And remember, it’s okay to decide that your group isn’t a team. In a world where teamwork is rarer than we might think, plenty of non-teams succeed. In fact, if your group is not meant to be a team, it’s far better to be clear about that than to waste time and energy pretending you’re something you’re not. Because that only creates false expectations, which leads to frustration and resentment. — 12: 182-185
Team members readily set aside their individual or personal needs for the greater good of the group. — 12: 178-179
If team members are never pushing one another outside of their emotional comfort zones during discussions, then it is extremely likely that they’re not making the best decisions for the organization. — 35: 528-530
Because when a team recovers from an incident of destructive conflict, it builds confidence that it can survive such an event, which in turn builds trust. — 37: 555-556
The lack of conflict is precisely the cause of one of the biggest problems that meetings have: they are boring. — 44: 661-662
Because most human beings are drastically more reasonable than we think they are. In my work with teams, I’ve come to understand that most people don’t really need to have their ideas adopted (a.k.a. “get their way”) in order to buy in to a decision. They just want to have their ideas heard, understood, considered, and explained within the context of the ultimate decision. — 48: 736-738
Another Lack of Accountability Story I once attended a staff meeting where one of the executives had his laptop open and was intermittently typing away during discussions. After the meeting I asked the CEO, “Does that bother you when he does that?” He told me, “Yeah, I find it distracting.” So I asked the obvious question: “Why don’t you tell him to stop?” A pained look came across the CEO’s face as he answered, “I don’t know. I’m not his parent. Who am I to tell him how to act . . .” I wanted to interrupt him and scream, “You’re the friggin’ CEO! That’s who you are!” But I didn’t. That’s because I too sometimes struggle with accountability. — 57: 869-875
The point of these stories is that human beings are naturally self-interested. Only by ensuring that the people on your team are committed to collective results ahead of their own needs, and by keeping them focused on those results, can you avoid the kind of individualization that breaks teams apart. — 68: 1042-1044
But perhaps most important of all, having too many people on a team makes team dynamics during meetings and other decision-making events almost impossible. That’s because a good team has to engage in two types of communication in order to optimize decision making, but only one of these is practical in a large group. According to Harvard’s Chris Argyris, those two types of communication are advocacy and inquiry. Basically, advocacy is the statement of ideas and opinions; inquiry is the asking of questions for clarity and understanding. When a group gets too large, people realize they are not going to get the floor back any time soon, so they resort almost exclusively to advocacy. It becomes like Congress (which is not designed to be a team) or the United Nations (ditto). One member says, “I think we should pursue proposal A,” provoking another member to say, “Well, I think we should pursue proposal B.” Someone else lobbies for C, yet another person wants A with a slight modification, and before you know it, everyone is trying to get their opinion heard. Inquiry, on the other hand, would entail one of the members saying, “Wait a minute. I’d like to hear you explain why you support proposal A, because I want to understand your rationale. After all, if it makes sense, I could go along with it.” Okay, that might be just a little too idealistic, but you get the point. — 76: 1159-1170
You see, a team is a relatively small number of people (anywhere from three to twelve) that shares common goals as well as the rewards and responsibilities for achieving them. — 12: 177-178
A good way to understand a working group is to think of it like a golf team, where players go off and play on their own and then get together and add up their scores at the end of the day. A real team is more like a basketball team, one that plays together simultaneously, in an interactive, mutually dependent, and often interchangeable way. Most working groups reflexively call themselves teams because that’s the word society uses to describe any group of people who are affiliated in their work. — 40: 606-610
It amazes me that intelligent people will sacrifice the effectiveness and manageability of their team for a tactical victory. This is undeniable evidence that many executives, in spite of what they might say, don’t really understand the importance of leadership team cohesiveness. — 44: 673-675
One of our consultants worked with the leadership team of a division within a large beverage company. He convinced the VP of that division that more conflict was necessary on the team. Unfortunately, they were having a hard time getting people to engage in it. This is typical. So the VP put in place two formal rules. First, if people remained silent during discussions, he would interpret that as disagreement. People quickly realized that if they didn’t weigh in, a decision could not be made. Second, at the end of every discussion, the VP would go around the room and ask every member of his team for a formal commitment to the decision. These simple rules changed the nature of their meetings and increased healthy conflict almost immediately. This would not have happened had the VP simply told his team that they should engage in more conflict. — 68: 1039-1048
See, it’s only when colleagues speak up and put their opinions on the table, without holding back, that the leader can confidently fulfill one of his most important responsibilities: breaking ties. When a leader knows that everyone on the team has weighed in and provided every possible perspective needed for a fully informed decision, he can then bring a discussion to a clear and unambiguous close and expect team members to rally around the final decision even if they initially disagreed with it. — 70: 1068-1072
A good way to ensure that people take this process seriously is to demand that they go back to their teams after the meeting and communicate exactly what was agreed on. — 73: 1115-1117
First, when accountability is handled during a meeting, every member of the team receives the message simultaneously and doesn’t have to make the same mistakes in order to learn the lesson of the person being held accountable. Second, they know that the leader is holding their colleague accountable, which avoids their wondering whether the boss is doing his job. Finally, it serves to reinforce the culture of accountability, which increases the likelihood that team members will do the same for one another. When leaders—and peers—limit their accountability discussions to private conversations, they leave people wondering whether those discussions are happening. This often leads to unproductive hallway conversations and conjecture about who knows what about whom. Having said all that, when it comes to addressing relatively serious issues, or matters of corrective action in which a leader is wondering whether a member of the team might not be worthy to be on the team anymore, then everything changes. These are best handled privately, in a one-on-one situation, to respect the dignity of the person being held accountable. However, and this can be dicey, the leader is often well advised to let her people know that she is addressing the situation to avoid unproductive and dangerous speculation. — 85: 1302-1311
All too often they embrace the attitude embodied by the fisherman who looks at the guy sitting at the other end of the boat and announces, “Hey, your side of the boat is sinking.” — 90: 1367-1369
The only way for a leader to establish this collective mentality on a team is by ensuring that all members place a higher priority on the team they’re a member of than the team they lead in their departments. — 90: 1374-1375
most of the leaders I’ve worked with who complain about a lack of alignment mistakenly see it primarily as a behavioral or attitudinal problem. In their minds, it’s a function of the fact that employees below them do not want to work together. What those executives don’t realize is that there cannot be alignment deeper in the organization, even when employees want to cooperate, if the leaders at the top aren’t in lockstep with one another around a few very specific things. — 96: 1464-1467
Thinking they’re being mature, leaders often agree to disagree with one another around seemingly minor issues, thereby avoiding what they see as unnecessary contentiousness and conflict. After all, from their vantage point, the gaps in their opinions and decisions seem small and innocuous. What they don’t understand is that by failing to eliminate even those small gaps, they are leaving employees below them to fight bloody, unwinnable battles with their peers in other departments. This leads to the antithesis of (oh, I hate to use this word) empowerment. — 96: 1471-1475
There is probably no greater frustration for employees than having to constantly navigate the politics and confusion caused by leaders who are misaligned. That’s because just a little daylight between members of a leadership team becomes blinding and overwhelming to employees one or two levels below. I’ve heard this referred to as the “vortex effect.” Whatever you call it, it’s real, it’s a big problem, and it makes deep organizational alignment impossible. — 97: 1478-1482
What leaders must do to give employees the clarity they need is agree on the answers to six simple but critical questions and thereby eliminate even small discrepancies in their thinking. None of these questions is novel per se. What is new is the realization that none of them can be addressed in isolation; they must be answered together. Failing to achieve alignment around any one of them can prevent an organization from attaining the level of clarity necessary to become healthy. These are the six questions: 1. Why do we exist? 2. How do we behave? 3. What do we do? 4. How will we succeed? 5. What is most important, right now? 6. Who must do what? — 99: 1514-1527
More than getting the right answer, it is important to simply have an answer—one that is directionally correct and around which all team members can commit. — 101: 1545-1546
There is a darn good chance that your company—in fact, any given company—has not yet identified its purpose. I’ve found that most have not, at least not adequately. And I’ve come to realize that even organizations that think they have usually haven’t done so with the degree of rigor and specificity that is necessary. This leads to two problems. First, those teams don’t achieve a real sense of collective commitment from their members. Too often busy executives who want nothing to do with what they see as ethereal, metaphysical conversations simply nod their heads and agree with whatever the team comes up with for a statement of purpose. This is a recipe for jargony, empty declarations. Second, and this is certainly related, those executives don’t see the company’s reason for existing as having any practical implications for the way they make decisions and run the organization. As a result of having no real idealistic boundaries, they operate in a largely reactive, shortsighted way, being overly tactical and opportunistic. And they often lose their way by getting involved in a variety of random pursuits and projects that might be financially justifiable in the short term but don’t really fit together. This tends to dilute the focus and passion that employees look for when they’re coming to work. Some executives, especially those who are a little cynical about all this purpose stuff, will say that their company exists simply to make money for owners or shareholders. That is almost never a purpose, but rather an important indicator of success. It’s how an organization knows that it is effectively fulfilling its purpose, but it falls far short of providing the organization with a guide to what ultimately matters most. In those rare companies where business owners really do believe that the organization’s underlying purpose is to provide themselves with financial windfalls, it is best that leaders are up front about that purpose. Otherwise they’ll create confusion, cynicism, and a sense of betrayal among employees who almost always prefer a more idealistic reason for coming to work. — 106: 1612-1630
But a real danger, and a common one, occurs when leaders confuse their motivation for identifying their purpose with trying to come up with something that will sound impressive on a billboard, in an annual report, or on an employee sweatshirt. — 108: 1647-1649
kids how to do their homework better. Those are a start, but they’re certainly not lofty enough. As Porras and Collins say, the next question that needs to be asked, and asked again and again until it leads to the highest purpose or reason for existence, is Why? Why do we do that? Why do we help companies use technology to do more business with their partners? Why do we pave driveways? Why do we teach kids how to do their homework better? Eventually, by answering that question again and again, a leadership team will get to a point where they’ve identified the most idealistic reason for their business. That point will be somewhere just shy of to make the world a better — 109: 1659-1666
Those are a start, but they’re certainly not lofty enough. As Porras and Collins say, the next question that needs to be asked, and asked again and again until it leads to the highest purpose or reason for existence, is Why? Why do we do that? Why do we help companies use technology to do more business with their partners? Why do we pave driveways? Why do we teach kids how to do their homework better? Eventually, by answering that question again and again, a leadership team will get to a point where they’ve identified the most idealistic reason for their business. That point will be somewhere just shy of to make the world a better place. That’s how they’ll know they’re done. — 109: 1660-1666
I’ve come to learn over the years, with the encouragement of clients and consultants who found it to be true, that there should be three anchors. — 142: 2169-2170
There are three keys to cascading communication: message consistency from one leader to another, timeliness of delivery, and live, real-time communication. This starts toward the end of leadership team meetings, a time when executives are usually trying their best to get out the door. That’s when someone needs to ask the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: “Hey, what are we going to go back and tell our people?” — 170: 2594-2597
The fact is that the best human systems are often the simplest and least sophisticated ones. Their primary purpose is not to avoid lawsuits or emulate what other companies are doing but rather to keep managers and employees focused on what the organization believes is important. That’s why a one-page, customized performance review form that managers embrace and take seriously is always better than a seven-page, sophisticated one designed by an organizational psychologist from the National Institute for Human Transformation and Bureaucracy (there is no such thing). This point cannot be overstated. Human systems are tools for reinforcement of clarity. They give an organization a structure for tying its operations, culture, and management together, even when leaders aren’t around to remind people. And because each company is different, there are no generic systems that can be downloaded from the Internet. Let’s take a quick look at the most important human systems that an organization needs, according to the logical life cycle of an employee. RECRUITING AND HIRING Bringing the right people into an organization, and keeping the wrong ones out, is as important as any activity that a leadership team must oversee. Though few leaders will dispute this, not many organizations are good at doing it, for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, too many organizations have not defined exactly what the right and wrong people look like; that is, they haven’t clarified a meaningful set of behavioral values that they can use to screen potential employees. I addressed this when I discussed core values, but it’s worth repeating. Hiring without clear and strict criteria for cultural fit greatly hampers the potential for success of any organization. And even for organizations that have identified the right set of behavioral values, a host of other problems keep many of them from hiring well. For all the talk about hiring for fit, there is still too much emphasis on technical skills and experience when it comes to interviewing and selection. And this happens at all levels. When push comes to shove, most executives get enamored with what candidates know and have done in their careers and allow those things to overshadow more important behavioral issues. They don’t seem to buy into the notion that you can teach skill but not attitude. And even organizations that have defined their core values and really do believe that those values should trump everything else sometimes lose their way when it comes to ensuring cultural fit because they don’t have the right kind of process for hiring. I’ve found that most companies fall into one of two categories on opposite sides of the structural scale for hiring. — : 2736-2760
What leadership teams need to do—and this may be the single most important piece of advice for them when it comes to meetings—is separate their tactical conversations from their strategic ones. Combining the two just doesn’t work and leaves both sets of issues inadequately addressed. — : 3189-3191
The truth is, if executives are having the right kind of meetings, if they’re driving issues to closure and holding one another accountable, then there is much less to do outside meetings, including managing their direct reports. — : 3236-3237
During tactical staff meetings, agendas are set only after the team has reviewed its progress against goals. Noncritical administrative topics are easily discarded. — : 3259-3260