Monday, April 25, 2022

The Importance of a Shared Mindset

“Distance and diversity, as well as digital communication and changing membership, make them [teams] especially prone to the problems of “us versus them” thinking and incomplete information,” writes Martine Haas and Mark Mortensen in their article called “The Secrets of Great Teamwork” (Harvard Business Review, June 2016). As they continue, “The solution to both is developing a shared mindset among team members - something team leaders can do by fostering a common identity and common understanding.”


In order to create a shared mindset, Haas and Mortensen explain that “High-performing teams include members with a balance of skills. Every individual doesn’t have to possess superlative technical and social skills, but the team overall needs a healthy dose of both.” This is an important point that many team leaders miss in their transition from being a team member to being a team leader. Most team leaders focus on technical skills and do not value the mix of technical and social skills.


Next, Haas and Mortensen note that “Larger teams are more vulnerable to poor communication, fragmentation, and free riding (due to a lack of accountability).” However, they point out an important solution to this problem. As they wrote, “Teams can reduce the potential for dysfunction by establishing clear norms - rules that spell out a small number of things members must always do (such as arrive at meetings on time and give everyone a a turn to speak) and a small number they must never do (such as interrupt)….. And in teams whose membership is fluid, explicitly reiterating norms at regular intervals is key.”


When we choose to establish these norms, we build the infrastructure for a shared mindset. When we choose to coach people and hold them accountable for their words and their actions, we continue to strengthen this infrastructure. And finally, when we choose to invest in training that creates common language, we further strengthen common identity and common understanding. 


This week, review the above material with your team and discuss what are the norms that we must always do and the norms that we must never do. Then, you will all move forward in the right direction together. 


Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Monday, April 18, 2022

Problem Solving Solutions

Being a team leader is a challenging job, especially during a global pandemic. Given we have little influence and control over external events, team leaders need to build and maintain a team that has the capacity to solve technical problems, adaptive challenges and crisis situations. The first step in this process is to define who is and who is not on the team, and why. As Martine Haas and Mark Mortensen in their article called “The Secrets of Great Teamwork,” (Harvard Business Review, June 2016) write, “… putting together a team involves some ruthless decisions about membership; not everyone who wants to be on the team should be included, and some individuals should be forced off.” As they continue, “… as a team gets bigger, the number of links that need to be managed among members goes up at an accelerating, almost exponential rate. It’s managing the links between team members that gets teams into trouble.”


The second step is to clearly define the purpose, the role and the direction of the team. As they explain, “… setting a direction is emotionally demanding because it always involves the exercise of authority, and that inevitably arouses angst and ambivalence - for both the person exercising it and the people on the receiving end.” Still, the work must be done.


The third step is to create and execute a team building and maintenance plan. As Haas and Mortensen point out, “The problem almost always is not that a team gets stale, but, rather, that it doesn’t have the chance to settle in.” As part of this process, team leaders need to remember the following: “There are many things individuals can do better on their own, and they should not be penalized for it…. The challenge for a leader, then, is to find a balance between individual autonomy and collective action.” 


The fourth step is to engage in regular coaching of team leaders. In an interview with J. Richard Hackman by Diane Coutu called “Why Teams Don’t Work” (Harvard Business Review, May 2009), Hackman explains, “Each leader brings to the tasks his and her own strengths and weaknesses. Exploit the daylights out of the stuff you’re great at, and get help in the areas where you’re not so good…. What matters most to collaboration is not the personalities, attitudes, or behavioral styles of team members. Instead what teams need to thrive are certain “enabling conditions.” When we coach team leaders, we need to help them figure what are the “enabling conditions” they need to create so the team can flourish.


Finally, we all need to read and think deeply about the following quote by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall in their excellent book, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019): “… what distinguishes the best team leaders from the rest is their ability to meet these two categories of needs for the people on their teams. What we, as team members, want from you, our team leader, is firstly that you make us feel part of something bigger, that you show us how what we are doing together is important and meaningful; and secondly that you make us feel you can see us, and connect to us, and care about us, and challenge us, in a way that recognizes who we are as individuals.” Again, this is an area where we can coach team leaders and help them become better at doing these two important things. 


The above five step process is a solid beginning given the problems and challenges before us now. Through disciplined action and regular coaching, we can assist team leaders and their teams to become better problem solvers.  And given all that has happened this spring, we sure do need that to happen at a higher level.


Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Monday, April 11, 2022

The Foundation For Success

Martine Haas and Mark Mortensen in their excellent article called “The Secrets of Great Teamwork” from the June 2016 issue of the Harvard Business Review write that there are four key components to creating a successful team. They are as follows:


- Compelling Direction: “People have to care about achieving a goal.”


- Strong Structure: “Every individual doesn’t have to possess superlative technical and social skills, but the team overall needs a healthy dose of both.”


- Supportive Context: resources, information and training to achieve the desired goal.


- Shared Mindset: “Distance and diversity, as well as digital communication and changing membership, make them [teams] especially prone to the problems of “us versus them” thinking and incomplete information…. The solution to both is developing a shared mindset among team members - something team leaders can do by fostering a common identity and common understanding.”


In order for teams to work better with a combination of adaptive challenges and technical problems, there needs to be a compelling direction as noted above. This is the foundation of every great team, namely a direction that energizes, orients, and engages its members. As Haas and Mortensen noted, “teams cannot be inspired if they don’t know what they’re working toward and don’t have explicit goals.”


The challenge for many team leaders is that their pre-pandemic team has evolved into a 4-D team. And now, many 4-D teams are actually “team of teams,” referencing the work in the following book: Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement For A Complex World by General Stanley McChrystal with Tantum Collins, David Silverman and Chris Fussell (Penguin Publishing Group, 2015).


So, why is a “compelling direction” so important to problem solving at the team level?


As Haas and Mortensen explain, “On 4-D teams, direction is especially crucial because it’s easy for far-flung members from dissimilar backgrounds to hold different views of the group’s purpose.” Most of the time during this pandemic, team members do not even agree on what the team is supposed to be doing. Therefore, “Getting agreement is the leader’s job, and she must be willing to take personal and professional risks to set the team’s direction.” As they further explain,“[Team] members need to know, and agree on, what they’re supposed to be doing together. Unless a leader articulates a clear direction, there is a real risk that different members will pursue different agendas.”


This spring, sit down with your team and read the aforementioned article. Then, clarify the purpose and the direction of the team. This will become the foundation for success for the rest of the year.


Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Monday, April 4, 2022

The Bigger Problem

Starting in the late spring of 2021, and then clearly into the summer and fall, I began seeing and hearing about more and more problems with teams. Over the course of the pandemic, many teams had de-evolved into single leader work groups with the leader being the funnel for everything. Many single leader work groups had de-evolved into just being work groups. And many 4-D teams began suffering from the “tyranny of structurelessness”, i.e. nobody knew exactly what to do so people just did their own thing. 


Note: a 4-D team is one defined by members of the team being diverse, dispersed, digital, and dynamic which means there are frequent changes with the membership of the team. For information on 4-D teams, I encourage you to read the following: Haas, Martine and Mark Mortensen. “The Secrets of Great Teamwork.” Harvard Business Review, June 2016.


From my vantage point, the main problem is that many of these struggling teams lack role clarity and/or clarity of purpose. Furthermore, many team meetings over the course of the pandemic have turned into information sharing with some coordination. There is little consultation, collaboration, or decision-making. The result is that team members are not involved in the decisions that will affect them, which is resulting in a continual decline of personal, operational and strategic trust.


However, I think there is a bigger problem taking place which is the root of many of these team problems. Individually and collectively, we are experiencing a mix of pandemic-grief and pandemic-anxiety. Over the course of this winter, people on teams have been experiencing a wide range of feelings including helplessness, depression, fear, fatalism, and resignation. The outcome is that people are more focused on their losses than on their gains at the personal and team levels. They also are more focused on their problems than their short term wins.


In essence, I believe we are tending to get lost in the darkness of the pandemic. The outcome of this choice is that we have lost touch with personal and collective awe, joy and light-ness for lack of a better term. I do not believe we need to not hide from pandemic darkness, but on the other hand, we should not get lost in it. We need to learn new ways to deal with our pandemic grief and anxiety. This may not be easy or simple but it is an important first step if we want to create healthy teams and single leader work groups this spring.


Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257