Best Place to Work

The Friday Finance Break

(For anyone just tuning in, every Friday we take a break from the CFO content and talk about mental health. If you're just here for the CFO stuff, we'll see you Monday!)

Sometimes, when Josh and I first speak with a company about facilitating their leadership offsite,

Folks aren’t forthcoming about the tensions that exist in their companies.

They might not be aware of them, or maybe they just don’t feel ready to talk about them.

But it's often these same companies

Who actually need intervention the most.

Look:

When people work together, conflict happens.

It’s completely natural.

In healthy teams:

• Folks have conflict and tension. Sometimes it's even by design! (Think Marketing and Finance or Sales and Engineering - these departments almost ALWAYS work in tension.)

• They come together on a regular basis to surface and negotiate these areas of disagreement

• They share opinions and build a shared narrative

• They move beyond the conflict and can get work done

• And they expect to check in again later, to realign as things change.

So when we hear things like,

• “Our company is like a happy family!"

• “Everyone really gets along all the time!”

• “Our team doesn’t have any issues to resolve!”

• "We're all very senior, so we really don't need meetings!"

• “We’ve been recognized as a Best Place to Work by [insert pay-for-play listicle here]!”

What I’m really thinking is,

Oh boy. This iceberg probably goes DEEP.

These guys may need some help,

STAT.

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