Whenever I am asked to speak on the topic of teamwork, I start with a game. My family loves puns and anagrams are one of our favorites. Anagrams are played by taking a word or phrase and rearranging the letters to make other words. No jargon, no proper names, no abbreviations, and no words of less than three letters.
On a flipchart I write the words One Audacious Claim and yell, “Come on!” Each person has 60 seconds to write as many words as they can. At the end of 60 seconds, the people in the room have formed their words, some as few as 5 or 6 and others as many as 15 or 16.
Then I put everyone into groups of four, have them choose a recorder, and repeat the process with the same three words. Within 60 seconds, these small groups have reached 30, 40, even 50 words of One Audacious Claim.
This is living proof of the bold statement made by the great Patrick Lencioni in The five dysfunctions of a team,
“Do not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare. A friend of mine, the founder of a company that grew to $1 billion in annual revenue, best expressed the power of teamwork when he once said to me, ‘If you could get everyone in an organization pulling in the same direction, , could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.
WHAT IS A TEAM?
Most teams, however, are a team in name only, not a fully functioning workgroup. What is a team? A team is a small group of 3-12 people who work together and do things, decide things, recommend things, or execute things that actively experience these four dynamics:
T – RELATIONSHIPS OF TRUST
The first dynamic that makes a team a team is the quality of the relationship that exists between its members. Real teams know each other well and trust each other explicitly. This takes place over time as each member, in her own unique way, connects with the other members of the group and discovers that they are people she respects and believes in. This cannot be forced or the power of teamwork will be nullified from the start.
What many teams do, instead of spending the time to build this type of unit, is settle for the unit’s evil twin: uniformity. Unity, unlike uniformity, is forged through the rigors of discussion, dialogue, and even debate. No problem is off the table with trustworthy teams like this. Team members are open about their mistakes and weaknesses, ask for help when they need it, and take feedback from others without becoming defensive.
E – ESTABLISHED PURPOSE, VALUES AND GOALS
Every pilot who takes an airplane into the sky, commercial or private, files a flight plan. The flight plan clearly states where that plane is going, how long they intend to be in the air, and when they are going to land. You can’t take off without one.
Dynamic teams do the same. They define their core purpose, that is, WHY they exist as a group. Along with that purpose, they identify the core values of the group, or HOW they will behave. Then, with those two in place, they set clear goals to measure their progress, i.e. WHERE they are going.
Are things happening that can throw you off your plan? Surely. No one can perfectly predict the weather or the future. Pilots recognize this and are always making mid-flight corrections as they fly. Dynamic teams use their “flight plan” to fly, execute against it along the way, and make changes when necessary to get them to their intended destination.
A – ACTIVE PARTICIPATION OF ALL MEMBERS OF THE GROUP
The third dynamic of effective teams addresses how group members function when they are together. Two A’s really come into play here, HASall group members HASactively participating in the discussion, making decisions and doing what the group has set out to achieve.
Please note that this is not meequal share of mevery member of the group. That would also spell the word, but incorrectly, TEEM. Everyone in a work group will not have the same experience, the same education, or the same talent for a particular project. As a result, the ball, so to speak, does not need to be distributed identically. But for a team to be a team, everyone must have a part of the action that works best for them, one dribbling, one passing, one shooting and one rebounding.
Here are some questions to ask about your team in this regard.
When topics are discussed, does everyone have a chance to express what they think? When a decision is made, is everyone asked for their perspective before the decision is finalized? When jobs are assigned, does everyone have a significant part of the project? These are just some of the ways in which the active participation of all group members is ensured.
M – MUTUAL RESPONSIBILITY
Who is the leader of your team? Don’t answer too quickly because it’s a trick question.
Yes, almost all teams have a formal leader. But teams will only go so far when they depend on him or her. Teams that truly perform at the highest level of effectiveness have freed themselves from their reliance on a formal leader and function in a zone of mutual responsibility, with each team member taking responsibility for team performance as seriously as if they were the formal leader. . In fact, if you were a fly on the wall at a team meeting that had grown to this point, you wouldn’t be able to tell who the formal leader of the group really was.
Competitive bicycle racing has a word for this dynamic: pace line.
A pace line occurs when riders ride in a straight line with one rider in the lead and the rest falling behind. That lead position takes the most effort, but after a few miles the lead rider slides to the back of the line and another rider leads the pack. In this way, the pace line shares the lead, conserves everyone’s energy and delivers better performance. Teams with mutual accountability experience the same as the answer to the question “Who is the leader of your team?” it really becomes irrelevant.
HERE IS ANOTHER BOLD CLAIM
Drawing on decades of consulting in the field of organizational performance, Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith echo Patrick Lencioni’s earlier point in their best-selling book The wisdom of teams, “We believe that teams—real teams, not just groups that management calls ‘teams’—should be the basic unit of performance for most organizations, regardless of size. In any situation that requires real-time blending Given multiple skills, experiences, and judgments, a team inevitably performs better than a collection of individuals operating within combined job roles and responsibilities.” It’s how to win at anagrams and how to dominate the market.