivil, if you know what I mean?
[00:23:10] Chris: So the way that any of us will choose to change our behaviors in that conscious way is when the change. That we are thinking about making resonates with our values, and it resonates with who we are and what we believe in. And one of the, the key things to recognize here is that people don't choose to be a dick because.
[00:23:35] Chris: It's fun to be a dick. They choose to be a dick because they think that that is how you get results. And many of us were brought up in a world where we were surrounded by people who, whose leadership behaviors were often very hostile and who seemed to get rewarded for that. If you can show people how teams work when they're led by people who are more respectful, potentially more compassionate.
[00:24:02] Chris: And that that results in better outcomes. Then that will drive a lot of people in that direction. But that's not the only reason for that. People get on board. Some people are really money orientated, so you have to show them an argument that treating people respectfully within your organization results in that results in decreased sickness, decreased turnover, decrease equal opportunities, legislation, lawsuits.
[00:24:25] Chris: You show them that, then that appeals 'em. But in my work there, there are some people who really like education. And if you can show people that educating in a respectful style results in more people retaining the information and being able to use it, then that's the angle to be coming at. The thing there is, if I'm talking to very senior people, the only way I know that is by having a conversation with them. if I'm on a stage, what I do is, and this is quite a meta concept, I imagine myself as this wee man in an old fashioned railway signal box, and I've got these big levers I can pull. And I have to remember, different people have a different lever. So I have stories and then I have, here's some data, you know, single incident of uncivil behavior.
[00:25:07] Chris: On average, we have a 61% reduction in our cognitive, uh, our cognitive ability. When we're the recipients of this, I have concepts. We end up talking about some conceptual stuff, Try and laugh because laughter takes the tension away, and laughter lets us be open to ideas and to slosh them around.
[00:25:26] Chris: And I tell you one thing I never try and do is change anybody's mind. that's not my gig. My gig is to turn up and say, there's a bunch of stuff that we never knew, that we didn't get told. This is what the evidence currently says. Holy moly, what do you think? and it's deeply uncomfortable. Just think how vulnerable somebody is if their, if their leadership career has been punctuated by these episodes of being hostile, aggressive.
[00:25:51] Chris: And that's kind of normalized for 'em when they realize that actually they may have been having worse outcomes as a consequence of that. And that's, that's a horrible place for people to be in. And in healthcare, what that actually means is sometimes people might have died as a result of our behaviors in really stressful situations.
[00:26:09] Chris: And I think it's always worth remembering that people when confronted by this stuff, are often in a very, very difficult situation. And the worst approach is when we try and punish people for their previous sins when they've only just learned about them.
[00:26:23] Dan: I think there's a Brene Brown quote about that, isn't there?
[00:26:26] Dan: Think she's onto that. Yeah. About being self-compassionate for things we didn't know before. Um, one of the things that I, I want to come back to peer's. First point about self-awareness, if that's okay, because, but basically because.
[00:26:39] Dan: I can imagine if someone's shouting all the time, they might be aware of that. Um, but the sort of liminal nature of this thing that sort of marginal, they're tiny behaviors potentially as cutting people off. Little eye roll did little comments, sort of not, not bringing people into, they're quite subtle sometimes.
[00:26:56] Dan: How aware are people of those things and how can you build that self-awareness? 'cause that's clearly the fir, I guess the first step, isn't it?
[00:27:04] Chris: I, I suppose it varies how self-aware people are about, about how they have responded in the moment. And I think all of us will have been told at some point that we've rolled our eyes or totted at something and we didn't, genuinely didn't think that we'd done it.
[00:27:19] Chris: and my marriage is certainly punctuated by conversations around this stuff.
[00:27:24] Chris: Um. So I, I don't think we can always expect to be self-aware and we're not, none of us are. So we can be as aware as we can be and think about our responsibility, particularly when we're leading, when we are the person sitting in a meeting and we're the boss. Uh, one of the things we know about eye rolling is eye-rolling.
[00:27:43] Chris: If everyone's watching the boss to get a. To get a clue as to what's acceptable, what's not acceptable. If the boss rolls their eyes, when somebody starts speaking, the team knows that is off the agenda and that doesn't come back. People don't engage. So as, as a leader, somebody's leading a meeting, for example, that becomes important.
[00:28:05] Chris: The other thing that sits alongside this for me though, is that when we are dealing with the messiness of life. We are going to see an issue from a different perspective to other people, and they're gonna see it from a different perspective to us. And what that means is that when we look at a problem, we are going to disagree.
[00:28:28] Chris: That's cool. Except the crucial thing for me is this next statement is how do we deal with the discomfort of disagreement? Who are we when we disagree with somebody else? And there are three modes that people generally go into. You can split this loads of different ways and people will have done the Thomas Kilman conflict inventory and they'll know who they are in a fight.
[00:28:50] Chris: But there's basically three different modes you go into. First one is this. Ah, so done. We disagree. Bring it on. Let's see what you've got, let's go. And what happens is we fight to win and it becomes like, you know, for people who are old enough, uh, James T. Kirk, and, and the sort of fight scenes that you get where they have the, the clashing music in the background of Star Trek, the original ones, uh, and, and we, we circle each other and then we, then we fight and
[00:29:19] Chris: The thing about that is many of us are really attracted 'cause fighting results in a winner. We love winning. Winning. It's a big sur of dopamine. Feels brilliant. But here's the thing, winning is not necessarily doing the right thing.
[00:29:34] Chris: Winning is not making the best decision. Winning is about dominance and. You might dominate me through intellect. We might try and dominate each other through physical presence. We might do it through hierarchy. We might do it by implicit threat. Explicit threat. The thing is, Dominance leads us to win. And it's not the same as doing the right thing because what it's doing is destroying information and information's king.
[00:30:00] Chris: The more information we have to make decisions in general, the, the more likelihood we have of making a good decision and other people's perspectives are information. So that's one way. Second wave that we might deal with a discomfort disagreement is. To be rather lovely and accommodating or avoidant for people who don't have a fight, and I love these guys.
[00:30:21] Chris: My mates would fall into this category. I definitely fall into this category. I'm not a fighty guy. I'm probably doing the wrong job on some levels. Um, but I'm, I'm really not. I'm, I don't want to fight. I know I don't perform well when I'm in that zone. The thing about those guys is I like them loads, but they are not.
[00:30:38] Chris: Helping us to make better decisions because they don't share information, they keep it to themselves. So people who fight aren't helping us make a better decision 'cause they destroy information. People who withhold information are not helping us to make a better decision. And then there's a third group.
[00:30:54] Chris: And the third group are the group who went confronted by the discomfort of disagreement. Actively choose to listen, to understand somebody else's perspective, not to fight with it, not to tell them why they're wrong. Just to understand it, and it won't come as any surprise to you that those are the guys who set themselves up to make the best decisions.
[00:31:14] Chris: Now, what I like about that as a model, how do you deal with the discomfort disagreement, is that I am at a stage now where I can access this. When I'm in the moment with somebody, I'm thinking, hang on a second. What am I trying to do here? Now they're often bringing a fight to me. I can't really control them.
[00:31:31] Chris: I can control me and I can, I can engage my inner curiosity. I can ask some questions. What I've found is when you start doing that, they start telling you stuff eventually for a lot of people, but not everybody. For a lot of people, once they feel that they have been heard, they're in a position to hear my, my take on something.
[00:31:48] Chris: If they don't, if they're not in a position to hear that, that kinda doesn't mark, 'cause I've still got their information. I'm the net winner in the information game when I hear what's going on in their head and I still know why thought in the first place and I could still balance it all.
[00:32:01] Dan: I'm, I'm drawing a link now between a guest from a couple of episodes ago who Jeff Withhold, who, said we asked too many questions, which you'd never heard of in over a hundred episodes, because we need to spend more time reflecting what the other person is saying and actually make them feel heard. I think that's a, a good, good strategy of that category three listener.
[00:32:20] Chris: I I think there's a bit. There is, which is what's the best question? It's the second question. It's not, what color do you like? Can you say green? I say, what's your favorite band? You, you say green. I say, oh, why is green so important to you? That second question is the one that shows I paid attention to the first one.
[00:32:36] Dan: Excellent. Well, that's, really helpful, Chris. Actually, I think that those, those dis 'cause actually the incivility arises, I guess a lot of times in those moments, disagreement, not sort of necessarily randomly in the workplace and how yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:32:50] Dan: How do we, how do we respond in those moments? And it's so I can, I can really see that, that that's a, an a time to easily slip into incivility when you. I think you're just sort of debating or arguing or whatever. Yeah, I could. It's a, it's a hotspot I one to watch out for
[00:33:05] Pia: and I, I guess I've gotta ask this question. So, what happens when you got incivility being pumped at you through social media 24 7?
[00:33:14] Chris: Yeah, We're all primed by negative behaviors, negative behaviors, breed negative behaviors, that that's what happens. I'm going to answer your question really obliquely Pia, with, with opinion. So the, I I can't tell you where the evidence base for this comes from. This is me speaking to lots and lots and lots of people about, about how we're interacting with each other. And the observation is this, that. Things like social media provide for a hot take. Here's the thing, I don't want anybody's hot take if I'm trying to make a good decision.
[00:33:46] Chris: I don't want your hot take because our first thought isn't usually a thought. Our first thought tends to be an emotion, and what you get on social media is people's outrage and their anger at something and. Obviously legitimately a lot of the time and judgment, I don't want people's hot take on things in a meeting.
[00:34:08] Chris: I don't want to confront people with an idea that they've never heard of before and say, what do you think? ' cause what I'm gonna get is what they feel, just their first emotional response to it. What I want in life in general, Specifically in meetings, what I want, it's not people's hot take. I want 'em to think about something and give me their considered take.
[00:34:27] Chris: So I would rather get the benefit of their wisdom on something rather than, how do you feel when I instantly say this to you? Now, social media just gives us how people feel immediately. 'cause we can, we can just be a weak keyboard warrior. I think that's why a lot of us end up curating our social media feeds so that we are hearing not just from the people who just agree with us, but people who we recognize as having deeper thoughts. And for me it becomes about stepping away from the emotional hot take that people have and more towards people are going, well, this is what is. This is what's going on on this side. This is what's going on on this side, and this is why mainstream media and mainstream news has traditionally been really good about this.
[00:35:08] Chris: Uh, and, you know, you could argue it's become polarized now.
[00:35:11] Pia: I, agree. And I think that, I think we're primed to have those hot takes. I, I, I, I think too that, 'cause that makes money, Yeah, that, that provides more eyeballs on things, more clicks, more, you know, it, it, it's addictive.
[00:35:25] Dan: And it's been, it's been iterated, microscopically to, to be addictive, hasn't it? So, Yeah. It's not an accident. Hey, so Chris, if someone, um, thinking about someone in the team now and they want to make steps They've heard what you said. They're convinced. What, what's the, what's a good place for someone to start?
[00:35:45] Chris: Well there, there's a variety of places to go. Me, we, we try and collate on our website, civilitysaveslives.com, we try and collate, a lot of the work that's that's going on across the world. See. Look at this. I've so worked by people like Christine aff, is really foundational around this and Christine Pearson, looking, looking at that. But you know, beyond that, I think the, one of the starting places un understanding what you're trying to achieve. If you're just being curious, just be curious if you're looking to. Change the sort of environment that you work in. And I'm talking here about cultural change, then that's a way longer term goal.
[00:36:28] Chris: It's a, it's a softly, softly catchy monkey zone. Getting people to move into a different way of thinking. And the, the disaster way of doing it is to start telling people they have to treat each other better. Um, because that just creates reactance and all these people push back on it. And, If we're looking to, to move the culture in a direction think about the levers that we pulled to do that become really important.
[00:36:54] Chris: And there, there are communities of practice out there of people who will talk about this and help each other to traverse the rough ground of understanding this and making decisions. And, and the guys, you know, that civility saves lives is, is a very loose organization. there is no control. Anybody can use civility, saves lives in any way they like, nobody would stop them and there's people use it around the world and all sorts of different arenas.
[00:37:18] Chris: You could use it to promote something terrible, like I don't, devil worshiping. Nobody would stop you. You might kind wonder what you're up to, but wouldn't stop you. And I'd probably watch your video 'cause I'd be really interested in what was going on. Um. But we, we just provide resource that hopefully is useful to, to people.
[00:37:37] Dan: Perfect. That, uh, link to civility saves lives, will be on in the show notes. So for anyone's listening, I would like to get stuck in, might be a devil worshiper out there, wants to bring the same thinking to who knows, um, exactly.
[00:37:52] Chris: I, I, I'm presuming that's the first time anyone said, bring Satan to the party on your
[00:37:56] Dan: I don't think I've ever heard that sentence before in any context. So well done.
[00:38:01] Chris: And apologies to anybody who is offended by that.
[00:38:05] Dan: of course, of course. Um, so Chris, leave us with your media recommendation. Could you book, podcast, netflix series, anything?
[00:38:13] Chris: So, my absolute favorite bit of, uh, management book of, of paperback stuff is Dan Coyle's, the Culture Code, which really appeals to me. It's got really short stories. They're all based in truth. And, um, I, I love it.
[00:38:28] Chris: It's about being a, being a reflective organization and being a reflective team. And I go back to it time and time again. But the other thing is just something of pure joy, and that is a song by a guy called Jonathan Bird called You Can't Outrun the radio. And Jonathan Bird is an astonishingly talented singer songwriter country guy that you've never heard of.
[00:38:54] Chris: but I think you can get your, can outrun the radio on Squadify and Apple and all the rest of it. And it's just a glorious song and it makes me really, really, really happy when I'm in the car and I put it on.
[00:39:04] Dan: What a great recommendation. Uh, strangely, I think that's the first. Song recommendation we've
[00:39:09] Pia: Yeah, we have not
[00:39:11] Dan: um, Thank you. Chris, thank you so much for being on the show and thank you for the work you're doing as well. This is,
[00:39:16] Pia: Mm,
[00:39:17] Dan: Pia sort of alluded to in these times, so needed, so thank you.
[00:39:22] Chris: Uh, thank you guys. It's been a complete joy.
[00:39:27] Dan: I sort of, some of the things that, Chris was mentioning, I don't think I've seen, you know, tutting and eye rolling, but I think the thing that really jumped out for me is how he used that word, liminal. You know, this is on the edge of things and the subtlety, and particularly in enterprises where everyone's reasonably well trained, there's a sort of base expectation of.
[00:39:46] Dan: You don't shout, you don't do those things, but it can, the uncivility can still be lost through really subtle things. I think it's really worth diving into what they can look like, because in the, in the, in the world of companies, corporations, I think it's a very subtle thing. It can come through in emails the way yes.
[00:40:06] Dan: You know, the way you sort of maybe don't bring people into conversations at a meeting, ignore comments. There's a lot of things that are far just could be missed, but they have a huge impact.
[00:40:17] Pia: And I think like some of the basics, which, it's like politeness of, you know, thanking people. And some people are, some people are, you know, are really great. They're, they're, they're, you know, some of the people I've, I'm working with are just like, just, just, it's so natural. But for some people they forget.
[00:40:34] Pia: And, and then some of their emails are quite abrupt.
[00:40:38] Pia: and then there's this ghosting. So like, not, not returning emails back to people, and sort of almost slightly wasting their time. and, you know, you and I have had that then sometimes ca canceling meetings last minute or you know, just that
[00:40:55] Dan: Yeah, you're right. I think so. Ghosting the meeting cancellation. Yeah, I think they're all things that are just a pretty common, I think they're actually, you're massively on the rise now, aren't they? And um, I think they all need to be watched out for and, um, you know, that, that idea of. Treating people as you'd like to be, as they would like to be treated.
[00:41:14] Dan: Actually, even the sort of platinum rule is, is, is is, is a real basic thing. I think it's interesting that thanking piece is the civility on the positive side can be, as you say, people writing emails without any, Not just hope this email finds you well, which is just sort of boilerplate stuff, but actually engaging with people as a human, and even in emails and messages, um, saying, thank you, apologizing.
[00:41:38] Dan: Yeah. We messed that up. Recognizing that, um, they're, they're the things that are, that sort of keep things really human. I also think the, the other bit that jumped out for me was, was, um, was Chris's really clear view on how disagreements are handled and I think. In the run of things, there's not that much incivility.
[00:41:56] Dan: It could be those subtle things, but when we disagree, I think those things come to the, you know, the water level suddenly drops and then we see those different behaviors and uh, and that, you know, those two either, you know, it's interesting, it's like the, um, lifestyles inventory of LSI, if anyone's used that, that was sort of, you know, a red, aggressive, I'm gonna win.
[00:42:18] Dan: Green retreating. Okay. Whatever, you know, sort of too shrinking back. But that blue sort of in that model, constructive style of, actually let me understand your thinking, but let's really find a solution that is above both of us and really aligned to our, our purpose. Um, but, but I think though that's a really good way of looking at it. But I think that's where those, uncivil behaviors can come out,
[00:42:41] Pia: and he used the word dominance, you know, that, that, that, that one, like when you're trying to win and that, you know, and then you could be very subtle with that. So it doesn't look like dominance. But the other person's sort of thinking something doesn't. Feel quite right. the other bit I just wanted to touch on was the second question.
[00:42:58] Pia: So the first question, you know, it Is the surface level and then it's your interest in the answer of that question that you're going to ask something more. And I think that's a really, really great skill
[00:43:10] Pia: to, to, to go beyond what you see to the next level. Because I think that's another slight incivility is you're just generally not being interested
[00:43:19] Dan: You haven't listened. You haven't. You're not interested yet. Exactly,
[00:43:22] Pia: And don't ask questions in the first place. Don't ask anything that actually creates the person to share or be interested in them. And I struggle when I think, gosh. Is that, is that,
[00:43:34] Dan: Did you, did you hear what I just said? Yeah, exactly. I, I, I, I have to tell you about my, um, daughter Ella is at medical school and, uh, in her first term, they were doing patient simulate, simulated patient conversations. And And they, they were with actors, She was watching someone doing this, and they, and they, the guy, the man, male, patient said, well, actually I have been, and he had all kinds of symptoms.
[00:43:58] Dan: I've really been quite stressed at work recently and my wife's left me and I'm really, really been feeling a little bit down and the um, upcoming medical student said, and do you smoke? It was sort of the next question, you know, but I, I think that's a beautiful example of, no, a second question about what he just said
[00:44:17] Dan: might have been useful.
[00:44:18] Dan: You, you
[00:44:18] Pia: not down the list to the
[00:44:20] Dan: exactly.
[00:44:21] Dan: Go, go. Yeah, it is a classic so, but I know a laughable example, but I think actually we see it played out all the time. People say, think that second question doesn't, doesn't come, but it's, um, yeah, it's a, it's, it's a really good one. So I think this is a really subtle one, and it comes back, I think, to Graham talking about business bastard and that, you know, the barstardliness can play out in many ways.
[00:44:44] Dan: It's not
[00:44:44] Dan: terrible.
[00:44:45] Dan: It's not terrible, but the subtlety and the way that it, you know, as Chris said, how it can make people feel. Unheard or reduced in some ways, just a, just a really subtle one. Equally, if we can turn that around and say, okay, how do I as a person really engage with people? I'm polite, civil, I act as a human.
[00:45:04] Dan: Um, it, despite the. Technology, et cetera around us. I am going to be really human and civil. even if we sometimes fall over on that, then we can really make a difference. Brilliant. Well, that's a couple of nice episodes there for our time, I think and want to reinforce, uh, what we wanna do and two, inspire us all to be kinder and more civil. But that is it for this episode. We Not Me is supported by Squadify. Squadify helps any team to build engagement and drive performance. You can find show notes where you're listening and at squadify.net. And if you've enjoyed the show, please do share the love and recommend it to your friends.
[00:45:39] Dan: We Not Me it's produced by Mark Steadman. Thank you so much for listening. It's goodbye from me.
[00:45:44] Pia: And it's goodbye from me.