What’s the Fuss?
Part II: Leveraging life experience to enhance workplace interaction
by Kelly Rupp

• timelines required for us to deliver results are absurdly short;
• we’re thrown together with co-workers that we hardly know;
• the tasks before us are often pioneering — we’re trying to create something new.

We know that we need to work together to in order to get things done. We need to "team up." But how to do this quickly, effectively, and — most importantly — intuitively? In the answer lies a paradox: to build and exercise effective team behaviors for today’s rapid-fire business challenges we must draw upon lessons already known to us.

Towards a Solution: Three Dimensions Frame a Customer

Consider this thesis: we already know what we need to do to succeed in workteams. We learned these lessons in our personal journeys to adulthood. It’s time to bring these lessons to life.

First of all, there’s a Customer. Always someone real, someone human, who will benefit from the team’s deliverables. Is it a "Big C" Customer, the end user who exchanges money for the goods and services that our company offers? Is it a "little c" Customer, someone or some group internal to our business that needs the outcome of our team efforts to complete their work better, faster? Perhaps we are the Customer in some way?

As a workgroup, discover the Customer. Name her. Understand her needs and internalize why these are important to her. Describe her "persona" in a written outline. Ensure that all members of the team know "her." What is going to be important to her in the team’s end deliverable and what’s not; what is it in the team’s deliverable that will make a difference to her? Can she (or a representative) join the team? Speak to the team?

The persona of the Customer needs to provide focus for the team. The persona of the Customer will help arbitrate disputes and resolve conflicts. The Customer provides a direction towards solutions at each challenge presented to us in our team’s journey to results. Delivering on our commitment to the customer is the motivation for the team’s existence.

We frame the Customer inside three dimensions, from which to build and execute the tasks of the team. These three dimensions are interrelated and will lead us to look within and without of ourselves, to what we bring and how we’ll engage. Team participants and leaders need to face the challenges of working together across these dimensions:

Sense of Self and Others: Balancing a sense of our own interests, needs, and capabilities, with those of other team members; Objectives versus Time: Understanding exactly what the group is expected to deliver or produce, in what timeframe; Motivation: Each team member is motivated to contribute (or even participate!) on the team based on intrinsic (personal and private) drivers as well as external expectations for reward or outcome.

Sense of Self and Others: The first dimension, Sense of Self and Others, asks us to look inside and outside, taking stock of each other and ourselves. "What do I bring to this group?" "What does each of us bring?" The Sense of Self and Others is linked to the other dimensions: "What do I (we) need in resource and skillset to complete the Objective in the Time allotted?" And very importantly, "What’s my motivation for being here? Is this relevant to what I do? Am I committed to working for this Customer’s benefit? With these people?"

A private reflection on these questions, together with an assessment of individual strengths and weaknesses as they relate to the team’s objectives, can help each participant discover her own decision to "opt-in" to the team. Other exercises help the team evaluate their resources, determine roles, and establish norms for working together, but the personal "opt-in" by each participant is a primary step towards goal achievement.

Team membership needs be "opt-in", versus "tagged" or "assigned". The "opt-in" descriptor is borrowed from the Internet protocol wherein receivers of email choose whether or not they will continue to receive messages or promotions from the sender. Each individual is empowered to select whether or not to participate in the program. We understand this lesson well enough: if we don’t pledge our energies with honest and wholehearted conviction, there will be a consequence sometime or somewhere in the team’s journey. Perhaps the impact will be minor: a tardy deliverable. Or perhaps not so minor: a lapse in the quality of our contribution. Either consequence, however, is an impact to the team and the Customer. Our choice: opt "in" or "out".

Objective versus Time: This dimension seems clear enough. After all, we presume that we gather as a workgroup to accomplish something. But what, exactly? Can I and everyone on the team clearly articulate what we’re doing? And by when? The Time allotted to complete the objectives of the team will crystallize team thinking about what has to be done, by whom, with what resources, or even if the team judges the Objective possible altogether.

As we form into groups, we may be dismayed at an arbitrary declaration by someone that a particular objective will be achieved by the team at such and such a time. As children, we quickly quit a game if it becomes apparent that no one can possibly win. We learned to change the rules (or even change the game) to make the play more interesting. Similarly, as team members we must be able to choose our rules, our route to win, and even our goal. We won’t play any game well unless we’re empowered.

The Objective versus Time dimension deserves considerable attention by the team. Each participant must understand and personally "sign up" to the top-level and step-by-step plan of what will be done, how, and by when.

Motivation: This dimension underlies the other two. What do I as an individual hope to gain from participation with these yoyo’s? OK, what’s in it for me?

Individually, we need genuine motivation to participate in a team effort. We think twice about working with others to accomplish things; it really does take extra effort. And it’s not a hardwired notion. Psychologists speak about children’s judgment of what’s worthy of enthusiasm and energy, and note that "anything that is too hard to do alone" will be scored low. It’s ok to want something personally as a reward for our participation. It may be tangible and visible, as in recognition or promotion, or intrinsic, such as learning something new or experiencing an event. Go ahead — be a little selfish for yourself; it’s good for you and for the team.

Collectively, the team must be motivated to achieve its results, and that requires that the team believe that it can achieve its objective in the time allowed, with the membership and resources that it has. Researchers argue that this collective belief by the team in the possibility of success is the single greatest factor in ultimate achievement of team objectives.

Putting it all Together: a Mission to Understand

"Coming together is a beginning,

Keeping together is progress,

• Henry Ford

Self and Others. Objectives versus Time. Motivation. The Customer. These three dimensions and the customer they frame outline a model of team dynamics that may indeed be organically rooted in our human experience. Lead To Results, LLC seeks to explore how teams can better achieve their work objectives by leveraging basic lessons from our life experiences into workplace interaction. Why another perspective on team effectiveness? Don’t we already have enough skills training available?

Over $50B is spent annually by corporations for training in problem solving, conflict resolution, planning, negotiation, relationship management, and communication effectiveness. These skill sets and their development investment are exceptionally valued and genuinely help us overcome issues that may hinder team performance. But skills development by itself will not provide a foundation for knowledge workers to "fast form and fast norm" in the new millennium’s absurdly paced, inhumanely pressured economy. Unless intensely reinforced and repeatedly exercised, skills training disappears from our behavioral repertoire at the very moments we need them most, when faced with real-life business tensions that test our ability to work with others towards our objectives.

We need an intuitive, natural foundation to direct our workteam behaviors that we bring into the workplace, not imprinted upon us when suddenly in the workplace. By exercising deeply internalized lessons in basic communication, problem-solving, and relationships that we universally learned during our childhood and continuing through adolescence, and by mapping them to our three keystone dimensions for easy reference, we can realize greater effectiveness in teams, sooner, with increased satisfaction.

We bring these learnings from our life experiences into the workplace. We have only to apply them in the team context with an adult perspective. With the Customer as compass, we’re on our way to the results we envision!

Agree? Disagree? Share your insights. What team experiences have you seen that were particularly effective? Which have been singularly dysfunctional? What characteristics of each do you think were fundamentally responsible for each? Can the three dimensions discussed above capture the essence of what works and what doesn’t?