How to create a high performing agency team culture, with Alison Coward

This episode is for you if you're responsible for an agency team and you want the team to be working together more collaboratively.Today's guest is my friend Alison Coward who is the founder of Bracket Creative and an expert in team culture.In this episode Alison explains:* Why it's important for agencies to pay attention to their team culture and impact a positive culture has on productivity* What to look for if you suspect your team culture needs attention* Some examples of where agency leaders go wrong with team culture* How remote working is affecting team collaboration and what you can do to bring the team togetherAlison shares insight she's gained from many years working with high performing teams and what shines through in this chat is Alison's vast knowledge and passion for the subject and the many compelling reasons why team culture, particularly now is so important to keeping us all working together in the best possible way.Enjoy! Transcript:  Jenny:So I'm really excited to welcome to the show, Alison Coward today who is the founder of Bracket Creative and Bracket Creative help teams work better together. Now the first time I met Alison was when she was speaking at an Agencynomics event. And she's a very well known keynote speaker. And I was just struck by how she captivated the audience. Literally all of these agency leaders were scribbling notes, because she was just so, so articulate for one, but also, her speech contained so much fact based, you know, there was data, there was thought leadership that she was quoting books and statistics, and it was so impressive, and we've become friends. And I'm, for that reason, we're both in the same kind of industries. Alison works with lots of different types of industry and companies, but specifically, we have an overlap in terms of agencies, because she works with agencies. I would love for you, Alison, I know you've got over 15 years experience, I'd love you to just give us a flavour of your experience. Alison:Yeah, well, firstly, thank you for having me, I always love our chat. So I'm really looking forward to this. I think you've given a really good introduction to what I do already. And my company is Bracket, I specialise in team culture and collaboration, I have been working in the creative industries, literally most of my career. And specifically what I do at Bracket is around helping teams to become more creative, more productive together, essentially looking at that high performance, but how can they make the most of the talents of the team and, get them to work together so they can achieve amazing things together and enjoy while they're doing it, as well. So I do a lot of workshop facilitation, which are sessions where we bring teams together, helping them to have productive discussions, and, you know, figure out what they're going to do, how they're going to do it, strategy, sessions, kickoff, sessions, brainstorming, you know, new idea type brainstorming sessions as well. The other thing that I do around that is a lot of my work is influenced by workshop facilitation. And I'll probably get into that a little bit later. We also do kind of training and coaching and consultancy, because I think one of the things that's really important to me is that people within teams become owners of their culture and responsible for their culture. So I'm really kind of quite keen on helping people to develop the skills that I have in particularly in facilitation, and how they can have better conversations about how they work together. Jenny:Fantastic, what I love, you always pop up on LinkedIn. And it's not necessarily that you're posting, it's because your clients tend to post about the experience of working with you. And they're usually just glowing with great feedback. So I know that you do some great work in the world, and why specifically, like turning our attention specifically to agencies, because this is the audience that I'm talking to mainly, why do you think it's important for agencies to pay attention to their team culture? Alison:Yeah. So I mean, I come from the creative industries and create, like a creative background. So my history is in working with creative people, people that have you know, have got creativity as their currency. And there's one thing about like, being creative. But then there's another thing about the conditions that foster more creativity, and foster high performance. And that often comes down to things like the culture like, you know, how easy is it for people to put forward ideas? How supportive do they feel in their environment? How easy, how comfortable do they feel, taking risks, and making mistakes in front of their team members. And that's all cultural. So within an agency environment, focusing on the aspects around the team, which kind of create the environment for people to do their best work is super important. You know, you can be creative without some of those conditions. But if you do put those things in place, then you're going to get much more kind of productivity and creativity from a team. And as I say, they're going to enjoy doing it as well. Oh, and you know, enjoyment is a big part, enjoyment and engagement is a big part of doing great work. It's not kind of you know, if you do the work, and then you have fun, it's, it's completely interlinked. If you can enjoy what you do, then you produce better outputs. It's just as simple as that. Jenny:It's so true. I mean, you mentioned the creative output, which is so key to what we do as an industry and how great team collaboration and culture can foster that. What do you think the impact on the agency's bottom line is as a result of a strong team culture? Alison:Yeah, well, I mean, the thing that comes to mind when you when you talk about that is, and this is what I spoke about at the Agencynomics event, it was one of the things that I mentioned was the idea of psychological safety. And it was a study that came out, actually, psychological safety comes from I think it was coined by someone called Amy Edmondson who's an academic. She does a lot of work around like teams and teaming. But when Google did this internal research study into what made their most high performing teams, they found that psychological safety was right at the top of the list. They thought when they did this research because they wanted to understand like, what made the best teams perform highly? And how could they replicate that and they thought they were going to find things like, you know, IQ and like aspects of technical expertise, that kind of thing. But everything that they found was more cultural. And at the top of the list was this idea of psychological safety, which is people feeling safe to make mistakes, and take risks and learn from their mistakes, all within a team environment. So I mean, if Google were finding that this was what made them high performing teams, I definitely think it's something that we should probably all take notice of. And there's no I mean, there's loads of research studies, I can reel some off if I kind of look through my notes, but research that shows that when people are more engaged, and it leads to more productivity, when people are happier in their work meets more productivity, when people have good connections with their colleagues at work, it leads to more productivity. So there's, I mean, there's loads out there and show that concentrating on culture is not I mean, I think the problem with culture is that it can seem into intangible that, I think, is a mixture of so many different aspects. But it might be hard to pinpoint exactly which thing is having an impact on the bottom line, but all of it together definitely does. Jenny:I love that point about psychological safety. And it's, it's quite a well known study in certain circles. But if someone's listening to this, and it's the first time they've heard that concept, and they're thinking, actually, I want to make sure as a leader of an agency that I am creating an environment that my staff feel that they are psychologically safe, that they can admit they've made a mistake or take risks, why would they know they hadn't created that environment? What would they look for? Alison:What would they look for so? Honesty. Are people able to be honest? Are you able to constructively critique your teammates and team members ideas without, you know, it turning into unproductive conflict? Are you getting ideas from people, because the thing is, is if it's not psychologically safe, and then people are going to be afraid to say something that they think might be stupid. And we you know, we know in the brainstorming session, that often it's those kind of terrible, those ideas that seem terrible at first that leads to innovation. So if you're not getting those kinds of terrible ideas, I guess that's a good way of kind of seeing that you haven't got psychological safety, because people don't feel safe sharing them, or playing around or kind of, you know, experimenting. So I think those are some of the signs. I do feel that people have been honest, are able to speak up and be honest. I mean, you can look at your meetings, for example. And I guess this is not always a sign of psychological safety. But it can be one of the things to look out for when you're running your meetings and our people speaking up? And does it feel like an environment where people do feel that they can speak up without getting, you know, any kind of pushback, or, you know, being blamed for getting something wrong, or made to feel stupid? Jenny:This is so interesting, because presumably, if it takes a lot of self reflection, maybe and self awareness on behalf of an agency, or agency leader, for example, to recognise that, and maybe it's the middle management, maybe that spot what's happening as a dynamic. And to that point, can you talk to us when an agency comes to you, someone from an agency, who typically comes to you? And what kind of sort of symptoms do they explain to you as to why they think they need to address their team culture? Alison:Yeah. Well, do you know what Jenny, this is super interesting. And this is something that I've discovered over the past couple of years through looking at who comes to me, I mean, first of all, it depends on the size of the agency, but often, it is like an agency leader, that comes to me. I find that the teams or the agencies that are really in trouble, I don't see them, because they don't know what they don't know. They don't know that, you know, it's likely that they haven't even registered that culture is something that is important to focus on, or they've completely dismissed it or something. And they think that it's a luxury and something not necessarily the teams that come to me, they're already on their way to exploring or looking at a team culture, I often tend to work. I mean, I've had it on my website that I work with forward thinking teams, because I really think that the people that come to me are the people that are already doing a lot right. And they want to know, how do we keep this going? We're growing, things are changing, how do we make sure that we maintain our culture because they already see how important it is. Or they might be at the kind of early stages of that they're starting to kind of come around to the idea that we need to spend a little bit of time and resource on our culture. So I don't really, I can't really say that I kind of see people that have, like, you know, like you say the symptoms, but it's, you know, it's usually all the kind of things that we want to make sure that people feel included. You want to become more collaborative and want to run our meetings better. So yeah, there's, it's usually kind of towards the other end. Jenny:That's so interesting, isn't it? It's almost like I can't tell you that this input is important, you almost have to decided it's important, and then look for some help in how to make it better. Alison:Definitely, yeah. And I think, you know, it's not like you sit around the self awareness, this is not easy work. And, you know, there are all kinds of things that you can do to get things going and to start things off, which will make an impact. But actually, the self awareness, you know, if you've got a leader that all of a sudden realises that their meetings aren't a place where people can speak up, that does take kind of like an admission that maybe I'm not running these meetings in the most effective way, which is like a self criticism, which, you know, some people aren't ready for. Jenny:How do you think the whole situation with COVID and this global pandemic where we’ve all had to work remotely? What effect do you think that's had on generally across the board on Team culture? Alison:Massive impact. I think if people weren't thinking about it before, they're definitely thinking about it. Now. People have really seen I mean, in the conversations that I've had, and people have really seen the connection and engagement piece, but how do we stay connected as a team? And we're not sitting next to each other? And, and yeah, meetings, online meetings in meetings, but how do we run our meetings to make them more engaging, and we make the best use of our time? I think, you know, again, one of the things that I was, was quite interesting at the start of pandemic, you know, this was something that none of us had experienced before. I was kind of looking around at teams and thinking is the stuff that I've been doing with teams over these years, is it relevant in these times? Does it work? Is it you know, is it going to hold up, so I was kind of, you know, just observing and seeing what was going on. But one of the things that I remember and quite distinctive, it started with pandemic was, you know, there was kind of like that initial rush to get everyone working from home. So everyone focused on like the tech and that, can we work from home, and there was this kind of like, wave of zoom screenshots on LinkedIn, of like, you know, people with, you know, maybe with the silly hats on or, you know, showing we’re all working from home, we can all do it, we can all work from Zoom. And sort of like thinking, it's great that you've been able to get on Zoom. But that's not culture. That's not team culture. Team culture actually happens in between those zoom meetings. And so I think there was kind of a, I think, a realisation of what culture really is. And not just kind of people feeling good and happy. And the kind of, you know, the Friday night down the pub, and it's really all of everything, and all the stuff that we can't see as well, and how people feel about their work. Jenny:Give us a few examples of what good looks like.  Alison:Good looks like,  I've spoken about a lot of it. Good looks like anybody being able to say, this isn't working in the way that we work together, let's improve it. It looks like anybody within a team standing up and saying, I would like to improve this within our culture. But what can we do together? It means somebody in a team. I mean, I talk a lot about facilitation. And I think that's really key to meeting. So for me and ideal, this doesn't always happen. But an ideal is anybody been able to facilitate those meetings and all of those meetings being productive, and the best use of everyone's time. It looks like a team, like if you were to ask a team, that what is it that you're working towards? Everyone would be 100%, super clear. And it looks like a team being aware of the value of their teammates and their team members understanding everyone else's contributions as well as their own and having empathy to how people work differently. Yeah, there's a mixture of things. I mean, I could go on forever, really. But yeah, it's like a resilient team, you know, that how well does a team stand up, like if something changes within the team, it could be a pandemic. I mean, we've kind of experienced that now. But how resilient is a team that how does a team kind of bounce back quickly? Or how does the team kind of rally round and support each other through that? So those are those are the kinds of things that I look for in cultures, team culture. Jenny:if someone's listening to this, and thinking, oh, my goodness, I'm a leader in a business. And I believe that we've got a bit of a problem. I don't see people standing up and presenting ideas. I don't see people being quite bold in their thoughts and being able to express themselves, where do you even start? Like, what can you give us a few tips for someone listening to think what they could do about it? Alison:Um, so again, it depends on sort of what stage you're at, like things are really broken, and obviously you need to kind of address it more sensitively. So in that case, I might suggest like one to one conversations with team members and anonymous survey and those kinds of things to kind of gather thoughts and feedback and that actually listening to that feedback, not kind of dismissing it because you don't agree with it or it kind of sounds quite threatening, but actually really listening to it and taking it to heart and then looking at what can change. In a team where you can start to have those conversations have an open conversation about like, what's, what's not working for us? And what is working? And where do we want to be as a team, and therefore, how can we get there. Again, that kind of takes a certain level of connection within the team already in place, because people need to trust it, and trust that it's going to lead to something. But starting small is super key, like the worst thing is to kind of make these massive promises that everything's gonna change, and then not be able to live up to that promise, because a big part of this is behaviour change, behaviour of the leader and people in the team as well. So making sure that whatever you kind of at least start with is a kind of a small shift. So you know, starting with our weekly meeting, and how can we improve that? How can we make our weekly meeting more collaborative and more inclusive and working on that over a period of time and seeing the shift. And see the shift in that weekly team meeting you can start seeing the shift up in other places, as well as building up the momentum to kind of try new things. Because the team would have seen that actually, they set up meetings weren't working, they were involved in figuring out what makes what will make that meeting work. And then they started to see those changes actually take place. And they can feel the difference. Jenny:It's such great tips, such great advice. Recently, I heard of an agency who had been listening to their team, which is great, as you say, and the feedback was, we're having too many internal meetings, everyone Xoomed out, they're exhausted, and they wanted some control back on their diaries. So they decided to have a no internal meetings day, a week, you know, and what else? Have you seen other examples of little initiatives that have been helpful to teams? Alison:In the pandemic, one of the things that I've seen and I’d advised teams on, and I've seen teams doing this as well, is making space for the social connection. And because we don't have that now, do we, we don't have the kind of we can just walk over someone's desk and ask them a question or say, let's kind of take a coffee break together. So actually making this up being intentional and making a space for that. I've heard of some teams using a there's like a little plugin on Slack called Donut, which randomly pairs people for coffee. And so there's that the social connection, and what else is there? What else have I seen, um, so the no meeting days are something that I've seen as well. One team that I've worked with actually gave the example of giving everybody and got rotating the responsibility of doing a little activity at the start of a team meeting, which was a fun activity. And everybody had responsibility in there kind of, in turn to do that to kind of involve them. And to kind of surprise the team. Also, what else have I seen? And Gosh, lots of things. And I think also very simple. I mean, personally, I've seen leaders investing in this more so actually getting external facilitators like myself to work with their teams to have these kinds of conversations when teams haven't done that before, you know, so that can make a difference. I mean, there's a lot of follow up to be done after that. So the workshop in itself is not the kind of, you know, check, we've done it. Actually, it's the kind of the start of a conversation, I've seen much more of that and much more sort of leaders willing to invest in like away days, and like team discussions and those kinds of things to talk about how they work together, as well Jenny:See, that would make total sense to me that you get someone in externally to conduct that, yeah, it might take a, you know, a certain amount of humility, because you don't know what you're going to find out. But I would have thought that a third party people would be much more likely to open up and presumably they do to you? Alison:They do and I mean, on that as well as I am, you know, obviously I do facilitation as an external person, and I see the value of it. And I do see the kind of value of having someone from the outside be able to spot that my aim with teams at the same time is eventually for them to be able to do that themselves. Because I don't think that these kinds of conversations and discussions should be reserved as a special thing. And I think that this is how people should be running their meetings, they should be open, they should be collaborative, there should be a space where people feel that they can be honest and constructive and kind of problem solve together. So at the same time, as you know, I do see the value in every now and again, getting some kind of external facilitator in to support those discussions, especially if a team has never done it before, because a facilitator knows how to handle those dynamics. But encouraging a team to have those discussions more frequently and eventually take responsibility for the facilitation themselves. Jenny:I love that it's almost, it's much better to make that investment to almost course correct the agency and then give them the tools and the skills to carry on. I love that. Where do you see this evolving? What kind of trends are you seeing for the future? Is this just gonna carry on being something that we invest time in? Alison:I hope so. I mean, I have, since I've started the business, I've definitely seen a shift in the way in the recognition of the importance of team culture has accelerated in the last few months, in terms of kind of like the complete end of the scale where I hope teams will get to. Where I really want to see teams get into is that they do take responsibility, like everybody on the team takes responsibility for the culture. So it is like a kind of self evolving, self sustaining continuously developing team culture, rather than it kind of being seen as something that you do once and then it's kind of done. And the reason I see that happening is because change is, it's I mean, change is normal now, we should expect change. And a team needs to be able to kind of take themselves through those changes. I mean, it's great if you can bring an external person in. But what's much more powerful is if the team themselves have the skills to be able to kind of adapt and respond to what changes happening around them. So that's where I hope team culture is going in that it becomes much more natural part of the work conversation, we're not just focusing on the output, and what it is that we need to create. But we're also having conversations about how we get there together. Jenny:I think this is fantastic. I've got a question for you. With the way we've been working recently, particularly agencies, obviously, this is really super relevant, where you have a team that you want to enhance the way they work and be more productive, be more collaborative. What about if agencies now are getting more freelance talent now and again, for different projects, bringing in teams from around the world? Because now we've opened up the market to the world, haven't we? Working on projects together. Do you have any advice or thoughts around how to do that efficiently? When it's just more about maybe, you know, short term contracts with people. Alison:Yeah, I mean, to be honest, this is where Bracket started, Bracket started off as an agency that brought together freelance talent. And that's where all of these concepts that I've kind of, and these this methodology in this framework, it's evolved out of that through the knowledge of like what it takes to bring independent experts together into short term teams. And, you know, because they're working together in over a short period, they need to kind of perform well, quickly, right. So and it's all of the same principles just intensified. And, you know, get the team together, get everyone in the team together from the start, whether they're freelancer, whether internal, get the whole team generating that, how they're going to work together, and what they're going to work together on that. What's the what's the final idea, make it collaborative from the start and keep everyone involved. And so that everyone's got a bit of ownership over how the project goes, rather than kind of coming in and doing a little bit that they can only see. You know, their part, they need to be able to see the bigger picture. And so, that's exactly what I was doing when I first started Bracket, which was like bringing these things together. No matter what their kind of discipline was getting everyone together at the start of a project, having a discussion about like, you know, this is what the client wants. This is the skills that we have on the team, but what can we do? What does it look like? And how are we going to work together to make that happen? And I mean, I mean, this is a long time ago now. But I remember, this is how I started facilitating, because I didn't really do facilitation before that. I just remember, like all of those sessions, the freelancers enjoyed it so much, because they were kind of, they felt much more part of the project rather than kind of being handed a piece, and that they would take away do and then and then kind of deliver. Jenny:It just feels like such a no brainer, doesn't it? Alison:It does. Yeah, it does. I've been talking about it for ages. And I think for me, you know, I know, there's lots of complexities involved within companies and agencies and teams and organisations. At the same time, I think that if we kind of kept it simple, which is, you know, how do we get great people together to do great work? That's what we want, right? And we would kind of probably make it a lot easier on ourselves. Jenny:Absolutely. And you want to get it right first time, don't you, because time is money. And the longer they have to work, you know, over and above the original brief. It's just costing anyone money. So it's just it's absolutely no brainer. It's been fantastic the amount of information you've shared with us. And the insight you've provided is great. I know you have a team culture programme, which obviously you've been iterating over years. So it's now probably a well oiled programme with all of your experience. Can you tell us a bit about that? Alison:Yeah, so the programme is almost like a combination of everything that I know and do and have done with teams over the years. So it's a mixture of like facilitation, ie, getting the team together to create ideas. Figure out like, you know, what it is that they're working towards, what their team purpose is, all that kind of stuff, as well as training. So this idea of ensuring that teams have the skills to kind of sustain this and so teaching them things like facilitation and how they would have conversations about designing new ways of working together, and as well as team coaching as well because every team is unique. There's no kind of like cookie cutter approach for you know, making a team work. A team culture depends on who's in it, what they're working on the nature of their work, and what that team looks like together, the environment that they're working within, so that the coaching addresses the specific issues for that specific team. And it's a mixture of all of that stuff. So yeah, training, facilitation, coaching, consultancy, and to get a team to a level where not only do they know what they're working on, they know their culture, they know their identity, but they've got the tools and the skills to kind of sustain that if any changes happen, or someone joins a team, someone leaves, if they face any challenge together as a team as well. Jenny:I can imagine that it's not only an effective process to go through, but also a fun process. Alison:I should hope so. Yeah, I would say that it's fun to work with me. But yeah,, the thing is with this as well, is that, you know, I've learned a lot. As you say, I've been doing this for quite a while. And I've learned a lot about teams and kind of, you know, evolved my thinking around it. And I think when I first started doing this, I was so focused on collaboration, and you know, the team as a unit, and I kind of I wouldn't say that I forgot about, but I didn't really see the relevance of the individuals within the team. It sounds bizarre, but I was kind of looking at the team as a whole rather than the individuals in the team. And then it kind of dawned on me that if you want a team to perform well, together, then those individuals need to perform well, individually, right? They need to be self aware, they need to kind of know where their opportunities for development are, they need to know how they fit into the kind of collective goal of the team. So you kind of need to work on those two levels. So the programme kind of works with a team in terms of the dynamics of all of those people coming together, but also works with the individuals to ensure that they are engaged and connected and you know, their areas of development that's been focused on in terms of how do they contribute to the to the bigger picture. Jenny:Makes total sense. What are the first few steps that you take when you start working with an agency? Alison:And so as an assessment, there's lots of kind of interviews and kind of where are you now and I’ve actually designed a bit of an assessment, which is on my website, and just about to be released, actually. So it kind of helps teams to figure out what stage they're at, whether they need to fix their cultural overlay to build it when they need to sustain it. But anyway, you know, after that, it's like a five minute quiz. And there's more investigation into that, what are the actual dynamics in the team? What do people in the team feel like the priorities are to address or fix or improve or work on and then we'll set up a plan around that. So there's the five pillars of the programme, which are the kind of things that I've learned, that are important for high performing teams, but then there's all the pieces in between, which is where the team gets to really address the issues based on their own specific culture. Jenny:Sounds like a really useful tool, we certainly put the link to your website, because I think even if it's not live yet, when someone listens to this, I'm sure by the time they listen, it'll, it'll be live. How do you get inspired, Alison? Who do you follow? What kind of sources of inspiration do you go to? Alison:I'm always reading and I do sort of, you know, I've got some Google Alerts set up for things like collaboration and creativity, you know, I get a lot of inspiration from, sounds really boring, but I get a lot of inspiration from academic papers. I really love reading and you know, kind of like research papers on meetings and the connection to wellbeing and how to, you know, increase creativity and productivity and the value of facilitation. So I get a lot of inspiration from those kinds of those kinds of studies. Yeah, I mean, I love hearing about teams that feel that they're doing good work and kind of seeing examples of things that they're putting in place to get inspiration. I think one thing that's important is that, you know, you may see something work in one team culture, and you can take inspiration from it, but it's may not work for you in exactly in that exact same way. And you may need to kind of adapt it. So I do like kind of reading about teams and what they're doing and sort of what they've learned as well. And so yeah, and I've got like a stack of books behind me that I need to get as well. Jenny:You're probably one of the most well read people I know. And it was clear from your talk that you did, I mean, it was just bam, bam, bam with all these statistics, and it was just, you know, it's evidence based, everything that you talk about is evidence based. So I think it's really, really powerful. If someone's listening to this, who ideally is the ideal person that you think you can help the most, like, who would you want to contact you? And how would they do that? Alison:Yeah, I think anybody that's got responsibility for a team and is able to invest resources in you know, their development, essentially. So whether that's kind of a middle manager within a larger organisation or a senior leader within a smaller agency, although I'm happy to talk to anybody to be honest. Like I you know, sometimes I go in and I do kind of, you know, coaching with people that want to learn to facilitate more effectively, for people. I mean, one of the things that I feel quite passionate about, as well as obviously, from a business point of view, certain people that are able to kind of invest in what I do, but I'm also really passionate about helping people that work within teams. It might not be at that level, but really concede that there's things they can improve. And they've got like a real passion to make their working environment and their team's working environment better. So if you're one of those people, then feel free to get in touch because I always like talking to people like you as well. And you can go to my website bracketcreative.co.uk or find me on LinkedIn - Alison Coward. Jenny:Fantastic. Have you got any final pieces of advice for anyone listening to this about teen culture? Alison:And yeah, I mean, I think I said it before, but start small. You know, this is I think, you know, you can feel very passionate about improving team culture. And I think that's great. Like, definitely, if you're in the stage where you think like, this is something we want to work on and, but be realistic about what it takes for people to change their behaviour. Like it's not instant. It is, you know, something that you will work on over time and hopefully continue to work on. So I'm taking like a small first step, just to get the ball rolling, just to get buy in, just to get people feeling a bit motivated, that change can happen and then then go from there. Jenny:Thank you. That's great advice. I love talking to you, Alison. You can see in your eyes how passionate you are about this subject. So I hope people will get in touch and benefit from your services. Thank you so much for joining us. Alison:Thanks for having me.