Tag: teamwork

The step teams forget

Anyone who knows me (or at least reads this blog) knows that group work is something that can destroy my soul. Part of that is due to my introverted tendencies, part of is it my control issues (self-awareness will set you free), but I think a big part of it is how ridiculously ineffective it can be. I mean…picking a team name alone takes a good 20 minutes of ideas and recriminations.

Collaboration is good. Hopelessly stumbling through a forced group activity is excruciating – and is not very good business.

The reality is, teamwork IS a vital component of work. None of us can be successful by ourselves. We rely on the expertise, time and effort of those around us. Different tasks and different projects require teams to come together and break apart all the time. Remember Tuckman’s stages of group development?  With the pace some businesses run, there often isn’t even time to name all four, let alone move through them. And it’s exactly this frenetic pace that can sabotage the success of teams.

You’ve probably noticed that some teams are remarkably successful and others are a trainwreck from the first meeting. And while there are many variables that factor into the success or failure of a group, there is one thing teams can do shift the odds in their favor:

Talk about how the team will work with each other.

Im-not-bossy

Think of it as establishing the rules of engagement – how you’ll communicate, how you’ll make decisions, how you’ll disagree with each other, how you’ll resolve conflict. Everytime I see a team take as little as 5 or 10 minutes to have a quick conversation about this, I have seen that team do well.

My belief in the importance of this step  is solidified whenever I see teams go head-to-head in some way. What follows are two examples – one from real life, and another from “reality” TV:

Real Life: I’ve facilitated a team-building/communication exercise a number of times that involves the recreation of a Tinker Toys sculpture. Each member on the team is only allowed to do a specific thing in this exercise and talk to only certain people. It’s quite convoluted feeling and teams get frustrated because the person who can see EVERYTHING is not allowed to share anything – they can only answer yes or no questions. The twist is that anyone on the team at any time can call a team meeting so they can talk about HOW the team is working together. Every single time I’ve facilitated this exercise, the team who takes the time to establish – and review – how they will work together successfully completes the sculpture. The team that does not do this descends into frustration and passive-aggressive sabotage.

Reality TV: I absolutely adore Face Off, a special effects makeup competition show that is now, sadly, ended. Depending on the season, the challenges change week to week in being either individual or team competitions. Sometimes the teams are chosen, but more often than not, they are randomly assigned. Time and again, the teams that take a few minutes at the beginning to establish how they’ll make decisions and are intentional about sharing their thought process out loud so the others understand it win the challenge. It shows in the final product.

While both of these examples are from an artificial environment, I have seen this play out in business projects time and time again. Think about the BEST project you’ve ever been a part of. chances are you had clarity in communication cadence, clearly defined decision-making authority, and the understanding that disagreements could be aired in team meetings without people taking it personally.

 

So the next time you find yourself on a team – ad hoc or otherwise – focus on the step that will make the biggest difference.

And no…picking a team name doesn’t fit that bill.

 

Take a chance on talent (from #SHRM17)

[This post first appeared on the SHRM Blog on June 19, 2017]

The Monday of any SHRM conference is usually jammed packed and high energy. It’s the first full day of sessions. People are excited to check out the sessions they mapped out for the day, and they aren’t yet exhausted from talking to the 18,000 attendees at #SHRM17.

One of the themes I noticed in the sessions I attended – whether it was Laszlo Bock’s general session or Jennifer McClure’s excellent session on disrupting HR – centered around taking a chance on talent. They challenged HR to stop putting up so many artificial barriers to hiring the best performers; you know, barriers like degree requirements or minimum years of experience. These barriers only serve to weed out people who may have excellent potential, ensuring you hire people who were successful in one system but not necessarily in yours.

This concept most likely rubs a lot of HR professionals the wrong way. After all, minimum qualifications are the bread and butter of job postings everywhere (particularly in the public sector and highly regulated industries). But research is beginning to support this stance. Recently, Ernst and Young announced they would no longer require degrees as entry criteria because their research showed a degree was NOT a predictor of success at their organization. Other organizations, like Xerox, found that experience didn’t matter either. It was better to build than buy, because work will outpace skills at a faster pace and you better be able to train your folks up if you want to stay competitive.

I like this trend. I hate artificial barriers in hiring, and have often said some of my best hires were people I hired on potential rather than track record. One of these people is sitting on a panel at this very conference.  Sam joined my team with limited experience in learning and development. He had been working for a bank and had made some job aids…and that’s about it. But he clearly had an eye from problem solving, a creative mind, and a work ethic like no other. I always asked candidates to prepare a presentation on leadership for my hiring process, and Sam’s was incredibly well-researched, coherent, interesting, and definitely helped the audience learned. So I hired him. And he was amazing.  Today, Sam is the Director of Training at Chipotle – a role he created from nothing after starting with them as a contractor.

If I had followed the job description and minimum requirements, I never would have hired Sam. I shudder to think that I probably wouldn’t have been allowed to hire Sam if anyone really looked closely at his background. And that would have been a damn shame because I would have missed out on a chance to watch a person find their path and become a success. (As you can tell, I’m ridiculously proud of Sam and try not to embarrass him, but I did it anyway, so there.)

So if you take anything back with you to your workplace, take the idea that it’s time to stop putting ridiculous requirements on your job descriptions. Challenge your hiring managers on their desire for degrees, certifications, and years of experience. Point-factoring isn’t how we do comp anymore – it shouldn’t dictate how you define a job. If you don’t push back, if you don’t consider potential and growth, you risk missing out on some incredible hires.

Go out there and find your Sam. And prepare to be amazed.

The world IS wide enough

I am an unabashed Broadway nerd. I’m not the most knowledgeable, and I have some very controversial views on Cats (Spoiler Alert: I can’t stand it.), but what I lack in knowledge, I more than make up for my love of certain shows. And one of my greatest loves is Hamilton. (Going out on a limb there, I know.)

The show overflows with themes, just pick one – love, ambition, politics, the disconnect between men who cried freedom but not really for all. In relistening to the soundtrack recently, another theme really stood out to me – the idea that there is enough room for more than one success story.

Too many of us think the only way for one person to rise is for another person to fall. That the key to protecting what you have gained is to ensure no one else has that same chance. This can be especially true among groups who have historically struggled to gain power – women, minorities, LGBTQ, the poor, the undereducated, the disadvantaged. 

I watch the dialogue happening in our country today and I’m struck by this theme returning again and again. And it troubles me because it seems we are approaching success like a zero-sum game, which is bad for society at large. Fair isn’t equal…but do we really think a zero-sum game is fair?

We see this play out on a smaller scale in our workplaces. We make some strides in diversion, but fall down with inclusion. We talk about “culture fit” without acknowledging it could easily be code for “look, think, and BE like me.” We subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) place a limit on how many of the “other” are allowed to be successful, and we create a system that ensures the few “other” who do succeed participate in keeping the new status quo to protect what little gains they’ve achieved.

How did we get here? And more importantly, how do we move on from here?

Maybe it’s as simple as realizing the world IS wide enough; that success is NOT a zero-sum game; that, in fact, when we support each other and help each other succeed, we raise ALL ships. We need to celebrate the honestly gained success of others, not knock them down. We need to stop comparing ourselves to an impossible standard we see online because so much of it is a lie anyway. We need to set a path that makes sense for us, and then support others who are seeking their own path.

At the recent WorkHuman conference, Former First Lady Michelle Obama and Steve Pemberton spoke about the Maasai tribe’s custom of asking not “how are you?” but “how are the children?” In their culture, if the children are well, then everyone is well. This resonated with me (and not because I like children – I’m not exactly maternal). It resonated because it’s another way of saying, “The world is wide enough.” Give every child a chance to succeed, and they will continue to expand the borders of our world as we know it.

There is so much room for success in this world. There is so much potential to be realized.

How will you help others expand their world?

Now I’m the villain in your history
I was too young and blind to see…
I should’ve known
I should’ve known
The world was wide enough for both Hamilton and me

– Aaron Burr, Hamilton: The Musical