They try new things
and see what works
Getting your team to successfully adopt new and more effective behaviors is no mean feat. It’s not enough to realize you need new behaviors and set an agreement to do them. A team needs to experiment—to iterate with new behaviors, new mindsets, new awareness—until they discover an approach that actually produces the desired results.
That’s why we invite leadership teams to engage in stretch behavioral experiments. We start by posing three key questions:
- What new ways of thinking or collaborating would make the biggest difference in our effectiveness right now?
- What’s an experiment we could try that would help us build that habit or capacity?
- Which experiments do we want to commit to?
These experiments often lead to lasting agreements—but we don’t start with the agreements. When teams frame something as an “agreement,” it can feel too permanent, too high-stakes. It can limit the ambition of what they’re willing to try. When it’s framed as an “experiment,” there’s more openness to stretch, risk, and learn.
It’s understandable and very common to assume that declaring a new agreement will lead to new behavior. However, what we have seen over and over again is that real change requires iteration and learning. The basic steps: (1) reflect on what you know, (2) design a stretch experiment, (3) run the experiment, (4) repeat. This experiment-first approach enables teams to discover what works, strengthen new muscles, and expand what they believe is possible.
Learning through experimentation and shared practice is how great teams get even better. Experiments are an invitation; they can be held with grace and curiosity. With each new experiment, the team gets better at adapting and growing.
Sample stretch experiments
To give you a better sense of the experiments a leadership team may take on, here are three agreements our clients have created that we’ve seen be highly effective for them.
Ask a question
- Looks like: When you’re not agreeing with someone, or you feel upset about the way a conversation is going, get curious. Rather than explain why others are wrong, assume intelligence and positive intent, and then ask a question so you can genuinely understand how they arrived at their view.
- Experiment: Practice this once a day.
- Why: Many of us advocate louder and more forcefully when we disagree; some of us get quiet. Asking a question helps us to calm down, slow down and open up the conversation so that wiser thinking can emerge.
Pick up the phone
- Looks like: If an email or communication thread is going off the rails, or if someone says something that you disagree with, pick up the phone (or head over in person) and discuss it.
- Experiment: Keep a tally: how often does this happen for you each week? Notice the length of the thread, and pivot to phone as soon as you are aware of what’s happening.
- Why: Text is a notoriously unreliable format to debate important issues. Voice conversations are relational, and misunderstandings are quickly identified.
Practice “No”
- Looks like: When it seems the team is saying yes in an automatic way, ask a question that helps the team more thoughtfully consider the decision, creating a space for “no”.
- Experiment: Play with questions like, “How is this going to help us hit our target?” “Is this the best time for us to focus on this?” “How does this land in our priority stack?”
- Why: For teams, less is almost always more. Making space for “no” helps teams maintain focus.
Key takeaways
- Creating new behaviors on a team can produce huge improvements in team effectiveness.
- It is important to get clear on specific behaviors in specific situations; if agreements are just principles, they won’t get implemented.
- While creating sustained behavior change is difficult, it becomes easier when we experiment together and discover what works best.
If you’d like to take the “Innovation” portion of our Team Outcome Model Survey, you can do so on our website here. This offers six questions that help you think about how ready your team is to experiment and innovate together.
Let us know if you have comments or questions about this topic, and please share an agreement and experiment you have tried. What happened?
Post your comment here or get in touch with us to discuss.
Best,
Kristin, David & Cyndi