Problem people, problematic environments

Anyone who has ever taken a class in organizational behavior, teamwork, leadership, etc. knows that frustration that comes when the instructor is asked a question and the answer is some variation of “it depends…”  There are very few truly reliable answers, answers that cut across contexts, in our field.

One of those truly reliable answers, comes from some of the early work of Kurt Lewin (1890-1947). In 1936 Lewin first proposed the theory that B=f(p*e); that is that for any given person, their behavior (B) is a function of the person (p) (or rather their personality) and the environment (e).

While it easy to look at this theory know and say, “of course, that is just common sense.” One needs to remember however that in the early 20^th century, psychologists (and indeed many others) were fully immersed in the “nature vs. nurture” debate. Freudian psychology, advances in psychological testing such as the IQ test, and longer held traditions such as Plato’s philosophy of the mind and religious beliefs about the soul fueled many people to believe that people behaved in certain ways because that was simply “who they were”, that certain behavioral patterns were inherent in an individual because of genetics, early childhood environment, predestination, etc.

In contrast to the “nature” side of the debate, those on the “nurture” side looked to the philosophy of Aristotle, Locke, and the learning theories developed by initially by Pavlov, Thorndike and others. They argued that human beings are highly pragmatic and shape their behavior in response to the environment. These arguments ultimately led to Pavlov’s theory of operant conditioning or behaviorism, that behavior is purely a function of punishment and reward.

Lewin’s “middle road”, that behavior is based upon both an individual’s personality and their environment, helps us to realize how complex human behavior actually is. Not only does a manager need to come up with potentially a different motivation/reward system for every individual (because people are motivated individually), one needs to realize that events will happen in the work environment which will impact the behavior of even the most focused, most dedicated worker. The problem is how does the manager interpret and react to those situations?  Our tendency (as I will talk more about in a later post) is to interpret these incidents by focusing on the “p” in Lewin’s equation – that a person’s behavior is due to their own motivation, personality, goals or values. However it is critical to remember that sometimes people are simply reacting to the environment around them, whether that be reward systems, deadlines, authority figures, or other aspects of their environments.

The solution then, when encountering a person engaged in problematic behavior, is to first understand whether this particular behavior stems primarily from the person or the environment. Only then can you take the appropriate actions to try to change the behavior.

The functions (and liabilities) of hazing

I don’t wan this blog to be dominated by news about sports teams, as they are only one type of team and are not representative of most of the teams that are in the work world. However recent news events from the sports world do periodically provide great opportunities for us to reflect on teams in general, what makes them work, what we expect of team leaders, etc.

Just this past week there has been a flurry of information about hazing in the American National Football League (NFL). For those of you who haven’t followed the story; Jonathan Martin, a player for the Miami Dolphins, threw down his tray in the team cafeteria and left the team practices without speaking to anyone after being the butt end of what some on the team describe as a series of pranks. These “pranks” reportedly ranged from the use of racial slurs and epithets (Martin is black), a staged event where multiple white team members got up and left the table as soon as Martin sat down, and a series of text messages from one team member in particular (Richie Incognito) that included a variety of threats to Martin and his family.

On the sports radio channels, there have been a lot of people calling in and giving their opinions on whether or not the actions by Incognito and other team members or the reactions by Martin are appropriate given this particular context and the “macho” culture of an NFL team.  While many people (and radio hosts) condemn the actions of Incognito in particular; others also condemn the reactions of Martin, stating that he should just accept this as a natural part of the “hazing” that occurs in this type of culture, and that these types of actions are designed to test the “mental toughness” of new players.

I have never played professional football, so I won’t try to speak with authority on the culture within an NFL team, what is or is not appropriate language, etc. I will however talk about the use and function of “hazing” rituals within teams, as these rituals happen in all sorts of different organizations.

Hazing rituals play a valuable role in organizations. They communicate important information about group norms and expectations, establish and enforce status hierarchies, and reinforce key values. But most importantly, these rituals establish a sense of community. In an organization where people enter as a cohort group (for example a fraternity or sorority, or a military boot camp), the hazing rituals help to establish bonds between the members of the cohort as they all go through the experience together.  In other organizations where members enter one at a time, these rituals reinforce that the individual is a junior member of the team; and that while senior members of the team will engage in this hazing of the junior member, they will also protect that junior member of the team from significant threats coming from outside the team.

These rituals are not intended to test the “mental toughness” of team members; and there is an important reason for that. The actions of Incognito and others served to isolate Martin, which does indeed “test” one’s mental toughness. Isolation is used as an interrogation tactic by police, military and intelligence units as a way to break down an individual. In order to build a team, however, you do not want your team members to feel isolated. You want them instead to always believe that they can always count on their team members for help and support. This way, they become more comfortable engaging in risky behavior (for example, putting one’s body in front of multiple 270 pound defensive ends) and committing themselves to the goals of the team, knowing that in turn the other members of the team will protect them.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of modern psychology, made a very interesting point about the importance of feeling like you are a part of a larger unit. In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Freud commented that most military leaders felt that the perception of panic within a military unit led to the dissolution of the unit, and that therefore one must act directly to reassure the members of the unit that they would be successful. Freud however noted that this thinking was backwards. It isn’t that panic leads to the dissolution of the unit. Instead, it is that the realization that we are not in fact a single unit that leads to the perception of panic. From the beginning of human history, one of our biggest advantages against predators that were larger, stronger and faster than us was that we were able to coordinate our collective efforts to act as a single unit, a team if you will. When we act as a team, we become bigger and stronger, and better able to deal with a variety of external threats.

Therefore from the perspective of the Miami Dolphins, the biggest problem with this incident is not that there may be one individual player who is treating others badly, or even that there may be problems with racism within the team. The biggest problem is that there are behaviors going on that are designed to isolate individual players, preventing them from integrating with the team. And when that happens, you are always going to be playing at least one man short.

Sports teams and other work teams

It’s the middle of October and two of my favorite sports teams (the Boston Red Sox and the New England Patriots) are both playing this weekend (the Sox are hoping to head to the World Series and the Patriots are in the middle of their season). So I thought I would spend a little time talking about some of the differences between the teams that we see on TV and the teams that make up the majority of our working lives.

You may think there are many differences between your team of co-workers and (for example) the New England Patriots. For example: chances are that none of your team members are making in the neighborhood of $10M annually, none of you regularly host televised press conferences, and none of you are married to super-model.  And you probably think that is just the tip of the iceberg.

From my perspective though, the differences between your team and the Patriots, the Red Sox, or any other professional sports team can be summed up in one word: design.

Team design, how the team is tasked, structured, staffed, supported and rewarded can encompass a slew of different variables and several studies suggest that team design is vastly more important to team performance than interpersonal variables such as cohesion, trust, or leadership. However when we talk about what is going right or wrong with our work teams, we often phrase it in terms of these interpersonal variables. Why?

Interestingly, part of the reason we tend to focus on the variables is probably because those are the variables we hear about when we attend to professional sports teams. Broadcasters and color commentators will talk about “the chemistry” between individuals on the team, about the tensions between coaches and key players, about rivalries between players and between franchises, etc. This makes sense for them, partly because this more interesting to listen to than insightful conversations about team design, but mostly because when watching a sports team in action all of the teams share essentially the same design. Think about it, when was the last time you saw a professional basketball team put 12 players on the court at the same time, or baseball team field 3 pitchers at once? Nearly all of the aspects of team design (with the notable exception of actual skill/talent of individual team members) are clearly articulated as “the rules of the game”.

However in our workplace teams, there are no clearly agreed upon “rules of the game”. Your team is tasked with designing a new product. You may know that your competition is trying to design a similar product; but you don’t know what their time frame is, what the size of their team is, what their budget is, what sort of political support they have from their management, or even if they are collaborating with another organization. Additionally within your own team, roles are not always clearly assigned, team members may or may not have the skills that they need, you may or may not have the resources you need to meet your deadline, and team members may not even have the same definition of success.

Imagine what this scenario would like in a sports arena. “And in tonight’s match, we have Tom Brady, Muhammed Ali, Mary Lou Retton, and the entire pitching staff of the Boston Red Sox against Tiger Woods, LeBron James, and Dale Earnhardt Jr.  The match will begin 3 hours ago and will last until the concession stand sells $40,000 worth of diet soda.” In a situation like this, would you be primarily concerned about the disagreements that Tiger and LeBron have been having about which of them is the best at the pole vault? Of course you wouldn’t. You would be concerned about finding out how “success” is going to be measured, and what you can do to help your team turn it’s apparent disadvantage (only 3 players, Tiger, LeBron and Dale) into some sort of advantage (perhaps through faster decision making, making sure that points can only be scored by dunking a basketball, or trying to earn extra points by posting the fastest average lap time at Daytona).

What does this mean for teams in our day to day lives? It means that time and careful consideration up front to make sure all team members are in agreement about appropriate goals (for both the team and individual team members), clear role assignments, performance measures, and the procedures or norms team members will be expected to follow will lead to high payoffs in terms of team success and team member satisfaction.

Learn the rules of the game, then play ball!

Imagine the future

Everyone knows that leaders and managers need to provide feedback to others. As leaders, we supply feedback to our team members to help them calibrate their efforts, their performance strategies and ensure that they are heading in the right direction. We also rely upon feedback ourselves; to help us improve our own procedures and processes, evaluate new ideas, and evaluate our leadership skills and style.

But as several management theorists and gurus have pointed out, there is a major flaw in relying upon feedback in that it focuses on the past. Often, feedback is received on a bi-annual or even annual basis, when we are barely able to remember the context of the events and behaviors about which we are receiving feedback. Alternatively, feedback is often received fairly quickly when it is in the context of a crisis or disaster (“so let me tell you all of the things that you did wrong…”).  Either way, it is focused on the past, on what has happened, not thinking about moving forward and what might happen.

What if instead of focusing our coaching and development efforts on what people have done in the past, we instead shifted towards a future focus, what professor, author and consultant Marshall Goldsmith refers to as “feedforward”. In other words, rather than focusing on someone’s behavior in past situations, thinking forward to their likely future contexts and situations and thinking about what behaviors will be helpful to them in those situations.

Think of this, we can’t change the past, but we can change the future. Feedback asks us to learn from past mistakes in a simple, corrective manner. What Harvard Business School professor Chris Argyris would refer to as “single loop learning”. This is fairly simple; as a matter of fact it is the kind of learning we expect of our dogs! And while feedback helps us avoid repeating past mistakes (certainly a valuable exercise), it doesn’t help us understand and recognize what will be effective behavior in new and future situations.

Goldsmith’s idea of “feedforward” however focuses us on the future, not on the past; it also focuses on positive, proactive behaviors rather than criticism of mistakes, which is often an energizing experience in and of itself. “Feedforward” also helps us think more strategically about new and different behaviors, about broadening our behavioral “toolkit” if you will. In contrast feedback tends to push us into distinct behavioral patterns (“do A not B”).

Finally, the idea of “feedforward” is more inherently developmental. Let’s face it, it is fairly easy to figure out what not to do after you have been “burned” in a situation. It is much more difficult to envision what will succeed in a brand new situation. As a leader, you should be preparing your people for the situations that they are going to find themselves in over the next several months and years, not simply correcting the mistakes that they have already made. “Feedforward” assumes that this person is going forward in their career, on to new challenges and responsibilities for which you need to help prepare them.

So while I’m not suggesting that a good leader never gives feedback or focuses on corrective behavior, I do suggest that you spend at least some of your time developing your people for their future rather than their past. Imagine the possibilities!

Interpersonal "strategies"

It seems to me that one of the problems that most of us face (and I include myself here) is that we often fail to think strategically about our day to day situations. For example, a guest speaker to an MBA program recently mentioned an interaction with an IT client where the question was posed "what do you want IT infrastructure to be able to do in 10 years?", and the reply was "no one here has ever asked that question before".

We often get so caught up in the minutiae of this moment, this interaction, this person, that we fail to step back and ask "What, really, do I want out of this situation? What are my goals? What tactics can I take to best reach my goals?". Instead, we simply use tactics in the moment - those of us that are comfortable with conflict become argumentative, those of us that are good at reconciliation try to build consensus and collaboration, etc. However, ultimately the goal is to have all of these tactics as "tools" in our managerial "toolbox", to be taken out and used as appropriate.

My question for you (o dedicated blog reader) is this: What "tactics" do you tend to use most often, and how do they add to or detract from your interpersonal effectiveness? What ideas can you think of to help yourself (or any of us) start thinking "strategically" about our interactions? How can you avoid the trap of using the same interpersonal "tactics" over an over, and start thinking more "strategically" about your relationships with colleagues, co-workers, managers, etc.?

A few things to know about virtual teams

So a lot of my students these days (particularly the part-time students) want to know all about "virtual teams"; that is, teams that work together on a project without having any shared physical space. Well, the first thing to know about virtual teams is that there is a lot of differences between them! One the one hand you may have a "virtual team" that is all members of the same organization, all speaking the same language and using the same terminology, all coming from mostly the same basic assumptions about goals, processes, products, etc. On the other hand, you can have a virtual team where one member is in NYC, a second member is in LA, a third member is in Paris, a fourth in Beijing, a fifth in Cairo, etc. And to top it off, at least 2 of those "team members" are either independent consultants or are employed by another organization, so they don't operate within the same structures, systems and norms as some of the others!

So there are virtual teams, and then there are virtual teams.

So a few things to know about virtual teams...
First, despite what you may think, virtual teams in various shapes and sizes have been around for quite a while. The East India company operated in many ways as a set of virtual teams, with ship captains and traders having to coordinate their actions, and predict the actions of their partners, over distances of thousands of miles, in order to maximize profit. The armies of the Romans, Greeks, Persians, and other ancient empires managed to coordinate actions over hundreds of miles, varied terrain, and a multitude of logistical problems (weather, travel conditions, repairs, supplies, etc.) to bring different battalions together at a central point at the same time. So "virtual" coordination of effort, intelligence and information isn't new. The difference now is that it happens, quite honestly, a lot easier and faster than it used to!
The critical thing to know about virtual teams is that they really aren't *that* different from any other team around. They just have a harder time engaging in full sharing of information.  Personally, my belief is that the modern idea of the virtual team (where a relatively small amount of people share information and engage in problem solving using computer mediated technologies) was dreamed up by a few hard-core, introverted engineers who thought "If only we all interacted through a *computer*! Then we wouldn't need to to deal with all these people problems!" The dream of a group of people coming together cybernetically into a purely rational network of cognitive function and efficient information transfer however dashes against the sharp, jagged rocks of human perception, emotional reaction and behavior. We just aren't wired for it (literally and figuratively)!
So if you want to have a well-functioning virtual team, you need to treat it like you are *supposed* to treat a "normal" (face to face) team, only more so. You need to be incredibly clear up front about the goals, roles and procedures that will govern the team; you need to make sure that everyone understands them and has accepted them (at least for the duration of the team project); you need to touch base routinely with team members both collectively (a meeting) and individually to find out what is going on, what problems they might be having, what opportunities might exist for synergy within the team, etc.
So being a part of a virtual team is a lot of work. Especially as a leader or manager, but even for non-leader team members. Communication errors happen more often, it is easier to get off track with each others' work, and there is generally little sense of team cohesion or social connection. So why do it?
Well, the great thing about virtual teams in the modern world is that it allows for specialists to work together regardless of physical constraints. An engineering company I do a lot of work with has as one of their corporate mottoes "Design Anywhere: Build Anywhere". They have about 50 different locations throughout the US, each one purchased over time because there was a distinct bit of local expertise or knowledge. So by implementing virtual teams (one member in NY, one in NH, one in TX, one in WA, etc.) they get to leverage the knowledge and assets that they have without spending a lot of time and money on airline flights. So that is the big advantage of the virtual teams: access to the best expertise that you can get, wherever it may be. Is it worth it? For some certainly. But all to easy to mess up.
So remember, if you are setting up a virtual team, outline the basics clearly, early and often; make sure all team members are routinely updated about all aspects of the project and how the pieces are going to fit together; and make sure to touch base regularly with individual team members to provide a sense of connection, continuity and support.
Good luck!

A Team Leader's Job: If (they) only had a brain....

So when I was younger, "The Wizard of Oz" would come on TV once a year without fail. And every year I watched it without fail (except the bit with the flying monkeys, they always scared me...). And every year I was always fascinated towards the end when I realized that as soon as the Scarecrow stopped being dependent upon Dorothy for guidance, he showed that he really did have a brain and was perfectly competent at understanding tricky situations, realizing what needed to be done, and even strategic planning (I figure that creating a plan to sneak into the Witch's castle counts as strategic planning, I have colleagues who would disagree with me but that is another discussion...).
So all this time both Dorothy and the Scarecrow were operating under the impression that he knew nothing, and it turns out that they were both wrong. Huh.
In my non-blogging life I am a teacher. I teach undergraduate and MBA courses in Leadership, Teamwork and the like. I periodically find that I have unintentionally begun to assume that my students have no brain, but I only realize it when a student writes a particularly good paper that makes me re-evaluate the way I look at the student, the assignment, all the other papers, etc.
Chris Argyris, of Harvard Business School, has written extensively about senior managers and leaders within organizations, and how their position begins to shape they way they think about themselves and others. Simply put, if I am promoted to a management position it must be because I am smarter than those who were my peers. Argyris talks about how this paradoxically makes it harder for those senior managers to learn, because they become psychologically invested in the tools, techniques and knowledge that helped them attain their current level of success. However, this same unconscious belief also makes it harder for us to find ways to put the team's collective brain power to use. After all, if I am the smartest (because I am the "manager") then any one else is at best the 2nd smartest person on the team. And why would I want anything but the smartest brain working on an important problem?
So this set of assumptions leads a manager or team leader to assume that he or she has to be the one figuring out all the answers. However this is a bad assumption for at least four reasons:
1) you may not actually *be* the smartest person on the team;
2) you may not be the best suited to solve this particular program (it may rely upon specialized knowledge, skills or networks that you don't have);
3) your primary job as manager or team leader is to get and keep the team running at peak performance;
4) if you are working on all the hard problems it is a huge demotivator to your team members.

One of the best articles on empowering others I have ever read was a 1976 article in Organizational Dynamics called "MacGregor" (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W6S-4B7GPCN-2V&_user=1967573&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1139576761&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000053403&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1967573&md5=9cde3c8bb84920f12472867ce3e70ae7)
MacGregor is a fictional plant manager who spends the vast majority of his time playing golf. He forces his assistant managers to work with each other to solve all of the problems that they run into. He gives himself the tasks of strategic planning for his plant, and choosing who will be his next assistant managers. Its a wonderful tale about building motivation and engagement in one's direct reports or team members not simply by letting them do meaningful tasks, but by *forcing* them to realize that they are not dependent upon you as a leader.

So if you want your team members to start acting like the smart, skilled people that they are - don't simply request it, require it by changing your own behavior!
Good luck!

A Team Leader's Job

In my line of work I see and talk to a lot of people who are in the position of leading a group without having access to the rewards and punishments that formal managers can rely upon when needed. Whether these people are team leaders (who are formally given responsibility, but not given any real authority), team members or informal/emergent leaders who are leading their peers, or the leaders of relatively informal groups (e.g. leaders of non-profit groups, networking organizations, communities of practice, etc.) they all wrestle with defining their role as "leader". And they all deal with it in different ways.
However, the two biggest mistakes I see are when these informal group leaders try to either A) adopt a formal "command & control" style of leadership, or B) try to lead by always taking on the biggest, most difficult, and most complex tasks themselves.
Obviously, the first route (command & control) will begin to develop resentment among the members of your team. You're not officially their boss, why are you giving orders? And obviously, the second route (trying to do everything) will lead to burnout on the part of the leader and may well lead to important tasks not being completed properly or in a timely manner (overload on the part of the leader).
However, there is something that both of these mistakes have in common that is often overlooked. Both of these leadership strategies send the message that the other group members are not capable, and committed to the task.  If I am giving orders, it sends the message that you aren't capable of making decisions and knowing what is important; If I do everything myself, it sends the message that either you aren't capable of performing the complex task, or you are not committed enough to perform it properly. Either way, the other group members are being treated (usually unintentionally) as if they don't really have a brain.
So, how to lead then?
Remember that as a team leader (or a team manager), your top job is actually *not* to do everything related to the task. Certainly it is helpful if you have a general understanding of what needs to happen for the task to be completed properly, but you do *not* need to be the expert in the room on every part of it. Your job instead is to unleash the *collective* intelligence, skill, experience and ability that resides on the team. If only one brain was needed for the team's task, then you would simply be telling computers or robots what to do. However, you need creative, talented, thinking people on your team. Therefore your job as team leader is to stimulate them to perform at their best. And when you are making all the decisions and performing all the most complex tasks yourself, without their input, then you are sending the message that not only are their brains not needed, but that their thoughts are not wanted.
More on this soon....

"Time" for leadership

A great discussion on how a leader's messages about time impact the way employees (and teams) go about their work, setting priorities, and engage with their tasks.

Check it out, if you have the time!

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/10/how_smart_leaders_talk_about_t.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-TOPICEMAIL-_-OCT_2009-_-LEADERSHIP1

Want engaged employees? Give them an engaging task!

Recently an acquaintance was asking me what he could do to make sure that his team members were more "engaged". He felt that they lacked enthusiasm or motivation for their task. As the team leader, he wondered if  there was something he should be doing to his management style to make them happier or more satisfied.

My response was that he should first look at the task they are doing.

When I was in junior high school, one of my favorite books was "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams. One of the characters is a robot named Marvin, who is absolutely brilliant but generally quite depressed. Marvin is repeatedly asked to do menial tasks (because that is what robots are for after all), and as he trudges off to complete the menial task he mutters "Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me if I can (insert menial task here)".

Well, we often do this same thing to our employees without realizing it.

Many years ago, Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham came up with what they called the Job Characteristics Model. They posited that employee motivation would be based upon the task(s) that employees are being asked to perform. Their model statest that motivation increases when employees are given a "meaningful" task (meaning that it requires a variety of skills, the task is significant in some way, and it has a specific identity), which is then combined with autonomy to perform the task in way the employee decides, and followed up with regular, specific feedback about task performance.

This model can be found in almost any organizational behavior textbook. But we often fail to take it into account when we design teams/tasks or when we look for ways to increase "engagement".

Designing teams and tasks properly takes work. More work than most of us ever want to do. Our business environments push us to start accomplishing things yesterday, we don't have time to do things properly just start doing them.  However we often forget that teams are a technology that we have borrowed from sports and the military, and those two industries know that to have a high performing team you need to spend time with it, redesigning the team, working with the individuals, running it through simulations. Practicing managers don't have that amount of time to invest into a team before they get results. However, as a team leader, you need to find at least some of that time to think about how the team and the team members should approach the task at hand, in order to keep everyone's engagement levels up.

So stop thinking so much about your "management style" and focus on the task!

Trust me!

So recently someone was asking me about how to develop trust within a team.
Trust in teams and organizations: its pretty much a perennial concern. Everyone wants trust. Let's face it; everyone wants to be trusted, everyone wants to work with people that they trust, we know that trust has some positives associated with it (e.g. reduced conflict, increased information sharing, etc.) and has relatively few downsides.
But in our 24/7 instant-on-demand culture, we want trust to develop faster. We want to develop trust before the team starts, we develop team-building sessions to help create trust, we find ways to encourage (or even force!) non-task social interaction in order to develop trust. Especially in virtual teams, where team members do not have the opportunity to meet face-to-face, we are concerned with the impact on trust.
What we often forget is that trust is primarily an outcome of social/task processes, not an input. When you first meet someone you have neutral trust with them - or rather, you have whatever trust you happen to have in the social context. If there is a strong social system with distinct rules and laws, then you have trust in those rules & laws rather than trust in the individual. If you meet someone in a relatively lawless environment, then you are going to be suspicious of them until they have given you reason to trust them. So trust is an output first, and then becomes an input into social processes over time.
So, the best way to build trust within a team is let people start interacting and performing. Over time (and really, not that much time if they have the opportunity to work on shared tasks), they will get a very realistic sense of how much they can trust each others' motives, values, intentions, competencies, etc.
But still, some people will want to speed up the development of trust within their team. Sorry, you can't. You cannot force two people to trust each other. You can however build up a social system in which they can place trust, regardless of the trust they may have for each other (positive, negative or neutral). So what you do is focus on building very clear, shared goals for the team - working to make sure that everyone's motives and intentions are in alignment with each other. You create very clear roles for everyone on the team, and explain to all team members what John Doe brings to his role and what Jane Smith brings to her role. This helps to build trust in people's competence. Finally, you encourage communication between group members about their task, as it is hard to feel interpersonal trust for someone who is isolated from you. Now you have a system that encourages trust in the short term, plus the interaction to build interpersonal trust over time. So sit back and start enjoying the task, the trust will come.
Go on, give it a try!

Aligning your people

A bit of a follow-up to last week's post on personal (or personnel) development.

Teams (as well as larger organizations) often have a tendency to suffer from inertia. In other words, we keep doing something in the same way because that's the way we have "always" done it. A key manner in which this can hurt a team is in terms of job assignments.

Your team changes. New people come onto the team, sometimes people leave, sometimes people alter the amount of time they can spend on your team, and sometimes people go out and learn new skills & knowledge. However, we rarely sit back and systematically look at the (human) resources that we have and how they map onto the jobs/demands that the team must fill. Your financial advisor will tell you to systematically look at and adjust your financial portfolio every 1-3 years. However, they will also tell you that this doesn't hold if certain things change - most notably your own financial goals or the goals of an individual fund.

Similar logic holds for systematically analyzing the resources your team has at its disposal. You don't need to do this every 6 months, or every year. However, there are certain situations that should trigger a systematic evaluation of the team's tasks and the roles of team members.

These will include events such as:

• A change in the team's tasks and responsibilities. Don't just assign someone to the new task, make sure that your overall "portfolio" of people and the roles that they perform make sense. This includes not only what is someone's availability and technical skills/expertise, but also what relationships and people skills can a team member take advantage of?
  
• A change in the team's membership. Obviously, if you have different members on your team, you have a different set of skills & abilities at the team's disposal. We often see this in terms of new skills added to the team (by a new team member), or skills lost to the team (when a veteran team member leaves). However, we rarely think about moving people around within the team to better position the team as a whole after the arrival of a new team member. An example: John has been our team's liaison to Operations over the past 9 months. He does a pretty good job, and he is not dissatisfied with this aspect of his job. Now Lisa joins the team. She has a background in Operations, worked there for 15 years. Most managers don't think about giving her John's liaison responsibility, they just give her any "open" jobs, or a job that someone is performing poorly. However, this is a lost opportunity.
  
• A change in the way key tasks are performed (e.g. new software, a new business partner, etc.). "I've been doing this task all along; so yeah, I suppose I'll learn the new software...". As a team leader or manager, your response should be "no, wait". Its one thing if this team member wants to learn this new skill for other reasons. But if someone else in the team has that skill, this may be a good time to reposition a few team members and the roles they perform.

And don't forget, there is also a long-term advantage to shuffling people around to get the "optimal mix" of people to roles on your team. Six months down the road, when one of these people is pulled from your team for another project, you now have someone else on the team who is already familiar with that role and can fill in for a while if needed.

So mix it up!

Leading people via personal development

A fair number of people I know have been asking lately about performance feedback. What *is* the best way to give performance feedback?
Some people prefer to focus on an individual's weaknesses, some prefer to focus on strengths, some prefer to try to achieve "balance" between strengths and weaknesses, etc.
A lot depends upon your goal when you give someone performance feedback?

An analogy: when a child reaches towards a hot stove, do we take the time to praise them for their curiosity or their ability to climb up on the chair by themselves? No, because our *goal* is to make sure that they don't make that "mistake" (touching the hot stove) again. Conversely, when that same child draws a picture and proclaims it to be several fish swimming in the sea, do we criticize them for not drawing an accurate depiction of fish? Again, no, because our "goal" this time is to get them to begin developing their abilities to draw & color, use a writing implement, express themselves, etc.

So the way we handle feedback should be in with our goals for that particular feedback session. If someone has just made a mistake, and you want them to not make that mistake again - then by all means use critical feedback. The human brain is hard-wired to accept and remember critical feedback. From an evolutionary perspective, if I just ate a berry that made me sick - I really, really want to remember what it looked like so that I don't eat that same berry again. We remember critical feedback very well, it makes an impact on us. Properly timed criticism can be very helpful in ensuring that we do not repeat mistakes.

However, if you want your employees to grow and develop, you need to adjust your feedback strategy. Critical feedback makes everyone do the same thing (avoid the mistake). But it also has side effects: it limits experimentation, makes us less likely to communicate with others, and in many people has a negative impact on motivation and satisfaction. Positive feedback on the other hand ("here are your strengths") causes very different reactions: it makes us *more* likely to experiment with new ways of accomplishing tasks, more likely to incorporate new ideas and information into our thinking, more likely to connect and communicate with other people, and it tends to have a positive impact on satisfaction and motivation.

Positive feedback also allows us to better identify, understand and develop our own unique and individual strengths. Organizations are made up of many people for a reason, you don't *want* carbon copies of one person. The fact that organizations have a diversity of people means that they have a diversity of strengths, and a successful organization plays to this.

Another analogy: If you were managing a sports team, would you want your roster made up entirely of multiple versions of David Ortiz or Teddy Bruschi or Tom Brady? Okay, so I'm a New England sports fan, but still... You wouldn't want a soccer team made of carbon copies of David Beckham or even of Pele; you wouldn't want a basketball team made of multiple copies of LeBron James, or Shaquille O'Neal, or even Michael Jordan. Business organizations (like many sports teams) operate in a complex environment where they benefit from specialization.

So maybe you have direct report (let's call him "Bob") in your marketing department that isn't very creative at all, but is a great analyst. You have to do things: (1) you have to help Bob realize that he isn't all that creative, because to let him have a false sense of competence in a specific area isn't fair to him or to your organization; (2) you have to help Bob realize how his analytical abilities help the department as a whole, and how he can be even more help if he goes out and further develops his analytical abilities. Now, Bob is motivated to work on his strengths (because they have been recognized, and will help the organization), and is cognizant of his weak area (and so will allow others to be the strong ones in that area). Plus, because most of your feedback is focused on the positive, Bob is more likely to be proactive and creative in his use and development of his analytical abilities, will be more likely to step forward and communicate his skill to others, and will be more likely to reach out and partner with others who have complementary (rather than redundant) strengths.
The end result? A stronger team.

Much as I like David Ortiz, I don't want him trying to Red Sox entering into the post-season....