113 — Good Team, Bad Team: Transforming Team Dynamics with Sarah Thurber and Blair Miller

Karen: 00:00:00

Hello, everybody. It’s Karen Lynch, and I’m happy to welcome you to another episode of the Greenbook Podcast. I’m incredibly excited to be talking to the two people I am talking to today for this episode—people that I have known for decades, to say the least. I’m honored and privileged to be speaking today to Sarah Thurber, who’s a managing director at FourSight, and Blair Miller, who’s one of the co-founders of FourSight. And we will get into what FourSight is and how well I know these two individuals and why I’m excited to be talking to them and sharing with you a little bit about their knowledge and about their book. But first, let me welcome you both to the Greenbook Podcast and ask you to introduce yourselves a little bit more robustly to our audience.

Sarah: 00:00:53

Thanks, Karen. I’m Sarah Thurber—and thrilled to be here. As you say, I’m the managing partner at FourSight, where I lead a team of researchers and designers and facilitators and trainers and thinkers, kind of a very diverse team, to bring a research based thinking system to people who want to think creatively and work collaboratively and produce better solutions.

Blair: 00:01:19

I’m Blair Miller, a former Outward Bound instructor school teacher who discovered the field of creativity and have been a creativity professional since the late ‘80s—really excited to be here.

Karen: 00:01:36

I’m so excited to have you both here. And, for people who have listened to me talk before, you’ve probably heard, you know, in one of the episodes, I had the executive director of the Creative Education foundation on, Beth Miller, and I talk a lot about Creative Problem Solving Institute, which is how I know both Blair and Sarah. I’ve also not only taken the FourSight Thinking Profile assessment, but I have also facilitated teams to use it. And it is really, I think, at this point, in my DNA.

Sarah: 00:02:01

[laugh].

Karen: 00:02:02

So I’m excited to have you both here and bring this topic to our audience because it’s in the context of this current conversation, at least—the context of good teams and bad teams, the new book that my friends have released. So let’s first, before we get into this book—because I think it’s an important leadership tool—I would love to tell our audience a little bit more about FourSight and kind of the Thinking Profile, some of the tenets behind it.

Sarah: 00:02:31

Sure. Well, FourSight is a thinking system, and it was developed by a group of people who teach creative problem solving. And the “ah-ha” moment came when Gerard Puccio, who was a distinguished professor at the State University of New York, was teaching creative problem solving to a group and noticed halfway through in teaching a complex tool in the developed stage, that people just—one group came out and said, “I have such a headache. That was terrible. I can’t believe anybody thinks like that.” And Gerard, who’s a very nice guy, thought, “Hmm... was it me?” And not two minutes later, somebody came back and said, “Gerard, that’s totally the way I think. I love that tool.” And as a researcher, as a PhD, as somebody who wants to understand the phenomenon that happened in problem solving, he wondered, “Could I measure that? Is there a way to understand how people approach challenges in a way that’s measurable and understandable and predictable?” So he worked for six years and tried six different iterations before he finally hit on this assessment that you mentioned, the FourSight Thinking Profile, which measures our thinking preferences as we work through complex problems.

Karen: 00:03:49

And, Blair, there’s a history of you in this current application. You co-founded this organization, but you also have this huge background in team building. You were talking about Outward Bound, and I know you were one of the leaders when I was pursuing some training at the Creative Problem Solving Institute in team building. Talk to me a little bit about how this profile assists teams, which is critical to this conversation.

Blair: 00:04:15

Well, it comes back to what Sarah was just saying about the nature of FourSight. FourSight comes from the world of deliberate problem solving and illuminates that we all, apparently, have preferences for the different types of thinking involved in problem solving. Okay, so what does that have to do with team building? Where I was trained in team building was largely put people into a novel situation—a novel social situation, a novel problem solving situation out on the side of a cliff, out in the middle of the woods—and have them solve a problem together, something that is intrinsically important, like we’ve got to get back so we can eat or something. And I had a chance to, when I was in graduate school, to do my thesis on comparing the development of teams when they learn creative problem solving and when they are doing these outdoor based training activities. It turns out both were incredibly vibrant in different aspects of developing trust, faith in peers, group process, and so forth. And so what I thought was, “Huh... what if we had people come together and solve problems together and have that be what was drawing people together?” And we all know that when people have this coming together and effectively collaborating, wonderful things start happening in terms of what are dimensions of good team—good teaming?

Karen: 00:06:14

Well, and, you know, it’s funny. I do want to talk about, at a very high level, kind of the styles, but what I love about a good assessment—[laugh] I’ve said before, like, I love good assessments. Like, there are very few that I don’t take if they cross my way. Like, I have more labels on myself for lots of different things between MBTI and the Predictive Indicator, the PI. And, anyway, I love a good assessment. But what’s interesting about this is other people, if you are familiar with these kind of thinking preferences, can start to understand where your shortcomings are and where your energy is. It was clear before I had the label, for example, of an ideator, it was clear to me, to other people around me that that is what I did. And, you know, my family would laugh and say, you know, “Let’s not ask mom where we should go to dinner, because she will mention 10, 12—we’ll be driving to a restaurant, and mom is still throws throwing out ideas.” Like, we will have all decided and be headed to the restaurant. And I’m saying, “Oh, but we could also go there.” As we drive by, we could also go there. They’re like, “Stop. We have converged on the plan, mom.” But I can’t stop myself when I start to ideate, so I get very energized for that. And I didn’t quite realize how you can see yourself in these profiles, when you realize that it’s all about where your energy rises and falls. So let’s talk a little bit about how other people manifest in this, like, where their energy rises and falls, just at a very high level, if you don’t mind.

Sarah: 00:07:43

Sure. I mean, this was, I think, the genius of Girard’s theory, which was to solve a complex problem of any kind, whether it’s where are we going to dinner—not so complex. But to solve a problem of any kind, you really need to bring together four different kinds of thinking. You need to clarify, like, what’s the challenge; what’s going on, so you solve the right problem. And then you need to ideate. You need to come up with ideas to solve it, but you can’t stop at ideas. So you clarify and you ideate, and then you take the best ideas and develop a solution, but still you’re not done. So you clarify, you ideate, you develop, and then you take the solution and you implement. And when you can put those four types of thinking together, you can make a home run solution. I mean, it’s beautiful. It’s simple, science-based, works like a charm. There’s just one problem, which is users. Because human beings, when we clarify and ideate and develop and implement, have thinking preferences. We like some and not others. In fact, most of us like one and not any of the others. So, like you’re describing yourself, you get very happy in the ideate stage and want to just do that and keep doing it and unconsciously do it. And it is fun for you. And when it’s a fit for the group, it’s really great for the group. And when it is no longer a fit for the group, you’re probably still doing it anyway, which is the challenge here.

Karen: 00:09:11

Yeah. And I think that that’s something that, again, knowing these styles, I can see it in others. I know when I should really ask a developer to be doing something that I have no business doing, for example. I also think that there’s value to understanding yourself because you can rely on tools for your shortcomings. Right? Like, I may not be as strong of an implementer as I naturally would be, but I now have tools so I can get things done. I know what to put into place so that I don’t stall at any part of the process, which I think is also part of the, the magic of knowing and seeing yourself in the profile and seeing where you’re strong and where you might have to shore some things up with tools.

Blair: 00:09:50

It’s kind of like trying to see the nose on your face. We all know we have one [laugh]. We all know we have one, but sometimes we need a mirror to actually see it and see it in its fullness. And that’s where assessments come in. We may know we have certain preferences, but a well-made assessment can be a mirror, and so we can see where we have a real energy to go and not. And we have tools, not only to help ourselves, but also to lead others in those areas where maybe they have less energy or less desire to pay attention there. So it makes it easier.

Sarah: 00:10:38

Can I pop in and say that, you know, really what we’re measuring with thinking preference is not capacity to think. Everybody can clarify and ideate and develop and implement, and if you don’t like it, you can use tools to do it better. What we’re measuring is just preference. It’s just where you go automatically. It’s your go-to way to start solving a problem, and you’ll stick with it until you run into a wall, and then maybe you shift to another kind of thinking. But really the generous nature of this assessment is it’s not telling you whether you can do it or not. It’s just indicating where you’re likely to go when you’re not paying attention. And then there are tools in the whole system to edify your outcomes regardless of your preference. So I love your point, Karen.

Karen: 00:11:26

Well, and, you know, again, kind of, you know, I have in the back of my mind that this is an audience of largely insights professionals. Yes, some marketers, some data and analytics folks, but a lot of people who do consumer research or customer research or patient research for a living, and a lot of them are clarifiers. It is a business of asking questions. And sometimes there are people who enjoy asking the questions so much that they don’t necessarily want to go further than that. They want to keep asking. Or, you know, maybe they’ve clarified project objectives, and they are ideating on methodologies, for example. And they really want to do that, but they do have to actually develop a proposal to win the work [laugh]. And then, you know, then there are people on teams who it’s like, “Okay, I’ve got suppliers doing this for me, but—and they’ve made some recommendations, but now I really need to do this action plan to make sure my ideas, you know, get delivered to the C-level executives and are actually out there.” So my wish for the audience is that, you know, they check out the [show notes 00:12:26] and start to think about how this profile can manifest in their occupation, not just in themselves personally. And, and then kind of my wish is to shift our conversation into the book. But before we get into the book, anything else you want to add that could be foundational for, for the listeners?

Sarah: 00:12:43

Well, I will say Blair’s PhD research was really in looking at how preferences show up in careers, because people are attracted to jobs that call on—often that call on their favorite thinking preference, and he’d be the guy to check in on that with.

Blair: 00:13:00

I was just going to underscore, Karen, what you said. It turns out different occupations have different flavors of problems that get served up. And, you know, in the old person environment theories of attraction, selection, and attrition, it’s a really insightful thing you’re saying that, if there are many—many people are clarifiers, and they need to be convincing people who are fundamentally ideators or developers. It serves you well to know who are you communicating to, and what kinds of messages do they prefer. Or, when given an idea, how do they like to have it couched so that they can most readily receive it and get on board with working with you on implications and actions? So thanks a bunch. You came up with the “so what” on my dissertation just like that.

Karen: 00:14:06

Yeah. Well, you know, like, I’m glad you put in all that effort [laugh]. Actually, full disclosure, I—at one point, I did sit down with Gerard, and I really wanted to get into that program. It was unfortunately, at the same time that all my kids decided it was time for them to go to college.

Blair: 00:14:21

[laugh].

Karen: 00:14:22

So I’m like, “Oh, fine. Mom on the back burner once again. It’s fine. It’s fine.” Anyway, it’s a great program—and all the work that you’ve done, I’m so glad it’s such a part of it—and it’s such a part of CPSI. But really, I desperately want to get into this book that is recently launched. When this episode goes live, we will be celebrating this launch for both of you. So, congratulations. So it’s called Good Team, Bad Team: Lead Your People to Go After Big Challenges, Not Each Other, which I think is a genius title. And really, in the book, and I think you even say this, it’s everything you need to lead a good team. So we’re switching the conversation into leading good teams, and the book is broken up, for the audience kind of paying attention, into—really into three parts: knowing yourself, knowing your team, and knowing your challenge, which I think those are three, like, great—just great pillars for the whole book. I was just so pleased to see how you put it all together. It was an excellent job, even if I’m a bit biased. But let’s just talk a little bit about kind of the book and how it came to be and why it came to be and the importance of leading teams with this mindset.

Sarah: 00:15:26

Sure. Well, I have to say, we started about three years ago when Blair announced he was going to retire. And I said, “No. No.”

Karen: 00:15:34

I was going to say, I think that would be a hell no. No, no, no.

Sarah: 00:15:37

That would be an absolute full stop no, because, you know, I just—for me, the driving force of the work we do is to bring the research that’s known about how to collaborate, how to solve problems, how to bring deliberate creativity into your solutions. It’s known, and yet it isn’t disseminated. Like, I had a very good college education, never heard this. How is this a missing piece? And that’s really driven our work. And Blair has done a brilliant job bringing that to teams around the world and bringing it into the FourSight company, which is a much easier way for teams to get it. But the idea of Blair leaving the career world with all of the institutional knowledge he’s developed about teams that go beyond the FourSight framework, that go beyond just the research on creative problem solving and how these preferences work—the idea that that would be lost just seemed criminal to me. Like, wait, we really need to do our very best to put this in some kind of package where other people, who are not paying you top dollar to be the super-world class consultant to come in to work with them—like, anybody could get this. How could we make that? So we decided we would write a book. That would be great. Good plan. I used to be a writer and freelance writer. So, you know, how hard could this be? So we take a course, and we go to the coach, our writing coach, and we say, we want to write a book about FourSight, about teams. And she was like, “Well, you don’t write a book about something.” And we said, “Well, this is kind of going to be about something.” She said, “No, a book is for someone. So you need to understand, who are you going to write this book for? Who is the audience this is going to have the most impact for?” And we really had to think about that for a while. Like, we could write it for anyone. But the point of highest impact seemed, to us, to be a team leader. Like, if a team leader could understand this research and this practice and these approaches, it could really have a profound effect.

Karen: 00:17:47

Yeah, I’m curious now. When we think about that team leader and we think about having that impact on that team leader, if you had to summarize in a quick sound bite, why does it matter for a team leader to read this book?

Blair: 00:18:03

Experienced leaders know they’re only as good as their team. It’s the team that gets stuff done, and often that means solving problems. But not all problems come with instructions for how to solve them. They require new thinking. And many of us labor away on teams where “no” has become the most common response to new thinking. No comes—you know, it comes disguised in a lot of different forms. I’m too busy. Not how we do things. That cost too much. Why don’t you write up a report? People get discouraged. The leader gets resigned to the team that they have because, yeah, stuff is getting done, more or less. But there’s this importance of moving things into the next level because teams are at the root of how stuff gets done, whether or not you’re a team at the UN or a board or a business team. That’s why leaders need to do it. And if you get to make a really good team and everybody else in the organization wants to be on your team because you are making such a rocking team, then you, hint, hint, get the choice of [laugh] whoever you want to be on your team. It works out.

Karen: 00:19:41

And I think, I just want to be really clear with the people listening that the best teams don’t just capitalize on one thinking preference, for example. You know, it’s not that the best thing would be for a team of clarifiers to be with other clarifiers, even if they really enjoy each other’s company because they think the same way. That is not actually what makes a good team. So talk to me a little bit about that cognitive diversity you actually should have on a team and how we unleash that.

Sarah: 00:20:10

You know, I mean, if you think solving a problem takes four kinds of thinking, you definitely want a lot of kind of thinkers on your team. But naturally, when you put different thinkers together—I mean, if you, everybody in the organization took the FourSight Thinking Profile and you assigned teams just based on creating diversity, that would not do it because people don’t naturally want to work with people who are not like them, not unless they understand what’s going on. It was John Sedgwick, a big CPSI follower, psychologist in Canada, who said that people are amazing in their ability to spot differences. We can do it in seconds. And without a positive label to label those differences, we tend to associate negative labels with those differences. And that’s true in problem solving too. I might trust you not to steal a stapler, but if you and I start working together and you start going off on your own way of thinking about this challenge, that’s not my way, I don’t trust you anymore. I think that’s a little suspect. And it creates this sort of friction, mistrust, pulling apart on teams. So the idea of just throw people who are different together, that’ll be great. That is not true. You need to throw people together, and then give them clarity on how these different mindsets work and who’s got which one. And suddenly, it makes sense. Like looking through an x-ray lens, you can see what someone’s trying to bring to the problem solving process, and you can see that their efforts, while apparently annoying to you, might actually be the thing you need to solve the problem. And that’s the unlock. And that’s where it becomes exciting to look for people who are not like you because they like to do the work you really don’t like, secretly, but they produce—it produces more powerful results in the end.

Karen: 00:22:02

Yeah. And I think one of the things I like to say a lot, again, if you follow kind of the process, clarifiers, ideators, developers, and implementers, I am low in development. That is not what I like to do, but I really appreciate—actually, I think I’ve worked for in some of my previous roles, like, four developers who just are really good at taking everything and making it better. And I might be begrudging about that on some level, but I know they’re making this idea so much better before I roll it out and implement it. So that is one of the things I have learned, is to really and admire other thinking preferences, because the work and the outcome is significantly better if you trust the process or if you trust the individuals on your team. So I think that would be another takeaway.

Sarah: 00:22:48

You know, I think the research that came through recently on that is pretty amusing, which is research done by Ashley Goodwin, who was looking at who likes to work with whom, who naturally sort of gravitates toward working with whom. And she found that people who like to clarify like other people who like to clarify because they’re so smart, you see, because they solve problems the right way. They’re analytical and organized and don’t rush into things. They also—people who like to clarify also will work with developers, they’re okay—also analytical. And people who like to develop will work with developers and also, I think, clarifiers. And people who like to implement—frankly, they only want to work with other implementers. Everyone else is way too slow. But people who like to ideate, they like to work with everyone. But not everyone likes to work with them, surprisingly, because they’re always coming up with ideas and they never stop. So it’s this funny, like, human condition that we all live in. In whatever team we find ourselves in, that’s just happening. And if we can be kind to ourselves and each other about that happening and then look for the opportunities to connect, instead of shame, on how people are problem solving, like, we are way ahead of the game.

Blair: 00:23:59

The goal—remember we were saying, a mirror into ourselves is once we have awareness of what our preferences are, it then becomes our responsibility to understand how we’re coming off to the world. And, with that understanding, I can wake up or go into a meeting or go in to working with somebody who I know has a different preference than mine, and I can take responsibility for that, for how I’m going to present whatever I’m presenting. It’s the idea of, if it’s not top of mind, that unconscious bias is probably leading you. But if you’re conscious, you can manage it and work towards those collaborative interactions that—where, where things get done and wonderful collaborations and good work.

Karen: 00:24:57

Yeah, I can give an example. You know, I was, I was recently charged with creating a plan for something, and I knew I had taken it as far as my ideator brain could take it, and I had to give it back and say, you know, “This is literally as far—like, I wish I could go further but literally, I can’t go any further on this. This is not the best use of my time. You can do a better job developing this plan further and then passing it off to somebody who will implement.” So I use this language in an organization of people that don’t have necessarily the same language around all of these types. So that’s why I’m excited to finally be here introducing it to my colleagues. So thank you for this gift, because now I have a great vehicle to deliver it with. But there’s more than just that, that I’m excited about in this book, and I really want to go there for a minute. One of the things—and I, in our little pre-call, I said I really wanted to talk to you about this is when you talk about knowing yourself and knowing your team, there’s this other part of making sure people on a good team know their purpose. And I thought, now that’s a very interesting facet of team building that I’d love to dig into a little bit. Can you talk to us about that? Because it’s not just knowing yourself and knowing your team. There’s this other aspect that brings us towards a good team that I’d love for you to expand on.

Blair: 00:26:17

So having. And it’s surprising how often we fail at this. It’s that we’re together. We’re in a group. We call ourselves a team And when asked why do we exist; why are we here, and ask people to write it down on a little piece of paper, and it turns out everyone has a different conception of why this team exists. And don’t point your nose down at the people in the other teams. This goes all the way up to senior executive teams. Ask them why do you exist? Because everybody has a team of executives. Not good enough. So having a clearly understood “why are we here”—that can be done in a variety of ways. The leader could define that. The leader could define that with input from everybody else, or you could do it in a completely collaborative way for everyone to define that. The “how it gets there” gets—we get into the weeds, but all are legitimate. And to go through the exercise—for each individual to go through some values clarification or some generating of ideas of what’s my purpose. What’s my purpose in life? What’s my purpose as a family member? What’s my purpose at work? We can differentiate these things. It doesn’t have to be earth shattering. The reason it’s valuable is we know that when an individual’s purpose is aligned to some degree with the team’s purpose, and even the overall organization’s purpose, it doesn’t have to be a perfect overlay. It can be off a bit. But if there’s clarity and there’s some overlap, the satisfaction with work and the satisfaction with what they do has a better chance of being there.

Karen: 00:28:26

And it’s different from a company mission. Right? So I have an example, as you were talking, and it happens to be somebody you both know of, a qualitative researcher and very close friend of mine and facilitator, very close friend of mine, Siri Lynn, who I haven’t shouted out on this podcast yet, so that’s kind of ironic to me. But she was a qualitative researcher. She was in the business of addressing research challenges or business challenges through, you know, the means of interviews with consumers and customers and delivering quality insights to people that needed to know. But one of her purpose statements was, “I am doing this because I want my clients to look good.” And I remembered that she said that to me at one point, and I’m like, “Gosh, that is an interesting ethos,” right? Like, she has a job to do that is a mission of the company. But her purpose was to make her clients look good in their careers and in their companies and all that. And I never forgot it. So I think it’s an example of that sort of thing. Like, you might have a mission for your company, and yet she had, you know, in her, in her small team when she executed business, she had a purpose. And I think that those two, I love that you called that out in this book, that there’s a difference there. I also love, and I will, I will shout out another thing of the book. See, this is when I start to act like your biggest fans, as I am. Friends, there is an action guide you can download. So in this book, there are QR codes, and you can download a team charter with suggestions for how to work together and tools that you can use. So, if you want to start to do this work, if you lead a team or are part of a team, talk to your cohorts on the leadership team about, you can actually do some of this work with this very practical, useful, usable guide that Sarah and Blair have provided in here. So thank you for that. That’s a nice little feature of your book.

Blair: 00:30:12

Well, we really did want to write a book that would not be just about dry stuff. We wanted to really avoid a book that would be just a long business card, like, “Oh, and if you really want this, the contact...” We wanted to make sure that people who had this book had what they needed to get started on making a good team. And by the way, I don’t know if you know this, but Siri Lynn and I met at CPSI our first year. We went through Springboard together [laugh].

Karen: 00:30:47

That doesn’t surprise me one bit. She is the reason why I ended up at CPSI, too. Right? I was working with her, and at the time it was Linda Haviland at Sun Research Group. And so she brought me in to start that program on her once I joined her and started working with her. So it doesn’t surprise me at all [laugh]. She’s in all our hearts. So, Sarah, you were also going to say something.

Sarah: 00:31:07

I was just going to say that it’s always been part of the ethos of FourSight to take this research all the way from theoretical and make it very actionable. You know, the goal was really to give people something they could use, something that would make a difference for them right away just from reading the book. And you can guarantee it, since Blair’s allowed to retire now, that it’s not a ploy to get you to hire Blair.

Karen: 00:31:31

[laugh].

Sarah: 00:31:31

[laugh] We had to make the book the full stop delivery vehicle. So there we are.

Karen: 00:31:36

I love that. So there’s another concept in the book I want to talk a bit about, and I think, you know, we put this in our kind of brief, but this idea of a hands-in approach versus a hands-on approach, can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that’s an important thing to just pause on and take a minute to acknowledge.

Sarah: 00:31:56

Sure. Well, that comes, at first, from the fact that, when we do research and look at, among leaders, is there a prevalent thinking preference? You know, you say among insights people, probably clarify is a high preference; and among salespeople, implement is a high preference; and among IT people, probably develop is; and advertisers, maybe ideation is. But among leaders, there’s a distinct prevalence of implementers in the leadership group. Maybe 60 percent of leaders have a preference to implement. And when you look at the description of who likes to implement, these are people who are persistent, determined, want to move to results, want to get stuff done, and are willing to just get into action first and get going. That is great. That is a great thing to have on a team. And often those are the people, as individual contributors, who really stand out as high performers and therefore are often promoted to lead teams. And that’s all well and good until that preference unconsciously causes leaders to think, “Hey... the way I’m going to contribute as a leader is the same way I did as an individual. I’m going to get in there, and I’m going to get stuff done, and I’m going to push things over the line.” And before they know it, they have functionally made themselves the center of any movement on a team, inadvertently not trying to be egotistical, just because that’s their move. That’s their success strategy to get stuff done, and people see that and start coming to them to get stuff done. And instead of having the team doing what Blair was talking about, taking on challenges and solving them independently and creating this sense of, “we are a team; we’re together,” everybody sort of takes a step back and tries to bring problems to the leader to solve. And that is one of those blind spots that when you see it, it’s like, “Ah. I see that happening. I didn’t mean for that to happen. That wasn’t at all the intention.” But as soon as you know it, you can check it. And you can go from being sort of a hands on leader, solving every problem, being involved in every solution, to recognize that you’re contributing more to the team—if you can start recognizing what everyone else can contribute: their clarifying energy, their ideas, their solutions—and bring that together and hold the space for the team to solve the problem. So, if you go from, you know, being a hands-on leader to leading a hands-in team, that’s kind of the secret sauce, I think—the whole thing.

Karen: 00:34:44

Yeah, I love that. Thank you. And I think it’s incredibly, you know, powerful to start to think about the difference there because I think there are a lot of leaders that, you know, feel that they can step in and solve a lot of things themselves, and maybe they even think they should step in and solve a lot of things themselves rather than tapping into that diversity of thought that comes from all of the different kind of preferences. I do want to say for people listening, not to mislead people, that there are people who are strong in two areas, for example, and, you know, maybe they are—you know, they’re drivers who get things done, or maybe they’re integrators that are actually, you know, good at or naturally inclined to do all the preference or have all the preferences equally. They’re integrators. Right, friends? Yeah. So, you know, this isn’t just, you must fit in a bucket. There are people that have different balances in place. So it’s a really great tool to be looking into. Are there other watch outs? We talk a bit about the watch out for leaders to not be too hands-on, but what are some other watch outs for—you know, signs that maybe, you know, either an individual has to shore up some of their watch outs, or whether a team has some watch outs that you should be on the look for?

Blair: 00:35:56

I would watch out for a team, over time, becoming homogenous, attracting people who are just like them. This is especially for teams that develop over a long period of time. They might start just naturally getting very similar types of thinking, and it becomes very comfortable. Like, you get me. You know, we finish each other’s sentences. Man, this is so comfy. That’s a watch out, and it can sometimes be a big surprise. I worked with a leadership team, a group of partners of a big PR firm, and they were very surprised that 20 out of 21 people on their directorate were the same profile.

Karen: 00:36:44

Interesting.

Blair: 00:36:45

They had enough self-awareness to say, “Whoa, oh, no.” And they were able to say, “This makes so much sense because of the industry we’re in and why.” However, they were a national firm and they had professional HR and OD. They knew that they hired with a great deal of diversity and inclusivity, but here they were—evidence that the people getting promoted were of a certain type. Not gender, not race, not education, but something that was under the surface. And you know what? Right there, they changed their agenda of the meeting and said, “We need to start thinking how are we going to figure out career paths for these really smart, talented people who don’t seem to fit this other thing?” I hope that wasn’t too much of a—that’s what I thought when you asked the question.

Karen: 00:37:50

No, no, it’s great. It’s great. And I think—I think, yeah, I think that’s one of the benefits of doing a team assessment, right, is finding out where you have gaps, and how can you perform at your most optimal as a team if you do have gaps that are critical along the way. If a company doesn’t have clarifiers, for example, they might be, you know, coming up with ideas that are addressing the wrong challenges altogether, and that will not bring them to the right place on the shore. If they’re traveling, you know, if they’re on a boat that’s traveling and they haven’t even clarified where they’re going, they might get there really fast [laugh] or they may end up in the wrong place because they didn’t stop to ask, “Hey... where are we going?” So, you know, I think that’s a great thing for hiring and avoiding that homogenous workforce. I think that’s great.

Blair: 00:38:32

It can be surprising. We had a big session, and there was a couple hundred people in the audience, and at one point, we had people pair up and just pair up with somebody with—next to you and bring your little feedback with you and compare. And up here in the front, I noticed one couple. They were really being animated, and they were getting excited. There were smiles on their faces. And one guy was an older, frumpy white guy in a frumpy kind of suit and probably looked like me.

Karen: 00:39:11

[laugh].

Blair: 00:39:11

And the other guy was clearly a guy in his twenties, very fit, and a very fine looking—you know, and an African American guy. And at the end of this, I asked, “Any insights? Did you find anything?” Well, both of their hands shot right up before anybody else had a chance. And the two of them stood up, and the younger guy jumped in. And he said, “I have been feeling like a fish out of water, and I’ve just met,” you know, whatever his name was, “and we are exactly the same.” And the older guy said, “I’ve been looking for someone to mentor, and I’ve just found somebody that I can help guide through his career.” At some levels, they couldn’t be more different, and it couldn’t have been a more incongruous pairing. But at another level, it was really a wonderful moment.

Karen: 00:40:11

Yeah. Yeah, that sounds wonderful. And I’m so glad you had that. I’m sure you have a million stories like that, too, from, gosh, how many, you know, teams have you worked with, you know, probably training at, what, 1,000 companies and, you know, having trained more than 5,000 people in your career. So I do wish you luck in your retirement [laugh].

Blair: 00:40:34

[laugh].

Karen: 00:40:34

Sarah, you’re not going anywhere.

Sarah: 00:40:36

You should wish me luck in his retirement [laugh].

Blair: 00:40:40

[laugh].

Karen: 00:40:41

[laugh] Full disclosure to those listening, Sarah and Blair are married. There’s a great intro in the book about how they met, a nice story called “the interview” that I think you will all call the interview. You know, ultimately, I think Blair called their first meeting “the interview.” And, anyway, so you can enjoy learning a little bit about their personal life as well. But I can’t share it all with you because I have to be mindful of time. Right now, my producer is probably looking at the clock saying, “Karen, you did it again. You know, we like to keep these between 30 and 45 minutes, and here we are.” Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you two wish I had asked you?

Sarah: 00:41:16

I can’t think of anything. I think this has been so much fun and such a privilege to talk to you and having known you for so long. But really, you know, for you to be seeing what’s new about this book and its intended audience and its, hopefully, impact. Really, really pleased to be part of this conversation.

Karen: 00:41:38

I’m so glad. I’m so glad. So this is your chance to kind of plug how people can find out about the book. We’ll put things in our [show notes 00:41:44], but how might they reach out to you? How can they get their hands on this book?

Sarah: 00:41:49

We’re on LinkedIn, so you can find Sarah Thurber or Blair Miller on LinkedIn and connect with us. And the book is on Amazon, probably the fastest place to get it delivered. And for bulk sales, for people who want to bring this to their team, Porchlight Books has much better discounts. But you can also find updates on the book itself on our website, goodteam-badteam.com. And if you want to know more about FourSight, that’s at foursightonline.com. We’d be happy to—happy to introduce anybody to this theory. We’re very fond of it [laugh].

Karen: 00:42:24

[laugh].

Sarah: 00:42:25

We think it makes a big difference.

Blair: 00:42:28

And, Karen, I guess the last little plug is both Sarah and I have developed keynote presentations, trying our hand at getting out to spreading the word, the contents of this book, to wider audiences, and we’re really excited to do that.

Karen: 00:42:47

I’m so happy for you.

Blair: 00:42:48

That’s what my retirement is going to look like [laugh].

Karen: 00:42:49

Yeah. Aw. Aw. I wish you many, many speaking engagements and many, many sales.

Blair: 00:42:55

[laugh].

Karen: 00:42:56

Anyway, and I look forward to when our paths will cross again. So thank you both for joining me today. Thank you to Natalie, our producer; to our editor at Big Bad Audio, who really does a really good job making us sound better than we think we sound in the live moment, so... And of course, our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in and enjoying this episode, I hope. Please give us feedback if you have any to share, but we will see you next time for our next recording. Bye-bye, everybody. Take care.