Thriving In The Digital Age: Kimberly Wiefling and Building Effective Teams

Kimberly Wiefling, a leadership expert, discusses the importance of building effective teams and communication skills in the digital age. She highlights the challenges organizations face in building teams and the common causes of failure in global teams. She emphasizes the need for psychological safety and trust in teams and the role of leadership in creating a culture of open communication and innovation. Kimberly also shares practical strategies for improving leadership skills and employee engagement, such as listening actively and creating a positive organizational culture. She concludes by urging leaders to focus on the future and create a clear vision that inspires and motivates their teams.

Transcript

Joe Crist (00:01.837)
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Thriving the Digital Age. I'm your host Joe Crist. Joining me today is Kimberly Wiefling. Kimberly, thank you so much for joining the show. Tell the audience a little bit about yourself and what you're doing.

Kimberly Wiefling (00:15.054)
Okay, well I started out my life wanting to be a scientist, got a master's in physics and then started working at Hewlett Packard 10 years, seven different engineering jobs and then three failed startup companies in Silicon Valley in three years. And then I said, I should have studied human skills. Whoops.

Joe Crist (00:36.173)
So you transition from a technical background to more of a human approach, right? So why the change

Kimberly Wiefling (00:43.794)
Yes, because I had to work with human beings, Joe. I'm like, dear Lord, because I had one communication class back in all my seven years of college. And I asked the professor, how can I prevent people from talking to me? And then there I was working in teams, trying to get a mass spectrometer out the door, know, hardware, software, firmware, 12 people on the core team, 120 on the extended team.

trying to get all the parts assembled and tested and shipped so it worked and met the customer's needs and chemistry and physics and all kinds of stuff.

And then I realized, holy cow, I can understand the science and the physics, no problem. But when I got to work with the human beings, that is the challenge. So I shifted to product development life cycle, project management, leadership teams, organizational culture and design thinking and innovation approaches, all of which depends on human beings working together as a true team, not just a group of people.

Joe Crist (01:44.941)
You know, that's one of the most, as I see too, is one of the most important aspects of really transforming an organization and to really even thrive in the digital age, right? It's about building those teams, right? And building those communication skills, right? That is one of the most challenging aspects that I see a lot of companies regardless of their size today. So what are you seeing out there in the world when it comes to actually building these teams? Like what challenges are they running into?

Kimberly Wiefling (02:15.47)
It's so pathetic, Joe, because the challenges that they're running into really haven't changed much in 30 years on the human side. I know you understand the value of the people first approach. And when you look at the top causes of failure in global teams, number one is, they didn't build trusting relationships. Oops. And then number two is communication. And you might think it's language or culture.

Except when you dig down underneath of it, you go, we don't know how to solve problems together, we can't make decisions together. And then you dig below that and go, well, we didn't have clear shared goals and the individual and team goals weren't aligned. And then you sit there and ask yourself, well, whose job is it to make sure there's clear shared aligned goals and great communication and problem solving and decision making approaches in

or organization that has psychological safety and trust, that's totally a failure of leadership.

Joe Crist (03:17.187)
That's an interesting point you bring up too, It's creating that place where people can actually be vulnerable, right? Or people can be disagreed with, right? Where they have that trust that they're not gonna get attacked for having a bad idea. Or at worst, they're gonna get attacked for having a great idea.

Kimberly Wiefling (03:29.827)
Yes.

Kimberly Wiefling (03:37.598)
actually worked with one really strong personality, CEO of all of this one company, all of North and South America, A global company, and he was responsible for all of North and South America. And he was pretty tough, and I'm pretty tough too, although I try to look nice and be kind. And I said to him one time, I'm just wondering, if you were gonna do something that was going to destroy your company, would your people have the courage to tell you?

And he said, probably not, Kimberly.

Joe Crist (04:11.457)
Yeah, that's really sobering moment, right? If you're the only one who's really looking out for the survival of your company, people don't feel safe enough to actually say, this is

Kimberly Wiefling (04:25.324)
Yes, now the smart executives that I've heard of, because I haven't worked with many of them, because so many of them are in this learned helplessness camp on the other problem area. But when I ask them, know, like, what do you think you should do differently? And they're like, well, Kimberly, I can't do anything because the people above me are the problem.

You so it's either like you got this strong person that's driving things or you've got people that feel like it's not really their responsibility because someone above them is the real problem. And when you reach that person, someone above them is the real problem. And I'm like, hey, aliens landed on planet earth, set up sick, twisted, dysfunctional organizations that suck your will to live and then left because I can't find anybody who feels responsible for creating them.

Joe Crist (05:17.619)
That's a really big challenge too, I've met a lot of, as my time as a consultant, I've met a lot of people who had great ideas, who could really change our organization, but they were scared of challenging their boss.

Kimberly Wiefling (05:32.962)
There was one executive I heard a story about who asked his executive leadership team. So it sounds like we're all in agreement about this decision. yes, boss. Yes, boss. And he said, well, then I suggest we delay the decision until we have some healthy conflict about it.

Joe Crist (05:50.659)
Yeah, that's an important thing, When I do team building with organizations, one of the big things I really do look for is some to always be devil's advocate, right? Where they're like, they're trying to find something that is wrong with the plan because in reality, if everybody agrees, not everybody sees the entire picture, right? Or if people do see the entire picture, they don't want to be penalized for calling somebody out, right? Because there is the...

the assumption that their boss is going to punch him for that. But what I've also found too is a lot of their leadership, if someone can come to them politely and be like, Hey, I know what you're trying to do. I think I may have found an issue here, which you'd like me to explain it to you. And they're going to be like, absolutely show me what, what did I miss? Because in the reality we are human and we are fallible. We make mistakes. We miss things and it's okay. And then a lot

People miss that, right? Because they imagine it's like, this is on me and this is my responsibility. Well, it's everybody's responsibility. It's the team's responsibility.

Kimberly Wiefling (06:54.798)
Well, and you know, Joe, it depends on how you facilitate those conversations. What I found works really well, especially with the techno people that I work with, is to say, hey, let's go to the dark side. They have cookies. And then you put up a flip chart and you say, what could we do to make our business worse? Or what could we do to make sure this project is a complete failure? And that's a safe place for people to say some things that people might be thinking about.

but aren't allowed to say, I've heard that if you want to tell executives the truth, you got to make them laugh.

Joe Crist (07:31.799)
That's an interesting tactic too. I've never heard that before. Like taking someone to the dark side and just like, how can we just derail this? Right? Like what a great way to capture risk.

Kimberly Wiefling (07:41.984)
yeah, just try it, because it's so fun, because you have people trying to make it worse and they're laughing and because they know it's not really going to be that bad. Then all you need to do is reverse everything they think about. And now you got the light side. And it's so much faster than asking people, how might we transform this? They go, I got nothing.

Joe Crist (08:01.389)
Yeah, that's a really interesting way because it does create that psychological safety too where it's saying like, hey, just throw whatever you want, no one's going to penalize you, we're just having fun here. But really what you're doing is you're capturing things. And now that they're actually visible, it's like, hey, this is something, we can actually do something about that because it is realistic.

Kimberly Wiefling (08:25.238)
Yeah. Yeah. Smart leaders, they ask questions that there is no, you're doing great boss possible answer. say, okay, if our competitors got a hold of the information about how we do our business, how would they put us out of business? Right? What would they leverage in order to destroy us? Right.

and then you can start to think from the dark side or, hey, let's think about at least one idea that would never work and at least one idea that would get me fired. You know, that's what the executives need to say to people in order to make that safety if they really want to have innovative thinking and open sharing in a psychologically safe way.

Joe Crist (09:04.943)
how you do facilitate it does matter though because it's you need to really create an environment and this is not not just for consultants but business leaders as well as this create that environment for people to say like hey this is a problem like I don't want to tell you directly because I don't want to I may not understand entirely which is also you know a challenge to a lot of people don't want to bring up an issue because they don't understand the risk in entirety so by really just saying like hey I see this happening

It allows group think where companies like, yeah, no, that is true because X, Y, Z may happen as a result of that. And now what you're really doing is dissecting that risk and bringing so much light to it. You'll like, okay, this actually is a real thing. Like we need to worry about this.

Kimberly Wiefling (09:49.356)
You know, I would think in my olden days, I would have thought that would be so interesting to executives and leaders at every level to know what's going on and what's not working and what should be changed to work better. And especially what am I doing that's maybe contributing some of the problems that we're suffering from and how might I change myself in order to greatly improve our situation and lead more effectively? I would have thought

because I'm obsessed with getting optimal results in transformational change. But what I have found is, for the most part, I would say the vast majority of executive leaders that I've worked with, when I have come to them with some direct feedback from their people,

saying, hey, was talking to 10, 20, 30, 50 of your people and they have a whole bunch of ideas about what they need to change. And they also had a few ideas for you executives. I mean, you know what they asked me first thing when I tell them something that's negative about the executives. Can you guess

Who said

Joe Crist (10:53.219)
Cool,

Kimberly Wiefling (10:55.042)
Doesn't that make you feel psychologically safe,

Joe Crist (10:57.409)
Not at all. if I, I think a lot of people also get nervous about filling out anonymous surveys too, because they're like, well, they find out who, if I sent it, or could they identify me by what I'm saying?

Kimberly Wiefling (11:11.394)
They can, and they also, call me and say, Kimberly, is it really anonymous? They don't believe it. So what I do is I just use a piece of paper, flip chart.

and I put up a bunch of post -its and I tell the executive, come in here and tell them what you need help with. Here's the kind of leader you want to be, the kind of team you want to create, the kind of company transformation you want to achieve. And then we'll put that in the center and then you leave the room and everybody will have the same color post note, the same color pen. And they will brainstorm if they truly were committed to helping that executive achieve that goal and that outcome. What should that person start doing?

What should they stop doing? What should they do more, do less, continue? So it's this five section feedback starfish. now executives do not get that kind of feedback almost ever because as soon as you get positional power, people are smiling and going, no, you're doing great. no, everything's fine.

Joe Crist (12:09.283)
is nobody wants to lose their source of income, right? And I think that's a big fear for a lot of people.

Kimberly Wiefling (12:15.158)
And people believe it, right? And Robert Sutton at Stanford University studied power poisoning and said, people who have positional power or power of any kind receive more positive feedback than others. Yeah. And it's like a bunch of monkeys in a tree. You're the top monkey looking down. You just see a bunch of smiling faces.

Joe Crist (12:38.051)
So that brings up another interesting question, right? So obviously there's a lot of things that are keeping executives away from the truth, right? Things that can not only make the company better, but make themselves better leaders. What solutions are out there or what could these business leaders start doing today that could really help push their organizations to not just improve, but help individuals improve as

Kimberly Wiefling (13:03.054)
Well, it's pretty sad, but like I was thinking earlier today, you can't drive a car in the United States without taking a test and getting a driver's license, but you can become a leader without knowing what's on one page. 30 years of research with millions of leaders across over 70 different countries has proven there's five areas, five practices that the best leaders in the world do. And each five practice has six very specific behaviors.

like asks for feedback on how my behavior impacts the team or shows appreciation to team members. Very simple, actionable things. That's all based on Mary Posner and Jim Couss's The Leadership Challenge. It's been published multiple times and you can fit the summary on one page, go ahead online and buy it from

Leadership Challenge website and if you just do those 30 specific behaviors in those five areas People will think you're one of the best leaders in the world even if you feel like a complete fraud Now why don't people go and and use this? Very easily available and very in my opinion simple approach

because the other thing that my buddy Robert Sutton at Stanford University studied was called the knowing -doing gap. And he found that knowing how changes nothing, right? He studied all these executives from companies that used to be Stanford Business School professors, and he found out they didn't follow what they taught when they became leaders of companies when they were teaching at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. So knowing how changes nothing,

I ask people, how can I lose weight? I need to lose five kilograms. Kimberly, eat less and exercise more. Yeah, thanks, I knew that. And that 60 % of Americans are overweight and knowing how does not change behavior, you gotta get into the gym and workout.

Joe Crist (15:02.369)
It's really, it comes down to the small incremental changes too. Right. think a lot of leaders, a lot of people in general, just business leaders, they want that big bang fix, right. Where they switch on the lights and everything is different. But in reality, it's a lot of practice, right. It's a lot of getting it right, getting it wrong. And then making those like incremental changes to really like focus you and focus your energy on what's going to make you better. But there is never it's

There's never a way for it just to be like, you're a great leader today or hey, here's your MBA. Like congratulations, you're ready to run a company.

Kimberly Wiefling (15:39.36)
It's iterative. You've got to take necessary risks. You've got to experiment. You've to prototype. You've to learn from mistakes, so -called mistakes. We don't call them mistakes or failures in Silicon Valley. We call it a prototype. And then you've got to keep going. Like in Japan, they have a saying, seven times fall down, eight times stand up. And then you've got to, like you said, it doesn't have to be complicated. Simple, small changes like nudge theory, right? How can you make small changes that have a huge impact?

It's kind of based on physics of chaos and complexity and emergent behavior and systems thinking. if I want everybody in my company to come by my desk and hang out and tell me what's going on, I put a bowl of good chocolates there. Everybody will stop by, all right? It's not like rocket science. You want people to take the stairs, turn them into a piano like they did in the fun theory instead of the stairs, and they'll run up and down the stairs playing songs.

I mean birds, birds are a perfect example of this. There's no CEO bird. They don't have bird organization charts. They don't have bird planning meetings. They just all have certain ways they engage with the nearest neighbors and the whole flock can do some amazing complex maneuvers without birds wrecking into each other and falling from the sky dead.

Joe Crist (16:59.556)
It's creating those cultural norms. Like this is what we do. Here's my role. I'm really good at it. I'm going to keep doing that. I know the person next to me or the bird next to me, you know, knows their role and I'm waiting for their signal. And when they act, I know to act, right? But what's that saying? It's a culture each strategy for breakfast.

Kimberly Wiefling (17:01.516)
Yes!

Kimberly Wiefling (17:21.152)
Yes, and it's really amazing. Cultural norms, it's so misunderstood. Culture, my mentor, Dr. Edgar Schein helped me understand so much better. Culture is like air. It's invisible. You go in and you don't notice the air and say, wow, thank you for the oxygen. It's invisible, but it permeates the whole place and influences everything. And what I do with one of my workshop,

series I worked with Yamaha Motors for over 10 years doing this, try to make the culture visible. So take the stories from the past. What is the history of your company that you can build on? The DNA that makes you strong, that makes you different from other species?

And then what are the stories from the present? Like your values, that thing that you hang on the wall, that values that create cynicism. No, let's turn that into action. What does it look like when people are aligned with it, when they're not aligned with it? And what would you fire your best engineer for?

your best salesperson for for violating your values. And then stories from the future. What are your aspirational goals? What you that mountaintop that you want to get to together that there's no way you're getting there by yourself. And you want to all be looking at that North Star as you journey around here on this planet.

Joe Crist (18:38.925)
that's important to do right it's like that telling that story to not not just the people around you but yourself right and it really does help you embody it like what's your your real mission is here it's I want to be this person here's how I'm gonna get there right

Kimberly Wiefling (18:54.89)
Well, so like, yes, if you don't have stories that show the most positive, powerful aspects of your organizational culture, then you know how the real culture is communicated when you figure out, we hire some new employees and that's the stories they tell the new people. Be careful of this or watch out for that.

Joe Crist (19:16.728)
Yes.

Joe Crist (19:20.321)
Yeah, I've both clients and companies I worked at that was always there too.

You know, would not the name of any company in particular, but there was plenty of times where I've walked in and I've asked questions. can say, why is it like

And what I always got, and this is just one company this happened was that was, welcome to XYZ company. This is how we do things. And it's like, okay.

Kimberly Wiefling (19:52.78)
That's the way we do things around here. Well, so here's where I start, because what you said, sometimes small changes can make a big impact. I start by saying, you know, what if we become more creative by just starting to wear innovation socks? Okay. I know you still want to wear black, brown, gray, blue and white, you know, kind of boring colors, especially I work primarily with very big Japanese companies that are global.

But I'm like, how about you just wear innovation socks, something that will remind you every day. It's called enclosed cognition. Remind your brain to be a little more creative. And then when someone sees your socks, they'll be, and they'll just jump their brain out of that rut for a little while. So I've been successful in getting a lot of companies to adopt innovation socks as their innovation clothing.

Joe Crist (20:43.565)
And it's really what that does too. It starts the snowball of change. And I can be creative and I can be fun and I can have fun at work.

Kimberly Wiefling (20:54.83)
Yes. So let me say this about fun because I have to tell people, hey, I'm a physicist. I base everything I do on data and research and I don't like to have fun, Joe, but the research has proven that when you're having fun, your brain is 100 to 300 % more creative. Okay. So we have to have fun. I don't like to, but we got to do it.

Joe Crist (21:19.021)
Yeah. And creativity really does breed innovation too. Right. And that's such like a key ingredient. If companies really do want to grow and they want to grab market share and they want to thrive through the digital age and beyond, right, they need to innovate.

Kimberly Wiefling (21:27.703)
Exactly.

Kimberly Wiefling (21:44.236)
Yes. Yes.

Joe Crist (21:45.485)
but they also need to have their employees truly engaged in a way where they feel safe to do it. They're having fun doing it. They're investing the best version of themselves because what's really gonna happen now, it's that innovation because they're gonna be happy employees, which is gonna make a lot happier customers, right, with a lot better products, and that's what's gonna impact the bottom.

Kimberly Wiefling (22:09.134)
Absolutely, we have to and if you look at another 30 years of data that I'm fond of quoting is the Gallup Research Employee Engagement where they've studied employee engagement all over the world, dozens of countries and found out, yay, the employee engagement globally has gone up to a whopping about 20 to 25 % now. Really, 75 to 80 % of people working in the world are disengaged.

not engaged or actively disengaged and the lowest engagement in the world is in Japan, in the countries measured, it's like 5, 6, 7 percent over the years, and the US with the highest in the world, ooh, 35 percent. Give me a break. The best companies in the world have about double that. And what it means is people come to work and they actually care. And if you're not engaged, you come to work in exchange for a paycheck.

or you come to work actively disengaged, working against your own

Joe Crist (23:12.269)
Absolutely, that brings up another interesting question, right? obviously the...

Joe Crist (23:19.457)
metrics out there, right? Saying like, hey, here is where the countries are on average, right? Here's how little employees are actually engaged. Right? So how's the future look that? Right? Like what trends are you seeing? Like are people just going to become less and less engaged and then everything's going to suck?

Kimberly Wiefling (23:38.936)
Well, you want to hear my crazy dream because the Stanford Population Research Institute published some research.

few years back said, ooh, there's going to be a huge skilled worker shortage in this world. And Germany and Japan were going to have the highest shortage around 17%. And that was all pre -COVID numbers. And even the US would have a two or 3 % worker shortage. And again, pre -COVID numbers, the huge skilled worker shortage. And what they predicted was companies will go out of business because they cannot attract and retain the individuals.

They need to stay in business and be competitive in this world. So if you have a culture that sucks people's will to live and you don't create great leadership that inspires people and employee engagement where people actually care, you could actually have your business under threat.

Joe Crist (24:34.595)
That's a very alarming thing to think about too, but it does make sense, especially if you look at turnover rates in companies.

Kimberly Wiefling (24:42.183)
yeah, yeah, well, you don't want zero turnover, but if you got double digits, you better start looking at

Joe Crist (24:49.619)
require lot of like you know and looking inward to be like why are people leaving in droves but not just acting on

Kimberly Wiefling (24:54.19)
well, I hate to spoil the surprise for you, but Gallup published the book in 2019, it kind of ruins the surprise. It's the manager, the number one cause of low employee engagement and thus quitting voluntary turnover is the direct manager. So if you want to know who are your worst...

managers who don't know how to be great leaders and don't know how to engage employees, just look at the quitting ratios for each of the team members under them and then you can figure out who you need to get to transform either through some workshop like that you do with them or figure out maybe they're not a good fit for your company.

because these people probably never had the chance, like I never had the chance to understand what does it mean to be a great leader? What's the difference between a manager and a leader and a group and a real team? And how can I behave more in alignment with the best leaders in the world so that I can engage people on my team so they actually care and we can actually get more done? I mean, I think there's still this illusion that you will get more done by being pushy, bossy, and

Joe Crist (26:06.295)
Yeah, and that's, I've seen that as well, that it's really unfortunate. And I think a lot of it comes from being so focused on the wrong measurements, as opposed to a lot of companies what I've seen will focus so heavily

you know, how much money they're making, right? Whether, whether, or they become so profit driven that, you know, they, don't focus on really like, are we innovating? Do people like being here? Right? It's the thing is too, all these employees that leave, they're not just leaving with their knowledge. They're leaving with your secrets.

Kimberly Wiefling (26:43.68)
And they're telling all their friends don't work there.

Joe Crist (26:46.485)
Exactly. Right. And that's, that's something I hear too. And if you go on like websites like Glassdoor, you can always, you can look at a company's like how their employees see it. And the thing is too, know a lot of, you know, you know, customers do this as well. So if like one thing I like to do with what vendors I work with is I always go on Glassdoor and I'd be like, what do their employees say? Because their employees are miserable there.

I guarantee I'm going have somebody that's going to be handed off my work that I need done. Right? And if it's one person, that means there's going to be a skill loss. There's going to be miscommunication. If people are rotating on the projects, I'm having them do, then what's going to really happen is it's going to hurt me. But the companies I see where people are like, I've worked here for 10 years, it's the best thing ever. Management listens to

I know that company is not just gonna take care of my work, but I know they're gonna be there for a long time, which is reduces risk to me.

Kimberly Wiefling (27:47.63)
Well, two things I want to talk about. First of all, listening, that is the most powerful communication skill. Listening to other people as if what they're saying has gold in it it's your job to mine it. And that transforms people and teams. And don't believe me, there's a whole book called Time to Think, Listening to Ignite the Human Mind, which talks about how when you listen to other people, you make them smarter.

and then your ideas are higher quality and you get better results. Plus, the other thing you mentioned was companies focusing on money. Companies that focus on money as their top priority make less money. Money is not an actionable target. It is the result of delighting customers, releasing wonderful products, making sure that your employees are happy and engaged, right? So if you focus on money as a target, you make less money.

Joe Crist (28:16.941)
Absolutely.

Joe Crist (28:40.387)
Absolutely. And really when it comes to quarterly earnings, right, or any sort of earnings, it is a lagging indicator and nothing more.

Kimberly Wiefling (28:49.366)
That's right. And then the other thing that we should talk about since, you know, it's available to everybody, anybody who has a smartphone, I call this thing coach in your pocket. I bought

for a hundred bucks about a year and a half ago, a wonderful AI Smith chat tpt tool. And I take it into the workshops with me. And I also use the chat tpt on the screen and I say, Hey, let's ask it some tough questions about leadership or teams or how to communicate or how to negotiate or how to have a difficult conversation. And this thing is really good at those kinds of generic challenges that are most of what we face on a daily basis at

So coach in your pocket, don't rely on your gut instinct and let your amygdala hijack rule. You type it in here, I gotta have a tough conversation with an employee who's underperforming and not delivering what they promised. What are some effective approaches and what should I be careful to avoid? You're gonna get some great advice, way better than if you just go in there and follow your instincts.

Joe Crist (29:51.1)
And speaking of advice, I actually do have one last question for you, Kimberly. So if you could give our audience advice, anything you can think of that if they walked away with today, they would be more successful, what would it be?

Kimberly Wiefling (30:04.622)
Start in the future. Begin with the end in mind. Jump into the future. Create a clear, vivid image of a future that seems highly unlikely or darn near impossible, but if it were possible, would transform you, your team, your company.

your customers, the world for the better, and then make it sound so amazing that people will try to figure out how to make it so. And then listen to them and create highly engaged employees that are psychologically safe in an organizational culture that doesn't suck your will to live and get rid of the boss holes.

Joe Crist (30:41.229)
That's amazing advice. really love that. Well, Kimberly, thank you so much for joining us today, helping not just me become smarter, but helping the audience as well. And to those out there listening, I hope you learned as much as I did about really how to not just make your teams better, but how to make yourself better and how for leaders to truly improve and what it really takes today for organizations to thrive in the digital age. Everyone, again, thank you so much. Kimberly, it was a pleasure.

Join us next week for another exciting episode of Thriving the Digital Age. Everyone, have a great

Kimberly Wiefling (31:17.026)
Thank you. Thank you Joe.