Have you ever been sitting in a meeting when an idea gets floated out, and then kaboom? Suddenly, what felt like a relatively normal conversation sets someone off and triggers a much larger disruption. One landmine sets off another, and then another, and then another. The room fills with smoke, everyone is frustrated, and someone stands there shell-shocked, having no idea where this came from.
I've been there. I'm sure many of you have too.
A few days ago, I got an almost panicky phone call from a principal. Her mentor had given her my number because she was running into a storm of change. She was new to her role, leading a school of about 140 teachers and over 900 students. She was seasoned, but she'd never been in the head role before.
What happened next became one of the most powerful lessons I've witnessed in leadership. Not because of what she did wrong, but because of what she did next.
She had been hired over the summer and immediately felt pressure from several staff members to make changes before the school year even started. These people came to her office with concerns about culture, test results, behaviors, certain teams, and processes. The conversations weighed on her.
Her strength set is strategic. She tends to move quickly to new ideas and innovations when problems are brought to her attention. So she assembled the people who had come to her in confidence and confided that she shared their concerns, even though she'd never experienced or seen any of these issues for herself.
Together, they made decisions over the summer. Most of what they were "fixing" had been done the year before by the old leadership team, well before her arrival. Those changes had disrupted the status quo, and they didn't seem to make sense to her or her new advisors.
She believed in her heart that these people were genuine and good-willed in their efforts to make change. She wanted to demonstrate that she cared about the perspectives brought to her over the summer.
On the first day of opening in-service, she gathered everyone together. They did fun activities. People were energetic. They had a big barbecue lunch. When everyone settled in for the afternoon, she was ready to discuss everything she'd learned over the summer and how she was going to save them from the changes that had been made.
Let me pause here with a quote from one of my favorite books, The 48 Laws of Power: "The cat is a creature of habit. It loves the warmth of the familiar. Upset its routine, disrupt its space, and it will grow unmanageable and psychotic."
Organizations, friends, are a lot like cats. Change too fast, and they respond.
Upon showing the first slide of her PowerPoint deck, a hand immediately went up. She described it as violently shooting up. It was a teacher she had yet to meet.
"Why is this happening?"
Another teacher raised his hand: "Where did you get the idea to make this change?"
Yet another asked: "How could you do this before getting to know us?"
And another stated: "This is so typical of new principals."
By this time, the new principal's energy was draining. All the morning's enthusiasm flew out the window. The overwhelming majority of the staff hit her with rhetorical questions. People who just hours before were telling her how excited they were, that they'd been on the interviewing committee that picked her, that they were going to do great things together.
The small group of very active teachers who had advised her all summer just sat there passively and watched her drown in questions.
As she was talking to me, I could sense her voice begin to tremble. I could tell she was beginning to cry.
"What did you do next?" I asked.
"I just ended the meeting and shared that I appreciated their input and would review my ideas. I said we were not implementing anything until I had completely reviewed everything."
"How many slides did you get through?"
"Of the twenty in my deck, I got to my second slide before the room exploded."
"What happened next?"
"I called my mentor and he gave me your number."
"When did this happen?"
"Just yesterday."
I was energized and sad for her at the same time. I knew what had happened. I knew the pathway. And I knew there were processes she could put in place to not just recover what had happened in the culture, but to engage it.
She had broken a bunch of rules that established leaders learn the hard way. Those of us with battle scars from making poor decisions in the past love to share the better way.
I explained what she had done, that this was all fixable, and that she would recover. I offered her a variety of reflections, starting with four critical rules for new leaders:
Rule Number One: Never act upon the requests of the first five people you meet when you're new to a job, because they all have an agenda. Put time between their ideas and concerns so you can learn the organizational landscape and culture on your own. These are good people who come to you, but they're motivated by things they care about, and you are not even on that list yet. She had clearly stepped into a coordinated discussion and strategy to paint her views in one way.
Rule Number Two: Always follow Chesterton's principle. Never make a change without understanding the context or history of what you are about to do differently. Only make change after utilizing the wisdom of the crowd. In other words, engage everyone in the decision so they all have choice and voice.
Rule Number Three: People are all about self-preservation. When a new and inexperienced leader enters the system, many people will do everything they can to influence that person as much as possible. Put time between their comments and your actions.
Rule Number Four: When you team with a group of people who leave you to the wind when things get tough, that is a sign about their character, not yours.
Early in my marriage to Megan, we would sometimes set each other off as we were getting to understand each other and our needs. Two people madly in love suddenly sharing one bathroom. Fun and cute for a weekend, but when it becomes permanent, something needs to be done.
We created the recess conflict resolution process. When we would get frustrated and the air would chill between us, one of us would call out: "A do-over." Yeah, a do-over, just like at recess when you were kids.
It works on the playground and it works in life.
I told the new leader: "Call for a do-over with your staff and bring them a process."
Calling for forgiveness, in whatever form, when you make a misstep is a critical step, especially when you are newer. Never double down on an error. People are filled with grace and mercy when you're new. How you pivot and fail fast becomes your reputation.
Stubborn is stupid. Humble is heroic.
The opportunity when you are seeking to support those you serve is to create a map. A map of the landmines.
Too often, we find ourselves in the middle of a minefield and we don't know how or why we're even there. It's because we're managing a bunch of cats in a room full of rocking chairs. We're not including them in the solutions, not asking them for their navigational beacons, and not getting their input in the decisions that impact their lives.
That's why we trigger landmines all the time in our organizations and relationships.
A landmine is a seriously destructive weapon of war. It's a bomb buried under the ground, set off by pressure when someone steps on the trigger. Once triggered, it explodes.
Organizations have these buried all over the place. Great leaders mine for them, disarm them, and avoid going near them because they have proactively collected and mapped them out.
This leader didn't have a map, and her friends from the summer selfishly dropped her in the middle of a minefield. When you don't have a map, you buffalo into the process by making your own.
As an aside, buffaloes do not run into minefields. We do, however, sweep them, map them, and then carefully and intentionally go through them.
The process is beautifully simple and wonderfully complicated at the same time.
Create a chart and ask these two questions:
What are our organizational triggers? In other words, historically, what sets us off as a group?
What sets us off individually?
This is a change management process. You are seeking to understand what happens when we try to change by seeking information upfront and in the open. You are collecting the wisdom of the organization. You are ensuring the success of your changes, ideas, and iterations. You're working hard to understand the organizational landscape.
For Teams: When you're on a team of other people, what triggers the team when we work together? What triggers us individually? Remember, an unspoken expectation can never be met, and this gets it out there.
If you're a strength-based organization, this is powerful because what may trigger you is a gap in your strengths as a group, especially if you don't have any influencers on your team who can explain to others where these ideas came from.
For Classrooms: Teacher, when we start a new year, new unit, change classes, what triggers this class when we learn? What triggers you individually when you learn?
You might think it's a good idea to mix up the seating chart every quarter. That might trigger kids. They get used to specific things: where the light hits them from the window, the ability to see out in the hallway because it's safe, not having to sit by somebody who makes them feel uncomfortable.
If we never ask, we might trigger the child in their learning process or put them in a position where they are intentionally disengaged because they don't feel respected. They had no voice and choice in the changes that impact them.
Be specific in your ask or you'll get weird answers from kids like Taylor Swift or orange Skittles. Yes, I know because I've tried. If you ask kids what triggers them and you're not specific about their learning, they're gonna give you answers like Taylor Swift and orange Skittles.
Who has a problem with orange Skittles? That might be a whole podcast someday from the kid who gave me that information once.
Start a meeting where change is needed or a new leader is present. Ask: "What triggers the group and what triggers you?"
Have people use Post-its and silently reflect. Then put them up on the wall for the world to see.
The leader and team get clarity on anything up there. The leader can step up, grab a Post-it, and ask anyone to describe or help them understand what it meant. If it's not clear and it's foggy, that makes it an even more dangerous minefield.
However, if you seek clarity and put yourself in a position where people are all on the same page, and then we avoid those mines, we have a clear field to charge through.
That lets everyone make sense of everything that's going on and stops us from being the crazy little cats that we can be.
Are you wondering what happened to this principal? Let me tell you.
A few rattlesnakes were shook out of their nests by this process. The new leader learned that the people who came to her over the summer had worked together to impress upon her that there was a lot wrong when, indeed, there wasn't. They just didn't like the changes of the past, and they used this as an opportunity to get back their worldview.
You know what their worldview was? That of the cow. They turned themselves away from the storms, away from the reality that every organization in the world has to evolve or it's not going to survive. They wanted to go back to the way it used to be.
So they got together in their herd, mooing all the way to the office, and one at a time went in and presented a perspective that turned out to not be true at all. They set the principal up for organizational failure and threw her in the middle of a minefield.
She called for a do-over and followed the process. I was very proud of her for doing it in her own way.
What she learned changed everything.
She learned that the old way was that a small group of people would work together, isolated in committees, and they had tremendous power. One of the organizational triggers for the whole school was that they had a history of just a small group having influence while the rest of the staff felt left out.
Guess who that small group was? The people who came to her in summer.
These people would get triggered because they felt ignored when they lost their power. The whole staff would get triggered because they felt isolated, unable to provide any leadership.
The new principal wanted them to feel empowered, wanted them to act as one group instead of a fractional committee system that the same handful of people always sat on.
Through a rapid process, she realized her error was stepping onto the minefield planted by a few. No one had ever been given the opportunity to express their frustration about how things were implemented in the past.
The staff themselves realized they operated in small factions and they wanted that changed because it triggered most of them, both organizationally and individually.
They learned that no one liked operational staff meetings. They needed video communications to explain daily expectations for change because no one was reading emails, and they wanted to be able to watch it while walking down the hall to their duties. They learned they were not alone in their frustrations, that most of the staff was in the same spot.
The initial negative event provided this leader an opportunity for an awesome outcome of positivity.
What triggers the system and what triggers you is a rich and smart way to take a measure of the systems that you serve, of the systems' wellbeing. It provides us the opportunity to proactively avoid issues. More importantly, it clears a path so that we can all safely charge into the problems we are facing without setting any of us off.
Collecting, discussing, and addressing triggers is critical. It supports organizational well-being, allows people to operate in their strengths, and provides predictability. That's a great formula for success, especially organizational success.
The more you do it, the more you honor it, the more willing people are to step into the space you provide for them when you need to iterate, innovate, or do something different.
How many times have you been in a meeting where you don't even know what triggered somebody? If you don't know, it's on you to find out.
What we need is a safe way to identify what we need so we can focus on our wellbeing. As a result, we can charge into the storms that we are facing by focusing on the wellbeing of others.
Remember your influence with others and that you can magnify that influence through process. Always seek understanding before beginning change. Find what works for others. Create a map for yourself that allows success for the entire crowd by making sure to understand what sets off the team, the group, the class, and the individuals.
The only way to understand how to manage and support others is by asking them.
List the projects or teams that would benefit from using a triggers tool. Describe how you seek to collect navigational details before beginning something new. List projects you've worked on that this process would have supported, and think through why they failed.
Organizations are filled with landmines, buried under years of history, hurt, and habits. But great leaders don't tiptoe around them forever. They don't ignore them and hope for the best.
They map them. They disarm them. They create safe passage for everyone to move forward together.
That new principal learned something powerful: her biggest mistake wasn't the presentation she gave. It was assuming she knew the terrain without asking those who'd been walking it for years.
When she called for a do-over, when she humbled herself and asked the simple questions about what triggers people, she didn't just recover from her mistake. She transformed her leadership and her school's culture in ways that would have taken years otherwise.
Stubborn is stupid. Humble is heroic.
So this week, don't wait for the explosion. Don't wait until you're standing in a smoke-filled room wondering what just happened. Get out the Post-its. Ask the questions. Map the minefield.
Because the only thing worse than stepping on a landmine is knowing you could have avoided it by simply asking: "What sets us off?"
Your people have the answers. They've been waiting for you to ask.