The Discovery Channel recently featured a program about a pride of fearsome lions. The documentary illustrated what happens when the leader is no longer able to preserve order and calm.
In one scene the lioness-leader of the pride is leading the hunt of a zebra. As she chases her prey, the frightened zebra jumps over a log at the very same time the lioness is trying to bring it down from behind. As they both leap, the zebra winds up violently kicking the lioness-leader in the head, inflicting a severe wound.
Over the next few weeks, the culture of the pride changes significantly. The lioness-leader becomes fearful and, because of the event with the zebra, shies away just at the moment of the kill. The pride gets visibly angry with her; they are hungry, and the lioness’s traumatic experience has demolished the familiar, effective structure of the pride. She is no longer securing food. Her fear and tentative behavior have created chaos and caused a dysfunctional team that is confused and threatened by starvation.
During times of chaos and confusion, leaders can either be peacemakers, which will bring a calm that pulls the team together, or they can let a “kick to the head” at a decisive moment cause them to pull back, which will cause disruption, loss of morale, and uncertainty.
In my work with clients, most of the questions I receive concern how to find the key that opens the door to a successful team. Often the organization is in turmoil. It needs peace. It wants teamwork to lead the way out and beyond the current situation.
Peacemakers encourage teamwork. They seek group dynamics that unleash the right kind of power and the right attitude to achieve the best results.
So many books, articles, and seminars are developed to help leaders understand how to build teams. It’s ironic that on a moment’s notice during a terrible crisis several people facing impossible odds came together and built a successful team.
In what the news headlines called “The Miracle at Quecreek,” nine miners, trapped for three days 240 feet underground in a water-filled mine shaft, “decided early on they were either going to live or die as a group.”
The fifty-five-degree water threatened to kill them slowly by hypothermia, so according to one news report, “When one would get cold, the other eight would huddle around the person and warm that person, and when another person got cold, the favor was returned.”
“Everybody had strong moments,” miner Harry B. Mayhugh told reporters after being released from Somerset Hospital in Somerset, Pennsylvania. “But any certain time maybe one guy got down, and then the rest pulled together. And then that guy would get back up, and maybe someone else would feel a little weaker, but it was a team effort. That’s the only way it could have been.”
They faced incredibly hostile conditions together, and they all came out alive together.
The Quecreek story pretty well illustrates ideal team dynamics. Being a contributor on an effective team and working together to accomplish a meaningful mission is a deep desire of many. It’s up to the peacemaking leader to coach that team…of so many dreams.