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BONUS Why Your Teams Really Resist Change, The Neuroscience of Leadership That Nobody Taught You | Andra Stefanescu
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BONUS: Why Your Teams Really Resist Change, The Neuroscience of Leadership That Nobody Taught You With Andra Stefanescu In this BONUS episode, we explore the challenges leaders face during transformations with leadership coach Andra Stefanescu....
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- [00:07]
Vasco
Have you ever wondered what it really.
- [00:09]
Andra Stefanescu
Takes to make Agile work well? At the Global Agile Summit, we're bringing you real life first person stories of Agile succeeding out there in the real world that will inspire you to take action. Whether you're a leader, a product innovator, a developer, you'll hear practical insights from.
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Vasco
Those who've done it.
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Andra Stefanescu
They'll be telling their own stories from the stage. I'll tell you more about this at the end of this episode. So stay back and listen to the full detailed description of what we have in store for you at the Global Agile Summit. But if you can't wait, you can go right now to globalagilesummit.com and check out our full schedule for now onto the episode. But I'll see you at the end of this episode with more details on the Global Agile Summit. Talk to you soon. Hello everybody.
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Vasco
Welcome to this very special bonus episode. We will be talking about growing and transforming as a leader with Andra Stefanescu. Hey Andra, welcome to the show.
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Andra Stefanescu
Hey Vasco, thank you for having me here.
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Vasco
Absolutely. So Andra is a leadership coach and facilitator specializing in brain based ways to foster psychological safety and team collaboration. She helps leaders navigate transformation challenges with playful neuroscience driven techniques and she's passionate about creating healthy workplace relationships. Andra empowers teams to resolve conflicts, make better decisions and experience meaningful growth through customized training experiences. And we're going to dive into all of those topics today. I'm especially curious about the brain based ways to foster psychological safety. Andra, now you've worked with many leaders growing, going through transformations, sometimes personal, other times transformations in the organization. What would you say are the biggest challenges that these leaders commonly face and what might be the underlying factors under those that cause those challenges?
- [02:25]
Andra Stefanescu
All right, so I have been going through these challenges myself then I have helped work with teams from different industries dealing with mainly the same challenges. And last year I have conducted also because I was really curious what happens in times of transformation, for example, in big companies, what happens with the leaders and what happens with the people? One of the biggest pain points and challenges that they have is they get resistance from the people when they want to implement something. You make a big transformation, whether just start a new project, a simple thing, people are giving resistance. And the second thing that I found is that in general leaders are feeling overwhelmed in times of changes, whatever that those changes are right. And sometimes even they do not feel the power anymore. They're like powerless. Comparing the first day when they become a leader and they think they will be able to go with the flow and make everybody follow them and so on. They find themselves in one day when they do not feel any power anymore. And this is for some of the people, really painful.
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Vasco
Yeah, absolutely. When you think about these different aspects, right? Like the struggle, the overwhelm, the powerlessness. Well, how do you like when you, when you're working with these leaders, when you're coaching them, how do you work with them? Like what are the things that you bring up, the maybe the thoughts, the exercises, the approaches that you use in order to help leaders that are in those situations?
- [04:11]
Andra Stefanescu
So we work on specific framework of communication to help them understand the people needs, psychological needs and to try to meet them. Right. So to address the different personalities because we are not one color all, we are not one brain all, we have different expectations, different psychological needs. And this resistance come exactly from this because the basic psychological needs that people have are not met. Right. And we work on specific frameworks on how to deal with that, how to address resistance in times of transformation. And also like, you know, this kind of leader who is finding themselves in a situation where they do not enjoy themselves anymore, they do not like their job, it's so much stress and so much pressure that they want to break through out of it. And they can do that with simple frameworks just to communicate in another way.
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Vasco
When you talk about these transformations, like of course our listeners will have in mind either digital transformation or agile transformation. But you're talking about much wider aspects of the journey of a leader, right?
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Andra Stefanescu
Yes, yes. I mean it's broadly the same. There are the challenges that I just mentioned are everywhere in independent of the industry and of the cultures and so on. And I have particularly did research last year in the area of agile transformations in different industries because I'm also an agile coach and I wanted to understand better those. And yeah, the main idea is that when people are going through big transformations, these transformations are coming with as a package also with lack of trust from the teams, a lot of lack of clarity. They sometimes even lack courage to do things that they would normally do in another situation. And this is because the brain is changing in such situations as a kind of stress level that enter now into details that gives you a certain, in a certain situation, a behavior that is attached to it.
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Vasco
I guess one of the things that we could say, and I'm not an expert, so I'm kind of just trying to translate what you said into my own words, one thing that we could say is that when faced with overwhelm or challenges for which we don't yet have a solution. Our brains themselves give us resistance. Like they make it harder to understand the process, make it harder to understand the different emotional and psychological needs that the people we work with have at the time. Is that how you see it?
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Andra Stefanescu
Yeah, yeah, exactly, Vasco. Because the reason behind it is that when something is changed, whatever that is can be also on your phone, a mobile app that changes what your brain perceives is like a threat. Because the one question that we put all day long in our brains is, is this safe for me? You are in a big trust, for example, in a company. It doesn't feel safe firsthand. Like, I want to go on the known road, right. I don't. I don't want to take an unknown highway or non forest way, you know, I want to go on the way that I go every day. Because the brain likes automation, simplify things and routine, you know. And as soon as you go out of that, as you said, your own brain gives you resistance because it's feeling safe there.
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Vasco
When I think about that, I'm thinking, okay, so if we enter that kind of like fear state or insecurity state, then we are not yet ready or we are not ready at that time to receive the other's own fears. Right. Like one would imagine that the resistance we face as leaders creates our own state of fear or internal resistance in ourselves, which makes us much harder to accept and empathize with other people's reasons to resist. And there's a danger that this becomes kind of this spiral that never ends. Right?
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Andra Stefanescu
Yeah, true. Exactly. Yes. This happens usually because, you know, when you're in an airplane and people in this instruction say, put your own mask first. Right. And this is the same here. The leaders would maybe like to think to put their own mask first, take care about their own feelings, situations, awareness of sensations in the body and so on, and make sure that when they go and lead other people, they are in a state of mind, as you said, that they are able to do that. Because if the cognitive performance is dump cognitive performance, then yeah. What can you expect out of as an outcome? Right.
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Vasco
I mean, when we say it like this, it sounds obvious, but it's not always obvious when we are in the middle of it. Right. Can you share some examples or findings from your sessions and research about how the consequences and how certain leadership approaches just don't work?
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Andra Stefanescu
Yeah, right. So it's all about. For example, one of the situations that I have encountered is about middle managers in corporates who are feeling Trapped between the upper management which want something from them. And usually it's fast and very important. Right. And there are teams who are below them from the organizational structure point of view, when it's this is theoretical and they want something else, they do not agree with whatever the upper management say. And the middle managers are in the middle. They have high pressure from above, high pressure from down. So there are different directions there. They are kind of catching the middle. And this is where they arrive in this powerless situation where they ask themselves, how can I make this work? And they do not enjoy the work anymore. This is one of the situations that it's very, very often encountered. And it's quite easy, I would say, even if it's deep, it's easy to solve just by learning some techniques that you can either adjust and recalibrate yourself or know how to do that to communicate with the others in another way.
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Vasco
And I guess that's where the real personal transformation starts. So when you work with leaders, how do you help them through this? What are the kind of the models or the strategies that you're offering them to be able to first detect where they are, put the mask on as you said, and then work with the rest of the organization?
- [11:14]
Andra Stefanescu
Yeah. So first of all, I teach them how the brain works because this is universal. It doesn't matter with whom do you work. They are the same principles and how to establish first of all psychological safe environment, how to be aware of themselves and how is their leadership style opposed to what is happening from their behavior perspective. So to go deeper into the own reflection first and then neuroscience based frameworks upon how to communicate to make sure that you meet the other person's psychological need. Let me give you an example. A lot of persons, for example in the IT area, in the development of products and they are very technical, they are logic based, they want to give you facts and they want also facts to hear from you. And when you go to them as a leader and you talk about very high level topics and they do not understand the why behind it, you don't give this to them, then you have this gap, they give you resistance from the start because you do not connect on that level with them. So just some simple examples here on how you can use very simplified frameworks just to make a difference in the way that you communicate.
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Vasco
Can you give an example of what might be some of those frameworks? So you were referring to maybe the natural ways in which we think and act. Like for example these people who are much more concrete thinkers who need numbers and facts, maybe others are not. What are some of the frameworks that you often train leaders?
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Andra Stefanescu
One of them is the SCARF model. It's invented by Dr. David Rock. He's the CEO of NeuroLeadership Institute. And the SCARF comes from. It's an acronym from S from Status, C from certainty, A from Autonomy, R from relatedness and Efron fairness. So there are specific buttons that you press positively or negatively. And when you press them positively, you are most probably meeting also the psychological needs of the people. And this framework is really based on a brain model which is, as I said, universal based. Everybody can use it whenever you are with whatever can be Also private, not only at work, works for sure. I tried it out many times and a lot of the people who come to my sessions the same. And this is one, for example, there are many others, but I will share at the end. Also my newsletter, there's a specific article upon it if people want to go deeper into that.
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Vasco
Yeah, absolutely. We'll put the link to that in the show. Notes, everybody. So check it out. Now, we were talking about psychological safety, but one thing that doesn't often get talked about so often is that psychological safety is a consequence. It's not something you do, it's a consequence of something you do. Right. And when we think about psychological safety, we then have to ask, okay, but what do we need in a leader that leads to or might lead to psychological safety? Now, you've pointed to a couple of things and one concrete example, like using the SCARF model to evaluate our own actions. But in your writing, you also talk about this concept of emotional intelligence and how that needs to be developed. So can you give an overview of what you mean by emotional intelligence? And then also how does that link to the work that leaders need to do, be able to build an environment where psychological safety can emerge?
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Andra Stefanescu
Sure. So first of all, when talking about emotional intelligence, this is one of the skills that it's highly evaluated. Right. Now, I have made some research either from Deloitte or from McKenzie. They do some annual reports from different organizations. And one of the things that I have found there is that, for example, 31% of the employees who experience burnout were lacking support or recognition from their leadership. So it's not only about the leader, it's himself, themselves, but it's also about what is the impact when that leader do not have the required skills, like emotional intelligence, for example, or another statistic which is quite high as well, is that employees who report to have a leader with low emotional intelligence are four Times more likely to leave the company within one year. Right. So this is huge. And one of the things that I also like to say, it's that psychological safety, it's not there by default. So if you don't work on it and make it happen, it doesn't happen.
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In fact I would say it disappears.
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Vasco
Very quickly by default.
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Andra Stefanescu
Exactly. It's just like that.
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Vasco
So, so let's go back to this emotional intelligence. Because I, I, I think like okay, so people, when, when we're talking about emotional intelligence or EQ emotional quotient, people will imagine that it, it, it is somehow something that, you know, it's maybe well defined, maybe it is well studied. Maybe there are, you know, very concrete ways to assess and develop that. Like is that your experience and, and how do you work with leaders when you're helping them to understand and grow that aspect of their practice?
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Andra Stefanescu
I mean there are a lot of tests and stuff like that about emotional intelligence. I like to use the approach of giving a more self reflection at the beginning of a session or over the training and putting specific questions to support them, to guide them in a way that they self assess themselves. It's not about coming someone from outside and say you have low emotional intelligence, it's about you yourself. Because everybody is unique, you know, in your context and with the cognitive performance that you have right now, how would you assess that? And this is pretty powerful because it then it helps them to come up with a lot of insights that they didn't have until that very moment. And some of them of course not related to emotional intelligence, but are related to also what is the whole context that they are working, what is their self awareness, how easy it is for them to answer to these questions. Because in this wheel of doing fast everything and it's urgent and it's important we forget sometimes to pause and reflect upon ourselves. And this is something which is very powerful related to emotional intelligence. And not only of course.
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Vasco
So let's look through an example, maybe something from your experience working with leaders. Like what would be a step if we want to help leaders first be aware of the importance of this emotional intelligence and what that means and then also then to actively and concretely work on developing their own self understanding, reflection abilities and so on. How would we go about that?
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Andra Stefanescu
I think as I said, the first step would be reflect upon where are you. Like make a self awareness of how do you think your relationships are happening in work? And not only and how do you feel in that situation. Also about where are you, are you at the cause or the effect. As a leader, for example, when you are going through a transformation and you have the impression that you're at the cause all the time, you will not be in the leading position. Right. And if you do not have the emotional intelligence skills and not able to also communicate in a way that empowers the others, then you will be always at a cause. Yeah. Or always at the effect. So it really depends on where are you. Yeah.
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Vasco
So that would be the first step, right?
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Andra Stefanescu
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Vasco
So what next? Like so we've done that self reflection. What would be the next step for us?
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Andra Stefanescu
So when you manage yourself to go out of the effects that, let's say make sure that you are a leader who can empower also the others and inspire the others to become at the end the leader who everybody wants to follow and love. It's also about increasing the skills of how to communicate. And I would really recommend learning the scarf model. This is one of the things that I use. But also emotional assertive. How to identify, for example, when you're in a conversation with one employee, how to identify when people wear masks, how to identify yourself when you're angry, Is it a healthy anger or let's say behavior that you want to exchange? And also what are the personality types that you encounter? There's the. Maybe I can share Here shortly, the PCI model, process communication model. This was invented in 1970s by Taibi Kala and it's a model that was used at NASA for more than 40 years in interviewing the people who were about to go to Mars. Right. So it was an important topic to make sure that they are fitting to that right position. And then it was also used in a lot of big companies in the onboarding process of people. So just this kind of three points. First of all, the scarf model, what is associated also with a lot of communication skills to higher the emotional intelligence, also the self awareness and more or less going into the emotional certainness. But also maybe the PCM process communication model. I can also send maybe a link of the trainer that I learned from because I also did a lot of trainings that helped me in this regard.
- [21:52]
Vasco
Absolutely. And we'll put all of those links in the show notes to make sure people can easily access that. Now transformation very often is seen as like this one time thing. Right. Like it happens and then it's done. But leaders are not a one time thing. We hope they're not. And they need to be in constant development. So what advice do you have for leaders that want to be mindful of where they are, but also to continue to grow themselves and their teams in a sustainable manner.
- [22:27]
Andra Stefanescu
So one of the most powerful things would be to think upon why do they get resistance? Because this is the main pain point. Right. And identify how could they communicate in a way that they get followers instead of resistance. And one of the, let's say, principles that I like to teach is upon connect before collaborate. Right. This is very strong, can be applied, of course, anywhere in any area of the life. We find ourselves a lot going into a meeting, into a board members session or whatever and start already to collaborate in a good case where you actually collaborate and do not fight. Right. And we forget about connecting before we do that, because we don't know. Right. I don't know, for example, about you, Vasco, if we would be in a meeting now, what is your state of mind? Maybe you had a bad day already. Is it really a good moment that I come up with a specific topic right now, or shall I maybe do it in another way or in another day? So this idea of connecting before collaborating helps people to recalibrate themselves. And this is very powerful.
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Vasco
One of the things that you said, this might not be the moment, like even that question can be so powerful, but it does require the people we are talking to and ourselves to feel that we are in a long term relationship. Right. Because when we look at our colleagues as transactional relationships, and unfortunately that happens a lot. I mean, I'm just coaching a client right now who's in the middle of a problem that comes from that aspect of just looking at each other as transactions rather than people who will be there for the long term. Right. And one of the things that I find is that it takes time and effort for ourselves as leaders to accept that this is not one transaction. Right. It's okay to think I can do it later because the relationship with my colleagues is something that is going to last for a long time.
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Andra Stefanescu
Exactly. Yes. And that's the important part, to put the relationship above whatever you say your agenda was from the principal perspective. Because it's more important to have a long term relationship than to achieve whatever you wanted to go through with it if that was the case.
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Vasco
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. For me, this reminds us that. This reminds me that when I'm in a hurry is the right time to slow down and figure out, okay, what is it that I can bring to this interaction that is productive for both of us.
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Andra Stefanescu
Exactly. And sometimes a simple question like, you know, what does your new what's on your mind today? Or what Is your intention for this meeting could really help you out to find out these things? Simple things?
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Vasco
Absolutely. And it is in that simplicity that hides a lot of power. Like for example, we were talking about the scarf model. Like these are five letters. We can just quickly run through our mind and think, okay, what could I ask that allows the other person to know that they are being seen, that they are accepted as people first? Right. Not as colleagues first. As people first, exactly.
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Andra Stefanescu
Yeah. That's really powerful.
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Vasco
So when you think about all of these topics, I mean, we've covered a lot of things like scarf model, the PCM model, emotional intelligence, change, transformation, psychological safety. But what's one resource that you think, okay, people interested in these topics must really read. And of course your newsletter will be in the show notes link as well. So people out there, be sure to check it out. But what would be a resource could be a book, a blog, a video, something that would really get us deeper into these topics.
- [26:34]
Andra Stefanescu
My one preferred book that I also have given a lot of recommendations so far, though I don't have any connection to it is the book of David Rock. He's the author of the scarf model. And it's called your brain at work. And it talks not only about the scarf model, but upon a lot of situations, how you can prioritize your time, how you can manage your workload, depending on how your brain works and so on. And it's really useful because it comes with a lot of examples, with use cases and simple things that everybody can apply wherever you are, in whatever industry or part of the world you're working.
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Vasco
Yeah. It is time we recognize that before anything, we're all humans, right?
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Andra Stefanescu
Yes.
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Vasco
So, Andra, thank you very much for being with us. We're about to end, but before we do, where can people find out more about you and the work that you are doing?
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Andra Stefanescu
Thank you for asking. Vasco. I have created just because it's very hard for me to structure my notes, I have created a newsletter so that everybody has access to it. So it's mainly weekly newsletter. It's called teamflow.substack.com I will send it to you. And in the last half a year, I particularly customize it to talk about leadership, their challenges, what happens in the world, what did my research find out? What are some simple methods where you can go through the transformation in an easier way? There are a lot of articles there that people might like to read, so I'm happy to share that.
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Vasco
Absolutely. We'll put the link in the show Notes. Andra thank you very much for being here with us and for your generosity with your time and your knowledge.
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Andra Stefanescu
Thank you so much Vasco for having me and looking forward to hear from everybody. How was that? And you can just connect if you have further questions.
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Hey friend, thank you for staying here is all you need to know about the Global Agile Summit if you've ever suffered or know people who are suffering from Agile fatigue, this event is for you. Agile fatigue is that feeling that settles in when we can't really see a light at the end of the tunnel. We get discouraged, especially when conversations revolve.
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Vasco
Around the same old frameworks, the same.
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Andra Stefanescu
Old buzzwords and theories. We don't feel that energy anymore. Well, the Global Agile Summit is a different kind of event. We're bringing you real life first person stories of agile succeeding out there in the real world that will inspire you to take action and transform the way you work. The Global Agile Summit will happen in Tallinn, Estonia, May 18th. That's the workshop day, then 19th and 20th the conference day and Tallin, Estonia is one of the most innovative tech hubs in Europe. The Global Agile Summit is hosted together with Latitude 59, which is kind of a citywide celebration of software startups and groundbreaking ideas. And we'll have a shared ticket for you to attend those events as well. So who will be speaking? Well, we've got an incredible lineup of thought leaders, leaders in software and agile. For example, Clinton Keith, the person who wrote, literally wrote the book on game development with Scrum and is busy bringing Agile to the world of game development. You must check his session. The very famous and well known Jurgen Apello, author of Management 3.0, will be talking and exploring about AI's impact on leadership. We also have Goiko Adsic, who's taking an unconventional look at product growth with his Lizard Optimization keynote. Other speakers include, for example Sig Sven Dietz, who's challenging everything we know about software development by ditching, literally ditching contracts and estimates. Can you imagine his teams deliver software before their contract competitors are even done.
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Vasco
With a contract negotiation?
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Andra Stefanescu
How agile is that? But there's more. We'll cover engineering practices in our developer track with talks on, for example AI assisted test driven development, developing products in minutes with a different approach to how we develop, configure, deploy platforms, and much more. We also have a product track where we cover cutting edge ideas around product discovery, delighting customers with product delight frameworks. We'll have a talk about that. And we also have an Agile business track where we will talk about for example Open strategy A very agile approach to managing organizations and delivering software faster to clients faster than you can even write a contract.
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Vasco
Literally.
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Andra Stefanescu
I mean, I already told you about Svendeet's story is amazing. It definitely is a must see. I'm sure you'll be inspired and get a lot of ideas for your own software projects and software delivery. Now, whether you're a business leader, a product innovator or a developer, you'll definitely find value in our three focused tracks. That's Agile Business for those working with businesses and organizations Agile Product for product managers, product owners and innovators and Agile Developer for the builders making Agile work in practice. The coders, the testers, the designers, the producers, the scrum masters, you name it. If you join, you will meet over 200 agile professionals from all over the world. People who just like you, want to grow, want to share, and want to learn by challenging the ideas that don't work anymore. At the Global Agile Summit, you'll get new connections, fresh ideas, and the energy to take your own Agile to the next level. And who knows, maybe even find your next career opportunity. So don't miss out. Check out the full program and grab your ticket now@globalagile summit.com I'm really looking forward to seeing you all in Tallinn, Estonia in May. I'll see you there.