Six Secrets of Powerful Teams: A Practical Guide to the Magic of Motivating and Influencing Teams (7 page)

The following secret is advanced stuff! I thought of leaving it out, as it is a bit more complicated than the other five; however I trust you - my reader - that you will be able to understand the gist of it. If for some reason you need clarifications, feel free to drop me a line and I’ll be happy to give more clarifications around it.

Gestalt therapy is also known for its focus on the ‘here and now’. Everything that happens to us happens now, all our thoughts also occur in the present moment, moreover all our recollections of the past and the memories we have, are always remembered and reconstructed in the context of the present.

We might delude ourselves to think that our memories are ‘as is’ recorded events; however that cannot be more far from the truth. Our memories keep evolving and changing together with us, and it is our decision in the ‘here and now’, on how to remember and relate to them.
Even the specific memories that we’re choosing are impacted by the context of the here and now
. But I’m sidetracking, back to the here and now and its impact on teams.

Many team leaders are baffled when it comes to handling emotions and feelings that arise within the team, and prefer to push them aside instead of focusing and relating to them. We have already mentioned self-disclosure as a tool to handle conflict and emotional issues in the team. However, how can the team leader know that what is occurring and what she’s seeing is genuine and relevant?

The answer is, whatever the team leader feels relevant is probably also relevant for the team. If the team leader feels irritation, it is likely that other people will feel it also. If the team leader feels annoyed, it is likely that this feeling is also shared by other team members.

So what?

Well, if we assume that what the team leader is feeling ‘here and now’, is probably felt by other members of the team, or that what the team leaders is thinking is also thought by other team members, it offers the team leader a valuable basis on which to impart an observation to the team.

The team leader can easily say something like: “I’m feeling some disagreement”, or “I am a bit annoyed”. She is using the phrase ‘a bit’ since this allows other team members to share her feeling and to discuss what they can do about it.

Many teams are stuck at a certain point or around a certain conflict; usually the only person who can facilitate and support the team to overcome this conflict is the team leader. Focusing on the ‘here and now’ assists the leader to examine how she’s feeling toward something and offer it as an observation to the team – and ask the team to relate to it.

In practice this does wonders. Do make sure though, that your comment is not projecting on other team members and that you are taking it on yourself, avoid an observation such as: “Mark you seem a bit irritated”. Rather, do say: “I am a bit irritated”.

Reflection
: thinking ‘here and now’ is difficult. We are used to think about the future and the past – planning and remembering. We seldom stop to experience what is happening to us in the present. Buddhist monks spend years, learning how to focus on the moment. The trick is to concentrate on breathing as a first step.

This works as well in team interactions – by stopping to notice your breathing you also become aware of the team’s interactions that are occurring in the ‘here and now’.

What happens if the team works too well together? It was mentioned previously that during the NORMING stage, for the sake of a sense of cohesion and unity, team members will not question decisions and will fall into a pattern known as groupthink.

Groupthink occurs when everyone in the group agrees, in order to avoid or minimize conflict. Pressure to conform within the group interferes with that group's analysis of a problem. They may reach consensus, but it's without critically analyzing and evaluating ideas. Groupthink thus causes poor group decision-making.

Individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking are lost in the pursuit of group cohesiveness. A variety of conflict-avoiding motives for this may exist: a desire to avoid being seen as foolish, a desire to avoid embarrassing or angering other members of the group, a desire to be seen as team players.

Voicing unpopular truths is difficult -
remember the ‘shoulds’?
We should conform
is a powerful introjecting statement that exists in many organizations and can lead to groupthink
.

A specific example of groupthink is known as the Abilene paradox.  The Abilene paradox was introduced by
management
expert
Jerry B. Harvey
in his article The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement.  The name of the phenomenon comes from an anecdote in the article which Harvey uses to elucidate the paradox:

On a hot afternoon visiting in
Coleman, Texas
, the family is comfortably playing
dominoes
on a porch, until the father-in-law suggests that they take a trip to
Abilene
[53 miles north] for dinner. The wife says, "Sounds like a great idea." The husband, despite having reservations because the drive is long and hot, thinks that his preferences must be out-of-step with the group and says, "Sounds good to me. I just hope your mother wants to go." The mother-in-law then says, "Of course I want to go. I haven't been to Abilene in a long time."

The drive is hot, dusty, and long. When they arrive at the cafeteria, the food is as bad as the drive. They arrive back home four hours later, exhausted.

One of them dishonestly says, "It was a great trip, wasn't it?" The mother-in-law says that, actually, she would rather have stayed home, but went along since the other three were so enthusiastic. The husband says, "I wasn't delighted to be doing what we were doing. I only went to satisfy the rest of you." The wife says, "I just went along to keep you happy. I would have had to be crazy to want to go out in the heat like that." The father-in-law then says that he only suggested it because he thought the others might be bored.

The group sits back, perplexed that they together decided to take a trip which none of them wanted. They each would have preferred to sit comfortably, but did not admit to it when they still had time to enjoy the afternoon.

How can team move away from groupthink and the behavior that would lead to the Abilene paradox?

When the team is too much in the ‘WE’, the team leader can suggest a perception and perspective exercise. A tool to carry out such an exercise is the famous Edward De Bono Six Thinking hats. It is used to look at decisions from a number of important perspectives. This forces to move outside the habitual thinking style, and helps build a rounded view of a situation.

When you examine a problem with the 'Six Thinking Hats' technique, you will solve it using several perspectives. Your decisions and plans will mix ambition, skill in execution, public sensitivity, creativity and good contingency planning.

How to Use the Tool:

You can use Six Thinking Hats in meetings or on your own. In meetings it has the benefit of blocking the confrontations that happens when people with different thinking styles discuss the same problem.

Each 'Thinking Hat' is a different style of thinking.

Here are the six thinking hats with a short summary of each hat:

White Hat:
With this thinking hat you focus on the data available. Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge and either fill them or take account of them.

This is where you analyze past trends, and extrapolate from historical data.

Red Hat:
'Wearing' the red hat, you look at problems using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. Also think how other people will react emotionally. Understand the responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning.

Black Hat:
Using black hat thinking, look at all the bad points of the decision. Look at it cautiously and defensively. Observe why it might not work. This is important because it highlights the weak points in a plan. It allows you to eliminate them, alter them, or prepare contingency plans to counter them.

Black Hat thinking helps to make your plans 'tougher' and more resilient. It can also help you to spot fatal flaws and risks before you embark on a course of action. Black Hat thinking is one of the real benefits of this technique, as many successful people get so used to thinking positively, that often they cannot see problems in advance. This leaves them under-prepared for difficulties.

Yellow Hat:
The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult.

Green Hat:
The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is where you can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas.

Blue Hat:
The Blue Hat stands for process control. This is the hat worn by people chairing meetings. When running into difficulties because ideas are running dry, they may direct activity into Green Hat thinking. When contingency plans are needed, they will ask for Black Hat thinking, etc.

Use the hats to promote decision making in the team through interaction. It does wonders to increase participation, receive additional and often neglected points of view, and provide a robust solution.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is an incredibly powerful discipline that enables people to unblock the structures of human communication and human excellence. By doing so, people can think, communicate, and manage themselves and others more effectively. NLP explores the relationships between how we think (neuro), how we communicate (linguistic), and our patterns of behavior and emotion (programs).

By studying and learning from these relationships, people can effectively transform the way they traditionally think and act, adopting new and far more successful models of human excellence. (This activity is called modeling and is a key feature that distinguishes NLP from psychology.) In effect, NLP is a powerful change management tool that transforms the way people think and act to have the greatest impact both professionally and personally.

That’s why NLP is one of the most powerful skills used in business management, psychology, sales, sports coaching, and all forms of personal development.

We will explore only a fraction of what NLP is about—specifically five words that are used redundantly in almost every team interaction. These words are mostly negative, yet they are common in team interactions. They create noise in the communication, confuse the message, and carry baggage of ill-considered meanings.

Word #1: Try

The first word often used without understanding the implication is “try.”

For example: “We will try running this test next week” or “Please try to have the results by Wednesday” or even “I tried really hard.”

“Try” masks the intent and carries an element of implicit failure in the message. As Yoda said, “You either do it or you don’t; there is no try.” Either you’re going to run the tests next week or you’re not going to run them next week. When you’re saying that you are going to “try” to run them next week, most likely, you’re not going to do it. When I’m telling you to please “try” to have the results by Wednesday, I’m actually saying that it is fine that they come in Thursday or Friday or even next month.

Review both case studies and notice how many times the word ‘try’ appears in them.

Notice how many times the word “try” appears in Mark’s email:

We have indeed defined a way of work, but we also defined a process for completion of tasks, that we should
try
to stick to.

What is Mark saying? Did we define a process just so we should
try
to stick to it? Or did we define a process that we must stick to? By using “try,” Mark undermines his authority as a team leader; he defined a process for the team members to follow.

The abundant use of the word “try” in many teams, both collocated and virtual, is a sign of fear that both leaders and team members have of stepping up and asking for commitment and responsibility.

Thinking Alert: Drop the “try.” It does not add anything to the communication.

Word #2: Should

The second word often used without understanding the implication is “should.”

We have already discussed introjecting and the role that ‘shoulds’ have with creating a stipulation on our decisions, behaviors and even thoughts. ‘Should” has a flavor of admonition, guilt, and manipulation, especially when other people are using it by blurting out-loud a general statement with the word “should.”

For example: “You should always finish what you’re eating and never leave anything on the plate.” Also: “This should have been completed by now.” And yet another: “You should not get up before the manager has left.”

Review both case studies and notice how many times the word ‘should’ appears in them.

For example, Tina writes:

Tina answers, “We
should
focus on production levels because this is what is driving the transfer to production; trust me, I’ve been here and have seen these projects many times.”

In this case, Tina is using “should” to reprimand the team and also to have it her way by defining an imaginary rule and enforcing it upon the team. Actually, what Tina is saying is, “I want to focus on production levels.” Many times, people use “should” instead of “I want”; this is the case with parents and children. The admonition of, “You should be nice” is actually saying, “I want you to be nice.”

Observe the power and direct impact of the second sentence as opposed to using “should.”

Tina answers, “
I want to focus
on production levels
because this is what is driving the transfer to production; trust me, I’ve been here and have seen these projects many times.”

People use the word “should” to mask their wish or need. Instead of directly stating what they want, they construct a stipulation without naming a person responsible for carrying it out. In families, we often hear such a “should” sentence: “The lawn should be cut.” This  indirect communication can create resentment. The person would be better off asking directly what he wants to happen “Please, can you cut the lawn now?”

Notice that this question can lead into conflict as the other person might rebel and disagree. By using “should,” we are avoiding the conflict between our wishes and the other person’s wishes. The truth is that the conflict
is not avoided
; rather, because the communication is indirect, it is unclear what the person wants the other person to perform.
Thus, the conflict is exacerbated and not mitigated
. The extensive use of “should” stipulations occurs in families, in couples, and naturally also in business teams.

Thinking Alert: Monitor the “shoulds” in your teams. They are barriers to effective communication and reduce the potential power of the team.