Team Tips - 3 {Who gets to play?}

The next challenge for teams I have chosen is from Ben N.:

New member ?

“How to select members for a great team?”

The smartest way we have seen people get selected for a team is to have all potential team members attend the team building workshop: Simple Rules and Tools for Great Teams. This session is also known as BootCamp by the originators of the event, Jim and Michele McCarthy, and is based on their book Software for Your Head.

By inviting potential team members to participate in this workshop the boss* is setting some initial conditions which help define the basis for the team. (* see Team Tips - 1)

1. The workshop is NOT mandatory. Accordingly, the people who attend are only those who want to be there; hence, want to be part of the team
2. By participating in the session attendees are immersed in the Core Protocols – the Simple Rules and Tools. This helps everyone involved get to experience and practice these foundational behaviours for great teamwork, and some will invest energy in this learning and thrive in it, and some may choose not to
3. During the session, the team members develop a Shared Vision for that team. If someone doesn't wish to share that vision they are free to follow their own dream and so move out of the original team
4. The team members that find that the Core Protocols as used by the team deliver on the promise of high band-with communication, fast decision making, the development of trust, a focus on results of high quality, etc. become their own self organized team. Any attendees who don't are again free to not participate, possibly forming their own team working in other ways

The boss gets the result: a self organized team, following Simple Rules and Tools that are repeatable in any situation, scaleable for any size of group, reliably working to produce the best results on time every time. Any attendee who chooses not to be part of this, effectively self-selects themselves off the team.

Our experience with this approach is that:

   a) bosses have used the session to “do the hiring”. That is the immersion becomes the hiring process, and the check for personality chemistry, and the probation period, and any other scrutiny one wishes for in a hiring process. (And the cost of a “normal” personnel search, interview and hire, and possible failure after three months of probation more than pays for the session.)

   b) or alternatively, they have seen after the session who should be, or remain, “on the bus” [Good to Great, Harper Collins, Jim Collins] and can identify those who don't wish to work on the team using the Core Protocols. (Again this saves considerable energy and cost dealing with employees who have turned out not to be a good fit.)

Team

The quick answer then is: Have the team select their own members.

If the team already exists, then they are the best people to determine who will fit well on that team, who can aspire to the team's shared vision, will use the team's commitments to responsible behaviour, and follow the team's protocols for information sharing, decision making, self improvement, development of great products or services, etc.

And just as the great teams work with a bias toward action instead of discussion, and incrementally building prototypes, and perfecting them, they can do the same thing in confirming new members. That is, work with them over a probationary period for everyone to confirm that the newly expanded team is functioning as well or better, and similarly the team is a good fit for the new member.

Great teams learn to let ideas go, and similarly can accept that their world isn't perfect for everyone. Sometimes the shiniest, prettiest, smartest new hire just shouldn't be on this team. The Core Protocols provide the tools to deal with that.

Again, the underlying premise in all these answers is that the team is using the Simple Rules – the Core Commitments in the Core Protocols – and the Tools – the Protocols themselves for their day to day operation. This is simply the smartest approach for any team that we have found.

So here is the “catch”. If what I am suggesting doesn't seem workable in your situation, then you need to use the Simple Rules and Tools for Great Teams (or something better).

To add your questions to the list add a comment below or tweet me @ReevesResults.

Software for Your Head 2

Continuing with the stereotypical project team kickoff meeting from Software for Your Head by Jim & Michele McCarthy.

We left off (from page 5) with:

My, but you’re feeling anthropological today, aren’t you? Is it maybe the presence of the cynics nee idealists? Does it touch you somehow?

Whatever. The scarcity of vision does strike you as interesting, even though it’s not a major topic of conversation (or even a minor one, for that matter). You know that most of these team members would agree that “shared vision” is a vital thing for a team. Why, if you went around the room and asked who was for and who against a shared vision, almost all would vote for it. Some would hedge or go technical on you (define this, what do you mean by that, it depends). But none would vote no. And yet, despite this general conviction, no one seems committed to a particular shared vision, or attempts to achieve one on this team. Of course, catching a shared vision, that’s a tough problem. Who knows where lightning will strike? Who has mapped the rainbow’s end? You note that there are a few who absolutely believe that a shared vision is the vital ingredient for a successful team. Still, no one speaks up about this obvious vacancy.

Instead,while you drift in and out, they plod on through the usual meeting follies, cracking a few minor jokes, interrupting without reason, talking overlong and repetitively, sporadically fighting for control, while somehow meandering through a poorly conceived and prematurely written agenda. Yet all the while the people on this team are somehow numbing themselves to a frightening lack of vision of where it is they are going. You wonder, why doesn’t anyone speak up? Don’t they care? You are willing to bet dollars to dog biscuits that plenty of perfectly good beliefs and values are lying dormant within the members of this team—beliefs and values that would make all the difference, if only they were put into practice.

But, because you are acting as a kind of mentor or coach, and are really troubled by this curious vision oblivion, you decide that the obvious first step is to get them going on a shared vision.

This would help. Short-term, anyway. Now that you’ve decided how to help, you can barely restrain yourself from saying something that might awaken their somnolent vision-building potential. But you say nothing now, and not only because of the difficulty of fighting the others for precious airtime, and of suborning the agenda, but because you intuit that jumping in with that straightforward and inarguable direction (get a vision, people!) might be a long-term mistake. You are having a growing belief that there just may be bigger, tastier fish for you to fry here. No sense settling for little crappies, you think, when some big ole lunker bass might be about.

You are increasing your degree of presence.

The problem, you think, is not merely that they ought to acquire a shared vision. Clearly, they need one, and they aren’t about to get one, not with their present behavior, anyway. And yet, your intuition whispers that the lack of a shared vision is not the most important issue to address. So, trying that on, you think some more. What was that about fish to fry? Teach a man to fish, etc. Yes, that’s it.

You know that some of these team members do believe in having a common purpose. You know the whole team would really catch fire if team members just had this one big, energizing, lightning-striking, all-solving vision! But here, on this team, almost unbelievably, not one person will even say anything about this AWOL vision.

You wonder why would they lie and betray their beliefs. A little more of your dwindling supply of innocence goes poof. There must be some explanation.Maybe the lack of shared vision is the symptom here, not the problem. The problem with this team is that not one damned person on it is speaking the truth. They don’t really lie, not much; they just focus on the smaller stuff, because the bigger stuff is too scary. So they don’t tell the truth. Not all of it, anyway. Hell, not even the pieces of it they have.

So now what?

Continues soon. Sound familiar? Please comment.

Leadership 5

Let's summarize the concepts we have accumulated so far in this series on Leadership:

• a vision
• the best idea moving toward that vision
• a leader proposing that idea
• a cohesive group wanting to follow that idea

Some of a leader's attributes: Inspiration, Courage, Patience, Respect, Decisiveness, Firmness, and Connection with the individuals in their group.

A test for leadership:

• Followers = Leadership happening
• No followers = no Leadership happening.

Characteristics of a group and it's leader:

• a symbiotic relationship, mutual influence, agency
• a cohesive group – a social identity – ideally using tested and proven interpersonal tools to share information, make decisions, resolve conflict, etc.
• a transformational process creating the group, determining its identity, developing these individual and group visions
• again ideally, the opportunity for any individual at any point in time take leadership of a team by means of the team's acceptance of that individual's idea for moving the team forward - that leadership possibly being momentary or lasting as long as it takes for the team to achieve their vision
  

Finally; a modification of the definition of leader to: one who has willing followers.

Which leads us to some other notions to address, such as authority vs. power.

If one of the “proofs” of seeing leadership is to also see followers, what about situations where people are forced to follow?

We see lots of projects in the software industry become “forced marches” and some so dire they become “death marches”. Usually no programmers die, thankfully, no matter how poor their programming or teamwork, although some project managers contemplate homicide followed by harakiri.

In these cases, are we seeing leadership?

Hence the more precise way of describing followers by adding the adjective “willing”. If the person heading up a group has to resort to coercion or some other form of power – typically fear – then should we say that person is demonstrating leadership? I believe a consensus would say no. People forced to follow the person in charge in any situation would not be considered willing followers and hence the person in charge would not be considered leading.

Can we then make a distinction between power and the use of power in the sense of force, and authority?

If, as we see regularly in our teamwork retreats called BootCamp or ResultsCamp, the team (our cohesive social group above) willingly follows the current “best idea”, and in effect the proposer of that idea, then we can say the team confers authority of leadership upon that proposer. On the strength of that idea, and the team's understanding that to continue to progress toward their vision they need to act on the current “best idea”, authority to lead automatically flows to the proposer of that idea. Or even more accurately, leadership authority flows to those who begin action on that idea.

What we see then in our Camps is the following proven scenario:

• the team members develop their individual visions of their futures
• this impetus leads to the team readily developing a team vision
• the agreed and accepted stance of the team becomes a bias toward action to enact that vision
• this bias for action leads to the development of, and proposals to, the team, of ideas to move toward that vision – the elements of enactment
• the act of proposing an idea, and the team's acceptance of it, causes emergent leadership by the proposer, and then by those who act with authority to make that idea so

The results are:

• leadership emerging from any team member at any moment
• the team conferring authority on these emergent leaders to move forward decisively based on action towards results
• this leadership lasting as long as progress is made, results are achieved, and the next “best idea” appears

None of this contradicts what we have learned so far. And it does make a very exciting and promising experience. Because exactly what we need right now is leaders like President Obama of the United States to not only propose ideas, but to seek out those of us who will act. Clearly no one individual can accomplish all the change needed, nor do they necessarily know what the current “best idea” is. But together we can all find ideas, and act on them – locally, municipally, provincially, and nationally - as emergent leaders.

Leadership 4

Continuing from last week with Dr. Reicher and associates's work (all text in quotes is from their paper*):
“There is a truth here which is so obvious that it is easy to overlook. Leadership is not simply a matter of leaders, or even of leaders and followers. Rather it has to do with the relationship between leaders and followers within a social group (Haslam, 2001; van Knippenberg & Hogg, 2003b; Sherif, 1962, p.17).”

This matches our experience from BootCamp / ResultsCamp. The experience of the team prior to Fiona's proposal (Leadership Article 1) was to build that social group. What preceded the team's capacity to really listen to her proposal and then act on it was the work each had done developing connection. That was accomplished through the mechanics of generating a shared vision – shared between the group members and guiding their actions and interactions.

And further:
“... any consideration of leader and follower agency must consider their inter-relationship within the group. This notion of leadership as a group process is the starting point for the social identity approach to leadership...”

Again, we regularly see in ResultsCamp the capability within the group for various leaders to emerge at any point based on the best idea proposed at that point.

Dr. Reicher's paper continues to develop three important elements:

• the group (and the leader) share attributes or an identity which makes them a group, and this binds group members including the leader
• in fact, a leader can provide the definition and shape the group.
• leaders distinguish themselves not only by words but also by structures that fulfill the vision and the words

And then states:
“The critical insight is that leadership is a transformational process. It involves changes in the self-understanding of people and also in the nature of the social world. Indeed, one of the insights to come out of our analysis is that these two forms of change are interdependent since identities are models of how the world is and of how it should be.”

Accordingly:
“Effective leadership is about supplying a vision, creating social power and directing that power so as to realize that vision.”

So here is this critical notion of vision again. Is this expressed as our mission, that is to say, what we are intending to do? Or is it possibly our goal, our objectives, our targets?

The ResultsCamp vision is the picture of what we want the world and ourselves to look like in the future. Because the ResultsCamp team members determine first of all their own personal visions – what they want their future life to be – they can then determine a team vision and see readily how they as individuals can support that vision and each other to realize that vision.

Given all this what do we now have?

• team members with their own personal visions
• a team vision each individual has helped develop and can support with their own personal futures
• a cohesive group – a social identity – using tested and proven interpersonal tools to share information, make decisions, resolve conflict, etc. (the Core Protocols)
• a transformational process – participation in the ResultsCamp – which is creating the team, determining its identity, developing these individual and team visions

and possibly most interesting

• the opportunity for any individual at any point in time take leadership of the group by means of the team's acceptance of that individual's idea for moving the team forward - that leadership possibly being momentary or lasting as long as it takes for the team to achieve their vision

However, there is still the “unreal” world after ResultsCamp and the following warning from Dr. Reicher:
“Of course, to argue that leadership need not diminish the agency of followers (and may in fact enable it) is not to deny that there are forms of leadership which do attempt to do so. Far from encouraging an open debate about who we are and how we should act, some leaders may indeed try to essentialize their constructions, to present them as the only possible versions of who we are and to brook no debate. The extreme to which we referred above, where the leader constructs him- or herself as the embodiment of the ingroup, leads to a situation where anything the leader says or does by definition encapsulates the group identity and anyone who opposes the leader by definition becomes an opponent of the group. Where, on top of that, a sense of pervasive threat is created such that the ingroup appears to be in danger of destruction by imagined enemies, then extreme measures to quell dissent can be justified in the interests of self-defense.

Such strategies, of course, are commonly found in undemocratic and dictatorial regimes (Reicher & Hopkins, 2003; see also Koonz, 2003, Overy, 2004). Our concern is that if one presupposes that leadership takes away the agency of followers then one fails to address the conditions under which tyrannical leadership thrives (Haslam & Reicher, 2005). This lessens our ability to promote open and democratic leadership and to defend against autocracy. In this way, the danger is not that the traditional opposition between leaders and followers is valid in theory but rather that — partly through a faulty theoretical analysis — it may become true in practice.”

So this warning brings us back to the dangers of leaders posturing as representing groups that they do not, not allowing the group to bring forward their best ideas, to the extreme of outright opposition between the leader and the group.

While I agree that tyrants and despots exist, and analysis needs to include this possibility, I conclude this week with a modification of the definition of leader: one who has willing followers.

*Social identity and the dynamics of leadership: Leaders and followers as collaborative agents in the transformation of social reality. Reicher, Haslam, Hopkins (2005)

Leadership Article 1

On a hot, muggy, August afternoon in 2005 a group of twenty or so people were sitting and standing in group around one of their work tables. Inside the Community Centre in the small town of Duncan, Oklahoma, this group were protected from the heat and pending tornadoes but not from their tiredness, frustration, confusion and lack of energy. They were stuck. Their momentum on their team assignment had slowed, wobbled, and fallen to the ground over the last hour. The promise of that morning's ideas for their project had waned and those ideas just weren't as useful as they had seemed.

Luckily, in this group of seasoned corporate employees, some with Doctorate degrees in Engineering or thirty years of experience solving extremely difficult well-drilling problems across the world, or both, was an eleven year old girl. She wasn't a child prodigy or some mistake by the Human Resources department. She wasn't even known to the others two days ago. But she was part of their team. They had all come together the previous Sunday evening to spend a week learning and practicing the best behaviours known for successful teamwork results.

As I entered the room for a “curiosity walkabout”, Fiona stood up in the group, with that look of tired resignation that teenagers perfect as they are not listened to time and time again, and made a suggestion. As she spoke she just looked at the table so she wouldn't have to immediately deal with looks of rejection from the mixture of adults, some approaching retirement. One of her more present teammates asked her to clarify her thoughts in proposal form nudging Fiona toward the Decider Protocol they had learned. Fiona restated her idea: “I propose that we... “. There was a pregnant silence, then smiles, then people sitting up and moving closer to each other, then the required response to a Decider – here a mixture of approval and support indicated, but no “thumbs down”. Fiona smiled, they smiled, Fiona declared the proposal accepted, and the team immediately started to move forward again to implement her new idea. They were re-energized by the best idea available at that moment – Fiona's idea – and Fiona became the team leader as they sprung into action.

What had just happened?

This group had validated again that leadership doesn't necessarily depend upon charisma, charm, age, wisdom, experience, or size. It doesn't have to come from an organization chart, a long history of work experience in an organization or a group.

Leadership can come from anywhere and anyone within a cohesive group that recognizes and respects each member, stays open to ideas from any source, and manages their egos, old habits, and prejudices. A group that understands and exercises the meritocracy of ideas can be open to an infinity of possibilities.

We don't have to wait for the boss, the loudest speaker, the eldest with the most experience. No one can predict when the next best idea will surface or who will have it. Of course, in any group some may appear to be, and act as, the wisest or most creative, but they don't have exclusive rights on good ideas. And so often the strangest thoughts at one moment become the most valuable the next. As my daughter Allison quotes Einstein in her email signature: “If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.”

A leader, in my opinion, doesn't need absurd ideas necessarily, just ones that the group agrees moves them positively forward toward their vision. But often the “absurd” or “scary” ones turn out to be the most useful and energizing.

What have I seen so far?

• a vision
• the best idea moving toward that vision
• a leader proposing that idea
• a cohesive group wanting to follow

More to come next week!