Why Your Team Needs a Heartbeat: The Importance of Organizational Health

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:01:00

Welcome back to Becoming Bridge Builders, the show where regular folks learn how to live well, master their money, build a life that money can't buy. I am your host, Keith Haney. And today we're diving into the heart of what makes organizations thrive.

Teamwork, inclusion, and purpose driven leadership.

Today our guest is Faze Clark, an organizational, health and teamwork specialist who helps business leaders build value driven, diverse teams that deliver both business and social impact.

Faith brings a powerful blend of experience from a background in computer engineering to her doctoral research and teamwork and her lived experience as a Caribbean immigrant and mother of neurodistinct children. She helped organizations improve operations, maximize productivity, and even double their revenue, all while staying true to their true values.

Faith, before we dive into our work today, I want to start with my favorite question for you. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Faith Clarke: 00:02:00

Well, first, Keith, it's lovely to be here with you. I think we're going to have a lot of fun.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:02:05

I think so too.

Faith Clarke: 00:02:07

I think. I don't know about the best, but what came to mind just now as this older woman, she was in her 80s at the time, I was in my 30s.

And she said, honey, don't pay attention to their mouths, watch their feet. And I was just like, she's right. You know, there's just this sense of we all live out our values in what we do. It's not really what we say.

What we say is often aspirational. What we're actually doing in this moment is a reflection of what we value, what's our values in our hearts right now.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:02:44

So I love that and that's so true. I'm sure my mom says something similar, but just with a, with a southern flair to it.

Faith Clarke: 00:02:51

So.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:02:54

That'S great advice. So let's dive into your journey because you've had an interesting background and I'm just kind of curious to dive in and know more about you.

How did your background, engineering and your personal experience really lead you to focus on organizational health and inclusion in your team and teamwork?

Faith Clarke: 00:03:12

Yeah, so I think that's interesting because I didn't see engineering kind of caught me because I was planning to go to medical school and didn't get in.

And I had all the science subjects and then I was in the chemistry lab and it caught a fire while I was in college and I was like, no chemistry for me. And computers felt safe. So I did that and enjoyed it, but really enjoy teaching it to other people.

And so a lot of my career has this educational component but what I realized when I started to support, I had a lot of friends in nonprofit spaces and faith based spaces and churches and other places and recognizing that it's not our impact. Yeah, we want to do things in community, but we can only do things in community based on our health internally.

And I think the engineering piece structure for my brain helped me to see the multiple levels internally that needed to be supported to have sustainable external impact. So often in faith based spaces, budgets are thin and people are overworked and all this.

And so I could see how, yeah, it's the same two people who are both ushering, singing on the choir and going out to kind of feed people. This isn't sustainable.

What's underneath this and why, why do we have this, you know, 4% of people kind of doing external work and what do we need to do on our insides so people feel like it's, this is a good place to be, to offer their energy because these same people who are not doing anything here are volunteering and doing things in other spaces. So it's not about we can't afford to pay people.

It is more about our environment is not conducive to their effective participation or else they would do it.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:05:11

I love that. That's always a challenge, especially in the church setting of, you know, we say the 20% to 80% of the work and then we burn those 20% out.

Years ago, I remember that church health was the buzzword for everything.

If you had a healthy church, you had a growing church, kind of define for us what you mean by the term organizational health, because I'm curious how you define that.

Faith Clarke: 00:05:36

Yeah, for me, the health of the organization isn't about the one metric of resource or even the one metric of external impact, whatever it is that the organization is about. Often people will say if it's doing that and if it's well resourced, it's healthy. And I'm like, no, there is no organization without people.

So when I say organizational health, I'm really talking about people health individually, I'm talking about communal health together. So are the people able to work together? Well, in ways that feel nourishing, not extractive? And then is the system healthy?

In other words, can it sustain the people and the impact without compromising one or the other? And so often in spaces you'll find like, I've been in projects, worked on teams where the project came off amazing.

It's just like, it's beautiful work. And people are like, wow, we did a great job. And we're like, all right, let's do it next year.

And people are like, absolutely not, we're not doing that again. So that means that there's something not healthy because the balance isn't in place.

And so when we think about body systems, our bodies are created to hold symbiosis, to hold homeostasis. It's constantly trying to help us be in balance.

When we look at ecosystem, there's always this combination of give and take so that the system remains in balance.

And I say that the organizational body, instead of making it like a factory model or like a piece of piece parts, we need to look at models in nature. And the organizational body is a body that needs to be in this healthy homeostasis. That's what will that will, will that will make it sustainable.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:07:33

I want to go back into something you just said because I'm curious why this is happening in so many organizations. Why do leaders overlook the people part of the organization in terms of health wise?

And maybe it's because they are focusing on the in the end product and not the people. So kind of why are leaders missing this?

Faith Clarke: 00:07:56

If I'm to be blunt, leader, we are, we are all missing this because our systems of work have not been built for human thriving. They just have not. The system of work has been built on human extraction.

If we go all the way, as far back as we can go back where work is concerned, in fact, one day I'm a little bit of a word nerd. And so I looked up the meaning of the word work. There is no positive meaning to the word work. It's all about extraction and toil and. Right.

So really deep down and for many organizations this is embedded in the spreadsheets. Humans are resources to be used and replaced.

If we're to fundamentally change that and think about how do we design work so that humans aren't consumed, we have to go into the very basics and say I have to be willing to design work that causes humans to thrive.

But that's not the thing that I'm being taught in my MBA program or maybe or that's not the thing that this 50, 80, 100 year old business was built on.

And the fact that we have a hierarchy of human value in our society means that only the people at the very top get to thrive while the rest of the people get to produce so that those people thrive and so that the organization produces money or whatever it is. So I think leaders aren't missing it. Every leader I talk to wants it.

They just don't think it's Possible to do it and still have the business, make money. And the reason we don't think it's possible is because of the structures that we've inherited.

But what I tend to say to people is that, listen, we have a machines on Mars giving us information about the weather there. It means that we, we can figure this out too. We have kept our minds in the messy unknown for so many scientific problems to solve them.

This is, this is straightforward as far as I'm concerned.

It means we haven't stayed long enough in this question of how do we help humans thrive and maintain our bottom line, whatever that needs to be, and accept human thriving as a valuable thing that we want to create. It's an ethical, for me, an ethical issue, not a business issue.

Because the research is clear that when humans thrive, more money is made, better decisions are made, stronger organizations.

This exists, the data is there, but it is more that the ethical piece of things tied to how organizations are structured and our willingness to shift that structure into something that's more nourishing, that's an ethical issue.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:10:57

I love that. So now I'm going to get to a nerdy part of me. You just got done doing a lot of research for your doctoral work.

Tell me about what was at the heart of your research.

Faith Clarke: 00:11:10

My research was about team cognition. And team cognition is the knowing and doing of a group of people. You know, so it's the collective knowing and doing.

And my question was, how does that emerge? How does that form, especially in organizations that are new, that don't have established culture and established structures?

And I felt like it was an important question because right at the time when we were talking, you know, we talked about the pandemic, it was at the time of the pandemic. And we are living in a time of so much rapid change that even stable organizations, stable organizations are experiencing the constant shifts.

The pandemic really did that for us. That's causing them to need to be more agile to be able to stay abreast.

So I was curious about how do you figure out how people will think and act together when the context isn't yet formed. And what I found was that it's almost as if people, people, people form into families.

And I like, if I stayed with it, I would be curious about the similarities between newer social impact organizations and family businesses.

Because there's a way that in a deep relationship, deep care for, for each other, deep care for the mission, people figured out how to be with each other without being told. And I think we give up some of that knowing. When we become more structured, we stop kind of leaning on that intuition and we start to need policy.

And I'm not against policy, but there is something about humans leading with their hearts that makes teamwork matter and happen effectively in nourishing ways that's harder to implement through policy alone.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:13:08

So as you did this research, what aha moments did your research reveal to you?

Faith Clarke: 00:13:16

I was in the middle of an interview with a member of a small nonprofit organization that was newer to the organization than some of the others. And it hit me that, wow, this person didn't have the legacy stories this person did. It was like.

It was like this person didn't have the relationship with the OG team members and because of that, had critique and upset.

Perhaps this person interpreted the behaviors of some team members through external context lenses instead of through the lens of deep knowledge and family. And I just found it interesting just to kind of note it as a.

A newer team member not connected to the original kind of sweating of forming the organization, was struggling to. To be a part of the team. And it made me wonder about.

I was very clear from before I started the research that our onboarding in most organizations is horrible. I've been onboarded horribly many times.

But there's an opportunity that we're missing with onboarding to connect people to story and to heart and to mission.

We waste the time trying to connect people to tech and tools, and we give them a PowerPoint when really what we need to do is to be inviting people to go on mission with us and giving them as much time for their hearts to be engaged as possible. And so that was one of the insights I got because that conversation felt familiar.

And then when I interviewed another younger person on the team, it wasn't as extreme, but I was like, ah, there's a theme here.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:15:17

Something you said just really stuck with me just now. I never thought about the onboarding that we do. We don't connect people to the story of the organization or the mission or the heart of it.

So now that you've gone out and done all this wonderful research, how would you change our onboarding processes to include those things in that process?

Faith Clarke: 00:15:41

Yeah. So I tell people that when I work with clients now, story is an important part.

I tell people that we're working with three S's when we're designing culture. I think the first thing that I do is to help leaders see that what you're actually doing is designing culture.

Culture will emerge, or you can shape it. And when you're designing culture, culture is the habitual thoughts and behaviors and actions and stuff that people have in space.

So if you're going to design that, you design it from entry all the way through. And part of the culture is the culture has stories to live out those stories.

The people have skills, and then the system has, the organization has systems that make the skills accessible and make people be able to use those skills to live out the culture. So stories, skills and systems.

And so I basically say that onboarding as a system needs to give people the skills needed to really embrace and further live out the story. And onboarding shouldn't be seen as a 12 day experience with it. It's no shorter than six months, perhaps a year.

Because human beings don't shift their stories overnight unless trauma will do that. But we don't want to traumatize people at work.

So having onboarding be something that you first of all don't assume will happen in two days releases people completely. And then having onboarding that's inclusive means how does this person become a part of our culture?

And so first few interactions with a person has to understand, is this the kind of person that needs a person, a mentor, a guide into this new space? Is this the kind of person that needs a bunch of information by video first and then some conversation?

Is this the kind of person that needs to feel how the team is? So the first thing is just to be immersed in the team and to be embraced by the team.

Just starting with those questions so that we can offer people the kind of integration practices that they need so that they can best be become a part of the team. So that's number one. And then number two, people don't onboard themselves. Teams and workspaces wrap around people and embrace them.

So instead of making onboarding be the HR person's job, every person in the organization is wrapping around this new person or these new people and bringing them in. And how then do you build a culture of embrace? That's part of what I talk about.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:18:27

So what you're describing takes an entire team concept. Not just like you said, I'm just an HR person. How do you teach organizations to lead this in their organization?

Because that sounds like a lot of time intensive work there. And I think most things that I discover in most organizations is we don't want to spend the time to do that.

We just want people to get it and we can move on because we already have, like I describe it as, we already have all of our Legos full, so we don't have to adopt a new spot for our Legos to have somebody else onboard it. So we just kind of like to hire off to somebody else and see.

Faith Clarke: 00:19:04

Usually that that makes perfect sense. But usually by the time people have hired me, they're in such pain that, you know, it's like when you go to the PT and you say, my knee.

And the PT says, yeah, you need to be doing those, you know, exercises that you knew you should have been doing 20 years ago, but you weren't doing, but now your knee is hurting. One of the biggest issues that the leaders I work with deals with is conflict and the time it takes to help people stay on the same page.

And so they're aware, they don't have time. They're using time trying to keep people working towards mission. And I'm basically saying to them, we need to use your time differently.

We don't need to do more time. What we need to do is use this time differently. And one of the first places I look at and I said, what's your schedule of meetings?

Because I want to use some of the existing touch points. Where do people connect? And let's get in there.

And then some of the stuff you're doing in these meetings where people are silent and just listening to you and nodding and leaving, that's an email, that's a video. Let's not spend premium contact, spend synchronous time on information dissemination.

Let's spend it where it's needed, which is moving things that are in the head into hearts and into hands and feet. Because often what's going on is that people aren't living out the things that they've heard because we don't have time to practice the living out.

So it's not about using more time. It's about using the time differently.

It's about figuring out what we should be doing in premium human contact time and then allowing some other things to happen in the. In, you know, in passive, in more passive ways.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:20:49

What you're describing sounds very powerful and can really, I think, transform organizations. How do you communicate what you're saying to people? Because I can't see always being as effective in a book.

It seems like there is like multiple communication process to really get this concept ingrained into organization. So how do you do that effectively?

Faith Clarke: 00:21:12

I don't know that I'm effective, Keith. I'm, I'm not in the business of convincing people that this needs to happen.

I work best with people who already recognize that they need to do something different, that they, they, they left corporate or they left old School, nonprofit, or they left legacy church in pain and they don't want to perpetuate the same pain that they experienced in previous parts of their lives. And I think we all have those stories of pain. So I tend to remind people that the systems that created that pain, we can't use them over here.

We have no choice but to recreate pain if we use the same tools.

But often when I start working from the place of whatever the current pain is, revolving doorstaff people not staying conflict in the team or whatever, it always drills back to some difference in how we nurture people, lead people and build culture. And so I don't have to tell the whole story up front.

Once we start with the pain point the knee, and then we start with some exercises we build up to you need more core strength and also eat better food and drink water. We tend to build back up into these very basic things about human thriving that we all know, but in some ways need permission to embrace.

Recently in a meeting with a client, the team asked me, what do we do when we're in these crunch times and we feel overwhelmed and there's so much to do and we feel like we, I don't have enough capacity because of what's going on in the world and what's going on personally, what do we do? And I said, do less. And they were like, yeah, that's what you do. No, breaking is not an option.

So since breaking, I'm going to help you take breaking off the table. I'm going to help you take illness off the table since. Right. So then do less.

And like we in our society, in our workplaces, workers, staff and leaders don't feel that that's an option to treat ourselves like humans. It doesn't feel like it's an option. But I'm driving my car and if I drive my car and treat it poorly, it breaks down. And I know that.

So I care for it. I drive less fast or I give it better gas.

And I'm like, no, we, we must in our organizations give ourselves the permission to care for ourselves best because we are resource number one. We are client number one, we are stakeholder number one. So I'm like, do less. And their shoulders went down. They're like, oh, do less.

Because we will have those moments when we have more capacity and we will do more. And humans automatically do that.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:24:11

So what you're describing though, because I do a lot of work with consulting churches and things and when they asked me, you know, give us the, give us the secret sauce, the Magic bullet to fix everything. And what you're describing is what I tell them, that there is no magic bullet.

I can't come in and show you there's not a prescription that is applies to every single organization. You have to listen and start where they are.

Like you just said, if you're doing too much and you've getting to a point of breaking, I'm not going to have you start at step one. If there was a step one, you're at step seven. So we got to go in to deal with step seven before we can get to maybe step one.

So how do you diagnose what a person needs or organization needs so that you start at the right place? Because I know people hearing this are going well, I couldn't do that because I'm not sure I have this step ladder of processes.

But you are, you have to listen and start different places. So how do you learn to listen and say, okay, you need this versus this?

Faith Clarke: 00:25:15

Yeah.

I have a four stage team effectiveness model that came out to some of my research and I tell the story a little bit tongue in cheek because stage one, the primary skill that needs to be worked on is trust building. But stage two, skill that needs to be worked on is trust building. And in stage three, trust building.

And somebody was like, I guess, I guess in stage four, we're working on trust building. And although there are different things that are happening in the different stages, what I found is that if trust is eroded, we're dead in the water.

Right.

And so even before I get to a specific diagnosis, I know the organization needs to do trust building and trust repair and figuring out where to start. That trust building and trust repair that can be with just one leader and a little bit more vulnerability, if that's possible.

That can be building listening skills and noticing when listening is not happening and voice is not being heard. Because for me to even do a good diagnosis, people need to talk to me.

And for people to talk to me, they need to trust me that I'm not just listening for whoever, but I am listening for real healing in the team. And so I have to do trust building. And so I don't rush diagnosis. I tell people it'll take me a month to six months to do a good audit.

But the audit is intervention because my trust building processes are going to shift things around so that people start to share and you get good information about what's happening. It'll feel worse if people actually start telling the truth. It'll feel worse.

But then we get, we can start to notice what's going on, what are some of the themes, and then what's a good point to intervene where we can get a cascade. We don't work on 15. Things show up. We don't work on all 15.

We find the low hanging fruit that when we help it heal, other things kind of automatically fall in place, you know, like core exercises and drinking water, you know.

So I think that one, I invite people, even if they're not working with me, to work on the trust building and I can offer people some suggestions on how to do that regardless of the team.

And then two, when I'm working to understand what's going on, it's two to six months of listening and sharing just to begin to get, okay, now we have the thousand puzzle pieces on the ground. Now we can ask, where are the edges? What's the blue sky? We can start to put things together in ways that feel more nourishing.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:28:01

You mentioned that you have a team that you work with. Tell us about your organization, tell us how you approach, discern what clients you work with, where you start. Just walk us through that.

Faith Clarke: 00:28:13

Team I work with depends on the organization. I have a bunch of colleagues and consultants that, depending on what people's needs are, I will pull in to work with me. But in essence, people reach.

I enjoy working with nonprofits and so I keep myself in dialogue in a nonprofit space and invite people to share me with their other nonprofit colleagues.

And the thing with nonprofits and faith based organizations, but perhaps even more so nonprofits these days, is that they already have medicine that they are offering into community. A typical corporation or small business may not feel that it is doing something to impact community.

But nonprofits and parachurch and faith based organizations tend to be community focused. Most of the problems I deal with in an organization can be solved by people taking their own medicine. We're just not taking our own medicine.

We're giving it to community and not offering it to self. So often I'm listening for me to be able to work effectively with an organization, I'm listening for what do they do in the world?

Because I'm listening to see if I can apply, help them apply that to themselves. And then so people approach me primarily for conflict situations or with the question, how do I build an organization that's not like.

And they point somewhere, you know, not, I don't want my nonprofit to be like. And so from that point of view, if they are nonprofit spaces, often funding is the issue. So we may even start with what's your funding situation?

Do you need help writing a grant, etc. And I may offer information if they're in a grant writing process.

So sometimes it's playing the long game to be in conversation, relationship with people. And I am pretty. I tell people I don't do business with, people I can't be friends with.

So if the relationship building can't happen, then likely it is that they won't end up working with me.

So some people meet me through socials and stuff like that, but I often get introduced to people through referrals, and then I will, you know, they'll research me online podcast episodes or socials, and then we will set up a conversation. And I begin my initial auditing even before the person is a client, because that tells me whether I can really be helpful or not.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:30:44

I like that. So what's one thing every business leader can stop doing today to improve their team's health and performance?

Faith Clarke: 00:30:55

Can stop doing today? They can stop treating themselves like commodities. Like, there's a way that we cannot.

We can't support people in any way that we're not supporting ourselves. So I tell leaders, you are team member number one. How. How are you treating you? Are you including you?

Are you making yourself just a caricature like this ideal whoever, or are you centering your own painful places and letting those be nourished in your work? Oh, your painful places can't show up at work. Well, then their painful places can't show up at work. So if I were to, you know. Yeah, include yourself.

Not include yourself in the. I take up all the space, but include yourself in the. How is this nourishing you? If this isn't nourishing you, it's not nourishing them either.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:32:00

That's great.

So, faith, this has been really a rich and inspiring conversation, and you're showing us that building strong, inclusive teams isn't just good for business, but it's also essential for impact. But before we wrap up, I'm going to ask you the question I love to ask my guests. What do you want your legacy to be?

Faith Clarke: 00:32:21

I want to be known as a person who comes alongside people, listens well, and helps them take another step.

So whether that is in my personal work or with my kids, in my business with my kids, or just in relationships in general, I believe that to kind of get. I don't know. I believe God lives in relationships. And so that's the space where magic happens, where God shows up, where change happens.

And so if I can be a person that comes alongside and bridges that relationship gap for a person and opens the door for their access to whatever the change is that they're looking for, then I'll be it, including helping them connect with another person. Because I do feel that we are building society where we are less and less and less skilled in being in relationship.

And I think that's most of the problem that I deal with, just building healthy relationships.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:33:23

That's awesome. So also, in season six, you have a new thing, a surprise question. Pick a number between 1 and 6 for your surprise question.

Faith Clarke: 00:33:31

1 and 6?

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:33:32

Yep.

Faith Clarke: 00:33:35

4.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:33:40

If you got stuck in an elevator and were forced to listen to one song, what song would you pick?

Faith Clarke: 00:33:48

I got stuck in an elevator. There's so many good songs, though. If I got stuck in an elevator, I was forced. This one came up today, so I'll say the Bengsons.

I think that's their name. They have a song that. The refrain is stay soft. This. And I like the. I don't. I can't even remember the title.

I'm sure I can give it to you for the show notes, but. But there's this line, stay soft. Like it feels like medicine for me because there's a way that we kind of toughen up, manage the world.

And this woman's voice in my head just, she's like, stay soft to this. And so I think that's. That would be in an elevator, especially if I'm stuck. And yeah, there's a solution in here if you can kind of stay, stay.

Stay open and receptive. Stay soft.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:34:46

I love that. So for listeners who want to learn more where they can connect with you and explore your work, give us your social media handles and where they can.

Faith Clarke: 00:34:53

Find you in socials everywhere. I am Faith Clark or faith A. Clark. LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and my website is faithclark.com or workecosystems.com thank you so much.

Rev. Dr. Keith Haney: 00:35:09

Faith and everyone who's tuned in today, remember, your team is your engine. Whether you're leading a business, a nonprofit, or a community project, the health of your organization starts with how you treat people.

So remember to treat people well. No. See them as commodities, but see them as valued employees. Thank you so much, Faith, for sharing today.

Faith Clarke: 00:35:28

Thank you, Keith, for having me.