Cognitive Diversity in Leadership Teams: A Deeper Exploration

Hi everyone thank you so much for joining us for today's hpe HSS session very excited to have you with us today I'm pleased to introduce a wonderful colleague and friend Dr Megan Seibel she is the inaugural director of The Valor program averaging a tech which is dedicated to fostering leadership and capacity building for Virginia's largest private Industries she's also the associate director and co-founder for the center for Cooperative problem solving at Virginia Tech it is an associate fellow at the occupational Research Center in the UK Dr Seibel thank you for being here I'm going to go ahead and turn things over to you great thank you so much Sarah for that intro and hello everybody so today as you are listening feel free to drop things in the chat raise your hand and ask questions we can make it as interactive as you'd like and um and hopefully there'll be some some good questions we will have some time for Q a at the end and there will be a couple little interactive components um but I just wanted to say thank you again for having me I'm really excited obviously it's always fun when you get to come in and talk about a topic that you're passionate about um I am as director and co-founder of the center for Cooperative problem solving one of the global instructors for AI practitioners around the globe and we're actually in the middle of an international accreditation course this week so this is great timing to spend some time with you um we're going to talk today about cognitive diversity and Leadership teams which we know is a big aspect of the work that we do and if we think about all the teams across a brilliant in a system that is that large and that nuanced there's different ways to sort of think through and frame that it's based on adoption Innovation Theory so I'm not sure how many of you had a chance to listen to the lecture from this same time last year that was sort of an overview of adoption Innovation Theory and talks about our individual preferences when it comes to cognitive problem solving style but there is a link to that I know so you're welcome to go back and listen to it today is going to go into some deeper applications for it although we'll be pretty well Standalone so not necessarily that you have listened to that prior to today I'm hoping that today will take us into a broader space and thinking about implications for the work that we do and the teams that we're on and then if you're interested you can go back and backfill there so uh I am curious and I would just want you to think about a couple of things here and then we're going to throw out a poll but in the context of work I want you to each think about yourselves as agents of change because as individuals who have the ability to ideate the ability to execute the ability to interact with others and operate independently you each have the ability to be an agent of change in the space that you're in and you really should value that about yourselves but as individuals we're also part of teams or a team single team multiple teams different kinds of teams and the roles that we play on those teams can shift throughout the day if we work on you know one team that is very detail-oriented in what it's addressing and then another one maybe a couple hours later where we're thinking about some Grand ideas of where we may go next and the way that we operate on those teams may look and feel a little bit different as we move throughout time and space so from the standpoint of asking you just think about that I'm just curious about if you've ever worked to solve a problem with someone who has vastly different ideas than you do was more or less concerned with the details than you might be or seems to view guidelines or rules differently than you and we're going to open up a poll and you can take a quick minute if you have access to a keyboard or if your phone and answer yes or no to each of these questions and we'll see where everybody falls on that I think everybody's answer that's going to so I'm going to go ahead and end the poll so as suspected the majority of people have worked with somebody who generates ideas utilizes structures to implement those ideas in response to rules and group Norms differently than you do a lot of us some of us may have an opportunity to work with people who are pretty similar to us in these spaces on a regular basis or in one or more areas there's a difference but for the most part we've had a chance to be in situations where there's just something about the way the other person is operating that feels different than the way that you operate and those differences are really natural because we're all each individuals but they those differences depending on how well we manage them and how well we utilize them and how that difference in is presented right that cognitive diversity so to speak is presented to the group it can either be helpful um hopefully it's at best neutral but it can also be hostile to the problem-solving environment so it's a really interesting thing to kind of ponder so I appreciate you answering those questions so we've got four learning objectives for our time together today to differentiate between adaptive and Innovative preferences when it comes to generating ideas utilizing structures and responding to group Norms related to the three questions we just answered but I'll explain a little bit more about each of those areas in a moment we're also going to compare agents of change groups within organizations and teams and identify consensus groups and outliers so like I mentioned before each of you is an agent of change but that then puts you in a different placement depending on the groups you're working with and inside of a larger organization we'll Define precipitating events pendulum of change and spiral of change since we know change is constant but depending on how that change is happening and whether it's planned or unplanned or how large or small that change is it can really have a different impact on organizational response and then also think about in the end just the value that we need to place on cognitive diversity as we lead and manage change so just to start I'll throw out some kind of leadership food for thought I'm not going to belabor a lot of time on this side but these four areas of values Vision communication and Trust are absolutely essential inside of any organization and then the sub teams within that organization in order to really be able to navigate change well we know we need to be able to interact with other people none of us are going through any of these changes alone and so the way in which we're executing and the way each of these factors is driving the way that we're functioning and the way that our behavior is being executed and perceived by other people is really critical so this is particularly important as we talk about some things and I'll share with you today a couple of case examples of looking at some of the sub teams inside of organizations and think about how we might think about that then in the larger context of carillion for example and where these things are so critically important um just to throw up and have be front and center are the institutional core values for both quilling clinic and the school of medicine so you'll see some overlap between these two lists I tend to revisit these each time I have a chance to speak with you all just to make sure that we keep those front and center because just like those things that were so important in executing good leadership you'll see some of the some similar language in these that has to do with at the end of the day living out a vision and based on the way that we're communicating and the amount of trust that we have both amongst ourselves as professionals but then also in that interface we have with the public that we serve and being able to do that in an effective way in an efficient way depending on how we Define those and that has a large part to do with our own cognitive preferences and how we are addressing and framing problems so um the cognitive function schema I'm going to share with you this is based on the original work in adoption Innovation Theory by Dr Michael J Curtin uh out of the UK he passed away two years ago at the age of 94 but began this work in 1969 and had been studying it on on beyond that so this is a very simplified version of what goes on in on our internal and external environments but I just kind of want to throw it up for a placeholder that sort of purple Cloud at the top uh is the internal cognitive function that we each have so cognitive affect and effect are in there and then cognitive resource where we store away things for learning um we know we've got a potential level like IQ for example manifest level which would be the accumulation of our education in there um and we've also got things that drive how we make decisions and the things that we value as we internalize aspects from our environment in their cognitive effects section though it's also the way in which we prefer to do things so for example our environment um which could be the the climate or the cultural policies and procedures that we have to deal with inside of an organization or something that we're reacting to um some sort of a disaster or crisis for example that changes what it is that's happening so these things happen in our environment around us we internalize aspects of that in order to make use of them and then react to them via motive and then that Fosters our learning and what happens in there the way that we generate ideas and think about how to utilize structural elements to implement our ideas as we're thinking about what to do with this information how to respond to the problems that are part of that situation for example either by gathering more details and information or loosening things up so that we can go about it differently is hardwired and that is a big piece of cognitive effect and then our behavior is the external piece of that that we maybe show to the world and other people observe and it may be in alignment with what our preferences are in thinking about how we're navigating these complex problem spaces but it may also be a combination of our preferences and then what the situation is mandating of us or requiring of us and the skill that we have developed over time that we can bring to the table in order to execute so but the behavior is pretty flexible in that respect compared to our preferred style which is stable over our lifetimes um so that's a big piece of it now either as part of this conversation or beforehand I am curious and if people want to just drop in the chat if you feel inclined to it if I were to ask you how you Define cognitive diversity what might you share um as in sort of a simple definition for cognitive diversity I'm just going to move on and if somebody adds something to the chat we'll revisit it as we can so we're going to take this idea that our cognitive problem-solving style our preferences for the way in which we go about doing things not how well we do them but the way in which we choose to do them is actually a measurable thing uh we have there is an assessment called the kai current adoption Innovation inventory that people can ask access if you would like to it also has a lot of face validity when we talk about it in teams so when we're thinking about cognitive diversity which people are defining as a range of preferences and abilities for processing information yes diversity of opinion and thought the differences in the way people think through problems and creates craft Solutions the ability to adapt and integrate differences in Styles and information yes all on point um and it the way that you define those is a little bit of a mix of our style and our level and so what I will share with you is that just when it comes to our style the way in which we would like to execute the way in which we generate ideas utilize structures and respond to rules and group Norms falls out on a Continuum of very strong preferences for more adaptive um ways of doing things solving problems by making them better so to speak and I'll give you a little bit more descriptive language here in just a second all the way to the other end of the Continuum where it's a very high or strong preference for Innovation where we are solving problems by making things different now the reason I show you this graphic is because of all the data points that we've collected over the um last 40 years it falls out on a normal curve and two-thirds of the population fall within a standard deviation of the population mean so that's where the majority of individuals are there somewhere in the middle with a moderate reference 96 then fall out within two standard deviations so by the time people have very strong and more extreme preferences for adaption Innovation we're talking about very small percentages of points of the population that then reside further outside of that than them so they're potentially having to um cope and work to close that Gap unidirectionally and a lot of the things they do and I'll set that up with you visually here with a couple of examples but I just want to show you this continuum our preference for the way in which we do things is stable but it will be relative then to the problem we're working on or the people we're working with because those things then are probably going to be more adaptive or more Innovative than us in any moment in time but an aspect of the way in which we do things then gets magnified when we come to the table and then we also bring with that some skill some insight some training content expertise um institutional knowledge positional power with a leadership role for example all of those things then influence the group dynamic but can be maximized if we know really well what our style is and appreciate the cognitive style of those around us so um as I moved my mouse I went back apologies for that so let's go on here and just talk about this more specifically so for things that have to do just for example with what we call style of originality or the way we generate ideas and prefer to originate generate ideas people with a more adaptive preference will produce a sufficiency of ideas within an existing framework they'll think about what we already have what we already know what we've tried before and they'll have things that are on point and targeted and because of that when they think about those targeted ideas that they've probably thought through in their minds um before they're expressed openly they would expect a high rate of success of those ideas they seem on point and on target within the structural elements that we're aware of on the more Innovative end when it comes to idea generation these individuals produce a proliferation of ideas whether or not they're needed and they may be more radical or tangential which can also seem really exciting and glamorous but because these ideas may or may not be totally related to what it is that we're trying to accomplish um there's some tolerance of failure of those ideas because of a certain particular idea doesn't work there's another idea where that one came from and we can continue to try on some of those ideas and find something that works but you can see how if we take just those two extreme examples depending on what the situation is or the complexity of it we may need a range of ideas so that we can pick something that's worth trying the other next piece is what we call style of efficiency so this is the way in which we utilize structures to get things done and I'll challenge people when we talk about a word like efficiency because some people have very specific visual of what efficiency means but we can actually have more adaptive efficiency and more Innovative efficiency so on the more adaptive side these individuals think about things like thoroughness and attention to detail Precision methodical approaches when they're pulling together structural elements what do we already have what is in our inventory do we have our list are we fully prepared those kinds of things are in place so that they can use that and use those structural elements to improve something to make it better and they know where those starting points are and it helps them get out of the gate because they have all the information they need up front that makes them more efficient on the more Innovative side where people think a little bit more tangentially and may approach a problem from unsuspected angles will alter the structures or even disregard portions of the structural elements in order to do things differently that dismantling so to speak helps them be more efficient so that would be an Innovative efficiency but you can see pretty quickly how one group might view the other as problematic for them because either to them more Innovative person the structure is going to feel constraining where it's helpful to an Adaptive individual and to an Adaptive individual the looseness or lack of structure may feel daunting where they would want more structure to be in place in order to execute and then the third piece of um in of each of us that contributes to our overall style is the way in which we respond to rules and group Norms or group Conformity so more adaptive individuals will challenge the rules rarely um they typically will follow the rules and figure out what those rules and boundaries are before they begin they're often if they do change something it will be with the support of a group consensus and are concerned more with group consensus before moving on and they'll use the rules at the beginning and know what those structural elements are at the beginning in order to solve the problem it may result in a change of policy or change of rule as an outcome but that is the outcome of it we're on the Innovative side in challenging rules and Customs maybe not worrying so much about Consensus These individuals will actually alter the rules at the front end in order to facilitate problem solving um and then they they may be different again at the end but they'll they'll actually change it on the front end instead of on the back end um so there may be some shifting there but depending on what we need we're going to have some different reactions inside of the institution so why does this matter like does it really matter that everyone comes at it from a different perspective and the short answer is yes especially in really complex problems because very often when we come to the table and we're trying to figure out how to navigate the change that's before us we don't often put in all of the due diligence that helps us accept the change is happening understand fully what the change is and knowing that each person has a different perception of that change how necessary it is how large it is how minor it is whatever that is right we have a different perception of the change at hand we need to make sure that we take the time to agree on what the problem is or problems right if it's a very complex problem um you know Healthcare access for example or how we responded to a global pandemic any of those things that seem are seemingly complex Service delivery um specializations you name it right there's really complex things that we address on a normal basis but there's sub problems and sub-layers that go in there that offer a different complexity so sometimes we think we're talking about the same thing or we think we're talking about the same problem but we're really on a slightly different page and then after there's an agreement to the problem we have to agree on how we're going to approach it and the structural or systematic or procedural things we're going to put into place in order to be able to solve it and so people have to agree on the problem and then agree on the structures that we're going to need or not need in order to solve it and because we know each person views those pieces differently and is hardwired and Carries this innate stability to think about those things differently when we bring that diversity to the table it can cause what we call problem B because now all of a sudden there's a disagreement about approach a disagreement about which idea to execute or try first a disagreement between um regarding maybe who needs to be involved or who doesn't need to be involved and so figuring out where that buys around the table knowing that we'll need a breadth of cognitive approaches to solve something really complex but there may be more or less appropriate times to leverage it in different ways is something that we need to consider so that we can navigate that space well so there's a lot of implications for that so I mentioned up front that we are all agents of change and what I would like to throw out that is by each of you individually as human beings being your own unique person um all people who problem solving are creative and you are all agents of change then as a result of that by nature of being a human being being able to ideate being able to approach problems that makes you an agent of change um individuals at the same time then as you yourself the agent have changed we'll call it an agent of change one you as an individual will contribute to team problem solving from a different place on that Continuum so if we take everybody in the group and map them on that Continuum there's different clusters of people and I'll frame this in a little bit more detail but what we'll call we'll call those the Agent of Change too or agent have changed three groups so at any point in time you as an Agent of Change are part of one of these other subgroups in the team or in the organization and that really influences how you are viewed and how you potentially feel like you can participate or be included in the situational spaces around which we're solving problems more adaptive established policy driven detail detailed groups or are likely to anticipate what we would call a precipitating event that next thing that's coming down the pike the thing we need to be aware of um that are derived internally within the system so if you think about strengths and weaknesses on a SWOT analysis for example those things that are internal to the system they'll be able to see those um like a a policy that needs to be revised so that we can make sure that somebody doesn't get harmed or we don't get have a lawsuit or something like that right there's something inside a strength or weakness within a system that needs to be addressed more Innovative establishments are more likely to detect precipitating events that emerge from outside of the system so opportunities and threats that are on the horizon and so we don't want to disregard people that are in these spaces we really need them right we don't want to miss that next technology that we would like to have be part of the way that we do things so that we can remain competitive for example or knowing that something isn't going to work the way we anticipated and so we want to make sure that we stop putting resources toward it before we have a chance to move on to something else so opportunities and threats are external strengths and weaknesses are internal so we need individuals to be able to point those out those agent have changed two and three groups can either complement each other's strengths if we know where people are positioned and we have people who are have the ability or authority to lead and manage across those boundaries um and they can cover up each other's weaknesses as a result of that and and point out something or provide or offer a different level of cognitive diversity maybe than that the group itself has by being on the outside of that but each of those subgroups even though they may work really well with each other because they have similar styles um might quickly form in groups and I'll show you where this could be problematic if you've got um the Power Authority inside of one of those those subgroups versus collaborating with what they now perceive as the out group right there's we have a lot of social um inborn social kinds of things that we all navigate on a regular space where we've got in groups and out groups right people who are like me people who are different than me people who agree with me people who don't agree with me um the policy that I can jive with is a policy that I disagree with right so we've got all of these things that we're navigating in those spaces on a regular basis so determining where those change groups are just to recap Agent of Change one is you individual you can act as a leader when we're looking across an entire group or organization we can actually figure out where that midpoint is based on the mean of the group the Agent of Change to group or people who are going to be within 10 points more adaptive or Innovative either than an individual or with the mean of the group and so we'll we'll talk here over the next couple of examples about what it looks like across a group a team an organization where you've got this Agent of Change two group that's within 10 points of the mean so there's a bulk of individuals there and then the agent have changed three groups the more outlier groups are going to be more than 10 points more adaptive or more Innovative and they're on the fringes then as a result so graphically let me show you just kind of show you what this looks like here's the Continuum again like I said there's this bipolar Continuum with very strong preferences for adaption at one end very strong preferences for Innovation at the other end and then a normal curve in the middle the numbers that I'll be using for this are based on the population exam samples that we have so the population mean is a 95 just to give it a numeric static point now just know that this could happen anywhere on the Continuum depending on where the group Falls but we'll also talk about implications for changes in leadership and what that means for them as well so based on this population mean of 95 if you are each an agents of change I apologize every time I touch my mouse it does its own thing um if you go 10 points plus or minus that 95 so between 85 and 105 that is what we would call the agents of change to group so that's all these individuals in here it's the majority of the group it's about 40 percent of any group that depending on how many people are in the group but roughly 40 percent because you're going 10 points on either side of the mean and based on the standard deviations and all the all the good stuff that we're not getting into today that's where you've got the the bulk of your people right the bulk of the people who may be ideating in similar fashion May value structures and rules in the same way outside of that then more than 10 points more adaptive we have our Agent of Change three outliers on the Adaptive side more than 10 points more Innovative than the mean we've got our agents of change group outliers on the Innovative side so like I said before this is important because when we think about where we're looking for internal strengths and weaknesses or external opportunities and threats before they are so emergent that it's too late to respond to them we may want to make sure that we know who these individuals are so that we can leverage their input and make sure that we're aware of those kinds of things before they come down the pike so I'm going to show you um a way of mapping a group sort of numerically and because it gives you a visual this is actually a corporate event production company based out of Los Angeles that does you know light and sound for red carpet event type things um that I worked with earlier this year but I found it interesting because if you think about just the senior level people and you could translate this to any company or Corporation across the across the world including something like carillion right that has has a head team but in this one in particular just in this internal working team there was a range of 81 to 144 so moderately adaptive or pretty moderate adaptive preference to a very very high preference for Innovation to the point that on the more Innovative end of that 144 you're talking about a half percent of the population more Innovative than this individual that person also happens to be the company CEO and the person who the company is named after right so this is a reputation-based company who whose brand identity is the CEO's name and who now this person is also far more Innovative in their preferences than the rest of the team behind him then falling on Down the Line he's got a president his CEO account managers event production people senior producers designers on down he had a suspicion that that he knew that he was probably more Innovative than the rest of the team he didn't really know where they all fell when I came in to work with them but what was interesting to me was the value that was placed on even in this very um seemingly creative and Innovative space in which they work the need for um having those points there so then when you plot them out on this piece and you can see where their range is their mean was a is a 104.5 and this yellow highlighted here is the population mean of 95 so the mean of this group is slightly more Innovative now when you think about then for the 10 point range on either side of that that is actually a half a standard deviation so standard deviation is 18 points and so when we'll if we take that and just kind of round it up to 20 that's where we get this plus or minus 10. so this 20 point Chunk in the middle is where you would have a determination and again because I told you earlier it can happen anywhere on a Continuum depending on where the group is let's just take this example this team of people has a slightly more innovative mean their ac2 group is 10 points either side of that so between 94 and a half and 114 and a half so that encompassed these four individuals in the middle then outside of that then they're more adaptive ac3s are these two individuals at this side and the more Innovative ac3s are the ones on the other end and interestingly in that group then is the company CEO knowing that even though he may have these big grants and different ideas about where things are going he realizes the value in backfilling a team that has the ability to help put the structural elements in place and appreciate the details so that they can actually execute now then you've run into a challenge potentially because the people who were required with execution are potentially the most adaptive ac3s on this team who are having to take something that's coming from the most Innovative person on the team and figure out a way to translate it such that they can execute and so what happens then is you potentially have individuals in the middle of that Gap somewhere in the middle of this group that would potentially have the opportunity to play the social role of Bridger for example simple help translate back and forth help make sure things get done and so being really intentional about who's in those spaces to close the communication gap but who also has the skill and willingness to do so um that they're well positioned inside of an organization to do that so that you can have some opportunity to respect across those groups let me show you an example from a much larger group so we'll just say this could be any larger group inside of cruelian for example it's a hypothetical group but I wanted to show you what this looks like when you've got a broader range of individuals and more individuals in here right so this group has a range of 55 to 140 on the Ki which I said you could actually take or do in-depth discussions about and have some face validity so people could say I have a pretty good idea that I have a moderately strong preference for adaption for example and people are pretty good at placing themselves but if we look at what this means then when we're thinking about where to place people in the middle then this Agent of Change group between 85 and 105 again is this bulk of individuals There's an opportunity there for consensus momentum coming to agreement quickly it's the majority of the group and they're and they may be operating similarly in the way in which they are idea generating or utilizing structures you've got more adaptive ac3s more innovative ac3s um and then what's interesting is thinking about where the positional leader is because that's where we may have some power Dynamic if you have the person who has the authority to sign off on something to say let's move forward with this let's not move forward with this let's go ahead and deliver um or hey I've got this great idea what do you all think and they happen to be situated in that primary ac2 group where the bulk of people around them also can add to that momentum and potentially agree to them maybe because of the power Dynamic maybe because they actually are ideating but it increases the opportunity for that then you can see that that would potentially have different implications than for example you've got your leader that is in the more adaptive I mean the more Innovative Agent of Change group and is saying we need to do things differently we need to do things faster we don't need all of those details before we move forward and they're calling the shots when the majority of other people in the organization are not necessarily on the same page with them at the same time or likewise you've got a positional leader that has a more adaptive preference and is saying let's think about that let's gather more information let's slow down let's put some more parameters around that let's make sure we've got all of our ducks in a row and may potentially be so wedded to those systems that they miss an opportunity um maybe that's better than moving too fast with something and having and not being fully prepared but sometimes being overly prepared can slow us down as well so what happens when we know that we need to Value the voices at either end of that we've got like I said earlier this need to close these gaps from one end to the other to make sure that all of these people feel like they are included and part of the organization and we can it causes some coping where we're having to we know that we need to figure out how to communicate with somebody no matter how much we express ourselves it's not getting across right so maybe we have an Adaptive preference and we've explained it and explained it and explained it but it's in so much detail that somebody who doesn't need all of that detail just can't see it it's right they're stuck in they don't understand why all those trees are in the middle of the forest and on the other end maybe you're somebody who has a more Innovative preference and you feel like you've explained it and explained it and explained it but it's been in these big picture idea ways and somebody who needs the concrete detailer needs the specificity can't see it so then we've got to figure out a way to close these gaps and that's where we may think about bridging as far as where might the Bridgers in an organization be they're probably going to be in these Gap spaces between Agent of Change groups so the one that's between the more adaptive AC twos and threes may be able to translate kind of toward the middle there vice versa on the other side they may be able to navigate up and down that Continuum but they could become really important and valued position people inside of that organization to help with the translatability of that so that we can make sure that those ideas get urge and across so any other thoughts on why you think I mean why is communication across a group so valuable does it really matter I had somebody ask me one time why I bothered running a leadership program to teach people how to be leaders when we had other people that we could let make decisions for us I took a deep breath for a minute and thought well want everybody else I'm just curious anybody want to answer that question go ahead I see yep I don't think I can answer that question but I do have another question sure and you know this is a um great visualization for what's going on but in reality we have groups that are skewed one way or another you know um so like if you have accountants you know or that mentality they might be more so in the Adaptive than the uh evolutionary type um mindset and communication and that AC group is a little bit shifted it's not really spread out and diversified it's more hungry and they're going to be obviously variations inside that group yeah you'd expect some more differences so I think this is kind of a an idealized diagram it is idealized and I what I will share is then I think that's where especially inside of um large organizations that have multiple divisions or units inside of um those hierarchies where we have divisions and units but now we're also thinking about power dynamics we're thinking about um content specific specializations to your point uh there are going to be different means within each of those sub teams but then each of those units or divisions will also then have their kind of consensus group and their own outliers within that group so to give you an example I worked with a manufacturing company last year and they as a group all fell more innovative and as a group they were balanced you could figure out where their primary consensus group was and where their outliers were and so they said well are we a well-balanced team and the answer is yes in and of yourself you are a well-balanced team but if you look at your team overall you are completely missing anybody with a strong preference for adaption so when it comes to rolling out a product or finding out what you're missing asking someone if there is could they review this thing and see what else we might need to add to it it would probably be wise to then reach outside of your group and figure out how you can get that perspective that you're missing in so that you can further delineate what it is you're trying to accomplish and so that's where that's like again ideal right we don't always have a chance to reach across divisions or reach outside of our particular units but if we know where those style differences are either in our own teams or um with somebody that we can trust to do that you know that would be a great thing Sarah I appreciate the comments she put in and um so my slides were going crazy a minute ago because I lost my mouse and on a Mac for some reason the mouse wants to advance the slide so you were talking about um and I just want to make sure I dress all over this communication being vital right making sure we're talking about the same problem and depending on what the problem is to your point Francis you may need somebody with a very specialized approach to address certain pieces of that problem so maybe you have people who have a certain skill set who are working on one piece of the puzzle somebody a group with a different skill set working on a different piece of the puzzle and then at some point we're going to have to bring them together to make sure we have everything we need um thinking about folks who can translate to those closer to the ends of the spectrum and how you might identify them as a really interesting piece because um they need to have not only the ability to do that and be positioned well but also the interest in doing that and so it may just be saying you know hey um and so I'll give you an example and it you know it comes out of Virginia Tech you all are affiliated with Virginia Tech but years ago and interestingly I just heard president Sans reference recently um some of the things that were being done when they were talking about the way they were going to change up doing majors and thinking about progress for the future but years ago when they first rolled that out um with the former Provost and they had all of these working groups around campus to talk about what it meant everybody was on a different enough page that about three months into the process they said you know it's been brought to our attention that this may be a little bit too vague and a little too fast we're going to slow it down and put some more parameters around it because they knew it was something they really wanted to accomplish but they weren't going to be able to accomplish it in that way and at that pace um so that's a that's a big piece of it but when you're when you know that that's there go ahead and call out and say you know what we're facing something we've never faced before we know that there's going to take a lot of Minds to do that who would be willing to step into those spaces and who and who can do that and that's easier to do in smaller teams especially in more intact teams where people know each other and they already have some trust and ability to communicate um so and I think that role those the people in those fringes those bridging roles are absolutely critical because if they're not there then we may not be able to get the content or the ideas out of those Fringe groups and and they may be talking amongst themselves but if there's not a channel in place um something inside of the system that allows them to um do that and and offer that message forward either via a person or via an anonymous comment box then we may lose that right so what does that look like inside of an organization and being mindful of that so let me show you just a couple of things where hypothetically thinking again these are big big populations based on the means but I want to show you where we could have some problems um and and then save some room for questions so what we would call the cognitive climate of the organization if you take that that group where the bulk of the people reside and then like I said earlier you now all of a sudden have the positional power inside of there too that can very quickly determine the cognitive climate of an organization it's power of number and the power of status and so it's really easy to get caught up in there to make a lot of decisions have some momentum what seems like consensus because people are agreeing with the power structures that are there but it's pretty easy to accidentally Miss um the people on the outside of that right so if you have a gap then the power of status now somehow is outside of that consensus group then people May respond um not so favorable to favorably uh and you might have a shift in the organization and I put this person on the more Innovative end just because it matches an example that's coming but this person of power could also be on the more adaptive end and the shift goes the other way but what happens then is you might have somebody that comes in they want to change everything right and these could be leadership changes that are planned or unplanned um you know sudden uh or they could you know could be an election for example or it could be um the sudden vacating of a senior's position inside of an organization and somebody else comes in maybe it's because we've gone through a rigorous interview process because somebody's retiring and even though we've intentionally replaced them with this new individual this new individual operates very differently than the bulk of the organization does or the bulk of the people that are there right so so picture that in your mind so if that person comes in and they start changing things they're potentially going to push out people at the other end of that Continuum and with that then you're losing institutional knowledge content expertise years of experience and there's this shift and it sets you up to have a pendulum swinging I was in DC a couple of weeks ago for a meeting and a woman who's a deputy agency director said in her mind when those pendulums shift it is it's correlated with the amount of stress that the organization feels or the people that are left to execute the job feel so I'm going to give you a case example different Federal agency but still Federal agency um this was their group broken out I'm just going to put little figures in here they have their ac2 group in the middle AC3 is on either side now interestingly the person who was in charge their their director agency director is this individual all the way over here on the far right the day that I worked with them she was getting ready to retire so she left the following day about two months later the another member of their team who had the most years of experience also left and it was this individual on the Innovative side so they've now lost all of their AC3 innovators and the new director I hit that one too fast um is this woman over here on the more adaptive side she'd been the deputy director who had been coping to communicate with this more adapted more Innovative director all of those years but had learned how to work well with her even though they didn't see eye to eye on things and now the new director is at the complete other end of that Continuum and everyone inside is going to have to think about how she communicates differently how much more structure she might need for example in the reports she's receiving or how much more structured she might be when she's giving direct feedback or doing annual evaluations for example and the entire mean of the group then shifts when there's a change in leadership potentially like that so now there's internal shifting then of those groups inside where you've got the ability to have some consensus around change and what we're agreeing to so that pendulum is is tricky and we might need to do something you know about it to try and stop it so um Devil's Advocate could be an important person to have in an organization you don't want somebody who's continually antagonistic and trying to rock the boat but someone who's pushing the envelope just enough to say have we thought about everything what if let's speculate about are we prepared for um is is sometimes a really important person to have on your team where there's enough trust and respect that they can speak up and speak out without being penalized for that status of the originator is also an interesting thing to consider and it goes a little bit with who conveys those messages back and forth and who feels like they have the ability to have their voice heard because if you have somebody that is not in a position of power or position where they feel like they can share those ideas there may need to be Provisions in place for that and then knowing that even though the new group in its formation if there is a shift has some advantages it also loses some of the um good things that were part of that old group and we need to know where to stop that pendulum so an alternative to that might be a more of a spiral so if you think about a pendulum is Shifting back and forth sometimes very fast right in these big seismic ways sometimes as a slow-moving ship and by the time the change happens we don't realize and it's too late um but a spiral has some more upward and kind of outward momentum it has a lot more to do with awareness of what the problem is the tolerance for the change that's happening and the ability that we know that we can support each other through that change the ability to have enough understanding about what we're doing and buy-in that it allows us to collaborate and then the success that comes with either something going really well and we want to replicate it or something didn't go as planned so we're going to learn from it and we're going to do that too but each of those successes warrants a new level or a new layer of change and the cycle begins again so that's a nice way to kind of think about that and then I'm just going to leave you with four thoughts that have to do with implications for groups and teams to summarize we'll open it up for some questions but understanding your own own preference for cognitive style your hard-wired stable preference your cognitive problem solving style as an individual Agent of Change will allow you to better understand yourself and then also other members of the groups that you're on or what you can contribute to that group and how you might drive that intact teams May leverage individuals that are part of either those ac2 or AC3 groups in order to Foster usable ideas and structures and gain consensus at the same time so if we have no we've got some consensus around the person who has the ability to sign off on it for example how can we make sure we bring some of the ideas forward from one of those out groups and incorporate it into the discussion where there's the ability to actually do something with it working across groups to maximize bridging and mitigate coping it depends on communication how well we work together and how much trust we have and those areas that I showed you earlier about idea generation utilizing structures and Rule and group Norms are the indicators of communication working together and trust and so if you're curious you can really dig deeper and actually put some numeric values around each of those and figure out where there's maybe some two people who have a similar overall score but a gap internally to that total score or two people who have a very different overall approach but have some proximity in one of those subcategories and it gives them the ability to communicate or work more effectively together as a result of that and then probably key to any of this is this idea that respect and compassion for one another is absolutely critical to the success of the team and the project so I know um it's a lot of information oops and pretty quick succession I want to make sure that we open it up to questions and I'll probably if I can stop touching my Mouse um stop I'll stop sharing my screen and we can just have a dialogue as you'd like or if we need to we can go back and revisit some of the slides if that's helpful but for now I'll stop sharing thank you so much Dr Seibel this was incredible information super useful and and hearing lots of good comments in the background about um how how important all this information you shared is if you have questions please feel free to take yourself off mute and ask those or if you prefer you can put your questions in the chat and we'll make sure that Dr Seibel gets those I mean we can we can have some discussion um I do have a question for you I'll be happy to kind of start us off here um as you were talking I was thinking about different groups that I've been a part of either in the work environment or in volunteer work uh different capacities do you have any tips for people who find themselves at the ends of the that Spectrum they're more adaptive and they end up in a in a team that's really Innovative or they're really Innovative and they they find themselves in a team that's you know more adaptive because that can be really exhausting to find yourselves uh yourself at either end of that Spectrum so any tips that you might be able to offer to recognize that it's exhausting and if you have a very strong preference one way or the other you will probably the majority of the time be happy be having to think about what it is like to operationalize that other direction where people in the middle sometimes they'll say to me well I don't want to be average or I don't want to be in the Soggy gray middle right but they have the ability to flex a little bit more adeptly than somebody who has a very strong preference one way or the other so just acknowledge how hard that is what I will also tell people is know enough about yourself that it doesn't become somebody else's problem I have a colleague who will say to me on a regular basis oh that's just because I'm so innovative like no that is not an excuse to lay this stuff on other people because you don't feel like caring about the details for example right I'm glad that you're Innovative let's figure out what the good pieces are you bring to the table but but don't put that off on somebody else to figure out if you can look have some language you know say to somebody I really appreciate details I love information I want to have as much at my fingertips as I can to feel successful in this please bear with me while I ask or somebody who says you know what I have the information that I need to get started I really need some freedom to work on this give me a deadline because I need a deadline or I'm going to miss it but I would like some some space to work on this and then I'm going to report back to you please stop micromanaging me right so you've got the ability to kind of have some language there but that's that's usually enough to get the ball rolling on some of those things so all right thank you can answer your questions here before we look at the chat yeah it sure did thank you very much all right so somebody um put in here I've participated in several personality assessment type tests such as disc and wondering which of those might best emphasize adaptive versus Innovative Continuum okay interesting so if you ever want to be lulled to sleep with the statistics in the manual I will tell you that Kai in the way that it was based on adoption Innovation Theory as an actual assessment that organizations will use very often for professional development measures with Purity this piece of cognitive effect we've been talking about um because it does that and only that it's actually not correlated with very many other things that are on the market one because it's stable it's not flexible right so there's a lot of things out there like emotional intelligence where it's a great measure but it tells you what about you that you can adjust over time um or some that are a little bit mixed so there's a small level amount of correlation between certain pieces of Myers-Briggs for example extroversion introversion sensing perceiving I mean judging perceiving and sensing intuition but there's not a correlation with thinking feeling because that actually is in cognitive affect and this measures cognitive effect so it's a great question it's not duplicative of the other pieces that are out there but we know that personality is really complex so if you have the ability to take a different um some different assessments or be part of that they will give you different piece little snapshots of who you are most of the practitioners we have around the world if they have to come back to two because of the stability and the impact for Team Dynamics they'll typically go with Myers-Briggs and the kai although disk is used broadly and we're trying to figure out if there's um any overlap between parts of the disk and Kai and then the Gallup strengths finder is another one where there's a lot of interest in what that looks like and since Virginia Tech is a tech is a strengths campus and anybody with a Virginia Tech PID can take the strengths for free which I would assume would go with um some of our Korean employees as well that will have to look into that um there may be the way in which we leverage our strengths may be interesting with compared to being more adaptive or more Innovative in our execution so great question um hopefully that answered it if it didn't drop that in the chat and then someone wrote I'm sorry if you mentioned this and I missed it but there's a quiz you can take to find out the answer is yes obviously this is not um the presentation is not meant to be a sales pitch but um we do have access to it and what I will say is um the center that we started at Virginia Tech is partnering with the kai foundation in the UK and right now we are the the global hub for all practitioner accreditation around the world and we very often will offer it uh to different client groups and people that use it and inside of Virginia Tech we have the ability to do that um at a different kind of access point than than an external consultant might might do that as well so yes if that's something you're interested in I would suggest you get with the Training Division at carillion and we'll figure out what that might look like but you're also welcome to email me directly anyone can buy a code I'll just throw that out there um it's they're reasonably priced and less expense some of the other things but but we can we can chat about that offline uh Dr Seibel I do have another question for you as I was listening to you go through your presentation I was just curious um do folks who are more Innovative uh or folks who are more adaptive use particular language when they're writing or talking about their needs for information or the ways that they communicate has there been anything that has has looked at language usage depending on where you you might be on that Spectrum I would say I would say language usage and then even just um the way that they'll describe something or the way that they think they've offered enough detail to things so sometimes we'll have people who have um a very Innovative preference for example who will try and put down the parameters for something so they might um they'll write out the expectations for something or the directions for something and it's to them it makes a ton of sense because in their mind they know where they're going but it seems really vague um or lacking the specifics that somebody that has a more adaptive preference needs where on the other hand if you're talking about writing out things that would be something where people would have to compare a deliverable to it or are we meeting the expectations and and it's written in a much better a very detailed and adaptive way that can feel really constraining to people on the other end of it because they they just kind of feel hogtied by that um so what we'll say is sometimes there needs to be that that variation I know students for example who are faced with an assignment right and so if someone has a thing and they say this is what you need to do and here's the rubric um and if you think about you know even like med school environment or whatever it is here do this this and this and this in order to get an A for somebody who like that perfect they can execute on that if you were to say to the same person um just write about what you're learning it just is like it's they don't where do you even start with something like that right so um but so there will be some some words more detailed or vague kinds of language and sentence structure um what you'll also see is like those structural pieces um how much is in each paragraph how loaded is each sentence those kinds of things too but I'm not sure anybody's actually gone through and broken down all of the um the linguistic pieces of it but there's definitely you can get a kind of a style difference and then even an expectation difference for what people are looking for if somebody else has to do something with that piece that they've written thank you yeah all right so we have just uh one minute if anyone has any additional questions please feel free to unmute yourself or put your question in the chat um we'll make sure Dr seipel sees that thank you all so much for giving me an hour of your time today absolutely well thanks everyone for being here we appreciate your attendance um if you would like to get CME credit Deb has put the CME Link in the chat for you and also please feel free to go back and watch the previous session about a year ago I think it was and we've put that link in the chat for you as well where Dr Seibel presented um the first part of of this particular piece of information so thank you all so much for being here I hope you have a great day look forward to seeing you at our next session.