As I left for my morning walk one day, I saw some 20 security guards at an apartment complex doing a march past practice. What caught the eye immediately was the total lack of unison in the hand and leg movement. Unlike the typical expectation of all left hands and right legs moving forward in one go, it was a free for all action.
As I walked further, I passed a school where children were doing some physical exercises.Again, what caught the eye was the total lack of unison in the hand and leg movements.
The immediate thought that occurred was the obvious lack of teamwork in both cases. Each person seemed to be working to their own rhythm.
TeamWork – The learning starts very early in life
Such school level physical activities are the first points in life where we experience and learn doing things in a group.It is from here that we grow up further at schools, colleges and workplaces, learning group activities and team work.
Which brings me to the other thought that came to mind. That the main responsibility of ensuring this rhythmic action in unison, is that of the leader, or the teacher in the case of the kids, who is calling out the “left, right, left” or “one, two, three” instructions.
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The first and most basic role of a team leader is to ensure the team works in unison. In both the instances above, the leader had clearly failed in this.
Even in organisational scenarios, we can often clearly see the effect of the lack of this fundamental leadership quality, when teams fall apart due to lack of teamwork and do not deliver the objectives; be it in business organisations, social organisations, sports teams, governments or political parties.
Why is it that many leaders can’t ensure effective teamwork?
A leader’s inability to ensure teamwork may go back to their own childhood experiences and learning.
Basic leadership skills are not necessarily inborn. Even if a child has the instinctive urge to take on the leader’s role in a group, which we see many kids often do, it is important that the child has seen and learnt what exactly needs to be done; and in turn guides the team accordingly.
The onus thus falls on the seniors who influence the child – teachers, parents, close relatives, older children etc. Clearly training all children and encouraging them towards imbibing the concept of team work and understanding the importance of leadership roles is critical. Schools and parents, both need to be aware and alert to this.
Most of the time, what is actually inculcated into a child is only the need to improve and excel in his or her own performance and defeating others around him or her. This attitude becomes so deeply entrenched that as the child grows older into an adult, his or her total focus continues to be on their own success in every endeavour.
Effect of Childhood Learning on Adult life
Later in adult life, when a person attains leadership roles, but has such an “I, Me, Myself” attitude, it has its very strong effect on the interactions and relationship with team members. Besides, when they do not succeed in some roles, they land up with a sense of insecurity or feel less than others whom they compare themselves with.
The net result then is that their entire focus is only on achieving their own targets at any cost. In the process they could be –
a) Not connecting adequately with team members to build a common sense of ownership of the objectives.
b) Talking aggressively with team members and putting them off.
c) Running down members frequently, even in the presence of others.
d) Not bothering to see difficulties team members may be facing, that may be impacting their performance.
Such actions result in a frequent change in team members – either by retrenchment of “under performers” or by resignations of dissatisfied team members. So often we meet friends who have resigned from jobs because they couldn’t tolerate the working style of the superior.
All this eventually backfires on the leader!
Making Team Management and TeamWork a priority
For every individual moving into leadership role, it is worthwhile to take that pause, to see how they work today; and what could make the difference in one’s leadership style.
Organisations could also help in providing a mandatory self reflection pause, if need be with the help of professional help such as Counselling and Psychotherapy, where the individual can do this reflection objectively.
For any leader to succeed, some basic factors that lay the foundation for good teamwork are –
1. Domain Knowledge: Building strong knowledge and experience of the domain space is important for the leader, in order to truly visualise and engage the team members appropriately and gain their respect. Listening to the team and taking inputs adds to one’s knowledge from the first hand experience of the members, while also building a rapport.
2. Management Processes: Reviewing the processes being used currently and how these could be fine tuned for better productivity to meet the core objectives. Taking team member inputs can actually bring forward issues not visualised earlier. At times wrong processes impact delivery, but a team member may be unfairly held responsible.
3. Objective Evaluation and Support of Team: Evaluating each individual team member objectively is critical. Every one comes with certain strengths and weaknesses. Capitalising on their strengths and helping them overcome weaknesses is key to ensuring team motivation and productivity.
4. Respect and Empathy: Having one to one in-depth conversation with each team member without being prescriptive or judgemental, can be an eye opener. Understand their view about the role they can play. See if the role expectation the team member has for self, is aligned with the process plan.
5. Jointly designed Action Plans: Working out action plans with involvement of all team members ensures their buy-in and brings forth practical hurdles which may not have been visualised.
While there are other steps too which will help in promoting team work, those mentioned above can create the right foundation for good team spirit, enabling working in unison towards the group’s objectives.
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