Opinion piece written by Heidi Edwards, College of Leadership and Management (WA)
A lightbulb moment for a group of team players.
Teamwork. The subject matter for many an inspirational poster and managerial pep talk. Most professionals seem to have an appreciation that teamwork is important not just in terms of team performance, but also for creating a great working environment. In many years of team leadership, I am yet to meet someone who hasn’t considered themselves a good team player, or at least able to support the needs of their team. So what is it that is holding some of us back from leading or being part of a high performing team?
In a recent leadership development session that I attended, we were each asked to outline our workplace teams. Most people started off by describing the teams that they were accountable for – their direct reports. Quite a few onlyspoke about their direct reports. When my turn came, I rattled off my various teams and their subdivisions, carving up our four-layer department structure in multiple permutations – by hierarchy, by role type, by team function. And then I stated, with not a doubt in my mind, that the team that I am most aligned to is not any one of the teams that I lead directly or indirectly, but the leadership team that I am a part of. My leader and my co-leaders.
That day, we spoke about the concept of our ‘first team’, as explored by Patrick Lencioni in ‘The Five Dysfunctions of a Team’. The first team is the one we prioritise, the one whose interests we fight to protect. The message that we took away was fairly straightforward. Everyone around the table had a huge sense of loyalty to their direct reports, but that was nowhere near enough to take us to where we needed to go. Without diminishing the importance of the teams that we led, we had to redefine who made up our first team: our boss, our peers and ourselves. The priorities of the teams that we led would have to be subservient to the priorities of our first team. And given that team-building was never going to be an overnight effort, we would have to invest time and energy into building robust, trusting relationships across this newly-defined first team.
The concept of the first team, while not as intuitive as one might assume, proved to be relatively simple to understand. The metaphorical lightbulbs went on and stayed on. In the months that have followed since introducing this concept in our workplace, it has shaped up to be a game-changer. We have seen increased problem-sharing and hence increased problem-solving. There has been more engagement, greater buy-in to team initiatives and demonstrated ownership of our team’s performance. There is a tangible buzz and renewed energy to face challenging market conditions. Our direct and indirect reports have noticed the changes too. They are not feeling deprioritised or devalued, but are able to see the bigger picture and recognise the benefits to themselves and to our business.
Ask a leader if they consider themselves to be a team player and they will probably say that they do. And chances are, their self-assessment isn’t that misguided. But if the level of teamwork observed doesn’t seem to support the number of self-professed team players, perhaps hold fire on challenging their notion of what teamwork is and why it’s important. Ask them a different question – not what or why, but who: Who is on your first team?