From Judgement to Value: A Team Journey

Early in my teaching career, I shared a 5th grade classroom with a veteran teacher, Carol. Spending late evenings planning for the next day often left me overwhelmed and confuddled. I had a "go to" habit of moving and reconfiguring the classroom to get myself refocused. Come the next morning, I was met with Carol’s reaction. She walked in, looked around, remained silent, turned around and didn’t return for at least 15 minutes. This did not meet my expectation of her being overjoyed and impressed by my creative impulse. Based on my limited knowledge of Carol, I climbed my own personal ladder of inference, creating my own story. My resulting reactions did not improve the cohesiveness in our working relationship.

It's natural for the brain to immediately jump to judgement when facing behavior that goes contrary to our own expectations or preferences. The brain's job is to evaluate risk and determine what is a threat. The problem arises when we stay there and base all further interaction on our limited perceptions. This results in hampered communication, ineffective collaboration and disconnection. When this is happening among team members, unhealthy dynamics can emerge. How do we move past judging?

Beginning with a climate of curiosity, we can give time and opportunity to discover and share talents and behavior styles on the team. Allowing team members to voice not only their preferences, but how it connects with their emotions and safety builds empathy amongst the team. When we have understanding of why people do what they do, they are better able to interpret the behaviors of others.

But let’s not stop there! Going beyond the why, to next recognizing the value each person’s style brings, leads the team to a level of respect. Team members are now developing trust and acceptance. We have taken the brain out of survival mode and transitioned into rational thinking where we gain new perspective.

With this new perspective, we are able to notice examples of behavior that are benefiting projects, decisions and team collaboration in general. This is where authentic recognition begins to surface and the team has moved into appreciation. Feeling appreciated and valued in a work environment leads to greater engagement and productivity.

Can it get any better? You bet! With this new level of operation, we are now in a postion to strategically leverage the strengths on the team. Those behaviors that once led us into judgement and disconnect, are now a valued, vital part of the team. To sum up, the team has moved through the following stages:

JUDGING -UNDERSTANDING-RESPECTING-APPRECIATING-VALUING*

So whatever happened with Carol? Luckily, my principal did all of the above with his team. I came to understand Carol’s preference for stability and steadiness in her surroundings. I could respect her reserved approach as being helpful in many stressful situations. I began noticing where her style brought calm to difficult conversations and heated situations. This allowed me to utilize her as a mentor, helping me to develop those skills in myself and becoming a better teacher because of it.

If you are interested in moving your teams to a level where talents, skills and motivations are optimally leveraged to create engagement and a healthy dynamics, please connect with me and let’s talk.

*Based on DiSC® Classic, ©2011 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. “DiSC” and “Wiley” are registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.