Chapter 12

Question 1

Building habits of group vulnerability is like building a muscle. What does it take to build vulnerability?

Answer 1

1. Time
2. Repetition
3. A willingness to feel pain in order to achieve goals

Question 2

What is the key to building muscle?

Answer 2

Approach with a plan

Question 3

A few ideas to build group vulnerability

Answer 3

1. Make sure the leader is vulnerable first and often
2. Overcommunicate expectations
3. Deliver the negative stuff in person
4. When forming new groups, focus on two critical moments
5. Listen like a trampoline
6. In conversation, resist the temptation to reflexively add value
7. Use candor-generating practices like AARs, BrainTrusts, and Red Teaming
8. Aim for candor, avoid brutal honesty
9. Embrace the discomfort
10. Align language with action
11. Build a wall between performance review and professional development
12. Use flash mentoring
13. Make the leader occasionally disappear

Question 4

The successful groups I visited did not presume ______________ would happen on its own.

Answer 4

Cooperation

Question 5

Jeff Polzer, the Harvard Business School professor who studies organizational behavior traces any group’s cooperation norms to two critical moments that happen early in a group’s life.

Answer 5

1. The first vulnerability
2. The first disagreement

Question 6

The most effective listeners do four things:

Answer 6

1. They interact in ways that make the other person feel safe and supported
2. They take a helping, cooperative stance
3. They occasionally ask questions that gently and constructively challenge old assumptions
4. They make occasional suggestions to open up alternative paths

Question 7

One good AAR structure is to ask 5 questions:

Answer 7

1. What were our intended results?
2. What were our actual results?
3. What caused our result?
4. What will we do the same next time?
5. What will we do differently?

Question 8

A Before-Action Review is similar to AARs:

Answer 8

1. What are our intended results?
2. What challenges can we anticipate?
3. What have we or others learned from similar situations?
4. What will make us successful this time?

Question 9

One of the most difficult things about creating habits of vulnerability is that it requires a group to endure two discomforts:

Answer 9

1. Emotional pain
2. A sense of inefficiency

Question 10

The key is to understand what about pain?

Answer 10

It is not the problem but the path to building a stronger group