Team Players and Team Leaders
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Summary: There are some jobs which are single player games (eg an Author, Academic) but the vast majority are multi-players games. IMO to have a team function well you need to have Team Players and Team Leaders.
All teams, be it sport, work, family, need different “positions” or roles to succeed.
A great AFL team has people with different roles, who may focus on slightly different things, but share the same overall goal and vision
In families and friendship groups, everyone plays slightly different roles, but will be there to support each other
Work teams are no different.
People play different roles in a team. Roles are not necessarily mutually exclusive or static either. To have a successful team, individuals have to be Team Players, regardless of their role. There are also Team Leaders. A Team Player is obviously many things. This is just one lens!
This is my attempt at a short blog… it’s shorter :)!
Team Player = 1. Loyal Opposition + 2. Disagree but commit + 3. Think of themselves and the collective + 4. Understand that collective happiness is needed for individual happiness + 5. Has a Team Leader
Jingle: If you are on a team… it’s not optional to be a team player ;)! Being a team player ultimately means that you are able to enjoy doing things that individually you wouldn’t like as when you see the bigger picture is the overall best path forward!
Individual lens only = do not like the initiative
Collective lens = now do like the initiative because you can see how it all fits together
+++++++++++++++
Details
1. Loyal Opposition
There is always opposition, you have two choices, loyal or disloyal
Loyal = will bring things of contention up in a way that tries to have them be addressed and solved
Disloyal = will only talk with others about areas for change and not let the people know who are involved about your opposing thoughts to be able to try and improve.
Problem size: small / medium / large
Bring up anything medium+ close to real time (ie not a month later)
Bring up smalls if you think they’ll go to a medium.
Loyal opposition is positive sum for an idea. Loyal opposition is positive sum for a company.
2. Disagree but commit
It is not possible to agree on everything. Having a diverse team with different lenses and experiences helps improve a team drastically, so naturally there will be points of disagreement. And on top of this the optimal path of learning is often to test the idea with end users (ie not endlessly talking in a room about what to do).
If people cannot disagree and commit it’s very hard to get things done.
How and when someone disagrees (loyal opposition) is totally crucial.
For example picking the right audience to disagree to is crucial.
Soft and soon. Start small and soft and slowly increase your disagreement if you feel it is warranted. IMO do not come out of the gate with a medium or large response to something. Start with a small, then medium, then large!
Not everyone can know everything, not everyone should know everything.
This might mean that you disagree up (to management) but commit down (to directs).
3. Think of themselves and the collective
Secondary school and university are normally single player games. People have not needed to think beyond themselves.
If you are playing a multiplayer game IMO you have to think of all parties. Let’s give a quick example of the different parties:
Yourself
Your team
Management
The entire company
Unfortunately it is not possible to always have every party be happy in isolation. But I’ve found that if I look at all parties and see that this proposal is the best overall then I’m ‘happy’. In short, the ‘personal lens’ might not be exactly what I want, but the ‘collective lens’ shows this to be overall the best compromise so I’m then ‘happy’.
Ie ‘Collective Lens’ > ‘Personal Lens’.
4. Understand that collective happiness is needed for individual happiness
Collective Liberty ⇔ Individual Liberty continuum.
In a country, do you lean more towards collective liberty (freedom for the country, ie well functioning government that gets things done etc) or towards individual liberty?
From Will Durant (whom I have a mega mental crush on). If you lean too heavily towards individual liberty you have anarchy. If you lean too heavily towards collective liberty you have the government stifling the populus slightly.
In a company sense, you need to have a happy company and happy people. But without a happy company all people are unhappy. However you can have some unhappy people and a happy company.
So if you think of the different parties above (Yourself,Your team, Management, The entire company) you have to have the company be happy long term else no one else is happy.
In other words, the good of the organisation is paramount, with a dead Edrolo no one can be happy!
The more senior you are the more delicate you need to be with voicing dissent. You need to say one thing to senior people and another thing to people who report to you. This is not duplicity, this is looking after the common good.
5. Has a Team Leader
You need a leader not a manger for things to work
Managers = tell people what to do
Leaders = are authentically vulnerable, admit mistakes / fail openly, change course when the information necessitates. If you don't do this people won't disagree and commit.
In the early days, as people are learning more and more about the company etc, leaders may need to put on more ‘managerial’ hats, to get people up to speed. But ultimately, you want leaders.
Each company is different, there isn’t one structure of system that works everywhere. “Everything works somewhere, nothing works everywhere.”
However in the fast majority of companies managers / leadership will have the final say.
As it’s not possible to have everyone always agree, so disagreeing but committing is a part of life.
Decisions in hindsight will turn out to be incorrect (or need course adjustment). In my experience, when this happens the people who made the decisions need to 1. openly show that a decision is being changed (not change without saying) + 2. Explain the key learnings + 3. Explain the reasons for the change + 4. Explain the new decision + 5. Have input where appropriate!