Anyone waiting? Yes, would I have some team development, please? Yeah, sure. Oh yeah, if you need sugar with that, you can find it on the table.
Thank you. Let's see what I get. You could get anything when you ask for team development. Right, well, thanks for joining me for this fourth episode of Management Café, where we can consume some evergreen theories and models from our main menu, and also consider today's specials, those movements and trends that surround organizations today.
If we haven't met before, my name is Pilar Orti, and in this Management Café I'd like to share the evolving role of the manager in organizations today, mainly looking at what sometimes is referred to as soft skills, those skills that have to do with interacting with others, and which, far from being soft, are very, very hard. Today I've ordered some team development, and if you want to see what else is on the menu, head over to virtualnotdistant.com slash podcasts, where you will find the other episodes of Management Café, as well as those for 21st Century Work Life. Virtual Not Distance is the sponsor of this podcast, so have a look at our website and see whether we can help you and your team transition from working regularly in the office together to operating more like a virtual team, or to incorporate remote working or mobile working. In this podcast I touch on principles which apply to all kinds of management and leadership, regardless of whether your team is co-located or in a virtual setup, and I will touch on both scenarios.
Finally, before settling in for our coffee, if you just want to subscribe to this podcast, then you can do so via your podcast app, or if you want to receive an email with a new episode, then go to managementcafepodcast.com. Here's your order. Wonderful. That looks quite yummy, actually.
Let's find a seat. I hope you don't mind sharing. I had a bit of trouble knowing quite what to order today. I wasn't sure if I wanted team identity, which was so difficult to define and shape sometimes, or was I looking for team dynamics?
But they're really about the intrapersonal interactions in the team, so I felt it'd be too vague if I addressed them. Teens are also different, well, individuals are also different, that I wasn't sure I could speak directly to you and your people if I talked about identity and dynamics. And I would have loved to use the term team building, but unfortunately, this now is often associated with a one-of-activity to help with team spirit instead of the long, arduous process that building a team can be. So I thought team development would be vague enough, but could also give us enough of a hook to start our coffee.
So when I talk of team development, I'm referring to the processes or activities that can help our team get better every day. And for that, interestingly, I quite like looking at a classical model, which I rarely hear anything about nowadays. And when I say classical, I think 70s. And that is John Adair's action-centered leadership.
I'm not much of a model and theories person myself, but when it comes to looking at something as complex as working in a team, it helps to frame our thinking. And when used with other people, these models can give us a language. And of course, when looking through a model, we start asking ourselves questions, and we might even discover a solution that doesn't involve using a model at all. But in thinking through it, we can get somewhere new and discover something new.
Having said that, this particular model helped me a lot when I was running a small theater company many years ago. My main aim was to build an ensemble there, a group of freelance theater practitioners who work regularly together. And looking back, building this team was probably more of a driving force through my time at the company than creating theater itself. That's a story for a different coffee.
So we didn't have the resources to put on more than one show a year and a smaller experimental event also once a year. And we also had an ongoing education program. But this meant that we rarely worked all together, and we rarely saw more than a few of us working together in projects, and it was usually only for a few hours or two days max if we were running workshops. Around the time, I was looking also at formalizing a bit more the ensemble and building some sense of identity within it and around it.
Around that time, I took a leadership course, which was a really nice 10-day course, very unusual. And it was a wonderful introduction for me into the world of theories and models that I'd never come across. And one model did turn on my light bulb, and this was action-centered leadership. So in essence, I dare suggest that leadership in a team happens at the intersection of looking after the task, the individual, and the team.
Makes complete sense, doesn't it? And looking at it, this simple division of our work process can help us as much to plan and look forwards as it does to review how we're doing. So, for example, well, let me just repeat the model again with looking at task, individual, and team. So think about reviewing how we're doing in our team.
We usually focus on the task. I'm generalizing, but from what I come across, that's usually the case. How are we doing? And we review the task.
Mainly, we look at where we're at with the work. So how about also looking at how we're doing as individuals? Not just task-based, but in our sense of development, of individual productivity, fulfillment, and there I say happiness at work. Once we've looked at that, we can move on to the team.
Are we aligned? What's our communication like? What's communication like amongst ourselves and other parts of the organization? What is getting in our way of operating as a team as well as we can?
So, actually, when you look at it, it's not just leadership that is at the intersection of task, individual, team. It's teamwork that lies there. How we're getting on with the task affects the individual, which affects the relationship with others in the team. So this model, I find, can be useful at all levels, whether you're managing a team or building one, or if you are part of a team, and it can help to decide which areas to focus on when you feel that maybe something is not quite right.
So, for example, the feeling in the team might be quite cozy. People are really talking to each other. The task is on track, but individuals are not really developing because the tasks become easy or routine and they're so comfortable in the team that they don't need to find fulfillment in growing as professionals. That can happen.
Get them out of their comfort zones while they're learning something, whether it's by changing tasks, whether it's by deliberately doing a little bit of learning together. So it just helps you to look, okay, how are we in these three areas? Or if you're putting a team together, especially if you're the founder of a business, or if you are a manager in an organization building a new team, a new product, and you're bringing some people in, you might find yourself really being on top of the task and building strong relationships with individuals, but there might not be much team communication, which is something to look out for if you want to be a high-performance team. And if you want to hear more on that, you can check out the very first episode of the Management Cafe podcast on great team communication.
Now, for virtual teams, when we need to be even more deliberate about team building, I mean, those teams who are often in the same physical space, this model can help us to set up simple processes or to help us decide what kind of meetings we want to have. So for example, is the task falling behind? Then maybe the solution is to track the team progress, implement OKRs or working out loud. Are individuals not developing?
Well, maybe it's time to shuffle around tasks. Or if people are used to working on their own, it might be time to form sub-teens so that people can have more interactions with others and hence have more opportunities to learn. Or actually, maybe it's time to encourage one-to-ones of some kind formalizing reflection time when we're trying to develop individuals. But it might be that we can look at a different scenario when individuals are progressing and our tasks are in line, but then it might be time to turn to team dynamics.
So remember that our relationship with peers is very important in how engaged we feel with our work. And people who are used to communicating regularly and feel a sense of connection with the rest of the team will be more likely to be able to solve problems together and to know how to navigate through conflict and adapt to change. So again, just breaking down teamwork into these three areas might help us to know what we need to be looking at and what to put in place if we need to put something in place. Now, something I wanted to share with you.
As I was reading through some of Adair's work, I realized how much of a traditional view he holds or held of relationships in the workplace. And this is actually my opinion, so it'll be really interesting to hear whether you agree with me or not. You can email me at Pilar at virtualnotdistant.com and Pilar is P-I-L-A-R or you can find me on Twitter at Pilar or team. So this is a quote I found.
What do you think of this? There should be some social distance between you and the team, but not too much. And the reason John Adair gives to this, and he's talking to the manager specifically or the team leader, the reason he gives is that you might need to make decisions at some point which will be unpopular. And if you are in two friendly terms with the team, you will weaken your position.
Now, I like to think that we are moving a little bit beyond this. I'm not saying it's easy. And I'm definitely not saying that people have to have friendships with people they work with. Sometimes we can develop really good working relationships without taking it beyond the work.
And not just that, this also depends on your definition of friendship. So although I'm not saying that we're moving to an area where managers need to be friends with their team members, I think it's valuable to think of a way in which we can flatten the relationships, but still allow managers to make tough decisions should they need to. So how do we do this? I wish I had the answer, and then instead of a podcast, I would write a handbook and send it off to you.
But let's think, for example, about transparency. I like to think that if people understand the reasons for decision-making, they won't pull the how can you do this to us card. Or how about finding ways of making tough decisions together? What would need to happen to be able to do this in our team?
Do we really have to manage so well our social relationships to be able to lead a team? I don't know. Maybe this is the only option in some cases, but I'd still like to think that we can. And also being friendly doesn't mean that people get away with anything and that no one calls out each other's unsuitable behavior or underperformance.
In fact, I like to think it's the opposite. People who have high degrees of trust between them and feel accountable to each other, which would be my definition of friendship, they should be able to have these conversations more often. So you could even argue this is completely non-evidence-based. You could even argue that actually the closer you are to your team members, the easier it's going to be to make tough decisions.
Again, it will depend, but just something I wanted to throw there at you. So in a way, I also feel like if we need to create that distance, then we are reinforcing the hierarchy and also moving the manager away from the team. Surely we want teams where everyone feels accountable to everyone else. Excuse me, are you done?
Can I take this away? Yeah, sure. All right, well, time to go. I'll leave you to think about whether it is or not important to keep that distance between manager and team members.
And in any case, I hope that John Adair's model of action-centered leadership with his focus on the task, individual, and team helps you if you're stuck on how to develop your team or even to help you diagnose where teamwork might be failing. Adair's book, if you'd like to read it, it's called Effective Leadership. However, the book I'd like to leave you with today is another classic, this time by Warren Bennis, called On Becoming a Leader. You'll probably find it a little bit less of a practical read than Adair's work, but if you feel like reflecting on your practice, on who you are, and who you'd like to be, then it's definitely worth a read.
I actually read it quite a long time ago. I marked several passages. And in looking through it today in the cafe, I found the quote I had marked as relevant to new managers, who are probably the ones struggling most with this brain-manager dilemma we were talking about. And as a comparison to Adair's work, here is what Warren Bennis had to say about these difficult moments when we have to disagree or go against those people maybe we consider our friends.
He quotes American President Truman as saying, It takes one kind of courage to face a dualist, but it's nothing like the courage it takes to tell a friend, No. I'll leave you with a book, and I'll look for you in the cafe again next week. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.