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121 " belonging cues can’t be reduced to an isolated moment but rather consist of a steady pulse of interactions within a social relationship. Their function is to answer the ancient, ever-present questions glowing in our brains: Are we safe here? What’s our future with these people? Are there dangers lurking? "
― Daniel Coyle , The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
122 " Pick Up Trash: "
123 " The key to creating psychological safety, as Pentland and Edmondson emphasize, is to recognize how deeply obsessed our unconscious brains are with it. A mere hint of belonging is not enough; one or two signals are not enough. We are built to require lots of signaling, over and over. This is why a sense of belonging is easy to destroy and hard to build. "
124 " Having one person tell other people what to do is not a reliable way to make good decisions. "
125 " A key rule of BrainTrusts is that the team is not allowed to suggest solutions, only to highlight problems. This rule maintains the project leaders’ ownership of the task, and helps prevent them from assuming a passive, order-taking role. "
126 " Nick was able to disrupt the chemistry of the groups merely by sending a few cues of nonbelonging. His behavior was a powerful signal to the group—We are not safe—which immediately caused the group’s performance to fall apart. Jonathan, on the other hand, delivered a steady pulse of subtle behaviors that signaled safety. He connected individually, listened intently, and signaled the importance of the relationship. He was a wellspring of belonging cues, and the group responded accordingly. "
127 " It’s possible to predict performance by ignoring all the informational content in the exchange and focusing on a handful of belonging cues. "
128 " This is what I would call a muscular humility—a mindset of seeking simple ways to serve the group. "
129 " But the successful groups I visited paid attention to moments of arrival. They would pause, take time, and acknowledge the presence of the new person, marking the moment as special: We are together now. "
130 " Make the Leader Occasionally Disappear: Several leaders of successful groups have the habit of leaving the group alone at key moments. "
131 " Avoid Giving Sandwich Feedback: "
132 " they all performed the same vital function: to flood the environment with narrative links between what they were doing now and what it meant. "
133 " didn’t see many feedback sandwiches. Instead, I saw them separate the two into different processes. They handled negatives through dialogue, first by asking if a person wants feedback, then having a learning-focused two-way conversation about the needed growth. They handled positives through ultraclear bursts of recognition and praise. The leaders I spent time with shared a capacity for radiating delight when they spotted behavior worth praising. These moments of warm, authentic happiness functioned as magnetic north, creating clarity, boosting belonging, and orienting future action. "
134 " Embrace Fun: This obvious one is still worth mentioning, because laughter is not just laughter; it’s the most fundamental sign of safety and connection. "
135 " The other feature of this list is that many of these signals could easily be viewed as obvious and redundant. "
136 " The term pilots use to describe this type of short-burst communication is notifications. A notification is not an order or a command. It provides context, telling of something noticed, placing a spotlight on one discrete element of the world. Notifications are the humblest and most primitive form of communication, the equivalent of a child’s finger-point: I see this. Unlike commands, they carry unspoken questions: Do you agree? What else do you see? In a typical landing or takeoff, a proficient crew averages twenty notifications per minute. "
137 " In the first two sections of this book we’ve focused on safety and vulnerability. We’ve seen how small signals—You are safe, We share risk here—connect people and enable them to work together as a single entity. But now it’s time to ask: What’s this all for? What are we working toward? When I visited the successful groups, I noticed that whenever they communicated anything about their purpose or their values, they were as subtle as a punch in the nose. "
138 " In the weeks afterward, as part of its investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board placed experienced crews in simulators and re-created the conditions faced by Flight 232 at the moment it lost all hydraulics. The simulation was run twenty-eight times. All twenty-eight times, the planes crashed, spiraling to the ground without getting close to Sioux City. All of which underlines a strange truth. The crew of Flight 232 succeeded not because of their individual skills but because they were able to combine those skills into a greater intelligence. They demonstrated that a series of small, humble exchanges—Anybody have any ideas? Tell me what you want, and I’ll help you—can unlock a group’s ability to perform. The key, as we’re about to learn, involves the willingness to perform a certain behavior that goes against our every instinct: sharing vulnerability. "
139 " This place is like a greenhouse,” Hsieh says. “In some greenhouses, the leader plays the role of the plant that every other plant aspires to. But that’s not me. I’m not the plant that everyone aspires to be. My job is to architect the greenhouse. "
140 " These groups, who by all rights should know what they stand for, devote a surprising amount of time telling their own story, reminding each other precisely what they stand for—then repeating it ad infinitum. "