The Fainting Goat
Have you ever seen a video of a fainting goat?
One moment they are standing around goating. The next moment, they get scared or surprised by something, seize up, stiffen and fall over as if they are dead. They are rendered useless until they come to, stand up and literally shake it off. Then they return to goating as though nothing has happened.
It turns out they aren’t actually fainting. They are born with a condition called Myotonia congenita. When startled or surprised, the muscles of these goats stay tense, they seize up and fall over. They never technically pass out – they are conscious the whole time. But they are also useless until the chemical dissipates, and their muscles relax again.
Other animals move around them – stepping aside until they are able to join back in.
We all have a bit of fainting goat in us.
That seizing up can happen when trying to learn a new exercise, dance, or sport. Or it bubbles up when listening to someone with different political beliefs or values. For me, it is when I sit down to do taxes. I quickly get frustrated and have to walk away until I can focus again.
For many, it surfaces in difficult conversations or conflict at work. They can’t think or speak clearly and end up avoiding all discussion and team members tip toe around them.
Several months ago, I was working with a leader preparing for a team workshop. The team was struggling with trust issues and the leader was understandably nervous about the session.
As I talked through the agenda and my approach, I could sense his skepticism. He wanted to believe me, and he was afraid they would fall into the same patterns.
I explained my role was to help facilitate them to their outcomes. That we would learn to explore conflict. And I had no interest in creating fainting goats where people are rendered useless.
I wanted to help them use different tools, so they didn’t feel paralyzed. To stretch their comfort level so they could be open to productive conversations to resolve conflict.
There was an obvious fainting goat on this team: Edmond. He would often get frustrated and would storm out of meetings when he felt someone challenge him. It made for an incredibly unhealthy team environment. People were afraid to disagree with him for fear it would trigger an episode.
Instead of focusing the energy on the work, so much time was wasted trying to avoid making him angry.
Each time this happened, he was like a fainting goat: useless on the floor with the team stepping around him.
This team also learned they had some hidden fainting goats. There were many times in meetings when individuals didn’t speak up when they saw something concerning or if they had a different perspective.
Sometimes they were just too exhausted, didn’t think it would matter or it wasn’t worth speaking up. So, they froze. They waited until the moment passed and pretended it didn’t happen. Sound familiar?
This lack of psychological safety happens frequently on teams.
People aren’t comfortable disagreeing or debating and feel like they can’t talk about mistakes without being blamed.
In most cases, this is all fixable.
It starts with a mindset shift to embrace constructive conflict and leverage tools to gain empathy from each other and learn from their mistakes.
I gave this team a thinking preferences assessment to learn their different approaches to communicating, listening and decision making.
Edmond was stunned to learn how different his preferences were in key moments. He immediately recognized his trigger for storming out. Which opened up a different conversation of approaches to these moments so everyone could feel heard without getting overloaded.
This team explored why they avoided conversations instead of learning how to plan for and embrace conflict. Teams always seem surprised when they encounter conflict or a fainting goat episode. But it is more uncommon when they don’t.
John Gottman’s research has found that almost 70% of conflict comes from our individual values and perspectives.
We each have different approaches to thinking, listening, and communicating. Without tools to navigate these, we face a growing pile of misunderstandings until the goat faints.
One of the best ways to navigate these differences is through empathy building. This team worked through different activities to learn about each other and increase trust across the team.
The team also learned a new approach to decision-making.
Teams often think they have to achieve consensus on every topic. They rush decisions instead of leaving time in key moments to embrace divergent thinking.
Diverse teams produce the best results – including mining for different perspectives and ideas.
Even asking “What would it look like if we disagreed with this?” can lead to new insights and ideas.
The best part? None of this required more meeting time. It only required the team make better use of their time for more productive conversations.
Wondering if your team has fainting goats?
Watch how your team interacts.
If there is silence, avoidance of debate or conflict then you may have some.
At a minimum, you have a great starting point for a conversation of what to do different.
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