Ron’s Short Review: Yes, you will enjoy this more if you’re a Michigan fan but Bo Schembechler was a great coach and leader and his leadership lessons are timeless. Even if you’re green or scarlet I still think you’ll enjoy this one.
Well, it’s not actually a disease so there is no cure. However, there is an antidote.
I was with my oldest friend the other day. We’ve known each other since we were born so there are some very old memories hanging around.
One of those memories involves an ancient dam that held back the river in the small town where we grew up. One summer day as we were roaming through town looking for something interesting to do when we decided to work our way across this ancient dam. There was a catwalk from one side of the river to the other but it was not reliable and certainly wasn’t fully in place across the entire river. But we headed across anyway and either through bravery or stupidity (most like the later) we worked our way across some very precarious sections as we watched the water rapidly cross the top of the dam and cascade down to the river below.
When we returned home that evening the natural question first asked by our parents was “What have you been doing?” Probably because we were still a bit excited about accomplishing the goal, we freely told tales of conquering our fear and achieving the goal of crossing the river. With open jaws and terrified looks on their faces one of the parents finally said “Did you ever stop to think? Do you know how stupid that was?” Well, there it was; both the disease of stupidity and the antidote of stopping to think.
But I was a young teenager at that point, certainly I’ve become wiser through the years. But, it’s amazing to me how many corporate teams I work with seem to exhibit that same level of teenage stupidity, not stopping to think.
Because of the pace and globalization of today’s businesses, there it a belief that we must decide quickly in order to survive. But quick deciding is a relic of the industrial age. The banner of the industrial age is quicker, better, cheaper. But that only works when your future is clearly defined and the path is known. Then you can work harder and be smart enough to beat the competition by being quicker, better, cheaper. But through the information age and in particular as we move into the conceptual age, we’re often trying to see around corners and over horizons. This takes learning and working with perspectives. Today we need to stop and think. We need an attitude of quick learning leading to good decisions.
Quick learning environments require us to be open to perspectives and opposing thoughts and beliefs. It takes a great team environment in order to work through opposing views and build to commitment of a unified direction. It requires that we stop and think.
Move out of the quick deciding world and into the quick learning world. You’ll make better decisions if you stop to think.
Leaders at all levels grapple with the challenge of getting people to pool their talents and work with, not against, one another.
Often frustrating to leaders is a team that consists entirely of “stars” who can’t or won’t play together as a team to “win the championship.” In an era of knowledge workers, leaders find themselves with nonfunctioning teams of all-stars who can easily undermine them. (Peter Drucker defines knowledge workers as those who “know more about their job than their boss does and in fact know more about their job than anybody else in the organization.”)
Chuck Daly, the first coach of America’s Dream Team, found himself needing to take basketball players like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird and build a team of champions, not just a group of incredible superstars. Coach Daly used all his coaching experience, leadership ability, and basketball knowledge to mold this group of all-stars into a team.
You will see a team of professionals in the Olympics again,” said Daly. “But I don’t think you’ll see another team quite like this. This was a majestic team.
Coach Daly could not mold these incredibly talented basketball stars into the successful team they became by keeping the focus on himself. On the other hand, he could not surrender the basic basketball concepts he knew would help the team win a gold medal. He was a builder and a success at developing teams.
Teamwork doesn’t just happen. A winning team is not formed by a miracle of nature. You cannot just throw people together (even knowledge workers or pro basketball stars) and expect them to function as a high-performance team. It takes work. And at the core of team building is the desire to develop people and create a calm environment in which productive growth and seasoning can occur.
When leaders tolerate poor teams or even promote them through their own leadership style, organizations find themselves misaligned. Employees use this out-of-plumb structure just like children who play off each quibbling parent to get their own way. Leaders need to stop this behavior and get teams realigned. Leaders sometimes empower direct-reports to perform tasks or projects that are actually opposed to each other.
When team members come to me, they also have questions. Typically, the questions team members ask are about themselves: “How do I deal with difficult team members?” or “How do I get heard?” These are self-directed questions. The team members are concerned about themselves—getting heard, getting ahead, getting along, and getting their jobs done.
In most cases the leader has not developed the team to the point of understanding the full value of synergy. The team members do not understand that the sum of their collective output will be greater than the work they could do individually.
Worse, many executive teams are not convinced that synergy can happen at the leadership level.
It falls on leaders to get teams excited about working together—about creating synergy. Many of the team members’ questions and wants can be overcome when they feel the power of working together and achieving the goals of the team.
Ron’s Short Review: Maybe the most profound book I’ve read in a long time. Goes a long way in explaining the cause of poor leadership and teamwork (as well as government, education and parenting). It will take me a while to unpack all that is contained in this book but it really gets at the core of many issues.
Ron’s Short Review: Fantastic book that turns the noun “team” into the verb “teaming.” Great concept. Our corporations today need to be teaming on almost all fronts. It’s more than building great static teams (still needed). Teaming as an attitude is what creates the greater impact.
I’m continuing my series on an in-depth look at a wonderful little book that’s twenty years old this year. The title is “Management of the Absurd” by Richard Farson. You may want to consider dropping back and reading the previous blogs about ABSURD! I think it will put each new one in great context.
“The notion that people need to communicate more is perhaps the most widely accepted idea in management, indeed in all human relationships. Whether it’s called counseling, team building, conflict resolution, or negotiating, it boils down to one idea – that if we talk it over, things will get better.”
I just finished another Culture Survey’s with a client. (Actually I dealt with three client surveys over the last six weeks.) There are a couple of items that always get low scores on every company’s survey and one of them is the need for more communication.
Unfortunately, most corporate leaders respond to the noted lack of communication with more information. Seldom do people want more information. Every organization and person I know, including myself is overrun with information. We carry around the knowledge (and information) of man in our hand in a device we ludicrously call a phone when it uses about 0.001% of its capability to provide phone service. What we don’t carry around with us is the wisdom of man.
People don’t want more information; they want more meaning. What does this mean? How should we interpret these numbers? Give us meaning. Tell us stories. Help us understand.
Our author says:
“Almost all of this information is quantitative rather than qualitative and is of little use to top managers, who are dealing with predicaments that seldom yield to logical analysis. What these executives require is more likely to come from the advice of their colleagues than from comprehensive displays of data.”
Simon Sinek notes that great leaders inspire action by starting with Why! If you haven’t seen his video check out YouTube for “Why, How, What” or Simon Sinek below. Why starts with meaning. People are seldom interested in what you do but they are often interested in why you’re doing it.
The more we communicate, the less we communicate. The more with inspire with meaning and helping people understand why, the more we communicate.
To have a great organization, integrity must be widespread. It won’t do to be a saintly leader of highest integrity if the rest of the team consists of liars, backbiters, and thieves. Integrity must exist from top to bottom.
As leader, you are the key. If you are a person of integrity, you will be trusted, and “trust has been shown to be the most significant predictor of individuals’ satisfaction with their organization.”
Integrity and trust are inseparable—one cannot exist without the other. According to Charles O’Reilly and Karlene Roberts,
Leaders who build trusting relationships within their team are willing to consider alternative viewpoints and to make use of other people’s expertise and abilities. They feel comfortable with the group and are willing to let others exercise influence over group decisions. In contrast, managers in a distrustful environment often take a self-protective posture. They’re directive and hold tight the reins of power. Those who work for such managers are likely to pass the distrust on by withholding and distorting information.
In a research study several groups of business executives were asked to be involved in a role-playing exercise. The groups were given identical factual information about a difficult policy decision, and then they were asked to solve a problem related to that decision. Half of the groups were briefed to expect trusting behavior from the members of their group; the other half were told to expect untrusting behavior (“You cannot openly express feelings or differences with members of your group”).
After thirty minutes of discussion, each group member as well as those who had observed the role playing completed a questionnaire. The responses were in harmony with each other: The discussions among members in the high-trust group were significantly more positive than the discussions among members of the low-trust group. In fact, people in the low-trust group who tried to be open and honest were virtually ignored. Hostility was caused by a mere suggestion, and it quickly spread throughout the group. The people in the low-trust groups realized that the lack of trust kept them from high achievement. They did not feel free to be vulnerable due to the actions and rejection of other group members.
Here are some findings on the high-trust group:
- Members were more open about their feelings.
- Members experienced greater clarity of thinking.
- Members searched for more alternative courses of action.
- Members reported greater levels of mutual influence on outcomes.
The high-trust group opened the gate of personal vulnerability, and the result was a better team and a model of integrity-based leadership.
When people do not trust one another, it is difficult for the organization to succeed and for the people within the organization to feel completely fulfilled. People who feel trusted and who trust their leaders are more satisfied, and their work environment is less stressful. There exists a feeling of openness and confidence and a greater ability for people to believe they can take risks.
Source: MartialArtsNomad.com, Creative Commons
I recently started working with a new leadership team and I was interviewing each member to get a feel for the current conditions on the team. While they all spoke of how nice it was to work for this company and with this team, several of them said something to the effect that “we just haven’t been able to have a good fight yet.” I don’t think anyone was itching for a fight but they were longing for the tough debates about either controversial issues or issues where there seemed to be lack of alignment. Soon after that interview an interesting article popped up on LinkedIn written by Dr. Travis Bradberry, author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0. Dr. Bradberry starts his article with “When you’re a nice person, conflict can be a real challenge.” What really made me smile was his next line, “Not that mean people are any better at conflict, they just enjoy it more.” I like working with nice people but I really enjoy working with nice people who are really good at conflict.
Conflict is a needed ingredient
On high performance teams, conflict is a needed ingredient. I’m talking about conflict of ideas, experiences, assumptions, outlooks, beliefs, etc. It’s the richness of diversity of thought that is necessary for teams to become high performance teams. But diversity without well managed conflict will only lead to the splintering of teams into different camps.
Many of Dr. Bradberry’s suggestions are useful:
Consider the repercussions of silence
Often it just seems easier to be quiet and not bring up your objections or different point of view. However, not bringing them up is a decision in itself. You’ve just traded off the cost of dealing with it now vs the cost that will come with the ramifications down the road. The later costs are always higher than the present ones.
Don’t speak in absolutes
I’ve seen this one escalate arguments quickly. “You always” or “You Never” seem to trigger primal reactions in us that will lead to and grow a fight quicker than almost any other response.
Ask good questions until you get the heart of the matter
One of the books that recently went up on my reading list is “The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More and Change the Way you Lead Forever”. Using good questions is the best way to lead and deal with conflict. Stay curious my friend.
Dr. Bradberry includes several other suggestions that you may want to dig into. But I’ll close this blog with a thought from Dr. Scott Peck in his book “The Road Less Traveled.” His belief is that at the root of mental illness is the avoidance of pain and suffering. You may avoid the pain and suffering in the moment but if you can’t have that good fight, it will lead to a highly dysfunctional team rather than a high performance team.
As reported in the New York Times recently, Google embarked on an effort to build the perfect team. And as Google would be prone to do, they began to collect data in search of a pattern. As one participant stated, if anyone is good at recognizing patterns it’s Google. I don’t think there’s any argument about that.
However, after collecting data on hundreds of teams the first problem they ran into is that they couldn’t find a pattern. Or more accurately they found too many patterns which is just as much of a problem as finding none at all. So the search continued.
In the end they did find two very interesting correlations that seemed to be present on every good team. Not surprisingly those two elements were trust and respect. The two of them together formed an environment that has been labeled ‘psychological safety.’ If the team members feel psychologically safe because trust and respect has been built, the team will become a high performing team. (Tweet this)
Another pattern that began to emerge however was the productivity of these teams over multiple problems and projects. Teams that fell short on psychological safety didn’t seem to perform well at any kind of problem. Conversely, teams that exhibited psychological safety seemed to perform well no matter the nature of the problem. So the one element that people most often assume to be a needed ingredient, subject matter experts, didn’t seem to make any difference if there was no trust or respect.
Now, here’s the part I enjoyed. The internal name for the effort was called the Aristotle Project. One of the foundational structures that I always introduce to the teams I work with is Aristotle’s Levels of Happiness. The fourth and highest level describes the five things needed for great team work. In Aristotle’s word they include: Truth, Love, Purpose, Beauty and Unity. Every team needs a purpose but to accomplish that purpose they must be able to share and speak the truth, do it in a loving respectful way, in the most beautiful and elegant form possible and finally reaching a commitment of unity. Without those elements a psychologically safe environment doesn’t exist.
Although I’m glad they actually made the effort, had they simply started with what Aristotle knew they could have saved a lot of effort in figuring out what makes great teams.
2015 is an anniversary year for me. 25 years in the consulting business, 15 of those years as Team Leadership Culture (TLC).
Someone suggested that I write the “25 things I’ve learned in 25 years!” Sounds like a great idea.
#1 thing I’ve learned in 25 years of consulting:
Hit the Sweet Spot!
If you’re a golfer (or at least someone who enjoys the game regardless of skill level like I am), you know that when you hit the sweet spot of the club face, wonderful things happen. The ball tends to sore long and straight and you’re usually rewarded by hitting at or near your target. The other thing that golfers experience is that when you do hit the sweet spot, there is this wonderful feeling that it was almost effortless. There was no clank of the club hitting the ball and no vibration sent up through the shaft upon impact. Just a nice smooth striking of the ball in a pure form that feels wonderful.
Hitting the sweet spot in business is much the same. It feels good, things seem to be working in harmony and we create a trajectory that tends to be long and straight. Wonderful.
But the real question is “So, what is that sweet spot?” To me it has become abundantly clear over the last 25 years.
That’s the sweet spot.
Again with the golf analogy: as I’ve observed my game through the years I began to realize that on my poor days I only have one (and sometimes none) aspect of my game working, driver, irons or putter. On my good days I seem to have two of the three working. But as I look back as my most successful rounds, all three aspects were working on that given day. Business is much the same.
At every company I work with I can see patterns related to how many “cylinders” the company is hitting on. As I’m writing this I can see very clearly in my mind one company in particular. The individual leadership in many instances seems to be very solid and up to the challenge. This company has a deep culture that has been in place for many years and drives their performance. But as I look back over the years there seemed to be a particular turning point when team work began to fade. Individual success, loyalty to a particular leader, unit and division success rather than whole company success began to be the measured standard. Team work simply seemed to fade away over time.
In decades past it didn’t seem to make much difference. Success always came. Conditions in the market place could always be overcome or exploited. They were the king of the hill and were reward for being on top. But, in today’s fast paced, every changing world, companies are finding that they need to be quick and nimble. Only team oriented companies can respond quickly with nimbleness. Great leadership and deep cultures alone will not survive. All three, Team, Leadership and Culture, are required to survive in today’s world.
Well, number one of the 25 things I’ve learned over 25 years seemed to come easily. I’ll have to think about the next 24. But as I do, I’ll share them with you.
Ron’s Short Review: General McChrystal really nails this one and helps us see why the ONLY way we’ll experience success in today’s fast changing world is to build great teams. A must read.
Source: BiblioArchives, Creative Commons
A top NFL quarterback said today (commenting on their perfect season so far)…
“Winning shelters a lot of things we’re doing wrong.”
That one really hit home for me. I see this so often in the corporate world. When things are going even reasonably well there just doesn’t seem to be the will power to handle the tough issues. All too often leaders simply agree to disagree which drives deep wedges down through the organization (for more on that thought – see Consensus: The Split at the Top).
That doesn’t seem so hard, just stop agreeing to disagree and solve you’re differences. But it sure is when things are going well. Everyone feels entitled. Their division or team is working well and hitting the numbers. What they’re really saying is that… “Until I’m failing (or at least struggling) you can’t make me change the way I’m being successful just because it’s not working for someone else.”
Here’s where the game of football makes it easier to see. In football you know whether you’re winning or losing after each series of plays. It becomes more obvious after each quarter. And in 60 minutes you get your final score card. It’s obvious and it’s quick. Not so much in the corporate world. You may go years before you actually get that concrete score that says you’re winning or losing. Or at least that’s the way it used to be. Not anymore. I’ve seen some of my corporate clients suffer great change in fortunes in a matter of few years and in some cases a matter of a few quarters.
- Mergers and acquisitions that turn sour very quickly.
- Putting off investing in new products or markets for too long.
- Not building a culture of innovation or unwilling to cannibalize their own product or market because of the success of the existing product.
I don’t need to invent the list, you can read about it almost every day in business topics on the internet, magazines, newspapers or books.
What I do see consistently through it all is a lack of willingness to put in the time, energy and pain to actually build a team.
A team that trusts each other.
A team that listens and learns from each other.
A team that is willing to take chances and go out on a limb with each other.
A team that is willing to challenge each other in a trusting way.
This stuff is hard work. It doesn’t happen easily or naturally. Those leaders who are unwilling to tackle this issue, especially when things are going well, will surly see the painful consequences.
“This team is tremendously tough, we rely on each other. We’re a ‘Band of Brothers’ when we go on the road, and we know that if you give us one inch we are going to take it. We’re a ‘Band of Brothers,’ and I trust these boys to a ‘T,’ and we prove it every time we get out on the field.”
Sorry, another football quote. This one by James Ross a linebacker for the Michigan Wolverines. Many of these guys have played together for two or three years. But under their new head coach, they’ve become a team.
Building teams makes a difference. Building a team helps you survive when things aren’t going so well. Building a team doesn’t allow you to agree to disagree when things are going well.
Success camouflages a lot of bad things. – Team Genius