Pam Fox Rollin: Growing Groups Into Teams

Andrew Skotzko [00:01:18]:

Pam, it's so good to have you back. Welcome.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:01:23]:

Thank you, Andrew. It's really good to be back.

Andrew Skotzko [00:01:26]:

Oh, it's always a pleasure to have you back and to hang out with you. And we were just saying before we hit record, it has been almost been over three years since our last episode on this. It's just bananas. It was episode number 22, July 2020.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:01:43]:

I cannot believe that so much has happened since then. And I think back in July 2020, we didn't have any idea that the craziness would last so long.

Andrew Skotzko [00:01:54]:

Oh, no, not at all. I think we were like, all right, we just got to hang in for a couple of months. We're going to make it. It's going to be okay. Oh, boy, the things we thought.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:02:06]:

Yeah.

Andrew Skotzko [00:02:07]:

I'm so curious. There's a lot we're going to get into this conversation, but just since we're having a bit of a walk down memory lane, what do you think has surprised you the most about the three years since our last conversation?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:02:18]:

What has surprised me the most is how many critical hires companies have made from an area that is not their geography and that is really kind of new, at least to this degree. I mean, you always know some company that I would work with that had their CFO in New York, right? Public company, and they would fly back and forth. But now I work with companies where the executive team is scattered all over the country and they want their people to come back in.

Andrew Skotzko [00:02:54]:

That feels very strange to that. That's got to be going a little weirdly, right? But they're like, Wait a second. You're telling me I have to come back in, but you're not, right?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:03:06]:

Yeah, there's a lot of that going.

Andrew Skotzko [00:03:08]:

Okay. All right. Well, we might have to circle back to that later in this conversation. It feels like that might become relevant on some of the topics we're going to explore. So one of the things that especially was just my greatest excuse to bring you back, and not that I ever need any reason to want to talk to you, is that you have this fabulous new book that has just come out called Growing Groups Into Teams. And for the listener, I say that it's a fabulous book because I actually read it and devoured it and really enjoyed it. So I'm not just saying that. So please go get it.

Andrew Skotzko [00:03:37]:

But, Pam, one of the things that I thought was so interesting and we're going to get into all the book itself here, but one of the things I thought was fascinating about this was that you all seem to have used the book writing itself as an exercise in exactly what you're talking about in the book. So I'd love you to just start there.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:03:55]:

Totally. It was a book about teams written by a team, and we went through everything that any team does, and we're a team in real life anyway. Most of us have a good part of our work in that at least for eight of the authors, and the other five are good pals of us who we love to partner with. So we team together around the other work we do. But my goodness, in writing a book, everything comes up different people's perspectives in what they think is important and not important, and then people's perspectives on each other's work and all of that. So we have had three years of a really good workout on our ability to give feedback and to hear it and do things with it. So my favorite comment on this was from our illustrator who didn't work with us in person, but we were on tons of zoom calls, and then she would get feedback from the team about this and that, and she said, you all are so wholesome.

Andrew Skotzko [00:05:03]:

You're so nice, I don't know what to do with it.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:05:05]:

You're so wholesome. Like, you really give the feedback, you give the hard stuff, but you do it in a way that makes it easy to hear and nobody's wrong for their perspectives. And she said, I just wish all my clients gave feedback the way you guys did.

Andrew Skotzko [00:05:22]:

Could you give us an example of that? Because I think that right there is something that we could all be better at.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:05:29]:

Oh, sure. So I don't know if you noticed, but the illustrations in the book where there are people, it's far more diverse than most illustrations. Yeah. And I knew that was a value of ours. And so I let the illustrator know, and she was really happy with the people silhouette she came up with. And I was really happy with the people silhouettes we came up with. And we brought it to the team, and they're like, yeah, there's nobody there who looks like me. Yeah, there's nobody there who and so it was a moment of, okay, but the way they said it was inside of our shared care, our common concern for people feeling included and represented, because we know from all the research, as well as just being humans, that when people are included, they do their best work.

Andrew Skotzko [00:06:28]:

What?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:06:31]:

It's one of those things where it's good to have the research, but it's kind of sad that we also have to have the research where we can't just be human and say, yeah, why.

Andrew Skotzko [00:06:41]:

Do we need a white paper to tell us to do the thing we already know we should just do?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:06:45]:

Exactly. What that's reminding me of, since you and I, when we talk, we do some side tangents. What's that reminding me of is when.

Andrew Skotzko [00:06:53]:

I did a Buckle Up listener. Buckle up?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:06:55]:

Yeah. Did a program for a healthcare company I was working with for a couple of years, and we were talking about just, like, taking a pause. So before you just blurt out your reaction, you could pause and then respond thoughtfully, give yourself time to just they're like, breathe. We don't have time to breathe. Of course we breathe. What's that about? And so literally, I handed out a research, a five page research report on the importance of breathing. And I'm like, Do I really like.

Andrew Skotzko [00:07:33]:

You'Re a healthcare company.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:07:34]:

Do I have to sell you on this hair company? And apparently you need to be sold on breathing. Okay, now that we've done that so, yeah, people sometimes want research that it's important to include people. And I'm very delighted to say that the thing that your mom told you to do in kindergarten is still relevant when you're a leader in a company. And when people feel actually included, like, seen, and they see pictures that look like them and they're well represented, then they feel like, yeah, I can relax a little bit here and give my best work. So that showed up in our illustrations. We went through several rounds of refining that, and we are all so delighted with what she came up with. And it never would have happened if we didn't open ourselves up for feedback and take it seriously.

Andrew Skotzko [00:08:30]:

I love that. And one of the things that I think just to extract this little nugget from everything you just shared there, you said something to the effect of when team members gave their feedback. They did it inside. The sort of structure or the language of your shared care, I think, is the language you used. I think it's a term a lot of people may not be familiar with. What do you mean? By that when you say that.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:08:53]:

So one of the things that's important on a team is having some you can call them values, but having some things that you all think are important, and you've already talked through some of that now sometimes those values can feel in conflict. Like we've got a value of getting things done, getting it shipped, getting it all out the door, and we also have a value of making it really easy for the user. And so those values can be you're nodding your head vigorously in product, like that's part of the game. So those values can feel in conflict, but at least you can speak to the value of, god, we really want to get this thing shipped and people aren't going to look at you funny and sideways. So on our team, we can speak about the value of having people feel included and represented.

Andrew Skotzko [00:09:46]:

Yeah, one of the things that really feels like a good pivot point into something that was in the book that I thought was really worth calling out and maybe would be a good kind of jumping off point into the core ideas in the book, which was that you talk about this idea of a shared care, which to me, just as I listen to you, feels really resonant and related to the idea of this shared promise, which I think was one of the kind of keystones of what actually separates a group from a team. So let's start there because I think totally, I think a lot of folks listening to this, when they hear, okay, group versus team, they kind of have a bit of a spidey sense about it. They understand there's some difference there, but I don't think most people have really spent the time to parse it out like you have. So why don't we just start there? What is the difference actually, between group and a Team?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:10:37]:

We say there's two fundamental things that make a difference. One is a team has a shared promise. That means that everybody on the team is trying to get something accomplished in the real world, okay, that is different from a group of people who each have their own task and they're accountable for doing their tasks. They're all good with that. They want to make their task good and then they throw their task to the leader, the customer, whatever. And whatever happens with it is not necessarily something they're accountable for.

Andrew Skotzko [00:11:16]:

Wait, just to make sure I understand that first one. So it sounds like the real difference there is almost like in a group, someone is maybe responsible for, I hesitate to say checking the box, but a little bit of checking the box and then their job is done. As opposed to a team, it's like, well, yeah, you may have done that thing, but what happened in the world with the thing you did? Was the outcome at what we intended? Did we deliver the promise.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:11:41]:

Yeah. And there's a story we tell in the book, in the chapter about why make a team, where there was a really consequential team that we worked with that was responsible for technology infrastructure optimization that was like half a billion dollars worth of spend and involved the whole company and all of that. And when the person that we worked with came in and was asked to take that over, they were behind deadlines and delayed and whatever, and the execs of the company were like, we don't get it. There are best people on this initiative. We don't understand how they could be producing substandard work and be so delayed. And what she found out is as we talked to people, they were each still seeing themselves as I'm from this part of the technology stack, I'm from this group, I'm from whatever. And so there are 13 people kind of seeing themselves as representatives and they're going to go do their task and none of them were really committed to the overall promise of this initiative and it just didn't work. Is that something that you've seen? The sort of, well, I did my part thing going on?

Andrew Skotzko [00:13:05]:

Yeah, I have seen that, what you're pointing out and that thing you were just saying at the end there, where it seemed to me anyway, you were emphasizing the commitment aspect of it. That does feel kind of like where it lives and dies. Where? When I've seen what you're talking about, almost every case I can think of right now. When you dig into it afterwards, it turns out that person, they were just kind of I don't want to say they were phoning it in. That feels too harsh, but they just weren't that committed to the thing. And so they didn't do the extra effort, just that extra juice was missing. Basically.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:13:42]:

That's part of it. And now add the team element on top of it. Because you can get people who are working so hard to make their task look good, but if they're not committed to the overall outcome, the shared promise that you have to the customer or the downstream department or whatever. If they're not committed to that just as passionately, then when anything changes and they need to rejigger or when somebody needs help, when they need help, when they need a space that is safe for them to say, hey, I'm not sure exactly what step to take, and I would really value your input here. They just don't do it. They're really focused on making their individual task great. And if the world looks the same on the date that the product is to be shipped or the outcome enjoyed as it did on the day the initiative was first conceived, then maybe that would work. And if they planned it perfectly and if there were no breakdowns.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:14:47]:

But that doesn't often happen in the real world.

Andrew Skotzko [00:14:51]:

Yeah. So one of the things I'm curious about here is I'm thinking about one of the companies I'm working with that I was on a call with just a few hours ago, and we were talking about a situation that as you're speaking, doesn't sound too dissimilar than what you're saying. I mean, the details are different, but the pattern and the question I would raise reflecting on that conversation right now is in this case, we were talking about a person on the team or maybe unclear if it's a team or a group yet we'll get into that. But that person's working so hard, like, wow, that person, I mean, they are putting in the hours. There is no doubting that. And yet there does seem to be something missing and it's hard to kind of put your finger on what it is. So I guess my first question would be just even very practically for a leader listening to this in whatever part of the business they're in. So what's the difference between someone who's really working hard, putting the hours in all that, and someone who is committed? And how do you tell?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:15:50]:

So you tell by talking with them. I know that seems really radical in the age when we put everything, like the thumbs up on slack means that they're committed. No, it doesn't.

Andrew Skotzko [00:16:03]:

I love that call out so good, but they emojied my two liner in slack. What are you talking about, Pam?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:16:11]:

They're in, obviously. I think we've got to get away with this notion. By the way, I love slack, love so many people work there like great things going on, but it doesn't actually substitute for a conversation that says, what are you committed to here? And if their answer is, well, I'm committed to get you the thing and then the next thing and the thing after that, then you've got a perfect opportunity to invite them to think bigger and frankly more usefully and more focused on results. Like, let's talk about the results that you and I and the rest of our team are committing to. And it might turn out that that task that you've committed to do gets us part of the way, but doesn't get all the way that we need. And so really to open up in conversation what we're asking them to commit to, which is producing a result in the real world.

Andrew Skotzko [00:17:15]:

And so that makes sense. And it feels like that could be very easily. I could see someone interpreting that in two pretty different ways. And I'm curious if this is something you've been running into. And so I can imagine someone interpreting that as saying, okay, I'm signing up. I'm committed to deliver this result. And that result is something like you might see on, for example, your OKRs, right? It might be like, okay, whatever, we're going to ship this product, we're going to do whatever we're going to do. But the goal of that is to break into this market and get six reference customers in this market, for example, that would be aimed at getting product market fit in some new domain.

Andrew Skotzko [00:17:55]:

Awesome. Is that what you mean? Because I could also see someone taking it in perhaps a I'm trying to find the right word here, but what I was going to say was the broader impact direction, right, of like okay, trying to really tap into some sort of environmental social mission, that kind of thing. Do you see any distinction here or is this actually two sides of the same coin?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:18:20]:

I think it's the same sort of thing because ideally if a company wants to make that kind of impact in a community, some sort of ESG impact that they would have that as part of their OKRs. But yeah, right, OKRs. As you know, I love them when well done. And I've worked with a lot of companies have been implementing OKRs.

Andrew Skotzko [00:18:39]:

Okay.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:18:40]:

The difference between things that are well done and not so. Part of the challenge with OKRs is it points us completely in the right direction and it forces us to have the conversations with our upstream and downstream groups. And all of that to say, does this add up to the impact that we want to make this quarter in the marketplace? And then people go back, scurry back to their desks and do whatever task needs to relate to it. So unless people are a team aiming to deliver the objective, it doesn't actually work well in my experience. Yeah, when OKRs work really well is when a team owns an objective. And so the team is absolutely committed to that objective. And if it's a high level objective and you've got 200 people underneath, that great. What are their OKRs and what team owns that objective? OKRs is a perfect methodology to work with teams if you take it to that point.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:19:52]:

Because that objective is the shared promise.

Andrew Skotzko [00:19:54]:

We'Re talking beautiful for the listener. If you could see I was nodding so hard I almost hit with a microphone because I love everything she just said. What's really interesting here is this feels like it starts to open something up that's maybe a little nuanced, which is about reward mechanisms and how do we think about individual and team reward mechanisms? Because we know incentives work. We know they're powerful and they shape behavior. So talk to me a little bit about that. If we're thinking about this, I'm really trying to create a team and not just a group that's pointed in the same direction. How does that change the way I need to think about rewards? Comp all of that super.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:20:33]:

So let's pick up for a moment there are two things that we said it takes for a group to become a team. One of them is a shared promise. The second is that each person is committed to coordinate well to produce that outcome.

Andrew Skotzko [00:20:51]:

Yes, we missed the second one. Thank you for bringing that back.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:20:54]:

Yeah. And so if I'm tasked with coordinating, but I'm only rewarded for me doing my thing, then we've got a disconnect. And there's a paper that I absolutely love that I read when I was a baby undergraduate in organization studies, and it's called on the Folly of Rewarding a while hoping for B. And so we reward people for doing their individual tasks well, and we hope that they're going to coordinate with each other, just like you reward key leaders for hitting objectives in their areas. And you must hope that they will do that in coordination with the other executives and functions. There are companies that are making advancements in that, but I think not fast enough, because incentives make a huge difference. And Andrew, we're primed that way in school all the way through. Like, there's individual assignments and you get an A or not.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:22:04]:

And then there's the dreaded group assignment, very well named. If it were a team assignment, it might not be so dreaded.

Andrew Skotzko [00:22:12]:

The dreaded group project.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:22:14]:

The group project. Oh, my God. How many times did you wind up covering for somebody else who didn't do their part, didn't coordinate well, never understood what it was that the project was about, et cetera, et cetera. So these are the habits that people have been trained in for the 15, some, whatever, years of their formal schooling, and then they get into work life and they are unprepared to do that second part of coordinating. So I have so much respect for first level managers because they're the ones that have to show entering workers. And frankly, there's a lot of people who haven't learned this lesson at any age, but especially to show the newer people coming in how it is that we support each other to achieve common goals.

Andrew Skotzko [00:23:13]:

I love what you're pointing at, and I want to actually get a little bit more specific here. So let's talk a little bit about those first line managers. And so I kind of two questions that I'm thinking about from one I was just talking to the other day, and one would be I'm trying to imagine what that person would say inside this conversation. And one would be, okay, Pam, you sold me on this team thing. Everybody knows teams are good. Let's assume for the moment they don't need a white paper on it. But how do I know which one I've got? And if I don't have a team, what do I do?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:23:47]:

Okay, that's what our whole book is about. How long is this podcast episode?

Andrew Skotzko [00:23:51]:

We shoot for a little bit less than an hour, but let's just start with like, one or two things. Okay, well, sure, a go buy Pam's book. We'll link to that in the show notes. But then in terms of one thing, they could start with, let's start there.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:24:02]:

The first thing is to notice whether there is a shared promise, because if there's no shared promise, there's no team. And so one way to do this really simply, and I've done this with teams at all levels, is to ask them to jot down what is winning in the next three months, what is it we're all trying to do? If this team is successful, what are we producing? And then to compare those notes. And teams that aren't aligned in that way are just there's no way they can be as effective. Right? For the second part, are we coordinating to achieve that outcome? You can do a quick survey, you can god do sticky dots, you can vote, you can do a survey online, and we've got a 25 question survey. You can come up with your own that is from almost always to almost never. People here support each other's efforts. When there is a conflict, we discuss it with the person that we have that concern with. There's just a number of, in a way, really basic behaviors that say we're coordinating well, and ironically, often it's the executive team that least meets the standards that is surprising.

Andrew Skotzko [00:25:28]:

Wait, why is that? Because I would expect certainly that the exec team would be the one that's the most dialed in, certainly the highest compensated, the highest leverage, et cetera, et cetera. So what's up with that? I guess extending that. If that's true, why do most orgs tolerate, I don't know, mediocre teams at any level, but especially at the executive level.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:25:55]:

I'll start with the second one. Many people haven't seen it done well, so they just don't know how. On the first part, why are executive teams often the ones who least meet the basic sort of ten behaviors that you'd expect when you're coordinating well with other people, you're sharing information, you're giving feedback, you're offering support, all that kind of stuff. This is the team when for many people, it is the first time that they are on a cross functional team other than initiatives that were actually groups. So the chief marketing officer got there by being a rock star marketer and the head of engineering got there by being a great engineer. And the CFO is fabulous at finance. And they get to this hyper cross functional executive team and all those things we were talking about that our graphic designer usually deals with at other organizations where they don't know how to give feedback and they're not direct and they don't share information and all of that stuff. People don't know how to have those conversations with people who have really different priorities, ways of thinking their teams are different, all of that.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:27:23]:

And it's a conversational capacity that often hasn't been built. Add on to that, that incentives are often structured particular to that executive's role, with some add on bonus for the organization overall. But often it's not enough to get people to say, hey, we've got to do this a new way. The number one opening spot I see for this, Andrew, is when a new CEO comes in and says, holy crap, this isn't working very well, what do we do? And that's where we come in.

Andrew Skotzko [00:28:03]:

What?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:28:03]:

Yeah. We're not going to be able to transform this organization if the team is doing all this dysfunctional stuff. And often they see it more clearly coming in from the outside than they probably saw it at the last organization where they were a CEO and gotten kind of used to the dysfunction.

Andrew Skotzko [00:28:25]:

No, I really like this. And there's a line from the book that I wanted to pull out that just feels really, like where you're going and what you're pointing out with this that I loved this one line from the book, possibly more than any other single line in that entire book, which was there was a line in there that said something to the effect of it was talking about, like what is it that leaders do? What's our job as leaders, basically? And the line was something like, leaders build futures that matter through conversations. And I've never heard that before, but, man, I love that. So I want to hear more about that. And it feels exactly like the capacity you're talking about.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:29:04]:

Yeah, that's kind of the whole game, Andrew.

Andrew Skotzko [00:29:06]:

Oh, good.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:29:07]:

You picked out who you picked out a good line. I think most CEOs know they're responsible for the future.

Andrew Skotzko [00:29:13]:

Yeah.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:29:14]:

And that matters part is like, well, matters to who? Right? And the best CEOs I know are really clear about whose perspective matters, and that can vary from industry to industry, from company to company, but they're really clear on it matters to and I certainly hope that customers are high in that list. The best organizations I work with, like customers would be number one. So a future that matters to their customers because that's how companies have value.

Andrew Skotzko [00:29:54]:

So they create value in the world. Well, this is crazy talk, Pam.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:30:01]:

I know. Build a future that matters through conversations, and that's the power of the CEO. The power of the CEO is to say, this conversation hasn't happened, and until it does, we will not be able to move forward. Or you two, I notice, don't talk to each other. And that's really troubling because you're product and engineering, and I see you sending messages two levels down in the organization. But the two of you, I noticed, do not bring me joint proposals. Do not build on each other's ideas and meetings, and it's not working. We need the two of you to figure out how to have conversations.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:30:41]:

And sometimes they could figure that out on their own, and sometimes it's helpful to have some coaching support. But, yeah, the number one job of the CEO is to go see what conversations do I need to have with my investors, what conversations do I need to have with my executive team, what conversations need to be happening in the organization that aren't happening? And are people. Skilled up to have those conversations.

Andrew Skotzko [00:31:02]:

Yeah. This is fascinating because it feels both unexpected, right. Like, I think if you asked a lot of people what is the job of a leader or a CEO, or they would give a very different answer than what you just articulated. But it feels like a like an unexpected insight. But what I like about it, especially, is that it also feels very concrete, very actionable. That's not a fuzzy thing you just said. You need to go create conversations, and there are certain conversations that need to happen, and you need to develop the capacity to design, lead, and hold that conversation. And so that is really intriguing to me.

Andrew Skotzko [00:31:39]:

And so I'm really curious, how does one do that? Let's say you were sitting with a CEO, and they're like, okay, all right, I can see your broader point here. But then how do they start to think about moving forward in that way? If they take that on as kind of their mantle?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:31:53]:

Yeah, so before they take that on as their mantle, because usually they're pretty skeptical for a while because they didn't get to where they are. Because necessarily, or at least they're not aware that it was through conversations. I think a lot of them got there being pretty good at it. So I'm with that CEO or whatever level we're talking about in the organization, and we ask, what is your biggest pain point? We can't move forward. This initiative, it's creeping forward. And I keep talking to people about it, and it's not happening. So you say that we need conversations, like, every day I talk to somebody about it.

Andrew Skotzko [00:32:34]:

Yeah, I'm talking about it. It's not working.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:32:36]:

Talking about it. Okay, so then we kind of dive into sort of five y style on what exactly is going wrong and what is the basis of that. And almost always it comes down to a missing conversation, which is why we named our podcast Missing Conversations.

Andrew Skotzko [00:32:59]:

I finally understood that when I read that line, by the way. I was like, oh, it makes sense.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:33:08]:

It'll come down to, well, our finance team doesn't believe what so and so says. They don't believe that engineering needs more budget. Okay, so have they talked about it? Well, they told engineering, you don't need that much budget. Let's see, what is the actual full conversation that needs to happen there? Or they'll say, well, somebody on our board said, we need to do this. Okay, so what's your conversation with them about that? Because you clearly think that's not a good idea. Oh, I haven't really got back to them on it. I would just want to kind of see if we can sort of do it and then say we sort of did it and all of that. So it's like, well, how are you doing in talking with your board? Right? There's some conversations to have there, and almost always you can map out the things that are missing.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:34:07]:

And you and I were talking earlier about trust, and a couple of weeks ago, I was with a team, really enjoy working with a senior team of a public company. And we were supposed to be working on something, but they kept talking about trust, and they're like, well, and we're like, okay, we'll do a session on trust.

Andrew Skotzko [00:34:30]:

Fine, we'll talk about trust, fine, we'll talk about trust.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:34:35]:

But what they saw is that so many conversations are missing in the organization because this vice president says they don't trust this vice president, so they don't collaborate in the way that needs to happen. So what do we do to diagnose trust and to build and rebuild trust? So that's an important conversation on a team. And if I had a wand to wave, it would be for people to notice what it is that they don't trust. Like, oh, I totally trust their honesty, but I don't trust actually their skill in this particular thing. I don't think they've got all the chops that they need. And then for them to be able to turn that into a conversation, and it sounds almost impossible when we first bring it up to people, well, I can't say that I don't trust their skill. It's like, well, so instead you're just ignoring their advice and they're getting pissed off. And now there's a rift between your two functions.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:35:42]:

Of course you can have that conversation. You can say, to succeed with this effort, I think we need high level skills in these two areas, medium level or whatever you want to talk about in these two areas. And I'm concerned that one of those high level skills is missing. What do you think? Have the conversation. You can even have a conversation of I don't trust you're being honest with me. That's a conversation to have. The more and more we can get really clear with each other and actually be able to collaborate and coordinate, the more we can achieve those outcomes we were talking about.

Andrew Skotzko [00:36:23]:

I'm reminded of something you and I talked about offline earlier in the summer, which was definitions of trust and dimensions of trust. And I come back to that fantastic definition of trust from I think it's Charles Feldman in The Thin Book of Trust, where it's something very much like trust is choosing to make something you value vulnerable to the actions of another person. Something very much like that. Basically saying, I'm going to put something I care about, I'm going to expose it and put it at the effect of your actions, which I do not control. Oh, boy. And that is a little risky. So we take that, and then we take this model of trust that you all have in the book of these sort of five dimensions of like, okay, I say I don't trust somebody. What do I mean by that? Right? And your five dimensions that you had there which was a yes when I saw it was sincerity, competence, reliability, honesty and respect.

Andrew Skotzko [00:37:17]:

Like, wow, thinking about it already adds so much nuance to it. So I'm so curious, how do you help somebody take that on? Because I feel it just occurs to me that if someone could learn to have the trust conversation, that there's sort of the master key.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:37:35]:

I love that master key. That's even better than waving my wand. But that is the skill I would love for people most to have. So first I would just want to acknowledge that we've adapted that from Bob Dunham at Institute for Generative Leadership, who many of us have studied with, and we're also Feltman fans, too. So there's a few phases of being able to make those distinctions useful. The first is to look around, and often it's easier to work with one relationship, a couple different relationships that you have at work, talking about work relationships, although this applies to personal, too.

Andrew Skotzko [00:38:14]:

I was just going to ask you, is it the same outside work, too? Because I was like, it feels like it would probably be the same thing.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:38:21]:

We're all people. We're all squishy people. Andrew wherever we're showing humaning, I'm just humaning. I'm trying, we're bringing and when I work with executive clients, I have them outline who are the people that you want to get on better with, that you want to share a promise with so that you can produce things in the future that you want to coordinate better with. And we look across these dimensions and we diagnose and they can very clearly now, whereas five minutes before they were saying, I don't know, I just don't trust them. But once they saw the distinctions, they're like, okay, yeah, I trust what they're trying to accomplish. So I trust their sincerity, I trust their competence, but I don't trust their reliability. Like, this is somebody who makes promises and 70% of the time delivers, but that's not good enough for me.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:39:22]:

And it's like, great. What conversation are you going to have with them about that? And they're like, I can't talk with them. Raise millions and millions of dollars on Wall Street, you can talk with them about this. And to say, hey, I noticed, start with observation. I've noticed this time, this time, this time you said you would do it, and one of the times you delivered, and two, you didn't. And it's causing me to be concerned about the processes, structures, practices you have. Are they sufficient to get things done? Because, as you know, we're moving things really fast here and all of that. So I wanted us to get a chance to talk about it.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:40:08]:

And you go from there. The more that you can lean into factual observations, what the business needs and how you can support them, or how the organization can support them in getting what they need. They might say, yeah, well, you might remember that we pulled back all the budget for PMS, and I had come to rely on my PM to do a lot of cluing me in when I was supposed to do things. And you're right, things are breaking left and right, and I'm just like trying to spin the plates and it's like, okay, great, well, that's not working. So why don't you figure out what you need so that I can go back to having 100% confidence in your reliability.

Andrew Skotzko [00:40:53]:

We can brainstorm together. Like, let's sit down and look at this.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:40:55]:

Whatever is appropriate.

Andrew Skotzko [00:40:56]:

Yeah, I can see as you lay that out, why the shared promise and the commitment to that promise really is almost the frame or the container for this whole thing.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:41:07]:

Totally.

Andrew Skotzko [00:41:08]:

It gives you the context to have this conversation and it also gives you something like it makes the conversation worth it. Right. Because this is going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people, and if they're not committed to something bigger, it seems pretty unlikely they'll go through it.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:41:23]:

Exactly. And when you ask people, and I don't know how many people I've had this conversation with hundreds, thousands, you've probably had some of these too, is like, what was the best team you were on? Tell me about that team. They're always like, we were so committed to accomplishing this thing, we were so committed to it. And often they'll talk about, yeah, we worked nights and we did whatever, but say, tell me more about how you work together. Oh, my God, I was so overwhelmed and like, two of my teammates just came over and picked up stuff and got it done and I needed to learn something and people helped me out. And then there was somebody else in the team who was really junior, so I took the person under my wing. Nobody told me to mentor them or I wasn't their orientation coordinator, whatever, but I just knew we had to get them up to skill really fast. So I just kind of took that on.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:42:18]:

And all of these actions are exactly, as you say, inside that container of your promise.

Andrew Skotzko [00:42:23]:

Yeah. This is making a ton of sense now that we're talking about it. And I'm loving this framing of the primary tool in a leader's toolbox is conversations and the ability to design, to spot the conversation that's needed to design it, to hold it, to guide it, whatever the case may be. I'm so curious. I think a lot of folks are going to resonate with that idea, but want a little more in terms of, okay, how do I do that? Pam? So if I'm a leader, let's say I'm thinking of a client of mine right now who is a head of product and their executive team. The conversations have there's, the conversation is starting to flow. The information is starting to flow, but there are these sort of lurking skeletons in the closet that fall, I think, probably under the trust conversation, other related ones as well that are not specifically on the trust. But I'm curious if you have a leader who's on board with this concept, but they want to learn how to level up their conversational capacity.

Andrew Skotzko [00:43:27]:

No one's ever taught them that. They never even heard it put this way before. What should they do?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:43:32]:

They should look for a missing conversation and find a way to have it. A missing conversation that matters. Somebody on the team hasn't been producing at their usual level for a while, and you've just kind of ignored it. But it's really dampening the progress the team can make. Go check in with some empathy. Hey, I'm concerned about you. What's going on? Is there some way we can help? Really? The chief ability of a great leader is to prioritize which missing conversations to go have. Because the missing conversation that you left everything in the board presentation in English spelling instead of in American spelling, I've seen that happen.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:44:21]:

That was probably not a high priority conversation, but that's where they chose to spend their time. It's choosing which conversations to go have. And in fact, it reminds me, there's a study that just came out from IBM. I'll send you the link, but it's pretty cool. So there were 3000 sea level executives that IBM surveyed across like 20 industries in a couple of dozen countries. And they asked, what are the most critical skills for your workforce, given the dynamic environment, given the emergence of AI, given all of that, what do you need in your workforce? And the number one was ability to prioritize. Can you guess what the number two one was? Andrew?

Andrew Skotzko [00:45:11]:

I'm going to guess communicate.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:45:14]:

Nope, that was number three.

Andrew Skotzko [00:45:15]:

Oh, okay. What was number two?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:45:17]:

Ability to work effectively in teams.

Andrew Skotzko [00:45:19]:

Oh boy. Yeah. So this makes tons of sense to me, and it matches very well with I mean, this is totally like confirmation bias, but I don't care right now. It matches very well with what I see in reality and also with what makes sense to me if I think about it intellectually and analyze it. But one of the things I'm wondering about, and this goes to I'm thinking of various folks that I spend a lot of time talking with, especially in the product world. We're in this sort of what are we doing? Are we remote? Are we hybrid? Are we fully located? That whole thing. I'm curious, does that vector of change intersect with this at all? Or is this sort of independent of that?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:46:01]:

It does a bit, and it kind of almost on the edges rather than directly. And what I mean by that is, with our more global teams, it is harder to communicate, so it is harder to build a shared promise. It is harder to check whether we have a shared promise and it's harder to coordinate. Not that it was that easy before, but at least you could pull the people into a room and you didn't have to wonder if they were going to put the camera on. We also to deal with this environment, we're more and more using tools, right? And as we talked about earlier, you can't really assess commitment or offer human support via a tool. It's just not how humans are wired. Maybe someday, but the change has just been too fast. And we trust people that we actually have conversations with.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:46:58]:

Doesn't have to be in person, but the teams that I see that are doing the best, yes, they use the tools, but they also make sure they have live conversations. And often the ones that I see be really successful. They pull people together in person every half year, if not every quarter, sometimes more than that. That's what I'm seeing because the ability to align, it just doesn't live in Google Sheets and it doesn't live in Slack.

Andrew Skotzko [00:47:26]:

Yeah, it might live in Zoom and a live conversation, but even then that's almost like tiding you over until you get some actual FaceTime in person.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:47:35]:

You can coordinate about tasks, you can build some trust about things like reliability. Does a person show up to my zoom call on time with the stuff done right? Yes, but there are some other elements that it's really hard to get a sense of in a zoom environment. So it is helpful to have people come together. And I would say the other thing that is super hard, that there's not an easy fix for, but is probably the chief complaint of people at client companies, I would say, from the senior director to the sea level. Is they're on global teams and that means they're getting up at 04:00 A.m to talk to some geography, and then they're expected to be on a 09:00 P.m. Call. And it just is killing people's sleep.

Andrew Skotzko [00:48:28]:

Yeah, absolutely. Going to destroy people.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:48:31]:

So I don't know that there's a perfect answer, Andrew. It may be fewer meetings like that, it may be more a bit longer visits, which isn't possible for everyone, but to go in person and spend a couple of weeks. It may be that we do some regional teams and then coordinate across the regional teams in a different way. But boy, I would love to hear from your listeners who have figured that out. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. Pam Foxrolin. I would love to hear how your company is dealing with that issue.

Andrew Skotzko [00:49:05]:

Yeah, absolutely. It's something I'm checking in on with a lot of different people. And one of the things that really occurred to me when I was just listening to you right there was we talk about this idea of in the book, there's a whole section on distributed teams and there's a lot out there that people are doing and trying and that's all good. But I think one of the issues with it is actually perhaps the missing conversations angle that you've found here, which is that when I think about a lot of the quote unquote team building type efforts that people take on, and there's the ones that are more stereotypical and cheesy, and then there's the ones that people whatever people are doing, Right, right. A lot of them feel trite. A lot of them are focused on, I don't know, purely trying to create some sense of personal connection. Ironically, I think that maybe it's not working because they're skipping over the conversations that are the actual foundations of a team. Like, you're talking about, like, shared purpose, vision, a promise, a commitment, mutual, like all that stuff, which is people aren't dumb.

Andrew Skotzko [00:50:13]:

People want to do real stuff. And it's like, okay, what are we talking about here exactly? Yeah, I'm happy if I know your favorite color and whatever, but what I really want to talk about is, what are we doing here exactly?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:50:27]:

Yes. I'm not above ten minutes of something that's personal and fun and warm and wonderful and connective that's all to the good. Often those things are best left for meals and walks and different things in between it, which is, of course, impossible on Zoom. But yes, more than anything, I want to know, what are we here to accomplish? How are we going to go about that? What support can I expect from this team? And just to dive in a little bit further on support, because I think for some people, they're like, oh, that means you want me to do the other person's work. And sometimes that's actually needed. But usually what we're talking about is help them learn something, help them get to know somebody else in the organization, help them understand the context, because you've been working in this industry longer, or you happen to know this customer very well, or whatever it is, and you can kind of clue them in. If you're really committed to a shared outcome, then you want the people on your team to have that background information. It may be I know you can do it.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:51:39]:

It may be a little bit of encouragement, but often it looks like actually making it easier for them to get their part of the teamwork done.

Andrew Skotzko [00:51:49]:

No, I love it. And the things you're just saying there, this is one of the things that is certainly in product land, we talk a lot about this idea of the strategic context, and this is just so squarely in it of like, okay, let's just get real clear. Like, what are we doing here? How do we know it's working? Who's it for? What's it for? I don't know. You can cut this many, many different ways, but I just love what you're pointing to here. So this is fantastic. Just in starting to wrap up here. Pam, what I'd love to ask sort of two closing questions. First question would be for a leader who's convinced by our dialogue here, by our exchange.

Andrew Skotzko [00:52:27]:

And they say, all right, I'm into this conversational approach to leadership. What would you recommend as their next starting point in addition to buying your book, which they should already do, but what else would you suggest that they do? I'm going to tell them they should buy your book, but what's the second thing? And then finally, what is the key mindset shift that they can make internally in terms of how they relate to this conversational process that will unlock it for them?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:52:51]:

I love it. Okay, so the first thing about somebody who's ready to do this I'm laughing a little bit internally because they are already leading in conversations. The conversations are just pointed at either things that don't matter or they're not having them really well. So the number one thing you can do go back to it is build a shared promise. If we're winning, our team exists to accomplish this right? And that is the foundation of us being here. That's why we're here. And one of the things we say in the book is no promise, no team. So the key mindset shift is I am not here to make sure all the people get all the tasks done.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:53:44]:

I am here to make sure that the people are working with each other sufficiently that we can produce the outcome, which usually will mean some changes along the way. There'll be additional insights. The customer will decide they want something different. Production needs them to get something different, whatever it is. So the group has to be able, or rather, in this case, the team has to be able to navigate those breakdowns, to be able to produce an outcome that is satisfying to the folks that receive it. And that may be the end customer. That may be the next department that touches this thing. But the fundamental mindset shift is I am inviting people to be committed to producing an outcome together rather than I am pressuring people to accomplish tasks.

Andrew Skotzko [00:54:44]:

Beautiful. Well, thank you for that, and thank you for your work. I've been so grateful to explore it more deeply, to step into this deeper world of conversations that matter. I was just chuckling because it's almost like one of the key answers to how do you make things that matter? I E the name of this show is to have the missing conversations. I E the name of your show. So it does not surprise me that we enjoy talking about this stuff together.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:55:10]:

We will have to have you as a guest on Missing Conversations anytime.

Andrew Skotzko [00:55:13]:

I will be happy to provide one of those missing conversations. And for the listener, we'll be linking to all of this stuff in the show notes. And please go check out missing conversations. Go get the book. All of this will be linked to and Pam, where can people find you online if they want to follow up with you?

Pam Fox Rollin [00:55:28]:

Altusgrowth.com and there's a link on the about page by my picture. There is a little button for email. Or you can go to LinkedIn. Please say that you were listening to Make Things That Matter that will make me smile. Plus then I won't just ignore it. So I'd be very glad to connect with you if you listen to this show.

Andrew Skotzko [00:55:52]:

Awesome. Well, Pam, thanks so much for being here and keep doing what you're doing.

Pam Fox Rollin [00:55:56]:

Thanks, Andrew.