How to Use Systems to Build Work Relationships w/ Trevor Timbeck
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In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with author and executive and leadership coach Trevor Timbeck on using systems to build better work relationships.
A few reasons why he is awesome — he is an executive and leadership coach, transforming busy leaders into powerful leaders through the mastery of language and the fundament of love. He’s the co-author of The Power of Systems: How to Create a Life that Works. A book that helps us escape the quagmire of indecisions and self-doubt and get into action.
Connect with Trevor, and learn more about his work…
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“A culture is just a network of conversations… so that’s a system. What is the system of conversations that we have? The conversations we don’t have? The conversations, how frequently? And to me that helps the leaders start to see how they can impact culture because otherwise culture seems ephemeral.”
Trevor Timbeck
Russel Lolacher: And on the show today, we have Trevor Timbeck and here is why he is awesome. He’s an executive and leadership coach, transforming busy leaders into powerful leaders through the mastery of language and the fundament of love. I don’t get to say the word fundament very often. He’s the co author of The Power of Systems, How to Create a Life That Works, a book that helps us escape the quagmire of indecisions and self doubt and get into some action.
And I am super curious how this relates to relationships at work, Trevor. Especially and, and us as leaders. So let’s get into it. Hello, Trevor.
Trevor Timbeck: Hello. It’s great to be here.
Russel Lolacher: Good morning, sir. Before we get into this, cause Hey, I love an episode that really dives into the whole relationship building side of things, I have to ask you the question I ask all of my guests, Trevor, which is what is your best or worst employee experience?
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah. And I, I noticed that worst came up for me first.
Russel Lolacher: Tends to be the way, tends to be the way for a lot of
Trevor Timbeck: Tends, tends to be the way that, that, that probably, maybe that says something. So the worst experience is receiving an email from my founder at 2:30 in the morning filled with swearing and essentially letting me know and I’m no uncertain terms, how displeased he was with me about a conversation we had the previous evening when we were out for dinner. And I thought the conversation was us having an intellectual debate about something, he took it the other way. And when I. Woke up and received the email, noticed it was two 30, the tone. I went for a run, but I cried on my run. I was like, I’m done.
This is the founder. This is… and so that was just such an experience for me of… Actually, later I went and reread the email and it wasn’t nearly as bad rereading the email, but it just carried, it really alerted me to like how leaders, especially founders carry this gravitas and weight of anything they say just seems to carry so much more weight and I would never do that, right? Sending an email in the middle of the night with swearing to anybody because having received that was not a pleasant experience.
Russel Lolacher: Unless you’re like effing awesome, but nobody says that at 2:30 in the morning, generally.
Trevor Timbeck: No.
Russel Lolacher: So I was going to… thank you for answering. Like I was usually when I hear stories like that, I’m like, okay, what did you take with you out of that for your own experiences in your own relationships moving forward. I want to, this is just me dipping the toe in the systems and sort of those checks and balances in place.
How would you stop yourself? Cause I mean, obviously this is a very passionate person. It’s a person that sat there and marinated on this and just let it stew enough that they press the word send. It’s one thing to write a thing. It’s another thing to press the, press the send button. What are sort of some checks and balances you would put in place to not do that because there are some people that get a, get their emotions, get away from them.
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah. So it, and it fits in to this topic of systems. Coming from that, I put in my own system. So one of my systems is every time I hit send, I have 30 seconds to change my mind on every email. So I can call back an email because my email will just not send it for 30 seconds. I switched at one point to signing all of my emails with love and gratitude.
And I type that out. It’s not my signature, right? So I type it every time. So I’ve typed it tens of thousands of times by this point. But it’s my check of is, is this coming from love and gratitude? I don’t just sign, screw you with love and gratitude, right? So I have that. And then I’ve built all these other systems to me are, I say, our most important system is our nervous system.
So part of this is me checking in what’s going on in my nervous system. And if I’m feeling this disturbance and I’m coming from fear and it feels urgent and I have no time and I really want to send it now, that’s my clue to slow down. And slowing down is one of my favorite systems and my last year or so, one of my favorite systems is then to go for a walk.
And I’ve done this multiple times. It’s okay, I really wanted to send it, but I could feel the disturbance. I’ll go for a walk. And sometimes I say, I’ll go for a walk until I don’t want to send it.
Russel Lolacher: Right?
Trevor Timbeck: But because I’ve just noticed my nervous system shift and my perspective shift from like night and day, from the beginning of a, what I call a long, slow walk to the end.
And so I have these systems in place now because having been on the receiving end of something like that, not wanting anyone else to be on the receiving end.
Russel Lolacher: And, and, and I want to touch on this later, but it does make me think that some people will have these systems in place though, and they’ll start taking it for granted because it can become such a routine, like literally being somebody being so angry going and with love and gratitude, like just anger typing, love and gratitude, but not taking the moment to go.
But what does that mean that you’re typing like how mindful of you are in that moment? How how are you checking in with yourself as opposed to just like to your point I’m typing it But it’s still a signature like a sincerely or best regards. It actually has to be done with intention.
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah, it’s the thing where I often worry with the book or when I tell people about systems that I don’t want systems to ever become a prescription. So I would never recommend someone start signing their emails with love and gratitude. How it came up for me was I received an email once from someone who was in a support role and they signed their email with love and gratitude. And I was just so moved and touched. And I, and I remember this moment, I was like, can you do that? Can you sign your email? And I was like, of course you can do that. But I noticed the impact on me. And so I started experimenting. And in the beginning, when I was in corporate, I would just do it. I had these rules.
I could do it with certain people and I couldn’t do it with other people. Like now every email gets signed. But I, I’ve got to the absurdity of it when I got to this point where I could say love and gratitude to anyone, unless they were like a CE, a male CEO who I had never interacted with before. That was my final criteria.
I was like, I can’t say love and gratitude. Then at that point I was like that’s absurd. Of course I can say it to everybody. So for me, that, that phrase has such a powerful experience. So it’s not really the specific words, but it’s the fact that I’ve been on the receiving end when someone signed an email that way.
And now that’s my opportunity to slow down and check in, right? And to me, this is a big shift that I’ve noticed is relationships for me are conversations, right? So if you want to change the relationship to change the conversation and a conversation, I say anyway, is the braiding of language and emotion. So you can have the same language, but if it’s coming from or being received into a different emotion, it’s a different conversation, right? So that’s my opportunity to slow down and check in. What’s the emotion I’m sending, right? And that’s really my check is am I coming from fear and threat? Or am I coming from love and trust?
And so I have these systems to shift if I notice I’m in fear and threat. And my nervous system is how I’ll know that and delay or not send until, and usually it involves a rewrite of the email that I’m, I can send it coming from love and trust.
Russel Lolacher: You’re touching on something that’s close to my heart, which is basic communications, and a lot of people confuse communication with broadcasting, where it’s purely about I’m talking at you. I communicated right? But communication 101, which seems so lost in the workplace is not only what we say and intend, but how it’s received on the other end and both need to be considered.
So for you to talk about not only what I’m saying, but the emotion behind it, that’s considering how is this going to be received? How am I packaging this message within one emotion? Because on the other end that could be like, Oh, they’re angry at me. Oh, they are upset or they’re like, however it might be.
But both need to be considered for it to be pure, true communication connection. But we miss that piece so often. It’s just sort of like the email went out. I communicated. I’m like, that’s not communication. 101 stuff we’re talking here.
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah, absolutely. And for me, I, I go even further. I say language isn’t for communication. And if you ask people, and the first time I came across this, that was my response. If you ask people, what, what is language for? Most people say for communicating, for transferring information, for sending, receiving, and a man named Humberto Metrana opened my eyes up that language is actually for coordinating behavior.
Russel Lolacher: Interesting.
Trevor Timbeck: And that started to shift. So now when I send an email or I’m talking, I’m paying attention to what’s the, what’s the behavior I am coordinating. What’s the behavior I would like to coordinate. And that to me hits exactly what you said is coordination involves both, right? It’s co ordination.
And so I don’t get to say message sent and that’s not what I meant or all these other things, right? To me, the metaphor I use is it’s like dancing. We’re in a dance. You and I right now are in this dance and we are coordinating behavior. And that opened my eyes up to, okay, so a big part of how we coordinate behavior is emotion and the mood and things that aren’t even in the words and all these other areas that you said, sometimes for people you would call communication 101, but to me, it’s I find it even more powerful to transfer it away from communication to its coordination.
But you are coordinating behavior with people and therefore it’s all these other things come into play.
Russel Lolacher: And I’ll get really word nerdy on you here a little bit though. But communication also starts with CO, which is also CO. Collaboration, coordination. All these words start with C O, which is of the Latin. I don’t know what the hell, but it does mean as a coordination of two.
Trevor Timbeck: It’s, it’s the co and so I love word nerding. The co is the together. And so to me, the co is there in communication, but the shift I find more powerful is often people think communication is information. And why I love coordination is it’s interaction, it’s actually behavior, it’s action.
There’s something else. And so people don’t get away with here’s the information I sent. It’s not, it’s not my fault you received it poorly or something else. It’s as soon as I get away from information to something that to me is like behavior and action. And so that’s why I love to play with the words because for most people, communication, they’re like I communicate with my computer. And it’s it gets buried in there, to me, the, the coordination and the behavior part and everything else that opens up things beyond what we normally think about.
Russel Lolacher: That clear differential between talking at versus talking with, which is vastly underutilized. That’s before we keep going down this communication nerd rabbit hole. I want to backtrack a little bit cause we are talking about systems today and I love how much you touched on that with the email story earlier.
I need to start with definitions. That’s a huge piece of this show is, I hate talking about things that you might have a different definition of what I have as a definition or anybody listening to this. So when we talk about systems as it relates to even relationship building or the workplace, what are we talking about? What do you mean by systems?
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah. So my, my simplest definition is a system, a system is an organized whole. And so anything that, and that part of that is because I love whole and complete. So I love anything to do with wholeness. And so to me, that’s such a broad term and I love it that way because now I can call anything and everything a system. And part of the reason why I love organized whole is to me a system, and this is why I love relationships, is everything is interconnected, right? With a system, you can’t operate in one part and not impact and affect the whole system. It may not be obvious. It may be delayed. It’s the example, I heard someone said if you remove one electron from the furthest edge of the universe within a few days, it will impact the weather on earth. Of there’s this, there’s something of Hey, the system to me brings this wholeness and this interconnection. And so my simplest definition is organized whole. But I can then write a whole book and beyond on how that all interconnects. But to me, people don’t really need to know that since I’m coordinating behavior, not trying to transfer some information to you. It’s what does the using the word system, what behavior does that start to coordinate and how does that shift people’s behavior when they start to play what I call the systems language game.
Russel Lolacher: So if everything’s a system, what’s an example of that say in the workplace?
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah. So to me, everything we do, we can say is a system, right? Of how I run my meeting is a system, right? And oftentimes people will say I don’t have a system. And to me we always have a system. It may not be working. You may not have thought of it. It may not be intentional. But it’s do you talk about your agenda upfront?
Do you even have an agenda? Is your agenda questions, which is what my preference for agenda, right? Not here’s the things I’m going to tell you. But here are the questions we’re going to explore. What I love about this shift as soon as I start talking about it as a system, I can see things we couldn’t see before, and I can start to play with things people didn’t think about before.
And to me, that’s the biggest shift is gets it out of there’s something in my psychology or yours or like my… the people I meet with just aren’t very good at meetings, right? It’s hold on, the system is creating this result of either great meetings or poor meetings. And so let’s slow down and look at what is the system.
It’s just in the beginning, people aren’t used to using the word or thinking about or talking about it this way. So it feels a little clunky. But then what I notice is they start getting excited because they will see things they couldn’t see before because they had never looked at how is the bigger system, including our culture?
So to me, culture, I call that a system, right? A culture is just a network of conversations is what I call it. And it’s okay, so that’s a system. What is the system of conversations that we have? The conversations we don’t have? The conversations, how frequently? And to me that helps the leaders I’ve worked with start to see how they can impact culture because otherwise culture seems ephemeral.
They’re like, I don’t know what this culture is like. Okay. What if culture is a system of conversations and we can start to shape the conversations and say we have these ones and we don’t have these ones and right. It’s like all of a sudden they get access to the source of performance, right?
They get access to like how they can shape and intentionally create a culture, where before they didn’t know how to do that.
Russel Lolacher: It seems, the way you’re defining systems… cause I mean, in my brain, I’m like, I can immediately hear people going, no, that’s a habit, Trevor. That’s a preference. No, that’s repeatable behaviors.
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: But on, if you talk about it in that sense, it makes it personal. It makes it like Boss A or Boss B runs a meeting this way, because that’s good or bad, because that’s the way they want to run it. If you call it a system, you’re turning it into an other. It’s something that can be manipulated and changed for the preference of the group. I don’t own a system, but I certainly own repeatable behaviors. So it bring, it separates that if that’s how I’m viewing it is that if you separate it, it’s adjustable and it’s something that’s manageable as opposed to being more… too personal and too attacky.
Because we talked to Boss A going, you need to change your meeting. And but it’s how I like doing a meeting versus you need to change the system around meetings. Oh, okay. What’s a, what’s a more productive way. Like it pulls that ownership away from it.
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah. And it, and to me, what it pulls away is what you’ve said is like, it doesn’t make it personal, right? So you can still have ownership of systems, but now people don’t turn it into a personal attack, like you said, or I have to defend, or it means something about me that my meetings don’t work as well, right?
And to me, it opens up the things of the environment, all other things that people wouldn’t have normally considered, or like the physical space, right? When I redid this basement, it shifted where I sit and what I do, right? And one explanation would be like I had a habit of sitting here and now I have a habit of sitting there.
But to me, that doesn’t help me shift my performance. But if I’m like if I move the chair from here to there, I’m going to start sitting over there and I, for me, it wouldn’t be like, how long will it take me to break the habit? It’s, it’s not a habit, but when they come down, the architects say this all the time of the architect shapes the building and then the building shapes the people.
And it’s Oh, so physical space is part of a system that shapes where we go. That’s why Apple built that circular building and designed it so people would run into each other and interact and have more innovation. To me, that’s just a great example of you can shift the system and it will change the results.
You don’t have to say, how do we get more innovative people?
Russel Lolacher: See you get me nerdy when you talk about spatial communications. Cause I get in, I’ve written a few things on proxemics that just make me super nerdy about… and for those not understanding proxemics is the language of communication based on where you physically are in a space, i. e. If your boss is on a desk that is two feet higher than you, what are you communicating by that?
So to hear it for as a system, I find that super interesting. So yeah, thank you. My, my nerdy brain is getting crazy, but I need to talk about work relationships. So if we’re building a system or we’re trying to tweak a system that already exists, i. e. culture, i. e. habits, preferences, what are elements of a successful system?
What are, what are something that is a system needs to have in it for it to be useful, impactful when it comes to workplace relationships?
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah. So what I love about systems is, it’s visible when they’re working and when they’re not working, right? It’s not really an opinion, right? So when we get into a lot of things in psychological, like you said, it’s my preference or it’s my opinion how I run the meeting. When we start to look at the systems, we shift out of there and say can you show and point to what the workability, and so that’s, there’s kind of two things that I always put into a system.
One is workability. Does it work? And a big part of that is, I say, integrity is the foundation of workability, right? If something lacks integrity, a system, a person, a bridge, whatever it is, it won’t work, right? And similar, like if the meeting lacks integrity, cause we say we’ll start at 10 and everyone comes at 10 oh five, the meeting won’t be as workable, right? And so workability is a big component. And then the other one I liked, and people can create their own criteria, but mine is empowerment, right? So I like workability and empowerment. Is a system empowering people and does it work right? And so for me, the empowerment is more the impact on their nervous system.
And the workability is the yeah, the tangible results and things that we can see. And so those are sort of high level and then it depends on the system, right? Like I was talking to a client the other day and he was having some issue with delegation. And I said, so what’s your system for delegating?
And he was like, shocked by that because he said, I don’t know. I don’t really have a system. I just do it sometimes. And I was like, okay, slow down because you always, there’s always an existing system. So what I’m hearing is your existing system is a little ad hoc. Some of it is based on whether you remember to delegate, right?
And that’s a system many people use. And I say memory is the perfect system for forgetting, right? So I don’t recommend people use memory. And so we came up with a very simple system. And it was, in this case, was just some questions that he could go through of, and one of the most important was like, do I need to do this?
And if the answer is no, then he started to look through and talk about delegating. And we talked about when you are delegating, do you create agreements around that? Or do you just have an expectation that people will get it done and they’ll let you know, or something. And so we slowed it really down so he could start to see his systems around delegation, and it was really easy to start to see where they weren’t working, where they were out of integrity, where things were falling through the cracks.
And all of a sudden, like you, he got really excited because he had just never seen it as a system before. He just thought delegation was a skill and you have it or you don’t. And that’s the shift I find a lot of people put things in the psychological domain of I have it, or I don’t, I have confidence or self esteem where I’m good at delegating or I’m not versus the system view really shifts it away from it’s about me and it’s personal to this is a system and you can borrow other people’s systems, especially with things like delegation, time management. So many people have done these things so well, you can just borrow their systems.
Russel Lolacher: So if everything’s a system, but there is situations where there’s no system, so
Trevor Timbeck: Say there is no situation where there’s no system. There’s always a system. It may be unaware, unintentional, right? And that’s, that’s really helpful because when you slow, I slow my clients down to be like, what’s the existing system that sometimes the answer is I don’t have one. And we slow down and there’s always a system, right?
Maybe it’s someone else’s and you just inherited it, right? It’s your parents system, your teacher, your culture. When it comes to performance management, often people don’t have much of a, they thought a system and we, when we slow down, we see there’s always a system. It may not be very workable, often not empowering when it comes to performance management and it was just the one they inherited either from their company or culture or their first boss.
This is how my first boss did performance management and I inherited their system is what I would say. And that’s really opens their eyes.
Russel Lolacher: Yeah, because a lot of people will think, okay, systems for relationship building. Great. I need to implement a new system when what they’re really needing to do is really work on their self awareness and situational awareness to understand the system that already exists and tweak and adjust accordingly, as opposed to starting from scratch, which I think is exciting for some people that they don’t have to start from zero, but also scary because they’re super unaware of the situation they’re currently in.
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah. And so I love what you’re pointing to is to me, the systems approach brings a lot of self awareness and a lot of reflection and oftentimes slowing down, because that’s what we always say. The first question is, what’s the existing system? Because you can’t get outside the system. It’s sort of like gravity.
You could go to the end of the universe and you can’t escape the gravity from earth. The gravity gets really, really weak. And so sometimes systems get weaker the further you get outside them, whatever, but you’re always inside one or more or many systems. And so I find that helps people to slow down, bring some awareness and reflection.
And then they might notice, oh, there’s just one small change I could make in this system. And things will start working. I don’t need to throw it all out. I don’t need to start from scratch. I don’t need to change everybody. And that’s, that to me was the big shift. Deming said a hundred years ago that you’re, you have the perfect system for your current results.
And how we know that is you’re getting these results. And as soon as you see that it’s coming from the system, you can start to say, okay, all I need to do is tweak the system. And so to me, that opens up a lot more possibility for people.
Russel Lolacher: We talk a lot on the show about curiosity because that has to be part of the DNA of any great leader has to be. And it, and it boggles my mind that it’s not, and we just stick to assumptions a lot of the time. So to get curious, cause I mean, that’s what we’re talking about here. If we have, if we have to figure out what a system already exists, we have to get super curious. What are some questions we can ask ourselves to build that awareness around existing systems that we may need to address?
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah, so I’ll even slow down here because I find this is where sometimes people get stuck if they leave curiosity as some psychological domain or skill. And I’ll have leaders who were like, I’m not a very curious person. So I’ll slow them down and say what’s your system for being curious? And they’ll be like, what do you mean?
So similarly, when I first started coaching, I had, I thought I’m not that curious. And so I created a system and I just had a list of questions. Yeah. And in this case, I found a book I love called The Coaching Habit, and there were seven questions in it. And I would print them off and I would take them to meetings with my direct reports, and I would even share the system.
I’m like, Hey, I’m practicing this coaching thing. I have these questions. I’m going to ask these questions. And I tweaked that system. And all of a sudden you can see Hey, curiosity isn’t something you have or don’t have, and some people are more, it’s you can create a system. And so as you were, you’re pointing to is if you were to create a system to get curious about systems,. what sort of questions would you put on there? And that’s what I would encourage people, don’t leave it to your memory. Will I remember that? It’s great. Sticky note, spreadsheet, whatever works for you in your current systems. What are some questions that we can ask? And so to me, my favorite question is what’s the current system? And really it’s then the system of slowing down and taking a look. And that’s what I say is that you take a look at the system. What I love about them is you can hear, see, taste, touch, smell, feel them. It’s not where some people, but I always struggled with people when they’re like you lack confidence.
And I’m like, that sounds like some ephemeral or magical thing. I can’t taste it, feel it, touch it, smell it. And so when we shifted into the world of systems, you can and but it takes practice, right? But what I always say is what would a video camera see, right? And that’s you’ll start to see the system.
So it’s do the video cameras see people show up on time to the meeting? No, the camera sees people come late. Okay, that’s part of your system. When people come late. What do you say to them? Or what do you not say to them? Okay, that’s part of your system, right? And so, a big part of this is practice with that first question, what’s the existing system?
And at some point, as people start to practice, and this was what happened to me, it’s like something can shift and you can say, everything’s a system. Like when I go through the airport, I see the systems of the airport, right? And when I’m going here, I see the systems. But it really is that practice of curiosity of what is the current system?
And then my second favorite question is, is it working? And how do we know? And that starts to open up so many avenues.
Russel Lolacher: Relationships at work is always very much focusing first on relationships with ourselves first. So I like the idea of understanding your curiosity and digging a little deeper, but what you pointed to there was really more about the relationship building with our teams, which is the transparency of it is that I’m going through a system.
Look, look, everybody, here’s the 7 questions I’m going to ask you. And does it work? Does it not work for you? You’re part of this, as we talked at the top, which is this coordination, this co space. So what other benefits and steps can we take when it comes to that relationship building as we build these or to a better point, rebuild or tweak these systems that already exist?
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah. And so sometimes people struggle with systems at first because they think they’re very mechanical and linear and they think machines and computers. And so to me, my favorite systems are organic and nonlinear things like the nervous system, the solar system. And so. When it comes to relationships, sometimes people struggle like relationships, they’re not like machines. Absolutely. But system doesn’t mean machine. But if you start to practice this, you’ll start to ask the same questions with this relationship. What is my system? Is it working? What kind of conversations do I have? Are they working? And to me, what then brings in is often the answer is, I don’t know. I don’t know if this is working.
Okay. So what’s your system for finding out if this relationship is working? And sometimes people like they’re shocked by that question I don’t know, I don’t have a system. Okay let’s create a system and it could be a simple system where you check in with the other person. And you ask, is this working?
What’s working about this? And to me, that’s the system that most leaders don’t have, which is a system for proactively collecting feedback. Most people’s system is I wait until someone gives me feedback and most leaders just don’t get nearly enough feedback. If you shift it, because this is a great way to check on, are your relationships working, is to ask for feedback and open up a space for coordinating by giving and receiving feedback. These sorts of things really start to benefit to me relationships because it’s, it’s just a question people don’t often ask is my relationship working and how would I know? And how would I know if it stopped working? And those are great questions to have with someone you’re in a relationship, whether it’s a spouse or an employee of like, how will I know if this relationship stops working?
And that’s, everyone’s different, but I know for me, I would often then say to someone like, I’ll start to withdraw or you’ll see or hear from me less. And that might be a sign that this is not working.
Russel Lolacher: I can hear a bit of pushback from people that might be really leaning into like people leaders and service leaders going, this doesn’t sound very human, Trevor. This doesn’t sound like we’re, we’re injecting humanity into the workplace when all you’re doing is repeatable behaviors or systems you’re, you’re, you get my point, right?
There was a lot of people will think that it’s less so, but I would challenge a lot of those people. I’m curious to your thoughts is, but do you remember their birthdays? How do you remember their birthdays? You remember it because Facebook told you. You remember it because you put it in your Outlook calendar, that’s a way of human connection, but you’ve built a system of a reminder to connect with them on a day that matters to them. That is a system
Trevor Timbeck: It is. And again, back to impactful work experiences. When, when I was really early on, I think I was still in high school working somewhere part time. There was a gentleman working there and he was the, the most beloved person in the office. And so I was talking to him one day and he had a stack of cards and they were birthday cards and he was signing like 20 of them.
And I said, what are you doing? He said all of my clients and everyone I interact with… he didn’t use the word system at the time, but I could hear it is like he had a system that he would ask their birthday and they put it in and they all got handwritten cards from him every year on their birthday. Again, not because Facebook said or whatever right and when I was asking him like why do you do that?
He said you know it creates connection. I’ve actually really enjoyed getting them. They really enjoy receiving them. And so, I struggled with this at the beginning too. And until I had a very personal one of I forgot my wife’s birthday, right? Because I was using memory, which is the perfect system for forgetting.
And so I thought what’s the system I was using? This was before the books I didn’t use, I didn’t ask what’s the system. I’m like, how can I make sure? I’m like all my important things that are on dates and times are in my calendar. Why don’t I have my wife’s? And at first I thought no, if I really loved my wife, I would, I wouldn’t forget.
I’m like that’s, that’s not true. If I really loved my wife, I would have a system that guarantees no matter what’s going on and how crazy my life is that I would never forget. So I put her birthday in my calendar and then it happened one year where it was the day before and I still hadn’t bought a gift.
And so I thought, Ooh, what’s the system? So now my calendar has like week or two weeks before a thing that says buy a gift, buy a birthday present. And it’s yeah, to me, it starts to bring more humanness and more connection in. It’s just that I find that the shift people have to move is they’re like thinking, Oh, wouldn’t I just remember if I, and it’s no memory is the perfect system for forgetting. And actually the humanness comes from the freedom and things you have when you’ve got some systems and things in place that ensure workability and empowerment. So I’m not having to, what am I forgetting and worry about that, right? I can have. a structure in place that really supports…
Russel Lolacher: We on it.
Trevor Timbeck: All things that make us human.
Russel Lolacher: We touched on it earlier, but I want to get a little clearer about this, which is adjusting, tweaking systems because my brain’s going to diversity. And my brain’s going to different people want to be connected to differently and ways they wanted to be communicated when you first met versus three years from now may change drastically based on shifting values, shifting priorities.
If you have a system and you’re tweaking it, how do you account for that? Because there are so many people that will end up using these systems as a crutch because it’s, it’s, they’re praying to the gospel that is this process because they’ve created a system and they’re like, it works for me. I’m like, yeah, but it has to change over time.
How do you account for that?
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah. And so to me, this is the shift away from seeing systems as linear mechanical fixed, right? To our most powerful systems are nothing like that. This solar system, my nervous system, the system of our culture or family, when you start to call them systems, you see there’s these amazing organic growing, living, breathing systems, right?
That’s why it’s called our nervous system or I’m a biological system. Those are the ones I get more excited about because they have this freedom and everything else, but also then you can bring the two together. So one of my systems is to ask myself, how can I surprise my wife? So there’s no rigidity because I don’t, it’s not a surprise if I did the same thing every time, but that was a big shift for me because at first I thought I’m not a very creative person. I’m not very good at surprising. And I learned this from my coach. He had a system for surprising people and he could use it everywhere. And I was like, what’s the system? And the system is ask yourself what in this situation, what does the person expect? And then go one or two levels higher, and they will be surprised.
And I was like, wow, I love that. So it’s something that I don’t have to leave to memory or to some skill I have or don’t have. It’s oh, I can have this system of surprising my wife or an employee or something else. It’s I can ask myself, what would be surprising here? What, what does this person expect?
And what would it be in this situation with this person in this context, given what’s going on in our relationship today, what would surprise them, right? And so to me, it’s this marrying of some of the repeatability and predictability that you get sometimes with the linear but more bringing in all the creativity of the organic system.
And it’s kind of like the model I sometimes use is the left hemisphere and right hemisphere of the brain. The left hemisphere, it’s not exactly this cut and dry, but you know, likes the logic and the linear and the right is creative and all right. And it’s yeah, but they’re both systems and I wouldn’t want one system without the other system.
And so to me, while of wholeness and integration is the integration of things versus saying this one’s better than that, it’s actually like they work really well together.
Russel Lolacher: What have you seen gets in the way of leaders embracing this way of thinking?
Trevor Timbeck: It’s usually the, in the beginning there, what I would call semantic reaction to system, right? And to things that you’re bringing up of systems are mechanical or linear or repeatable or suck the humanity out of it. And the more we slow down and help them start to see that that’s not the case, it’s actually the opposite.
To me, it brings the humanity back because when we’re going. And seeing things in the psychological realm, people say to me this employee doesn’t have enough self esteem or confidence, and they kind of get really stuck. But when we shifted of what’s the system that’s creating that behavior, they really get back into love and trust versus the fear and threat that they were coming from.
And so to me, there’s something that you have to practice and experience and experiment with. And those are some of my favorite systems. Practice, and I think in our culture, unfortunately, that gets really devalued. You can practice this and experimentation is a wonderful system. And so when people start to practice and experiment with this, then they usually come back and they’re really excited because they’re like, I just made this breakthrough.
Or I never thought about it as a system before. And to me, as you’re pointing out, it’s this is, this is also a place where we can slow down and they can see how they can get stuck because they’re having a reaction. I call it a semantic reaction because they’re reacting not to the word system, but what they make it mean.
And you’re like, I’ll lose my freedom and flexibility or my spontaneity or something else. And it doesn’t mean any of those things.
Russel Lolacher: Is there any different approaches and maybe there isn’t, to the micro and macro of it all because we mostly focused on leaders with their teams We’ve touched a bit on culture being a system. But is this an organizational wide challenge? Is it an individual time? Like I don’t know if there’s much of a difference, but i’m curious of how you would approach that?
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah. So why I love the systems is people who tend to then start to do exactly what you’re doing, zoom in and zoom out, right? There are microsystems and there are macrosystems and they can see things that they couldn’t see before. If they thought it was just with this one person, and sometimes this is why I find leaders get really excited because they’re saying like, I want to have more innovation in my company.
And their first go to is I need more innovative people, more creative people. And that making it very personal and talking about psychology. So I would then say to them what’s your system for innovation? And they’ll get I don’t, we don’t have one. What do you mean a system for innovation?
And it’s yeah, you can create a system for innovation, right? And you might have something already. It’s just maybe not as workable. Let’s slow down and take a look at it. And all of a sudden you can get something at a very macro level that has micro impact. And that’s why I love systems because everything is connected and interconnected.
So when you make a change here a butterfly flaps its wings in one side of the world and hurricane happens somewhere else. Like when you have these dynamic nonlinear interconnected systems, you can make a small tweak and have a big impact. That’s why I love systems, but it also shifts people.
So they start to see how everything is connected and that they can start to get access to something that they thought was some quality or property, like innovative or curious or confident, right? And for me, it was my personal experience when I got promoted, my CEO said, you have everything you need except for charisma.
And so I was stuck for a long time because I was like, how do I find this charisma thing? And what is charisma? And right, let me read books. And I thought it was some sort of internal property and I just didn’t have it. And when I started to shift and see Oh, hold on, there are some systems I can be using for how I run my meetings.
And as an introvert, I think that was kind of his comment of, he thought I needed to be more extroverted to be ahead of sales. Once I started to see that it was systems and just different behaviors I could do, that opened it up. Whereas for the first year, I was really stuck because I thought I needed to find this internal property called charisma.
Russel Lolacher: Technology tends to be something people throw around a lot. A.I. especially.
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: Is there any place for that in this?
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah. To me, one of my favorite systems is ask for help. And so I, just this weekend, yesterday, I spent a lot of time with ChatGPT asking it for help. In this case, I was trying to translate a book and some texts from, and videos from Spanish to English. Cause I don’t speak Spanish. And so that’s a system I often use with my clients is ask ChatGPT or take your email and run it through and ask ChatGPT, how you could say it and effort different way, change the coordination, the behavior you’re trying to coordinate or have it have asked it what it thinks you’re trying to coordinate with this email.
And that’s interesting question to ask. So, yeah, I love technology for all sorts of reasons cause, and that’s sometimes what people think about systems, right? Systems are just technology. Though,, but we have all this amazing technology that you can use as part of any of your other systems, including asking for help.
Russel Lolacher: As we start getting to the end of the conversation, I’m kind of super curious about system as a whole. And you say it’s nonlinear, but I feel like I want to go back to the idea of checks and balances because the system starts. Does the system end? Because that feels super linear.
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: And if it doesn’t end, at what point are you checking back to make sure the system’s working or not working if it’s not linear?
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: How do you, how is that, how… fix my brain, Trevor.
Trevor Timbeck: So to me, it’s, it’s both and that you can have linear, right? There are linear mechanical systems, right? Machines, computers. That’s what we tend to think of. My favorite ones though, are, are, are the organic nonlinear. And for me there, the symbol is circle. And if you look at nature, this universe, the moon cycle, everything is a circle.
Everything is circular. So that’s always my favorite go to system in a conversation is what’s the circular? Where are we getting feedback? Where are we stopping to reflect? How is this feeding into the next conversation? So my preference is always circular over linear. But yeah, there are linear things.
Like when I, when you run a race, it is linear. There’s a start, there’s an end. But when I see my training and then the next race in this bigger picture of it’s circular and how does it feed in, I get excited about seeing the connections and put it in. So it’s, you can have linear and non linear. Non linear are my favorite because you can make a small tweak and have a huge impact.
Russel Lolacher: I like the idea of understanding that it’s an ecosystem, even within an A to B scenario. So like a run or more work related, a meeting. Meeting starts at 8, it finishes at 830. But the ecosystem is all the practices, the habits, the check ins around what that meeting means, what it doesn’t mean. And that’s where we need to spend a lot more of our time to really focus on those intention muscles is to embrace it as an ecosystem as a, and I’m thinking of a circle .
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: As it were around it, though, even though the practice is linear, everything to consider isn’t.
Trevor Timbeck: It’s so powerful. And I noticed ecosystem contains the word system. It’s that to me is where I got the word system. Like I love ecology and ecosystems and that shifts, right? If you think of the earth as this self contained circular thing, something as simple as throwing garbage away doesn’t exist because where’s a way on this circular planet, right?
It’s it goes up into our ocean and washes back up on my beach and it’s circular. You can’t get outside of this, to me ultimately, the circular nature of the universe. And so it brings in this concept of ecosystem And how the environment and the ecosystem shapes us and how we shape the ecosystem.
Russel Lolacher: Well word nerd. I’ll do you one better. It’s got CO and I get it too. It’s we’re back to the co part of the collaboration, coordination, communication side of it all.
Trevor Timbeck: Yep.
Russel Lolacher: I really love this conversation. Trevor, thank you so much for having it. Definitely shifted my brain a bit around systems. Before I get to the final question, I do want to ask, where do we start?
Where is the leader who’s listening to this right now going, okay, I need to get this. I need to get a system understood. I need to tweak. I need to wrap my brain around this whole concept. What is that first toe dipped in the water look like?
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah. So I love the metaphor toe dipped in the water because that’s so physical. I don’t love the metaphor. How do you get your brain wrapped around it? That’s psychology. That’s thought. And so what I would say is how do you get your mouth wrapped around it? How do you start to practice the language game?
That’s what I would say. Practice the language game of calling things a system, asking, what’s my existing system? Is it working? And if you start to practice, and that’s why I love this shift away from mindset. I don’t know how to change my mindset to systems, but I know how to change my language. And it will coordinate my behavior, and it will start to coordinate behavior of my team and everyone else when I start to ask that question.
What’s our system? Is it working? How do we know? So that would be my recommendation, is start playing this language game called systems.
Russel Lolacher: Thank you so much for this, Trevor. To wrap it up, my final question, which is… and it’s back to relationships. What’s one simple action people can do right now to improve their relationships at work?
Trevor Timbeck: Yeah, as I said earlier, for me, relationships are conversation, and I think the biggest shift that people can make really quickly is they’re listening. And to me, it’s because I’m writing a chapter for my newest book on love, and the chapter I’m writing was all about listening. And so I’ll give them my favorite definition from listening that comes from Mark Nepo.
And he said, in the practice of our lives, listening is leaning in softly. with the willingness to be changed by what you hear.
Russel Lolacher: I’m going to leave that with the silence that it deserves after the point that is Trevor Timbeck. He’s an executive and leadership coach, and he’s coauthored a book I highly recommend you check out called The Power of Systems, How to Create a Life That Works. Thank you so much for being here, Trevor.
Trevor Timbeck: Thank you. It was a real pleasure.
