Facilitating Feedback and Psychological Safety in Team Coaching with Nils Cornelissen
with Nils Cornelissen, Founder at Return on Meaning
Transcript
Edited for readability: filler words removed, names checked. It may still contain errors. The audio is the source of truth.
Nils Cornelissen
Many of my clients come up to me and say, well, we want to have a failure culture. And I ask, what are you prepared to give? What if somebody makes a mistake? Well, they shouldn't make mistakes. We want a failure culture, but no mistakes, right? One other important aspect is also feedback. Even board members all ask for feedback, but do they actually give each other feedback? They give feedback on documents or on content points, but this behavioral feedback, they don't give each other. No.
Tobi
Can you describe a very concrete facilitation method for bringing out this kind of feedback?
Intro
Tobi
What makes a high performing team? What helps them navigate rapid change? 12 years ago at Google they studied these questions and looked at more than 180 different teams and potential factors. And what made the single biggest difference was psychological safety: being able to feel safe in a group, to ask stupid questions and to disagree without feeling threatened. My guest today, Nils Cornelissen, helps top executive teams to achieve this level of vulnerability in their conversations. And on this episode Nils shares why he leaves a stain on the white tablecloth on purpose, why he wants to be seen as imperfect by his clients, and how he facilitates team feedback with the keep-consider method as well as the laser feedback exercise. So if you're working with teams, there'll be lots of methods to adapt to your own coaching and
facilitation practice, no matter if it's in business or with the team of a children's daycare center. So let's hop right into their boardroom together with Nils.
Interview
Tobi
Okay, Nils. In our last session we spent a lot of time preparing ourselves, digging into the exercises that you do for yourself to manage your state as a coach, as a consultant, to be ready for these conversations. And on today's episode I would like to basically enter the boardroom. So you've done your state management, you are above the line and ready for difficult conversations. And in order to set the scene a bit, I would like to ask you to show us around the boardroom. Maybe you can come up with a scenario of the corporate, what sort of change process they're in, and then take us a bit into the characters you find in this boardroom.
Nils Cornelissen
So let's assume a typical boardroom. And first of all, I usually prefer not to work in the boardroom with the team coaching, I prefer to have people offsite. But normally these people meet once a week for half a day or a day in their board meeting. I still remember a telco company, not German, one European telco company I used to work for. There was a top potential of the organization, and he told me going to the boardroom feels like being beaten up and then spat out again. This was 15, 20 years ago. Most of the boardrooms nowadays are a bit more, let's say, civilized, but still it's a daunting setup. There is usually the CEO, right, often very smart, often visionary, often having a sense for the different people. Usually the CFO, the
financial person, usually very smart, very rational, and he sometimes has something controlling about himself, numbers driven, so he can be sometimes skeptical about something like a team coaching. Ideally there is a CHRO, so the people person in the room. Traditionally, in German, we also have the Arbeitnehmervertretung, the works council. There is a whole idea about it. Nowadays many are very pro management and pro people, so they try to bring business and people aspects together. With our processes they can be our strongest allies, because they think what we are doing is very important and relevant, but they are also sometimes scared about me, or my company, or our work coming in, because in some ways it's their work, work that they're supposed to be doing or want to be doing. And so it's very important that we also align with them beforehand. Then there can be COOs, CTOs, CMOs in some companies, marketing. There can be chief sales officers. There can be people from different regions. Compliance can be a topic. But usually it's three to five or six people that I'm doing a team coaching with.
Tobi
I can imagine such a room very vividly. We can picture it in the boardroom, but it could also be a nice seminar room, maybe at your preferred offsite seminar hotel. So we have these different characters, slightly different interests for sure, very different personalities. How is the mood as you enter that space?
Nils Cornelissen
Always very different. And I am trying to look at it always on these three levels that I already mentioned. There is the individual level, so there are some individual processes going on for each one of them. In one coaching I was doing there was one person who already knew they wouldn't be on the job anymore in a week's time, it wasn't public yet, so he couldn't tell anybody. So there are individual processes going on. Or I once had a person whose wife had just split up with him. I mean, we are all on individual journeys, business wise and personal wise. In addition to the individual journeys there are group dynamics. In such teams, most of the people in the room, male or female, are very competitive, are very alpha animals. They try to be strong, they try to be in control, they have everything under control. So my first task is
to create space for some form of vulnerability, some form of psychological safety. Do you know this research from Google, Project Aristotle, that looked at what the one defining factor is?
Tobi
Of successful teams. And they looked at, is it male, female, young, old, content driven, functional or not, they checked all the different numbers. And the one defining factor for what makes successful teams successful is the vulnerability in the team, or the psychological safety. Basically what it means is, am I allowed to say something that is non socially desirable? So would I open up to you and say, oh, I'm not feeling good here, or, I feel I've got a weakness here, or, I don't feel good about that? Am I allowed to ask stupid questions, or am I allowed to disagree with you without you feeling threatened? These sorts of things.
Nils Cornelissen
And, you know, the stupid questions, again and again: very successful, very smart people, and we are having a conversation, or we are having a workshop, and somebody says something and I don't understand it. And then I look around in the room and they just continue the conversation. And then I say, stop. And I say, did somebody understand what X just said? And everybody first looks around. And then, because I'm smiling, eventually they start laughing as well, and they say, no, we can't. And it's amazing. They didn't dare to ask the stupid question of what does it actually mean. Nobody wants to be the stupid one who didn't understand X. It's amazing. And of course, as an external coach, I'm getting myself the mandate from the start and saying, is it okay if I ask you stupid questions? At the beginning of a team coaching, I can play a little bit with this role. And one of the first exercises I do is what we described in our last podcast, this talking about reactive and creative. So having conversations about, where am I in a curious, productive state, and where am I actually in
a fearful state or in a closed or defensive state? And having everybody becoming normal about, we are not always perfect, we all get into this kind of state, a reactive state, dozens of times a day. That opens up a conversation that is more honest than what we had before.
Tobi
You mentioned that you can be the guy asking the stupid questions. That reminds me to circle back and look at the beginning of this process, in the quote unquote boardroom. How do you do that, this sort of contracting, partnering, who can I be for you, with the group?
Nils Cornelissen
Usually what happens before the day. Usually there is some form of workshop day, but it's part of a whole journey. Normally I'm having one-on-one conversations with each of them, to build rapport and to already understand where they stand with regard to the team. The other bit is, there will be some person in this room who has contracted me, often a CEO, it can be the CHRO, it can be two of them. And I am having a conversation with them about what is a realistic outcome of the process over time, and also what they are prepared to give. In the earlier podcast we talked also about, what am I going to change, even though I'm doing everything perfectly. And in this whole journey, when we then have this team coaching workshop, usually it's not me who provides the outcome. Because, again, something we talked about in our earlier podcast, so if you haven't listened to it you definitely have to now, it's about where the responsibility is. I'm very careful. Yes, I do feel co-responsible that something helpful comes out of this process, so
I'm not a full systemic person who says this is not my thing and it's always theirs. I do feel a certain co-ownership, and yet it's an important part of the work to leave it with them, to leave the main responsibility with my clients. So it's not me saying, you want to get this out of the workshop, but me helping, for example, the CEO to prepare his individual intro speech at the beginning, where he says, oh, this is what I want to change, this is what I want to achieve with this team coaching over time, and, I am also not perfect, and I also want to change, and I'm curious to learn from you where I can do better. If he or she says something like this at the beginning, it also creates vulnerability, openness, curiosity, et cetera.
Tobi
I see, thanks. So then let's go back to the aspect of psychological safety, and establishing that not only between you and them, which you said you have done already in this process of talking to them individually, but also amongst each other. How does that look? How do you get people to talk honestly with each other?
Nils Cornelissen
We could talk a full podcast about it, but, to give you some tools that help me a lot to make it happen, even though for me it's not something that is achieved once and for all. It's an ongoing journey, it's a dance. It's a full dance, because in coaching we sometimes use these terms of building rapport, building the relationship, and leading the conversation. And as in any coaching, it's also with me in a group or team setting: it's a dance for me between building rapport and acknowledging them in their current state, also validating their maybe not so nice emotions.
Oh, I'm hearing you are frustrated, I can understand that. That's also part of enabling a dialogue that is usually not happening in a business boardroom on Monday at 12 o'clock. Nobody says, oh, I can hear you feel frustrated, I can understand that. It's creating a different language, talking about emotions and my own challenges, and that creates psychological safety. One part of it is me role modeling it. If I'm standing there and saying, oh, I'm perfect, I have everything under control, this is how we do things, that's not creating an openness. If I say, oh, I'm getting into a reactive state a dozen times a day, I'm trying, but I'm failing also, then it creates the opportunity, it's okay to make mistakes. It's creating a failure culture. Many of my clients come up to me and say, we
want to have a failure culture. And I ask, what are you prepared to give? What if somebody makes a mistake? Well, they shouldn't make mistakes. We want a failure culture, but no mistakes, right? Of course it's a paradox, you can't have that. So it's about role modeling this. When I was a young consultant in my career I once went to this lady who was supposed to teach me some good manners. She had a French name, I think she gave it to herself. And one thing that I still remember is, if you have a dinner party, it is actually quite a good idea as the host to take a bit of sauce or red wine and put it on the white tablecloth at the beginning, because it frees everybody up. Because if there is already a stain on the white tablecloth, it's not so bad if somebody else makes one. It's
counterintuitive to what most people do, right? If I look at Instagram, most people want to shine, they want to be perfect, they want to have a very white tablecloth, but they don't realize that that actually creates a very sterile dinner party. Whereas if I'm not so perfect, I enable other people also to not be perfect.
I don't want to become too political, but I think part of why Trump has been so successful is because he is not perfect, and that makes it easier for people to connect with him. Otherwise we always have so much ambition and we have to perform. You've just become a dad, right? You've got a young baby, you are a professional, you want to be a good dad, you have a partner. And there are all these pressures on us in our lives, and we always have to become perfect. And Barack Obama was perfect, right? He was getting up at four thirty in the morning every day, one hour of sports every day, he was a perfect husband,
he was good looking, he was smart, he was a good speaker, and he was a loving dad. He was perfect in everything. But of course that is so many demands. And if I then look at Instagram, or Facebook or whatever, or TikTok, I don't have TikTok, everybody there is perfect. There are always these ambitions, and I can't fulfil them. And therefore I think it's important to let go, to create a little bit of a stain on the tablecloth in the boardroom, and to invite people to talk about where they're not perfect. A very extreme version is to ask people, what is one aspect from last week that I'm embarrassed about? That's a very extreme example, I only do this with teams I've worked with before, but sometimes I do this. And quite often I do this getting-to-know exercise where I ask them, what does no one dare to ask here? And interestingly, there is stuff on the flip chart, there are questions on there, and of course, obviously, they did dare
to ask them, otherwise they wouldn't be on there. But it's interesting, and with that we get to a different kind of psychological safety and to a different sense of honesty in the group, but also in the whole organization.
Tobi
Wow. So what I hear is, the first thing that you mentioned is, you are imperfect yourself. You name when you are frustrated, when you are nervous, possibly. And in that sense you role model that imperfection, inviting them to also share their frustration, name it, and also be imperfect, join you in the imperfection. And that creates the safe space where it's allowed to actually talk about everything that's not working, and then to be able to do something about it. And the second thing you said, and there I would like to probe you again, because I think it would also mean that you as a coach, as a facilitator, say, ah, I hear there's a lot of frustration in what you're saying. If the CFO is upset, is that something you would do? Or how does that play?
Nils Cornelissen
Yes, definitely. I definitely try to mirror what I'm hearing or seeing. I'm trying to name emotions that are there when people don't have the words or the experience to voice concerns. And of course I'm very careful. I'm not saying this is the way it is, but I'm saying, oh, am I hearing, it sounds like it's really frustrating you. Yes, really? Or they say, no, it's not frustrating, I'm feeling more helpless. Ah, also great. So I'm making an offer. I never know what is true. Or, let's say, of course I have a certain sense, I'm trying to feel inside myself, what am I feeling in that situation? And over the last 25 years in my work I've become more trusting towards my intuition of what I'm feeling might be happening with the others. And I became courageous in actually offering it to them, even though it's not something they would like to hear.
Tobi
So there is this thing of naming and taming that you also do for the others, but you do it as offers. And then the third thing that you shared earlier would be actual prompts, like a question such as, what is the question nobody dares to ask, or, today I'm really frustrated with. These kinds of things. We actually have a nice card set that is called Speak Up, that is basically full of these sorts of prompts. I should send you one.
Nils Cornelissen
I would love to have a look at it.
Tobi
Great.
Nils Cornelissen
In the end it's about having conversations, right? And I've seen you've got the Speak Up card set, but you also have the pictures, and even that is a way into a conversation. So basically the idea is, I'm trying to create spaces where they have more honest conversations about the less socially desirable aspects. And whether it's in small groups of three, or two of them as a pair in a reflective walk outside, or all of them in a plenary, that's different depending on whether I use cards or any other prompts. But the basic idea is, I'm trying to create a space where they have the conversations they should be having but often do not have. One other important aspect is also feedback. Even board members, they all ask for feedback, but do they actually give each other feedback? They give feedback on documents or on content points, but this behavioral feedback, they don't give each other. No.
Tobi
How do you make that happen, talking about these imperfections, naming these imperfections towards each other? Can you describe a very concrete facilitation method for bringing out this kind of feedback?
Nils Cornelissen
There are two very effective feedback tools that I use with teams. One of them is called keep-consider. Keep-consider is very simple, and it's a group thing. So for example, at the end of a jour fixe, or at the end of our podcast, I could ask: now we are at the end of our podcast, what did you like about it? What do you want to keep if we do this again, or meet again and do another podcast or whatever? And what is one thing you would like to consider doing differently next time? What people sometimes do wrong is, they have long conversations. And then people say they don't have time for feedback. This only takes three minutes, or five minutes. I'm saying, what I really liked about this podcast was us interacting. What I would like to consider doing differently next time is, I want to hear more from you, Tobi, but actually I'm feeling insecure about whether that's actually part of this format, whatever. And then we don't argue about what I said, we just leave it there. The next person is saying keep, consider, keep, consider, keep, consider. And after
everybody has spoken, then we can think about whether we do something with the feedback or not. So it should only take three to five minutes at the end. I often say to teams who have a weekly jour fixe, do it once a month in your jour fixe, about your collaboration over the last month. One thing you appreciated and would like to keep about our collaboration, and one thing you'd like to consider doing differently. And the interesting thing is, I don't know, Tobi, are you a person who finds it easier to point out what could be done better? Or are you a person who finds it easier to appreciate people for what they're doing well?
Tobi
I am a constant learner, but I think my natural tendency is to look at what's missing. So for me it's easy to spot the mistakes and point them out, both at myself and at others, of course.
Nils Cornelissen
People split in half. One half likes to learn and get better, right? And that's correct, that's good. But they sometimes lose sight of the appreciation part, which is the fuel, or the glue, in the relationship, that actually makes the other person able to accept the criticism, in my view. And then there are those people who find it very difficult to criticize anything. They can only say what is going well and, oh, we should appreciate everything, et cetera. But there aren't so many leaders or executives out there who find both easy. And I think we have to train that, to see both, with the keep-consider method, because it asks for both. It's a very simple way of establishing this balance in feedback.
Tobi
Yeah, super nice. It reminds me of a micro retrospective. In retrospectives we often ask, what do you want to continue, what do you want to stop? And here we have that framed slightly differently, but I really love it. What do you want to keep, so that's the continue part. And then, what do you want to consider changing? And the fact that the focus is on the consider also helps me to hold it lightly. You don't immediately have to take it, it's something we could consider.
Nils Cornelissen
Exactly. Because usually, if I establish this newly in a team, people find it easier to point out the appreciative part, and many people are a bit hesitant to point out what needs to change. And therefore we use the term consider, because it's also not a claim to truth. And it makes it easier to just throw out an idea: maybe next time you are standing, maybe next time I could be standing as well. It's more creative in a way, or it inspires creativity and a safe space. And I like the term micro retro, maybe I'll use it next time, if I may, Tobi. I've never called it this way, but in many ways it is a micro retro.
Tobi
Do you have one more?
Nils Cornelissen
There are certain similarities. For me the key thing about feedback is, yes, there are many rules for good feedback, and you've heard many of them: talk in I-messages, have this balance between what you appreciate and what you want to criticize, have the intention to improve the other person rather than pushing out your anger towards the other person, have a safe space, ask the person whether now is a good time, et cetera. So there are all these rules for feedback. But for me the main problem is not that people don't adhere to the rules. And there are these models differentiating observation versus judgment: so, I've seen you come late three times, my feeling is that you don't take this so seriously, therefore blah blah blah. So these are all these rules. But for me the whole point of feedback, or the biggest problem of feedback, is that it doesn't happen often enough. So it's simply pushing
people, in a fun way and in an active way, to give each other feedback and to receive each other's feedback. And so often with teams what I'm doing is, please, everybody get up, together in pairs. If you have an uneven number of people, one person can grab a coffee. And then these pairs get a very strict sequence, and we call this a laser, or flash, feedback. And how this works is, with these two people, one person is A and the other person is B. A is the person with the longer hair, shorter hair, lighter eyes, darker eyes, bigger feet, whatever, with the birthday earlier in the year, whatever. So one person is A, the other person is B. For the next one minute, person A tells person B what I appreciate about you. And in what I appreciate about you, there's no but in there, otherwise it's not appreciation. Only appreciation. We'll come to the criticism part later on. But for one
minute you only tell the other person what you like. And pause. If you can't think of anything, stay in contact. It can actually be quite intimate in such a setting, if we are in front of each other. Or you can also do it online, like we do now. Tobi, what I really appreciate about you is your smile. You seem to, it makes it easy for me to talk, because I have the feeling that you like what you hear and you are entertained, and that gives me a good feeling, blah blah blah. So this is all the good things that I like about the other person. And then, one, two, three, go, and people give each other appreciative feedback. And then, for the next one minute, A says to B: I would appreciate it even more if. And the whole idea here is to offer criticism, but also to offer developmental chances. And if you're
feeling unsure, you can also ask a question. How about, have you ever tried standing up more straight, or having your head a bit more straight rather than forward? Whatever it is. It doesn't need to be, you have to, but rather, be out there. And if you can't think of anything, just look into each other's eyes and stay in contact, and I'm sure sooner or later something will come. Any questions about the process? Three, two, one, let's go. And then A does it to B, B to A, and then you can change. And I usually do three rounds in a team. So if there are five people, not everybody with everybody, but only three rounds of pairs. And then I tell them to do it by themselves the next time they meet for a workshop, and then the others have the chance to connect and give each other feedback. And it's fascinating, because people need this sequence, otherwise they wouldn't give each other this
feedback, or receive it. But afterwards everybody is relieved. They usually have a slightly red face, because it feels very intimate. But I also feel relieved, because, yes, the other person doesn't like this, or they think I could improve that, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be. It's fun. It creates proximity in a team and performance at the same time. And this is what, in my team coaching, I'm always trying to get together: not just the relationship part, but also, I think this has a direct impact on how they work with each other on their content or technical issues.
Tobi
Yep. And I can see this one getting much more personal than the keep-consider, because here it's most likely not about processes or whatever we do in the organization, but it's very personal, what I appreciate about you. So it's getting very touchy feely. Which brings me to the question: in this sort of environment where you have these very rational people, earlier you described this CFO that is usually the super intelligent, cognitively strong person, how do you get these kinds of participants on board with that sort of exercise?
Nils Cornelissen
The thing is, my clients, even CFOs, they see the reason. They see that there are many things happening, that there are dynamics that they don't get solved. And so often I don't have to convince them. But one little exercise I sometimes do with them, and we can share it, is: fold your hands. For those people who are listening to us, interlink your fingers as if you were praying. And, Tobi, which thumb is on top for you?
Tobi
The left one.
Nils Cornelissen
The left one, okay. Now I would like you to take the fingers apart and put them together the other way, so that the right thumb is on top. How does that feel?
Tobi
Unusual.
Nils Cornelissen
Unusual, right? It feels strange to some people, it doesn't feel nice, actually. For 20 percent of the people it feels fine, so it doesn't work with everybody. But for most people, for 80 percent of the people, this feels strange, weird, et cetera. Now, what's the reason behind this? Why does one feel better than the other?
Tobi
Because all my life I have folded my hands that way, and now having my fingers feel the other side is a new experience.
Nils Cornelissen
Exactly. It's a habit. It's simply a habit. But of course there have been scientists who looked into whether it's got something to do with whether I'm right-handed or left-handed, or whether my left arm is longer than my right arm. You know that both of our arms are slightly different in length, even though it's only micrometers or millimeters or whatever. But they checked for this and they said, no, there's no difference between the two hands, or they haven't found one. The only reason being a habit, and how it feels through the habit. And it's the same with the top team's behavior, how they interact with each other. So even though there is no technical, mechanical, biological difference or reason, we have habits that form certain feelings. And if you think about it, even though you don't like feelings, or you don't think they're particularly important, sometimes this convinces you that, yes, talking about feelings and having a team coaching process can actually be relevant.
Tobi
Because it's also those habits that we established in our communication, in our interaction on the team, that we want to question and possibly change, to establish new habits.
Nils Cornelissen
Yes. And they all have an agenda. Even the CFO has a certain agenda. Last year many of my CFO clients needed to cut costs, and they say, oh, people block, they say they can't save money. So they do have an agenda. They want some form of change, and for them it's a content change, a technical change. They want people to save money, but they've also realized that the ways in which they convince people to save money haven't worked so far, they couldn't convince them. So they're open to other ways of approaching this, meaning these psychological or psychosocial dimensions, and having a look at those as well. And I think that's something that is happening and could happen even more. Ideally executives would learn not only to do it in the workshop with me or with other facilitators, but also in their boardroom at home. We have one client, a big German mobility company, and there they actually spend 45 minutes on an intensive check-in before they start their full day boardroom session, and they talk about everything that's on their mind, and even the things that they don't like or that they
find challenging. And I think that's a big start. I don't think they're there yet, that they would share what they are really angry about, or that they could hold each other's anger. I think that's the next level. I think society will need 10 more years to actually acknowledge anger in such a way, as vulnerability. But I think we are on a good track to getting there.
Tobi
Wow. So, bringing vulnerability, bringing humility to the boardrooms. If I am now an aspiring coach or consultant and I would love to join you on that mission, what is it that you're looking for in me, and how can I find you?
Nils Cornelissen
Go to our website, we'll put it in the show notes, returnonmeaning.com. Or Momentum, that's the name of our program. And: have a business sense, because most of our clients that we talk to are high performing chief executives, or top level executives, so have a sense for business language. And have a people sense, and show humility and gratefulness, et cetera, yourself.
Tobi
Thanks a lot.
Nils Cornelissen
Thank you, Tobi, and you have a great day.
Outro
Tobi
This is it from Nils and Return on Meaning. If you haven't listened to it yet, I can really recommend also our previous episode with Nils, where he unpacked how he prepares himself, his own state, before going into these difficult boardroom conversations. If you have already listened to that, maybe you're curious to learn more about their approach to bringing mindfulness into business. They have developed a program called Momentum, where they take leaders through a 12 week journey towards more emotional intelligence and resilience. So if you happen to be a leader, or a coach within an organization, this might be interesting. If you're a coach looking for an employer, you've heard Nils: pack your business acumen and apply to join the team. Or, and this is my last call, simply adapt some of the methods and ideas shared by Nils to your own practice. If you like the episode, share it with a friend, maybe hit subscribe on your podcast app, and tune in again in two weeks from now for The Impactful Coach. I'm Tobi, co-founder of metaFox, and I wish you all the best on your next session.