259. The Power of X Teams: Exploring External Focus with Henrik Bresman

Truly innovative teams distinguish themselves not by what happens within their team rooms, but by how actively they engage with the world outside. In a powerful conversation, Professor Henrik Bresman of INSEAD draws from his decades of research and his book X-Teams: How to Build Teams that Lead, Innovate and Succeed to challenge traditional ideas of high-performing teams. He emphasizes that while internal alignment is important, it is no longer enough in today's fast-changing environment. Instead, teams must first reach outward—connecting with knowledge, power, and work structures—before turning inward.

Bresman explains that many leaders resist this "external-first" approach because of outdated mental models and a fear of disrupting internal harmony. Ironically, prioritizing short-term comfort by avoiding external feedback undermines long-term success and real team cohesion. The teams that succeed practice key activities like sensemaking, ambassadorship, and task coordination, constantly cycling through phases of exploration, experimentation, and exportation to remain dynamic and relevant.

This conversation redefines leadership for an uncertain world, where pretending to have all the answers breeds false security and true innovation comes from admitting what we don't know. Bresman's insights offer practical guidance for leaders at all levels, showing how to build teams that not only adapt to change but actively drive it. Listeners are encouraged to explore more of his work at xleadco and join a growing movement to rethink how teams can lead and innovate in complex environments.

🌐 Connect with Henrik:
• Website: http://www.bresman.com/
https://www.xlead.co/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henrikbresman/

📚 You can purchase 's book on Amazon:
• X-Teams, Revised and Updated: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1647824761/

Chapters

• 0:27 Rethinking Successful Teams
• 2:23 Meet Professor Henrik Bresman
• 4:20 Why Teams Need External Focus
• 8:43 Fear of External Engagement
• 14:13 Three Critical External Structures
• 19:15 Exploration, Experimentation, Exportation
• 26:51 Overcoming Dysfunctional Stakeholders
• 36:29 The Paradox of Leadership
• 44:05 Key Takeaways and Closing Thoughts

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

What makes a team truly successful in today's fast changing world? Is it enough for teams to simply work well together, or is there something more? Could it be that the best teams aren't just great internally, but are masters at reaching outward, leading innovation beyond their walls. Today, I'm joined by Professor Henrik Bresman of INSEAD, a world renowned expert in Organizational Psychology and behavior. Henrik will share why traditional team models no longer fit the demands of today's environment, and how outward reaching, adaptive teams can drive real innovation and success. We're in for a real treat today. Let's get started. Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Professor Henrik Bresman. Henrik is a professor of organizational psychology and behavior at INSEAD. He leads INSEAD development programs, the flagship programs of leadership for organizations, and he wants us to reimagine how we build and lead teams, and that's what our conversation is going to be about today. This led him to co author a book with Deborah and Kona, who's also leads leadership development programs at MIT so two amazing professors coming together to develop a book called X teams, how to build teams that lead, innovate and succeed, and that's what we're going to be unpacking today. I can't wait to get into today's conversation so without any further ado. Henrik, I would love it if you say hello to the audience, and I'd love to know what inspired the work that you do and why you say reimagine how we build and lead teams?

Henrik Bresman: 1:57

First of all. Mick, thank you very much for having me. It's a true privilege to be here. And then a little bit of a warning to you as a professor, I have this habit of starting to profess if you let me, so you should feel absolutely free to interrupt me at any time. So the topic, how did I come to that? Well, I did have a real job once before I became a professor, I actually worked in a few different roles. At first as a manager in a large electrical engineering firm. I then worked in a startup situation a bit. I worked a bit as a consultant. Now, in all of these roles, I found, of course, that leadership is absolutely critical, and I found that the fundamental unit of leadership, wherever you sit in an organization is in the team, whether if you're at the top or at the front line, that's where the crucible of leadership really happens, in these small moments in the team. So I got really interested in in teams, how to make them work, why they don't work, and so on. So this gets you a second question, why do we need to reimagine how we think about building and leading teams? And that really gets an insight that I had very early on, when I started my doctoral studies, when I was I was already in my 30s, when I started, was that there was a model of high performing teams that have been proven over over decades, which is about how and to be a successful team, you need to create internal alignment in a team around goals, roles, processes, interpersonal relationships. And what I found was lacking, and very much this was the road that my co author, Deborah kohner, was already on was well, how about alignment externally? And we found in our studies that you could actually have an absolutely perfectly aligned team internally, and you will still likely fail if you're not aligned with your stakeholders, externally. So the reimagination is really about this how to be successful in today's world. Because the world has been changing. We like to call it. Call it an exponentially changing world that is volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, increasingly asynchronous, diverse, changing at a furious pace. Something has shifted. The external world. Has always been important, but now is absolutely critical, and often explains more of the performance in a team than what's going on internally. So I'm going to try to summarize in one sentence what it is that you need to do today that perhaps you didn't have to do a couple of decades ago, and that is for a team to be successful today, you need to go out before you go in. You need to go out before you go and you need to be you need to care as much about the external world as the internal world in your team you.

Mick Spiers: 5:00

Yeah, really good, Henry. Now, I've have to confirm, based on my lived experience working for multiple multinational companies, that when we talk about high performance teams, we nearly always look inwards. First. We use a Drexel civic team performance model or something like that, or even Tuckman just, you know, forming, norming, storming, performing, is it? No forming, storming, norming, performing using some kind of model like that, but it's, but it's very internally. And then, if you're lucky, I'm going to say, then sometimes we catch ourselves and realize, oh, hang on a second, we haven't thought about our customer for a while, or other stakeholders, for that matter, that we have to interact with. So I have to say it's, it's very true. One thing I'm curious to know, with the work that you and Deborah have done and the research you said, you know, there's high performing teams then there's other teams that don't perform as well. I'm going to put to you that no team arrives at work going, we're going to do a bad job today. Where do we go wrong? Like everyone turns out, with the right intent, where do we go wrong?

Henrik Bresman: 6:06

Absolutely so if we, of course, there are 100 different ways in which you can go wrong, but if I connect specifically to where we started, then then we're some say something about how we go wrong in terms of how to connect externally, there are many ways in which you can go wrong internally. You might think that you're aligned around a goal, but you haven't checked your assumption you're wrong, and then you go in different directions, and there's conflict before because of that. So internally, a lot of things can happen, but if we focus externally, I'd say that there are, there are two main blockers. One is our our mental model. If I ask a group of executives, what's a great team in their experience, they have a very clear model of what a high performing team is, and it's almost always goes back to to what's going on internally. So the first reason why teams go wrong in that they they don't think enough about what's going on externally, is that that's not part of the mental model we think about the people who are in our team room or in our Zoom Room, and that's the team and people are not there, out of sight, out of mind. So that mental model seems to be burnt into our brains. But it is even more difficult than that, because it turns out going out and actively working with the various external stakeholders we need to work with. It can be kind of punishing. We can talk more about exactly how to how to think about the world out there, but for now, I'm just going to generalize to say, say it can be kind of punishing to work with people. If you ask a customer what they really think the response can be punishing. If you talk to someone who's a particularly powerful stakeholder, maybe an investor, maybe a CEO, will be very different things, depending on what kind of context you're in, the response might be punishing. And we know this and therefore, and one thing we know about teams is that we do like harmony, and so what we do when we go out is that we bring in disharmony and anxiety, and we don't like that so often, not necessarily consciously, but unconsciously. We close ourselves off, and we do not do those things that we probably should know that we need to do. I mean, it's not rocket science to say that. Well, you probably need to go out there and talk to your customer or you probably need to talk to your investors and so on. And yet, we just don't do it. And I think a lot of it has to do with with our our need for harmony and this fast changing world out there, we just don't get it. Now, of course, what I'm saying then is, yeah, you can get harmony in the short run by closing yourself off, but in the long run, your performance will will suffer and there will be no harmony anymore. But those are two things. One is our mental model, and two is often the unconscious decision not to go out there because we don't want to deal with the Incoming, incoming fire from doing that.

Mick Spiers: 9:34

Yeah, so I am hearing two things there, Henrik, and one is just getting into a pattern that this is the way we've always done it, a bit on autopilot. When we get together as a team, we do focus internally, and it's become a habit. And habits are very powerful, with their virtuous habits, but they they can stick, and if they're not a good habit, it's hard to break. So it might be just being on autopilot. The second part was, I'm feeling there an element of fear that if I go, let's pick customers as the one of the major stakeholders. If we go and ask our customers what they really think of us, do we really want to know the answer, and do we subconsciously avoid that conversation?

Henrik Bresman: 10:18

Fear is a big, big big issue in teams today because of the uncertainty that is inherent in today's world. It's fear of getting getting responses that you don't want. It's fear of of being caught not knowing what you think you you need to know. Fear of dealing with paradoxes that you can't resolve. There is a lot of fear out there. It's a huge problem. It is a huge problem.

Mick Spiers: 10:48

I want to share one of my experiences here as as well. Henry can help me unpack it a little bit. So in a role that I took on just a couple of years ago, one of the first things I did was go around to customers and give them a good damn listening to just basically you ask them a bunch of questions and just let them get things off the chest. I've got to tell you at the end of that, the relationship was already better, and one of the key things I picked up from that is one of the frustrations of those customers is they feel like their key suppliers aren't even listening to them, right? They feel, of course, those teams are so internally focused, and they worried about their own governance and their own processes and all of these things, customers sticking up their hand, going, Hey, what about us? No one's no one's listening to us. Can I ask? What I'm thinking here is just asking the question and letting them get off their chest. What they are thinking is half the battle. Half the battle's already won. If you give them a chance to get it off their chest. How does that sit with you?

Henrik Bresman: 11:52

When I coach teams to be externally more focused, what I often find is that they come back and say, Oh, it wasn't that bad. And one of the reasons is, exactly what you said. It turns out that what they imagined in their minds about how, how hostile this would be, just being a good therapist in the sense sitting there, sitting there, listening, that goes a very, very long way people you don't need to be in the context of teams running a business. This is being human. We like to be listened to absolutely. And if you listen actively, you will also learn things that can help you respond in a way that is more aligned with reaching your goals and the goals of whoever you're working with out there. So it sits very well with me.

Mick Spiers: 12:45

Yeah, very good. Okay, so there's going to be people listening to this already, Hendrick that might be sitting there going, Whoa. He's describing my company. We do this all the time. We're very internally focused, and we forget if anyone's listening to this. What does it look like for you? What does a perfect external reach out look like? Whether it's a customer or other stakeholders? Maybe the customer is the easiest one for people to understand. What does a perfect engagement look like?

Henrik Bresman: 13:17

It will depend on the context. However, there is a fundamental, fundamental characteristic of teams that do this very well, they connect to three specific structures in the environment. And you'll tell me if I sound too academic now. But what we found, we found more and more teams failing, and as we looked at the reasons of why they failed? Well, that was because they weren't outward looking enough. Now, these teams, very often had been successful at one point in time, but things had changed the environment. Things are moving faster. But just to say things are moving faster, that might not be very helpful. So I want to be specific here about these three dimensions or structures that have changed. One is the knowledge structure. This is about just how what we know about our environment out there, and that could be the customer, it could be a competitor, it could be new technology. This is about updating our maps, about what the territory looks like. And since the territory is changing all the time, we need to do this all the time. That's one piece. We need to make sure we have a correct map of the territory knowledge. Second is power. Where are the resources? Where are the stakeholders who we really need to be connected to? This has changed, because it used to be quite obvious. You had you looked at an organizational chart, and then you could tell where the power sat. And that is just not what it looks like anymore. This. The power structures are now much more elusive and not so clearly defined. So it takes some work to figure out, Where are the resources, where are the where's the power. And then the third dimension would be the work structures that are now far more interdependent than they used to be. I'll give you an obvious example. We write in our book about Microsoft, so we spend quite a bit of time working with Microsoft. You don't need to know anything about Microsoft to know about some of their best sellers in the Microsoft Office Suite, which would be Word, PowerPoint, Excel, teams, etc. Now it is obvious, of course, that if you want to be successful as the person leading the word team, you need to be intimately connected with whoever is working over there in the Excel team or over there in the power in the teams team, because if you don't manage those interdependencies, you will fail. And that is true more and more for any team, in any situation, that you have these interdependencies in the work structure. So you have changes in the knowledge structure, changes in the power structure, changes in the work structure. So that's the now I'm diagnosing the challenge. So what do you need to do? Well, you need to connect to these three structures by three fundamental external activities. To connect with the knowledge structure, you need to engage in what we call sense making. This is about updating the map. And then to connect with the power structure, you need to engage in what we call ambassadorship. This is about representing the team. This is about figuring out, where might the lines of resistance be, where are the resources? How can we hit the strategic frequency of the people who we need to have on board? How can we use their language? And then the third piece is then what we refer to as task coordination. This is about getting feedback about the interdependencies and making sure that we work with the interdependencies. And there, what very often happens with teams is they are not aware of the interdependencies, and so they step on someone's toes and then things go badly, and they didn't intend to. A more proactive way of thinking about that is in the following way, any model of high performing teams will say you need to be aligned around goals. What we're saying is that, yep, you absolutely do. We're not throwing out the baby with the bathwater here, but the best way to reach your goal is very often to figure out what these other teams goals are that you're interdependent with, and ask yourself, How can we reach help them reach their goals? And that's very often the best way for us to reach ours. So sense making ambassadorship and task coordination. Now, what this looks like will depend on your context, but all these three things need to be part of your game plan. Ambassadorship, if you're a startup team, well, then it's about connecting outside of your organization and having close connections with perhaps the VC that is funding you, if you're a product development team at Microsoft, well, then you need to have Satya Nadella, the CEO and the C suite on board. That's all internal ambassadorship. So the answers are different of how to do this, depending on where you are, but the questions are the same. How can you do these three things consistently?

Mick Spiers: 18:42

Yeah, really good, Henry. There's many things I'm taking away. I'd love to play some of them back to you. The first one that jumped in my mind when you're talking is that yesterday's thinking is what created today's results. And if you want a different result, you're gonna have to try something different. And it may have worked for you five years ago, but the world changed a lot in that five years. So you better not just follow the bouncing ball. You need to do something different in that external engagement with that stakeholder, and I'm going to keep on going with the customer, because I think that's the easiest one to understand. Firstly, asking them some questions, they're already going to feel heard, but now I'm hearing some guide rails of where our curiosity should lead us to understand the knowledge structure, the power structure, the work structure, so that you understand, if you want to do business with this other company or this other entity, you better know how they work, otherwise you're just going to get spat back out the door If you don't understand their work structures, where the where the power lies, how the knowledge structure works, furthermore, I feel like you're then starting to understand the problems that they face because they want to do business with you. It's because they feel like you've got a solution to one of their problems, and if you can articulate their problems to them better than. They can, they'll assume that you've got the answer, and it's game on. So it's almost like you're helping them diagnose their own knowledge structure, power structure, work structures. You're doing it for your benefit, but then you're playing it back to them to build their trust.

Henrik Bresman: 20:15

Yeah, absolutely. I will just say absolutely. That's right, and very often, because our internal team dynamics is colored by our ambitions, our personalities, our past. So if you can be an outside source that is a little bit more objective, of course, in reality, you're not, maybe objective, but you provide a different perspective that you might listen to in a different way. They might open their ears in a different way. And I want to, I mean, one thing that you said just before this that I want to just dive into a little bit. It goes back to, I guess, what we said before that is not exactly rocket science. Many of these things, I don't think anyone listens to this and say, Oh, wow. Now that is completely surprising and counter intuitive. What is surprising, perhaps, is why teams don't do it, and what you said, Now I'm going to play back to you what you said, which I think is so important, is that something worked so well, and now it doesn't. And this is for anyone who worked in coaching, which I know you have, you will have heard this idea of what took us here won't take us there another thing that is easy to say and difficult to do. And of course, we know that we need to change. But why don't we? Well, it is exactly because we've been so successful getting here in a working in a certain way, and that is another thing that gets in the way. So I'm getting back to this because I am convinced I've been doing this now for two decades, working with teams in different contexts, that the starting point to getting it right is to really understand what blocks you. Because otherwise you say, yeah, yeah, of course, of course, we, we're going to do that, and then you don't do it because you haven't diagnosed what would actually block you from doing what you you know you need to do, but there are powerful forces that blocks you, such as well, I was competent doing it this way. Now I'm going to do it a different way. What? What if I'm incompetent doing it.

Mick Spiers: 22:17

Might be a challenge to your own identity, your ego might have been your sense of self might have been the expert in the old way, and now there's a new way. Am I still going to be the expert at the other end of this journey?

Henrik Bresman: 22:29

This is so important. This is so I'm today, I'm writing an academic paper where we talk about this. We call it primary appraisal and secondary praise. And you just tell me to shut up if I get to academic. The idea is that primary appraisal is okay. Here's a challenge. And you know, what does that mean in terms of my ability to reach my goals and do I have the resources? It's very instrumental. Secondary appraisal is, what does that say about me, my sense of self, my identity, and so playing back to you what you just said, and I think that is the part that we forget. And if we forget that part, we are getting in our own way for reasons that might not be entirely conscious to us. So the question about who we are, who we want to be, successful, dependable, loved, all of these things. I mean, that's powerful forces, and we're going to do something differently that we don't know if we can do that threatens that.

Mick Spiers: 23:30

Yeah, these drivers of human behavior, whether it's our own or the others that are around us, if we ignore them, we ignore them, at our peril. I'll share a question that I quite often ask you, if we know what we want to do and why we want to do it, why it's important, why haven't we done it already? And if we don't ask that, why haven't we done it already? We won't over overcome the fear, the limiting belief, whatever it is, the story in our head that's prevented us from taking that leap. If you don't address that, you will never do all right. Now I want to now, I want to come back to something else that you said before Henrik was really interesting. You said that we have to go out before we go in. So let's say that we've got teams to have this external focus. And they've gone and they've done this diagnostic. They've now understand the knowledge structure, the power structure, the work structures of whoever that stakeholder is. What's next? Do they bring it back in? What? How do you dynamically adjust to this?

Henrik Bresman: 24:28

So we then need to think about the timing, and that's really what your question is getting at. And we, in this book, we sketch out a model with three steps, exploration, experimentation and execution. It's the second one. And finally, exportation. So once you done your explore, and you can tell, I'm sure, that we like, like excess, the the iteration here is not an accident, and I'm. Lifelong fan of the X Men, so maybe that's so exploration. Is this out before in, make sure you understand the context, and then you go in and you with that knowledge, and you experiment, and you execute based on that. You put things together. That's the second step. And then the final step, then is exportation. That's when you go out and and educate people about what you're what you're doing, and why they should care. Now, it's not as linear as this. It's in and out along the way. It's sort of as a help, helpful way to think about this over time. These three steps, and then there are circles back, of course.

Mick Spiers: 25:41

Okay, so exploration, experimentation and then exportation. That's really good and non linear. I can see that I'm also thinking that it's not one and done. You're going to have to do this on a regular basis, or with the world that's changing as fast as it is. What you did today that worked is not going to work two years from now? Yes,

Henrik Bresman: 26:02

exactly. And how you do this, of course, if you are a project team, then it may be, it won't, will never be perfectly linear, but then it will be relatively linear. But if you are an intact, ongoing team running a department or a division or a company, yes, then the loop is continuous, of course. Yeah,

Mick Spiers: 26:23

really good. I'm curious to know, in your work with your research and companies that you've helped on this journey to become more external, what does it look like at the other end of this journey? What's different compared to the internally focused

Henrik Bresman: 26:39

at the other end? So I will say, let's me take a crack at answering the question. What comes to mind? This is one way of answering is, I'm thinking, of course, of the success stories. It's just wonderful to work with teams. So there's a number of different contexts here that I have in mind. One is that I have executive audiences in my classroom at INSEAD, and very often we start these projects that they don't then finish after the programs, or I can work directly with intact teams and organizations. And then there are combinations of these. What it looks like, which is so gratifying, is that when this actually works, then one of the dynamics we talked about loops that happens, is that once they have had the courage to actually take the step to think differently about it, to go out before in, and really structure themselves as x teams, and the X and X teams, I don't think I said that's really about X Men, really, that's a real answer, but, but our cover story is that is external connection, external outreach. That's the x in x teams. Is that and they succeed, and then success breeds success. There is such a thing as winning streaks. And then you see the teams around them. They go, what are those guys doing? What whatever they are having, we want to have. And then then it spreads. And for for me, of course, that's incredibly gratifying, but that's, that's what it looks like. It is not only one team success and repeated success, it's actually the starting point to creating a web of innovation, change and success across whatever ecosystem in which you are embedded. That's the best case scenario disrupted along the way. I've also been involved working with companies where, you know, we're well on our way, and then then the CEO is fired for some reason, and everyone gets scared, and they pull back. And so there are those stories too, of course, where we don't get fully to where we want to go.

Mick Spiers: 28:57

Yeah, and understand, I'm sure that's going to happen, and that's part of the volatility that we see in the world. That's not always predictable. It's not always rational, but it happens. What I'm picturing on the success stories there is, first of all that if you have a team within the organization, let's pick a multinational. If you have a team that's starting to have this success and have this way of working that other people will absolutely they'll notice. And then one of two things, they'll want to join that team, because they see it's fun over there. Or they'll tap their leader on the shoulder and say, Hey, can we do some of that? And then the web that you're trying to say. The other thing I'm imagining is that team who's probably got a bunch of leaders in there, or leaders, or potential future leaders, eventually those people will get promoted and sent to other people, and now we're going to have a multiplier effect as well.

Henrik Bresman: 29:56

Absolutely, that that is what we see, because it is not. Always coming from the top. And often people come to me and say, yeah, yeah, no, I believe in what you're saying. But you know, our CEO is this silverback gorilla who wants to run everything top down, and so that won't work. And my my response to that is typically something like this. Yeah, of course it will be great if your CEO was with the program. And this is why I often like to work with the C suite, because then you know the program, it's easier that way. But even if it's not, this success lives at the team level, and if you then can showcase this success. In the end, everyone, including that silverback gorilla talk, will will notice and say, Well, what are they doing? And then you have this, this thing spreading, and we're back to one of the more gratifying experiences I have in my work when I see that good virus spread through an organization.

Mick Spiers: 31:03

I love the good virus analogy there. I'm also thinking, listening to you the clear difference between a victim mindset and a creator mindset. The victim mindset will say, Oh, this will never work. The CEO is going to kill this. This will never work. A creative mindset would do what they can with what they have from where they are, and they'd act very locally. They'd be successful, and that success would breed success. Yeah.

Henrik Bresman: 31:30

I liked that when you said what they can with what they have.

Mick Spiers: 31:35

From where they are.

Henrik Bresman: 31:36

I'll grab that quote if you don't mind.

Mick Spiers: 31:38

Yeah, no problems at all. Okay, all right, very good. Now I've got another challenging question here. I've been thinking about this since I've been starting to look at your work. Henrik, I'm fully sold. To be clear, I want to do this. I want this mindset in myself and in my teams. What happens? And I'm going to pick a customer again. Now if that external focus that you're looking at, and you're going in and you're trying to do this diagnosis of the knowledge structure, the power structure, the work structures. What if that organization that you're trying to do business with is quite dysfunctional themselves? How do you deal with that?

Henrik Bresman: 32:15

It is important to figure out if it's something you can deal with or you not deal with in so this is what comes to mind, is that in many, in most organizations that I work with, people are very competitive, and they just don't take no for an answer, and they will not accept anything from themselves or others, than than success. You need to know what you can control and what you can't. And so the answer to that, and now I don't want to be Debbie downer here and say, well, that probably won't work. That's not what I mean it is. You got to have a realistic view on this. And this is another reason why you need to go out before in. So you understand you have a good stakeholder map. What does it look like over there? What can you realistically do with that map? Well, then you might be able to find ways to work around that dysfunction, but you might also find that this is a kind of dysfunction and resistance that you will not be able to overcome. You will hit a brick wall, and if you're going to hit a brick wall, it's better to know it sooner rather than later, so you can refocus your energies. Maybe not the answer you were looking for, but it comes from the fact that I find too often that teams, they don't cut their losses, they just continue to hit that wall.

Mick Spiers: 33:40

Yeah. Okay, all right. So what I'm hearing there, I'm thinking of three things as you speak there. So you're doing that diagnosis, you're listening to that stakeholder. You're mapping the knowledge structures, the power structures, the work structures, be prepared that that map might be an absolute spaghetti map that's really complicated. And then from there, at least you know, it's better to know than to not know, then you can start looking at, can I find a path of least resistance through that map where I can be successful, or is that not going to work? And coming back a little bit before, when I said before, a bit like, if you can articulate that organization's problems to them better than they can, they might engage you to help you untangle that dysfunction. Depending on what kind of industry you're in, they might see you as someone that can actually they probably recognize it themselves. They might see you as someone that can help them untangle the dysfunction.

Henrik Bresman: 34:42

Yes, I absolutely think so. And so I did not intend to say give up that I using the same strategies absolutely are a better chance you have a better chance of succeeding, but also understanding when the odds of success are so small that perhaps you should be. Go to plan B. Another thing that I need to bring up. We talk so much about the external piece here that we may even forget the internal piece. I want to say that it is really important that we don't I think I used this expression earlier. We don't throw out the baby with the bath water here, the internal piece, absolutely necessary, not sufficient. And there is one piece here that we found in our research, and this, this builds on a research of a mentor and colleague of mine, Amy Edmondson. She's a professor at Harvard. She's done a lot of work on psychological safety. Are you familiar with this?

Mick Spiers: 35:40

Yes, very much.

Henrik Bresman: 35:43

Most organizations I work with will know about this concept. And so the idea that you can actually speak up in a team without being worried about being punished or humiliated, that you feel it can be candid, it is always important, but it is particularly important in an externally active team, because there will be so much incoming that if you can't have an open conversation in a team to talk about your failures, your anxieties, what you're unsure of, what you know, but also what you don't know, disagreements, because when you go out, You will find conflicting data, and you need to work that out in the team. The need for psychological safety really goes up in the next team. So that's a critical piece.

Mick Spiers: 36:32

I think you're you're spot on here. Henrik, so for me, psychological safety, the perceived benefit of speaking up, is greater than the fear of doing so, and if you don't have that, when these uncomfortable truths come back to you, you may not be able to deal with them in a way that unlocks the full diversity of thought, of everyone's ideas about what are we going to do about this? So when we've looked externally and we've found some uncomfortable truths, we need to be able to process them. And I think you're right. Psychological safety has got to be an ingredient of that for sure.

Henrik Bresman: 37:06

Going back to what we said a moment ago, again there, it's really important as a team, actually, to agree on what it looks like out there. What is the risk of failure, right? We need to have a common understanding that in this context, given the level of uncertainty, given the limited control we have over external stakeholders, you know everyone needs to agree that one outcome might be to go to plan B. So I'm just connecting back to that example. If you don't, if you don't have agreement on that if you don't have a common understanding of the stage you're playing at, well, then you cannot build up psychological safety, because then you have different ideas of what is permissible about what the expectations are, etc.

Mick Spiers: 37:55

Yeah, you're going to need that agreement on what the problem is and what is the magnitude of the problem. If you have some people that have already gotten to the catastrophization stage, and others are excited about well, we know now and we can fix it, you might have some alignment to do there, which I want to come back to something you said, we skipped over it. I think it was really important. So you've said to go out before you go in, but you didn't say not to do the go in, right? So we're not saying you don't do this internal work on alignment and an expectation setting and all of these things that are necessary inside the team. But what I'm thinking everything that I'm hearing from you, Henry, is, if you've done the external work, then that internal work is going to be in congruence and an alignment with where you need to be to be successful in externally. Otherwise you're just going in a circle. So the external work that you did to understand the knowledge structures, the power structures, the work structures, you're now coming that back in and now the work that we do internal is going to be so much more powerful.

Henrik Bresman: 39:02

Yes, absolutely, and harder, because it will inevitably involve learning to do things differently from what you might have thought initially that you would do. And this is, I see this, this actually, that brings me to something, because I just yesterday, I was confronted with this again, and I'd be confronted with it so often. This turns out to be particularly challenging for new team leaders. They tend to close off because they feel that to be a good team leader, they need to know where to go and going out before in puts that and we're back to the identity. I put that at risk, and so again and again and again and again, and I'm so it makes me really frustrated. Is not the word really sad. And for these people with so much potential that they crash and burn because they they. Cannot take in what they really need to take in, because it threatens their self, sense of self, and therefore they they stick to the plan. Because, at least that makes me a leader, because I have all the answer, and I can point with my hand and say, Here we're going, but they're going a completely wrong direction. So So then learning is after that. To keep learning is critical, and learning is risky, and learning can hurt because it can take you in directions you don't want to go, and that's the critical part.

Mick Spiers: 40:27

So to come back to a phrase that you that we said at the start, reimagining how we build and lead teams, we need to rethink that model of leadership, that the leader has all their answers and knows where to go and all of these things, because it's not anymore. The best leaders are the learning and adapting leaders that can really keep an open mind and open heart and open will to what. Where is this company three years from now? Let's find out. Let's go on a journey together, as opposed to thinking, I know everything. Yeah, this is so powerful.

Henrik Bresman: 41:02

Yeah, and we need to remind ourselves of this. Here's the paradox we are. It's human to be particularly attracted to a leader who says, I have all the answers. Only I can fix it. If you make me the leader, then I will take you to the promised land. It is paradoxically particularly powerful and seductive that message in a world where that is just impossible because we are anxious about where we are in this world and where we're going, and we don't know someone standing up and say, I know, I know everything, then we follow that leader, and that's a great strategy, often, to get to a position of power, to say that I have yet. I cannot think of one example of someone who has that mindset, who is actually successful, at least in the long run, if we, by success, mean to actually lead people in a direction that is better, you know, unless it's just for that person, that might be better for that person, maybe. But now I and this is true, of course, not only in organizations. This is all over society. We see this.

Mick Spiers: 42:20

Yeah, US politics. Well, I have to say US politics is what that's what it looks like today, but it's interesting. You really challenged my thinking just there. Henrik about because I know that that model of leadership doesn't work, but when you're said about the seductive nature of it, about how it's easy to get sucked into that world, either as the follower or the leader. I think it is seductive, but it's not going to work. It's not going to work. You've given us so much to think about today. Henrik, the key messages I want to give to people, to take away is to go out before you go in these x teams, and x being the external world, you you don't live in a bubble. Stop being so internally focused about your team. Look outside and look at the stakeholders that you're trying to work with, and get out there and do that diagnostic, give them a good damn listening to and then think about understanding, mapping their their knowledge structures, their power structures, their work structures, and then bring it back into your team. And you've you've done the exploration now do the experimentation and the exportation, and it's a cycle that you're going to have to keep on doing, because the world is changing faster than it ever has before, and what has worked for you up until now. I only got you this far. It's not going to take you where you want to go. This has been so powerful, Henrik, I want to now take us to our last four questions. So these are the same four questions we ask all of I guess. So what's the one thing that you know now, Professor Henrik bresman, that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Henrik Bresman: 44:02

Well, you know, they say that research is me search. I think one of the reasons why I've been saying several times building on your view too, that your own sense of self and identity can can block you, is because I feel like I was there as well. And I would say that it sounds simple, but for me, personally, it's been very powerful. I would say the one thing that I've learned is it's okay to not know, and in fact, in today's world, if you think you know, you should be suspicious.

Mick Spiers: 44:37

Very good. All right. What a powerful takeaway. What's your favorite book?

Henrik Bresman: 44:42

I have to say, I reread recently a book by Albert Camille, the French author, which in English, I think, is called the plague. It's just an amazing book about the resilience of people going through the plague of a city and the plague. In this case, it's a metaphor for the Nazis and during the Second World War. And I think, you know, given the authoritarian tendencies in the world today, I found that powerful, and it's also beautifully written.

Mick Spiers: 45:15

Yeah, wonderful. I don't know it. So you've given me one to go and explore. For sure, what's your favorite quote?

Henrik Bresman: 45:21

I am an avid diver, so this will be bit different from the theme here, but I of leadership, but I would say this beautiful quote of easily Lauren Eastley, he said, if there is magic on this planet, it is in water, and I can't wait to plan my next dive.

Mick Spiers: 45:44

I love it. Oh, very good. Thank you so much. And giving us a little insight into your life beyond, beyond INSEAD as well. Thank you. And finally, Professor Henrik bresman, how do people find you, if people are blown away by what we're talking about today, and go, Yeah, we're exactly this. We're internally focused, and we don't look externally. How do people find you to learn more about your work and how you can help them?

Henrik Bresman: 46:09

So I would say there are a few things in terms specifically about the book. I would send people to x lead.co, which is where I and Deborah we we link to the book and where you can buy the book. But also we have developed a simulation and some assessments that people can use if they want to dip their toes in what we've been talking about today. And then LinkedIn, I have a newsletter on LinkedIn called X news, together with Deborah, and I am the only one as far as I know in this world with my name. So if you Google my name, my LinkedIn profile will come up, and I'd be very happy to connect there.

Mick Spiers: 46:51

Thank you so much. Henrik, I've absolutely adored our conversation today. I feel like I could talk to you for many, many hours, and we still wouldn't be done. This has been amazing. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and your wisdom and giving us something to stop and reflect. I think you have described multiple organizations. I'm going to say the majority of organizations are internally focused. You've given us something to really stop and reflect and do something different about, thank you so much.

Henrik Bresman: 47:20

My pleasure. Thank you very much.

Mick Spiers: 47:23

What an amazing conversation with Professor Henrik Bresman. Thank you for sharing your brilliant insights today. If there's one takeaway from today's conversation, it's this, leading great teams isn't just about managing what's inside the room, it's about courageously reaching outside of it, the teams that will thrive are those who are constantly learning, adapting and leading change, not waiting for it. In the next episode, I'll be sharing my own reflections on what I took from Henrik today. It's been one of my favorite episodes ever on the show, and I'll be adding my own insights as to where I feel like organizations that I've led have fell into the very traps that Henrik is talking about, and what I see that our customers and stakeholders are so achingly waiting for teams to do in terms of reaching out and having that extrinsic view. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project mickspiers.com a huge call out to Faris Sedek for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP. Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo and my amazing wife Sei Spiers, I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Now, in the meantime, please do take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.