Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor. I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, a firm specializing in helping leaders and organizations crack their activation codes, finding the simple tweaks to enhance both performance and employee engagement.

I spend a lot of my time running pulse checks, like having these open and honest conversations with

teams about what they most need in order to deliver, develop, connect, and thrive,

you know, to be fully activated. And one of my favorite things about running these pulse checks

is seeing the leaders face when I share the results and recommendations back with them.

Because almost always, they are bracing for recommendations that will cost millions and take months to implement.

But also, almost always, they're surprised by how many pieces of low-hanging fruit are right there

for the grabbing. Because in nearly every organization, there are these

small irritants that everyone just deals with, things that frustrate us or slow us down or inhibit

the quality of our work. But they're so commonplace. It's just always been that way. And so rather

than solving them, we ignore and grumble and slap a band-aid on it and we just

deal with the frustration. One thing I see over and over is this angry, cranky tension that

takes place between teams. It irks and it irritates and it drives resentment while also inhibiting

collaboration and efficiency and customer, client,

or patient outcomes. This year, I'm putting my foot down. I want us all to band together and

decide it's time to solve this one and move forward and feel happier and be more productive.

Are you with me? So today, let's talk about how to turn this friction

between teams into productivity and even a little bit of collaborative delight. First, just start

by naming the problem. We have to begin by recognizing these spots of tension for what they are,

to recognize that there are two

or more sides to every story of why a thing didn't happen the way that it should have.

Like, in a professional services firm, I'll talk to the sales team during a pulse check who says,

...