🌊 The Plunge #13: I Dreamed A Team

How to find the magic - and transcend the mayhem - of teaming

Well, hello! It’s been a minute since we took The Plunge together. I’m excited for today’s deep-dive essay on a meaty topic: the joys and horrors of working on TEAMS.

Before we get there: I’ve got another edition of 🍹Poolside Chat🍹 coming up - this is where I play Advice Columnist! I’m looking for questions related to teams and teaming, so hit me:  Submit your question here.

Let’s dive in.

In 2018, when I was contemplating leaving my corporate job to become self-employed, I felt apprehensive about all I’d be losing.

The steady paycheck, of course. The clarity of career path. The security of being led by someone else rather than having to figure things out on my own. The structure of ready-made assignments. The rhythms of office life.

But what I most grieved leaving was my team - my magic-making, smart-as-hell, in-it-to-win-it team.

Not everyone feels they’re a part of a dream team, but for 7 years, I really did. We cared deeply about one another and about the work. We made each other better. We endured layoffs and reorgs (soooo many reorgs), launched triumphant new offerings, and fueled our collective learning with passionate curiosity and debate.

THREE KINDS OF TEAMS

When teams are high-performing, like mine was, they generate incredible returns for their organization and have a blast in the process.

When teams are struggling, the vibe ranges from icky to downright awful, and results come at great cost, if they come at all.

Often, teams are somewhere in the middle: not spiraling, not soaring…just “meh”.

Think back over your career. When have you experienced the magic, the misery, and the “meh” of teaming?

And have you ever wondered what sets those mythical high-performing teams apart? And finally, how do you get a team to go from misery or “meh” to magic-making?

ANY TEAM CAN BE A DREAM TEAM

While I sorely miss my former team (love you guys!), now I’m a Team Coach helping others unleash their inner dream team.

I adore this part of my job. It thrills me. 🤗

Here’s how my process works:

1. Discovery. I collect data and insights about the team through surveys or interviews with team members and stakeholders.

2. Diagnosis. I analyze the data to decipher what’s really getting in the way of high performance for this team.

3. Design & Delivery. I design experiences and offer tools to equip the team to move towards high-performance. Usually this involves an offsite-style experience (but not the kind where one team member gets left stranded on a mountain), and ideally that’s the start of a journey vs. a one-time event. I coach teams real-time to have the courageous conversations that will get them unstuck.

Me and my colleague (and dear friend) Nikki led an amazing 2-day team offsite recently. In this pic, we were eagerly awaiting the arrival of the team to fill all those chairs!

WHAT MAKES A DREAM TEAM DREAMY?

After helping dozens of teams using the approach above, I’ve seen some patterns emerge. Ready for it?

Every dream team nails these two things:

• Culture: interpersonal dynamics, energy of the environment, quality of leadership, personal accountability, communication norms

• Operations: clarity of work, consistent processes, best practices, continuous alignment

And these two factors don’t operate independently. Operations can create, reinforce, or diminish culture. And culture can pervade operations, for better or worse.

WHAT GETS IN THE WAY?

When I analyze the data on teams I’m coaching, the barriers keeping them from magic-making always comes down to something Cultural, something Operational, or both.

Today, I’m letting you in on the top 3 Team Challenges I’ve encountered in my team coaching work, and I’m serving up some of my best do-it-yourself tools to tackle those challenges.

3 COMMON TEAM CHALLENGES

1. Drama

2. Lack of Oomph

3. Out of Sync with the Organization

Let’s unpack these one by one and take home a go-to solution for each. It’ll be like a Happy Meal – you eat the meat, then take home a treat.

CHALLENGE #1: DRAMA

(Strongly resisting the urge to quote multiple Taylor Swift lyrics here. I can do this.)

Drama means interpersonal dysfunction.

Drama thrives in the absence of clarity. When we’re not sure what someone is really thinking, when we suspect the org is planning layoffs, when we feel threatened by the subtext in an email…we lack clarity.

And what do we do when we lack clarity? We make shit up to feel better.

Human brains love a good story. Stories make things make sense.

Except our stories are often wrong.

Let’s recap: lack of clarity —> people make up stories —> DRAMA.

Teams struggling with drama need to say the hard things out loud, to get their stories on the table so they can write a more true story together.

One of the best tools to help with this is the Drama Triangle. The Drama Triangle shows us how we unconsciously cast ourselves and the other players in our story in one of three roles:

• Hero: the good guy, here to save the day

• Villain: the bad guy

• Victim: the poor, innocent, helpless one

Image Source: Conscious Leadership Group

Team Activity: Watch this video about the Drama Triangle as a team.

Low-risk Conversation: Team members share examples of how they get sucked into the Drama Triangle outside of work. Then people individually reflect on which role they default to most often at work.

High-risk Conversation: Facilitate a candid discussion about how the Drama Triangle shows up on this team, for each person, and collectively. Give people tools to “step off the triangle”.

🎵 I swear I don’t love the drama, it loves me. 🎵 (I can’t help it you guys Taylor just resides in my brain.)

Photo by Stephen Mease on Unsplash

CHALLENGE #2: LACK OF OOMPH

Some teams are not dysfunctional. They’re just not high-functioning.

These teams seem directionless or floaty. They lack energy, their aim is fuzzy, roles and responsibilities are unclear….or are they? No one knows for sure…

The best teams operate as more than the sum of their parts. A team struggling with lack of oomph may consist of talented players who just haven’t hit their collective stride.

When I work with a team like this, I’m listening for what’s missing in a few key areas:

• Goals. Vision. Mission. Shared team goals that connect to individual goals.

• Roles. Who’s doing what, when? How are decisions made?

• Communication. Information flow up, down, and across. Feedback loops. Keeping the work moving forward.

Goals, Roles and Communication are like the parts of an engine: they need to be working in sync to propel the vehicle forward.

Team Activity: Ask your team to rate how clearly and effectively each of these three elements (Goals, Roles, Communication) is currently operating on a scale of 1-10.

Then prioritize the weakest areas. Use the handy Atlassian Team Playbook to find the “plays” your team needs to complete (ex: Define Roles and Responsibilities, Establish OKRs), then tackle them one by one.

CHALLENGE #3: OUT OF SYNC WITH THE ORGANIZATION

This one gets missed.

Sometimes a team is functioning just fine – if you ask the team itself.

But if you check in with the system around the team – stakeholders, partner teams, leadership – you’ll hear a different story. Outside of the echo chamber – they’ve got work to do.

The team might have a reputation for being difficult to work with, or they may not wield much influence over other parts of the org. They might be struggling to get traction from stakeholders. Sometimes, they might need a reputation boost to attract talent from other parts of the org who currently see the team as an unexciting place to work, grow, and advance their careers.

Team Activity: Map out the team’s key stakeholders and partners – both individuals and other teams. (You could use this “Network of Teams” activity from the Atlassian playbook.)

Host “listening sessions” with these partners to deeply understand how they experience your team and what would lead them to see you as stronger partners, influencers, or talent attractors. Then, pull together themes you heard and actions your team will be taking to increase its standing in the org.

Consider going on a “roadshow” to share what you’ve learned: what do you want other teams to know about your work and how your team is committed to growing as partners in the organization’s success?

WHAT ARE YOUR TEAM DREAMS (AND NIGHTMARES)?

Educate us!

What do you think makes a dream team dreamy? What challenges have you run into in your own team experiences? Do they align to the 3 common challenges I listed, or do they fall in a fun category of their own? What solutions have helped?

Did this post spark a burning question about a current team challenge you’re facing?

I’d love to help you out in my next edition of 🍹Poolside Chat🍹:  Submit your question here. Questions remain anonymous when I post them unless you choose otherwise.

See you next time on The Diving Board!