Leading Consciously Reflection #26

Preface: This week’s Reflections is written by Carole Marmell. She wrote an internal memo that delighted me. I thought it wonderfully illustrated what can happen when teams become self-managing. And it gives you an insider’s view of how we work in Leading Consciously. – Jean

 

When I began working in Leading Consciously, there was Jean Latting, Founder and CEO. Then she hired people close to her to help implement her vision. The shape of the organization was that of a wheel and spokes: everything went through Jean.

After a while, it became obvious to both of us that she was a bottleneck. Any time she delayed in responding to us, we were held up. When I asked how long she could serve as a bottleneck, she replied that we would all learn to work with each other. This didn’t compute, and we continued to funnel everything through Jean.

Next, she patiently explained self-managing teams, the concept that we could bite off a specific task and coordinate among ourselves without needing to check in with her.

Over time, she began to hire people who didn’t know her, or any of us. In the process of teaching them what we knew, we stopped checking in with Jean for everything and forged connections.

You’re getting the idea, she said, for self-managing teams. You are working together. When breakdowns occur, though, you still come to me. Now you need to learn how to give each other corrective feedback.

But Jean, we complained, no one gave us the authority to correct people. You have that authority, she said. You know what to do, now learn how to approach one another when it isn’t working.

Over Memorial Day weekend, I posted a note to team members over Slack, our cloud-based collaboration and messaging app. Jean thought it was a great example of the benefits of self-managing teams, and asked me to write this week’s Reflections and provide some context. This is what I wrote:

Lots of folks to appreciate this weekend. Valentina Covarrubias, who rocks but still says nice things about other people. Virginia Redmond, who saves me from my blind spots. Eillen Cuartero, who rarely asks for help but always provides it. Jean Latting, who faced a week of no A/C or internet yet still remained supportive. And Jean Ramsey, who has managed to navigate this unusual team while being kind to everyone. This weekend I am grateful to you all.

How is this self-managing? I asked. You took the initiative to post on Slack, said Jean. You offered positive feedback. You didn’t ask me if it was okay. You operated independently, just as you do every day.

And I got it. We were a self-managing team.

A self-managing team learns together through giving and receiving positive and corrective feedback to one another. No feedback, no learning. When a team learns together, it goes beyond individual learning. It’s team learning. The following, from an article by Jean Latting and Mary Beck,¹ offers eight suggestions for improving work processes through team or organizational learning.

In traditional command-and-control organizations, employees look to the supervisor for performance feedback, whether positive or negative. Feedback to and from employees does not normally occur and may even be viewed as inappropriate. Organizational learning, however, requires that employees freely and candidly provide and receive feedback from one another….

Knowing how to receive feedback is as critical as giving it. If someone seems unreceptive to feedback, others might hesitate to give that person feedback in the future and be more resistant to the person's feedback to them. The ability to receive feedback gracefully is essential for an organizational leader. By demonstrating openness to corrective feedback from supervisees, leaders model the process and often may gather important information that otherwise would be concealed from them….

Most people prefer to save face or look good rather than risk the vulnerability that comes with receiving or giving feedback in a more open, learning environment. Nevertheless, the benefits of such a heavy emphasis on feedback can be tremendous.

How well are we learning together? We are mostly there. 

Let me introduce the unusual team assembled within Leading Consciously, and how four of us on the social media beat learned to be self-managing.

We are about as diverse as you can get without male teammates. The self-managing social media team:

• Carole Marmell, White/Jewish, retired social worker; Leading Consciously editor, proofreader, writer, sounding board; brings mental illness to the mix; lives in Texas
• Eillen Cuartero, American/Vietnamese, IT and all-around problem solver; has worked with Jean for 20+ years; lives in California
• Valentina Covarubbias, Latina, designated youth connection, graphics artist, and social media guru; lives in Argentina by way of Venezuela
• Virginia Redmond, Filipina, graphics, tracking, and posting, backs up Eillen and all-around go-to; lives in Texas

The rest of the LC team (alphabetically):

• Amy Foy Hageman, White, entrepreneur, course facilitator; Stephanie’s daughter, has known Jean since childhood; lives in Texas
• Jean Latting, Black, retired social work professor, the reason we’re all here; lives in Texas
• Jean Ramsey, White, retired business professor at an HBCU; lives in the mountains of New Mexico
• Joy Kirui, Black, transcribes our podcasts; lives in Kenya
• Stephanie Foy, White, entrepreneur and social worker, course facilitator; has worked with Jean since grad school; lives in Texas

Most of us have never met in person (Zoom is our friend).

What part of this is self-managing? The social media team has become the most self-managing among us. 

How did we do it? For a start, we spent months going to Jean for instruction and validation. Most of us didn’t ride here on waves of self-confidence. Eventually we became comfortable with our roles.

Now we make our own decisions, knowing Jean’s end game. We make adjustments to the process by discussing amongst ourselves. We are responsible for the finished product, which can be nerve-wracking, knowing perfection is not an option, but we try.

We are encouraged to interact directly with each other and learn – sometimes with great difficulty – how to give and receive feedback. The hard part is providing corrective feedback. No… the hard part (for me) is accepting corrective feedback.

It’s an ongoing process. Getting past the feeling of being nit-picky is hard. When Valentina sends me copy with errors from the Spanish, I correct them rather than telling her what’s wrong. When I send copy to Virginia, she fixes my mistakes. Sometimes she tells me afterwards. We still have some work to do.

In the meantime, we form human connections. When a cold snap interrupted my electric power for four days, one teammate put me on friends & family at a local hotel so I had a place to stay warm. When Houston’s derecho cut off Jean’s air conditioning and internet for a week, she had multiple offers of shelter. We covered one teammate when her husband was having a heart transplant, and this spring it seem everyone needs a few days of R&R.

It involves reaching beyond our comfort zone to learn what the others do, so we can coordinate.

Getting back to the wheel with spokes…. We’re not the only wheel on this vehicle, just the social media wheel. Others include the book team, IT/website, program services, marketing. The list goes on. Soon we might become an 18-wheeler.

Bottom line: because the social media team has learned to be self-managing, we don’t have to go to the hub of the wheel for day-to-day operations, we can work around the rim. It’s validating and liberating for all of us.

 

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[1] Latting, J.K. and Beck, M. (2004). Facilitating learning through assessing performing [sic] goals. In M.J. Austin and K.M. Hopkins (Eds.), Supervision as collaboration in the human services: Building a learning culture (pp. 201-214). London: Sage Publications.