Introduction:  James Scouller spent 15 years researching and writing his trilogy of books, how to build winning teams again and again…  

He led three international Companies as CEO for eleven years before he founded his executive coaching practice, The Scouller Partnership in 2004. Today he coaches Leaders and their teams. James is the author of the bestselling book, The Three levels of Leadership: how to develop your leadership presence, knowhow and skill. He is the holder of two postgraduate coaching qualifications, and he has trained in applied psychology at the UK Institute of Psychosynthesis.

In addition, James holds a 4th Dan Black belt in Aikido. He lives in London with his wife Tricia.

Podcast episode Summary:  This episode explores what you need to know, what you need to do and how you do it to become a winning team. James shares his passion for teams and his quest to reveal what it takes to build real teams. It takes effort.

Questions asked & points made throughout the Episode:

 

o    How would you like to fill in the gaps, in terms of my introduction? James is an ex-CEO and that is an important part of his identity. James firmly believes that if individuals and team want to grow they need to address their unnoticed psychological obstacles. Peoples biggest obstacles are not to do with technical stuff, but it is more to do with psychological blocks. James believes that most people, if they can recognise these psychological blocks and work on them they can not only see greater improvement in work results but also greater levels of personal satisfaction. James has been working for nearly 48 years. 20 years ago he decided to set up on each own as a Coach, to train as a coach and along the way he wrote the book The three levels of leadership which he calls a self-help psychological manual and for the last 10 years his focus has been on writing the trilogy on teams. -that’s James story in a can.

 

o    What does your first book unearth in terms of the psychological principles you speak?  The first book has a role in the trilogy to describe what you really need to know about teams. What you need to know about teams is firstly the distinction between what a team is and is not, the definition of a team and the many alternative work group units. You also need to know about the psychological forces that are going on beneath the surface and if you do not know about them you are going to end up a victim of them and you will not act and succeed as a genuine team. The third big thing that you need to know is the commit, combust, combine model which James explains is a psychological model but it is also a practical model and a team can use it to determine which issue they are facing.

 

o    How do you help teams you work with through the collective forces and individual forces material you describe in your book? James is clear that he doesn’t, certainly not in the way he described in the book. He does not take teams into the dual forces model, it is a little academic and doesn’t give a team an immediate “so what”. James remains as a coach with his clients and not an educator, although now the books are out he may find himself having to spend more time in an educative role. What James really wants teams to know is that there is stuff going on beneath the surface. He will use a scaling question from 0-10 where he asks a team how well they can skilfully assert themselves in a conversation 1:1 and with the same question in a group. Typically the response is much lower in the group setting and this helps sensitise a group to the knowing that something more is going on in a group setting. This question and revealing is about as much as James will ever do with a team when it comes to the dual forces model. James will more readily use the other psychological model, Commit, Combust, Combine as well as the material from his second book with teams. James wants to make his sessions with teams as experiential & as developmental as possible. James will always explain The Team Progression Curve, which features in book one, which differentiates the different work groups such as task group, potential teams, pseudo teams, real teams and high performing teams. James find that most teams and in particular senior teams like this mapping. Teams get it, it intuitively makes sense and they see things that they didn’t know that there is a choice of unit and there is a trap called the Pseudo Team. On the same flip chart James will draw arrows on the ascent between the potential team to the real team that shows Commit, Combust and Combine. James is intent on allowing the teams he works with experience what each of these psychological elements feels like and it is only when he is bowing out of a team coaching assignment he will refer back to the explanation of the Commit Combine and Combine model. Instead James gives teams the team fixer model, book three so the team can self-diagnose. In summary James does not give his teams intellectual food on the models discussed in book one.

 

o    How did you find the synthesis of these three models helped you and your practice? I am a synthesiser. The world of applied psychology frustrates James because he finds that there are so many people describing the same things using different language. The work has an application for James because he can assess which issue is foremost in terms of commit, combust and combine to help him figure out which of the seven principles and action keys, in his 7 principles model described in book two will be most useful for the team and which to zoom in on. 

 

o    James what do listeners to this podcast need to know in terms of the interplay between the three models described in book one? The only thing that team members or team coaches need to take away from this conversation is that there is a model, a dual forces model that explains what is happening beneath the surface that is making it difficult for teams to form easily. James wrote book one to make the point that if a team does not take the material seriously enough it is unlikely to succeed in building teams. He wanted to create some pain to make the point. Book one is going to be of far more interest to psychologists and coaches than to teams other than to make this important point, you have to understand it takes effort to build winning teams. The Commit, Combust, Combine model is much better for teams to help them answer the question “what do I do with this information?”

o    Can you give the listeners a thumbnail sketch of each of the three elements in Commit, Combust and Combine? James starts by saying that the world has been fascinated with the idea of Psychological Safety and he will put it in perspective with respect to the C-C-C model. Trust and Psychological Safety are not the first immediate issue with a team. Commit, Combust, Combine is an attempt by James to take the brilliant work of William Schutlz who first came up with a model called FIRO-Elements in 1950, to make this work applicable to teams. Commit is the first issue for Teams. Commit is all about engagement. It asks am I psychologically in this team or am I not? This is not about whether you are physically present on a team, very often you do not have a choice but you do have a choice about whether or not you commit to the team. The commit issue gets revealed with these questions; what is this team going to be like?, is this going to be a good team, what do we have to do here? How does the Leader react to me? How are other people reacting to me? Can I sense a role that adds value to what I think this team is about? Do I feel included and noticed based on  the behaviour of other people towards me and on my experience to date? If team members can say, yes I understand why this team is here, I like the purpose of the team, I can be part of this and I feel noticed & valued and the leader pays attention to me and I can see a role for myself here, then they will likely declare “I’m in” That the simple way of describing the Commit issue and what has to happen to navigate through it successfully. This phase can go on indefinitely and many work groups do not get past the commit issue.

 

o    Is ambivalence the shadow of commit? Yes because if a team is unclear about the aim of a group, or they do not care about the aim, or they cannot see a role for them in the team then they are unlikely to be able to commit and the result is ambivalence.

 

o    How long does it take to help a team see their order of Commit? The elements commit, combust and combine do not work like a ladder or linearly. There can be recycling of issues. Moving through or getting commitment can take minutes or months especially with work teams who can often be so fuzzy about their purpose.

 

o    If we continue with Combust and Combine what do they both mean? When Commit is resolved enough and enough people declare “I’m in” this is when the combust issue emerges. Combust is essentially about Power. Now the team is asking itself questions like; how do we get things done here? How do we make decisions here?, Is that clear and acceptable? Individually questions are asked like; what is my part in those decisions?, how happy am I with my influence over those decisions? Combust is all around influence, power and role. In commit we are trying to sense our role and in combust we are trying to settle into a role that meets our power needs. Not everyone has the same power needs. Combust is resolved when people are happy with their role, influence and how decisions are made.

 

o    How was the choice of the word combust made? Is it indicative of this phase that combustion will be likely? James lets us into a secret about the naming of his model. He shares that Bruce Tuckman admitted that the real success of his model was because it has a neat rhyming to it and sim

Episode ID: 1000667959263

GUID: c1c37185-4f01-4302-a80c-91678918603c

Release Date: 01/09/2024, 17:52:00