By Bruce Piasecki
America loves a fierce individualist. There is something inspiring about the lone executive director blazing a path into the valuable future. Yet, while our culture will always celebrate the individual, the near future will be all about innovation for sustainable value creation, led by teams.
In a world that becomes more complex by the day, command and control is out, and employee engagement is in. The days when a larger-than-life personality is allowed to steamroll over the rest of the association are over. This destroys morale, which destroys results. Teams, not individuals, drive performance. The ideas that allow an organization to achieve, grow, and prosper (as opposed to merely survive) will be created only when teams leverage their combined skills and hold themselves mutually accountable. No individual, no matter how brilliant, is likely to have the skill set to take projects from start to finish in this fast-paced and complex environment.
The good news is, associations can shatter this individualistic mindset wherever it occurs and guide staff to a better way to work—while tapping into and maximizing their raw talent. But first, you must understand that managing teams, with their web of hidden politics and complex interplay of human differences, is very different from managing individuals.
Great teams are led by captains. Like many popular terms, the word "leader" has become so overused and commonplace that it has lost all meaning. Anybody can call himself or herself a leader, it seems. Anybody can follow the dos and don'ts in leadership manuals. But it takes a special type of leader—a captain—to create not just a loose affiliation of individuals but a true team that's centered around shared values and focused on a common goal.
Fierce individualism has no place in teams. Captains need to be sure that the MVP syndrome is not allowed to define their teams and be on the alert for individuals who might be losing sight of the team that gave them an identity—the group with whom they worked to produce the fame for which they are now known. It is in such situations that workplace ills such as favoritism, sexism, and even criminal activity like embezzlement tend to flourish.
Seek to hire coachable individuals rather than individualist-minded high performers. Do everything possible to promote and reward teamwork rather than individualism. Whether your efforts are centered on pay structure, group incentives, verbal recognition, or some other technique, seek always to send the signal that it's strong teams (not strong individuals) that make up a strong association.
Teams hold the bar high for everyone (especially the superstars). In all teams, there is an inherent desire to protect our superstars and keep them winning. (Never mind all the others whose quieter, though no less critical, contributions are downplayed.) We are all aware of conditions when everyone else was willing to go along with a wrong, and we must be vigilant and ever alert to wrongdoing. We must be willing to ferret out corruption in the highest echelons of the organization, to bench the MVP, even to fire the superstar for the good of the team and the sake of integrity.
Teams have to be willing to lose sometimes or they will eventually self-destruct. When teams keep winning, they can become addicted to victory—feel entitled to it even—and this is what drives them to illicit extremes. The lesson is clear: When we don't learn to tolerate failure, we will do anything to keep the public adulation coming. Teams become great because they keep things in perspective and understand the broader context of competition; namely, that there is always a larger league and a set of better players out there, no matter what you've achieved or what rung on a ladder you've just hit.
Great teams revel in the pleasure of persistence and the sheer thrill of striving. Knowing that we will stumble and fall from time to time, yet get up and try again with some success, is at the heart of a great team. It's critical to teach teams to be well prepared for assignments and to keep going in spite of hardship.
Successful teams share values, integrity, and a commitment to one another. In preparing for a team event, or in becoming a member of a team, a transformation occurs where team members end their individual associations and create a team identity through sharing with others the experience of that process. Once the team is created, a strong bond is already in place from that preparation, from the obstacles everyone had to overcome to get there.
Teams must feel at home with uncertainty and complexity. In a world getting faster, flatter, and more competitive every day, uncertainty and complexity are the rule rather than the exception. Teams and their captains need to be comfortable functioning in such an environment. In complex situations where outcomes are unknown, the temptation is always to play it safe, particularly in associations. But in a world of constantly changing tides, yesterday's safe is likely to be today's not enough. That's why teams must work on instinct, often at a moment's notice, and constantly move forward. Effective teams learn by doing and stay focused on results; they are not bound by method or processes. And that gives them the flexibility and resiliency they need to thrive in the midst of flux.
Effective teams take risks. Because business climates are constantly changing, teams and the captains who lead them know that yesterday's guidelines can quickly become obsolete. That's why they don't allow themselves to be overly bogged down by rule following and order taking. Rather, they push boundaries when it's proper (in other words, when ethical and moral lines aren't being crossed), because the greatest innovations happen beyond existing laws and rules. When led by great captains, teams regularly work beyond normal and limiting boundaries to increase productivity and success.
The word team is more than just a business buzzword. If done well, building and captaining a team will determine whether your organization merely survives or instead thrives in this strange new economy.
Bruce Piasecki is the author of Doing More with Teams: The New Way to Winning and president and founder of AHC Group, Inc., a management consulting firm. He can be reached through his website at www.ahcgroup.com.