This article explores the nuances of team development, emphasizing the importance of high-performance teamwork. It delves into the varying levels of group dynamics, from mere collections to cohesive teams with a shared mission. The author highlights the significance of interdependence among team members and draws parallels with real-life examples, such as climbing teams and corporate scenarios. The narrative underscores the need for teams to not only focus on individual success but also actively support each other. The article concludes by encouraging readers to assess their current team dynamics and strive for an ideal balance on the continuum of team development.
Transcript
High-performance team-ness. How much is enough? If you’re trying to create a high-performing team, you might want to stop and ask how much of that high-performance team-ness do we need? Sometimes in an organization, you’ll have a group of people that really have nothing much to do with each other. They’ve just been brought together to all report to someone so that they belong somewhere in the organization. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for that group necessarily to put a lot of effort into becoming a high-performing team. So you only want to go for a high-performing team when it will help you get the job done, get the mission done because it takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of different ways of thinking. It takes a commitment to a different way of working together. As you’ll see in this whole series on high-performing teams. So only do it when it’s really, really necessary. So let’s take a look and see how much of it do you need. Think of it as a kind of a continuum here. First, at the low end, in terms of how much team-ness is what is called a collection, like when you go to wait for the bus or wait for the train, and there’s the collection of people standing there, you have something in common. Yeah. You’re all waiting for the bus, let’s say.
But you don’t need each other. There’s no need to interact with each other to accomplish what you’re there for. It’s you have a personal mission, so to speak, which is to get on the bus. And it doesn’t really matter who’s around you and what they’re about. The same can be true in an organization where you have a mission. Your group may have a mission, but you don’t really need the other people directly, or there’s not much interdependence between you and the others. That’s a collection. The next level of kind of complexity or intensity of interdependence is a group. Now, if you’ve ever belonged to, let’s say, a book study group, a group of people that get together, let’s say, in the evenings to study a book. Now you’re all there for the same reason you all read this book, so you have that in common. You’re all there to maybe learn or grow or develop yourself in some way. So you all have a similar intention for being there. And there’s something about what the other people say and what they do that contributes to you or not. So in a group, you’re there for yourself. Basically, the group is there to enable something to happen in the individual members of the group. The group itself doesn’t actually have a personality. If you’re watching this series about groups, every group has its own personality and its own sort of being.
It’s a separate being in the room, but the group doesn’t have a mission that occurs when you go to a team. As soon as you make the next level up and you’ve gone to becoming a team now, everybody in that circle has the same mission, and the mission is bigger than just you. The mission is something that we’re all trying to accomplish together, and we have more interdependence. I need something from you. You need something from me, like a sports team or a singing group or something like that. There’s this need to really tune in to each other and kind of know where they’re coming from, so that you can make your strongest contribution to the mission. So now we’re getting to the point where there’s a little more interdependence among the members of the team, a little more need for each other to accomplish the mission. But there’s an even higher level now. And this is the high-performance, high-satisfaction team. And this is another this this is this is if you’ve ever been in one of these, you know, it feels different. There’s a kind of an electricity. There’s a kind of a hum. There’s there’s an excitement that goes with it. And in a high-performing team, the members of the team are not only trying to succeed themselves, they’re not only feeling responsible for making the mission happen individually, but they’re concerned about the success or the difficulty of everyone else on the team.
So on a climbing team, I’ve got some dear friends back in Spokane, Washington, where I used to live for many years. Some of the top mountain climbers in the world live in Spokane, Washington. People that have climbed the highest mountains on each continent and Mount Everest. A good friend has climbed Everest a couple of times, and I’ve asked them what makes for a great climbing team, and I thought they were going to talk about technical ability, you know, climbing skills and so forth. And they said, John, those just get you sort of in the circle to be on a team. But once we’re together on a team, we all have the technical ability. And I said, well, what makes a difference in a successful climb? He said, well, if you take weather out of the picture and if you just focus on the team, it comes down to, are you concerned and tuned in to what’s happening with each member of the team? He said, let’s say that we’re strung out on this mountain and we’re putting pitons. You know, we’re knocking. Pitons into the rock and we’re hooking up. So we’re all hooked up together. And let’s say that the person who’s leading this particular route is not putting in the pitons correctly.
What are we going to do about that? He said, think about it for two seconds. You’re not going to say to somebody else, oh, you know, he’s really messing up, boy. He’s really you’re going to you’re going to call out to the person and say, hey, what’s happening? These pitons are a little wobbly here. When trust breaks down, if there’s any kind of an issue with anybody on the team, you want everybody on the team to be succeeding. You cannot afford to have a single member of the team not doing well or having difficulty. I remember once with an insurance company in Canada, a very large insurance company in Canada some years ago, one of the vice presidents, his unit was was failing really badly, and he had tried everything that he knew. And I was facilitating this meeting with the CEO and the team. And this was one of the issues that came up, what to do about this. And as a result of this kind of explanation here, two of the other vice presidents, one the person in charge of strategy and the other in charge of finance said, let us come and help you. We will be your loan executives. We’ll come and be like your advisory board. You can put us to work any way you want. The finance guy said, I got my people can handle this stuff. Let me come and help you.
The strategy guys said the same thing. So they came. They partnered with this guy literally for three months and they turned that whole department around. That’s an example of high-performing teamwork. How many sports teams have you seen? Have you seen that have fabulous individual players that don’t win, and you have a team of fairly mediocre people or average people, you know, nobody’s mediocre at that level. But, you know, not stars and they win. Why? Because they’re playing together. They’re concerned about the success of everyone else on the team. So where do you need to be on here? Where are you now and where do you think would be the ideal location on this thing? Maybe have a conversation now among yourselves about where are we now and use the numbers. What I like to do is have people stand on the floor, you know, get up and here’s a one and there’s a five. Where do you see us now? Stand on the continuum, have a conversation about why you picked that number and then say, where do you think we need to be? What would be the appropriate level for us? And then see how big that delta is and have a conversation about how to get there. A lot of the materials on the Wise Work series on high-performing teamwork group dynamics will help you get there. Good luck with this one. Find the right place on this continuum.
