Helping People to be Team Players

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The top four reasons why people don’t always act as part of your team

Lots has been written about why people might want to be part of a team or group. But the issues behind why people don’t always behave like team players even when they could are much less well known. Even more unfamiliar are the steps you can take to get them back on-board, provided you know a little about what’s driving them.

I’ve set out below the top four reasons why people don’t always act as a fully-paid-up member of your team, and what you can do about it. There are more reasons than these, but these four are the ones you’re most likely to encounter at work. Let me know if you’ve got a different type on your team, and I’ll try to help!

Here are the four situations we’ll be looking at:

  1. The erratic shooting-star
  2. The defender of the status quo
  3. The detached daydreamer
  4. The toxic specialist

1. The erratic shooting-star

You may have someone on your team who is usually initially enthusiastic about new initiatives. Or who is always finding something interesting or shiny “over there”, slightly off the path of where you’re trying to get to. You may have seen that this person’s enthusiasm can often be enough to distract the rest of the team (and my experience is that they’re great at parties too). You’ll probably also have seen that they often run out of steam before actually delivering anything good.

To get this person fully on-board you’ll need to legitimise their investigations and explorations and make the most of their strengths. Find ways to have them investigate ideas, resources and opportunities. You may need to manage their expectations, so that what they are investigating are legitimate, current requirements for your unit, not stuff that is too far away from your goals. Have them present their findings to the rest of the team, and make sure that they get recognition for having done this. Do not make them responsible on their own for delivering on these ideas. But do enlist their help in keeping the people with lead responsibilities enthused and supported.

2. The defender of the status quo

You may have someone on your team who is usually responsible, committed and loyal. Yet there are times when people with these traits don’t act like complete team players. In my experience, this is particularly prevalent when forces outside your immediate team are driving changes. Or when there are on-going uncertainties in the external operating environment. In those times, this person may act like the last line of defence, holding back the barbarian hordes – when you actually need them to help with changing the existing order of things!

To get this person fully on-board you’ll need to do two things:

  1. Make sure that you (as the leader of the team) are fully committed to the changes that are taking place. You’ll need to be able to argue in their favour, both logically and emotionally. This is all about sending a clear signal of how you most need this person to direct their loyalty to you and the team;
  2. Help them see that there are practical steps you can all take to make the most of the changes or uncertainties. Boost their confidence by demonstrating that your team is not helpless.

3. The detached daydreamer

You may have someone on your team who is usually easy-going, agreeable and happy to go with the flow. But there may be times when you’ll find them saying yes to things without any real intention of doing them. Or you may notice them taking dubious short-cuts. If you’re not careful, you may not notice until it’s too late that this person has been ignoring problems or failing to deal with stuff – basically just sitting on it.

To get this person fully on-board with the team, recognise that what they really want is a sense of peace and harmony. They may have forgotten that to get to peace and harmony, we often need to work through problems with hard physical effort, not disappear into our inner worlds.

Make sure they are acutely aware of the problems or tasks that were previously being ignored. If possible, enrol others in expressing how uncomfortable or disturbed this person’s inaction has made things for them.

To the extent that you can, encourage physical exercise or assign tasks that involve physical effort to help get them out of their heads a little.

4. The toxic specialist

You may have someone on your team who has developed a deep understanding of a particular area. They may also be the “go-to” person, specialising not only in their subject, but also in their knowledge of the organisation and how to access its resources. In the bad times, you may find this person to be highly critical of others. And that there is a trail of ‘casualties’ in their wake – people who have not felt willing or able to live up to being their colleague.

The key thing to understand about this person is that, above all else, they value competence. As part of, or even leading, a team of competent, high-performing people with the independence to manage their way of doing things, they’re great! Change any one of those components and they can become extremely and unconsciously toxic.

There are three things you must do to help get this person back on-board with your team:

  1. Teach them that the abilities to get on with others of all levels of skill, and to develop their colleagues for the longer-term, are themselves competences. And that you require them to become good at these things too.
  2. Make efforts to enrol them in designing any changes to workflows (and they’ll be reluctant to ‘waste’ time on this). Do not make changes without genuinely listening to their views.
  3. Decide whether or not their value to the business, if they don’t change, is outweighed by the problems they are causing.

Three Empowerment Techniques

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Three simple ways you won’t have thought of to help someone empower themselves at work

OK, you might have thought of some of these, but they’re so simple, and so effective, that they often seem to get overlooked and are definitely worth repeating.

First things first, notice that it’s about helping someone to empower themselves, not doing it for them (which is actually disempowering). I reckon a lot of corporate programmes fall down right at this first hurdle, trying to spoon-feed empowerment to their staff instead of creating the conditions in which people want to take power for themselves. Perhaps that second option is just a bit too scary in some organisations?

1. Ask for their help

Nothing helps people realise what they’re capable of better than an opportunity to help somebody else. If you can do this in a way that is genuine, i.e. on something where you really do need their help, that’s good. If you can do it in a way that shows that asking for help is itself an act of strength, not weakness, even better.

2. Tell them what you see

This one is really so sweet and so powerful that it should come with a government health warning! People take themselves for granted. They forget about their good qualities and they focus on the things that they don’t like about themselves. You can change that in an instant with this way of giving people recognition.

Take a moment to remind someone about a resourceful quality of theirs that you have noticed them using. The format is really simple, but does take some guts to use. It goes like this: “I noticed that you were really [resourceful quality] during [recent situation]; that’s a great quality to have.”  Here’s an example of the kind of thing I’ll say to the barista in my coffee shop, just for practice:

I noticed that you were really calm and helpful with that difficult customer just now. That’s a great quality to have.

3. Be kind in their presence

Everybody knows by now that acts of kindness are contagious; when you see someone being kind you tend to pay it forwards yourself.  People are less aware that there’s an unconscious association of kindness with resourcefulness. It’s like part of your brain says to itself: “Oh, I’ve just been kind! I must have the strength of mind and physical resources that mean I can spare some for others”. Whenever you get the chance, role-model this for people and use the contagious power of kindness to remind people just how resourceful they really are.

Informal Team Alignment Exercise

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Is your business the “winningest” team?
Fun wordplay to help your team stay aligned

This is a fun exercise to try when your team is working well together and you’d like to keep the momentum going, or for when you need to lighten to the mood a little.

My 14 year old son is mad about American Football at the moment, so we’re learning lots of new team sport strategies and techniques and the jargon that goes with them. My favourite piece of American Football jargon so far, has been the term “winningest“, which the OED defines as follows:

Winningest
adj, North American, informal:

Having achieved the most success in competition:

‘the winningest team in pro-football history’

I did a lot of my early coach training in the US and I’m a big fan of how North Americans don’t let formal grammar get in the way of clear, concise and even fun communication. So I’ve been using this approach recently in my work with top teams and boards, to help them think about what kind of team they are. It also helps with getting more creativity and risk-taking, as it’s a subtly-rule-breaking exercise.

I usually start by introducing the term winningest and then ask them to take some other words they like and make similarly informal terms out of them that help describe who they are as a team.

Start with an “…ing” word and just add “est” to play along. Don’t worry about which part of speech your word is (because that’s kind of the point here). For example:

  • Amazingest – we’re the team that makes you go wow
  • Challengingest – we just don’t back down
  • Encouragingest – every one of us is a born cheerleader
  • Energisingest – you’ll never feel tired on this team
  • Fulfillingest – simply the most rewarding team to be part of
  • Surprisingest – we really love new ideas
  • Workingest – we try harder.

If your team was an “…est”, what kind of est would it be?

Leadership Modes and Trekking

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Why leadership, and the styles you use, are a lot like going on a tough hike

We had an amazing family break this summer, as part of a group camping and trekking in the US national parks in Arizona, Utah and Nevada. Being part of a group of strangers thrown together in relatively tough conditions like that is, for me at least, a great chance to see how we lead and behave together. Although there’s a guide, different people take-on different leadership roles during the trek as situations change and this one was over enough time to see how the dynamics worked.

I noted lots of different kinds of leadership modes in operation on the trek. And I know from my coaching that the same opportunities to lead like this come-up again and again at work.

So, as I write this at the end of the calendar year, I’m curious to know which of these leadership modes have been part of your kitbag at work over the last year?
Which is the one that tends to predominate for you?
And which is the mode you hardly ever use?

At the head of the group on a walk
Usually the fittest person, or the one keenest to get us to the campsite before sundown! Says stuff like: “Come on, if we step-up the pace a little, we’ll be there in no time”

Standing up and holding a map
Full of enthusiasm for what’s possible to go and see that day. Says stuff like: “Did you guys know that there’s a hidden valley right over this bluff? The views down to the river at sunrise will be spectacular”

In the team van at a crossroads
Wants everybody to have the best experience, for them. Says stuff like: “Looks like we’ve got two choices of destinations, and/or an early lunch. What do you guys feel like doing together?”

Being clear at the campfire
Managing a bunch of tired, hungry and mixed-experience campers. Says stuff like: “You go get some water, you get the campfire going and you two get the grill set-up; I’ll show you how”

Keeping us together during a trek
At the back, in the middle, at the front; starting conversations; checking people are ok. Says stuff like: “Would you mind keeping an eye on Steve and checking that his knee isn’t playing-up later on?”

At the start of a trail
Wants each person to experience all that they’re capable of. Says stuff like: “If you want to, you’ll be able to get right to the end of this canyon today. How much water do you think you’ll take?”

Let me know how your own leadership modes changed with circumstances during the year?
 

Team Performance Using DRIL

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The 4-step approach to great team performance: Design, Rehearse, Implement, Learn

I’m often surprised by how much of an expectation people set for themselves about being able to do stuff exactly right, first time. It happens a lot in business; even with professionals who’ve spent years acquiring expert knowledge in their subject. In other walks of life – the arts, the military, for example – there’s a much more progressive attitude to practising things before being expected to get them right.

And the area where people seem to have the highest expectations without putting in preparation is about how teams perform. Great teams don’t just happen – they are created and nurtured.

Here’s my DRIL – the four steps for getting really great performance out of teams:

  1. Design – what is it you want to achieve and how, together, will you go about it?
  2. Rehearse – practise it; walk it through in your minds or on the whiteboard;
  3. Implement – if you can hold-off implementation long enough to have done Design and Rehearse, then it can be done fast and with conviction, often saving time;
  4. Learn – you’d think that learning from what worked and what didn’t would be old news by now. It isn’t – maybe because a great team is never done learning.

Strategic Management

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What to do if your board or top-team is not looking at the critical success factors that your business needs to tackle

It’s easy for boards and top-teams to get caught-up in the routine of managing the business and even in the routine of managing the board agenda! My experience has been that if you give people the opportunity to examine the right issues and some structure to do it with, they’ll usually be more than ready to do so.

As a working definition, a Critical Success Factor (CSF) is anything that is vital for your strategy to be successful. You can think of a CSF as a make or break issue – hence “critical”.  One relatively easy way to identify some of your CSFs is to ask the question: “Why would a customer choose us instead of a competitor?”

Just occasionally, there are two factors which can unconsciously create resistance to taking the right amount and quality of time for your board or top-team to properly examine the factors that make your business successful. Those are:

  1. without necessarily admitting it to themselves or to each other, directors are aware that something important is not going right
  1. the organization is very busy but not outstandingly successful financially and there’s an “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mentally getting in the way of doing it better.

If that’s the case in your business, you’ll need to act as a catalyst and influencer so that the right people will give these issues their conscious attention. If you’re the boss, that’s relatively easy to do and it may be you’ve just not had the time or process to think about it before. If you’re not the boss, you’ll need to start building alliances and setting out the case for change, so that the Critical Success Factors for your business can be managed properly.

If you want to get a head-start identifying your CSFs, try downloading my area-analysis grid by clicking on the picture at the top of this article. This grid is also a great process to use at a board awayday session. Try sticking a big grid on the wall or the floor and then populating it with Post-its.

 

A Leaders’ Guide to One-to-One Meetings

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Ten ways to use one-to-one meetings to block progress, disempower people and avoid an embarrassing sense of being a team

 

Click on the picture above to download your own copy.

 

Oh, and I forgot number 11:

Always write it as “1-2-1” and never “one-to-one”. Because (a) words are just so hard to type and read, and (b) it’s so much quicker to use numbers and other shorthand than to muck about referring to actual people.