What Married at First Sight Taught A Newly Appointed Leader About Their Team
Nurturing the development of newly-appointed leaders during onboarding can expedite the transition process, decrease the gap in abilities and knowledge, and create a space in which the new leader can quickly make a beneficial impact on the business. Here’s how, in working with one newly appointed agency leader, toxicity in their team was uncovered whilst watching Married at First Sight.
What Married at First Sight Taught A Newly Appointed Leader About Their Team
Become Aware of Team-Dynamics
When a leader is newly appointed, they can often find it difficult to gain an impartial view of a situation, often the views of their boss or senior management team influence thinking. A method that I used to coach a client, Ali, was to watch reality TV shows to get away from the organisation's assumptions; they chose Australia’s season of Married at First Sight.
The aim; to enable Ali to challenge their perspective and uncover different viewpoints on how effective team are working individually and collectively. In doing so they gained a better understanding of relationship dynamics, the language and the challenges presented. This newly found knowledge removed their initial assumptions of the team, informed mainly by complaints from other senior leaders in the business resulting in Ali supporting both their team and the business to find new ways of working.
The Process of Building Awareness
In order to provide deeper insight, alongside each show I give a list of patterns of behaviour and thought processes that can create team dynamics and a list of reflective questions;
Polarised - The tendency to view a situation in either/or, all-or-nothing terms
Catastrophising - Automatically jumping to the worst-case scenario (big leap)
Personalising blame - Instantly blaming ourselves no matter the situation
Transferring blame - Instantly blaming others, no responsibility for the situation
Filtering - Focusing on the more negative aspects of a situation whilst filtering out all the positive ones, which could lead to catastrophising
What I’m encouraging is to look out for and reflect on:
What language do you hear whilst watching people interact?
How do you respond to the language when you hear it? Uncomfortable? Familiar?
How positive or negative do your rate language? (scale)
How aware are the people expressing themselves?
How are the distortions affecting the situation?
How are the distortions affecting behaviours?
How are others reacting to the distortions?
Uncovering New Team Dynamics - 3 Observations
Here’s what Ali uncovered by just observing a couple throughout their week;
Observation 1: Challenges of Polarised View-Points
Two contestants, with drastically different and contrasting perspectives, found being together painful. One had an eye on marriage in the future, while the other just wanted to make it through the week. This discrepancy manifested in their attitudes: the former was more than content to take time to think, reflect, and remain conscious of their feelings, whereas the latter just wanted to get through things without wasting time.
In a similar vein, the newly appointed leader was aware of the team’s tendency to adopt a let's just got through this mindset - particularly when it came to technical problem-solving. Rather than looking at how technical updates could improve service offerings, they were just an agenda item to be aware of if any bugs emerged and Ali recognised how this was forming a perception of the department - ‘just functional.’
Observation 2: How Blaming Others Diminishes Responsibility
One member of the couple had an unstated expectation that dating should follow a certain pattern based on their ex-boyfriend's behaviour, but it had never been discussed. The result was a blame situation - ‘you did not meet my needs.’ Frustration emerged from both parties and ultimately led to an argument. The newly appointed leader recognised this argument could have been avoided if there had been some honesty about expectations with each other; Ali recognised how expectations were playing a major problem for their newly acquired team.
Ali was aware that the wider agency teams had a perception relating to their department quality standards, and this was negatively affecting the work of other departments resulting in delays and reduced margins.
When Ali asked their team about quality standards what emerged was the team’s priorities were speed and deadlines. Coupled with what Ali realised no one ever asked for more time because budget and margins were emphasised by the wider team too. Ali was building a picture of the polarities their team faced. The team were good enough, but a combination of factors resulted in poor decision-making informed by other departments competing KPIs.
Observation 3: Filtering Out the Good Leaves a Toxic Environment
One contestant could only focus on the bad aspects of every situation: the food, the experiences, the shared space, and even the potential spouse. No matter how much the TV production did, or how suitable the suitor was, they refused to see the good.
What Ali reflected on was how their team responded to feedback - only taking note of the bad aspects, which resulted in some challenging behaviours.
Ali used the scenarios played out on the screen to reflect on their own team. The result, fresh insights and new ideas, informed by the wider team’s experience of the department, but were not assumed as the only truth. Over the past few coaching conversations, Ali has collected a much more extensive view of the team challenges and is seeking now to work with the wider team on how they can collaboratively solve the problems.
Benefits of Fresh Perspectives
This tiny snapshot of our discussion showcases what can be achieved when we are curious, we do not assume we know and do not default to held assumptions. Instead, Ali was able to bring a wider understanding of the problems that showed it was not just a department problem but business-wide.
Married at First Sight was a great tool for Ali to build new skills. This newly appointed leader has been able to build fresh insights into what is happening for their team. Significantly Ali did not take the word of others but choose to find out what is going on for their team before taking action. If you fancy some screen time to reflect upon your own team, use the list and questions above and develop your skills whilst you binge a little reality TV.
Further Tips to Increase Leader’s Success
Find out how watching reality TV can also increase your leadership capacity when using self-talk for success. Being able to share my coaching experience with Brainz Magazine gave me the opportunity to talk about the quality of our inner chatter and the role language plays in our success as leaders - how it can inspire or lead to mistrust and friction. I share 3 tips for leaders to increase their success through positive self-talk.
