Reverse Team Subversion
00:00:00
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Introduction to Teamwork: A Better Way
Spencer and Christian introduce the podcast and discuss their excitement to be back on air. They also express their hope to have a guest, Nadia Zeksembaeva, on the show soon. Spencer and Christian discuss Ayaan Hirsi Ali's article 'We Have Been Subverted' and its relevance to the current state of society. They delve into the demoralization process and its impact on society.
00:19:27
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Impact of Subversion on Business and Team Performance
The hosts emphasize the impact of societal subversion on business and team performance, highlighting the erosion of trust, unity, and cooperation within teams. They draw parallels to real-world examples and discuss the importance of focusing on the core mission of a business.
00:29:48
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Overcoming Stereotypes and Building Empathy
Discussing the impact of stereotypes and the importance of getting to know people in different departments and teams.
00:31:02
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Global Perspective and Human Connection
Exploring the challenges and experiences of people around the world, highlighting the need for a more complete view of global issues.
00:35:31
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Humanity and Common Ground
Emphasizing the common desires for growth and security, and the realization that we have more in common than differences.
00:36:55
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Addressing Workplace Dysfunction
Identifying dysfunctional workplace behaviors and the need to address issues and concerns openly.
00:43:31
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Empowerment and Team Building
Discussing ways to empower and support team members, promote open communication, and foster mutual respect.
Transcript Detail
00:00 - 00:14
Narrator: Welcome to Teamwork, a better way. The podcast filled with stories, experiences, and insights from leading high performing team experts. Here are your hosts, Spencer Horn and Christian Napier.
00:15 - 00:25
Christian Napier: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Teamwork a Better Way. I'm Christian Napier joined by the effervescent Spencer Horn. Spencer,
00:26 - 00:33
Spencer Horn: how are you? Bubbly. Just bubbling over. So excited to be with you. It's been a while. We've had
00:33 - 00:33
Christian Napier: it has been
00:33 - 00:34
Christian Napier: a while. It has been a while.
00:34 - 00:36
Spencer Horn: We've been subverted a few times.
00:38 - 01:20
Christian Napier: It's true. We were subverted by our technology on the last podcast and that was unfortunate, but we hope to have our guest. What was her name again, Spencer? Nadia Zeksembaeva. Yeah, she was amazing, and I hope we can get her back on soon. We'd really look forward to her conversation. It is a screaming hot here in Salt Lake City. And we're very happy to be joining all of you, wherever you may be. Spencer, we've got an incredible topic to discuss, something that you raised with me recently. You shared a video and then an article. Who was
01:20 - 01:24
Christian Napier: the author of that article and what was the content of that article?
01:24 - 02:16
Spencer Horn: So the article is by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and This individual grew up, I believe in Somalia, yes, and former Muslim growing up in this experienced, incredible subversion, economic unrest, communist takeover of our country, and just incredible situations. And so this individual fled to the Netherlands and eventually to America to be able to enjoy all the great freedoms that we experience. And then she wrote this, and I don't know if it's a he or she, forgive me, I.N. It is a woman, yes. And she writes this article about what's called We Have Been Subverted. And it's a
02:16 - 03:06
Spencer Horn: fascinating article. It just came out June, I mean, 13th, I mean, it's very, very recent by the free press. And I think it clearly explains much of what most of us in the Western world are experiencing in our society today, just the chaos and everything that's going on. And it's really not by accident that it's happening. And she refers to a very interesting former KGB agent who defected to Canada in 1980, who was disaffected and he had been lecturing in Canada and the US for years and lays out very, very clearly the plan that the Soviet
03:06 - 03:16
Spencer Horn: Union had and other communist nations to subvert the West and especially the United States. And we're not talking about what we see in movies like
03:17 - 03:17
Christian Napier: James Bond and blowing up bridges and all
03:17 - 04:03
Spencer Horn: that kind of stuff. That's not the subversion we're talking about. Literally, an extremely subtle decades long process of turning the company, you know, the country, and company, We'll get to companies in a moment, turning the country upside down, but not by outsiders, by insiders. And he, it's such a fascinating, you can actually find this lecture. Yuri Besmanov is the name of the KGB, a former KGB agent. And he talks about how the plan is to subvert nations and they've done it again and again, and they're doing it here in the United States. And it's fascinating to
04:03 - 04:46
Spencer Horn: understand this is not some conspiracy theory. This is well documented, well planned. And we're all experiencing it now. And it's really, since, you know, 2020, most of us have woken up in a different way to like, what's going on in our country? And we don't like what we see, and we have to take some responsibility for that. This podcast, and I know I wanted you to explain this, but this podcast is really focused on business and team performance. But we want to set the foundation here, Christian, about what's happening in society, because it has a huge
04:46 - 05:02
Spencer Horn: impact in what's happening in your business. Those of you who are listening, the workplace every day is having an impact why many of the challenges and ideologies and divisions that are in society are showing up in the workplace. So does that answer your question?
05:04 - 05:59
Christian Napier: It does. It tells us a little bit about what that article was about sets a good backdrop. I'm going to say from the outset, I'm not comfortable for this turning into a liberal versus conservative or competing ideology podcast. I'm not here to criticize 1 or the other. What I am here to say is that, there are many forces who have vested interests in our opinions and they spend tremendous resources to influence our opinions, primarily motivated by power and economics, which are interrelated. And I think the result of that is incredible polarization that we're seeing. And that
05:59 - 06:49
Christian Napier: polarization can leak into our businesses, into our communities, into our homes, into our churches, and it creates a lot of discomfort and anxiety. And as you know Spencer, we've spent several of our podcasts talking about how the workforce today is suffering from a tremendous amount of anxiety, a lack of mental wellness. And so these are real substantive issues. So we're not here to take positions 1 way or another or try to influence you to believe 1 way or another. What we're here to discuss is the impact that this is having and how we can, you know,
06:49 - 07:00
Christian Napier: at least within our sphere of influence, create a space where people can feel like they're safe and they're trusted. Right.
07:01 - 07:44
Spencer Horn: And, you know, I appreciate your, you know, thoughtful approach, but, you know, in the article it's very clear, she talks about how, you know, what happened in Mogadishu when the Soviet Union backed all the, you know, the rebels that were causing all, you know, this experiment, this communist experiment basically plunged her country Somalia into bloodshed and mass starvation. And that lasted over a 20 year period. Nadia Zeksembaeva, who we were gonna have as a guest, I'm so excited for her to tell her story growing up in Kazakhstan. Same thing, Soviet Union subverted that country and 45%
07:45 - 08:26
Spencer Horn: of the population were starved to death. This is not a benevolent socialism that is trying to take over. The problem that we have in society is during the Cold War, we had a very visible enemy, right? And when the Cold War was over, we look at who's the enemy now. You know, Western ideology has won and nothing could be further from the truth. And so our enemies are very, very carefully planning. And If you study the process of subversion, it takes decades. And it's very, very methodical. And I love to just share a couple of ideas.
08:26 - 09:09
Spencer Horn: And then we're gonna transition at how that impacts the business. But in terms of the plan, you start with what's called demoralization. And that takes 15 to 20 years. And according to Yuri Besmanov, no more, no less. And why is it that long? Because that's what it takes to educate young people. And now we've had generations of young people that have been demoralized and educated. And it starts in ideas such as religion, education, media, culture. You politicize, you commercialize, you impact entertainment, you increase permissiveness and relativity and you monopolize, you manipulate, you discredit, really focus on
09:09 - 09:55
Spencer Horn: non-issues and false heroes and role models. And then it talks about all the results. The next area you focus on is structure, like legislative, and not focus on moral issues, but rights versus obligations, intelligence, police, military, putting them down, party antagonisms, friends. So the structure is on security, internal politics, foreign politics, law and order. Then you get into areas of life. This is all the demoralization. Family, society, the breakup of the family and society. Health, you know, focus on sports and Medicare and junk food, race, lower, you know, lower the uppers and genetics versus environments. Crazy.
09:56 - 10:38
Spencer Horn: And then the population, you know, de-land, urbanize unions versus society and labor and that a pack and basically turning, you know, labor against the, you know, management and the owners. You create all kinds of unrest. Next, you have what's called destabilization that takes about 5 years. This is about power struggles. This is the economy focus that you were talking about, society and the fiber. Basically, you want to increase populism and irresponsible power struggles. And with the economy, you want destruction of the bargaining process. You see that when we have polarized politics, we're not, we have the
10:38 - 11:14
Spencer Horn: extreme left and extreme right, which the problem is on both sides and we're not compromising and working well together. And even Politicians that do are criticized as selling out. That's part of the plan, right? We need compromise, we need to work together. And then you have crisis from 2 to 6 months, And then normalization, which is when the victors take over and get rid of everybody that helped them get there. By the way, it's pretty scary. Because all the useful idiots is what they call us that helped them, you know, take over, you know, subvert us
11:14 - 11:18
Spencer Horn: and take over. Well, I don't know, anything you want to add to that.
11:20 - 12:13
Christian Napier: Yeah, I think you know I really appreciate you Spencer. Addressing it using those words because you know. We've become so defensive that we take our positions to the left or to the right. And we are armed and ready. Safety's off, right? We're ready to just blast each other. But what you've talked about here, actually, it can apply to far left, it can apply to far right, right? It's independent of, of where you come from. The whole point is to get us to hate each other. That's right. This is the entire point, right? The phrase, the
12:13 - 12:15
Spencer Horn: rest and put us at odds with each other.
12:15 - 12:22
Christian Napier: Right. It's that's the, that's the idea. The idea is to get us on opposing sides
12:22 - 12:23
Christian Napier: to fight each other. And it doesn't matter what the side is. It doesn't matter if it's Dairy Queen versus Wendy's. As long as we're arguing, which
12:23 - 12:25
Spencer Horn: is the best, that's the
12:34 - 13:12
Christian Napier: subversion is happening. Yeah, exactly right. And that's what we're seeing today, is we're seeing a society divided, and It's divided by, I would say, multiple actors who have their interests, but they stand to gain from a society divided. And so it's a really, really important topic because we're at each other's throats right now and we've got to figure out a way to come back and find some common ground.
13:12 - 13:48
Spencer Horn: You know, you gave me an interesting piece of information the other day about when you were working with the state of Utah with the fires happening in Maui. If people are thinking that we're just making this up, every single day I get a text from somebody that says, hey, you know, I missed you in Death Valley, or we were supposed to meet for lunch, or hey, John. And it's all, I know exactly what it is. And every once in a while I respond just because I feel, you know, silly or salty. And I'm like, oh, you
13:48 - 14:23
Spencer Horn: know, I missed you so much. I'm so sorry that I let you down. And then they're like, who is this? And it's like, well, it's John. And then they're like, oh, you're not John. Because they know it's not John. And they say, I'm so sorry that I interrupted you. Always the same. So, you know, did I hope I'm not disturbing you here? Can we be friends? And then it's always about transitioning over to WhatsApp or some other non, you know, reviewed or protected app. And they want to get you over there so that they can start
14:23 - 14:58
Spencer Horn: building a relationship with you. And they always say they're beautiful, and they send a picture, it's an Asian woman, you know, nothing salacious, just, you know, and they're always 38 years old every time. I mean, I'm talking, doesn't, I mean, it happens daily, and I don't, everyone's alive, I respond, because I just wanna see, it's a whole system done by the CCP. And What do they want? They want to get you excited and get you to invest in cryptocurrency. Why? Because they're wanting to replace the US dollar as the normal unit of doing business in the
14:58 - 15:16
Spencer Horn: world. And they have incentives to do that. And as you talked about, control and money and power and all of that, and they wanted just take away the leverage that the West has through things like even the US dollar and trade. And tell the story that you were talking about.
15:17 - 16:11
Christian Napier: Well, you know, what I heard from the people that were there, a report, a debrief following the fires in Maui, almost immediately after the fires began, we started seeing coordinated disinformation campaigns and the reports that were shared to people. I don't want to get into the details, but the reports that were shared indicated that 95% of the disinformation that they were seeing in the aftermath of those fires was coming from 3 different places, 3 different countries. And so there are countries who very much want to have, or they've got a vested interest in seeing us become
16:11 - 17:04
Christian Napier: divided and arguing amongst ourselves who flood social media, which is like a flamethrower to disinformation. Oh, yeah. And it really amplifies it and further polarizes us. And I actually think that's something that we need to, we should not underestimate is the power of social media and all of this. The folks who run these companies, they have invested billions of dollars in designing algorithms to capture and maintain our attention. This is what they do because they generate revenues from our eyeballs and, and to support their causes. That's right. And, and we've seen malicious actors leverage those platforms
17:04 - 17:48
Christian Napier: for their gain. Right. And, and I think it's important for us to have some awareness when we are on social media and we see something or we receive something in our email inbox and when we read it we start we get a little stirred up it's important I think for us to take a step back and say Why am I getting stirred up and who is benefiting from stirring me up? Right. I think it's an important, it's an important point of reflection requires a little bit of humility in our parts because oftentimes and myself included, we
17:48 - 17:50
Christian Napier: say, well, I'm, I'm above that.
17:50 - 17:53
Spencer Horn: I'm immune to it. I, I, I'm on the right side of this.
17:54 - 18:04
Christian Napier: I'm on the right side. Everything I consume is correct. And the stuff that I don't consume is wrong. Right. Right. You know, I think we all need to humble ourselves.
18:04 - 18:05
Spencer Horn: I've been a useful idiot.
18:05 - 18:46
Christian Napier: I'm sure of it. Yeah. I look in the mirror and say, you know what? Am I and are my emotions being manipulated here? Because emotion is super powerful. When we feel something. We, you know, we react much more strongly than if we just dispassionately consume some content you know some statistics out there we're like okay that's whatever It's interesting. But when emotions come into play, that really can influence our behavior. And, and they're very, very smart people on this planet, who know how to take advantage of that.
18:46 - 19:37
Spencer Horn: You know what the martial arts are right I mean judo and karate and everything there's this there's a concept in martial arts of using people's energy against them and that's exactly in martial arts those are warfare arts that's exactly what's what's happening here. So let's make a transition, shall we? ["Southbound Rage"] So, you know, Hersey Ali's article, we have been subverted really as we've talked about, describes a systematic erosion of Western values and institutions. And which can be linked to teamwork being subverted by divided workers in several ways. So let's just talk about those ways that
19:37 - 20:17
Spencer Horn: that subversion happens. So divided workers and subversion of teamwork can happen in a couple of ways. Number 1, erosion of trust and unity. You know, Hersey talks about demoralization targets, you know, the foundational ideas and structures of society, leading individuals to doubt themselves and their institutions. You talked about social media. Just think about how many people feel like my life is terrible or, and, you know, high suicide rates and all these different things. That self doubt, that self, almost self immolation where we're lighting ourselves on fire because our lives are so terrible, you know. Objectively, we've
20:17 - 20:57
Spencer Horn: never had it better, but subjectively, we've never had it worse in society. So, in a team context, if members are constantly exposed to negative narratives and are encouraged to question the legitimacy of their team's goals or even their leaders, that erodes trust. And that undermines unity and the ability to work. So for example, Christian, a team where members are divided by conflicting ideologies or a lack of faith in leadership can result in reduced collaboration and productivity. As team members may no longer trust each other or believe in their shared mission. And I think a great example,
20:57 - 21:31
Spencer Horn: another, I mean, a real example of that has been the universities that have been under fire because the presidents of universities have come out and made statements about policy on, for example, the Gaza and Israeli conflict. And what they've done is they've polarized their supporters. They've polarized their members. And it's creating chaos in society and on the campuses. And some of the presidents are losing their jobs. Thoughts on that?
21:33 - 21:50
Christian Napier: Well, I do have a thought but it's completely in line with something that you shared with me about Harvard and the policy that they came out with recently. And so Spencer, why don't you tell us about this update from Harvard? And you had a son-in-law, I believe, that attended Harvard, right? Yeah, so I called my son a lot. I talked to him because
21:50 - 21:50
Christian Napier: he has a
21:50 - 22:36
Spencer Horn: multinational company with 600 employees. And I wanted to see what kinds of issues that they're experiencing, a knock on wood, they're doing great, and for a couple of reasons. But as someone who has 2 degrees at Harvard, he keeps very close tabs on his alma mater. And the interim president, Alan M. Garber, announced just a couple of weeks ago, this was on May 29th, that there's a new policy for Harvard about how they are going to respond to political issues or public salient issues. And basically, they hired this group called the Institutional Voice Working Group who
22:36 - 23:19
Spencer Horn: did a study. And the recommendation is that they're only going to make comments when it focuses on the university's core function. So basically, they're only gonna talk about something if it impacts their ability to educate and the core mission of the university, which is very wise for any business. Yogi Berra says, keep the main thing the main thing. I'm sure I didn't say that right, but make sure the main thing always stays the main thing. In your business, if you focus on your core mission, you're less likely to get derailed by nonsense and things that are
23:19 - 23:59
Spencer Horn: divisive. Focus on the mission and not societal divisions. Focus on your business mission to create more unity. And I think that's a great message for all of us. Make sure I've gotten everything. The report that they generated noted that there's pressure to comment on every imaginable issue of the day. That pressure is part of this subversion process, right? To create this chaos and hell that we're experiencing. But should such statements become commonplace, that's a real problem. If the university adopts an official position on an issue beyond its core function, it will be understood to side with
23:59 - 24:11
Spencer Horn: 1 perspective or another on that issue, and that's gonna create more division, and so they're gonna stay away from that. And I think that's very, very wise and good input for all of
24:11 - 24:45
Christian Napier: us. I think so too. It's not easy to do because, as you mentioned, there is tremendous pressure because people feel very passionately about these issues and you know it helps your it helps your causes credibility right when you've got a prestigious institution like a University of Higher Education like a Harvard who is supporting what you're saying. And if they oppose what you're saying, then it inflames you even more. So it's not easy to do this.
24:46 - 25:21
Spencer Horn: The same thing happened in the National Speakers Association. You know, you've been involved in that as well for a time. And with that organization, there's so much pressure for the board and the presidents to make statements, take positions on political and society issues. And the leadership very, very wisely said, you know, that's not our mission. That's not our focus. I completely forgot about that till just now. And they have been, and that alienated a few people. People were frustrated because you need to be taking a stand. Like during COVID, they're like, you're killing people by having
25:21 - 25:58
Spencer Horn: meetings. And, you know, it's like, all right, it's what you said a minute ago, you're getting stirred up. Well, there's a lot of stirring up going on within organizations. And our organization said, no, we're gonna focus on the core mission, which is helping speakers grow their business. We're not focused on what color bricks should be in this community or that community. I'm total nonsense. And that is, I think, so important for you as a business leader, if you are having any kinds of this divisions, to get focused back on the main thing, which is your core
25:59 - 26:48
Spencer Horn: business values. Next we have destabilization of cooperation. That's factionalism, infighting. And as Hersey Ali points out that during the destabilization phase, society becomes characterized by vicious power struggles, factionalism. So in a workplace or a team environment, this translates to infighting and power struggles among team members. And when team members are more focused on their personal subgroups' interests rather than on the collective goal. That's when teamwork breaks down. So for example, you know, if a project team becomes divided into clicks based on differing opinions or goals, then their ability to cooperate and complete the project is effectively
26:48 - 26:49
Spencer Horn: compromised.
26:51 - 27:34
Christian Napier: Yeah. And you see this all the time, you know, it's funny to hear people in business complain about we operate in silos and we don't have good cross-functional communication. Yeah. But we operate in silos because it's comfortable to operate in silos. And, when we try to cross the aisle and work with other people, sometimes we, you know, that's when we realize, oh, we have competing objectives and I need to protect my own turf, often at the expense of other people's turf. And this causes a huge amount of problems. And so I'm curious Spencer, from your perspective,
27:35 - 27:48
Christian Napier: how we can overcome those barriers because they're very real, right? We talk about, yeah, we need communication, but that is hard to do. I think 1 of
27:48 - 28:32
Spencer Horn: the exercises that you can do as a company is understand that there actually are competing interests between silos, as you call them. So, for example, HR and operations and sales and finance, they all have different mandates and focuses. Obviously, we play for the same team. We should focus on the team that's on the jersey, not on our department. However, there are competing interests. So, for example, sales has a mandate to put as much throughput and deals as possible, but then the operations has to deliver and they may not have the people power to deliver. And so
28:32 - 29:09
Spencer Horn: those 2 departments can be at odds because they have competing goals. And so I think something that's helpful as an exercise is to sit down and map out where are the competing interests? What are they? And are these natural to business? And many of them are. And understand what they are so that you're not taken by surprise and you can focus on how do we deal with compromise. It can't be what's happening in politics where there's no compromise. There has to be working together to meet the common goal or the common mission of the organization. And
29:09 - 29:47
Spencer Horn: that means sometimes we need to have give and take. But to not be surprised that that division exists and that tension is there, that's just denying that, you know, life is imperfect, business is imperfect. So acknowledge that, but just the discussion of having, Just having that discussion helps people begin to understand that this is normal. So we want to normalize a little bit of the tension that exists. And then once that's out of the way, we can make the discussion less personal and more cognitive and solution oriented.
29:48 - 30:20
Christian Napier: You know, I think along those lines, 1 of the things that I've noticed in my career, and I'm sure you've noticed this too, is when we are in our silos, we tend to paint the other silos with broad brushes, right? Broad strokes like, yeah, all, all, you know, all the accounting folks do is care about saving money. You know, all the sales department does is they just care about driving revenues. They don't care about anything else. They're commissions.
30:20 - 30:21
Spencer Horn: They just want their commission.
30:21 - 30:54
Christian Napier: They just want their commissions. That they never do anything that, you know, according to procedure and we have to clean up the mess afterwards, we, we, we, we start painting people. We stereotype people in the other areas of the organization. And I'm curious, Spencer, how we can overcome those stereotypes because, you know, we just see everybody as characters and not necessarily as actual human beings.
30:54 - 31:32
Spencer Horn: Well, it, it, that's, that's easy to do when you don't know somebody. It's easy to caricature them. It's easy to, in the absence of information, the human brain makes up information. And so if I don't know somebody, I can assume we do what's called awfulizing and catastrophizing. As humans, we think of the worst scenario, why it's actually a survival technique. We've talked about this on the podcast in the past, and so we assume the worst in others because in case that's true, that protects us in some ways. And so we'll typically notice and focus on negative
31:32 - 32:09
Spencer Horn: attributes and ignore the positive because if the negative are true, that can hurt us and hurt our career. So we have to assume that those might be possibilities. So understand that's happening. And number 2, get to know. When you get to know the people in your team and in other teams, you realize that they're just people. When you travel the world, to me, 1 of the most amazing things that happens is my faith in humanity is renewed because I see and meet so many wonderful people that are just trying to care for their families. And I
32:09 - 32:50
Spencer Horn: think actually multinational countries have some benefits because they bring to the table experiences that are not just, when you're parochial and you have a company that's so tightly held or not diverse in its population or where people are based, I think it's harder to to have a more complete view of what's happening in the world. And we get wrapped up in our own stories. I don't know. I did some more research and just, You know, my son was telling me, my son-in-law was telling me, you know, they have hundreds of people in India. There's a lot
32:50 - 33:39
Spencer Horn: going on in India right now. They have employees from Ukraine. We all know what's going on in Ukraine. But 10 of the 20 worst humanitarian crises are Gaza, Myanmar, which is right next to India is huge, Mali, Sudan, Niger, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo. Add to that Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Nigeria, Chad. You have almost 11% of the population, but 86% of the humanitarian need. 75% of people are displaced, 30% are in extreme poverty, and 68% are in food, basically, insecurity crisis. And so when you start understanding the challenges going on,
33:39 - 34:06
Spencer Horn: like my friends in Lebanon, I have so much empathy for them because they are, they're so resilient and they're dealing with so many challenges, it just makes me admire them. When I talk to somebody from a different department and know the challenges and the focus and what they have to deal with, what does accounting have to do? Why do they have to do it? What's the purpose? Why do they exist? What, you know, the reporting that they have to give to the government, the regulations that they have to look out for, HR, same thing, what are
34:06 - 34:46
Spencer Horn: the laws that they have to protect the company from, from getting sued? Then all of a sudden you change your perspective. I mean, I have this saying where I characterize, HR is always the Department of Business Prevention, right? But that's not always helpful. Sometimes it's like, hey, all right, we need to be flexible here. But other times they're doing things that are to protect the company. And that may seem like it's. Focused on you, which is a very egocentric view, and it's, you know, hurting you personally, but when you understand why they exist, that comes from
34:46 - 34:51
Spencer Horn: getting to know them, that comes from increased communication, more collaboration, more interaction.
34:53 - 35:20
Christian Napier: I really like what you said about your experience with the PMI chapter and the professionals there in Lebanon. You've been around the world, Spencer. And I, I think you'd agree that when you actually get to know these people, when you get to meet people and hear their stories, you realize, as you said, very eloquently, We have a lot more in common than we think. How many
35:20 - 35:22
Spencer Horn: people have you interviewed around the world?
35:22 - 35:28
Christian Napier: I don't know. It's been a lot. 1 and a half thousand, probably more than that.
35:28 - 35:30
Spencer Horn: Do you find any inconsistent themes?
35:31 - 36:15
Christian Napier: Well, just as you mentioned, just as you mentioned, Spencer, ultimately what do we want? We want opportunities for growth and we want security for ourselves and for our loved ones. I mean, this is what drives virtually all of us, right? Everybody has different wants, but I think at the core, we have this in common. And when you meet with and get to know people, You start to see that, right? You realize, oh shoot, maybe we are not of the same faith. We are from different countries. We come from different socioeconomic backgrounds. We might be working in
36:15 - 36:25
Christian Napier: different professions, but at the end of the day, we're all human beings and part of this human family. And we have a lot more in common than our differences.
36:26 - 37:03
Spencer Horn: Yeah, this we could we could spend hours on this. We have so much to talk about today, but we get to move on. And I'll give you another problem, crisis in functionality, which is like loss of effective communication. And that's what's happening in business. An example of that, you know, team members are afraid to speak up about issues or concerns or critical problems. And so they remain unaddressed, leading to project delays or failures. Let's talk about a couple others. Normalization of dysfunction. This is accepting poor standards. And this is kind of in that normalization phase of,
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Spencer Horn: you know, subversion becomes the new normal and teams become accustomed to this dysfunction and low morale and poor performances, you know? And so that's when they focus on, well, I just need more money because it's like, pay me more money to put up with this garbage because that's the only reason I want to stay.
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Christian Napier: You know,
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Spencer Horn: what's that?
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Christian Napier: I was gonna say, Spencer, I mean, it's so true. How many times in your career have you heard the phrase, well, it is what it is, right? And I feel helpless to change anything. Yeah. It's just how things
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Spencer Horn: are done around here.
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Christian Napier: And, and we just accept that this is the way that's supposed to be, or this way it's going to be because we feel powerless to change it. And I'm curious in your career Spencer, as you've worked with so many organizations around the world, how do you get people to overcome that feeling of helplessness?
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Spencer Horn: So it's a great question and 1 of the first ways to do that is to hear them. And 1 of the ways I do that is, you know, in a team diagnostic we take assessments of the team's perspective and we do that we we collect that anonymously because we want people we want to hear what people have to say I think it's very dangerous for a leader to just have yes people around them you know people that tell the leaders what they want to hear you know I just went through my board retreat for being inducted
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Spencer Horn: as president of our, you know, my Speaker's Association next week. And I wanted, we have a great board, but there is a tendency to kind of be rubber stamp people and not come to board meetings prepared or engaged because after all we're just volunteering. And I think 1 of the ways to be able to turn that around, I know 1 of the ways is to get them more involved in the mission and the goals and where we're going and have their voices heard. When people feel like they have a voice, they're gonna speak up more. Now
39:13 - 39:38
Spencer Horn: that doesn't mean that you have to do everything that all your people say. I mean, the Japanese have used the process of kaizen for decades, and that is that if there's a way to do something better, they actually incentivize people on the front line to speak up and say, hey, there's a better way that we can do this. It's a brilliant idea and it incentivizes that. So that's 1 way that you can do that is encourage people to say, hey, if you've got an idea that can make things run better, I wanna hear it. But incentivize
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Spencer Horn: that by making it safe for them to do that and by encouraging them, but by acknowledging them, by holding them up and saying, hey, this came from, right? So, oh boy, we're having a streaming error. Uh-oh, hopefully it will work. But Anyway, so when you have this cycle of inefficiency, you've got a team that has normalized constant conflict and low productivity. And so they struggle to innovate and meet objectives. And so then dysfunction becomes ingrained in that culture. It takes time to switch that around. And you gotta get to the heart of the problem, and that
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Spencer Horn: means you've gotta spend time on it. And a lot of leaders don't wanna do that. They're just busy trying to keep the flywheel going, and so they don't wanna stop and say, all right, let's slow down to go fast, right? And really the systematic subversion of Western values and institutions as described in this article are really paralleled with how teamwork is undermined. When workers are divided, Trust, cooperation, effective communication, high standards, really essential for teamwork. All of these are eroded through demoralization, destabilization, crisis, mental health challenges, normalization of the effectiveness of a cohesive team. It's just
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Spencer Horn: like, work is work and life is life. I leave, you know, to me that's not true. You can't separate yourself or bifurcate yourself by who you are at work and who you are at home. I think there's real problems with that. You can try to compartmentalize your life, but your work impacts your home. And if you don't believe that, if you're getting negative feedback, And I just went through this experience, excuse me, this thought experiment with somebody I was coaching in Chechia in Prague yesterday. And I said, what would happen if you were constantly put down
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Spencer Horn: by your boss and told that you're not good enough or that your ideas are stupid or that you're not making an impact here. How does that impact when you go home and meet with your significant other? It definitely is going to impact my relationship and how I feel about myself. On the other hand, how does it feel when you are encouraged and supported and told you're doing a great job and that you're important to the team. How does that impact your life? We as leaders in business have a huge impact. And this thought really comes from
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Spencer Horn: Clayton Christensen who taught at Harvard Business School. And he wrote a book about this called How Will You Measure Your Life? And he said that Frederick Hertzberg believes that more than money, people are motivated by growth, by opportunity, by the ability to contribute and make a difference. And if they're given that opportunity, they're going to thrive. They're going to thrive professionally and personally. So, man, we're sure carrying on here, aren't we?
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Christian Napier: No, but I think it's an important topic. And,
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Christian Napier: you know, when it
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Christian Napier: comes to the subject of subversion, what you're describing here is that we have an opportunity as business leaders to have a material impact on the emotional well-being of the people that work for us.
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Spencer Horn: That's correct.
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Christian Napier: And what an incredible opportunity, right? Work and the workplace in our teams in a way can become a bit of a sanctuary for our workers where you know what they don't they don't have to worry about those things while we're here. If we treat people with respect and dignity as you're talking about here and following the principles that you talked about with Clayton, Clayton Christensen espoused, When we treat our people like real human beings that they have worth, then it can make a massive, it can make a massive difference. Just a massive difference. And I hope
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Christian Napier: it.
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Spencer Horn: Sorry, cut you off.
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Christian Napier: Oh, It's all good. Gosh, Spencer, we've been going at it for 45 minutes.
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Spencer Horn: I know, and we still
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Christian Napier: have. What else do you have on your list that we need to cover before we adjourn?
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Spencer Horn: Well, we've done a couple of ideas of what people can do to help reverse team subversion, but Let's go through and line them out in the time that we have remaining. Number 1, promote open communication, right? Encourage team members to voice their opinions and concerns openly without fear and retribution. So we've talked about that. I wanna reiterate that. So another thing you can do is establish regular check-ins and feedback sessions. I love it. I coach my leaders. Make sure you're having one-on-ones with your direct reports. That's important that you don't have too many direct reports that
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Spencer Horn: you can have one-on-ones. I mean more than once a month, at least bi-weekly. Better if you can do that once a week, but bi-weekly is probably appropriate. It doesn't have to be more than 15 minutes, but the agenda should be open, should be theirs. Now there are accountability meetings, Those are different. These are regular check-ins. What's going on? Knowing your people, how are they doing? Right? And then to your point, foster mutual respect and understand. And you can do that with team building activities that help team members appreciate each other's perspectives and strengths. And I'm headed
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Spencer Horn: to Ontario, Ottawa tomorrow, to work with a board to do exactly that. We're gonna be doing activities. And they're not just, we're not doing trust falls or anything like that, but we're gonna do activities that are gonna help highlight each other's strengths and weaknesses so that they can operate in a way that they understand each other better. Implement diversity and training, inclusion training, to really help understand and reduce biases. And some of those, I know that's gotten a lot of maybe some negative press, but there's a lot of ways to create diversity. Even in my communication
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Spencer Horn: workshops, I highlight the need for the different styles of behavior and thinking. So there's cognitive diversity as well. 3, reaffirm your common goals and values. And so focus on keeping the main thing the main thing. That's the team mission, vision, and values. And help your teams, Christian, align individual tasks and projects to that main goal. People need to know their raison d'etre. They need to know how what they do matters. How Does the receptionist make a difference in the world and how are they moving the mission forward? Help them to understand that. You know, if you're
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Spencer Horn: a construction worker, how does the work that you do impact or feed into the mission? You need to know that. And don't just assume that your people know that on their own. You need to take the time to help them align what they do every day with the organizational mission. Address conflicts quickly and in a positive way. And this is hard for some people because there are many leaders who are conflict avoidant and just kinda, I don't wanna address that, but the quicker you address it in the right way, help people see that they matter and
47:46 - 48:19
Spencer Horn: that you wanna hear what they have to say, but team leaders in conflict, you know, help them. Team leaders need to know how to do conflict resolution and how to handle disagreements effectively. And 1 of the ways you can do that is actually create team agreements and conflict agreements. How are you going to have that? What are you going to do when somebody breaks that agreement? And that's kind of establishing protocols in conflict. And so focus on solutions rather than blaming. If there's a problem, you know, instead of, okay, what are we gonna do about it?
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Spencer Horn: What are you gonna do about it? Instead of, all right, let's keep on the complaining. I'm kind of running through these. You have some thoughts?
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Christian Napier: Well, I appreciate the laundry list. I think it's a great checklist. What I, what I take away from our conversation today, Spencer.
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Spencer Horn: I got more.
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Christian Napier: Oh my goodness. You got more? Yeah. This is like the infomercial. What? But wait, Wait, there's more.
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Spencer Horn: We'll also include. Well, you talked about silos, right? So encourage that collaboration and teamwork. You know, look for opportunities for cross-functional projects that require collaboration between different departments. And encourage that and bring people together that have to figure out a common solution. That's going to help those collaborative tools and platforms really help reduce those silos. Reward and recognize team efforts. What gets rewarded gets what is the saying? What gets rewarded gets repeated? I think so. I
49:24 - 49:26
Christian Napier: think that's right. But you know, recognize when
49:32 - 50:03
Spencer Horn: find stories of team effort within your organization. Highlight those stories, tell the stories of people doing it right so that people wanna be part of those stories. When you celebrate team achievements and milestones, you know, you build a sense of collective accomplishment. This is a problem for many organizations because there's an expectation that we just, this is our job, this is what we do. We build stuff and it gets done and we move on to the next thing. But as you're celebrating as you go, people are feeling like, hey, we're contributing to the success of this
50:03 - 50:45
Spencer Horn: and we are doing something and we get rewarded for productivity. So you, and you wanna recognize both individual and team contributions. You know what, provide professional development opportunities. These are training, people need to have their skills. Create mentorship programs and coaching relationships within your organization. Make sure that people know exactly what their roles and responsibilities are. And here's another idea that I love, and that is build trust through transparency. There was a book written many decades ago called The Great Game of Business. And the idea is that you open the books to your team. Now There's
50:45 - 51:18
Spencer Horn: some risks in that, but I think there's more benefits. 1 of those is that sometimes we talk about subversion where the worker is against the owners and a lot of times people say, well, I should be running this company or I should have this right or that right. And they have no idea about the risk or the challenges that are going on in the organization that many times the owners have to experience. And so when you open the books, you realize, hey, we're making millions of dollars, but really our overhead are also millions of dollars and
51:18 - 52:00
Spencer Horn: so our profit is quite small. And we have to be very careful not to lose money and go out of business, because that hurts everybody. But when there's more transparency, then you increase that trust and then you don't have that negative subversion. Just create a positive culture, promote a work environment where people feel valued and included. Address behaviors or practices that come up that hurt team morale and cohesion and work on creating more resilience and cohesiveness and, and ultimately you're going to counteract those effects of subversion that are happening in society and your team will be
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Spencer Horn: high performing. So there, I got through my laundry list. I wanted to make sure that we gave people ideas that I think would be beneficial to reversing the fact that subversion is happening.
52:13 - 53:02
Christian Napier: So the takeaway for me from all of this Spencer is that it's possible to reverse subversion in a team environment within your organization. You can create a culture that can overcome this. However, It is hard to do and it requires some skill. So Spencer, you have been helping organizations around the planet for decades to build better, high performing, more unified teams. You've developed a lot of learning and skills in your career to help organizations do this. So. If I'm a leader in an organization or I find an individual who wants to build or be a part
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Christian Napier: of a high performing team. And I want to learn how to do that. How do I get in touch with you? Better do it today.
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Spencer Horn: This is important. And just reach out to me on LinkedIn and I get messages all the time and people from around the world, I love that. Spencer Horn on LinkedIn. And, or you can go to our website, Altium, A-L-T-I-U-M, leadership.com. Christian, how can people find you and get to know more about your amazing contributions to the world and what you can do for them? LinkedIn,
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Christian Napier: just like you, Spencer. So just look for Christian Napier on LinkedIn and you'll find me there, happy to connect with anyone who reaches out. I really appreciate it. I appreciate you Spencer for taking the time out of a Thursday to have this conversation with our viewers and listeners and we appreciate you as well. So please like and subscribe to our podcast everyone and we'll catch you again soon.
54:04 - 54:14
Spencer Horn: Oh, hey, just real quickly. We have, I was planning on gonna be in Canada when Mary Kelly, we have Mary Kelly coming up soon. And do you remember, is it the 17th of June?
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Christian Napier: I think so.
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Spencer Horn: Yeah, so I'm gonna try to reach her and see if we can continue to do that because I'm actually going to be in town if you're available. I'd love to if you know who Mary Kelly is, she's an economist, she's been in the Navy, she's an incredible speaker and she will have some great great ideas on team performance So stay tuned for Mary Kelly and that's all. All right. ["Dreams of a New World"]
