One of the hardest things I do is refuse to understand a team too quickly.

Seth Godin recently wrote about apophenia: our tendency to find meaningful patterns, even when the connections may not be real.

That tendency is especially dangerous when working with teams.

I may meet with six, sometimes twelve, sometimes more than thirty people on a team.

Each person sees the organization from a different position. Their view has been shaped by their role, differing pressures, history, relationships, and wishful thinking.

My job is to meet each person with a clean slate.

To listen without forcing their perspective into the story already forming in my mind.

To resist letting the first persuasive explanation become the explanation.

That isn’t passive absorption… and it’s beyond active listening. It is a discipline.

After 25 years of working with teams, I know how tempting it is to see a pattern too soon. It still requires vigilance on my part. I may have suspicions, but I resist treating them as conclusions until the evidence supports them.

That is my value to the client:

They do not get a canned answer; they get an understanding grounded in their reality.
People feel heard and become more willing to explore the blind spots that may be holding their team back.