Eva, Trevor and Kajsa from Tuff on the messy beauty of working in a self-managing organisation

Lisa: So welcome to the podcast. It’s strange welcoming my colleagues, but I’m really happy that you’re here talking to me. So I thought we could start with a bit of a check-in question where each of you say something. And the question is, how are you different now compared to how you were before you worked at Tuff? So who wants to start?

Eva: I can start. But I’m thinking like I need to—I need to show that I have transformed and I’m still not transformed unfortunately. But I think my biggest difference is that before Tuff I thought that I knew who I was and I was like “I know I’m like this and I’m like that” and I was stuck in me being in that way. And I think now is—I’m still being in that way, probably not as much as I was before, but I know that I’m not just that. I know that I’m also other things and I’m more conscious and willing to be something else or try something else or not just be that person.

So I would say that the transformation or the development has been going from “I think I know” or no, no—“I know” to “maybe I know” or “I don’t have an idea.”

Trevor: Yeah, I think mine is probably similar. I think definitely some of that, definitely some of that. I’ve changed in how I perceive myself. I think that’s really different for me. And I also think I came into Tuff a lot more single-minded. I came from quite a corporate background where projects get done in quite a linear way, and you just have to find the right person to convince, and then you get stuff done.

And I think over time, I’ve slowly shed that way of thinking, and that’s really weird because it colors how you see everything. So I find it hard sometimes to say how I’ve changed, but I know that I’ve lost something in the process.

Kajsa: I feel the main—there are two main things. And the first is that I’m much more self-authoritative, that I trust myself and—or trust that well, maybe I can find out how to do this, and maybe I know best of all how to do this instead of always asking for someone else’s thinking that others have better ideas of how to do something when it’s me that is the actual expert in that particular area. So in, for example, in what I do. So that I’ve needed to train a lot.

And then the other thing is that I think that I trust people more. When I sometimes feel lack of confidence—self, you know, I just don’t know what I’m doing here—then I can trust more other people, my colleagues, that okay, they let me be here. So then I trust them, and then I can go on. I don’t know if it makes sense. But yeah, I feel that I can trust others more.

Lisa: Yeah. It’s almost like you trust yourself more and you trust others more.

Kajsa: Exactly. It’s like a paradox. I don’t know. It maybe doesn’t make sense or—

Lisa: No, no, it does.

Trevor: I know you say that, Kajsa, as well. I feel like I realize now that at Tuff, I trust people—I don’t know, a hundred or a thousand—and they’re people that I don’t get to interact with that often. And I think that’s done something to me, that the ability to trust people that aren’t in my close-knit friend groups that I see on a regular basis, but I trust them to a much greater capacity. I haven’t spoken to either of you guys in a few weeks, and yet I feel connected and trusting of you. And that’s strange, and that never would have been the case before. There were colleagues I saw every day that I didn’t trust as much as I trust you. So that’s another weird rewiring, I think, for me.

Eva: Completely agree. Like you trust the body of people in this—

Lisa: Yeah, I think for me, I think before Tuff, I was very much a people pleaser, a good girl, and I’m still that. I haven’t quite fully recovered from that. But what I’ve learned in Tuff—and it’s taken me a long time, like nearly ten years to really give myself permission—but to see that actually that doesn’t really help when I’m filtering myself or censoring myself, being accommodating, being polite. In a self-managing team, that doesn’t really work.

That actually, when I disagree with something or when I show up a bit messy or when I share how I’m really feeling, those are important data points that add something to the team instead of what I used to think—that that was taking away somehow, that that was me being like a bad employee or a bad person. So there’s something about the culture that we’ve created that I think encourages people to—well, I mean, in the self-managing community we’re always talking about wholeness. I really think we live that in Tuff. We kind of welcome each other’s messy wholes. That sounds weird. But you know what I mean—whole, W-H-O-L-E.

Trevor: Thanks for clarifying.

Lisa: Yeah. But what would you say is—you know, we all sort of answered kind of similar things. I think something about how we’re able to show up. What do you think is the source of that? You know, when you say about like this messiness, I think there’s a lot in the corporate world now about bringing your whole self to work, but they’re words, and the world they’re in doesn’t really back that up, because as soon as you become inconvenient, you’re not welcome.

And I think there’s something—you know, I’m sure on many times I have been a bit inconvenient to Tuff, and I’ve never felt like that isn’t welcome. So in reality, I don’t think anyone ever brings their whole self to any job or work or anything like that because that would be weird. You need to pick and choose the skills and talents you bring. But the idea that you can really genuinely mess up or you can be a bit annoying or you can be a bit of a pain and that can be fixed, right? Because that’s what we train and that’s what we practice. If I mess up and I piss someone off, it can be fixed. So I know that I can bring all of me to work in that sense. And that’s genuinely different. We don’t really say “bring your whole self to work.” It’s too corporate sounding, and yet that’s genuinely what we can do, including all messiness.

Eva: And I think that also because we want to see the dark part of everybody really in the beginning. So we don’t—we sort of push each other’s boundaries or buttons or we call it whatever—so that your bad part of you, not that nice or not that cooperative part of you shows up. Because it’s better that shows up at the beginning of the relationship than shows up after ten years.

So I think we are good in doing that and allowing that so that we’ve seen all your sides and we’ve been talking about all of these sides that we have. And then that creates trust. That creates exactly what we see. So I know that you can be like this, this, this, this, and you know I can be like this, this, this, this. So you know who I am and you know how I’m gonna show up. And there’s no surprises, and that creates trust in each other.

And we always said, sometimes it’s not a so sexy side of you, but at the same time, it’s the side that we like most of. Because that’s a more vulnerable side or because it’s a much more connecting side or whatever it is. So I think that also helps that trust that we talk about.

Kajsa: I think it’s the consistency over time that, like you said, you have no surprises. It’s like it’s always the same. And I mean, I’m a sort of HSP person, highly sensitive person, and I’ve been messy many times. But every time I’ve been met with trust and understanding and listening and coaching. And over time you get that there will be no other surprises. And I feel so known by everyone. And that really creates trust.

Lisa: Yeah, I’m thinking like, for people listening to give some practical examples. I think you’re right, Kajsa. I think there’s like consistency and a commitment. I mean, Tuff, we’re a training company. We’re in the business of creating transformation in people, in teams, in organizations. So compared to other organizations, we maybe focus on different things or we prioritize different values. And one of the values we prioritize is development. So we have a lot of practices that help us keep that alive because it never stops being uncomfortable.

You know, even those of us who’ve been in the company for like twenty years, it’s still kind of vulnerable to give each other feedback, for example. It’s still vulnerable to bring up interpersonal tensions, what we call pebbles. We bring up mooseheads when we have kind of these conflicts in our group, but we have these practices. The fact that we have those code words—pebbles, mooseheads. We start every meeting with a check-in and we ask questions like, you know, is there something we need to know about you and how you’re showing up today?

And people share things like, “Yeah, I had an argument with my kids this morning. So I’m really shaken by that.” And we all just—we allow that to be. We don’t need to take care of that person or rescue them, but we allow that to be. And we have these monthly development days where we all spend half or a full day training together. Again, even if we’ve been in the company for twenty years. And Kajsa, you join those even though you’re not a trainer, because I think you like being part of that culture and we all—everyone in Tuff is part of the culture of giving feedback and things like that.

So I think compared to other organizations, we really prioritize that. We prioritize development over comfort, I guess.

Trevor: Yeah, I think—so I like being spontaneous and like a few people type of thing. I have this need to feel free and all this kind of thing. And again, I think my background in corporate then, it’d be like anything that gets put in place, any structural ritual, it just kills human beings.

And I think at Tuff, I’ve really got to value ritual, and I’ve really got to value sort of standards and agreements a lot more. So things like bringing up mooseheads, things like having pebbles, not leaving things unsaid, doing proper check-ins—and not in a superficial way, in a way that we really lean into it and we really mean it, and we do it with, as we train I guess, frankness and empathy turned up to the max—suddenly rituals don’t seem superficial anymore or standards or agreements don’t seem superficial anymore.

So I guess that sort of goes again back to how I’ve changed, but from a practical point of view, I think there’s a mindset around putting things in place that I had that I needed to change. So those things do actually do something for culture when they’re done properly.

Eva: And I think it’s because we have the structures, but I think because we know how it is when we have a clean climate or we know how it is when there’s a moosehead going on or we know how it is when there’s a pebble and we have not cleaned it up yet. So because we have this feeling and we know we experience it in our bodies. So we don’t like that. So then we put the structure in practice every minute, more or less. It’s not that we only have all these things that you said, Lisa, that is totally true. But we are so committed to have that climate that we want to have that very—not easily, but quickly—we try to use all these structures when they are needed and not only when they are scheduled.

Lisa: Yeah. I’m thinking of a specific example, Kajsa, that I really appreciate. I share this example quite a lot when we were in a meeting. I think it was you, me and Karen maybe. We were talking about marketing or website or something like that. And you started the meeting when we had a check-in. You said, “Actually, I have a pebble with you, Lisa, if it’s okay that I bring it up.” I was like, “Yeah, please.”

And it was about how I was being on Slack—that I, you told me that I sometimes would write messages on Slack about the website. At the time you were responsible for the website. And you said that I was a bit like a rock star going, kind of just flying in and dropping a message being like, “This doesn’t work on the website” and then flying off again. And I really appreciated you bringing it up and it was—you know, I was totally blind to that, my tone, and it was because I was in a rush, I think.

And so I was so grateful that you brought it up and we had this really great conversation where I said, “What can we do in future to—you know, I promise I’ll try not to do that, but if I do, like, can you let me know? Should we have a code word?” And you were like, “Yeah, maybe ‘rockstar’ is the code word. If you become like that, then I—” So I also like that we—it’s sometimes, you know, these conversations are like serious or uncomfortable or vulnerable. And also I think we have a humor and a lightness about it. The development doesn’t always have to be serious. It is also like just the sort of ridiculousness of human beings and what knots we tie ourselves up in, I guess.

Trevor: Yeah, and I’m the same. I love people bringing up pebbles because I feel like I’ve got some amazing suspension for rocky roads. I don’t feel small things, I just drive over them. And so when people really stop me and go, “Yeah, you were being a bit of an idiot there,” or “This thing really frustrated me or annoyed me,” and I’m completely oblivious. Something lights up in my brain. I go, “This is cool and exciting and different and we can talk at a different level now.”

So I genuinely—I get quite—you know, some of my colleagues in the UK are brilliant at bringing these things up, and we even made a commitment that because we all get along really well and we spend a lot of time in each other’s spaces, our commitment is to try to find things to bring up with one another because of the value that it brings beyond the little thing. You know, it brings up much greater value for our relationships.

So I love that about Tuff and it being a commitment that benefits us as a self-managed organization. It keeps the climate clean, as everyone was saying. But for me personally, like, it just, again, builds that trust, I think.

Lisa: I think all of us, we’re so sort of masochist because we go around longing for someone to bring up a pebble with us.

Eva: Yeah. We’re just doing it because we know that if we do it, we will learn something from doing that. Sort of—of course, all we think is that it’s hard, and you need to be vulnerable, and you don’t know how it’s gonna be. But in general, I think we are people that like development, and then you need to be sort of a masochist, be in that development all the time.

And knowing for me, it’s also—I believe that all of us, we also know that this development will never end. So it’s a commitment that you need to have every day. And that’s also part of, I think, the job that we’re doing. Understanding that it’s not a matter of two days’ course or just a coaching session, and we are ready to, you know, enlighten. Unfortunately not.

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. I also think about—because we’re all different. Like, for example, Eva, you and I are kind of on different ends of the spectrum, I think, in terms of directness and frankness. Like I said, I’m a recovering people pleaser. So it took me a long time to bring up—like you, Trevor, my first pebble—because I’m so accommodating, so flexible.

And again, I think I previously before Tuff would have thought if someone had a pebble with me, an issue with me, it would have been like, “Oh no, I’ve failed. I’ve, you know, I’m an awful person.” Whereas I see now that when those pebbles are going on all the time in every team, every organization, in every relationship, and us not bringing them up—A, what tends to happen is we kind of back channel. We have all this gossip. I remember in previous organizations, how much energy was spent having conversations about other people like, “Oh my God, this conflict’s going on.” And like, “Oh, can you talk to her?” And like, “Maybe I can talk to them” and, “Oh no, this has happened now.” Like, it took up so much energy to do that and tiptoe around that.

And also B, I think that I’ve learned that when you talk about a pebble in a relationship, that relationship—it’s not just like fixing it. It’s like upgrading it. Then you have so much more depth and trust in that relationship. You learn something about yourself, about each other, about that. It takes it to the next level. Because I think when we talk about conflict resolution, it’s like assuming that something broke and then you have to fix it and you put it back to how it was, instead of it’s an opportunity to kind of actually add something to it to make it something even better.

Trevor: Absolutely.

Eva: Yeah. And I don’t know—probably it’s not what you’re saying now, Lisa, but it’s coming from something you said at the beginning. So we are each other’s allergies in general. So we are different, and we push each other’s buttons. And I think that that’s the upgrade. So because my version is not a good version. It’s a better version when I work with you and then I learn that I need to add something on me so to be able to work with you.

So really, being different is a contribution to each other. And because we work in different pairs and we do different things and all that stuff, you really need to sort of—you don’t need to, but I think it’s smart to think, “Okay. I’m like this. But if I work with Trevor, maybe I need to add more of something like this. And if I work with Lisa, I need to add something more like this. And then with Kajsa, the same thing.” Because we want to be the best version when working with our colleagues. So it’s like an app upgrade all the time.

And as you said also, it’s this relationship thing. We have relationships outside work that is—you know some of us, we even go on holidays together. And I remember one of my first allergies was being with a colleague on a holiday and she pushed all my buttons. And for me was like, “How is that possible?” And then we just—we was like this and then during the holidays talking about this. And how much that talk—it was a friend talk. It was a talk that upgraded the relationship not just in terms of our personal relationship but also when working together. So it’s really an upgrade. I’m doing the job.

Trevor: I remember bringing up my first pebble was with Karen, which in hindsight was like a big deal to bring up with a founder. And you said about the energy of talking about people behind their back. For me, it was holding onto this energy of having a complaint, and it was a small thing that she’d said, and I just knew that I had to bring it up with her. And it was like a comment about Tuff as an organization. It wasn’t even like a personal thing or anything like that, but it really got to me.

And I remember as like, you know, still probably being a bit wedded to this idea of me being this unemotional person that comes in and is like super smooth. And I brought this pebble up with her and of course she was brilliant. And I was just sobbing at the end because of this tension that I’d had. And I didn’t even know that I was carrying that much tension, but it was so nice to be completely accepted in having this objection, even though all the stories that I’d made up about why she’d said this thing were completely untrue. And she really graciously sort of explained what was going on behind it and that that wasn’t her intention.

But you know, I can’t imagine ever caring that much in any other organization and then also not being able to bring it up. Especially with someone like perceived as having so much more seniority than me.

Lisa: Yeah, the founder and the CEO. It’s like in another organization that would be super scary. I don’t know if I would ever do that.

Trevor: Well, I worry now that maybe it sounds like this beautiful cult that we’re all part of. So let’s talk about the ugly stuff.

Lisa: What is—

Trevor: Dark side.

Lisa: Like what’s the dark side? What’s the challenges of working in Tuff? Like what—is this when we get to vent about all the things that we’re—

Trevor: We’ll bring up all the mooseheads that we brought up in the past.

Lisa: Yeah.

Trevor: I mean, one of the things I think that is difficult, and I guess, you know, a lot of people who listen to this are in self-managed orgs, this is not gonna be new, but coordination is a big challenge, I think. So I said right at the beginning, I used to have this mindset of you just get the right people on board and something happens. That’s not how it is at Tuff. And I’ve never really tried to do that either. I think coming with that was how things should be done.

But if you want something to happen, it kind of requires this constant gentle pressure and bringing in people and checking that there is a capacity and an interest for something to happen. Collectively, you have enough to make things happen, and you can’t bulldoze things through—that doesn’t work. And you can’t sort of force people to find time in their diary. And we work very hard and we value the time that we’re not working really well. So it’s sort of—you have to wait until the timing is right, until something is right for it to happen, rather than, “I really want this thing to happen and it needs to happen now.”

So it took a while for me to let go of that, but also it can be difficult. If you’re really convinced that something is the right thing to do, making that happen is really hard because people are doing their own things. That level of independence and freedom that we’ve got makes it hard to bring people together at times.

Eva: Eva looking like she doesn’t see that. No. But I—yeah. I understand that. So I see that and I understand what you mean. Oh, okay. But I have not had the need of experiencing or the whatever it’s called. Yeah.

So I think for me, I would say the hardest part is sort of sometimes needing to do things because someone needs to do it. It’s like—maybe I don’t know. A long time ago, we talked about the economy, you know, numbers. No one was interested in the numbers and economy, just our founder, Karen. And comes a point that, well, someone needs to do it, and she took that one. And this is an example, but there’s other examples in situations that we know that there’s something that needs to be done, and there’s no one somewhere else that will do it, and we are not gonna pay for someone else doing it. So we need to do it.

And then you just need to pause your “I don’t wanna do it. I don’t like it” or whatever it is. And you just, you know, upgrade yourself and you do it. And then you cannot say, “No. It’s not my job description.” I hate when I go somewhere in a shop and they say, “This is not my department. Ask someone who’s from another department.” We cannot do that. So I think that’s my part of hard to work in Tuff or in a self-managed company—that there’s no people doing things for you necessarily.

Kajsa: I think it can be lonely sometimes that everyone is so self—yeah. So self-sufficient. Right? Sufficient. Yeah. So and so much freedom. And so sometimes you feel like, “Does anyone care that I do this?” Or “I think it’s so—so I think it’s a good idea to do this.” And then I do it, and then no one really cares. Or they do care. I know that they care because it’s good for the whole company. It’s good because those are the things that I do most of the time. Something that I think is good for everyone, the organization, our whole business and us.

But it’s not very often that those things are really seen or—but I know that it would make a difference if I didn’t do them. But in that, it can feel a bit—yeah. You can feel a bit lonely sometimes. But I know that I can reach out to anyone, and then it’s gonna disappear, and it’s gonna be great. But it’s not all the time that I do that because I couldn’t be bothered or, you know—yeah.

Lisa: And there was that great moment where you brought it up. I remember in a—I think it was in a development day when we were all together and you brought it up as a moosehead maybe. Like, “I’m doing all this stuff with marketing and the brand and I don’t know. I sometimes I feel insecure, like, is it adding any value? Do you still want me to do that? I see some of you making things without involving me. And is that because you don’t value what I’m doing?”

Kajsa: Or it was really good to bring that up. And then we could all say, “No. We really value that. And we’re so grateful that you do that.” Yes. The feeling was that “I’m not sure how—do you need me? What do you want me to do? Is this a good thing to do? Is that something”—if you don’t get a soundboard for what you do always, then it’s like, it’s just me guessing. “Is this a good idea to do?” And people—you trainers are out there training, training, training people, and I’m not. So then that can be really difficult sometimes. But much less now than before after I took it up—brought it up as you said.

Trevor: And we don’t have like a list of objectives that we can tick off and go “Oh look how well we’ve done” and we don’t get graded on those objectives at the end of the year to get some kind of—it’s so much of us seeing and looking around and trying to, I don’t know, sense sometimes whether or not what we’re doing is good or adding value. But that’s kind of strange because you’re adding value to other people or you’re adding value to this organization, and there’s not any kind of formal mechanism to recognize that what you’ve done is good or could be better. Like there’s informal—yeah, you get feedback and you get suggestions and you get development, but it’s not like, yeah, it’s not that kind of clean recognition that maybe you—

Lisa: Yeah. I was just thinking like, we don’t have—we don’t have a performance appraisal system. So no one sits—none of us have managers. No one sits down with you twice a year and says, “What are you doing on your objectives?” And I guess like, you know, there will be people listening to this podcast in self-managing organizations where they have prioritized other values. They might have much more clear structures around how they do salaries or how they do career progression or whatever, like a lot of teams that use holacracy and things like that. And they might be horrified by what we’ve built in Tuff and our culture.

And I think I’m learning that every organization is different depending on the group of human beings that are attracted to that mission. And for some reason, the people that are attracted to Tuff tend to be people who aren’t so interested in money or project management. You know, we’re interested in development. We’re interested in creating a culture of openness and that has pros and cons. So I think we operate where we don’t have structures. We operate on trust. So we give each other feedback all the time, every day. And so we don’t need a performance appraisal process. But then the shadow side of that is, yes, sometimes it is a bit lonely. If you don’t get feedback or someone doesn’t see what you do, it’s like if a tree falls in the woods, does anyone hear it?

Eva: And I think—as you said, so there’s so—of course, many of us, we’re allergic to structures. And sometimes when someone is trying to put a structure, it’s like “No. No. No. Because structures don’t work.” So we—I think in general, we are allergic to that. And you say, but maybe we are more into trust. And I think also we are more into really commitment because we don’t have that appraisal blah blah thing.

But we know that when we’re leading a course and I get stuck somewhere, I can call a colleague and I will get some coaching. I know that when I’m doing something that is not working, you are committed to my development. So you will call me and say, “Well, I have some feedback for you.” So there’s this permanent commitment to each other that I think then is—when the structure is not—for sure helps. But because there’s so much commitment, maybe we don’t need that structure. Because I know that if I’m going around with something that is not working, you will let me know. I know that if I need some help in the middle of something, I can call you and you will be there. I know that if I need to talk about a client and I’m stuck somewhere, I also can call you whatever whenever. I think that knowing is the structure. Yeah, could be.

Trevor: Yeah. Well I also think we’re sort of selected—you know we date for so long before we join Tuff. I think we’re selected for being accountable as well. So you ring up to get support in your training because you’re completely committed to doing a brilliant job of training. And so if you have a group of people who are generally just committed to doing a brilliant job, that does so much. And if you know that about everyone who works here, then you can trust that they’ll look after the things that are in the way for them to do a brilliant job or at least to do a really good job. Maybe not always brilliant but you know, to do a really good job.

So I think that means that there’s not—you know, I’m sure if we needed structure to create something to bring us together and support our performance, we would notice that eventually and we would bring it in. And I think the reason why it hasn’t been needed today is because everyone’s committed and so accountable that they just paper over their own gaps or do whatever it is they need to do to be able to move forward.

Lisa: Can you say something more, Trevor, about this dating kind of onboarding process? Because in this group, you are the one who experienced that most recently. And it’s something we’ve been evolving in Tuff too, as we’ve been bringing more and more people into the organization. It used to be quite ad hoc, but we’ve become a bit more intentional about how do we bring people into Tuff and how do we know if they’re a good fit. So can you explain to listeners what is this dating process?

Trevor: Yeah. I mean, I can say something, and maybe I can say something about the dark side as well, because I’m conscious that we might be painting it in a rosy way. It was weirdly—it was a thing that actually attracted me to Tuff. So when I was first talking to Karl-Erik, and he said, “Hey, if you are interested, maybe you could talk to us about possibly joining Tuff.” And one of the things that attracted me was he was like, “Yes, we have this process where you”—these sort of—think about these circles of hell, but like, you know, these ever-decreasing circles of distance from the core of Tuff.

So you start off, and I had to speak to like five or six different people, and I’d already met you Lisa, and so I spoke to lots of people, and then it was like, “Yeah, he’s okay to date us,” and then I started dating, and then it’s like, “Yes, and now you’re okay to join lots of our courses,” and then as still part of dating, “now you’re okay to start giving more feedback and sort of step in a bit more,” and then “you’re okay to start giving bits of the course.”

So it’s this journey of, either way I think of it is kind of moving from the outside and moving in to where Tuff is, where you’re constantly developing, and you’re constantly sort of being assessed, but not in a sort of—well I guess sometimes it’s a bit pass/fail, but often in a “what’s in the way for you, what’s the gap, the thing that’s holding you back?”

And I guess the dark side of that is it feels a bit nebulous, so it’s sometimes a bit unclear. Where am I at? Like I don’t know where I’m at. I know I’m not at step one—stage one I should say—and I know I’m not in properly, I’m somewhere in the middle. And I guess that’s a bit what it feels like with dating sometimes—where is this relationship, I don’t even know. And it can’t be pinned down.

And also, you feel there’s this constant drive of development. I don’t think this finishes with dating, by the way, but there’s this constant drive of development. And whilst you feel like at Tuff you could bring anything up and you could say anything, there’s this slight feeling that you can never say no to development, that that’s like a cardinal sin at Tuff, especially while you’re dating, and your purpose is to get you to the point of competence where you’re allowed to step in, where you’re launched as a trainer, and you start to be able to do things more independently.

So that process attracted me from the outside, and then once I was in, I realized how incredibly hard it was to just be—it feels like you’re constantly scrutinized, but again, that’s quite old paradigm actually. You’re also constantly supported. So everyone is in it for you to make you successful. And it’s almost like the only way you won’t be successful is if you genuinely go, “I don’t want any of this anymore.” And I kind of, maybe not saying these words, but I kind of communicate that “now I want to walk away and it’s too much for me.” And that’s fair enough, and what I love about Tuff is I never felt at any point that if I said “this is too much and I don’t want this,” that I would be judged as a person. Which is really strange. Like, I feel like if you resign from a job that’s awful, you get judged for resigning, and at Tuff if you drop out of the dating process—okay. That’s alright.

Eva: I want to add one part of this process is that—and that it’s very different, I think, compared to other companies—is that it doesn’t matter how much knowledge you have or experience you have, that that’s not counting on coming into Tuff. Because we’re more interested in your being than in how much you can know on something.

And I’ve had people that they’ve been dating with us, and they’ve been coming from, you know, being managers in a company for a long time or being an HR manager, director with a lot of experience, and they have a being that is not—it’s not that there’s something wrong with the being, but maybe it’s not the being we’re looking for in Tuff.

So what I mean, it’s that what you described Trevor, that it’s hard because there’s a never-ending and even if there’s a lot of development. But it’s also that sometimes we say no to people because of the being and not because of the experience and people get like, “How is that possible? I have a lot of experience and I know a lot about this.” Yes. But the being is not working for us.

Trevor: Yeah. Let’s probably say, like, that process is a one, two, three year process as well. I don’t think I made that clear. It’s not, “Oh yeah, you do that for a few weeks, and then we decide.” It’s ongoing, because no one comes in ready to do the job. Whatever the job is at Tuff, no one comes in equipped to do it. So then it’s—yes, it’s kind of assessing “can you possibly do this at some point,” and it’s then supporting you because you will have a huge amount of development that you have to go through. So that just carries on until you know you’re ready or we realize you’ll never be ready.

Lisa: Yeah, I think also that’s what I want to convey is like, Tuff prioritizes development and, you know, we are a particular kind of company where we need trainers who are able to develop. And as you said, Eva, have like this way of being that works in terms of the kind of courses that we lead and it’s not for everyone. So people start dating Tuff and then in some cases realize, “Okay, this is too much for me. I don’t want to develop this much.” And there’s nothing wrong or bad about that. It’s like, certain people thrive in this environment and certain people don’t want it. And it’s not that other companies should have this level of development in their culture. It might not be appropriate, but it works for our purpose, I think.

And it’s like, I remember talking to one of the more recent trainers that joined about how it’s strange that in a way people do talk about you in Tuff kind of behind your back, but out in the open. So it’s kind of an agreement that when you join Tuff, you know, you’re going to be developing constantly and we will talk about you, but it’s not behind your back because we’re annoyed with you. It’s because we want to help you develop. So we’re talking about, “Okay, what do they need to develop? What do they need to progress to become a trainer?” And then we will share it with you.

So you will know—no one ever, you know, people who leave the dating process of Tuff, who, you know, have a conversation where, “Okay, we don’t think this is the right place for you.” It’s not a surprise because they’ve had a lot of opportunities to—they’ve got a lot of feedback. They’ve had a lot of opportunities to shift that, a lot of support coaching. I mean, we’re all coaches, so it’s great that we can coach each other.

And it’s painful, but I think, you know, we had someone leave Tuff recently and for me it was a really beautiful example of how you can do that process in a very compassionate, honest way where that person joined calls with us. And we got a chance to say how we all felt about that. We didn’t have to—sometimes when you leave a job, you’re supposed to pretend that you’re okay with it. Like, “Thanks so much for the opportunity. Let’s have a cake and say goodbye and yay.” You know?

But I think it’s really healing for everyone to be able to say, “I’m really sad that you’re going” and “I’m really heartbroken that I need to leave because I love you” and “I understand why.” And we can sort of process that together. I think good self-managing organizations have figured out a way to do that, to bring people in, in a human way and to support people out in a human way, you know?

Trevor: Yeah, and I think it’s also something about—because there’s some of this may not be obvious, there’s a decision in there, but we have had people in the past who they very clearly just need to make a choice. They need to choose between Tuff and something else in their life. And we really support them in navigating that. There’s not this sort of need to convince people that there’s a right or wrong answer or this need for them to demonstrate they really value—they just need to be supported in making that choice, and I think that’s very different from a lot of organizations. So yeah, we support the exit and the entrance, but we also support that process of making hard decisions. What do you need to be able to make this decision? And we try to support people in doing that as well.

Lisa: I’m curious to ask, Eva and Kajsa, you’ve been in Tuff longer than me and Trevor. How have you seen Tuff change over the years? What do you see—other things that have evolved or changed? Now we have also—you had just Tuff in Sweden. And then in the last ten years now, we also have like Tuff International with me in Barcelona and Trevor in the UK. What have you noticed?

Kajsa: Well, I think that our confidence has grown a lot over the years. I think we were more in the beginning, we were more like worrying that we would come across as weird or we wouldn’t be understood or we—yep. Like, call it underdogs out there. But now we have a lot more confidence and we—what we say is not that strange anymore. So and we have matured so much as a group.

There’s so much trust as an organization, I think. We trust how—that we do how we do things is the way we do things, and we trust that that works from everything like, for example, taking in a new software. We just don’t do that. We know that it has to be a consensus, and we need—speaking about that project thing that you were talking about before, Trevor, that there’s a certain way that we need to do it. And we are confident in that process. And we know—so we know what to say yes to and not to know what’s not gonna work and what’s—we have a lot more confidence and knowledge how to do things, I think, that what we do works and how we do it from big to small.

Eva: And for me, I think it has been from being a Swedish company working in the Swedish market to soon, we’re gonna be more non-Swedish than Swedish people working in this company. And, hopefully, at the end, it’s gonna be more or less or even more working for other countries than Sweden.

So and that, it’s—I think for me, it’s good because I’m not sort of half Swedish or sort of Swedish, but not Swedish. So far, I think it’s good in the way that we are more maybe even more open. I think we were open, but we’re even more open. We realize that we communicate in different ways. We realize and countries have different needs.

And I’m thinking about, you know, could be many different examples that we realize that maybe something that is not that important or it has not been a problem in terms of our participants. Maybe it can be a problem or something that we need to take care of or be aware of in another country. So in that way, I think we are richer because we need to open up, and we need to be more aware.

And, at the same time, it’s more risky because maybe things that we think work, maybe in some other countries, we need to be aware that maybe there we need to say things in a different way. And of course, now it’s this thing that maybe the Spanish language is much more direct than the English language. So I need to remember that because maybe when leading with people that are English speaking people, maybe I need to be careful how I say things. And if I lead a course in Spanish with Spanish people, I can say things much more direct, but maybe I can even say bad words, and it’s okay. So I think with the development, it has been like Swedish market, Swedish people to much more, you know, open, and then we need to open our way of saying things or doing things sometimes and presenting things.

Kajsa: Yeah. It’s interesting—oh, sorry, Kajsa. I can add that first when this international—going international was kind of “us and them” and it was just Karen was—we were like, “What are you talking about?” What—it was just there—this Lisa and Eva. Lisa and Eva. It’s like, “How are we gonna do this?” It felt—it was a bit of a struggle, and it was “us and them.” We didn’t want to think like that, but I think we did. And it was—we didn’t understand. And Karen is this visionary person. Without her, things wouldn’t be international and a lot of other things.

So but I think it’s how we are now. It’s so much more rich. When we are international, it’s so much more fun and enriching in every aspect. It’s so much better. More fun.

Trevor: That’s actually really nice to hear. I hadn’t really thought about it. Maybe it’s more about you, Lisa, than it is about me.

Lisa: That’s so nice.

Trevor: Well, I’m obviously not listening very well. I need more training in listening. But I was gonna say, it’s strange to, when you come into Tuff, because Tuff is self-managed and Swedish, those things sort of blend into one. So I quite early on realized I had to sort of wipe my memory and clean my slate completely and just go, “I’m just gonna embrace Tuff in however it does things.”

And it’s probably only recently that I’ve started to discern, “Well we do these things because that’s how it works in a self-managed company that does training and development. Like that’s just, it works, it’s tried and tested.” And then “this stuff is assumed to work from a Swedish perspective, and actually it’s challengeable and it might not work internationally, or there might be a better way of doing it.”

But to me, the two things were so connected, I think, that I didn’t get, first of all, that it could be challenged or that there was some of this stuff that needed an international influence. I just came in like a small child going, “Just teach me everything, I’m happy to just learn” after an initial realization that at first I had nothing to really contribute.

Lisa: Yeah. And it was like a moosehead fairly recently that this “us and them” came up again between the Swedish trainers and the international trainers. And it was really good to—we had a whole meeting scheduled for something else. And we ended up talking for most of the meeting about this moosehead and we realized, “Hey, we need—we’ve never really talked explicitly about, you know, what agreements do you have in the international team?” And, you know, we realized there were a lot of things that we had questions about and assumptions and interpretations about, and we needed to clarify some things. So we did that at our kind of team off-site. So it’s sort of ongoing.

Eva: Yeah. And it’s really ongoing because I remember 2012 when we had our summit in Italy. And then we said, “Okay. Now we’re a bigger family. So we need to relate to each other as a family. And then when we go on holidays, we need to check with the rest of the family if they are okay if I go on holidays.” So that was something we created in 2012, I think, or ‘11. It was really at the beginning of me starting in Tuff.

And in some ways, it’s sort of still alive, and we think that we need to check. But, of course, that’s one of the things that you Lisa said that that was maybe a distinction in Sweden with the Swedish team, but not necessarily with the whole—Sweden. So for us, it’s an obvious thing that you need to sort of check if it’s okay if I go on holidays, but not necessarily for everybody’s like this. So that’s one of the things going from Swedish to international. There’s some things that we need to upgrade.

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. I’m—we’re, like, 20 people now. Yeah. And like you said, we’re sort of half and half almost now—half Swedish and half non-Swedish. It will be interesting, you know, if we get to like 30 or 40—I don’t think we have ambitions to be like a hundred—but how things will have to change then. What were you gonna say, Trevor?

Trevor: No. Was just gonna say that that conversation was so interesting to me as well because I came to that—that it’s such a small thing. I get that. Like, it’s a tiny thing, a tiny administrative thing. But it’s so interesting because I was like, “I didn’t even notice”—this is me being a bit oblivious again—“I didn’t notice that Swedes asked for permission,” and I’d just go in and go, “I’m on holiday next week.” Like, and so now I’m like, “They perceive me as being like really rude or arrogant because I’m not asking for permission, I’m just going, ‘I won’t be here just to let you know, so don’t think of me as being around.’”

Because that kind of accountability thing, I just had this assumption that everyone knows that everything gets looked after, and it is a bit different because the Swedish team are bigger and there’s a lot more going on. They have to sort of know that someone’s around and allocate assignments in a different way. And then the UK, which is kind of properly a relatively new entrant into the Tuff family, we now have three people here. So it’s grown really fast, and I don’t think we—we do put some stuff in place to kind of look after one another as a little, like, satellite thing.

But there’ll come a point where we need to start thinking more like where Sweden is now because it’s growing all the time and it’s, you know, getting much busier. So there’s like this evolution, I think, of learning from one another as we go through.

Eva: And I hope it continues to make it richer, guys. And I just want to say it’s not that we’re asking for permission. That sounds really like a hierarchical comment.

Trevor: Exactly. But that’s how I saw it. That’s how I saw it.

Eva: Exactly. We’re just being sure that if I leave, you will not need me. Is it okay? Whereas I was like, “Why are you asking if it’s okay? I don’t understand.”

Trevor: I stored it as asking for permission when it was pointed out, and then I suddenly didn’t get it. But now I get it. I understand because the feeling is like, “Shit. I thought that I could, you know, I was free because I was working for this company. I can take my own decisions.” Yes. But—

Eva: Yeah. Yes. But yeah.

Lisa: Yeah. And then it makes me think about our colleague Diana, who really struggled when she joined. I mean, she had come from traditional companies and was saying things to me like, “So I can take as much holiday as I want, like more or less whenever I want.” And I was like, “Yeah, I mean, as long as you check that, you know, that things are covered, you can take what you need.” And she was like, “But, but, but really, I mean, is there a catch? Like, can I, or, you know,” it was really hard for her and me also in the beginning to be like, “Oh, I manage my own time and we have busy periods at Tuff and quiet periods.”

I felt really guilty in the beginning. Like if I wasn’t working nine to five, you know, if I had like a busy morning and then like had a nap in the afternoon, I’d be like, “Oh, I won’t tell anyone that I did that because I don’t want people to think I’m slacking off.”

And we had this conversation at our recent Tuff summit in August about work-life balance, which I thought was really interesting. And on LinkedIn, I shared about it, a lot of people resonated that in self-managing companies, weirdly, it doesn’t cure this challenge of burnout or people who work too hard. Like, even when you don’t have a boss, there’s this internal boss that many of us have to reckon with. Not all of us, but those of us who are like—it’s like the shadow side of what you were talking about Eva, like this commitment, being very committed and passionate that we also have to watch out for as a company, as a culture, that we also take breaks, that we renew ourselves, that we recover, and that we don’t accidentally reward or encourage that overworking culture, which is really challenging. It’s something that we’re trying to be more intentional about.

Kajsa: Yeah. I must say that that has been one of the hardest things to learn, to understand. And I’m employed. Many of—most of us are not—they’re self-employed—but I’m actually employed. And to get out of this nine-to-five mindset is—it’s been really, really hard. But it’s so great when you get over it. When you just—I know that I contribute and sometime—some days I work many, many, many hours and some days it doesn’t work to work many hours and I don’t have zero thoughts about that now.

But before, I used to write every quarter of an hour, “Oh, I need to”—you know, I was not as I am today. And that—it’s so much better for my entire life. So much more fun.

And then there’s this other part as you said, Lisa, that—and then we were talking about this with another colleague. It’s like Slack where we communicate. It’s like it’s more like that during the mornings. There’s not that much because people are delivering. And then suddenly comes alive around 5:00. And then from five to eight, it’s like questions and asking for things and things like this. And, yeah, then you would like not to have these questions. And sometimes you can postpone them till the day after, but it’s exactly the opposite. It’s like mornings are—yeah. You can go to the gym. You can go to IKEA. You can do all these things, but you know that probably you will need to be, you know, in Slack answering questions or requests in the afternoon. So it’s also being open to that and being okay with that and being able to manage that as you said. So taking time for yourself when you need that. And at the same time, you are committed and you need to be there and maybe answer things at 9:00 in the evening. So it’s also—

Trevor: I think I am very prone to overworking. I think Lisa you spoke about this a few times as well. And then you realize that in maybe a traditional organization, if they’re fairly benevolent, if a nice culture, then there’ll be someone, your boss maybe or your boss’s boss, who’ll tell you to stop working and just go, “Right, you’re done. Like you’re too tired or you need to look after yourself. Take some leave, or finish early,” or something like that.

And that’s not how it is here because we don’t have that kind of culture, and yet we’ve kind of recruited for people with this big commitment, big accountability. So I know for me, I love working, and so I can end up doing lots and lots and lots and lots of work. And it took me a while to adjust to this idea that if I was having a day where I wasn’t feeling it, I could just not do anything.

Whereas I think previously, because I’m so used to working, I would have then tried to fill that day with things that I can just about manage, even though my brain is not on form that day. So it’s a strange thing to then go, “Actually, I’m not gonna do anything today.” And again, I’m accountable for making that choice. I can’t just tell my boss and my boss makes it okay. I then have to go, “Right, what meetings do I have or what were people expecting from me today or do I need to do anything around that?” So I can just not do anything today and that will be okay if I’m accountable for it. That took me a long time to get my head around I think.

Lisa: Yeah. And I think in a—I think this is where our kind of adult-to-adult culture comes into play as well, because I was thinking about if we had brought that topic up at a team off-site, a kind of parental tendency might have been, you know, for the CEO or someone to have stepped in and be like, “Okay, we’re going to put a policy in place that you have to take this many days off,” or “we’re going to send that, we’re going to provide free yoga for everyone,” or “we’re going to give you mindfulness training” or, you know, which would be really well intentioned, but it wouldn’t shift this inner paradigm, this inner boss that we all have. Right?

So instead our way of approaching it is like that we have a conversation collectively. “Collectively, is there something we can agree to or commit to that would support us to each make sure that we’re taking the time we need to recover,” you know, or kind of reflecting individually about like, “What are my unhelpful mindsets? Or what are like unhelpful truths that I’ve decided about working at Tuff and let’s test them. Are they true or are they kind of fantasies?”

So it was a really interesting conversation. And also for me to notice that if someone—I think what’s interesting as we grow is that people come into Tuff who are different and challenge the culture in some way because they’re unique and they bring something. And then you always have this sort of like little crackle of disruption where the people who’ve been in Tuff longer are like, “Hang on a minute.”

But as you said, Eva, that brings something, a new dimension. And I think of our lovely colleague Vera, who is really much better than many of us at being boundaried and taking the time she needs. And sometimes that pushes my buttons because I can see that when I’m in that dark side as like “not committed” or like, you know, “I’m being a good girl and and she’s taking time off and like, that’s not fair” and rather than I can learn something from her ability to do that. Or if I, you know, if I have a pebble, well, I can give her feedback of course, but it’s interesting when someone comes in with another quality that initially, it’s like the immune system wants to reject it almost or see it as a threat. But to try and integrate that in some ways, you know, adds a lot.

Trevor: Perhaps that’s another dark side as well is that a lot of the ways in which Tuff work are kind of evolved in mutual agreements. They’re not always very clearly articulated that you can go, “Well, that’s how things work, and now I want to challenge that rule or something, and I want to get that rule changed.”

And so sometimes you sort of push at something and then nothing moves, and you’re not clear why, and you didn’t even maybe know you were pushing, but you tried to do something, say something, make something happen, or create something in a certain way, and you just have this sense that it’s not gonna happen. And then you don’t necessarily know how to take that forward because it’s this collective agreement that Tuff has got.

And it takes a very different skill set, I think, to notice that and then bring it up with someone or people or spend a bit more time thinking about “why is it that way” rather than being, at least for me anyway, being like, “I think I know the right way to do this. So why is it not being done the right way?” And then go, “Well, actually, maybe you’re bringing way too much to this, and maybe there’s a really good reason why implicitly they’ve closed ranks or, as you say, there’s this sort of fizzle of rejection. There’s probably a really good reason for it.” And until you get it, you can’t talk to the people that want it to stay the same way. And that’s, again, like, really different and a bit unclear, and it’s also okay.

Lisa: Yeah I really like this phrase. I think my impression is that in Sweden it’s maybe more of a common phrase but “making a guest appearance” that we’ve kind of used now as like a, again, like a kind of a code word or an agreement in Tuff that if you’re new to a project, for example, and the team has been working on that thing for a long time and you come in and go, “Hey, I think you should do it this way instead,” or “I have an idea” or whatever, that it’s much easier for those people who have been working on this for a long time to hear you without feeling criticized or, you know, like, “Well, you don’t know what you’re talking about” if you say first “You know I want to say something now and sorry if I’m making a guest appearance—you know tell me if I’m missing something—but can I share an observation or an idea that I have?”

So I really like that as like a little thing that you can do. It gives me permission sometimes to be like, “You might have been looking at this very question for like ten years. So forgive me if I’m making a guest appearance, but blah, blah, blah.”

Trevor: Yeah, that is so great. And also to say to someone “You might—I think you’re making a guest appearance now” and the person goes “Oh yeah I didn’t even bother to check if you’d looked at this before” or something like that—you know “I didn’t—I just kind of came blazing in.” And it’s quite a nice, and then the person can disagree and go, “No, no, I get that you’ve done all of this, but here’s the thing. Maybe I didn’t communicate it very well, maybe I didn’t say it.” So it’s not a way of blocking a contribution, but just a way of going, “I think we’ve thought about a lot of the things you’re talking about.”

And again, like, I don’t know, it doesn’t always need to be really deep and serious. We don’t need to explore it. These code words help us to take a shortcut to a thing that we’ve already spent time understanding. We know that people come in with assumptions. We know that people have often thought about things a lot before we come in. And so having that shortcut, I think, helps.

I have this truth that I’m really harmful, and I kind of boulder in and state these things like they’re true and maybe they’re not. So it completely takes care of that for me. “This could be a guest appearance, but.” Now I don’t have to worry because people can just go, “Yes, it’s a guest appearance.” I go, “Okay. So I can just step back out again, all right? Fair enough.”

Lisa: Yeah. Well, sometimes people say, “Yeah, it is a guest appearance, but we do also really want to hear if there are things that we haven’t thought of and stuff” and it takes care of something. Just the fact that you have said that makes it more able for me to listen to it.

Kajsa: I think maybe it’s a bit related, but something that is different from, with our organization and other organizations. I think that if someone comes with an idea and puts that on Slack, for example, “Well, I’m thinking we should do it like this,” and there’s, like, no answer, it just falls flat, then people will not try to like be superficially taking care of you politely. “Yeah sounds like a good idea but maybe not because we are you know we’re not doing that”—it’s just silence and this just falls flat and that is kind of—I think it could be a bit embarrassing, but it’s just the truth. So, yeah, I think that’s something that’s really different.

Lisa: Yeah. And then sometimes people bring that up as a moosehead like “I posted this thing and nobody said anything—do you think I’m stupid or that my ideas are”—“No we just didn’t think that was”—it could be—yeah that way as well.

Trevor: Yeah I wonder how many—in like maybe it’s a bit of a British thing too, this polite acknowledgement of a thing that “yeah possibly could be a good idea.” I wonder how many hours have been wasted because they sort of felt the need to encourage them like “we don’t want to dampen your enthusiasm so we’ll look after you by saying nice things.” And then that person’s enthusiasm doesn’t hear that there’s not really any genuine commitment. So they bowl along with the project for several hours because someone goes “why are you doing that?” And now I say out loud I’ve definitely done that. Because I’m so convinced that this is a brilliant idea that when people are nice enough about it I go “that’ll do, I’ll go for it.” Wasted hours.

Lisa: Yeah. So I’m thinking in sort of starting to round up our conversation, Tuff has been—I mean, we’ve been in this company for different amounts of years, but Tuff has a legacy of like more than twenty years of practicing self-management. So I wonder what each of you would say to listeners as like advice or wisdom for the journey, something to consider. Of course, there’s like no one right way of doing it, but what advice would you give to people listening who are exploring self-managing teams?

Trevor: I would say considering we are, I don’t know, in my estimation anyway, successful with very few structures, I would really encourage those people exploring self-management to be resistant to putting things in quickly to solve problems and try to then stay with the human component of why this thing doesn’t work or you know, why decisions aren’t being made or why things aren’t moving quick enough. Stay a lot longer with the human bit of that and try and work out why we as an interacting collective group of people are not making this work rather than jump to, “Okay. So what structure can we mutually agree on that will take care of this?”

I just think it makes the world complicated, and also you miss an opportunity to learn about yourself and your colleagues that could be hugely valuable, not just for solving this problem now, but for potentially paving the way for the organization in the future.

Lisa: No. I thought you guys didn’t agree. Because I’ve—I’ve landed with that silence we just spoke about.

Trevor: Yeah. Yeah. No. No. No. We’re in our heads thinking about what to say.

Eva: Exactly. We were thinking—okay. But I think my version is that, and maybe another version, but my version of that is if you are not able to trust the process, don’t get into this self-organized thing because you really need to have trust on the process. You need to trust that it’s gonna work. You need to—because if not, you’re questioning all the time and being angry with things that they are not working. And then it’s getting back to what you said, Trevor. It’s like, “Okay. We need to put a process or structure or something because it’s not working.” Not working.

Well, sometimes in this, I believe that it’s good that it’s not working. It’s good that we are in a breakdown. It’s good that it’s messy. It’s good that it’s whatever it is. And you need to trust that collectively we will solve that. And maybe it’s not gonna happen now because it needs, you know, some time to mature or to be even messier. So you need to be able to trust that. And if you are a hurry person, if you are just like, “Now fix that. Fix that. Fix that.”—it’s gonna be painful.

Kajsa: Yeah. I think—talk about everything and be humble and be real.

Lisa: What about you, Lisa? Yeah. What would I say? Yeah, I think, you know, this is episode 100 of this podcast. So I’ve talked to so many different organizations. And I think when I started this podcast, I think I had an idea that there were certain things that were universal in self-managing companies. Like, you know, you needed to do this and you needed to have this.

And the more people I’ve spoken to, the more I realized that there are so many—I mean, they’re self-organizing systems, they’re living systems. So they’re so unique and there is no—there’s no right way of doing anything. So how Tuff organizes and what we have chosen to prioritize is very different to what other organizations might choose to prioritize.

But I think what I believe we have to offer is if you think of development and an openness, psychological safety on a spectrum, organizations may not want to go as far as we have gone because we’ve gone pretty far. But I think there is something to learn about, you know, as all of you said, like talking about the difficult things to talk about, staying with the discomfort, sitting in the discomfort for a while, because I think as a culture globally, we’re so wired to avoid that.

But if we sit with that a bit and if we talk to each other, if we bring up those difficult things to talk about, if we listen to each other, it’s usually from that place that ideas emerge. And sure, if from that we have an idea of a structure or a process or a practice that would help us, then that is good. But I think that’s very different to, as you said, like quickly reaching for something convenient and hoping it’s gonna solve something. You know? Like, “Oh, we don’t have a feedback culture. Let’s use nonviolent communication and that will fix it.” And it’s like, “Well, guess what? People still feel uncomfortable to give each other feedback. That’s not going to go away because you’ve just grabbed a framework off a shelf.”

So let’s explore like, “What is it that stops us from giving each other feedback or what mindsets do we have about giving feedback?” Then we’ll really identify what’s getting in the way.

So is there anything that you would like to say that you would, if we finished the conversation now, you would regret you didn’t get to say?

Trevor: I guess I want to double down on Eva’s point there about like something about messiness and being okay with it and you know learning to sort of sometimes hold messiness for a bit and not run on. And I think that’s—I’m sort of constantly looking for a solution as most of us are, and I think it’s been so amazing to be at Tuff and kind of throw this messiness out and sometimes almost with an expectation “someone’s gonna fix this for me.” And then people just go, “Okay, great.” And that’s extraordinary, and I can’t help but feel it would also be valuable in every single self-managed organ—well, every organization, let’s be honest, every organization could do that in some version, whether they’re self-managed or not.

Eva: And for me, I think the last piece is and probably, again, works for all the companies, especially for Tuff, is it’s very important really like and to focus on yourself. So maybe there’s no structure or maybe there’s something wrong with that and maybe blah blah blah. And we usually look outside and complain about what’s outside.

And I think I believe that the key and it’s part of that development where all of us working with is like, look inside and just really see “What’s the interpretation I’m making about, you know, that, about me, about others. What’s the complaint I have? How I react?” And see if I can change that. So it’s much more—I would say in this sort of companies—there’s much more need of, you know, being aware of yourself and your being and how you show up and much more important than exactly the outside, you know, and what’s happening out there.

Kajsa: Yeah. Yeah. I think maybe good to post the question—why we do this. What’s it—why—what’s the point of, like, being this masochist people as we are? But I think that when we work on ourselves, it’s the common, you know, this cliche maybe. When we work on ourselves, we work on the world. And that’s the point, really. And that’s—if more people do that, then all the better.

Trevor: One more thing actually, and you probably edit this out, but I wanted to acknowledge you for reaching 100 episodes and that this podcast, I know, like, it’s really hard to do, and it’s really hard to stick with it and have the commitment, and you have managed to do it with, like, a constant curiosity and authenticity. And, you know, it’s not very adult-adult, but I’m in awe of you for having kept this going for so long. And I think it’s a brilliant achievement. And, you know, I hope you keep the passion to continue doing it for hundred, two hundred, three hundred episodes. Just think it’s brilliant.

Eva: Thank you.

Kajsa: Really amazing.

Lisa: Well, you—all of you. I really enjoyed this conversation and I learned a lot from it and I’m really grateful that you agreed to have this conversation. It’s really an honor to celebrate episode 100 with all of you. So thank you.

Trevor: Thank you.

Eva: Thanks for having us.