Andrew (00:32.034)

Hello and welcome to the TeamCraft podcast. I'm Andrew McLaren and I'm here with Mark Ridley. Hi Mark. So today we're talking about communication in Teams and I'm gonna start us off with a really straightforward, simple, easy to digest concept, not. But I wanted to kick us off with this concept of, well, in organizational speak, it's called communicative constitution of organizations, often referred to as CCO.

Andrew (01:02.634)

but I like to talk about communicative constitution of teams, CCT. And I think...

Mark (01:10.265)

You know you're going to have to explain this for everybody else. So there are a lot of syllables in that.

Andrew (01:16.318)

Yeah, so, so a communicative constitution of teams is basically, I think, a fancy way of saying teams talk themselves into existence, or the substance of a team's work is manifests itself in what they say.

Mark (01:40.316)

And is that distinguishing between teams and groups of individuals? So are we saying in that, that you can have a group of individuals, but it is the communication between the group that creates it or partially creates the team?

Andrew (01:55.394)

really interesting question. So I would say that the perspective that I would take in defining communicative constitution of teams would be that, yes, the things that we understand that represent what actual teamwork is as opposed to group work or otherwise. So you're talking about task and relationship interdependence, united around a clear common purpose, all those things.

the evidence of all those things would be represented in what the team says to one, what the members of the team say to each other. So in that respect, yeah, you can, you can see, you can find the, um, the substance of the team's work in the language that they use and the, the communication that takes place. And so from that point of view, that's what is constituting the team. Um, but it's, you know, my,

The other way of putting it is you can talk a lot about the things that a team does. So, you know, it's got goals and objectives and members or groups of groups of members of a team will get the work distributed to them. So to do this, you know, skill sets, they'll have task work to do and that task work will be interdependent to some extent. But the...

of building blocks of how they go about that work is all represented in language. So the sort of structures that end up existing may be, you know, to you again to use kind of sociological speak would be instrumental. So the task, the stuff that you do, that's the structures, but the building blocks of creating it is in language, is in what teams say to one another, or what members of teams say to each other.

So teams talk themselves into existence. And because I really borrow that phrase, essentially, as far as I'm aware of it, I've kind of offered that as a concept, the communicative constitution of teams entirely abstracted from the communicative constitution of organizations, which is a sociological theory. So.

Andrew (04:24.05)

If you can understand organisations through language, you can understand teams. So as much as your question is about like, okay, so is that specific to teams compared to groups? You could arguably say the communicative constitution of groups just in the same way you could say the communicative constitution of organisations. But again, it's wedded to your definition of what you're looking at. So...

And even in the literature of CCO, Communicative Constitution of Organizations, they talk about that. Like, how do you separate an organization from, say, an institution? So there's certain features. And I won't bore you with all the things that they go into, you know, things like strategy and so on. So the things that are specific to characteristic of organizations that mean the language that you look at allows you to fathom the fact that it's...

that organization is being brought to life through language, the same thing with teams. So task, relationship, interdependence, common goal, purpose, and so on.

Mark (05:33.883)

There's something that I think is really in doing the research specifically.

around communication in teams as we've been talking about it. Something just came out of the blue and hit me, I think it was last week that, and I've discussed it with you before, so hopefully it won't completely come out of the blue, but in thinking about teams and then thinking about communication more broadly than just spoken language, because I started thinking about, and it goes back to that CCO part talking about strategy and we might have time to talk about that, but I started thinking about, okay, what is the cadence of good communication? In the past, we had a fantastic

guest on podcast at Alina Kessel, who talked about the big tent pole moments in Teams. And that really got me thinking about, okay, there's going to be big infrequent communication, and then it's going to break down to all the way down to real time communication. But...

it sort of led me down this path of thinking there's lots of different types of communication and actually there are things like goal setting and often I think I've been trained to think about you set goals and then you communicate goals as if these are two separate things without necessarily realising that actually the

The act of both setting the goals and communicating the goals was all necessary for a team. And you said exactly this earlier, that teams are task and relationship interdependent people. So if we go all the way back to when teams started happening, so early hominids, humans started working together, they started working together because it was more beneficial for them to collaborate than it was to act individually. And that led to all kinds of interesting evolutions of language and communication.

Mark (07:13.949)

But to say that you and I want to work together to create a podcast, we have to say, okay, we're going to collaborate on that. And then we have to decide that's the goal and separate out tasks, which can only be done by communication. It might be nonverbal communication, but it can only be done by communication. So the thing about teams talk themselves into being, whether it's team or organization, it seems that communication is a fundamental necessity for teams. There is no team without communication.

next.

Andrew (07:44.81)

Yeah, so I think that examples are the good one. The idea of, so we set objectives for the team and that the good setting of those objectives leads to good communication, effective performance, hitting our targets, whatever it might be. But those objectives are a form of communication.

Communication is not just done, of course, verbally. So that example is of written communication. But I think it comes back to this idea of where do you see the role of language and how do you frame language and communication in relation to the work that you do? And...

I have a kind of favourite saying of like, you know, when you're talking to each other, you're doing teamwork, which you can see that sort of issues from the concept of communicative constitution of teams. When you talk to each other, you're doing teamwork. Talking is a doing thing. It's an act of sport.

Andrew (08:57.398)

very often we... Communication and language can be an inconvenient feature in how we conceive of what we're doing. So we can see a different way of framing it is, well, the way we communicate is just in service of the actual work. So the setting of, the clear setting or the effective setting of objectives allows us to do the work well.

Conveniently ignoring the fact that the way in which those objectives are constituted and written and conceived, all of that takes place in language. So and you know, you talked about Alina's example of tempo moments or cadences of communication. The there are two dimensions of communication that are always working well at different points in time. They are working.

in different levels of tension with each other. And I think so one of those dimensions is the deliberate and conscious ways in which a team seeks to communicate and seeks to go about its work in language. And that some of that will be best exemplified in you know the cadences of communication, how they hold meetings, the manner in which they

pass information around the team and so on. The other dimension is the unconscious, revealed, emergent side of how a team communicates. And I guess you could characterize that as team culture. It's the representation of the team's culture in language. But, you know, flipping that, I would say, a lot of what forms a team's culture is in language in the first place.

So, and the two are kind of symbiotically linked. They're always reinforcing and reproducing each other. So in that way, you could also say, right, so we have a conscious way that we do meetings. Something that I talked about recently, kind of a way day thing that I was involved in. You can say, right, there are certain types of meetings that we're going to hold.

Andrew (11:21.558)

where it's 15 minutes only and it's information broadcasting. So we're all attending the meeting online and it will be one person who's informing people of something. Camera's off, no response, and there's a really explicit expectation around how communication is gonna take place in that space. And then you might have different forms of interaction that are set up deliberately to achieve certain things. That's great. But...

there is the other dimension is always lurking in the background of how do people actually want to interact and how are they how have they habitually learned to interact in this team. So in that sense a team can talk itself out of existence as well. There can be conventions of language and communication in a team that are

Mark (12:06.18)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew (12:16.362)

squarely detrimental to how effective it is at achieving its goals. And I suppose that's the other side of why I think it's good to be aware of the fundamental gravitational force of language, which is the problems that you identify in a team are both

constituted in and resolved through language. So the very thing that creates a problem in the first place is your only means to resolving it or one of the principal means to resolving it.

Mark (12:48.872)

And I think that's...

that point around teams can talk themselves into being and out of being, I think that's the normal ebb and flow of teams. And I think it's very normal to see. It's really interesting to acknowledge that teams are extremely ephemeral, because even if you think this is a long-lived team, so that's language that is definitely overused in the tech world where I work, but we tend to aim for long-lived teams. But those teams are really ephemeral because people

it's a new team member coming, an old team member leaving, a contractor joining the team. So those small changes, it could be a different project or a different level of criticality of the outcomes of the piece of work that they're working on.

The teams change and I think this is one of those areas where you see those stresses in communication and it's language but it's non-verbal communication just as much in things like culture. You see those stresses in the communication but also I've seen a lot of benefit to having team charters. I know this is one of those things that lots of people talk about but very explicitly around laying out ground rules for what the communication is going to be.

communicate in teams and I think we'll probably come back to culturally how important that is because we're almost talking at the moment in simplistic terms about monocultures people with a shared understanding of the world or at least individually you know so they are individuals in a group but by and large they're in the same culture right

Andrew (14:27.734)

Yeah, there is, there are layers to it because a team, like you say, notwithstanding the fact teams change, are

potentially quite nebulous concepts in an organization as members, membership changes, teams grow, projects conclude, whatever. But there's also potentially an organizational culture that's around that team, and they're not, they're distinct, yet very intimately related to each other. And sometimes they can sit very much at odds with each other as well, you know, and that can then

potentially contaminate or pollute the potential that a team culture has. If there are norms and assumptions and beliefs about the organization, it may restrict the extent to which a team can thrive. And then sometimes that takes you, looks you all the way back around to, well, until you get that bit right, using a team as a unit of

of organizational performance of a way of doing work might not actually be the best approach because you're not created fertile ground to really make teams do that greater than the sum of their parts thing that we actually are wanting to use teams for in the first place. So there's layers of culture. And I think we'll probably come on to talk about it. You've got broader national cultural contexts and things that may.

play into individual people's own perspectives and normal behavior. And then, you know, like the national perspective, national context of an organization. But yeah, I think coming back to the one thing I think I would want to say about the role, the important role of language is that I had this question. I was doing this.

Andrew (16:37.475)

uh, this talk at the, for the home office at the UK government a few weeks ago. And in the kind of questions part, you're getting into a bit of dialogue. Someone asked, uh, Oh, we in, in our work, in our team, we use the word challenge a lot, and she wants to ask, she was, to do with, you know, discussing and solving problems, she wants to know, is that good or bad? And it kind of made me think it's like.

Andrew (17:08.791)

it captures, on one level it captures for me how fundamental language is because after having done a this workshop with this government unit, we were honing in on one word so someone was honing in on one word and going hmm we used that a lot and they were thinking about it and I thought well that's great and it also exemplifies the power of

language. If one word that is used regularly within a team can make someone really reflect on its role and what it represents and how it influences others behavior, then that demonstrates the power of language and how that does constitute a team's culture. The other side of it is, though, was, you know, in my answer I was saying, well, manifestly the word challenge is neither good nor bad.

It's what it means in context of the team. And you would have to ask team members, you'd have to go around the team and say, well, what does it mean to you when we use the word challenge? It's a word that we use a lot. It seems to be a kind of normative word within our group dynamic where when someone wants to question or ask for more detail, they will explicitly use the word challenge and it has a signaling effect. But...

you would need to get a sense of around the whole team. So what is the effect when that word is used? And then you have to kind of diagnose, is it one of those words that is talking the team out of existence? Or is it a word that contributes to the team developing things like high levels of cohesion and psychological safety?

Mark (18:56.215)

But it's so interesting how contextual that is because it's obviously not, you know, that is very specific to them. And I've been in a situation where I deliberately stopped talking about problems and started talking about challenges, you know, because a challenge could be an opportunity or it could be a problem. It's just something that you need to focus. But...

Andrew (19:10.143)

Yeah, yeah.

Mark (19:16.227)

But also on that context thing, I distinctly remember earlier in my career when I was working in exec teams, working on strategy, this is the kind of thing where you have an away day, you go and talk about this top level of strategic communication, how do we set big company goals? And I distinctly remember what would have been the most expensive meeting in the company because it had all of the most senior people in the company really falling apart into a discussion of is this a mission or is it a vision?

is this a vision statement or is it a mission statement? An ultimately entirely worthless conversation because it doesn't really matter you just choose one. But it's really interesting how the power of that communication can be so disruptive. So that team achieved nothing other than try to decide whether they preferred one of those two words.

Andrew (20:05.226)

Yeah, yeah, that's two opposite ends of the spectrum, I suppose, is one word that is a regular feature of team discourse that therefore carries a lot of meaning and everybody's using it and you want to dig into, well, what does it really represent for different people and is it having the sort of effect you would want it to have? Because interestingly, you know, that relates to this concept of

challenging and monitoring behaviour, which is a good team behaviour. But it's an example of perhaps in organisations where in the literature, we have this term challenging and monitoring and it gets imported wholesale as a concept. So because it's called challenging and monitoring behaviour, I'm going to challenge you. But if the word challenge is a kind of loaded term that may in fact be feel threatening to people, then

Mark (21:01.987)

Yeah.

Andrew (21:03.486)

you can still be challenging and monitoring behavior without using the word challenge. I'm not saying that's what happened in this example I was using, but it's funny how the words are the same. The other, the opposite end of the spectrum is where you get sort of unnecessary pedantry over something that is, it's only going to mean something once it goes into the, once it gets sent off into the real world, right? So it actually doesn't matter if it's a mission or a vision.

potentially, you've got to decide on it and then go and see how it manifests.

Mark (21:38.271)

Yeah, and I think actually this is where really trying to think more clearly about the purpose of those discussions, why are people even having those discussions? Why are they talking about a mission statement or a vision statement? Because it needs to communicate something to the rest of the organisation, so it could be a team, it could be an organisation. And very briefly that was...

What led me to thinking about this absolute necessity for communication in teams was this idea that you do have these different cadences. And just to sort of step through them really quickly, because I think we want to get onto the different sizes of teams and how they interrelate. But there is almost the for me sort of four fourish levels of communication, the strategic communication, which is decided the big thing that we're doing. So to go back to that first point, why?

that you and I are leaving aside our independent individualistic tendencies to work together for something so that's the big thing. Underneath that, so the strategic level of communication, underneath that you have the tactical communication so that would be you know we are going to split this thing up and this is the outcome of a shorter chunk of that bigger strategic objective so that will happen less frequently. And then there is also, you were talking about culture which is a type of communication that has to happen

or does happen regardless even if it's not structured it has to happen but for me there's also an operational level of communication which is things that have to happen in the teams that aren't specifically related to the job so yeah a

An example from, let's say, the perspective of a normal white-collar team would be performance review. So you and I need to have communication once a month. It is regular, it is scheduled, but it isn't tactical. It's not related to the project, it's related to the team. And then there's real-time communication, which is we're actually working on something and I may say, oh, Andrew, can you get the lights, you know, that kind of thing, whatever, whatever important thing we're working on. But we actually need to share stuff in the moment. And then

Andrew (23:24.255)

Yeah

Mark (23:47.585)

thing as well which is communication that happens generally without any observation of it happening. It just happens in the cracks but is insanely powerful.

Andrew (23:58.274)

Yeah, yeah. I think it gives us a bit of a segue into talking about structure actually, because going back to that constitutional of teams, CCT, I'm now getting tangled up with it. Yeah, going back to CCT, one of the concepts that is useful

Mark (24:05.263)

Mm-hmm.

Mark (24:12.887)

the cct thing.

Mark (24:17.879)

I'm never gonna be able to say it, so let's just call it CCT.

Andrew (24:27.95)

that is part of that way of thinking is that it gives you, I mean, I'm embellishing it slightly because it's something that I think is really good. So I'm gonna say it like this, but it's a bit like quantum in that, you know, if you take a CCT approach, you can kind of be looking at two things at once. So you can be looking at the micro. So you can find that in the cracks example that you gave, like the water cooler moments, whatever you wanna call them. They are...

they can be simultaneously in the cracks and highly representative of high level structural strategic systems that are that are taking place. So thinking of the language all the time up front as a principal substantive piece of how work is done within a team

jump the levels. And I mean, there's a bit more about that in talking about the kind of nested nature of the dynamics that exist. We'll go on to that shortly, I think. An example, I think, of that, of how do you jump the levels within the same conversation? And actually, an example is.

things like checklists in high reliability organizations. So that's the technical term of things like aviation, healthcare, nuclear power, so on. You know, you've got pre-flight checks that pilots have to do, commercial pilots, fighter pilots. And that, if you looked at that just on face value, you might not even identify that as a...

as a format of communication. It's just a list of stuff, right? But it's a list of stuff that inherently is expected to be verbalized, one. And two, it's a form of routine. So you would maybe put it there as operational communication. It's something that like a performance review or a-

Andrew (26:48.126)

all hands meetings, whatever it might be, there's an operational characteristic to that communication. But it also represents a belief and a commitment to a safety system in the context of the example, say a fighter pilot going through preflight checks. And the reason I think it's quite a useful example is because

it's all tied up in the idea of verbalizing it. So the pilot will go through the checklist systematically one by one, call and response with the engineers, people on the ground before they go for takeoff. It's an explicit form of memory and routine that is verbalized for the individual, for the pilot. It's a form of communication that exists at a team level.

And it also can be aggregated up to representing a strategic orientation of the organization, as opposed to saying, well, we'll just assume that we've all done our jobs and all the things that need to be removed before the flight have been removed and all the things that need to be put in before the flight has been put in and we'll go for it. So it's also an example of where communication, in fact,

explicit verbal communication represents a direct part of the system.

Mark (28:19.555)

Yeah, I think that it rings so true, those...

The point around those checklists, also the callback on some of that language, we see that so clearly in places like the military, in places like professional kitchens, obviously they are strongly interrelated because of their history anyway. When you were talking about checklists it brought back to mind for me, I push back quite strongly on definitions of strategy.

Andrew (28:27.743)

Yeah.

Andrew (28:39.799)

Yeah.

Mark (28:57.259)

in ways that really harm the point of having a strategy. So they will try and pack everything possible into a strategy. For me strategy is really very simple. It is something to be communicated and it is the steps that are necessary to achieve an outcome. So it is not the goal or the vision or the outcome itself, it is the steps that are necessary to do it. And that's really important because then you're saying that this is outcome driven, it's activity driven.

achieve. But what I've also said before, I will never come up with a tech strategy. So you know often I'll get asked in my role working in tech, somebody in the business, like let's say a chief executive would say can you come up with the tech strategy? It's like no, what I can do is I can come up with a tech roadmap, you tell me what the business strategy is, because that's what you want to communicate, the big, you know, what are the outcomes for the organisation. But in

Mark (29:54.157)

that definition of strategy down to the steps necessary to achieve the outcome. Bigger, you know, these are a year, three year goals.

One of the things that is sort of expected out of this, if you're saying, can I have a tech strategy? One of the things that is almost implicit in that or expected by a lot of people is, what are the operational standards we're going to adhere to? So in the strategy, you'll get something like, oh, I want to have a very modern technical organization, something like that, and here's all the things necessary to achieve it. Whereas actually what I'll try to do is much more that checklist approach. So I'll try, here's the strategy, these are steps to achieve big outcome.

But we have principles and we write those principles down and those principles work a lot like that checklist that you're talking about. So they are, if you join this organisation, whether you've been here some time or you're new to the organisation, almost culturally, not quite, but almost culturally, these are the things that are true that could be, you know, we really value quality, we really value performance. And those are the things that are like the checklist. So as you're going through doing your job, you have this evergreen part of communication.

and there is a bit of call and response and there is a bit of observation and monitoring of those things. But it is really important that communication does have these different cadences. It happens occasionally and powerfully, happens once and written down and constantly referred to, happens in the moment to give direct feedback or instructions. So communication is so varied over time as well.

Andrew (31:13.716)

Yeah.

Andrew (31:28.298)

Yeah, I think that kind of evergreen, unconscious, routine-ized part of it is a bit of personal bias here, but massively undervalued. And actually a lot of teams don't... You get examples of teams who do it, but they don't necessarily know why they do it, therefore it's a chore.

then you get teams that definitely need to do it but don't recognize the value of doing it. The sweet spot in between is the team that does it and knows why it's really good is even rarer. But the, I mean the, reading this autobiography of female RAF fast jet pilot Mandy Hickson and

she talks about when she missed a thing off the checklist and it was the pulling the pin out for the for the ejector seat before takeoff. So essentially if she'd needed to eject she wouldn't have been able to eject. She didn't, it was fine. But yeah it would have been different into the story. But it's an example of, she talks about it actually in

Andrew (32:54.674)

Officer not a gentleman. That's really good. She talks about that was that moment where she was like, well, that's a really big lesson that I've learned for free there of the power of the checklist because she'd, it was when she was coming up through her qualifications as a fast jet pilot. So, and in the RAF, they actually have to learn them by heart. So it's not like what are your

your commercial, your EasyJet pilots do before takeoff, they've got it printed out on a book and they go through it visually. The RAF, they have to learn it by heart and she basically missed a step. And she talks about, well, the fear and the realization of how the system is there to support you so that you don't have to.

think and you don't have to always be conscious. I mean, there's another question of, if you have to remember it, then if you remember it wrong, you don't know you've remembered it wrong. But anyway, it was a visceral example, you know? But onto structure, I think you mentioned structure a couple of times. I think we also need to acknowledge that teams...

are nested structures, so they're nested structures of communication. And this is something I think most powerfully, most famously developed by people like John Hollenbeck and John Matthew and other big name researchers and teamwork in America. And they...

developers idea of the kind of multi-level model of team analysis, but they really lay out that structure and how teams are nested in individuals. And even, you know, you've got an individual, yes, but you've also got individual decisions, even at a level beneath that. So at the individual level, you've got the person, you've got the decisions that they make. Then in teams, we often operate in dyads. So communication.

Mark (35:10.499)

And that's two people, right?

Andrew (35:12.33)

Yes, so two people, payers. So a dyadic payer, and I think anybody who teams are not, you'll know that you've got loads of relationships in the workplace that are founded upon payers. One other person that you're close to or that you have close working contact with. And then that migrates up to triads, so three people. So...

Pairs then morph into having a third additional person. And all the time we're thinking about, well, how does communication flow around that system? So, and communication, a bit like the checklist example, communication still manifests within an individual in the decision-making.

what they've heard, what information has been passed to them, what sense they're making of their work on the basis of all the discourse that happens around them and that they contribute to influences what goes on inside your own head and the decisions you make. You've then got the actual conversations and communication you have with other individuals. You then got that migrating into triads, then you've got group level. And what that whole literature talks about is how our understanding is

mediated and moderated on the basis of these different, if you think of like a network diagram, you know, the lines going between the dots, you'll have certain very prominently, you'll have dyadic pairs with really thick lines between them, you know, like people that you work closer with together, that you've got really strong continuous lines of communication. You'll then have.

slightly weaker triangulated lines for triads and then you'll have maybe dotted lines that are very weak ties but there's still lines of communication around at group level and you've got the whole team. And that migrates up again into a system so you'll then have your team as a system but then you've got multi-team systems so you've got you know individual decisions, individuals, diads, triads, group, team.

Andrew (37:19.446)

multi-level teams or multi-team systems, and then the organizational system as a whole. And my view would be from where we started, the whole system, the whole organization is constituted through communication. And then all of those different nested structures are constituted through communication with a very strong representation of how that works at the team level and communicative constitutive teams.

And communication runs the gamut, sorry, all the way through those different structures, you'll see communication being part of the substance.

Mark (37:58.543)

There's something popped into my head as we were, just as you were outlining that. One of the things that I...

I haven't got any specific data on but I know these exist as there's now a raft of products which specifically look at digital communication in ways that would have been sort of a time and study motion before a researcher actually following people around. Actually, I think MIT even did that type of study where they were wearing cameras to see the communication, the verbal and non-verbal communication that's happening between people. But now there's a lot of products on the market that will actually analyze things like Slack messages in a workplace.

to understand where the connections, so where, as you talk about those strong connections, so a social graph, effectively, where are the strong connections on those social graphs, which may be in teams, or may be outside of teams. So there's this really strong thing that, you know, you will often have teams, two teams collaborating, and individuals from those teams are responsible for the collaboration between each other, and they may actually, so let's say, take an example off the top of my head, but let's say there are two teams

codependent in producing a piece of software. You might have a project manager, I'm gonna use an old-fashioned term, but a project manager, and it's the two project managers inside each of those teams that are in that inter-team system, but they're also in this sort of intra-extra-team system where they are the natural link between those two teams. That point around the complexity of multi-team systems and communication in multi-team systems is really, really fascinating.

Andrew (39:37.162)

Yeah, it's what I'm so it's a it's a really long but really interesting paper. Multiple authors, but Margaret Luchano is the person that I've met and heard speak about it. So it's a paper called the double edged sword of communication in most team systems. I've probably butchered the title there, but definitely the double edged sword.

Mark (40:00.015)

We'll find it and link it in the show notes.

Andrew (40:02.43)

Yeah, it's a really great paper, but that's exactly what she talks about, she and her colleagues talk about in that paper, which is an emergency, like an accident scenario, so multi emergency medical teams working together. And the double-edged sword is that whole idea of where you've got a team that's

working on something. So in that kind of mass casualty scenario, you've got one team working on one casualty, another team working on another. And what you've got then is there needs to be some coordination around about those two things. I'm oversimplifying it here, but there needs to be coordination between what those two teams are doing.

So you need what exactly what you're talking about is you need a leader or a supervisory position in each team to take the role of interfacing so that the overall work is proceeding effectively. And that can be to do with prioritization of which casualty is being medevaced first or it could be to do with resources. So many different things.

But the reason it's a double edged sword is every moment that those supervisory roles, those team leaders, let's call them, every moment that they're interfacing with each other to update and coordinate, they are not with their team seeing what's happening and understanding the progress that their individual team is making. So it's constant trade off between monitoring the progress of

individual team and contributing to the overall supervision of the system. And you can't, there's no silver bullet to it, it's a continuous trade-off, it's really interesting.

Mark (41:55.779)

Yeah, I see something similar actually.

If I'm teaching teams how to respond to incidents, and these are tech incidents, not serious life-threatening incidents, the way that will be structured is there is somebody, an incident manager, and sometimes called an incident commander, but an incident manager is responsible for the outward communication. That's their job. And they will check in with the teams, but they have to, by definition, not be part of the team that is actually fixing the stuff on the ground, because that is all consuming work, and you don't want those people distracted. So it's really interesting

how you have those different roles. But one of the things, I'd like to come back actually to the CCT point, because you said that there's, I'm not holding you responsible for this, but one of the comments that you made or the sentences that you used was that teams can talk themselves into being, which is really interesting, it's really nice to think that way, and probably that's what we think of as an actual team that are working together and bonded.

But it's very rare for teams to actually make the decision that creates this group of individuals. Normally that's something outside of the team. Using silly examples, if I decide that I want a team creating a mobile app or somebody that is doing front of house in a restaurant decides to schedule somebody onto a service, then that is inflicted on them. For most people inside most types of teams, they are dropped into a team and it could be,

their team constitution also changes because I make a hiring decision, I bring a new personality into the team. So how do we resolve that, that teams talk themselves into being, but generally the construction of a team is something from the outside?

Andrew (43:40.854)

think you'll have to tell me from your experience. I would say that's that phrase takes you so far in understanding it but probably does your example demonstrates the limitations of that idea of teams talk themselves into existence and I would say you the intention around the idea of teams talk themselves into existence is

Mark (43:42.92)

Yeah

Andrew (44:07.346)

it starts and stops with thinking about the role and importance of communication in what it represents as a material part of what a team does. I wouldn't then I wouldn't say that the formulation of a team always emerges from random people talking to each other. There will be.

there will be some external influences, the practicalities and realities of organizations is that. But at the same time, the practical quote unquote, practicalities and realities of organizations, a lot of those practicalities and realities will also be manifested in language. So the brokering that takes place to define a team as existing or define the need for a team.

Mark (44:37.57)

And yeah.

Andrew (45:01.318)

will in itself probably be principally manifested in communication. So, but then once you've made the team, if you want to call it that, you think of the playground of picking your team. It's not of course anywhere like that in real life usually, but once the nominal team is, has some form of identity in terms of who's in it, what happens from then?

you will find a lot of the understanding of what the team is, how it operates in the way that the people talk to each other.

Mark (45:38.891)

I think there's...

It's very neat for you to turn that around on me. But something did pop into my head, as you said it, just in case you made me answer it immediately. But the one example that stands out, and I think it demonstrates just how strongly wired humans are to look for collaboration, and also look for this sort of in-group and out-group, so the group membership. The, years ago I used to run hackathons, hack days, so this is where you'll bring different people together to, over the course of a couple of days, very, very quickly create

product. And one of the times that I was facilitating this, we specifically created the teams. So we created archetypes and asked people to select their own archetype. And then we randomized, sort of randomized this up and then selected people into groups. So we did that almost that playground thing for them and said, okay, you for a group, you for a group, you for a group. And each one had, they had to represent different archetypes. And we actually said that group was

to come up with an idea and then their responsibility was to pitch the idea back to the group and then they would be free to go and choose whichever group they wanted afterwards. Now there's something really strange happens, something that I wasn't expecting because I was expecting we'll come up with a bunch of good ideas and then it will be a free for all and people will go and coalesce around the ideas that they wanted. That didn't happen. Almost I would say 80 or 90 percent of the groups that we had formed artificially then self-selected into their own idea and I think there is a bias that was their idea and

ownership towards it, which we can't discount. But there was also a bias that was then their in-group. This was the group that they had already spent some time with. And to an extent, even though it was two hours, that was a stronger bond than going out and going through that pain of reconstructing a new team. And these were definitely teams, in as much as they can be in that short amount of time. They were demonstrating all of the things that we would expect, not just of a group of individuals, but actually a group of people that really did share an outcome.

Andrew (47:40.27)

Yeah, I think that's a really good example. And you can see also contained within that example of how the role language would have played in forming those bonds, in developing a sense of identity around a common purpose. You know, there's a pretty well evidenced idea that good teams are teams that participate in the development of their goals.

you'd sort of viciously embedded that within the activity they did. So they'd participate in the development of a goal. And when other groups were pitching, they're pitching a goal that they hadn't the other groups, members hadn't necessarily participated in that. So it's interesting. And, you know, the way in which you talk and the way in which you contribute to that process through language, it.

Mark (48:28.346)

Yeah.

Andrew (48:37.126)

it's always having an embedding, entrenching effects and entrenching process is a bit negative, but I think it's a great example.

Mark (48:46.135)

And...

To take that a little bit further, I'd like to talk a bit about where language doesn't work so well. So this was something, and this is right at the top of my mind because I read a fantastic book last week called The Culture Map, which is by Erin Meyer, and it really strongly reflected some of my experiences. So last year I was working with a French team, and this is that situation where you think that language is working, but it's not. It was really, really interesting for me.

with companies that have.

had the essence of some other cultures in it. So I'm on the board of a Swedish business. I worked inside the FT, the Financial Times, which is owned by Nikkei and so has somewhat of a Japanese culture that comes down into the FT itself. But last year I was actually working in a French business and I was a little bit concerned to start with because my French is really terrible. I can listen just about okay, but I definitely cannot speak it at any level.

And so I went into this company thinking that the problem that I would have was the really overt communication So I can't speak the language and I went in prepared to get around that as far as possible and you know these days it's much easier to Translate even translating on the fly is now much more possible But I would lean into my habit of using a lot of documents So writing a lot of things down and that meant that we could sort of Asynchronously work without language being too much barrier all of my direct team

Mark (50:20.889)

had fantastic English much better than mine was but the absolutely fascinating learning for me was where it fell down on culture but

cultural communication and it wasn't that my communication of direct messages was unclear, it was that my communication of indirect messages wasn't clear. After a couple of months working in the business, my boss, so my boss and I, Isabelle, and I would catch up every week and she came and she said, she was giving me feedback and said, Mark, it's something I need you to know, I'm having to go around and speak to your team after you've spoken

sort of translate for you. I was like, oh really sorry, I didn't realise it was a problem. It's like, no because you see, you'll say something that you're, and I understand what you're saying, but they think, they hear it in a completely different way. And so what I came to realise is I was doing this to make that more clear. I was doing that very English thing where somebody would come to me with an idea and I would listen to it and I would say, oh that's very interesting, that's very interesting, I'll think about that. What

is so if you're English you know that what I've just said is that's a ridiculous idea I think you're an idiot but if you're French what you hear is he thinks that's very interesting he's gonna go away and think about it and

Andrew (51:44.895)

Yep.

Mark (51:47.063)

So I sort of experienced this and lived through it, but what Erin Meyer's book just did absolutely fantastically was talked, she breaks down communication over eight different scales and I won't go through them now, but I really strongly recommend people go and read the book. But although the French and English are similarly direct in our communication, Americans and Dutch very, very direct, so we'll probably be aware of that. They tend to go straight to the point. English and French are a little bit more indirect and cautious in what we do, but the French

Thanks for watching.

culturally are much more direct with their negative feedback and that can be individual negative feedback or this project isn't going well and so the English to them are extremely confusing because our What what's interesting is she? Sir, Erin talks about how Americans will tend to say here's three bad things and one good thing in In English and we'll have to bleep this out But in English if we're trying to give negative feedback, we don't do three good things and one bad thing We do a shit sandwich, which is one good thing one bad thing one good thing and

Andrew (52:43.954)

Yeah.

Mark (52:46.745)

almost culturally trained to do it. The French don't do that. They just say here's the bad thing and maybe here's three bad things and I might tell you one good thing but I'm probably not going to do it. So what was really interesting is I was being extremely unclear to the French team, not because my French was poor, although that didn't help, but because culturally I was unaware of how to actually use the language in this sort of very high, much higher context environment than I was used to.

Andrew (53:06.943)

Yeah.

Andrew (53:12.426)

Yeah, well, so much to say about that. It's a great example. And I think living it, if you've lived that experience, it really viscerally opens your eyes to that language doesn't mean the same thing in different contexts, or it doesn't mean the same thing to do to different people in the same context.

and also what signals you send on the basis of delivering the same information, but perhaps in a different order. Ridiculous example, but I think it's pertinent is I have this conversation with my wife about strictly cum dancing.

Mark (54:00.939)

which is, for those that don't know, a TV show on British television.

Andrew (54:05.907)

a cultural phenomenon, you might say, on BBC Dancing with the Stars in other countries. Professional dancers, team of celebrities, have to do a dance and they get judged. And there's one judge who's famous for being the nasty judge, Craig. And if you actually listen to, there's four judges, all the judges give positive and

constructive criticism, negative feedback. Craig just leads with his negative feedback. He always finishes on a positive. It's always a da da, but you did this really well.

But culturally, he leads with a very direct negative thing. And culturally, your British audience, the boo's start coming in. And it's a bit pantomime, right? Everyone knows Craig is going to start off being negative and everyone loves to get, you know, everyone loves to boo him. But essentially all he's doing is he's subverting a convention of discourse, cultural convention of discourse. In British culture,

it's impolite to lead on a negative. He subverts it and that characterises him as the nasty judge. He's not delivering any more criticism than any of his colleagues. He's just doing it in a different order.

Mark (55:25.579)

Yeah. There was... I think it's very important to... You know, individually, that's a great example as well, because I think Craig is Australian, and so culturally very similar to the English. What's really interesting, and I don't want to spend... I could easily spend the entire episode talking about Erin Meyer's book, but it's very important to understand... Talking about Strictly Come Dancing. Yeah. But...

Andrew (55:36.734)

Yeah, he is. He is Australian. Yeah.

Andrew (55:49.142)

Thought you were gonna say you could spend a talking about Strictly Come Dancing.

Mark (55:54.707)

It's very important to understand that you have to perceive the difference between cultures from where you're standing to somewhere else. So it's no good understanding for me. You can't just understand the French are here. You have to understand I'm English and this is where the French are. This is the gap between the two. And also it's very individualistic as well. So if there is a bell curve of behaviour, so I am very far to the right or I am very linear time. So to me if something's not in my calendar, it doesn't happen. It has to start and finish. And if you're not there.

which culturally is far away from some other cultures. But on that feedback note, one of the things that Erin pointed out was in some Asian cultures, and I think she was specifically talking about, gave an example in India, that it is often...

extremely hurtful to give direct negative feedback and actually you have to give negative feedback by omission so it's not even say some nice things and then say a negative thing as you might with more European or American cultures it's here if you've done four things for me this was good this was good this was good

And you just don't talk about the fourth one, because it would be so offensive to directly confront this poor performance that it would be extremely demotivating for that individual. And I think just the cultural sensitivity to communication, but this is bigger, it's not just language. I mean, it obviously is language, but it's so much more broadly constituted than that. I find it absolutely eye-opening. And I'm now so much more aware

behavior. So when I'm working with, say, so this week I'll be over in Sweden, I'll be working with a Swedish team, very flat structure, very egalitarian, and so it's really interesting to see how much more consensus-driven that culture is. But I'm now much more conscious of my own behavior in different cultural situations. I'm literally going to pull out the book and go, okay, where am I? Where is the culture of the person I'm talking to?

Andrew (58:01.709)

Yeah.

Andrew (58:05.038)

I think something to say on that though is going back to the idea of language, you take Sweden as an example, language does follow those cultural dimensions and conventions that exist to the extent that in higher or deeper hierarchical cultures, you will find a whole load more words in the lexicon of an organization for hierarchy.

supervisor, leadership, all of these things. And you will find that the lexicon that corresponds to that sort of thing in a culture like Sweden is far more limited. And we could get into the whole conversation of linguistic determinism, which we won't, but it is an interesting thing. And it's about how language develops around about the

the forces at play in the environment. And you will find that then has its own reinforcing effect. So the fact that we're limited in the sort of words that we use around about representing the depth of a hierarchy forces us to operate in a manner that is flatter.

Mark (59:25.107)

And what's interesting as well is sometimes the observed behaviour comes from two really different places. So what I found is that Japanese culture and Swedish culture appear equally consensus driven. But actually Japan has a very, very hierarchically driven culture and a decision making system that has this bottom up. So Nimawashi, this route binding culture where you go and you have a conversation with all of your peers and then that goes up to the level above and that goes up.

formalized in Japanese organizations. In Sweden you see a very similar thing. You effectively do Nimo-Washi, so you go and you speak with everybody and everybody wants to make sure inside the organization everybody has had the opportunity to understand that problem and have a say. One is driven by egalitarianism, one is driven by hierarchy, but the actual observed behavior is really similar. So in my simplistic view of the world, these cultures are similar. Actually,

similar. And then this goes back to those larger parts of communication outside of just the language that you're observing.

Andrew (01:00:33.846)

Yeah, and so you'd have to spend some time in those different cultures to understand how the destination you arrive at is you get there through different linguistic means. And yeah, I think that's where that's where if you can spend some time experiencing it, you get a you get a sense of the of the complexity of it for sure.

So I'll look forward to some stories from Sweden when you get back.

Mark (01:01:03.903)

Oh yeah, you would definitely get them. And the, you know, I think for me the...

being able to spend time in a different culture is going to help you so much if you allow yourself that learning opportunity, if you're just going and spending some time in a culture and not paying attention won't teach you anything. But if you can take that opportunity, that's definitely something that I would really recommend to people, just bringing out that cultural sensitivity because it will improve your communication skills the rest of the time. And in fact, I started with my own company, I started coming back and being much more explicit with the

having a multicultural team, it can feel normal. You think these are the social norms and being British, we don't like to ask directly for help. We'll sort of wave a hand, say, I'm quite busy. I've got too many things on. With the expectation someone will read that, that's what Erin Meyer would call like a high context situation. In some other cultures, yeah.

Andrew (01:01:58.794)

Yeah, that's an appeal for support, but it's indirect. Yeah.

Mark (01:02:02.559)

totally indirect, very ineffective. And so in my totally English cultured organization, or at least HQ'd organization, I found myself even with a small team saying, this is how we're going to communicate. We are going to be very explicit. And it's interesting how that goes back to things like performance feedback as well. So taking communication, not just in objective setting, but also, Andrew, I need to tell you, this is something I need from you and I'm not getting it at the moment. All of these different things that happen

amongst teams that is all bound in communication, but it's so much easier when you have been explicit. So it's whether it's checklists or charters or whatever, being very explicit, this is the culture of communication inside our organization, inside our team is really, really helpful.

Andrew (01:02:48.694)

Yeah, and I think you've mentioned this when we've chatted about this other times.

Andrew (01:02:57.858)

There isn't necessarily cultural determinism around about a team culture in an organization. So you could be a team working in a French business in France and the norms of French culture are a heavy influence on how you operate, but they're not determined. They don't have to be deterministic. You can make choices over slightly adjusting or introducing.

different ways of working that are specific to your team's culture. And I do think that what you said about spending some time outside, that's where you start, I think that's where you can start to realize how influential things like language are on governing and influencing how you behave. Because it's the whole kind of, you know, the fish doesn't

the fish doesn't know that it's in water sort of thing. You don't, it's hard to recognise that the way in which you've learned to use language within a specific team is actually forming part of your reality, your lived reality of the team itself until you get a shock to the system and go, all right, so this is, here's a team, here's an organisation that behaves in a completely different way. And I can see

the difference by looking at how they talk to each other. In fact, one of the principal artifacts that you would be able to hold on to would be, assuming you're not talking about different languages and different languages that you might not be fluent in, but assuming you have some capacity of the actual spoken language that's being used, it gives you those artifacts to compare and go, all right. And that's where, coming back to the idea of teams talk themselves out of existence, that's where I think you can start to see, ah.

there's something that it's happening in language that is not good for the team. It's something that the team does and it doesn't know what's doing it, but it's just a convention of the way they interact that's leading to...

Andrew (01:05:06.398)

I mean, some research that I did a couple of years ago, looking at interpretive repertoires really demonstrated that to me, where you had different groups of people that were in different disciplinary silos. So one more kind of high tech, in entrepreneurship like high tech, high innovation, and then more in the creative space. So arts, theater, creative industries. And...

The interpretive repertoires that they use were completely different. Interpretive repertoires basically just being the kind of codebook, the algorithm that you have in your head of what language is there to do. And the creative industries, people use a much more relational interpretive repertoire, so they, they saw language as being this means of creating community. And they saw acts of language as being, um, gestures.

towards creating intimacy and you know intimacy in its technical term meaning like relational closeness. So they looked for that in language and the more kind of high tech people

Mark (01:06:01.367)

Yeah, yeah.

Andrew (01:06:14.838)

they had a far more instrumental interpreter repertoire. So they were constantly looking for positionalities of how does what people say and what people ask of me, how does that represent my position in the world, their position in the world, what they can do for me, what I can do for them, what they need from me. And what's interesting about that in an entrepreneurship context was the...

ecosystem structures that are in place in entrepreneurship. So again, you know, this quantum idea of using language to move between different levels of, of analysis from systems to individuals, um, in the creative industries, they were bumping up against an ecosystem that had adopted the language of high tech. So all of the systems that are in place to support any startup businesses.

those systems were adorned in the language of high tech. So they use a very instrumental way of engaging with the businesses they were going to help. And of course, thinking of like, you know, your examples of culture match, that meant that those systems found it very difficult to help the creative industries because they were finding themselves at odds with each other. So the things they were at, the things that were being asked with the creative industries and vice versa.

the messages weren't landing, or they were being misinterpreted, or the things they thought they were asking weren't being responded to. But they find it very easy to engage with high tech. And you know, you can, I think it's obvious the result is that you get a system that is seemingly biased towards high tech, high growth, and creative industries feel marginalized and ostracized and not supported. And you kind of end up in the situation where you have to find a way of

supporting on one side supporting this, the support intermediaries to recognise that they speak a certain type of language and that actually might be quite

Andrew (01:08:19.842)

difficult for certain groups to deal with. And on the other side, helping those groups recognise that when they're being spoken to like that in such a way, it's not because they don't understand you, you need to sort of find your version of interpreting that so that you can, you can get the support you need.

Mark (01:08:36.811)

I think there's something in there about the danger of the familiar. You mentioned earlier when we were talking prior to this episode that you'd been in an academic situation and somebody came in from outside academia and said, what does good look like? Which in my world is totally normal, you hear it all the time. And I think there's something really interesting that if you walk into what looks like a familiar culture, so if you're English walking into an American culture, as an example.

Andrew (01:08:59.179)

Yeah.

Andrew (01:09:03.97)

Yeah, the paradox of familiarity.

Mark (01:09:05.639)

Yeah, exactly. It feels like it's very, very similar, but you were talking about how alien it is, and it almost makes you bristle, and the unfamiliarity of somebody saying, what does good look like in an academic setting? It's not natural for you. And so I think that's really, really interesting how even with really strongly related teams, so teams in these multi-team systems, I'm actually thinking back to the difference between editorial teams at the FT and technical teams at the FT.

Andrew (01:09:32.661)

Yeah, yeah.

Mark (01:09:35.813)

very strongly related organizations, very strongly related teams. Sometimes we might be seeing really strong misunderstandings and not actually knowing that they're misunderstandings because you know that reflection, they're so subtle, but it might actually be difficult to really understand and build it out.

Andrew (01:09:48.907)

Yeah.

Andrew (01:09:53.554)

A bit of self-consciousness about, well, we will, we cannot avoid the fact that we will have a team contained culture that's constituted in language that on very many levels of, you know, linguistic structures may be at odds with a team that we have to work with quite closely within a system. And if we don't acknowledge that those differences exist, then we will find ourselves, you know,

continually referring or identifying with the kind of in-group, out-group dynamic, we will find ourselves continually sort of lamenting how much those, how different that team is, how little they understand of us and so on, but acknowledging upfront that those differences are baked into the way that you do your work may help you navigate that slightly.

Mark (01:10:44.691)

Yeah absolutely, I was thinking we're pretty much at time but that's probably a big takeaway for me from this episode is...

Being very explicit around communication, and some of the examples that you gave around the checklists. Sometimes I feel like checklists are seen as something that is linked to incompetence. I need a checklist because I'm expected to be incompetent, but actually being explicit, whether it is a checklist or it is a set of principles or it is a set of expected behaviors or a team charter

Andrew (01:11:11.006)

Yeah.

Mark (01:11:24.609)

really assist people in maximizing their communication and that point that communication is absolutely necessary for teams to exist. Was there anything in terms of your big takeaways around communications?

Andrew (01:11:42.766)

I think the point on checklists is a really good one. I think that comes in a nice package. It comes with a buy one, get one free of being explicit. And it doesn't expose weakness or incompetence, the idea of having to be explicit. You talk about team charters, checklists, these sorts of things. They're all really.

helpful devices to grasp effective communication onto. The buy one, get one free on it, the other side is actually being reflective of what is the daily churn and...

Andrew (01:12:29.07)

character, tenor of the communication that happens in your team. So my takeaway on that is thinking about the culture examples, albeit examples were of national culture, but there is a there is a prevailing

set of conventions that exist in language in every team. And many teams sleepwalk their way through those conventions until they bump up against problems. And being proactively reflective on, how do we communicate? You know, on really small things, like what's the first thing we, how do we open our engagements with our colleagues? What's, how do we, what are the conventions of salutation? Do we...

When we start meetings, what are the conventions around what do we spend the first few minutes of meetings doing?

Mark (01:13:22.627)

It's an incredibly powerful observation and just to extend that one step further, I think the easiest way to do it would be to ask somebody new to the team because that's the point they will be observing. It's really difficult for us to sit in the team and be reflective. I think we should do that more but the most powerful time to do it is probably when you've got somebody who's walked in and you go, you guys are all weird.

Andrew (01:13:47.686)

Yeah, well, I mean, I'll finish on an example I got with the so, um, you know, former, former guest on the podcast, Matt Johns, you know, his, his organization, Fieri, so it's a leadership and consultancy company who work with all kinds of amazing businesses and support them in doing, uh, consultancy around teamwork and develop leadership development. I spent some time around their team and it's lit. It sounds so basic, right? But, uh,

A fiery team member cannot walk into a room where there are other team members and not say does anyone want a cup of tea?

Mark (01:14:29.156)

Yeah.

Andrew (01:14:29.558)

Okay, it's like, it's like a reflex they have. But it was, it was for me as someone who's not part of the team, but in their space, like that's a really interesting thing, okay. Because there are plenty of teams where you wouldn't see that convention, but the point is it was, it's not about can we make sure everyone's caffeinated? It's a device of a gesture towards.

the team dynamics. So I'm entering into the room where other members of the team are. I'm going to ask them if anyone wants a cup of tea. And I mean, most of the time people are like, no, I'm fine, thanks. But it happens so often, you're like, oh, this is a thing that they do. And they probably don't even recognize consciously that they do it. But it was a good example of a really highly effective team working. And they had these little conventions of language that are not, you know, no, no.

No utterance, no active language has one dimension. Multiple dimensions, right? You've got message, you've got meta message. I mean, the meta message there is like, I'm here for the group. I wanna do something for the group. Can I do that? And even if there's no need for tea, that has still been achieved.

Mark (01:15:37.195)

Yeah, I care for you as, yeah.

Mark (01:15:48.483)

Yeah, that's a fascinating example. Okay, do you have, so I think you know what my answer to this question is gonna be. Have you got any takeaways? So is there anything, is there a leave behind book on comms or article on comms that you would like to leave people with?

Andrew 

Well, I mentioned this and I don't think it's directly to the communication, but I've read it recently. It's really good. And it's where I got that anecdote about checklists from. So kind of on the theme of checklists.

and explicit communication and framing that as a positive thing as well. I think that's one takeaway maybe from this chat is, as you said, sometimes checklists and that form of very standardised communication can feel as though some form of admission of incompetence. But it's actually the opposite. It's a practice that really effective teams embed within their broader communication rhythms. So An Officer, Not a Gentleman by Mandy Hickson is that book.

really enjoyable story of a female fast jet pilot coming up through the RAF which you know in the 1990s was a relatively rare thing so she's a bit of a trailblazer and some nice anecdotes in there and more specifically on checklist there's a book by Atto Govandi who is a surgeon but he's been quite influential in

safety, especially safety around operating theatres. And he's got a book called The Checklist Manifesto. Does exactly what it says in the tin, but it's quite a quite an enlightening deep dive into where checklists exist, where you might not actually have. You might not even have recognised them as checklists, but that's what they are and how vital they are to ensuring

Effective outcomes, safety in some contexts. So yeah, it's a good read. It's well written. Lots of lots of good reference to good evidence as well. How about you? Drum roll, surprise, surprise.

Mark (01:20:56.879)

Perfect. Well, I think you know what mine is gonna be.

in this context. So I absolutely loved this book that I've referenced throughout this episode. It's called The Culture Map, it's by Erin Meyer. So do check out the book, but she's also, there's a bunch of videos, YouTube, that kind of thing, maybe even a TED video. She's a fantastic speaker. The book is crammed with examples, real world examples, which makes it incredibly powerful,

Mark (01:21:30.237)

you do work with multicultural teams. It will probably be one of those things where you suddenly pick up at least some reasoning behind why something that you've said might have been misinterpreted or a way that you've behaved or somebody else behaved didn't come across quite how it was intended. So definitely look that one up. We'll link all of those in the show notes wherever they turn up. I think that's probably, I mean, we could easily, I think there's another hour of show

on comms we might come back talking about goal setting and all the other all the other stuff but i think that's us. Great thank you very much Andrew. Cheers!

Andrew (01:22:02.054)

We'll have another chat another time.

Andrew (01:22:10.978)

Cheers man. Enjoyed it.