Hello and welcome to Power of a show about design operating at many levels of zoom from thoughtful detail through to transformation in our organization, society and the world.
My name is Andy Polaine.
I am a design leadership coach, designer, educator and writer.
My guest today is Alan Colville, a design leader helping government, public and private sectors think differently to find human centered and design led ways to thrive.
He's been an independent consultant since 2006 and is currently helping the UK Met Office design their data services.
I met Alan recently at the Service Design Global Conference in Helsinki where he gave an excellent talk about embracing conflict which really resonated with a lot of the
conference guys.
Alan, welcome to Power of 10.
Thank you, Andy.
Yeah, it's a privilege to be here.
So I want to talk about the talk because it really did resonate with a lot of people.
It's been one of the ones that many people have listed and said it was one of my favorite ones.
But before that, just tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey to where you are now.
Okay, so I'm going to pick out just some, I think, transformational moments because I've been doing this for quite some time.
I'm a designer by qualification.
My degree is in graphic design, actually.
And I started working mostly in print, loving the smell of paper and the process of printing and really enjoying that.
But of course, the internet started to happen, didn't it?
And I realized fairly quickly I was being asked to design things that I didn't fully understand.
interaction around.
in 1999, I went and did a Masters in, I guess, Interactive Media was the title of it at the time, but it had a lot of human computer interaction.
And I think that was the point I can clearly remember becoming user centred.
And it being the thing that I carry through and the red thread, essentially throughout the rest of my career and what I do mostly today as well.
From there, there wasn't anybody in Ireland where I'm from doing, I guess, usability, information architecture.
So I harassed uh a company in the UK to give me a job and they did.
They're CX Partners who are still based in Bristol.
And that was a huge change for me because I began to see the possibilities and work with other disciplines and see
the work getting carried through.
And from there, working in an agency, of course, around 2001, we had the dot com boom and things started to change and all agencies then started to let people go.
And I moved from there and took up a position in a cable company in-house, was, you know, some people consider it to be an unusual move.
understood that maybe I'd continue agency side.
But I think the four years I spent in that company were transformational.
I had a role as a commercial manager, but I was a commercial manager with a superpower because I saw things from a user-centered point of view in 2002, 2003 when not everybody
did.
And it gave me a way of really developing products that had impact actually.
And then within the organization was identified and rose very quickly as somebody that could do something and deliver things in a way that worked.
From there, was, I guess the next most important piece was I was headhunted to go to BT.
So the British Telecom, because they were designing a TV service.
So their first foray into TV.
So I was heading up the customer experience team there.
And I think about a year and a half into that, I was pretty much burning out.
know, dumb roles risen really quickly, but felt it wasn't quite working for me.
In a huge organization trying to be user centered, it was really hard.
It was like trying to steer a tanker.
So I decided to leave and was offered a gardening leave.
in case I went to a competitor, which I took and my wife took us.
Let's go traveling for a while.
So the three of us, my wife and my 18 month old went traveling for a year.
I think that was really transformational for me because I think I hadn't the balance right in work and life.
I hadn't really seen my 18 month old.
But that allowed me then to kind of crave that flexibility.
since then, that's 2006, I've been an independent consultant.
working for myself in, you know, mostly in private sector, I would say.
But actually in the past seven years, and this is another transformational piece, wanting to work for organisations with stakeholders and with purpose more so, and less for
shareholders.
But I remember coming into government and public sector and being really surprised by design.
It didn't look, sound, feel, work as I...
It was, and I think actually that was the point where it started to surface how disagreement was entirely different, how uh harmony was valued over uh constructive
disagreement.
And so that was probably the biggest challenge I had.
uh In addition to the pace, the pace was very different to private sector or, know, for agencies where you're working on pitches.
And it's really high-paced, high-measured.
Yeah, and that kind of takes me to today where I'm working still for a government organization uh using user-centered design to help them uh understand users better and
deliver better services.
And out of that, kind of uh the pace difference, mean, slower in public services or you said different.
That's slower.
I definitely think slower.
So you have to adapt to that.
Inside work and outside of work, I'm quite energetic.
And I think I had to think about, what do you do with that slower pace?
What are the things that you can focus on in addition, because you're moving slower?
And that's where I started to think about the more human qualities actually, that you can spend a little bit of time because I guess in the higher pace, you're focused very much on
the practice.
the primary and secondary, the competencies and stuff, but less time to engage because actually it became, if you're moving slower, keeping people engaged, keeping them moving
with you when you're traveling at a slower pace.
And sometimes it can be glacial and just managing yourself to accept that's okay.
And sometimes actually in that context, trying to rush is really detrimental uh because the culture and people are not ready.
how they currently do things.
But yet you need to move fast because organizations need to change.
And if they take too long, then there's a risk and a threat there, isn't there?
There is, I mean, there's that perpetual change thing that happens as well, which I think if, you know, I'm not a fan of speed particularly.
I think that whole kind of obsession with velocity has been problematic, you know, because it's been inherited from mostly from Silicon Valley startups, right?
And they're where velocity is important.
But for a lot of large companies, I think often getting it right is an organization's getting it right.
is more important than speed at all costs at least.
But there is obviously the flip side of that, which is that sort of glacial pace.
And there's a thing that happens where, you know, we've spent two years doing this transformation and then, you know, new CEO or new somebody comes in and goes, oh, well,
I'm going to do, not doing any of stuff that that last guy did.
We'll do some other stuff.
And it is often, that's quite gendered often, it is often a guy saying that about the previous guy's stuff.
and you know, I knew a company in Australia, a telco, I won't name which, which of the two it is, but they went through this whole process.
Um, it took them like six months to do their budgeting process for the year.
Right.
So they were in the middle of the year, just got it all kind of sorted.
And then, uh, the CEO brought McKinsey in McKinsey did their restructure, which meant firing a lot of people basically.
uh
and McKinsey forced them to do the budgeting process all over again.
So literally, they were like 10 months into the year and they still hadn't fixed their budget for the year.
And it's impossible to really work amongst in those kinds of conditions.
And so that stuff happens a lot.
There's definitely a cycle.
So your talk, let's talk about your talk.
Well, we talked earlier and we ended up doing that thing where we ended up talking for ages before the show.
So now we have to repeat some of it, but there was, we talked about your talk about conflict, but we were talking about a thing that I talked about actually, which was how
much your family circumstances, how you grew up, certainly family, school, culture you grew up in, they shape a lot, an awful lot about how you deal with conflict.
And you started your talk with a personal story.
Do you want to?
Yeah.
So I think I've had to, in my simple brain, put together how to have better conversations because I didn't have role models, for example.
So my mom and dad, you know, I told this story, valued harmony in the house.
They took pride, bless them, like, love my mom and dad to bits.
They took pride in
never arguing in front of us.
And I remember, you know, having relationships then as you grow up, and having disagreements and just not having the tools just having to, you know, I'd shy away from
it, I would avoid it at all costs, which isn't healthy.
And it doesn't progress things.
So I think almost the talk was me recognizing that
you have to have better conversations, which involves having constructive conflict and piecing together.
How would I bring myself to a point where I could broach subjects where I would lean into it?
Luckily, as a designer, you're kind of taught that, right?
It's part of your degree.
know, critique is really important.
You always have thought that you take it and you build on it.
So I think that was really useful for me, but it still didn't give me the day-to-day nuance, I guess, of...
dealing with disagreement with colleagues, for example, or even with partners as you grow up.
yeah, I think that's where the talk kind of stemmed from my own inner work, as you called out in your talk, which I absolutely love.
But it's funny, isn't it, as designers, we start with, OK, so I'm going to look at this thing and I'll understand it, but I'll look at how it affects other people.
But the more I went through it, the more I realized it was my inner work.
It's actually
me and what I bring to the table because that all comes into play when you disagree with someone.
It's not just about the topic of disagreeing around, it's how you disagree and your approach to it.
And that's where I realised, you know, as a designer, maybe I've not set the conditions for that to happen well, because I haven't considered even the words that I use, the tone,
the approach, the question you asked, that opening question to
open up a discussion and create space.
And then, you know, that really hard bit actually, which is being prepared to change your mind.
I think almost as a designer, we're taught that, and particularly service designers actually were often looked to as people who have answers to lots of different things.
But being able to say and going into a disagreement and hedge your claims, don't start by trying to prove yourself right.
So
Yeah, that's quite a shift.
That's a reframe of how you approach disagreement, isn't it?
It is indeed, yeah.
There's something that's just become apparent to me that is now really obvious now I can think of it.
You said something back before about sort of taking something, looking at how something's made and there's a classic thing.
I mean, you it as a graphic designer or as a media designer.
I studied film, video and interactive media and photography.
But there's a classic thing that say, know, industrial designers, product designers do, which is, you know, the professor comes in with a uh vacuum cleaner.
like a Dyson and says, okay, take this apart and understand how it's made.
And you take that thing apart and you have the students take it apart and have a look at it and they go, oh, this bit's injection molded and this bit has been designed in this way
because for efficiencies or whatever.
And here's where they save some money.
And you really do that.
You really can deconstruct it and understand all the parts of it and understand and try and do the reverse engineering of thinking, how did that become that way?
Why is it done in this way and so forth?
And what were the decisions made?
And I try and get my students to do that with services, which is a bit more difficult because they're intangible quite often.
But it just struck me, the thing that seems like really obvious now that I think of it is doing the same with interpersonal interactions and doing the same.
So obviously what my wife is a psychologist does all the time, but really intentionally doing it in the work environment and saying, okay, there's a conflict going on here.
And instead of like, oh, conflict, we don't want any of that.
doing, we can talk about the generational thing later on actually, but doing that thing of like, no, I don't want that.
That's, you know, that's triggering me.
That's traumatizing me.
Um, but actually looking at it and going, well, let's have a look at what's going on here.
Let's pull it apart.
Let's look at it as we would any other designed and or designable object.
Um, and understand it.
I think it's a, maybe a useful way for us to get our heads around the idea that it's not.
awful thing to do but it's actually a very design-ly thing to do.
Yeah.
And I think so if you said that and applied that it's in organizations, that's not how they run.
you know, organizations are, you know, there's lots of research to say that organizations are not doing their best thinking because they truly don't know how to handle conflict.
And I gave some some statistics around even at an exec level in Europe and the US that execs shy away from avoid because, you know, they might fear.
of getting embroiled in uh conflicts that they don't know to manage because they don't feel equipped or maybe even they think that they would lose.
So even at that level, and then you think about employees as well, you have to think then about, okay, so what's my part to play in this?
How might we have better conversations?
Understanding that the norm is probably to avoid them.
So then the only way you can lean into that is you as a designer.
what you bring to the table and how you might encourage better to start to a tone and model that rather than thinking, I'm going to change the organization to having
constructive conflict.
That's not the starting point, if that makes sense.
Yeah, mean, I agree.
The more and more I kind of think about impact on the whole conference we were at, the theme was impact.
The more I think that the greatest impact we have is, obviously, really like the stone in a pond and the ripples is those really close to us.
And that ripple effect, I think we underestimate actually of what a difference that can make.
And even if it's not in the organization you're currently in or for the next few years, often, you you will be the role model for someone else.
And when they are in, end up in that position, they end up affecting quite a few people, you know, anyone who's reporting to them if they're in a leadership role.
Uh, and so that could be, that can have a massive impact.
really can have a ripple effect.
And when I talk to people in coaching, you really hear it's one or two people in their lives have made a massive difference.
It's quite often, for a lot of people, it's a teacher of some kind, either at school or university who, um, saw something in them and kind of gave them permission to step into
their own power in that respect.
or showed them that design was a thing.
But quite often it's just one person who really, could be someone they worked with, be a boss who just really unlocked something or just gave them a role model for something.
But that goes both ways, obviously, Mike.
So people have kind of terrible role model of someone, I say terrible role model, they have a role model of someone acting in ways that are very destructive, but that also often
gets them promoted and then that becomes a thing too.
And I that quelling of conflict can often be a very sort of dictatorial approach in management.
Yeah.
And I think the challenge is really, isn't it, our psychological drive to not have interpersonal discomfort or to rush over conflict.
these habitual things we do when we're faced with it.
It's kind of...
You talked when we spoke before this about reprogramming.
think the element of reprogramming here that you've got to do, starting with yourself.
And how do we as designers not jump to a solution?
I think we're better at that.
We try to surface assumptions which should create disagreement that would allow us to get to better, forming better outcomes that we can work to.
But we are human and we do want to be proven right.
We want to be seen as.
So like that reframing and reprogramming is really interesting.
But from going through this process, and I've been kind of applying this for some years now.
It is hard, but it's simple as well.
Because these are the things you can do.
Just last week, I was using some of these techniques, just simple framing statements to just try and have better conversations where there wasn't good conversations.
And it's amazing once you have some courage, show a little vulnerability, how others react.
And the room changes as well, doesn't it?
Because you find, oh,
I'm not the only one because of course you're the only one.
there's something else feeling, you're feeling it's not being said, know, others feel it too.
So, you know, it can be really positive to be the one that kind of just says, hang on, you know, there might be a better way here.
And then others go, yeah, I was thinking that too.
And it's like, it just changes everything.
Or even you say something that people disagree with and you don't get resolution.
And it isn't solved.
you've had a disagreement and that might be the first time you've had a real disagreement in a team.
So the next time you have it, maybe you're better placed or you just, you just shifted the dial a little bit or lent it a little bit more.
So it's a better place to have it next time.
just saying those things and getting them out there, even if it doesn't get to the outcome that you've maybe you'd hoped for is still better.
Cause I, you know, I've presented this talk before going to Helsinki.
um And someone in the audience said, it sounds like an awful lot of work.
uh Yeah, it does sound like a lot of work, but think about the lack of motivation.
Think about the negative energy.
Think about the dissatisfaction.
Think about the team and how it can deliver impact when you don't surface those things and you just leave them there and you carry them and they just remain.
Yeah, I think that's worse.
But
Again, in organizations, we like to quantify and measure things.
That's really hard to measure that we should create some sort of playbook for designing with conflict because it actually, the return on investment is this.
We're far away from that.
But I think on an emotional energy level, I think it makes more sense to surface those things than it does to actually leave things.
Yeah, I mean, I agree.
I think it's also, I mean, you could quantify some of that stuff.
one of the things that happens in consulting and, know, this isn't unique to Accenture.
It's unique, you know, it happens in loads and loads of large organizations, large enterprises.
Um, but what I found, I was really surprised by the amount of, uh, alignment meetings.
I was like, what, what, we need an alignment meeting on this.
Initially I was like, what the hell's an alignment meeting?
And what it is is.
a group of people dancing around each other, circling around each other.
It's a bit like when dogs meet each other and they are, and you get that initial moment of like, are we going to fight or are we going to play?
And um we're not quite sure.
And so there's this kind of circling around each other and everyone is talking around the project.
And usually there's a lot of jargon in there because jargon is a great way to cover up all sorts of insecurities and questions that nobody really knows the answer to and everything.
And then eventually,
what happens by some kind of osmosis, greater, or, you know, it's like a kind of a systems effect where the group of people align and at least they think they do and now this is our
purpose and direction and so forth.
Quite often that is an illusion anyway.
But there's a, there's, you know, a deck has been created.
That's usually one of the aligning things, but you know, it can be like three or four meetings with quite a lot of people who have paid quite a lot of money to get there.
And
If people had the confidence to say, I'm sorry, what are we doing here?
I don't really understand what we're doing.
When you say we need a vision strategy roadmap, what is that?
I don't really know what that is.
And there we would get very much, much quicker to some kind of result.
I think one of the design superpowers, which we forget all the time is to make abstract things like that tangible.
It's to draw a diagram or to draw whatever it is.
you know, is it a concept or an idea and to actually sketch it is a very, powerful thing because then you, get out of the fact that telepathy doesn't exist and everyone's kind of
pretending to know what the other thinks and you actually have uh a concrete thing that you can disagree over too, but you've at least you're both know you're looking at the same
thing and you're disagreeing over it rather than thinking you're aligned and you're not.
mean, how often does that happen where you get this moment where everyone thought we're there on the same page and then.
as soon as something gets made manifest in the project.
I said, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what I was thinking of at all.
And trying to get there quicker is really important.
Yeah, think I remember from the conference somebody talked instead of alignment to talk about cohesion.
And I thought that was really interesting because it says an awful lot more, doesn't it?
But what would you need for cohesion would be different to what you would need for alignment, for example.
So in putting the talk together, one of the things that I tried to stay away from was a tool case, you know.
I'm so tempted to ask you, what are three things you need to do?
Because actually, think it's more fundamental than that.
It's more foundational.
It's more words, you know, being so powerful.
And the framing statements you could use to elicit some of those assumptions that you feel are in the room.
You know that they're in the room.
You know there's beliefs, particularly at the beginning of a project or even some way through.
You know what you can feel when there's beliefs that are not coming out.
Maybe a sketch or a visual thing as designers, but sometimes just a reframe, just a question.
can be enough to start a conversation that might result in, does it look like this?
And I think the interesting bit is, like, how would you flip that to make that more open for input from people who maybe don't want to pick up a pen and do a sketch?
For example, know, great with solutions architects, for instance, they're happy to do a process flow.
I do, I use an exercise which I've been using for many, years, and it's just a...
It's a stick figure exercise and I've used it with X, I've used it in ballrooms, I've used it everywhere and it's beautifully simple in that everybody can do a stick figure.
So I guess it's thinking about if you are going to use a tool, how do you leave it as open as possible to input?
A really good, I don't know, even the simplest, like let's start with outcomes as a question is really good at reframing.
But that six figure one is like really useful because it's got only six boxes.
So it forces out a priority.
You ask people to start thinking about a user going through it.
So it then starts to build empathy for users.
And you ask them, know, the sixth box needs to be the outcome that they want.
So even in that, and I've had people sketch out stick figures with ties and high heels and all sorts of stuff, I've never seen, even when I've used it, I've never seen, know,
initially people go, well, I can't sketch.
you, but it's fine.
know, everybody can do a stick figure.
But I guess, you know, that's the lowest fidelity, but that's as much as you'd need sometimes to surface disagreement, isn't it?
But other times it's like it's complex than that.
So you need to put something together that really brings out some of some of the complexity in that.
And that might be a diagram or a tool.
But I yeah, I tried to in the talk of us all the time resisting my
urge as a designer to whip out a tool and say you could because it didn't fit.
was like, because I knew it wasn't about our practices.
I knew that it's about our human qualities.
So that's very much about our language and our attitude and our mindset, which is, guess, where the the core of the talk came from was that and you the idea that it's embraced the
conflict and I had those stickers that people keep asking me for from it because
I do think it's a mindset shift that you can do at any time and you could start tomorrow and just try.
Yeah, think we talked about this a little bit before in our previous chat that there is also this, well, there's cultural differences and there's also generational differences.
I so I'm British and I had lived a long time in Australia.
I live in Germany now and I teach in Switzerland.
I've taught in Australia uh as well.
I certainly noticed differences when I first went to Australia about ...
critique culture, for example, and I don't know if it's unique to the UK, it may be true of the USA.
It's pretty hardcore in the UK when you're in university and you go through a design crit, there's no holds barred.
In Australia, I really found there was a tendency to avoid that conflict or to avoid being the one who put yourself out there a little bit and say, you know, well, I really think
this didn't really work so well because there's a whole cultural thing about what they call not being up yourself.
oh
And so that ended up in crit sessions, people going, yeah, I like it.
I don't like it.
But why?
I just think it's great.
But why is it great or why is it not?
And getting that out of people.
You're Irish, so you were talking about, and now you live in the UK.
What have been your sort of cultural experiences around the differences in the way people approach conflict or avoid it?
interesting isn't it?
I love this.
We're going to make loads of generalisations now, right?
tons of gender violations.
uh So I think you can jump to, and I think this was the third section of my talk was talking about supporting others.
And a lot of that is about maybe some of the beliefs that you're bringing into a disagreement around your cultural background or somebody else's actually.
But we often do forget about the thing that trumps that, is our family experience.
But let's start with cultural background for a second then.
So
I'm Irish, which I think gets me a long way into disagreement.
Something about the accent, for example, uh which people like.
Once you're understood, that is.
I do remember coming here when I moved here first and meeting somebody that I'd been working with for about three months and they were in a different office in a different
city.
And when I met them in person, they were like, you know, love your accent, but didn't understand the words you were saying.
So, you know, that that can be an issue.
I think that's something that I bring to the table when I'm disagreeing with someone and that comes into play.
And sometimes that can be beneficial because maybe I'll, you know, the accent gets me some of the way.
But I think in the UK, people are not as willing to disagree.
I think it's more healthy in Ireland because we're very self-deprecating as a nation.
um it's, yeah.
So
And then, you know, I've got a brother who does initially and his Italian wife, you know, healthy disagreement is such a part.
And it's so interesting.
I was with him a little time ago and to see when he interacts with us, you know, it's, he's not as, as, yeah, I guess he's Irish, but when he's interacting with Italians, it's
like a different person.
because of course he's been living in 20 years, so he's taken on and it's like much closer proximity to people.
know, like, these are really careful not to kind of stereotype here, but you know, it is a lot of like, it's not just verbal, it's, it's...
And you don't know, I don't understand the language, are they upset?
No, they're not.
It's just that's how they express themselves.
But you know, so I think there is a cultural thing for sure that...
you know, is good to consider.
But also don't just consider who's in front of you and their cultural backgrounds.
Actually consider your own and start there.
And then there are benefits that you can just think about, right?
You know, how can I kind of better not utilize because if I hate to think that you're thinking about this as some sort of persuasion, that's not what it's about, actually.
It's just about because the most important thing is when you're working in a team, when you're working in organization, regardless of cultural background or
family experience, you just want everybody's opinion.
You just want people to be heard what you don't want.
Either from a senior stakeholder who maybe has an idea that you've not managed to get out or from a team member, you just want to get those ideas out.
That's the most important thing, regardless of background or family experience.
But what it does really help is to think about cultural background, maybe.
But if you can get underneath it a little bit and think about somebody's family experience.
And I explained a couple of techniques to do that, asking simple questions in your team.
Because we know that when people share a little bit about their family experience, they're more likely to share in other areas.
Because that's all you're trying to do actually, is to set up a space where people can feel, they can share, and you can get everybody's opinions.
Because we know best opinions don't always come from designers.
They come from every place, and you have to hear them.
um Yeah.
uh
Yeah, it's funny when you think about the of the methods used in workshops, they're often used to deliberately flatten out the hierarchy in the room or to get different kinds of
voices.
And if you think of that round robin exercise, people don't know it's an ideation exercise where someone ideates something.
And then the next you pass your papers like the consequences game, you you pass it around to the next person and they are called upon to critique that idea.
And I've had it once in
In Japan, fact, where, know, hierarchy is very strong in business culture, where the person was sitting next to the CEO and had they had not been given the instruction of run
now, you have to kind of critique this piece of work.
They probably wouldn't have done it.
Um, but it was, you know, it's very healthy.
It's really useful to do that.
I find the culture of things always fascinating.
And obviously, you know, know thyself is really the rule here of, what do I bring?
And it's so tempting.
you know, certainly when you're younger, I think to assume that your, your cultural norms are, are the norms.
I have a really funny little example of this.
Actually, there was a TV show in the UK and it all about generational cooking and recipes and how people cook like their parents and grandparents did.
And it was a woman who was saying, you know, I always cut the cooking ham or something like that.
So I always cut the of corners off of the ham or the kind of, and I said, well, why'd you do that?
just the way I cook a ham.
And then asked her mother and her mother said, why?
My mother used to do it, so that's why I always do it.
And they asked the grandmother and the grandmother said, well, you know, it never used to fit in my tin.
And so they're taking on this thing.
I am someone, actually, I am someone who likes, I like vinegar on my bacon.
And I thought it was a thing that everyone did.
It just turned out my dad did that.
I suspect his dad did that too.
But those kinds of examples are really, you hear it over and over again.
When people actually start to excavate their own cultural norms and then lot often those things get embedded in methods as well.
you know, having done lots of workshops and stuff in other parts of Asia, for example, it becomes very, very clear of how North American, a lot of design and European, a lot of
design.
methods are offered, sort of workshops and facilitations and things, and they don't necessarily translate into other cultures.
But that said, I think you can lean into your own culture.
When you said about the Irish thing, I've definitely had a, there's definitely an excuse when I'm in Germany or in Switzerland to say, you know, it may be because I'm British, but
can I ask this really stupid question?
It's not really a stupid question to see that.
Can I ask the question elephant in the room?
Which I think you can make use of.
And I've also had a,
I think it's a nervous tick of mine probably to sort of be a little bit joking and kind of dad-jokey in interactions with sort of senior people.
But I found it very useful because I found a few times I slipped into that kind of court jester role and the court jester was there to tell the king the truth that everyone else
would get their head cut off off for saying.
it's been super useful sometimes because I felt I could then...
I had the license, think, that gave me some confidence, but a license to say the thing that everyone else was thinking in the room, but didn't dare say.
And say it in a way, which maybe is a very British thing to have this, it could be interpreted one way or the other to say it in a way that, you know, it could be
interpreted as a joke if it, know, if it landed badly, but it could also be taken seriously and start a conversation.
And I think there's a, there's an awful lot of service you can do.
where you understand, you know, what role can I play in this social dynamic?
What am I good at doing?
You sometimes it's bringing people back down to earth.
Sometimes it's bringing clarity.
Sometimes it's bringing some humor.
Sometimes it's bringing the kind of personal in.
Everyone has their different skill, I think, but I do think everyone has a skill.
I completely agree.
So it's interesting, Andy, because one of the doubts I had before giving this talk was I knew it was an Irish person working in the UK and this was a global conference.
So was like, well, any of this land actually, you know, are any of these things universal?
And I think I asked that question in the very beginning, you know, has anybody had issues or concerns at work they're afraid to raise and the whole put up their hand.
So I was like, that made me instantly happy.
and sat because I wasn't sure that I thought maybe it was culturally specific actually.
So I didn't see how it would land, but it seemed to have definitely hit a note didn't it?
The talk itself was very well attended and I've been in it data to be honest since.
So there's something there and there's something for us as service designers, there's something about how we better have better conversations.
There's definitely a feeling, think, because I've looked back to some of the things that people have been probing me about.
And it's like it is looking for better ways to deal with, but it's not about, you know, have you a tool that's more about how would you broach, how would you ask, how would
you...
So it's simpler, isn't it, but really important.
Yeah, this comes up all the time in coaching actually and there's often a, I think I talked about it in my talk, there's often a moment where someone's having a problem like
that, they're having an issue with someone they work with and it's often a peer as much as a boss or someone working for them.
And they really wound up about it.
eventually, and I hear, listen, they rant about that for about 10 minutes or something.
said, well, what is it that you really want to say to this person?
And I get the version of it with lots of swearing.
And then we kind of go, well, but my answer is really, or my question is really, then why don't you say that?
And what would it look like if you had to say that?
And then they make the non-swearing version of it.
But it amazes me how scary that is for people to then go off and say it.
But invariably, when they've had the courage to then say it, and it's helped them to rehearse it, I think, in the coaching.
You know, including what's the worst that could happen if you say this and what might happen otherwise.
And then they have it and often it's not only resolves some of the conflict, it can quite often really be a very, it's like the first argument in the relationship, right?
It actually then bonds them much better with the person that they've previously been in conflict with.
Have you had that experience or similar?
Yeah.
That's exactly it.
that's, if people understood that, uh we're willing to take that risk.
You know, and I think, you not just because people do ask me a lot about, okay, so, but hierarchy, you know, surely that's, you know, the biggest problem.
But often our disagreements can, you know, are with peers or with people in different teams, not always with disagreement with management or an exec.
And that's rare actually, because that's more about the strategy going in the right direction, which isn't actually about agreement, that's a direction.
So I've absolutely had that and I'm having that all the time.
And I've yet to have, and this is me being really honest, to raise something that didn't feel right or that was maybe worrying about or demotivated me or made me feel anxious and
not had the other person step into a space.
that made us better connected afterwards, even if we didn't get to some perfect resolution.
The trust that was built with just raising that and being humble and vulnerable and exposing yourself and just saying, I'm feeling this.
creates that space that is, yeah, so it's worth doing.
It really is worth doing.
But you need to
approach that with a mindset that is, if you're looking, and this is the kind of checklist, if you're looking to proved right, then that's probably not going to go well.
But if you're looking to truly make a better connection or work better, and if it's in the interest of work, and if you're prepared to be wrong, then it changes things entirely.
Because tonally, obviously, it changes things.
Words, language, framing, everything becomes different.
But you have to be willing to change your mind.
I think that's probably the key thing, isn't it?
It doesn't work if you're not willing to change your mind.
And are we really willing to change our minds?
Because you're not always right.
So are you willing to be proved?
I mean, obviously, you know, I'm always right, but everyone else.
I think um there's a funny paradox at the heart of this.
I said this lots of times that I think the biggest lie is this idea of it's not personal, it's just business.
We have this idea of professionalism being sort of non-emotional, right?
Don't bring us, why it's so gendered as well, you know, don't bring those kinds of emotions in there.
This is being professional.
You know, we are sensible when we're professional, we wear suits and all of that stuff.
But actually when you hear, I hear you talking about that, what you're really hearing is in fact the sensible, mature thing to do is to have a conversation about this and have the
conflict, not act out the conflict, but actually have discussed the conflict.
That's that sort of meta communication thing.
And that is much more sensible and mature.
And those who don't, who kind of use
The idea of, I'm just being professional and sweep the emotions under the carpet end up actually being the opposite, right?
Where you end up being terribly unprofessional, or at least by not being human, not being personal, you end up creating this really, really toxic environment that has negative
professional results, is what I'm saying, or effects.
So it's this kind of weird paradox there that the very thing, maybe it's just human nature, but the very thing we're trying to avoid is the thing that's causing us the
problem.
It's interesting though, isn't it?
uh So some years ago, decided my LinkedIn profile should have elements of me outside of work on that.
And I think that started to happen.
This is well documented over COVID, for example, where we started to see into and understand and get a glimpse of.
And I think that is a good thing, actually.
um But the thing for me is, because I always have in my head
those times where you had a really good working relationship, where disagreement was healthy, where ideas just bounced, where roles disappeared.
really didn't matter how hierarchy was lost because it's in the interest of getting to the best.
It was open, it was free.
So always have that in my head as that only happened because people opened up.
It only happens actually, I think, when the emotional part is there and understood.
yeah, and you know, there are constraints, you know, but there's an understanding, you have this promise that you've made to each other, that there's trust.
And when you raise something and disagree that it's for good reason.
And then, you know, the creativity and the innovation just flows from that.
So you've kind of...
took apart that professional piece, put it to one side, and you're only dealing with the emotional piece, actually, and that's when it works best.
But you're right, you know, I've expressed this before and I really like it, but that's a flip, isn't it?
In, you know, putting emotion into your professional work and what you do and being vulnerable and being willing to say I was wrong.
All those things that me as a consultant, maybe...
Maybe I was less comfortable to do that 10 years ago, maybe when I'm younger as well.
maybe I didn't have the gravitas perhaps to say, well, no, I didn't get that right.
I think it should be like this.
As a young designer, I probably wouldn't have had the courage or the confidence to do that.
But I do think it's, yeah, that's a change that I'm putting into play now and have been for some years.
The benefits are so much better.
The connections you make with people are so much deeper.
The impact that you can do is far greater.
You said before there are constraints and boundaries to this.
think there is definitely a, I have seen people sort of weaponize that in the other direction where they come in and it's all about them and it's all about their, how
they're, you know, and if they're having a bad day, there's someone in particular I'm thinking of and she used to come in and was, you know, made a big thing about how hungover
she was and then sort of it would sit down and be like,
You know, and it was like it flooded this room with this vibe of like, you know, it's not my day today.
And then of course it just became awful for everyone.
And there was no, there were no boundaries there.
And I've also seen that thing, you know, like I said, I'm married to psychologists and psychotherapists and the language of therapy, and I don't want to minimize anyone's actual
trauma or experiences, bad, toxic,
workplaces because there's lots of them.
I'm not saying this at all.
I'm going to preface this, the language of, you know, even things that saying that triggered me or I'm traumatized or I feel unsafe.
I really want people to be able to say that they feel unsafe and all of those things, but I have seen it then used um cynically, I would say, you know, to say, um than I'm feeling
discomfort here and we can explore that.
So I feel unsafe and just shuts the whole thing down.
And it's particularly used as a way of kind of bullying upwards.
um And I understand all the reasons why sometimes you need to kind of fight upwards and use what you can because there's a power differential there.
But I've definitely seen it then um go so far the other way that it makes it very, very difficult for people to interact with each other because it's conflict aversion so strong
there.
You can't even begin to have a conversation about the fact that you might be having a conflict, let alone actually go any further than that.
It's yeah, so I've presented in the talk Patrick Lencioni's five dysfunctions of a team.
do think it's the simplest if you were to apply some framework to it because you know, when he talks about, okay, so in what you're describing there, Andy, is it an attention to
results?
So is that person focused on individual pursuits and not collective success, for example?
So I think with Patrick Lencioni's framework, you can start to go, but what is this?
break it down, is it that there isn't trust here, so people are afraid to disagree?
Is it that, you know, there's a lack of commitment because we don't have clear direction um and there's a lack of bias, so we just can't make decisions that stick?
Or is it about accountability?
Because when I gave this talk, people say, well, one of the things that we disagree on most is people's roles.
And we know there's much more disciplines that we're working within teams.
So, but I think you can unpack it.
Probably the scenario you're describing, it's hard even to get to that discussion point.
But I do think thinking about where might the problem be and then having the conversation and even showing, you know, I've used Patrick Lencioni's model and showed it to people
where there was disagreement.
So where are we having this?
What's the disagreement about?
there's a little bit over here.
There's a little bit over here, but it always comes down to the same thing.
There's probably a lack of trust and there's probably a fear of conflict.
the roles, responsibilities, the attention to results and stuff is all stuff you can sort out and should sort out and that's really valuable because actually if they're not there,
that will cause disagreement.
But it usually comes down to the human qualities and the foundational competencies that mean you're not having good disagreement.
Yeah, it definitely can help to have a third thing you can point to, I think, rather than, you know, that's just your opinion and stuff.
But I think it's also what I'm also hearing there is how important it is to have some of these conversations up front and to talk about, certainly when you're forming a project
team or any of that stuff, to talk not just about, um you know, here's what the project's about and everything, but how do we feel about this agreement?
How do we go about resolving that?
Are there any particular structures?
What are our boundaries?
But also the personal stuff of this stuff's really important to me and this stuff is stuff I need your support on.
And I've seen teams where that's worked well and people have policed each other and someone said, it's okay, you know, I'll stay late to finish this.
And the rest of the team said, no, you need to go because we know that on Tuesday nights is yoga or whatever it is.
eh And that's really important to you.
And when it works well, like that stuff is really, really super important to have upfront.
it can help.
Again, it's that sort of meta communication idea that we're going to do some work around how we communicate before we are full of all the adrenaline and fear and hormones there
that are going to make us then explode.
So that when we get to that point, it's like having a good fire extinguisher.
When we get to that point, we know what to do.
So I agree, but I've seen this go wrong actually a few times.
where you, for example, you take it in because you've got different organizations starting off on something really big um and you start to build that understanding.
Maybe you're starting to get people to think about objectively different strengths and weaknesses.
But I think it's the things that you can sow into the routines that are
almost more important.
the reminders of, I've used examples of a simple question at the end of a retro, for example, to say, is there anything here that you're afraid to say?
I think if we can start to let into routines, it becomes, because a great start is good, don't get me wrong.
But then it can just be focused on the work as you say in the milestones and it goes into the cadence.
And then we've lost it somehow.
So I think if you can build it into your routines and it's totally possible to do that.
There's a lovely, from facilitation at a glance, that really amazing book.
There's a beautiful survey that you can run.
It's only 10 questions that you can run with your team to just assess how are we handling disagreement?
And I love that because it's really old, it's beautifully simple, and you could do it at any time just to see, is there anything below the surface here that's not being dealt
with?
there anybody that's afraid to say?
So I do think, yes, a good start to surface some of those things can be hard because you might not know some of those things.
You might not have that relationship yet, right?
You might not have built some trust.
So then periodically coming back to that I think is really healthy as well.
So this has been fascinating.
We're coming up to time.
Unfortunately, we could talk about this for ages.
We should have recorded the pre-conversation we had where we talked about a load too.
As you know, the show is called Power of 10.
It's named after the powers of 10 film by Ray and Charles Eames, all about the relative size of things in the universe.
And so the one small question is, or the one of the final question is, what one small thing is either overlooked or could be redesigned that would have an outsized effect on
the world?
That's a really hard question, Andy.
I love that you are.
There was so much, I was racking my brains over the weekend thinking and there's so much that I could have talked about.
But I think for me, I need to bring it back to the talk.
I need to bring it back to the idea that, you know, we're not doing our best thinking.
So taking that first step, there's probably something if you're in a team and you're doing work today.
There's probably something that you're not saying.
There's probably some, whether it's big like an elephant in the room that people are not talking about, or whether it's small, something, maybe an interpersonal thing with a team
member that is demotivating you, you're finding it hard.
So I think the small thing is just saying it.
and
how it lands and then seeing the ripples as maybe somebody else does the same.
So for me, the smallest thing that could have the biggest impact is just to start to have those disagreements, to say that thing, to, you know, and to not think of that as a
negative because sometimes we give ourselves a hard time and say, I can't say that because of this.
Don't think it through so much actually in some regards.
Just think of it as, you know, this is a step forward.
It'll help others.
And just remember that you're probably not the only one thinking it.
So it's good to say it.
So the smallest thing would be just to say that thing that's worrying you, that concern that's there, that issue that's there, that interpersonal thing, person in the team that
you're going, I'm not quite sure.
I think we could and just go for it.
I think that's the small thing.
That's wonderful.
What I'm also hearing there is the thing around people reflecting from what is it that I'm actually feeling here too, I think, because I think there's often the surface thing and
then what's actually going on there.
And I think that can help ask those questions or have that conversation without the immediate kind of emotional conflict that sometimes will come with it.
So where can people find you online?
So, yeah, it's a complicated question these days with some of the changes in social networks.
LinkedIn is probably the easiest way to find me online, to the point that I like to people to know a little bit more about me beyond the professional.
My Instagram is actually someplace because I'm a visual person.
So that's the other place I direct people to at the moment.
But if you want to contact me, LinkedIn is best.
Thank you so much.
I'll put all the links in the show notes and I'll put a link to those couple of books you mentioned too.
Thank you so much for being my guest on Power of 10.
You've been watching and listening to Power of 10.
You can find more about the show on Pelain.com where you can also check out my leadership coaching practice, online courses, as well as sign up for my irregular newsletter,
Doctor's Note.
If you have any thoughts.
Put them in the comments below or get in touch.
You'll find me as at andypolaine on Blueskey
You'll find me at Andy Polaine or apolaine on LinkedIn or my website.
All the links are in the show notes.
Thanks for listening and watching and I'll see you next time.