Latest / The Lagging Team / Somebody Takes the First Hit

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Somebody Takes the First Hit · The Lagging Team

0:00
Apriel Biggs: That is our responsibility: is to catch the
0:03
first impact, so that you know. For us, it might feel like
0:07
somebody knocked the wind out of us. For them, it might feel like
0:12
you know they they cut a corner too quickly, right? Like they
0:14
just brushed against something.
0:21
Devon Morris: She's describing a job, not a role, not a title. A
0:27
job somebody on your team is doing right now that isn't in
0:32
anyone's plan, and that nobody is counting. And the whole point
0:38
of the job is that you never feel it? Well, think about it.
0:47
Name what you think it is, because somewhere in your
0:52
organization this week, there's a conversation about somebody
0:57
who's checked out. It's usually that person who was the actual
1:04
opposite of that. They used to be the person that caught things
1:09
early. They used to push back. They used to volunteer for
1:13
everything. Now they're quieter meetings, slower to respond to
1:19
emails, and they stop volunteering for anything, and
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the conversation is always the same conversation. Are they
1:30
still engaged, or even sexier than that? Are they quiet
1:33
quitting? Do they even care anymore? There's an industry
1:39
built on that question. You know, engagement surveys, pulse
1:43
checks, discretionary effort, stay interviews. I want to talk
1:48
about why that's the wrong question, and I want to be
1:53
careful about it because it's the question that I would have
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asked too. This is The Lagging Team. Falling behind is a
2:05
position, not a verdict. I'm Dr. Devon Morris. This is a sidebar.
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Tuesdays I sit down with somebody. On Thursday I take one
2:19
thing that they said, and go all the way in on it. Today, it's
2:25
one sentence from Tuesday, and an argument that I think most of
2:32
us are actually losing. One thing before I go anywhere with
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this, because I've been thinking about this for a few days now,
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Apriel called that responsibility ours to carry, ours to accept,
2:51
and I nodded my head clearly when we were having the
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conversation, and I actually think that she's right about it,
3:00
and I actually support it, no question. But I've come around
3:06
to thinking that responsibility is a smaller version of the
3:12
idea. See, a responsibility is something that you actually take
3:15
on, and what she's describing is something that gets spent; those
3:23
aren't the same, and the difference is the entire episode
3:29
here. So here's my problem with the engagement conversation:
3:36
it's just the wrong argument, and I don't mean wrong like
3:41
people having it wrong. I mean, it's the wrong argument because
3:46
the situation is built differently, and it's there to
3:52
actually start the argument. It's the loudest thing in the
3:56
room, and it's standing directly in front of the most important
4:01
thing in the room. See, watch what happens the second you
4:05
decide it's engagement. Everything you do next is aimed
4:10
toward motivation. You know those one-on-one conversations
4:14
about their goals. You know improving the recognition
4:18
program. A conversation about whether they are in the right
4:23
seat for them at this time, and every one of those are
4:28
reasonable moves to make against the problem that this person
4:33
just doesn't have. So you spend six months treating motivation;
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they're getting quieter, and now you got the evidence right. You
4:44
see that they're checked out even more. Meanwhile, the actual
4:48
thing sitting in plain view, somebody on the team finds out
4:53
first every time something goes wrong, and they've been doing it
4:59
long enough. That is costing them. Sometimes it's the leader.
5:05
Usually, it isn't, right? It's a coach. It's a scrum master. It's
5:09
a project manager, senior leader, a developer. Everybody's
5:13
quietly routing the problem through because they always
5:18
handled it. Apriel spent her career on transformation. I
5:25
mean, she's one of those people who walks into the room when the
5:28
ground is actually shaking, and here's how she describes why
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that person matters.
5:35
Apriel Biggs: And so I spent a lot of my time working with
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folks in the army, and one of the things that I remember is
5:41
that in combat a soldier defaults to their to their
5:44
lowest level of training, and so coaches like you and I are
5:47
taught how to be emotionally strong, right? And so we have
5:54
tools that we can rely on in those moments, and so for
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someone who has a large amount of responsibility, but does not
6:02
necessarily know how to be emotionally strong can wreck a
6:08
team.
6:09
Devon Morris: Under pressure, nobody rises to the plan. You
6:13
fall to whatever you've actually practiced, which means what a
6:19
person has in reserve on a bad day is the entire ball game. All
6:25
right, here's the part I actually want to give you. When
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you use two words like they mean the same thing and they don't,
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trait, resource. See, a trait is something you are. Some people
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are resilient. Some people aren't, and that's the hand
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you've been dealt. And that's how almost everybody talks about
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this. A resource is something that you have. It's something
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that you can actually spend, but it's also something that can run
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out, and those two words are different. They got different
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jobs, man. And the second one is the one that actually applies.
7:14
See, put on your researcher hat with me for a moment, because
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this is where our work actually begins. People spend their
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working lives building and protecting a set of resources:
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their energy, their attention, their emotional reserve, the
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stuff you draw on when something actually goes wrong. See, stress
7:39
isn't an event. Stress is what happens when those resources
7:44
drain fast enough, and they haven't come back. See, that's
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the shift. It isn't a bad day. It's an accounting balance. It's
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your checking book, and the loss just compounds. The more
8:00
depleted someone is, the less they have left to actually
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protect what's still there, and so the next hit costs more, and
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then after that, it costs even more until that last one hits,
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which is why the person absorbing everything looks fine
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eight months ago, and then all at once it comes crashing in.
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Nothing dramatic happened in that last eight months, but
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month nine, that reserve ran out, y'all. Same things worked
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at the team level. Team resilience isn't the sum of
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everybody's grit. It's the state that the team is in, built on
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what it has, on what it's built, and what is put in reserve,
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which is kind of good news, right? Because if it can be
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spent, that means it can be built up. Where my own work
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lands is resilience sits on a path between coaching and
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whether team actually adapts when the ground is moving around
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them. Coaching doesn't make a team perform better directly. It
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works by building the things the team spends when things actually
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go wrong, and this is where you got to understand the guardrails
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because you can utilize it to actually build up the resource
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that's gonna be spent when everything is moving. So here's
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the part that bothers me: the person catching the first hit is
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doing invisible work by design. The whole point of the job is
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that nobody else feels it. Done well, it looks like nothing
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actually happened. Invisible work doesn't get counted. It's
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not in the plan. It's never going to be on any status
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report, and nobody is going to staff for it. It shows up in
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nobody's goals. So the better they get at doing it, the less
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anybody notices is actually happening, and the reward for
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absorbing well is actually to absorb more. That loop runs
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quiet for years and years and years, and here's the trap in
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it: the organization isn't being cruel, y'all. Not at all.
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Nobody's decided to do this to them. It's just the routing is
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efficient, and the cost is invisible. And those two things
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together will drain a person to death that is acting in good
11:00
faith. That's the same shape that everything else is on this
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actual show. Nobody stopped caring. The job changed
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underneath them, and guess what? The agreement was never
11:17
rewritten. Here's what it looks like from the other side of
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that,
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Apriel Biggs: teams become disenfranchised. They become
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absent. They are looking for new roles, and you see, you know,
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them quietly quitting, or best performers, you know, are
11:39
exiting the organization, or just suddenly they've just
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started doing just enough in order to get their paycheck,
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right? Because they don't believe that their body of work
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matters.
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Devon Morris: Now go back to the top of this episode, because
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this is the exact person that we started with, and that is
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exactly the person the disengagement conversation is
12:03
about to get wrong. See the second pair of words. This is
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the diagnosis: disengagement and depletion. Here's what depletion
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actually looks like. Well before anybody actually hears the word
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burnout. Responses get slower. Initiative drops. They stop
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volunteering. You don't hear as many questions in meetings. The
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same person that used to flag things three weeks ago has gone
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silent. Now write that list down and read it back to yourself.
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I'm waiting. No, I'm not really. I'm not gonna wait, right?
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Because it's the perfect description of disengagement
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too. Identical from the outside, kind of wearing the same
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clothes, the same symptoms, opposite causes. Disengagement
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is won't. Depletion is can't, and you treat those two things
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completely opposite directions. One of them you address, the
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other one you relieve. The silence isn't disengagement.
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It's an empty tank. All right, three things Monday. None of
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them cost any money. None of them need any permission. One,
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name the catcher. Ask your team one question: When things go
13:46
wrong, who finds out first? You'll get a name really quick,
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and it probably isn't the name that's on the org chart. Whoever
14:00
they name is carrying more than their job description actually
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says. You can't manage what has not been named. Two. Count the
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invisible work. Go to the actual person and ask them what they
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handled in the last month that never showed up on a status
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report, that isn't in their job description, that they're
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quietly not telling anybody about, and I want you to write
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every single thing down, all of it. That list right there is the
14:43
load that nobody staffed for. Until it's on paper, it isn't
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real, and nobody's going to even worry about it. But that
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particular person who actually caught it. Three, replenish.
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Don't just recognize. Here's a third pair of words for you, and
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it's the one that people get wrong the most: recognition and
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replenishment. Thanking somebody for absorbing costs you nothing.
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It gives them actually nothing in return. It confirms the load;
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it doesn't move a single thing. See, replenishment is
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subtraction. Take something off the list, put a second person on
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that path so they aren't the only door. Give real recovery
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time after a hard stretch, and then don't schedule over it.
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Recognition is a receipt; it isn't a deposit. Now, here's
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what would make me wrong and and really put egg on my face about
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this because I want you to check this instead of just taking my
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word. Go ask the question. If the name that comes back is the
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actual person with the most authority, the one person that
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has to approve everything, this is definitely not what I've been
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describing. That's a bottleneck. That is not the catcher. That's
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a different problem. It deserves a different fix. Taking work off
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their plate will not change anything whatsoever. See, the
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thing that you have to understand is that the name that
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comes back is the person with the most traffic, the one
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everything routes through, because they're always just
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handling it, whether or not they're supposed to. This is
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where you should be looking. Authority is a design problem.
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Traffic is a resource problem. That's one more pair of words
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for you. And if you ask everybody and they name
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different people, you've learned something too. That means
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nobody's catching it. It's landing on the whole team every
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single time, and that's the third thing. Look, here's the
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deal. Falling behind is a position, not a verdict, and part
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of what puts a team in that position is the one person
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quietly running out while everybody else thinks things are
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fine, you don't fix it with the pep talk. You don't fix it with
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an engagement survey. You fix it by finding out who's catching
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it, counting what they've been carrying, and putting something
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back. Resilience isn't a trait; it's a resource. It's something
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you're spending, but the question is, do you know who is?
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And if you want to talk about this and what it looks like for
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your team, go to thelaggingteam.com/start. That's
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thelaggingteam.com/start. That's the sidebar. Now you know where
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to look.
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Oh yeah, one last thing before Tuesday: ask your team who finds
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out first. Just that. Then tell me what the name is. Right, come
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back. Whether it surprises you or not is what I really want to
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hear from you. Comment right wherever you're listening. Come
18:41
and find me on LinkedIn if you need to. Next Tuesday is going
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to be another conversation. Make sure you follow the show
18:48
wherever you're listening, and it'll show up on its own. Trust
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Devon Morris: me.