Well, welcome back everyone after another week of Corona fun. I hope everyone is washing their hands and practicing social distancing. If anything, here at the Acorn Blog, we want everyone to be safe and sound during this time.
In the first part of this blog, we talked about Project Aristotle with Google and the five factors that allow a team to function at it’s best. We left off with your leader, also having to show real interest in their team members. Remember, don’t fake it because your team will pick up on this. If you really don’t care about your team members and want to proceed to be the leader, then simply be upfront about this fact and don’t try and hide it. Your team will appreciate you being authentic about this, and they might want to still be apart of your team in the long run even though they shouldn’t.
Group norms
Simply put, group norms are your traditions in an environment that influences how everyone acts within the team. This goes both ways; having a safe or threatening culture will affect your team. How you run your group does make a difference.
Norms may relate to how people look, behave, or communicate with each other. Tossing a nerf ball around a circle of workers is perhaps a peculiar way to start a meeting, and it probably doesn’t contribute directly to achieving substantive goals. Still, this tactic has been implemented by many group leaders before meetings to create a sense of camaraderie.
Some norms relate to how a group will act, e.g., when and how often it will meet or how a meeting is conducted. Others have to do with the behavior of individual group members and the roles those members play within the group.
By defining what social behavior lies within acceptable boundaries, norms can help a group function smoothly and face conflict without falling apart (Hayes, p. 31)
Rules for how you’re going to conduct your meetings are very important to get your group on a sound footing. For your team, start with easy questions like Interrupting vs. speaking your mind and promoting active listening within the group. These are all fundamental things to consider in a group setting, but to get the best results, your team will depend on your decisions.
The how of the group and not the who
Now that you have your group norms set, let’s look at the individual players inside the team. In many business classes, an example is given, which would you rather have in your group? Five geniuses or five average people. Everyone usually jumps at the answer of the five geniuses, but this is, in fact the wrong answer. A team of average people will outperform the genius group every time. The reasoning behind this is because when you deal with brilliant people, they have been brought up knowing that they are smart. Over the years, in many cases, ego’s get developed, and a belief that each one of these brilliant people has the answer stops all discussion because each member feels their suggestion is correct and all others incorrect. A group of geniuses simply don’t play nice together. It’s a team of Me’s instead of a group of we’s. The correct answer is picking the team of average members. These team members will listen and contribute, along with play nerf ball at the beginning of a meeting with each other. Simply put, they play ball. (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself)
Team Cohesion, and backing your people (The great Balancing Act)
Team cohesion, motivation, and the types of motivation used to promote the “team” concept are paramount in being successful as individuals and as a team. Depending on the types of motivational strategies a leader utilizes, they can maximize team and individual performance, and by doing so, can promote team cohesion, overall team climate, and even goal setting. Whether a leader chooses speeches, or a specific type of coaching style all have a motivational factor for employees and the teams they are a part of. It is up to the leader to know their coaching philosophies, their groups, and individuals to make an educated decision on what motivational techniques would maximize performance.
If you’ve got the best people in the right positions, they will tell you what is needed and how to get there. If you don’t, chances are you are going nowhere. The one thing your team needs is backing from the leader. I’m sure many of us have worked on teams where the leader has “thrown someone under the bus” just to make themselves look better in the face of a bad result. You not only lose the respect of your team, but upper management also knows what the real story is. If upper management groups are OK with the leader laying blame on a team member to save himself, then this is a company you don’t want to be a part of, because these wrong actions are indicative of bad leadership in the company as a whole. Save yourself the headache and find a company that values its employees and most importantly, you.
Example of a good team
Across the US health care system, there is an increasing reliance on teams from many different specialties. Nursing, physical therapy, physicians, social work and general patient care. At the same time, medical errors are estimated to be “the third most common cause of death in the US,” and teamwork failures such as simple communication account for about 75 percent of these errors.
If these are correct results, then you would expect an outstanding hospital team to have fewer errors. This assumption is incorrect. Many studies have been made on error rates in hospitals, and the results are always good hospital teams have more errors than bad ones. The reasoning behind this is good teams don’t feel like mistakes would be held against them and thus are free to speak up and admit to errors made.
The culture at these hospitals promotes a feeling of safety when mistakes happen. This is not to say that the management looks the other way when major violations happen, which they do from time to time. The management team simply allows team members to speak up without reprisals as long as the result of the error isn’t catastrophic. Even then, the resulting error in these situations are more times than not, truthfully reported.
Other aspects of a good team are not blindly backing of supervisors simply because they are in charge. A lot of the time these supervisors are the cause of bad teams and bad decisions. Other aspects which you should avoid are, no closed-door criticism about specific team members. If you have an issue with a member, bring it up with that person away from the team setting. You are allowing members to speak up with no reprisals, allowing others to fail and respecting different opinions. If you follow these guidelines, you will be well on your way to creating a good team.
Psychological safety
What is Psychological safety? It is where team members feel free to take a risk and be vulnerable in front of each other. If in a brainstorming session, team members are throwing out ideas, you don’t need someone shouting out, “that’s stupid” or saying that they’re playing “Devil’s Advocate.” Using this term is another way for a person to attack someone’s idea without looking like a bully. Using the term Devil’s Advocate, they feel this somehow protects them under the auspices of looking out for the company, when in fact they are simply “bomb-throwing” and trying to stop the flow of ideas.
Now that you have Psychological safety, the next step is to foster a behavior of togetherness in your group. To accomplish this, everyone must partake in group discussions. This is a no “wallflower” zone, and if you were invited into the group, there must have been a reason. Everyone must talk and present ideas to the group. No exceptions.
During every meeting, everyone is allowed to speak freely with no criticism’s or reprisals from anyone. People are free to question any point but aren’t allowed to undermine someone intentionally. Lastly, remember that enthusiasm always trumps loyalty norms. Someone who is excited to be in a group will always bring better results and ideas than someone merely looking to bolster their position with the boss by volunteering for a group for recognition sake.
I know that talking in groups makes a lot of people uneasy. One way to alleviate the nervousness that most people have about speaking in front of groups is trying this exercise. Before each meeting, allow 5 minutes for someone in the group to tell them about themselves. They can’t talk about what they do at the company or their education, simply who they are as a person. They can bring in photos, or anything they feel gives insight into who they are. Everyone has a unique story and being allowed to tell this in a group, is a great way to create togetherness. Every member in the group will do this step in the following weeks. Again, everyone has a turn to talk and present ideas.
Group culture trumps personal needs
Just when you think you have this all down, there is always an example to throw these ideas on their head. Just remember you can break any of the small rules to conform to your group, you just can’t break the fundamentals that drive the group.
Now let’s look at an example of someone who does it a little differently. Lorne Michaels, the creator of Saturday Night Live, was quoted as saying, “there is no I in team. My goal was the opposite of that. All I wanted were a bunch of I’s. I wanted everyone to hear each other, but no one to disappear into the group.” This group breaks the rules by having individuals being front and center in the group setting. The “I” in this case, trumps the “we.” Just remember there is a madness to his methods. (Ah…ya).
In SNL, Lorne Michaels set his teams up to compete against each other, to push them to be more creative. He wanted people to take chances, and because these were his rules which he never broke, he created his own culture within the group. This is how he created psychological safety for his groups and the success of SNL is because of Lorne Michaels and his team-building prowess.
Common traits in great groups
If you want a good group, then here are some characteristics you should strive to achieve. All your team members should have high social sensitivity or the ability to read people. These people can gather information just by deciphering body language and actions. Because of this, good teams have more women involved with them. After all, communication is the primary goal in group dynamics, and women are usually better in this area, not to stereotype.
You don’t need to like everyone in the group but must show respect toward all members. In life, like in groups, everyone will not like everyone assembled in a team, but it’s how the group deals with this which is critical. All team members must treat each other with respect and be concerned with how others feel in the group.
Other key traits are:
- Empathy or the ability to understand and share the feelings of others
- Good group interaction
- Collective intelligence that adds synergy to a team
- Group members work is important to them
- The work must be personally meaningful for members
- Everyone must have clear goals and roles within the group
- Your group must depend on one another (If you say you will do something, everyone knows you will follow through)
- People who give over control must trust the group and have Psychological safety within it
If you read 100 different books on how to create a great team, I’m sure you would get a thousand combinations of what works. In this blog, I put together information that I have compiled over my last 25 years of work. The information I obtained, were both from books and observing how great teams work together in real life. There is no magic bullet, and following my suggestions doesn’t guarantee success. I simply wanted to present information which rings true to me. As the old saying goes, practice makes perfect. Now let’s go out and start creating great teams.
If there is anything that you have found that works and I have left it out, please let me know what it is. All my list are works in progress, and I’m continually tweaking and changing things up, always looking for the best answers. Teams are so important in today’s business environment, and I hope I’ve presented some information that is useful in this endeavor.