When High Performance Turns Toxic

 

"We asked about building high performance project teams and found a recurring theme of brutal cultures and mental health issues"

Whilst this CEO was interested in leadership on big budget infrastructure, engineering and IT projects, we see a similar pattern in many sectors. The lessons are universal.

Toxic cultures stymie high performance – it’s hardly newsworthy. How come these dynamics persist – even when leaders are charged with monitoring well-being? What are we missing? What can leaders do to improve success rates?

The CEO was Collin Smith, of ICCPM (international Center for Complex Project Management).  He was talking about the toxic cultures identified in ICCPM’s Roundtable Research.[1]

Toxic cultures and mental health

"Teams in bigger and more complex projects often have a battle rhythm characterized by cognitive overload, decision fatigue, day in day out conflict and excessive stress. This results in poor mental health or even PTSD like symptoms

He continued,

Unfortunately, there’s a trend: leaders in these projects keep pushing and pushing – to the detriment of their own mental health and that of their teams. And productivity suffers.

Although these project leaders are responsible for monitoring staff well-being, at times they seem to exhibit a pride in the scar tissue they’ve acquired over decades. They tend to baton down the hatches, crack the whip and crank up the stress to get things done.

Yet our research tells us, when complex projects really get tough the opposite is needed. We need leaders at their very best in terms of critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and adaptability.

We need leaders who, despite the overload and stress, can slow down rather than becoming more transactional and process driven."

That’s where the ideas I introduced in my earlier blogs come in.  

SCARF a Brain–based Model for Managing People on Projects  explores how the human brain works, and how our response to social threat takes our Thinking Brain offline.

 Change Requests and the Project Stress Cycle   extends these ideas by demonstrating  how excess stress increases complexity, and reduces the chances of project success.

Now consider the project leaders Collin was referring to. They are no different from you and me. 

We know from the SCARF model, the human brain loves certainty. Yet they are dealing with masses of uncertainty and the stakes on their projects are incredibly high. This means many of them are under constant stress.  

In other words, their Thinking brains are offline. And we know from those earlier blogs, when our Thinking brains are offline, we see things less clearly. If we can’t really see what’s going on, we start making assumptions about what is actually happening.  After all, we’re wired for survival.

The fight/ flight reflex says it all. If we’re not going to run away, we may well start fighting. And that increases stress levels, and makes a brutal culture far more brutal.

So what can we do about it? 

Breaking the toxic cycle starts with self-awareness

In my view we need to take a new look at the skills for successful project leadership, and put self -awareness at the top of the list.  I argue it's THE key skill.

By this I mean you  need to be able to ask, at any time – ‘what is going on for me right now?’

What’s going on for me, means working out how I’m feeling about this

Note I use the Feeling word, which doesn’t feature in many business conversations, because answering this question helps to bring our Thinking brains online.

Once you know how you’re feeling, you can consider how other people might be feeling too. You can then move on to consider what do you have to do to:

1. bring your Thinking brain online?
2. bring their Thinking brains online?’

Thinking brains have to be online

Our Thinking brains have to be online for us to be able to collaborate well, be high performing and motivated

They have to be online for us to inspire people and learn well.

If you're cracking the whip,  all you're doing is evoking a fight and flight response. Nobody will be able to think clearly, so they will make poor decisions.  Project performance will suffer. 

The research is clear.  We need leaders who, despite the overload and stress, can slow down rather than becoming more transactional and process driven.  And that means leaders with a high degree of self awareness.  

References

Project Leadership: The game changer in large scale complex projects

Image by Sebaastian Stam on Unsplash