CHAPTER SEVEN
DOLLY PARTON: COMPLETING THE 9-TO-5 STRAIGHT
Dolly Parton: In poker, a straight that includes the five through nine cards (“nine to five”).
—From the 1980 movie Nine to Five
Less than 24 hours into his parole from a New Jersey penitentiary, charismatic thief Danny Ocean (George Clooney) is already rolling out his next plan. In one night, Danny’s handpicked crew of specialists will attempt to steal more than $150 million from three Las Vegas casinos. If you’ve seen Oceans Eleven (the 2001 remake of a 1960 movie of the same name starring Frank Sinatra as Danny Ocean), you know that Danny purposefully picks his crew for their strengths. And his picks are the strongest and best in their respective, and nefarious, fields of expertise. He knows their coordination and ability to work together as a team is paramount to success. As team leader, Danny must orchestrate their work so that each team member—and the team itself—plays to his strengths. There truly is no other way to succeed, whether you’re robbing three casinos, or leading a team at work!
This fun, exciting, and, to some, inspiring film shows what you can do when you assemble the right cards. Ocean deals all the cards, with all the right strengths, in just the right order. There cannot be a card missing. He can’t leave any gaps. He has to study his cards carefully so he doesn’t create a hole in his highly interdependent team. He has to deal a perfect straight.
In poker, a straight is any five consecutive cards. It’s a fine metaphor for a team—five cards, aligned, one falling in line with the next, to create a winning hand. As you begin to apply the lens of strengths to your team at work, keep in mind that the strength of the team is not merely the sum of the individuals’ strengths. There’s one more lens through which to look—the strengths of the team itself. The powerful hand you’re holding—all your cards working together, to the team’s advantage—represents the team strengths. You hold “A Dolly Parton”—a straight from 9 to 5. Strong teams know the strengths of the individuals and those of the team, and rigorously cultivate and apply them to achieve the team’s goals. And, yes, the poker term refers to the hilarious movie Nine to Five, starring Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, and Lily Tomlin as three office workers who scheme to get even with their appallingly chauvinistic boss.
Strong Team Foundation
To build a strong and excellent team, you need a strong foundation comprised of the structures and processes that help to maximize individual team member contributions. Without this foundation, teams falter and never gel. By understanding team development, building trust, setting clear and measured goals and accountabilities, and directly applying team and individual strengths, your team will achieve spectacular results. A strong team accomplishes the work of maturing itself, so it can effectively achieve its goals and vision. A team has at its disposal diversity of thought, a panoply of strengths, and a possibility for synergy that can rise above any loosely formed group of individuals. Impressive power.
It is the work itself that determines whether a team is called for—or whether a group will do. A group, “a set of interacting individuals who mutually influence each other,”1 makes perfect sense when the work does not call for high interdependency to achieve goals. For example, accountants supporting different divisions of a business may come together to share ideas and processes, improving overall effectiveness. If their goals are not interdependent—if they do not need to work together to accomplish their performance objectives—a simple group will accomplish the purpose.
When interdependency exists, however, forming a team is ideal for achieving results. A team is “a small group of people with complementary skills committed to a common purpose, a set of specific performance goals, and an approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.”2 A team implies significant alignment, commitment, and interdependency among its members. Whether it’s a project team, virtual or co-located, ad hoc, or an intact staff, the decision to create and sustain a team is one we make in light of the requirements of the work itself. Creating and sustaining a team is hard work. Don’t bother to put forth the effort to create a team when a group is sufficient. However, a team often is necessary to meet the complex and sophisticated requirements of internal and external customers in today’s world.
Gumby Team Leaders
Remember Gumby, the green character made of pliable rubber wrapped around a wire frame? You can bend and flex Gumby into a wide variety of positions—some strong, some funny, and some, well, downright ridiculous! Gumby maintains his solid and original shape—even when you bend and flex him into strange positions.
As a leader of a team, you are Gumby—bendable, flexible, and resilient. Leadership is changing, because every organization must accomplish more with fewer resources. The demand for flexible leadership is increasing as technology drives rapid change and customers demand instant, customized solutions. As a result, leadership today is much more about influence than authority. Realizing that teams develop through time and don’t begin as high-performing entities reinforces the importance of leadership flexibility.
Leaders must develop the ability in themselves and their staff to discern customer needs and to be innovative, responsive, flexible, and comfortable with ambiguity and change.
—Robert J. Lee and Sara N. King
The Team Development Clock
A classic error made by team members and leaders is to assume that high-performing teams happen with the flip of a switch. We bring people together, call them a “team,” and immediately expect superior performance. Unrealistic! Only with intention and attention do we build the relationships and the strengths required to create a highly effective team.
It’s not in our nature to form immediately into an intimate, open, strong, and high-achieving team. If human nature didn’t make it challenging enough, organizational dynamics can also create resistance to “teaming.” Reward systems and performance management processes tend to support individual accomplishment over team accomplishment. Typically, individual accomplishment and strength create career success. When we attempt to form strong teams, individuals may mourn the loss of independence, autonomy, and the simple ease they enjoyed working on their own.
Creating a strong team is an investment, a “letting go” of individual autonomy, a new paradigm.
It is amazing what can be accomplished when nobody cares about who gets the credit.
—Robert Yates
Understanding how teams develop and knowing time-honored ways to facilitate their development creates reasonable expectations and helps the team focus its efforts. It’s like raising a child; you can’t expect him to form full sentences, read and write his name, hold a job, and get a master’s degree before his first birthday!
The Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing model of team development (page 190) is a widely used representation of team growth and change in the business world today. Bruce Tuckman, who published this theory in 1965, maintained that all four stages are necessary and inevitable for the team to grow, to face up to challenges, to tackle problems, to find solutions, to plan work, and to deliver results. Essentially, this body of work depicts the path teams follow to discover, utilize, and further leverage their strengths.
Historically, there have been four stages in the Tuckman model, though more recently he added a fifth, Adjourning. We created a model, the Team Development Clock, to depict Tuckman’s first four stages. An apt metaphor, the clock reminds us that it takes time to evolve through the stages and “settle” into our collective strengths. We may find our team circling back to the earlier stages, especially when new members join. In Oceans Eleven, you can actually watch Danny’s team evolve through these stages.
FORMING
Every stage is important and credible. During the first stage, Forming, team members come together and begin to learn about each other, to discover why they are part of a team, and to define their desired outcomes. Forming is represented on the team development clock between the hours of 12 and 3. Team leaders play an important role during this time—answering questions, providing direction, and building trust among team members. Team behaviors in the Forming stage are polite and guarded. Members are nice to each other, tend to avoid or delay conflicts, are hesitant to share their innermost secrets, strengths, and passions, and are watchful. On a personal level, the individual team member wonders about being included. Team members quietly ask themselves, “Will I be included in this team? What do I need for myself in order to feel like a real part of this team?”
Many teams become stuck in the Forming stage. This happens if membership is not stable, or if the team does not address differences of opinion, style, or outcomes. For some teams, the Forming stage may be sufficient. If the project or outcome is short-lived, all the work of the team can be accomplished in the Forming stage. For example, Andrea’s neighbors came together to decide the process for purchasing and installing a fire hydrant. Tom completed research about what the fire department required, Bill took the action to find a hydrant for sale, and everyone agreed to split the costs evenly—easy, simple, complete. In our complex work environments, however, teams seldom have the luxury of staying in the comfort of Forming, because the tasks require ongoing relationships and increasingly complex performance.
Typical behaviors in the Forming stage include:
♠ Excitement.
♠ Apprehension.
♠ People are unclear about what their goals are as a team.
♠ Team members talk in terms of “I” instead of “we.”
STORMING
For a team to reach high performance, it must pass through Storming. Storming is uncomfortable for most people, and many will want to whiz right through this stage. Storming is represented on the team development clock between the hours of 3 and 6. All team members should know about Storming in advance, to reduce their apprehension and discomfort.
Disillusionment, frustration, and even anger are signs that Storming has begun. Members may begin to confront and experience irritation with each other. Members feel stuck. They may want to opt out of the team and its responsibilities, or rebel against the team or its leader. Decisions don’t come easily. Cliques may form, and there will be power struggles.
It is a natural stage of evolution to move to Storming. Storming is like when a child advances to the Terrible Twos as a toddler. It’s good news developmentally, but that doesn’t mean it’s fun! The individual issue that invariably emerges for a team in Storming is one of control. “How much control, power, and influence will I have in this group? How much do I want? How do I earn respect?”
The team leader at the Storming stage encounters the most important challenge he or she will face in guiding the development of the team—building the team’s capacity to storm. As leader, you need to make it safe for team members to express differences of opinion, to disagree, listen, and reach new conclusions. You may be in the position of knowing there is unspoken or unresolved conflict on the team. This is what you want at this stage! When you encourage the expression of differences, and facilitate processes to resolve them, you build the team. You may very well have to push the team into Storming if they resist it, because Storming builds a very important skill for the rest of the team’s life—the ability to manage conflict effectively. A successful experience with Storming builds confidence and reduces fear the next time a team faces a storm. When a team successfully navigates the storm, they bond, build trust and respect, and arrive at better decisions.
Donald, one of our clients, is an HR Director in a high-tech company, and he encountered the perfect storm in one day! Individually, four members of his team dropped by his office to complain about how someone else on the team was approaching salary planning, and how he or she thought it should go. Donald saw in a flash that his team was ready to storm. He called them together and assigned them their goal: to create a common process for salary planning for the entire division. Donald then left. Three hours later they emerged from the conference room with a process they all supported. The “esprit de corps” was palpable. They joked with each other, and began a period of true high performance. As a team leader, you may not be able to leave the room—Donald’s people were very sophisticated in managing interpersonal relationships, and Donald encouraged each of them to be open and honest. However you do it, you must ensure the team storms, building the foundation for the next stage of development.
Typical behaviors in the Storming stage include:
♠ People feel “stuck.”
♠ Some team members opt out of meetings, conversations, and conflicts.
♠ Team members complain about working together.
♠ People confront each other instead of the issues.
♠ There may be ideas, but few are explored in-depth.
♠ The tasks seem more difficult than anyone originally thought.
NORMING
Once a team has successfully navigated the hurricane, wild fire, or other crisis, it moves into the third stage: Norming. Norms are the accepted standards, ways of behaving, or methods for doing things. Norming is represented on the team development clock between the hours of 6 and 9, though the process of Norming exists throughout the entire team process. At some level, norms are continuously being created, reinforced, and broken. Team members articulate norms in creating ground rules during the Forming stage. In the Norming stage, the team revisits those norms and sets rules that more clearly reflect the unique operating style of this team. You will find guidelines for creating team ground rules—and other important team processes—in the Implementation Ideas section at the end of this chapter and on our Website.
You will know the team has entered Norming when topics (both inside and outside the team meeting) change from confronting people to confronting issues and barriers that impede achievement of team objectives. Having learned that they will be included in the team and can use their ability to influence, members now have the self-confidence, safety, and security to open up to and respect each other. Real affection happens at this stage.
None of us is as smart as all of us.
—Ken Blanchard
Team members develop the skill and the commitment to provide honest feedback. The team organizes itself for maximum effectiveness, and engages a broad range of strengths from its members. Roles and responsibilities are clear and accepted. Commitment and unity are strong. What a team!
Typical behaviors in the Norming stage include:
♠ Team members provide each other with useful feedback.
♠ The team is organized, and able to make and monitor progress.
♠ Team members interact well—even bond.
♠ There is a mutual and shared understanding of the goals.
PERFORMING
Performing is represented on the team development clock between the hours of 9 and 12. Because the team is performing at some level throughout all the stages, we prefer to call this stage “High Performing.” At the (High) Performing stage, the team is a well-oiled machine. Members are open, flexible, resourceful, and exhibit high energy. There is closeness and an unconscious process of working together, something magnificent to witness—even if you are outside the team. Emotional intimacy emerges in this stage, with team members immersed in what may be some of the most important and deep relationships of their work careers. The team knows clearly why it is doing what it is doing, and is able to stand on its own feet with no interference from the leader. The team works toward achieving goals, and also attends to relationship, style, and process issues along the way. If your team makes it this far, the rewards to the individual, the team, and the organization will be enormous!
It takes a long time for teams to reach the Performing stage. Two years is not unusual, though you will see glimpses of high performance along the way. Andrea considers herself privileged by twice being on a team that reached this stage, once as a member, and once as team leader. Both teams met frequently and had many interdependencies, and it still took 18-24 months to achieve consistent high performance. Once arrived, however, each team not only performed magnificently, but formed friendships that are still alive today.
Typical behaviors in the Performing stage include:
♠ Team members are highly resourceful.
♠ Team members support each other and the team.
♠ The team is highly successful at achieving its goals.
♠ It is fun to work in this team.
♠ The team creatively resolves problems.
AFTER THE PERFORMANCE
In Tuckman’s new stage of Adjourning, the team completes the work and disengages from the task and the other team members. The team might also begin again—at midnight on the team-development clock—and start with a new charter. When you successfully navigate the waters of team leadership, and bring forth the best strengths from all team members, you have achieved a significant breakthrough that leaves you with a sense of remarkable accomplishment!
Trust
As a team forms and begins to move through the various stages of development, trust is a necessity. To illustrate, look at the following scenarios.
♠ Sydney told Emma she did a great job explaining the proposal to the client this morning. Emma knows Sydney is telling her the truth, because Sydney also tells her clearly and directly when she makes a mistake or does less than her best.
♠ Though Joe stated openly that his team messed up in the first phase of the project, the team remained enthusiastic, motivated, and engaged.
♠ Stan is having trouble with his young son, and he is coming to work late and leaving early. His colleagues, who rely heavily on Stan’s work, are picking up the slack without a grumble.
♠ The purchasing department needed to layoff two people to meet corporate cost reductions. The department came together and made the decision who to let go.
What do all of the scenarios have in common? In each of these situations, the team has engendered trust. Trust is required for building relationships, tapping strengths, increasing productivity, and engaging workers. As you can see from Tuckman’s model, trust is imperative for the team from the beginning. Building trust is ongoing and constant. It doesn’t happen only at off-site team-building events; it happens every day. As the leader of a forming team, the way you speak about the strengths of each team member, the team purpose, and your vision of a great team all build trust. More important are your actions. “Walking your talk” through accountability, openness, curiosity, and commitment to the team builds trust faster than words.
Trust is the foundation—the infrastructure—of excellent relationships at work, at home, and in our broader lives. We don’t give much thought to the infrastructure in our community until something goes wrong. Most of us don’t pay attention to how many snow-plows our town operates until the big 100-year snowstorm hits. We don’t worry about the sewer backing up into our basement until the floods come.
Trust is similar. We don’t consciously think about trust until a storm of words or actions destroys it. How often do we stop and consider what we are doing to build trust? When do we actually ask ourselves, “Am I consistently following through with the tasks that I’m assigned? Am I sharing information with colleagues to keep them informed and up-to-date on my responsibilities that affect them? Am I soliciting input from others so that I am acting on the best information?” Normally, we think about building trust only when it has been violated and desperately needs repair. As leaders, we can—and should—build trust constantly. It would serve us well to think about and begin building trust before trust is lost. Unfortunately, trust is often lost in a flash. A comment, question, or single incident can destroy fragile or shallow trust. Even more unfortunate, it takes much longer to rebuild trust than to create it in the first place.
If you create trust in a relationship, you will be able to enjoy cooperation, communication, and collaboration. Trust enhances your ability to influence and motivate others. Trust creates satisfying relationships. Trust builds strong teams.
BEHAVIORS THAT BUILD TRUST
So, what can you do today to increase trust on your team? The behaviors of trust are really quite simple to explain…though not always simple to do!
When we meet someone, we naturally want to trust the other person, and be trusted in return. However, if we don’t quickly begin to build it, the opportunity for trust will dissipate. The first rule of trust is to trust. Assume each team member wants what is best for the team, and eagerly hopes to be able to bring his strengths, skills, and passions to bear. To build trust further, include these actions consciously and consistently:
Truthfulness
Respect
Understanding
Support
Time
Respect
Understanding
Support
Time
TRUTHFULNESS
♠ Express emotions—how you feel—as well as facts.
♠ Walk your talk by taking actions congruent with what you say.
♠ Avoid excuses—tell the truth, even when it hurts.
♠ Provide feedback without judgment.
♠ Disclose information about yourself; take personal risks.
RESPECT
♠ Accept others as they are, without judgment. You don’t need to control, fix, or change them. Remember, they are creative, resourceful, whole, and wise.
♠ Play to each other’s strengths.
♠ Solicit ideas, opinions, and personal feedback from others.
♠ Listen when another person speaks.
♠ Maintain confidential information.
♠ Assign no blame.
♠ Respect different points of view—yours and others.
♠ Gain others’ insights before making decisions affecting them.
♠ Repair relationships—don’t avoid the conversation because you are uncomfortable.
UNDERSTANDING
♠ Learn more about one another’s strengths, skills, and experiences. Team members need to know that each other is competent before they trust fully.
♠ Listen for the feelings underlying the words of the speaker.
SUPPORT
♠ Offer skills and resources; give help when needed.
♠ Build each other’s confidence.
♠ Ask for help when you need it.
♠ Advocate for each person, and the team as a whole.
♠ Allow each other to share problems without judgment.
TIME
♠ Spend quality time in relationships.
♠ Spend quality time in dialogue.
♠ Be silent—give others time to think or express their thoughts.
♠ Be there in a time of need.
♠ Value and respect each other’s time.
A Path for the Team
ACTIONS TO FACILITATE FORMING
You know about the stages of team development and how to build trust. You’ve studied the work that your staff needs to accomplish, and you’ve determined that success really does require “a small group of people with complementary skills committed to a common purpose, set of specific performance goals and an approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.” So you decide to create a team. What steps do you take? Where do you begin? Let’s explore the answers to these questions through Michael’s good example at B2B Printers.
Michael decided to transform his staff into a bona fide team. The first stumbling block he encountered is the same one you’re probably thinking about right now—you don’t have the luxury of starting a team from scratch, with members who are brand new and eager! How can you begin at Forming? You have a group that has been performing, more or less effectively, as a team. It may be stuck at Storming, you may see glimpses of brilliant High Performance, it may be divisive or unified. It may be in all of these stages at different times!
Michael started with a few foundational actions. No matter at what stage your team is functioning, you always can cycle back to these Forming and Storming activities and build a stronger infrastructure with the team. Michael (wisely!) chose three actions to begin what he called re-Forming. He led his team to create a charter, establish ground rules, and identify and apply strengths in a one-day offsite meeting. Whether starting or restarting a new team, these actions facilitate Forming.
STEP 1. CREATE A CHARTER
For a team to form and unify, its members should create a team purpose, vision, and goals—a team charter. You might use the word mission instead of purpose or desired state instead of vision. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you and the team define the reason for your existence, the end state you desire, and the milestones that get you there.
The first order of business is to establish a purpose that answers the question, “why do we exist as a team?” Michael’s sales managers chose this purpose: “As sales managers, we come together as a team to drive revenue strategically, to create visibility and opportunities for our sales associates, to create a unified face of B2B Printers to our customers, and to maximize the effectiveness and accuracy of our sales process.” Motivating, isn’t it?!
When a team can clearly identify what it intends to accomplish, it naturally leads into vision, the second component of the team charter. The vision is the inspiration behind the purpose. Vision is the dream—what’s possible, or maybe even a little bit impossible.
It’s a compelling image of the team purpose accomplished, the ideal future state. When guided by a vision, people believe their efforts can make a difference, and they’ll work with greater commitment.
An inspiring vision:
♠ depicts future achievements.
♠ invokes a vivid picture.
♠ suggests a measure for high performance.
♠ speaks to the common values of the team.
♠ prompts integration and collaboration.
When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
—Audre Lorde
Michael’s team developed a vision that paints a vivid picture of their future success: “A waiting list of excellent people want to join the Western Division of B2B Printers because we develop employees, consistently grow revenue, and totally delight customers.”
With inspiration from this compelling vision, the team dove into its third and final task in creating its charter: setting team goals. Through lively discussion, they created the following package of high-level goals. They were prepared to measure their progress and hold themselves mutually accountable to:
♠ Charter a team to design and implement an effective leads process by June 30; “effective” to be defined by the team and approved by the sponsor, Keith; target date for implementation to be determined.
♠ By September 30, commit to a process to gather information about development needs and opportunities for sales associates. By December 31, be prepared to charter the next step.
♠ Hold a “Sales Synergies” conference in September to explore ways to exploit the western territory by industry, common business processes, and/or geography.
♠ Take the actions necessary to form, storm (yuck!), norm, and highly perform! Undertake a specific task or action at each weekly staff meeting to move us in this direction. Michael is accountable to create a plan by June 1.
Michael knew that establishing accountability—for individuals and the team as a whole—was a critical part of the charter. With individual accountability, team members take full responsibility to complete their own assignments. Interlocking accountability occurs when team members take ownership for their own conduct and also their obligations to others, creating an environment in which people can count on each other. Michael facilitated the team, establishing interlocking accountability tied to the team’s goals. Each team member agreed that he was not only responsible for assignments, but also for his relationships, his performance, his agreements, for holding other team members accountable, and for all of the team’s goals. They all knew team success was a priority over individual success, and that the whole was truly greater than the sum of the parts.
That was a day well spent! The team emerged from its meeting even more engaged, committed, and enthusiastic about future potential. Now, ever vigilant about applying his strengths, Michael reviewed the day and noticed how effectively he used his strengths to lead the team through these activities. He revisited his strengths:
♠ Initiating: I turn thoughts into action.
♠ Developing others: I develop others, especially their strengths!
♠ Influencing: I win others over.
♠ Learning: I acquire knowledge and learn fast.
♠ Amplifying: I transform something (or someone!) from good to great.
He acknowledged that he used his strengths of initiating and developing others. He also saw that he applied his influencing strength when he could have been using his learning strength. In reviewing the conversations of the day, he realized that he might have been advocating for his position a little too often, instead of drawing others out. Well, there’s still much to work on! Best of all, though, he knew that he was turning his staff into a strong team. Ah, the beauty of playing his best cards!
STEP 2. ESTABLISH GROUND RULES
We each enter a new team with different assumptions about what makes for ideal interactions. To build a strong team, be clear from the beginning how members work with one another. At the earliest stages of team formation, members need to define specific attitudes and actions that are their standards for interacting. Create team ground rules to guide the team members in how to operate effectively as a team and achieve its purpose.
In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions.
—Margaret Wheatley
This is precisely what Michael did next—create team behavioral agreements. (One of our favorite methods for creating team ground rules is at the end of this chapter in Implementation Ideas.)
Here’s what Michael’s team agreed to:
♠ Check egos, titles, positions, and other judgments, labels, and “baggage” at the door.
♠ Act in the spirit of collaboration, not contention. Maintain a “solution-oriented” frame of mind (no blaming, shaming, bashing, whining, complaining, pouting, withdrawing, or rehashing history).
♠ State your point of view clearly, once, and offer data or rationale to back it up.
♠ Be respectful of each person expressing a point of view and allow each person to speak uninterrupted. Listen thoughtfully and consider with an open mind the opinions of others.
♠ Come to team meetings prepared to participate as a fully engaged team member. Accept responsibility and ownership for team goals, accountabilities, strengths, and weaknesses.
♠ Use feedback as a growth and learning opportunity. Offer it to others respectfully and constructively, and be open-minded to receiving it in the spirit of learning.
♠ Complete our commitments—or renegotiate as early as possible.
♠ Play to our strengths!
♠ Have fun!
Further, Michael’s team agreed to post their ground rules in their offices and regular meeting rooms, as well as to use them at their annual strategy meeting.
STEP 3. IDENTIFY AND APPRECIATE DIVERSE STRENGTHS
The third action Michael chose was to increase team appreciation of differences. He knows this is important for building team trust and reliance upon one another, to encourage different perspectives and ideas, and to facilitate better team decisions.
At the time, team members had already completed the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment, identifying their individual strengths. Michael created a matrix of team member strengths, and, together, they explored team patterns of strengths and the implications for team members. He knows that on high-performance teams, people say they call upon their strengths more than 75 percent of the time.3 Thus, it’s critical for team members to know each other’s strengths, so they can play to and maximize them.
Next, seeking another reference point, Michael invited a facilitator to administer and interpret the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI), which gave team members helpful information about each other’s preferred styles in gathering information, making decisions, and communicating. The MBTI instrument, extremely popular in organizations of all kinds across the world, requires a qualified facilitator.
Whew! We’ve just described the three steps Michael took to transform his group of sales associates at B2B Printers into a fully formed team. As his team progresses through the team development stages, he will want to use specific methods and focused activities to help it evolve and progress. We invite you to visit our Website—www.play2yourstrengths.com—for additional insights and activities for the Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing steps of team development.
Improving Team Communication
Throughout its stages of development, a team requires many additional skills—effective communication among them.
Daily discussions in meetings, conversations in the hallways, decision-making, and interactions with coworkers and other teams require team members to advocate, clarify, summarize, acknowledge, listen, and speak nondefensively. The two most important communication skills for the team are advocacy and inquiry.
The crucial role of language in human evolution was not the ability to exchange ideas, but the increased ability to cooperate.
—Fritjof Capra
Advocacy
Dictionary.com defines advocacy as “active support of an idea or cause.” Simply stated, it’s the ability to offer one’s point of view. Sounds easy enough, right? Yes and no. To advocate effectively takes skill. Have you ever been in a conversation with someone who has very strong verbal skills? Occasionally that individual may have a tendency to advocate, advocate, advocate! Advocacy is not about bullying or wearing people down until they agree with you. It’s actually about engaging the other person in a dialogue, and inviting their curiosity. Some powerful tactics for sound advocacy are:
♠ Share your perspective and its rationale, disclosing not only your thinking, but also your assumptions. “Here’s my viewpoint on this issue and how I got there...”
♠ Invite others to react to your view and challenge your assumptions. “What do you think?”
♠ Encourage them to provide a different view or to challenge yours. How do you see it differently? What have I missed?”
Sometimes we simply share our point of view. Other times, when the stakes are high, we take a stand with fierceness for all the right reasons. To be in the right frame of mind for effective team communication, it is helpful to ask yourself, prior to advocating your point of view, “what is my intention in this conversation? Am I willing to be influenced?”
Inquiry
Inquiry is the “trump card” for inviting others into a dialogue with you. How can anyone resist answering a great question? Effective inquiry is not interrogation—it is genuine and respectful natural curiosity. Specific methods of inquiry that invite conversation include:
♠ Use open-ended coaching questions that encourage a more thorough answer than yes or no from the other person. “What does marketing need to know before we implement?”
♠ Ask for the other person’s rationale, and how he arrived at that perspective, to discover what assumptions he is holding. “Help me understand your reasoning...”
Listening, too, is a natural part of inquiry—they are two sides of the same coin. After asking questions, engage your ears, eyes, body, and mind to really hear the other person. Habit number five in Stephen Covey’s best-seller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, states, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Rather than scheming to debate the other person’s position or being distracted by the to-do list in your head, listen for new information; listen for common perspectives; and, based on genuine curiosity, listen to be enlightened by another point of view.
Uncover Team Strengths
We know the strengths of individual team members; we now can look at the strengths of the team as a whole—a collective. When you draw the fifth card to complete your Dolly Parton straight from 9-to-5, you transform your hand. Instead of a collection of cards, you have a hand that could win a pot! The whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. Similarly, once you know individuals’ strengths on the team, you’re ready to search for the team strengths.
Reminding one another of the dream that each of us aspires to may be enough for us to set each other free.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a powerful and practical process to uncover team strengths. AI assumes that everyone has a core of strengths, and that positive change occurs by identifying—and then doing more of—what each individual, team, or organization does well. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Appreciative Inquiry searches for the best in people, their organizations, and their world. AI is being used to identify team and organization strengths in such diverse entities as The University of Michigan, The Camp Recovery Center, Pfizer, Boeing, John Deere, and the U.S. Navy.
Appreciative Inquiry accomplishes two important things: it illuminates strengths, and it shows how to repeat, multiply, and magnify those strengths. Through AI, your team zeroes in on “what works great around here,” and fosters a climate that creates opportunities to do more of that!
There are four primary steps to the Appreciative Inquiry process. However, there is a crucial “prework” task—creating the question(s) to open up the constructive dialogue about team strengths. There are innumerable variations, but the basic format resembles one or more of these inquiries:
♠ Describe a time when you or the team performed really well. What were the circumstances that made this possible?
♠ Describe a time during your career in this organization when you felt most effective and engaged. What circumstances made the situation possible?
♠ Talk about an incident when you or someone else on the team truly delighted a customer. What made that possible?
What we focus on, individually and collectively, prospers by our attention. We urge you to think carefully about how to ask the AI questions, highlighting “What we are doing right” to keep the discussion focused on strengths.
After you carefully craft the question or questions, you’re ready to begin the AI conversation. See Implementation Ideas at the end of this chapter for instructions on facilitating this important dialogue.
When teams use the Appreciative Inquiry process, every member begins to work from a natural place of strength. The team begins to use previously neglected strengths, and they also become more deliberate about where their team strengths are serving them well—and where they need to invite in different strengths to represent missing concepts, ideas, and perspectives. As you empower more success and engagement through this process—more opportunities for the team to play to its strengths—you create geometrically more opportunities!
Coaching a Team to Strengths
Carol coached a team into their strengths when she was senior director of global leadership and learning with a Silicon Valley high-tech firm. Prior to Carol’s arrival, the department experienced considerable turnover, the leadership direction was sketchy at best, and the rest of the organization viewed the department as an unproductive cost center that created products marginally helpful, but barely responsive to their needs. There was an incessant, frenzied push to throw products and programs out to internal customers without much thought for strategic direction, planning, customer inputs, or needs analysis.
The VP would swing back and forth in management style—from sheer neglect of staff members to micromanaging the most tedious project details. The pervading culture kept decision-making authority (both strategic and tactical) at the highest levels, not delegated to the more appropriate lower levels in the organizations. Managers were frustrated by having no input and no authority for decisions on projects.
Team members, in a state of fear and frustration, were confused about how and if their work was valued, how it contributed to the larger organization, what the true priorities were, how performance was measured, and the perceived inequities (especially during bonus time). Not surprisingly, deep morale issues pervaded this global 45-member team. They feared they wouldn’t do what was expected, would be on the receiving end of the VP’s unpredictable wrath, and would lose their jobs. They didn’t know how to integrate their strengths into their work, and they didn’t have the authority to do so.
Carol wasted no time in taking decisive actions to strengthen the team. She began by honoring the hard work, dedication, and talent that had led to successful projects in the past. Carol acknowledged each individual and his or her unique contribution, and celebrated the product successes of each project team.
She searched for the strengths of individuals, so she could acknowledge not just what they had accomplished, but also who they were being while accomplishing it. She looked for patterns of strengths used effectively.
Carol facilitated a shared vision for each project currently under way or on the radar screen—talking about the work’s objectives and outcomes, how the project benefits customers, and how it fit in with the overall mission of the company.
She established an infrastructure to keep employees focused on their strengths, including weekly project team meetings and one-on-one coaching with all direct reports and project team leads.
She discussed strengths with each team member and adjusted project roles and responsibilities to ensure the work suited each team member’s strengths and passions.
She clarified and articulated the strengths of the team, aligning and engaging them around a common purpose, and setting clear interlocking accountabilities.
The results? Engagement, dedication, and satisfaction rose, significantly increasing morale. The products, services, and reputation of the department improved dramatically, and they received positive feedback and praise from their client departments throughout the organization, even winning an industry award for their work.
Not a bad story, huh? You, too, can create a strong team by completing the Dolly Parton straight in your team, and playing that full, strong hand to everyone’s advantage at work!
Dolly Parton—Completing the 9-to-5 Straight
We thought you’d appreciate this story from The Cultural Creatives by Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson. In the Arizona desert, there is a solar collector constructed of an immense array of freestanding mirrors. Every mirror reflects the sun’s light onto a single collector tower that heats water to more than a thousand degrees, driving turbines for electricity. Each mirror is curved slightly and pivots independently under sensitive computer control to track the sun’s beams and keep them focused on the tower. All of them together are the equivalent of a gigantic parabolic mirror.
The metaphor of this story illustrates the potent premise of this chapter: The power reflected by uncoordinated individual actions has little effect; however, focus 10 or a thousand individuals on the creative fire, and let them move independently, but with a common purpose, and magnificent focused energy materializes.
Implementation Ideas
We include instructions for a number of processes in this section. Visit our Website for downloadable versions of all instructions.
BUY A GUMBY!
For Gumby fans, or those of us into nostalgia, Gumby is once again available at many stores! Here’s a great place to begin looking: www.toyscollectibles.allinfo-about.com/subjects/gumby.html
STUDY AND APPLY TUCKMAN’S MODEL OF TEAM DEVELOPMENT
See www.chimaeraconsulting.com/tuckman.htmandwww.businessballs.com/ tuckman formingstormingnormingperforming. htm.
CREATE A CHARTER
To successfully form and unify, a team should create a team purpose, vision, and goals. We suggest discussing:
♠ Why do we exist as a team?
♠ What can we attain that cannot be attained by operating as individuals or as a group? What synergies can we anticipate?
♠ What do we hope for? What is our vision?
♠ What are our significant team goals?
Here is an exercise to help your team create a vision. You may want to change the date and award to suit your organization.
It is July 31, 2013 (choose a date five or more years in the future), and your department has just been presented with the Fast Company Award for the “Most Innovative Product in the Industry.” Imagine the editor hires you to write a 500- to 1,500-word article telling readers about your team’s successes. Bring it with you to the team meeting on establishing the charter. Yes, you get to define “best.” Be as tangible as you can. What has the team accomplished in the last five years? Who has it served, and how has it served them? What affect has it had on the people and the communities in which it works? What affect has it had on the world? How is this team unique? What is notable about the internal workings of the team—how is it managed? What is its culture? Who does the team partner with in its unique style of relating to its customers? What are the most pervasive strategies and tactics that have brought it such success in these five years? What’s the next big milestone, after 2013, envisioned by the team?
Invite team members to read their articles. We once worked with a team at Novell that did this exercise first thing in the morning of their full-day retreat. They became so clear about their vision of what was possible, they stopped the meeting, and told us (the consultants) to go away—they didn’t need us anymore. They prepared a presentation for the CEO, met with him before the day was out, and proceeded to create one of Novell’s most successful products.
WRITE TEAM GROUND RULES
To create your team’s ground rules or norms, try this process. It is a bit surprising that it begins with the challenge of defining typical behaviors in an unsuccessful team. However, you’ll find it smoothly transitions to identifying specific strategies and tactics that set up the team for success.
Step 1
In your team, answer the question, “what would we have to do to be a totally unsuccessful team?” Also, consider “what have we done in the past, in our interactions with each other, that wasn’t productive?” Brainstorm and record the specific behaviors and actions that contribute to being a truly dysfunctional team. These aren’t hard to come up with—we would dare say each of us has either (accidentally?) pulled these shenanigans, or been the victim of them, on more than one occasion. Examples:
♠ Discounting or shooting down ideas.
♠ Interrupting.
♠ Not participating fully in meetings.
♠ Coming late to meetings.
♠ Bad-mouthing team members.
Step 2
As a team, choose the three to five behaviors from your list that would cause the biggest problems for your group.
Step 3
Determine specific behaviors that will ensure your team effectively avoids these problems. Use strong and positive language to identify what team members will do. Instead of “we don’t arrive late,” try, “we arrive five minutes early.”
Step 4
Ask each person on the team if these behaviors constitute the ground rules for interacting on this team. Ask each if they are willing to abide by these ground rules. Also, ask if they are willing to enforce them. Tweak the wording of any ground rule that doesn’t feel right; make sure each is agreed upon and accepted by everyone. When the entire team is authorized and empowered to abide by and uphold the team ground rules, you have ground rules with teeth. Decide among yourselves how and when you call an infraction of the rules. Do we call a behavior in the moment? Do we interrupt to do so?
APPRECIATE DIVERSE INDIVIDUAL AND TEAM STRENGTHS
In addition to the Appreciative Inquiry process identified in this chapter, here’s another great exercise for uncovering the collective strengths of your team:
♠ After all team members have completed the Clifton StrengthsFinder, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and other self-assessment instruments, bring members together and facilitate a rich, in-depth discussion of each team member’s competencies.
♠ Ask the team to focus on the collective perspective: What are the strengths and competencies of this team? What are our successes, our failures? What do we love to do together? What are we passionate about? What is easy for us in our day-to-day work as a group?
♠ Refine, edit, and create a list of six to eight team strengths.
♠ Rate each strength on how well the team is leveraging it today.
♠ Create a table that lists the top five strengths of each member and the top-five strengths in the team as a whole.
♠ Discuss how the team can leverage these individual and team strengths even more.
The team strengths profiling exercise highlights the diversity and uniqueness of each team member, while allowing them to assign appropriate and meaningful responsibilities based upon strengths.
CONDUCT THE TEAM STRENGTHS ACTIVITY
Michael designed an activity to ground each team member in his strengths. He knows now that enabling team members to use their strengths improves team performance, and teamwork is at its best only when complementary strengths align. Because team members rely upon each other, it is best for the team to understand how to support each other using their strengths—and not their weaknesses. We thought you might like to see what Michael did. (This activity is adapted from Marcus Buckingham’s Go Put Your Strengths to Work, Free Press, 2007) Each team member in turn engaged in this conversation with the team:
One of my strengths is _____ , and here’s how I think we could leverage it. What are your thoughts? How can you help me leverage my strength for the good of the team?
The speaker then put a key weakness on the table.
One of my weaknesses is ______. What ideas do you have for how I can spend less time using my weakness? How can you help me work around it?
Finally, the speaker restated one of his key strengths and asked each team member to relate one instance when the speaker demonstrated this strength.
This exercise builds confidence and competence in each member’s strengths, amplifies the team’s focus on individual and collective strengths, and strengthens the bonds of support and integration among its individual members.
FACILITATE THE APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY PROCESS
The prework component of AI is to create the question(s) that will open up the constructive dialogue about team strengths. Here are three examples of questions to get the team started:
♠ Describe a time when you or the team performed really well. What were the circumstances that made this possible?
♠ Describe a time during your career in this organization when you felt most effective and engaged. What circumstances made the situation possible?
♠ Talk about an incident when you or someone else on the team truly delighted a customer. What made that possible?
Tweak the question so that it is most pertinent to your organization. Think carefully about how to frame it, highlighting “what we are doing right” to keep the discussion focused on strengths.
Decide whom to invite into the AI conversation. It could be just you and the team, or you could invite some customers! You can start big or small. Allow ample time (three to four hours or more), to engage fully with the question. Work through these four steps of AI:
Step 1: Discovery
Discovery is about appreciating the best. This is where you ask your well-crafted questions. Seek, discover, appreciate, and value those points of strength, where your team did what they do well. Participants typically experience high energy and positivism. Encourage full participation by using small groups if needed to ensure everyone’s engagement. Have each group share the most exciting information they uncovered. You’ll create a powerful shift in the room that everyone will experience.
Step 2: Dream
In this next step, envision what could happen if you (the team) create the circumstances to support doing more of what works well. What results/impact can you expect if you set yourselves up to play to these team strengths? Notice how this idea is fully grounded in reality and past experience. It’s a different process altogether from typical vision because it creates inspiring answers to what might be possible if you pave the way to repeat and sustain such excellence in team strength.
Step 3: Design
In step three of AI, talk about how to change your processes to create opportunities for repeating your successes. How do you need to reconstruct your work so that you ensure more of these delightful, high-performance experiences? What barriers do you need to tear down? What supporting mechanisms can you build?
Step 4: Destiny
This final step is one of innovating and committing. What will you (the team) do to fertilize your strength opportunities? What actions do you choose to take? And when will you conduct an appreciative inquiry session again? It’s an intuitive/iterative process that builds on itself.
GET COMFORTABLE WITH CONFLICT AND POWER
Conflict happens, especially during the Storming stage of team development. Handling Conflict, provided by CRM Films (www.crmlearning.com), can help us understand our preferences for dealing with conflict. Also from CRM Films, rent The Abilene Paradox and its facilitator’s guide to explore the fascinating topic of Groupthink.
The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument is a great resource for understanding our preferred conflict styles. You can purchase it at www.cpp.com.
Because there is a profound link between power and conflict, you might enjoy reading the “Sources of Power” article by Andrea on our Website, www.play2yourstrengths.com.
ESTABLISH TEAM ACCOUNTABILITY
The attitude of team accountability holds that team success is more important than the success of individuals. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. How do we accomplish that? Steps we have found helpful for creating team accountability include:
♠ Review the team charter, including purpose, vision, and goals. Ensure that each person feels responsible for the success of the team by linking the team’s charter with team and individual actions.
♠ Create action plans for accomplishing a vision and assign responsibility for all actions.
♠ Challenge team members to hold each other accountable with acknowledgement and support, building safety for the team.
♠ Make thought diversity the norm. Solicit multiple points of view for decision-making and problem-solving.
♠ Encourage skeptics and doubters. Create a culture that welcomes challenges and “push back,” in which important questions such as “Why?” and “Why not?” are readily asked and answered without defensiveness.
♠ Monitor and measure the team’s performance.
♠ Support mistakes and errors—embrace them as opportunities to learn and improve.
IMPROVE TEAM COMMUNICATION
Teach your team members about the important communication skills of advocacy, inquiry, and listening. Encourage members to become adept at using these skills in all of their interactions at work (and in life!). (See our Website for additional resources on the skills of communication, and other tools for teams.)
Read the “Enable Drumbeat Communications” article by Andrea on our Website to discover a method for devising a strategic communication plan within your team.
WATCH A GOOD MOVIE
Watch Oceans Eleven for an entertaining perspective on the importance of individual and team strengths! You may also want to rent Nine to Five for a comic view on how not to lead!
LEARN THE MBTI
A resource for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is available at www.cpp.com. You need a qualified facilitator to administer and interpret the MBTI with your team. Visit our Website to gain access to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
READ A GOOD BOOK
Try these for good reading:
Discovering the Leader in You by Robert Lee and Sara King, published by Jossey-Bass and the Center for Creative Leadership, 2001.
The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High Performance Organization by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, Collins, 2003.
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World by Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson, Harmony Books, 2000.
The Oz Principle: Getting Results Through Individual and Organizational Accountability Roger Connors, Tom Smith, and Craig Hickman, Portfolio Hardcover, 2004.
Navigating Change: A Field Guide to Personal Growth by Gary Gore, Team Trek, 2002.
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