Trust, Co-leading, and Knowledge Sharing: Communication Insights for Navigating Ad Hoc Online Teams - A Conversation with David Birkam

David Birkam, a professional creative,  shares his experiences and empirical research with us regarding how to successfully navigate virtual ad hoc work teams. 

Being appointed to a project team can be challenging in a best case scenario. 

But what about when these teams are comprised of individuals from several different work units with likely with no shared history who are then tasked with solving a complex, often emergent problem? 

Want to complicate this further? 

What about when these teams function fully in a co-located, virtual space? 

David shares his insights and leaves us with insights related to building trust, the importance of co-leadership, and the potential of knowledge generation and sharing. 

David Birkam is a Graphic Designer at Western Michigan University working in teaching and learning support in addition to a recent communication program graduate.

Until next time, communicate with intention and lead with purpose.

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Transcript

Dr. Leah OH: 0:00

Today in the communicative leader, we have David Birkam. David is a graphic designer at Western Michigan University and he works in teaching and learning support. He also recently finished a graduate degree in communication. As a professional creative David is often tapped for ad hoc or temporary teams, many of which function fully in co located virtual spaces. David combines his experiences with empirical research he is conducted to give us some communication insights for leaders and members of these virtual ad hoc teams. At the end of the day, he helps us to understand what a typical experience many have, but what an ideal experience can look like for everyone involved. What else when these teams are led well, output tends to be better and everyone members, the leader, the organization all benefit. Hello, and welcome to the communicative leader hosted by me, Dr. Omilion-Hodges, my friends call me Dr. OH. I'm a Professor of Communication and a leadership communication expert, and the communicative leader. We're working to make your work life what you want it to be. So, David, before we dive further into your work, can you tell us a bit about yourself specifically, what experiences led you to be interested in this particular area?

David Birkam: 1:28

Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. So by trade, and I guess by sometimes I feel like it's by chance, I have worked as a graphic designer, for the most part, but, you know, general creative for my entire working career, which is both a blessing and a curse, in some ways for your influence in communicating with leaders and teams and employers. Yeah, I've been doing creative work for over 10 years now. I often have found that those working as professional creatives in nonprofit for profit corporate startup configurations that I've been in creatives, especially those in the communication side of things kind of end up at the end of the line when it comes to influencing the decisions of communication processes, or influencing a product or initiative before it comes to the public art of communication. So that's been an interesting challenge as a professional and I think a lot of other creative professionals would probably feel the same way. So that's something I've always been interested in, kind of, I don't know, wondering about why that's the case or wondering, like, Where, where, like, a professional creative voice is best used in sort of these like, end of the line communications, which relates to kind of the ad hoc teams that I I've discussed in research I've done and things I've been interested in. You know, I feel like additionally, working as a creative professional when COVID hit was a really interesting experience, I imagined it was interesting experience for every single person who works, or every single person who's alive. But for me, specifically, like, I found that with that kind of chaos and uncertainty that that pandemic unleashed, and the sorts of like emergencies that came about the working creative professional, suddenly had a bigger voice in certain ways. People were looking to try and do things differently, were working, looking to find new solutions or to rethink ways that they had been working in the past. And I think during that kind of crisis leaders and individually and started at organizational levels, were looking for more voices were more more interested in in different voices. And, and I thought that was a really interesting the thing that happened and it's kind of itself already changed and now that the pandemic has moved on to the different stage, and we're kind of More back to business in a lot of ways that I've experienced. And so I was oh, that's kind of actually been an observation since I've done some of the research that we're talking about today. But regardless, you know, the, I think these are really, that's a really interesting thing I noticed while I was working as a professional, and I brought that curiosity into my research.

Dr. Leah OH: 5:27

Yeah, so interesting. You hit on so many things, this idea of being pulled into all of these initiatives, and not until the end, because there are people sitting around saying, oh, we need design. And they don't necessarily know what that means. But then you are one of your colleagues are pulled in. And like you said, a lot of times it's during a chaotic or uncertain situation. Or when you're told yes, we need this, we needed it yesterday. And okay. Great, lovely, perfect, perfect way to start the creative process. So, David, so we're going to think about ad hoc teams, because you know, with the work that you do, in particular, you find yourself pulled into all of these different special projects, these different initiatives. Some are short term, some are long term. But when we're thinking about these special teams, can you tell us how this ad hoc team approach is different than a traditional work group?

David Birkam: 6:30

Yeah, so the way I've come to define these kinds of ad hoc teams, and I focus mostly on ad hoc teams that are working virtually almost exclusively, are those that are typically organized to be temporary, they are called workplace culture, and even just life culture, diverse, as well as professionally diverse, and they typically get assembled and dissolved as the market and the workplace needs evolve. So you know, for example, I've worked in an organization where there were, I'm trying to, I'll put it in the way of, yeah, there was a recruitment issue. And they assembled a ad hoc team to address this recruitment issue, because it was very pressing, within a month of certain reporting times, that would be very impactful. So that brought in people from my institution, in a number of different capacities, and a number of different units, and even from completely different vice presidential areas, which is pretty uncommon. So we dealt with people who had, you know, workplace, culture, extreme workplace culture differences, people who could not communicate with me, in a professional sense, as a professional creative, they wouldn't know Photoshop from a, you know, any other kind of creative design tool or creative tool. And that, that that team was effective in what it needed to do. But it took a lot of communication, obviously, to make it work in any capacity on a very short timeline.

Dr. Leah OH: 8:40

Yeah, I mean, you know, pressure, right, here's an emergency. Now I need you to work with people you've maybe never even met. And using language can have this jargon that most people aren't familiar with, you know, you're the one person at the table with that skill set. And then you're tasked with teaching others about as well. So you've kind of tapped into my next question. I know you've been on a number of these virtual ad hoc teams. And like they said, you have this unique skill set. And so a lot of times you are pulled into this. So how how does that feel, especially when they're these kind of high stakes high priority? challenging assignments?

David Birkam: 9:25

Yeah, it really depends, you know, like it's very dependent on again like the kind of how like congruent or not like the skills of the individuals are on these teams like, whether or not there is a meshing there of not only skill and personality, but also personal knowledge, you know, of one another as individuals. It can be very confusing. Obviously, there Usually these teams are started because of particular emergencies within the organization. And often, the cause of that emergency or the the like kind of solution doesn't exist the emergency, it's more like, we know there's a problem. And we're going to assemble a team, because we think these people have the skills to address it together. So yeah, often, there is no scope of work. Sometimes there is, but it is a very large, it is kind of a target. That seems that's like, like, you really have to question is this addressable? Right? Like, that's, that's kind of some one of the first questions I I've asked in some of these teams is like, is this the configuration of people that can address this problem? And often, you know, to be frank, you know, that you're there to be a band aid, right? Like, you know, that you're being asked to solve a problem in a very immediate sense. And that, hopefully, right, you're going to create some body of knowledge that will also give a long term answer to your organization. And that that's a that can be extremely. That can be pretty bad for the morale of the team, right? When you feel like you're a temporary solution to a problem. And so I think, leaders that have articulated to me the immediate value of what you're doing, and kind of the assurance that we are going to learn from this has been helpful to me. And, you know, there's honestly, there's a lot of that, what it feels like to be on that team, there's a lot of that like, anxiety, of like getting to know people getting to know a leader potentially, that you do not know, trying to understand the group dynamic, trying to understand where people are coming from and what their stake is, within that team. Some people do not want to be on this team, you know, some people feel like this team is an opportunity for them to get advancement of some way. Some people could not possibly handle another responsibility. So you know, as an individual being pushed into these teams, you have to I feel like there's a there there as a member, as someone who is not being given like a formal leadership with authority in these teams, you have to be very, you can't help but do defensive when you when you are put into a team like this. And I think, you know, again, like leaders I've encountered on these teams who work really well. They have a way of like, diffusing, that defensiveness that I think is is really valuable. I mean, some of the folks I've talked to about this work. These sorts of teams, they they often speak to these ideas of, you know, there might be a leader, but the team has to figure it out together, regardless, because a leader might be just as unfamiliar with the problem of how they're going to solve the problem. You know, like, there. There's definitely a lot of that, then, and definitely there's the anxiety of the suddenness of it. Like the many people I spoke to spoke about a random email, or all of a sudden, there's a Microsoft Teams call or a Slack call that just happens, or ice mysterious meetings that pop up in your calendar and things like that. So there's, there's a layer of like, not being prompted, or there's no groundwork, which is hard, right? It's an emergency. So like, those are sorts of the there's the overriding sense I get is most people feel anxious, right? Some people see an opportunity, but that's not the majority of people I've spoken with. It's it's often overriding anxiety of like, what does this mean for me? Personally, what does this mean for you know, just from getting along aspect, what does this mean for my job, and my responsibilities? And where I am like, how am I and how am I going to fit into this? Like, how much work Am I getting? Who do I have to deal with? And what does this mean for the rest of the job? I always do normally.

Dr. Leah OH: 14:50

Exactly. I you know, I was just kind of smiling to myself and you're talking because it's you know all of the leadership and team Coaching I've done I've never thought like, sprinkling some pressure, a whole lot of uncertainty and then a dash of anxiety. And there you go while we have it, that that's exactly what's happening here, we recognize how much we're putting on individuals. And like you said, a lot of times, there's no discussion ahead of time. A lot of people are voluntold, that this is this is now a priority for them. Mm hmm. So, one thing that you kind of touched on, and I know you've done a lot of really neat research on is this idea of leading an ad hoc team. So before we get into your lessons learned, can you tell me some of the experiences that you've had with leadership in these teams? So are people formally appointed? Do we kind of look around the WebEx or the zoom and see? Who's going to raise their hand?

David Birkam: 15:58

Yeah, I mean, the hand raising is typically a secondary consequence, the I've almost always been on these teams with a leader of some kind being appointed. And they're usually there to report to another higher up individual within an organization or group. I've, you know, I, that person is nominally in charge, and sometimes is very much in charge. And I've had the privilege of working under some very effective people who have been able to, you know, delegate and make people feel important and make people feel like they fit in and that their work is mattering on these teams. And I've also had leaders on these teams who, for better sometimes, and sometimes for worse, like really look to the group to help make decisions. Again, it depends on who that person is, and what the situation of the work is. I would I've, I've seen like some really great leading delegation where a leader will, you know, be able to identify people's strengths and kind of ask them to take that plunge into leading that part of a team. Obviously, for me, that is always a David, you're going to lead the visuals, you know, or you're going to like, you know, the creative side of it, like, yeah, right. That's like, what have you, you know, but I mean, you know, sometimes some of my other skills have been tapped, whether that's, you know, those sorts of skills, or that kind of being a professional creative entails, like project management, or just general sorts of problem solving asks, you know, those those sorts of things. But when people can, when you gotta have a leader of these ad hoc teams, who's able to look out and see people, that can be really great. And that sort of appointed person is very effective. But I have also been on teams where it is. I mean, it is a squabbling round table, but it does work sometimes. I think there's, you know, and I've learned this lesson from you over time about conflict. And sometimes conflict is what's needed. On the other team, if you you need people to kind of argue out the ideas and argue it out to get motivated. Because people always come to these teams with assumptions, right? As I've kind of touched on with culture, like, people come in expecting a culture of conflict, or sometimes they they come in expecting a culture of being just ordered around. And that can be very jarring if they don't get what they're expecting. So I think it also takes a leader either de facto or not, who, who can like kind of see the different points of of conflict and how are how are we going to move through those? And yeah, I often there is that does result in an emergent leader, whether or not usually more than one, right, like you have people kind of vying sometimes they're vying for power, and sometimes they're helping guide. And I've seen people do that in a really positive way and a really negative way again, and I often see emergent leadership come around subject matter, expertise. I am typically one of those people. So people do look at me for certain kinds of leadership in the settings around my subject matter expertise. And again, that can be really valuable if you have like a marketer or you have a Ammar kind of technical aspect, someone who's if we're trying to solve a problem with a technical issue with a technical issue, you have to have the technical subject matter expert, sort of pushing, right and leading, or at least guiding the conversation of what's possible and what's not possible if you're running into a technical issue. But that can also be a curse in these kinds of teams, because sometimes subject matter experts steamroll proceedings, because they see themselves as the most valuable voice. And they don't have and no one will check them or they cannot check them for cultural reasons or organizational reasons. And you end up with someone who only has a part of the picture kind of leading everyone else around and it can be a problem that can really end up with some issues occurring. So yeah, leadership is, as I imagine you would agree with it is it is very complex and multifaceted. And I've always found no matter, even if it is a kind of deadlock dictatorship, like, in theory, like that is how it was supposed to be run, there's always room where things are kind of there is conflict. And if a if a an appointed leader can't manage that conflict, then they really need to look to their members to see who's emerging to help manage that conflict.

Dr. Leah OH: 21:44

Yeah, that is, so you've done a really nice job of and certainly we hear all of the challenges that are very real in any group, and especially in ad hoc teams. But I mean, it's listening, I was also thinking about some of the opportunities that you pointed out. And what I really like. So you, for example, have this wealth of creative experience, that you're also a phenomenal critical thinker, really great problem solver, you have this impressive ability to take a step back and see the big picture. And I'm not saying this is the case for you. But for some folks, maybe in their traditional workgroups, they're not looked to for that, because there's someone in a formal position or someone who's already kind of emerged. So there are some opportunities to lean into some other skills. And I also love the kind of endorsement for conflict, right? Because so many people hear it, and it's a scary word. And, but we know when there's conflict, people are invested. Right, which is wildly better than being checked out. And that feeling like there is something at stake. Right, as you said, if we don't have a leader that can navigate that or is afraid to navigate that. Yeah, we're in trouble.

David Birkam: 23:05

Yeah, I mean, I feel like it would be antithetical to an emergency team dealing with an important issue facing an organization if, you know, 90% of the team is just doodling on their their notepads? Right. Right. You're being if people were being asked I, you know, that they would be invested. Right. But I think that kind of behavior, if a leader is seeing something like people being totally disengaged, or disinvested, from the process, like, I think that that should provoke a little, a little bit of investigation or, you know, some some reflection on like, we, you know, we're all here to solve a pressing problem, but nobody is engaged, then. What does that say about the organization? What does that say about problem? And I mean, you know, also might provoke a little point of self reflection and a leader as well.

Dr. Leah OH: 24:06

Exactly. And that leads us to my question, so you know, that you've done research, you've talked to other individuals who are members of virtual ad hoc teams, we know that leadership in this assignment can be especially challenging. So with that in mind, what were some examples of leadership gone awry? Or maybe leadership that was absent that either you experienced or your study participants, right experienced?

David Birkam: 24:32

Yeah, I mean, as I mentioned, above, like are the SME issue of subject matter expertise. Folks who can steamroll a situation that can be a problem? You know, we I I've kind of run into this idea that of what I call the deviant and dominant organizational role modeling that leaders can do and what I mean when I say that is like leaders can really lean into how an organizational culture operates. Or they can deviate from it. Sometimes with success or, or, or failure. And it can go awry, especially if you kind of you know, you lean too heavily into both like, the bad expectations of the organization or you you kind of break you know, you throw the, you know, the baby out with the bathwater kind of kind of thinking, you know, like, you know, a lot of my participants reported, the, you know, that leaders often lean into the organizational culture stuff that gets results, but is extremely exhausting on their team and can create huge downline problems, right, like, one of my respondents, who has both a member and a leader reported about her organization, values, deadlines above almost anything, if you will hit your deadline. And if that means, you know, you're overworked, if that means that it creates downstream problems, that is not as important as meeting a deadline, which is effective for that organization up to it seems up to a point. And other folks have talked about how the the kind of breaking of acceptable accepted norms and the culture is generally acceptable to members, if that leader has like, a high amount of authority authority, right? If that meant if that leader can walk in and say like, the CEO, the president, the whomever, they have my full support, and I'm doing this to try and get us to a better place, then they're, they're much more willing to get on board. And if they're trying to end breaking with kind of the way of doing things, one of my leader participants spoke to me about how people were really concerned about, like, well, how will all these changes, you're enacting affect where I sit? Like, where's my desk gonna be? And he had to, because that had been very important for where you sat signaled power, or access, or like, how much pretty privileges you have, you know, and he said, I don't care. Like, I don't care where you sit, like I care, we're getting this job done, you can sit wherever you want your ex to whoever you want, you know, that is not my focus, you know, as a leader in that situation. And again, that you asked about things going awry, that maybe I think most of us would probably see that as a positive thing. But you know, that that can create a downstream problem in leadership, right? Potentially, I didn't get an additional, I didn't get an addendum to that anecdote. So I don't know if that causes any problems in the future. But people are very attached to their culture, even if it's bad culture. And, you know, kind of being deviant from that can be very liberating, but it can also throw people completely out of the loop. And the same leader did report another anecdote that maybe the sitting problem had a part of I don't know, but he he had a kind of a, like, come to the light moment where he was like, Look, I need you to do things this way. Or you need to not be on this team. And people left. And so he lost. You know, he lost human resources in doing that. He did not, you know, these people weren't punished. These people weren't fired or anything necessarily, but they he was like, if you can't do this, you can't I can't have you on this team. And they left and I would imagine from the member perspective, that could have been a very arrived leadership. But yeah, you know, I as far as my own personal experience, you know, like I've seen leadership go very arrived on these sorts of teams, when just the the, the person who is on the org chart was put in charge, when it shouldn't have been the person on the org chart. It should have been someone with a little bit more humility or a little bit more quick thinking. And things can go very right when the higher level management or leadership can't think creatively about how these teams are operated. And that that I think a lack of creativity on leadership's end is sort of where things always go awry with these teams. Because if you're going to have people to up in their organizational boundaries, potentially upping their organizational culture to solve a pressing problem, but you do not ask a leader to do that, then that is going to create lots of problems. And, you know, finally, I'll add things, unfortunately, tended to go awry from a lot of my participants, especially my female identifying leaders in gender dynamics. That was a oft cited thing. And things went, alright, so to speak, only from probably the perspective of those members who didn't want a female lead on their teams, and those sorts of things those femme leaders had to do to make these teams work. That that is another thing that I noted, and also something that a lot of my members were very reluctant to talk about when I when I spoke with them. So I definitely think there's a lot more work. Well, I know there's much work in the world that spends on about family leadership in organizations and teams. And I think it's something that has to continually be looked into. I mean, I I'm in the position of being, you know, heteros sis white guy who, like, comes into this into this research setting and asked asked question about that. And I think me not even getting responses sort of, you know, speaks to the power of like how intransigent and difficult gender relationships in leadership positions can be.

Dr. Leah OH: 31:53

Yeah, yeah, no doubt, when you were kind of talking about these instances that go awry. It was thinking about the two basic ingredients for leadership, the tasks in the people, and in these ad hoc teams, especially in a virtual setting, tasks oftentimes aren't clearly defined, or maybe someone who doesn't understand the whole scope of the project, or we have our SME who steamrolling. They're trying to define tasks, in a way that's only part and then the people is, well, if we have people who don't want to be there, or who are having a really hard time respecting a leader, simply because of a gender. I mean, we see these as two basic ingredients in their heart hard in traditional workgroups, and it becomes a whole new level of complexity, when we're thinking in these ad hoc teams, especially under trying situations such as really tight deadlines.

David Birkam: 32:59

Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, the complexity requires, like, complex leadership. I mean, I've seen I've personally seen leaders try to use the hammer, you know, to break through a complex ad hoc team. And ask, like, you know, use threats, use intimidation to use, like, ways to, you know, like, sort of force an issue, and I don't know, I feel like you, I could say maybe those teams did a job, but wasn't a job it was asked to do almost never, you know, it's it's it's typically, again, like, only reinforces negative sentiment, and it makes the next job that much harder. And, of course, leads to a lot of other complex downstream problems in an organization

Dr. Leah OH: 33:59

under percent, you bring that bad experience. Gosh, and it's just it's astounding to me, again, leadership communication expert that folks still think pressuring and hard tactics and demanding this. This is it. This is the way it just, oh, that leads me to one thing that I really loved that you uncovered in your work was the importance of trust. And we can recognize that sometimes. The situation, the context, it's just not going to be right for trust considering how someone is communicating and modeling expected behaviors. But what what can you tell us about what you found in terms of trust in these virtual ad hoc teams? Yeah,

David Birkam: 34:50

I mean, I felt like I learned a lot from the member participants I spoke to in the situation. I think the leaders all leader participants I spoke to had great sentiments on this. And they all said trust was critical. They all said that that's how they want to do things. I remember one of my leader participants said something around like, well, what's the fun of a dictatorship? You know, like he articulated that as like, you know, like dictatorship is the absence of creativity and trust. And I think those were all wonderful sentiments, I think they were valuable. I did feel like a lot of the members had, those had more of the bullet points of like, what they wanted to hear from someone. And I think, a lot of that boil down to just like interpersonal recognition, that of their humanity, you know, like, will they be willing to learn my name and address me as such? Like, will they like, tell the I love this from one of my participants, they had said, like, I would really like the leader to articulate why I'm valuable to this team. Because I think a lot of the times we end up in these teams, and you do the roundtable, but y'all introduce ourselves, and we all are maybe kind of vying and saying, like, I'm here, I think because, you know, you know, or like, I, I think, you know, they're, no one is maybe saying I think, but you can tell like, in the tone of their voice of like, I'm really, this thing is really like, where I feel a leader who can articulate that or be like, you know, David is here, because this going to be a heavy social media push. And we're going to need a lot of social media graphic design assets, created. We David is here, because we need to make sure that we are very on brand with our visuals. And he also understands what that means for our tone as well, when we're communicating with our audience. You know, you know, you some, a lot of our participants said they really valued that they valued like a leader, initially being able to describe why they are here, and what they are expected to be bringing. And then in addition, and kind of following along with that thread, several of my participants, I would kind of summarize this of several things participants said, in the kind of trust is, trust is earned by the team from a leader, or the team trusts each other more when someone, hopefully that's the leader typically can articulate, you know, the known and unknown information about the problem and the task, can create meaningful delegation out to the team of like, what people should need to be doing individually, and then how that feeds into the larger group. And the, you know, as I had said, already acknowledged humanity and the expertise that person is bringing. And I think very importantly, for a lot of people, they acknowledged, they get more trust out of a group, when they can know what the meaningful end work goal or the team's scope is. And they really would prefer if there was a calendar attached to that as well, like people want to know how long they're going to be invested in into a problem. And I don't think that I think sometimes the, the intuitive sort of function, I think of the kind of commanding leadership would be, well, if I give people an end date than they know, when they can check out and I'm not going to get everything I can from them, or they're going to cram until, and then wait until the last minute to do what I need them to do. Because that's the date. And I think, you know, for most people, like, like I said, like, a lot of people are very engaged, if they're brought onto these teams aired, they're, they're anxious, but they do want to help, right? And if you can give them a meaningful scope of work, or what an end state looks like, what an afterlife could look like for this team, and you know, a date at which, you know, the meaningful work is accomplished. Like that goes a long way to give people the ability to compartmentalize and think about how much can I devote to this? Where is my head at at the where are the chunks right? I've heard people on your podcast say before, you know use the app for Muslims that eat the elephant one bite at a time. Yes. Yeah. You know, and I think we will need that right because of the dynamic Huge problem they don't know when this will end. And as I said, like, these are ad hoc emergency teams, one would think intuitively right? That means like, there's an end date. And often there is not like, there's there's like, this is a problem. When, when are we going to try and solve the problem by when it's solved? You know, that's, that creates a huge amount of stress on members and mistrust of like, How long am I roped in for this? Like? Like, what does this mean, for my regular again? What does this mean for my regular duties? Like that's, that's those are the things that always come up. So yeah, like, humanity. Dates times, like, and also again, what do they know? What do they not know? Like? I mentioned that briefly, but like, knowing being able to articulate like, you know, what we know about the problem? And what we don't know about the problem? Yeah. Oh, important, because that can give the team you know, that scopes the team's work, in many different ways. Yeah.

Dr. Leah OH: 41:08

And what I really enjoy about this response, and I think it shows the importance of your research. And the impact of your research is that it's really simple, right? If we're, I mean, it's not very simple, but there's a simple way to get started. This is why you're here. This is what we're gonna look to you for. And then some basic scaffolding, right, this is, like you said, this is what we know. But let's also define what we don't know what we're not aware of what we need to find out. And with that scaffolding, if we're just building in next steps, some potential future dates or potential future place, recognizing, you know, this might move this might be tentative, but this is what we're working with now. You know, really, really simple things, but things that would set up teams and employees to generally have much better experiences when they're pulled in here. I think, to, you know, in another way, it's an honor to be pulled in to say, we have this problem at the organizational level, you have this really specialized skill set, and we need you. So I think if these were done, bettered be away from place to feel good, and extra validation for what they're doing, but the way they're often done, it feels like a punishment I imagined at times,

David Birkam: 42:39

you know, and I did, I will say, some way participants did talk about teams where the problem was so immediate, and so pressing, and was very hands on to the point where, there, they were there to be a body, you know, like they were there to be to backfill capacity that didn't exist in the organization. And I think after that trauma, or during that trauma, perhaps, like an organization needs to recognize how much people are stretching themselves to fill fill in, you know, for that, or, you know, that needs to be considered write down, you know, again, and that's why I, in my research, and some of the things I've looked at, it's like, teams need to have ways to document themselves, and what, and especially towards like, sorts of the deep, the deep, like, expansion of capacity or ability is happening when sometimes you are pulling people in as, you know, a body to do a thing that they might not know anything about. And I think like, right, that's hard, right? Well, I just made that recommendation of like, why are you here? Right, and, you know, leader doesn't really want to stand there and say, You're a bad, you know, but, um, some I've been there, some people have said, but, you know, like, they're, I think, like, you know, if you're gonna do that people, you need to have a way to reward them, you know, and I write lots of organizations, they cannot provide financial compensation or they want and but having a way that someone's going to get recognition or are going to get a benefit out of doing that and doing something completely different. Like that's, that's important that needs to be considered.

Dr. Leah OH: 44:36

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And that makes me think of another element of your research when you talk about the importance of CO leading. So can you talk to us about what you mean by CO leading and what that might look like in an ad hoc team?

David Birkam: 44:54

Yeah, so you know, I pulled co leading out of a lot of the academic literature I was looking at for this research and the ways that many different researchers over time have looked towards unorthodox ways of teams or organizations organizing themselves to accomplish a task or to exist. And CO leading is, I think, in my context of the ad hoc team that does typically exist with a nominally appointed formal leader, like CO leading is a way in which the formally appointed leader is intentionally and often sometimes intentionally shedding some of those work responsibilities or leading tasks to members of the team. And they do this in order to, you know, give themselves more capacity. And I mean, as I've said before, like, often this happens, because these teams are dealing with problems of such complexity, and working with members of such diverse skill sets, that one individual doesn't have the capacity to lead all of these people in this specific kind of way. So yeah, co leading is sort of like, especially in this context, it's sort of an agreed upon division of leadership. Lat is either agreed upon because it just happens and everyone accepts it, or through again, as I've kind of indicated, like very thoughtful delegation of leadership, and CO leading takes the form of, you know, I think people, people don't often give enough credit, like people are like, oh, a leader who's listened so well, you know, like, sometimes leaders are co leading be in there listening very well, right, because they're, they're making decisions with a group, you know, like the group is, is, we like to we enshrine the concept of the single leader so much in our culture. We don't give enough credit to like, when someone's willing to let go of like, all power. And I think even like, when you're talking about a leader who's thoughtful enough to listen to a team, be able to, like, be an arbiter of the different things this team wants to do. And maybe the final decision lies with them, but often, they will delegate the decision power out to, again, subject matter expertise, or, or to members who have really stepped up and be like, I've been in a situation where like, a leader will be like, oh, so and so you, you know, person, a, b, and c are going to report to you in this in this for this type of work, or this part of the problem we're addressing, and then you're going to report out to everybody else, and you're going to have, I want you to be making decisions about like how your team works are like, or your micro team inside of the team, how you work or how, you know, you're going to capture your work or whatever, you know, and those sorts of like, meaning, you know, meaningful leadership delegation parts where like, the nominal head leader is sort of shedding some of that responsibility. But also, I've seen co leading, I would also use CO leading in this context to kind of, again, capture that concept of emergent leadership. And some, some of the participants I've talked to, there was the the nominal leader had no capacity to lead. You know, they were there basically, to be like, I'm here to take a report to like, my person to me. And, yeah, get that work done, guys. And so folks, often spoke members often spoke of like, an ad hoc within the ad hoc of leadership, and how like, they're like, um, I guess we're figuring this out ourselves. And so people would kind of band together under several individuals who would all kind of break, you know, they didn't tentatively break the task out and figure it out for themselves and they co lead together in the absence of a strong formal leader. And so that's that's kind of and that can be and we would think, like, intuitively, I'm saying intuitively a lot but I feel like I think that is is I think how a lot of us operate when it comes to leadership. Like very, you know, there are a million ways people have been taught to lead and a lot of basically through hard lessons. And you, we would tend to think, right that if people came together and lead themselves, they would be very excited about that. And they would feel good about it and look at what we did, we did this together. But because of how organizations are created, organizations operate, and the kinds of cultures we all live in with, you know, singular leadership, people tend to see their CO leading in the absence of a strong leader as another burden. And it can feel just as much as a punishment for them to have done that. So yeah, co leading again, I kind of see it in two ways. I see it as in the configurations I've witnessed in this research and the things I've looked at, you know, some a thoughtful leader who's who's thoughtfully, delegating, still kind of, you know, wants to be there wants to be leading this group, but is recognizing the limitations of their own individual ability, you know, or acity, or people kind of scrambling to lead themselves in the absence of a strong leader. The research I looked into also pointed to a lot of examples of, you know, non traditional non hierarchical leadership, be anything from a food Co Op to a workers owned business, you know, to, you know, collectives and things like this. But, you know, in my kind of point of view, looking at kind of very traditional organizations in this research, yeah, the CO leading from the emergent point, it's more of a matter of survival and a matter of kind of working around an ineffective leader.

Dr. Leah OH: 52:02

Mm hmm. Yeah, that's really a helpful way of thinking about, especially when you're going into it and recognizing that this is likely to be participative. And these tasks are going to be distributed. And I might have a leader who really is savvy with this, and really thoughtful with their time and the scope of work. And I might have a leader who has not. And you touch on a really important point about our culture, in particular, where a leader is a hero or a scapegoat, and really nothing in between, right, and this idea of CO leading, can help us to step away from that. And you've talked about a follow up question on the importance of, you know, co leading or establishing co leadership in a distributed or participative leadership, and you've talked about leader capacity, talked about just kind of needing to fill in the gaps. Is there anything else you would say in terms of, you know, arguing for the importance of CO leadership in these unique groups? Yeah,

David Birkam: 53:12

you know, I, you know, my research into some of the existence literature pointed to a few. A few authors kind of advocated for distributing leadership for a number of reasons. One, of course, as I've already mentioned, is a capacity reason. Others have advocated that it develops a sense of shared belief in in addition of the team, and can help create an emergent culture for that team, which I would say I witnessed in some of my participants talking about the ways that they buy kind of CO leading with each other, were able to create an emergent mini culture for their team, and how that actually had a knock on positive effects down the line, right, because once they had done this, they had kind of grown their own capacity for leadership personally, and had importantly created really strong connections with these other people that had helped kind of lead through a team, they were able to walk away and in the future have these amazing resources they could pull on, of different individuals they had been a part of, and then also skills that they had acquired themselves. So you know, creating, like allowing people to kind of lead and CO lead these teams that you're building capacity for your organization. Right. That's like your future leader, actually, within the organization that kind of being forged in the fires, so to speak. Yeah, obviously, he wouldn't want necessarily have that occur because of the for organizational leaning forward, but I mean, like, seeing that recognizing that as an artist is something they should take out of that. Yeah, and you know, other other authors had. And, you know, this was, again, sort of echoed by some of my participants was that, you know, kind of distributing leadership really ups the level of responsibility that people take to their own work, like, I am, co chair, de facto, yada, yada, and people are, I'm responsible for the quality of a smaller number of people's work or, you know, I helped craft the decision that is going to be made out of this team on policy. You know, that's, that's on you, you know, I've been, I can, again, I always point to a personal anecdote. I've been on teams graphic design, while ad hoc teams, but specifically in the creative sense, where I was working with a lot of like minded, adjacent skill set individuals, and we were working on a problem, but it was not really a co leading situation, you know, and I know, the decision we came to at the end was contentious with our audience, and I directly had people say to me, Well, I wasn't in charge. My name's not on this. I don't, you know, and then like, just another day. So like, you know, that can be a knock on, like, you're not to like, if you're not allowing people kind of to be part of that decision making process, then you're really not invested. So yeah, so yeah, those were those were definitely some other things that seemed to come out of my research that felt important around like, what are the benefits of using a distributed leading or coeliac?

Dr. Leah OH: 57:01

Yeah, buy in and identity. I mean, those are huge. And you talk about the importance of what that can generate in terms of outcome. And that, that leads me to a question and this is something I've really enjoyed from your research. And something I honestly hadn't necessarily thought about before you dove into this line of inquiry was the idea of knowledge generation, and knowledge sharing is an outcome of being on an ad hoc team or virtual ad hoc team. And this is a huge, huge benefit. So can you talk to us about this?

David Birkam: 57:41

Yeah, absolutely. So I feel like my kind of like the hot the hot take, I guess it's not so much research, right? Is that even a hot take if you've done research, but

Dr. Leah OH: 57:55

it's always that take when it comes to research?

David Birkam: 57:57

Yeah. The take a takeaway I came from this is like, an ad hoc team, solving a potentially existential problem for an organization or even a culture problem, a procedure problem, whatever that team is doing is as valuable in solving a problem as it is generating new knowledge for the organization. And often what that means is like, generating like procedures, generating project management skills, generating networks and relationships, generating new forms of, you know, work practice that, you know, an organization could pay a consultant to teach them, but they learned on their own through their own people, right? Like, even the knowledge of how to operate a team like this is valuable to an organization because it's highly likely that organization is going to need an another emergency ad hoc team in the future, right. So like, the value of how a team can create useful documentation are useful ways of sharing its knowledge, and whether that could come in the number of different ways. Often, I think, what people generally associate with a team at the end of the day is they maybe write a report and some recommendations, and then any of the member folks I talked to, of course lamented that Well, that went on a shelf and I never saw it again. And I have no idea what that was, you know, but I think the research I looked into the literature spoke about, you know, interesting ways that this could be, could be done differently, right. Like a team, sharing its knowledge through a live event. You know, at the end of a project, a team creating, doing explicitly being authors within, you know, a CMS content management system that an organization uses, whether that's, you know, like, starting a thread inside of a team, Microsoft Teams like writing, you know, a document, you know, like having a conversation in that way, getting articles within a help desk, that kind of thing, or, you know, like being tapped to kind of like take these lessons have packaged them into learning management, you know, like, hat creating an ad hoc team, ng module, or what have you, you know, afterwards like kind of using like, more rich media, as a PDF to like, report out what you've done. And I think the value of this sort of cross discipline, ad hoc emergency, all these superlatives, I've added on to these sorts of teams like, right, they teach an organization about its wider self, because it's a microcosm of the organization. If you have people from different departments, and different areas have different expertise, all interacting with each other, you get to see like, all those different cultures, all those different, you know, micro cultures of different teams or units, like combining crashing into each other and documenting that or figuring out how to do that is a really useful thing for an organization. I think one of my favorite examples from the literature was journaling, just straight up, like having team members journal, their experiences, and being able to have that like, individual perspective that isn't full of like, you know, jargon and WorkKeys. Like, the like, it's not about the KPIs or, you know, the all those good acronyms we have NIMS world, but like, expressing their experience and making that available to people or having those journals be available to other team members. Right, as like, the process goes on. This could you know, because then you are seeing each other, you're seeing each other's struggles, you're seeing, like, how, you know, you're all affecting each other? That of course, you know, right, that's asking a lot of vulnerability from people, a lot of people really commit to and workplace, but, you know, it's a potential start, you know, or the same authors describe the ways in which the, like, people would kind of do end of day write ups, to kind of their team members. were, you know, that way, like, kind of knowledge is being shared perspectives are being shared. And it isn't necessarily, that version of it isn't a journal, it's it's more right up thing, but it goes directly to each other. As to I think a lot of us have used project management suites, where you enter something into an interface and it leaves a comment. And then who is going to read that, you know, kind of thing. But if it's structured more as a it's a direct communication between each other, like, people are more likely to read that. So. But yeah, knowledge generation and knowledge sharing, like, there's several ways to approach it. There's more complex ways that I've described here. There's ways of like building databases, as I'm sure as technology advances, and we have more intelligent digital co workers, I guess, in the kind of working with us, maybe those are the kinds of entities that can grab that knowledge and get more useful things pulled out of it, we already see, you know, social media does these sorts of things with algorithms and stuff like that. Keywords and sentiment and things like that. But yeah, like, I mean, having your people you know, document their work, or and then be able to encourage them and build into the process ways in which not just documentation, but then deliverable and create things that benefit the organization, or reward those people by, you know, the folks who teach people how to do certain things or let you know, give them a change in their, their, their, you know, their position to where they're, they're more engaged with their colleagues through spreading what they've learned through a process like that can really benefit in Oregon. isation in, you know, in, you know, I think it benefits organization and well being and benefits and organization and just growing your own kind of knowledge base, which so many organizations spend so much time buying expertise and buying knowledge that comes in and does its thing, and then it goes away. And like, but if it's homegrown, like I know, I feel like you have a higher chance of success in that way.

Dr. Leah OH: 1:05:30

Yeah, I agree. I agree with everything, all of the above. When I was listening to you and thinking about knowledge generation, I was just thinking of how expansive how expansive it is. Because they think before, I personally would think, Oh, the deliverable that this team did, or this problem, this tangible solution to this pressing issue, but you talk about, you know, the idea of honing your own project management skills, or maybe being able to teach these different stages of working through an ad hoc team and creating community. You know, even the cloud that one can earn as part of working through this and sharing those experiences. So knowledge in a really broad sense in a way that would fit and could fit any employee in the way they want to lean into. So, yeah, thank you for that, that was really helpful thing to be thinking about. Yeah. So David, I have two final questions for you. So as you know, I'm the communicative leader, we like to leave listeners with communication or leadership communication tips. And I like these to be really pragmatic. So something they can do now, to start making the workplace what they want it to be. So with that in mind, what advice do you have for organizational members who find themselves are tapped their voluntold? Or they volunteer themselves? For an ad hoc team? How did they make the most out of that experience?

David Birkam: 1:07:11

There were a few things that I thought of for this question. The first being, make connections, people you're being thrown into with, try, look for the people that seem congruent to who you are. At the very least, you never know who you're going to end up working with. You never know what kind of valuable relationship you could have down the line with that person. And at the very least, right, if you go through this experience with someone, that could be very stressful or very, very unpleasant, actually, and you come out the other end, liking that person. Like, that's someone you would maybe want around at your, your workplace and someone you could at least reach out to when times are hard or, you know, someone you can you can just, you know, that you get along with and you jive. Yeah, make those connections like not only, like kind of, you know, that's the traditional networking out, you know, gaining influence all that good stuff. It's so important to have people you like, at a job, like, I don't think a lot of us even like, consider that, like when we're considering a workplace or like how we're going to end up but if you come into a team and you find people you enjoy spending time with difficult situation, you know, they can be very important for you down the line. Yeah, and kind of like, the the two kind of interrelated things are all both about boundaries, right? We were so trained, obviously, to say yes, say yes, say yes, doo doo doo doo doo. But, you know, if you're being pulled into an emergency, you need to figure out how this emergency ad hoc team you're being asked to participate in affects your work duties, your common work duty, and you need to get that squared with your traditional reporting mechanisms of whoever you will report to whether that's a manager, committee, whatever, and whoever is kind of leading or has overall authority of this team, you're being asked to participate in like, and you need to get that as soon as you can. Like, are you being moved full time on to this emergency? Then that is that is then you need to set up? And and have that expectation of asking people? What do I tell my people who need what do I tell my customers or what do I tell my my constituents in my district, that I can't do the thing that are expecting me to do now what's the messaging? Or you know, like, if it's a half and half like what am I giving up? What am I keeping? What is critical? What is not? And do I have a say in that, and you need to figure that out as quickly as possible, within within a short amount of time as you can manage? And speaking up for that is difficult. And, you know, sometimes you don't want that to be the thing, you're hashing out in the first meeting of a team, that's a pressing problem of like, well, how does because that can rob a team of a lot of momentum and time, I would say it's still, it's still, I think the imperative is to protect your ability and your well being and you're, you're doing with your own work. But thinking creatively around like, is this an email, you know, that goes out and you're assigned to a team? Is this the cross channel, like touching base with somebody through instant messaging? Is this a phone call, you need to talk to someone in person, getting those ground rules established, as soon as you can. And try not to wait, like, for when a team convenes to do its work, try to get that figured out. With your manager individually, or in a co leading like that out with the people you're on this team with? Like, I, you know, I can't, I couldn't guarantee possibly that one would not face repercussions for trying to have those conversations with other employees of an organization by themselves. But trying to have that conversation as quickly as possible, like, Where? Where are the boundaries of this? Like? Yeah, I kind of have two points on my notes that are really more of that. Just that one thing? Yeah. But yeah, like just and also, like, come prepared with your knowledge around project management and team, I've found often I will be have been put into a team. And I might be the only person who's ever done project management, like or tried to? Or is that just is it like, and that's a big ask sometimes to try to inoculate a large C team into something like that. But having that discussion with your team, again, this new team as quickly as possible, like how are we managing our tasks? How are we man? How are people? How are people reporting, like if people refuse to use a project management suite or something like that, they only want to use email or something like that really, like get that structured as quickly as possible. Because and, you know, really, like try to use your influence and your your nominal leadership or your your own like kind of leader leader fool behaviors to, to really like figure out the ways in which you're going to manage this project. I think those those are really critical, make connections, make boundaries, make the structure for how you're going to work.

Dr. Leah OH: 1:13:29

Yeah, yeah, just setting the groundwork early, so helpful in recognizing that when we do that work early, it's going to pay off throughout the process, and then afterwards, as well. So my last question, a follow up to that. So we've talked about these employees who are tapped to be members. What about our organizational members who are then appointed to lead an ad hoc team or virtual ad hoc team? What advice do you have? So we set those friends up to be successful?

Unknown: 1:14:02

Yeah, I would say from the participants I spoke to, there's so much you can get done with humility, and recognizing the, the kind of the cause and effects of this situation on the members that are being asked to participate. Just just being human. Just recognize this is hard. And it can be a challenge, you know, is a huge, huge thing. I think, you know, a lot of people probably imagine that they're going to go into this situation, they're going to give that rousing speech, and people are just going to respond to it. But I think, from what I've observed, the people who are successful are the ones who are able to articulate again, those articulate like the Problem, recognize the humanity of the people you're working with and how they are interacting with that problem. And being able to recognize where these people are going to help you where they get, you all get to where you need to be. Because the most important thing is accomplishing the task, solving the problem getting past the crisis, whatever, whatever it is, like, like, doing that, and learning from it is just going to, you know, hopefully, that makes this wherever you are a better place to be. And I think, you know, personally, I feel like, you know, leaders are most successful when they are making the lives of of their team members, easier to interact with the problem they're facing, which I feel like in the wrong one makes the leaders task easier, or the leaders problem easier. It's, you know, communicating it like, again, you need to tell people what you know, and what you don't know, and how you're going to figure out what you don't know or how, where they're going to figure out what you don't know, together. Like, it's rare. It's like, again, every single leader I spoke to it was like, as much transparency as they can muster. And Transparency means different things, different people, but like, but that like guidestone, of like, transparency, and transparency, transparencies also seeing each other as human beings than like that. And recognizing that, like, we're not just a role, and we're not just a subject matter expertise, but we're also people who, who are trying who, you know, you know, move on the good faith notion that people want to solve this problem with you.

Dr. Leah OH: 1:16:54

Yes, yep. Exactly. Oh, thank you, David. That's so helpful. And I think that we're going to continue to see more virtual ad hoc teams, but the way in which your work places are shifting and evolving, and for better, for worse, we know that these crises and the sudden, unexpected scenarios aren't going anywhere. And so your advice is going to be really helpful for so many. So thank you for your time and your expertise.

David Birkam: 1:17:27

Thank you for the opportunity. Dr. OH it has been a wonderful time.

Dr. Leah OH: 1:17:32

All right, my friends. That wraps up our conversation today. Until next time, communicate with intention and lead with purpose. And looking forward to chatting with you again soon on the communicative leader.