Michael Brainard is the CEO & Founder of Brainard Strategy, a management consulting firm specializing in executive leadership development.
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A team is a group of people coming together presumably for a common purpose and with common goals; team members have some level of interdependence with one another. At some level, they must work together to achieve their mission and accomplish goals. Without interdependence, we would call them a group.
There are many types of teams inside an organization. Some operate like a hockey team where all members must know where each other stands in order to make no-look passes to one another. Some operate like wrestling or swimming teams in that interdependence is not so high. I make this distinction because many of us must clearly articulate the purpose, the goals and the level of interdependence required to perform to and above expectations. J. Richard Hackman describes team performance as the ability to meet or exceed external and internal expectations. High-performing teams interact in a positive and engaging way and are highly productive to exceed expectations.
As a leader, it’s also helpful to think about "team" not only as a noun, and also as a verb: “teaming.”
As a highly effective leader, it is obvious that I am accountable as the team leader to drive engagement and productivity. The team then is a place (or noun). It becomes a forum for interaction and productivity. I must take care of that forum in very specific and precise ways to increase the team’s inner workings.
Now let’s describe “teaming” as a verb. Teaming as a verb requires some level of selflessness, vulnerability and contribution toward an agreed-upon set of outcomes, even in the case where those outcomes supersede the need to create individual esteem. Teaming is the ability to give oneself over to a group that can exceed expectations.
This level of discipline is not how everybody wants to interact, as we can see in the performance of SEAL teams. SEAL team training requires selflessness and SEALs in training are given feedback daily on how much they have contributed or taken away from the performance of the team, and the performance of the team supersedes all individual needs. I find that great leaders easily team, whether leading or following.
Let's look at what makes up the core of "teaming."
Selflessness
In 1976, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins wrote in The Selfish Gene, “If you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature." While that may hold true in some cases at the individual level, humans have cooperated and acted with altruism to create societies, civilizations and global organizations that can contribute back to humanity.
While selflessness may not be our first instinct as human beings, the act of moving away from the needs and wants of self, toward the needs and wants of teams is learnable. When “we” and “I” receive benefits from collective actions and selflessness, and those acts and attitudes are reinforced in organizations, we can and should expect increased levels of selflessness. The problem, however, is that many/most organizations are still over-indexed toward individual performance appraisal and incentives.
So not only is there a biological barrier to selflessness, there is also a “created” misalignment toward the desire to “team.” Rewards and reinforcements are artifacts of how organizations have measured contributions. Simply stated, every organization wants the multiplier effect from teams to get business done, but they are still measuring and rewarding at the individual level.
Vulnerability
Brené Brown describes vulnerability as "uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure." While it may seem counterintuitive to “be vulnerable” in organizations, it has been my experience that when leaders and team members demonstrate vulnerability, other human beings often have an impulse to be supportive or even helpful.
Let’s imagine the opposite scenario: A leader credentials himself at the start of the meeting as “the expert,” with years of experience, and seeks to put team members in a situation of helpers rather than collaborators. It has been my experience that team members' first acts are to challenge the expertise, seek to debate the expert and not collaborate readily.
Expertise and experience, when overused, become acts of self-protection. They operate in contrast to vulnerability and can be perceived as statements of insecurity, or ways to keep others at a distance so that the purveyor cannot be “at risk” or “exposed.” I have found vulnerability to be a core construct in one’s ability to “team.”
Self-Accountability
This is the willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions. I once watched Tom Brady get questioned about his defense allowing 49 points to be scored against them in a game. He didn't take the bait. Without even taking a breath, he said something to the effect of: I knew how many points were required to win the game and my job is to play quarterback and score those points. This loss is on me, not the defense. (Not a direct quote.)
Imagine being on a team at work tomorrow in which there was no blame. Blame became irrelevant because each team member was regularly reporting whether they were falling behind, made a mistake or needed support to hit the goals in the agreed time and level of quality. Self-accountability would drive the extinction of blame, post-mortems and confusion about performance expectations.
Self-accountability, vulnerability and selflessness take a great deal of mental toughness and emotional intelligence. These are three primary drivers of becoming great at teaming. While we can and should continue to develop “teams” as a noun, we must tear down over-indexed individual performance measures and incentives and replace them with equally weighted team measures and rewards for teams and teaming, and we must coach true “teaming” skills in organizations.
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