“If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction,” writes Patrick Lencioni in his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Jossey-Bass, 2002), “you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.” The notion and importance of having healthy teams and dealing with dysfunctional teams is nothing new in the world of leadership and organizational change. Most authors have documented this within various books and research. The challenge is that when dealing with this wicked problem, most leaders are not aware of two problems that have a tendency to become malignant and cause significant problems when dealing with a situation of this nature.
Ram Charan in his book, Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: The New Rules for Getting the Right Things Done in Difficult Times (McGraw Hill, 2009), points out that during periods of uncertainty, which often happen when we are dealing with a wicked problem, teams can become “frozen in analysis paralysis.” And as a result, there is a reduction in horizontal cooperation, which, from my vantage point, is critical to solving a wicked problem.
Now, the natural next step, given Charan’s observations about teams during challenging times, is to implement a team development strategy, which will empower them to tackle this wicked problem. This course of action would aid teams in overcoming the common problem of being frozen in analysis paralysis. At the exact same time, this strategy could also focus on generating superb horizontal cooperation.
However, most team development strategies that focus on empowering teams are focused on intra-team development, rather than a combination of intra-team development and inter-team development. In particular, we need to recognize that inter-team development is mission critical to generating effective short and long term solutions to this wicked problem. But to do this level of work, we need to explore the subject of empowerment in greater detail.
Brene’ Brown in her book, Dare To Lead: Brave Work, Tough Conversations, Whole Hearts (Random House, 2018), reminds us that there are three elements to empowerment, namely, power with, power to, and power within. “Power with has to do with finding common ground among different interests in order to build collective strength. Based on mutual support, solidarity, collaboration, and recognition and respect for differences, power with multiples individual talents, knowledge, and resources to make a larger impact.”
From my vantage point, I don’t think we discuss the concept of “power with” at a team level often enough. I think we mostly define power within the scope of positional power, i.e. the role and responsibility of the leader. However, Brown’s definition of “power with” requires the team leader, and the team as a whole, to have a particular mindset and skill set in order to generate “mutual support, solidarity, collaboration, and recognition and respect for differences.” This is heavy lifting for people who are expected to do this kind of work, because they may not have the ability to do it, or a framework or process for doing it. Therefore, we are setting the team leader and the team up for a predictable failure.
Next, “Power to translates to giving everyone on your team agency and acknowledging their unique potential. It is based on the belief that each individual has the power to make a difference, which can be multiplied by new skills, knowledge, awareness, and confidence.”
This second key point about empowerment links directly to Gallup’s research on strengths based leadership, and the seminal work of Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman in their book, First, Break All The Rules: What The World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently. (Simon & Schuster, 1999). From my experience, in order to achieve this understanding, there needs to be a tremendous amount of education, common language, and regular coaching plus weekly check-ins, all of which are not normally part of a team development strategy. It is the combination of these factors that has the potential to empower a team to deal with a wicked problem.
Third, “Power within is defined by an ability to recognize differences and respect others, grounded in a strong foundation of self-worth and self-knowledge. When we operate from a place of power within, we feel comfortable challenging assumptions and long-held beliefs, pushing against status quo, and asking if there aren’t other ways to achieving the highest common good.”
This is an important point in Brown’s writing, and it needs to be thoroughly unpacked at a team level. In particular, the notion that we recognize differences and respect differences is integral to the DEI work that many organizations are doing at this time period. However, this overall corporate strategy is rarely explored and implemented at the team level, most of the work is done at the individual level. In particular, the idea of people “challenging assumptions and long-held beliefs, pushing against status quo, and asking if there aren’t other ways to achieving the highest common good” is rarely supported at a team level, because most team leaders feel threatened by this course of action. The outcome of these feelings is that many team leaders will transform their team into a single leader work group in order to maintain control and limit the feeling of chaos or messiness that the team is experiencing.
Empowering intra-teamwork and inter-teamwork can be part of implementing a team development strategy. But, from my vantage point, there is not enough work done with the three, aforementioned concepts described within Brown’s research. If we seek to focus on teams and recognize that they are mission critical to solving this wicked problem, then we need to take the time to create a short and long term strategy that generates a work environment where people can role model power with, power to, and power within.
One other component related to implementing a team development strategy is to sit with teams and ask the following question: If this team works exceptionally well with each other and with other teams, what is the outcome that will take place? This question is similar to Brene’ Brown’s famous question, “What does done look like?” If a team can not define it’s core purpose and desired outcome from the work it is doing, then no matter what kind of team environment is created, especially one with high levels of functional and emotional trust, the team is not on track to being successful. If we want effective teams that are able generate sustainable outcomes, then implementing a team development strategy must be carefully designed, defined and then delegated to people who have the capacity to execute it in a timely and efficient manner.
FYI: To be continued next Monday.
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