Be brave and participate in your teams

Be brave and participate. That's useful in primary schools and our teams. Photo by Emmanuel Ikwuegbu on Unsplash

In a recent leadership development workshop, we started by describing how we wanted to interact with each other. This is a regular process in many workshops and most of the time, it leads useful reflections from participants with responses such as "honesty", "transparency" and "listening". On this occasion, one response from a participant, who we will call Thomas (because that was his name). He wrote down:

"Be brave and participate"

We discussed this further and Thomas shared that this was something that his children used in their primary school classrooms. Two things struck me about these four words:
 

1. Those four words were simple and powerful.
   
   Their simplicity didn't make them easy to achieve (we often confuse simple for easy), but they were a clear guidance for how people were able to be a part of the group. That clear guidance made them powerful.
   
   We expected ourselves and each other to be brave, which as Brene Brown has taught us, requires us to be vulnerable.
   
   We expected ourselves to participate. It wasn't OK to be passive, the expectation was an active contribution.
   

2. Those four words are applicable across our teams.
   
   It seemed to me that many of the teams that I work with express the sentiments of those words in many of the ways that they ask each other to behave.
   
   "Honesty" is a request for being brave and sharing your perspectives.
   
   "Transparency" is a request for you to be vulnerable.
   
   "Listening" is acknowledging that we are participating even when we aren't speaking.
   
   It seemed to me that "Be brave and participate" captured the essence of how high performing teams interact with each other.
   

One final reflection. The fact that the phrase it had come from primary school reflected a universality of these principles. You won't go too far wrong if you and your teams be brave and participate.

Here are some questions for you to reflect on this week:

1. Could your team benefit from adopting the code of be brave and participate?

2. How might you demonstrate bravery?

3. What actions would encourage others to participate?