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Chapter One
The Usefulness of Effective Teamwork Well, if the command approach is no longer valid, and organizations are less and less hierarchical, it follows that if anything is to be done people in tacit and functional cooperation one with the other must do it. Good teamwork doesn't just happen naturally. The participants must be cooperative and they must be well coached. It takes time to build a successful team. You won't do it overnight. You may not even do it in a year. But there are a few techniques that will be useful: * The team leader must establish and the people on the team must accept a shared sense of purpose. In this scenario, the leader must be a strong focal point for the team's activity. This leader's task is to establish the goal, seek everybody's understanding and acceptance, and identify the elements of success not only for the team, but also for the outside world that observes the team. Now the question arises as to whether or not the team leader - himself or herself - must be a strong, outgoing, type A personality. Yes, there are leaders who have the charisma, the platform presence, the speaking ability, and the knowledge necessary to rally people to the cause, even though they might not personally wish to make the trip. However, that overlooks the gentle, soft-spoken leader who can rally people around an idea, and who can inject just enough centralized knowledge to get the team members to "buy in" to the goal. * The entire concept of a team is that it rises or falls as a team. If the team is successful, all, and perhaps the organization at large will share the rewards of that success. The goals, then, must be developed in association with the team, accepted by the team, and the individual members of the team must be committed to participate. The team goal, then, must begin in the first person plural. "We seek to accomplish ..." * While the team is an amalgam of individuals, these are, indeed individuals. The interests of the individual are very much present, despite participation in the team effort. People have their own opinions, aspirations, biases, and devotions, and they will all affect the accomplishment of the goal. So it becomes important for the leader to remember that she is involved with each team member on a personal level and must treat each person with the respect he or she is due. * The concept of a team is that the individual must subordinate his or her primary interest toward the accomplishment of the team's goal. The project belongs to the team. Each member of the team bears responsibility for the team's product. To do anything else results in blame and recrimination toward the individual perceived to be the slacker. And, of course, in a voluntary organization, that slacker always has a way out - withdrawal from the group. The role of the leader will be to intercept and overcome problems with and between individuals while at the same time finding a way to uniquely motivate each team member. * You see it all the time - sports coaches are relieved of position, only to find another similar position. To organizations for whom winning is paramount, this is the way things are done. Falling on your sword, however, is an important part of leadership. It becomes your responsibility to accept the blame when something does not go well, but distribute the reward for the success when it has been achieved. In most of our organizations, great celebration is undertaken when one reaches a plateau of performance uncommon to the masses. We do the equivalent of slaughtering the fatted calf in an effort to further motivate the succeeding and motivate others to similar levels of performance. * Perhaps the most difficult task facing any leader is the perpetual effort to build confidence among the team members. After all, you cannot be with every team member at all times. It therefore becomes very important to impart to each and every team member that you firmly believe in their commitment and capabilities, and further, that you trust them to see to their role in the accomplishment of your collective task. * Because the militaristic, traditional organizational model no longer works, there are no longer the intermediate figureheads to carry direction downward and news - good or bad - back upward. This, then, means that the leader of this volunteer group must be a participant. It does not mean that he or she must do all the work, though it may seem that way. It does not mean that he or she must know how to do any of the work, so long as the leader's organization skills are sufficient to promote the work of those who do know how to perform the work. * The leader's most important role may be in the training of those being led. He or she must have the motivation to mentor the team, to develop those people's skills and to get them to share those skills with other team members. This may mean periodic and frequent meetings to impart knowledge, share experiences, and evaluate progress. Because everything that happens to a group is somewhat dynamic, the ability to evaluate what has happened and respond to it must be trained into the members' psyches, else, like the Sorcerer, you may well have found your apprentice to have run amok, requiring your presence and your skills to take over the work and see it finished, to the shame of both the individual and the group. And remember that all the time you are doing this, you are training your replacement - someone who can take over the project in your absence - or someone who, him- or herself, may be called upon in the future to form and develop yet another team. Determining Focus and Direction Another work by one of these authors is a book about persistence. In it are the features and requirements of persistence as a means towards developing an outstanding business. The twin of persistence is an attribute called focus. Focus requires that you know what you want, move into and remain in pursuit of that want, and want with a high degree of motivation (or perhaps desperation) to succeed in its accomplishment. We do not enter leadership simply because it is an interesting thing to do, a fun way to spend a weekend. We may be altruistic in our motives relative to others, but the sincere fact of the matter is that we would not be making this journey but for our own self-interest. Picking a direction is relatively simple. If your association with your company is a product line, then you wish to sell those products in quantities sufficient to earn an outstanding economic return. We do those things that promote our own success, hopefully not to the exclusion of anyone else's success. If your direction is leadership, what's in it for you? Big bucks? Perhaps. Great respect? Perhaps. In both cases witness the awe given to some of the heavy hitters in your organization. Altruism? Doubtful. We don't normally do something for the sheer love of doing it without some parallel motivation. And leadership is sufficient enough work that we would not be tempted to expend the energy simply for something interesting to do this week. Anyone who can tell you that he or she has elected leadership as an easy means of gaining personal reward or glory could possibly not be telling you the truth. What then is the truth? Why do we get involved in leadership? Certainly, economics are a driving motivation. It may come as a total surprise, but many people seek leadership for no other reason that they are motivated to be something other than followers. If you're not the lead dog, the view never changes. The dog sled team, harnessed into succession, may get the job done, and all participants may work equally hard, but the driver who sets the direction and the lead dog that sets the speed participate, with support of the followers, in a project that could bring glory to them all. Ask Susan Butcher of Iditarod fame. It should be pointed out that the commitment of the dogs is to obey command. It is the responsibility of the driver to determine direction, control speed, and sustain the team. In preparing for this writing, I had the opportunity to read a very interesting book, The Flight of the Buffalo, by James Belasco and Ralph Stayer. The premise of the book, in the shared "I" format, was that buffaloes wait around to be told when and where to go, whereas geese still have a leader in the "V" formation, but that leadership tasks are shared, and when the lead goose has done his work and is tired, he drops out to the back of the formation, and the line moves up Each and every bird in the flock is faced with the same task - get the flock to the feeding grounds. And all the members of the flock in equal amounts share the leadership of the flock. You, therefore, as leader of your group, remain only the figurehead of your specific group. The greatest task before you is to get your flock pointed in the right direction, committed to making the flight, and prepared to perform the leadership duties as necessary. Focus is one thing - it is the desire to accomplish something specific. Focus, however, is but the idea that requires pursuit. The rest of the equation is self-discipline. Self-discipline is what gets you out of bed in the morning when you would prefer to sleep. Self-discipline is what makes you put out your literature on a hot day. Self-discipline is your resolve that you will not allow interruptions in your schedule, diversions in your direction, negative people to bog you down, or competing emotions to keep you from winning the race you have set before yourself. In a voluntary organization, direction is more often than not, perpetuation. Status as a leader comes from the generation and training of recruits who in turn generate and train recruits to the point that you ultimately will be at the head of a very large organization. The problem with that could easily be that as your organization grows, you may find it difficult to maintain a relationship with every member of your team. So long as you have a hand in recruiting and training your first few levels, your impact upon the rest is assured. The whole concept of multi-level-marketing is that you duplicate yourself. You don't want to be that heavily involved with the downline of your downline of her downline and so on. You do want to set the direction, steer the course, motivate the organization, and celebrate the successes. You will learn, given time, just how dependable your people will be. It's an interesting thing that people who are dependable are given more opportunity to expand their dependability, and it may be that dependability that will bring forth the success you all seek. And it is very important to remember that your focus must remain on what you wish to accomplish, when you wish for it to be accomplished, and your determination to see it done. And you will further learn that the question is less about what you can personally do than it is about what your organization can do. So Here Is Your Job Description * Get a view. Establish the vision for your organization. You're not in charge of strategic planning for a military exercise. Nor are you in charge of establishing direction for a procedure-bound organization. Your role in this leadership drama requires you to envision and reveal what is possible, to the benefit of your team members, to the benefit of their team members, and to the ultimate benefit of the customers you all serve. * Be specific in communicating to your downline people, once a direction has been established, what will be required of them all in the participation in this joint effort. A leader has a right to expect some loyalty from those being led, but at the same time must inspire that participation by communicating afresh the goals and the expectations of the organizational structure. * Meld the interests of the team. Unique interests naturally besot a team, being made up of individuals. It will be your role as leader to develop a sense of shared values among the members of the team. Where competing individual values preclude or prevent positive shared performance, your role as leader then becomes the resolution of individual differences and the refocus of the group's strategies in the mind of the participants. * Stand firm in the face of the "going my own way" mentality. Because a team is comprised of individuals, there will be a very strong tendency to revert to the function of a random group of individuals. When that happens, the group sense of shared values is displaced by the original set of individual values, many of which may exist in competition. * Put yourself in charge of negotiation. Get people together to talk. Develop and share newsletters. Promote participation in groups of similar interests. In short, you are in charge of the expression and control of dialogue. There is no better way to learn than to listen to the other team member, another group leader, the writings of a commonly respected individual, or the pronouncements of the company that you represent. If you can see the logic of the perspective, often that one act will remove the competing perspective, from either person's position. * Be a troubleshooter. Your role will be to overcome objections. You get to regulate and adjudicate distress. Again, put yourself in charge of negotiation. The distress brought on by challenge can easily change into the distress of impending failure. In addition to your constant affirmation that each oarsman needs to row the boat, it becomes your task, as well, to complement each oarsman on technique, procedure, and results. It is important to balance the positives against the negatives, and you will have some of each. * Carrying the oarsman analogy one step further, it would do no good if alternating rows of people handling the oars were turned facing one another. The boat would be dead in the water from the equal, but opposite, pull. As leader, it is your role to get everybody facing in the same direction and pulling the oars in tandem. In your leadership sense, since this is a volunteer organization, it becomes your responsibility to make all team members collectively responsible for the success of the team. That's it until after convention. Goodnight. Ken the Avon Man -- AOL IM kenlordjr RC, UL, CBA -- Tucson, AZ Book: Becoming an Avon Representative -- $25 US Book: Persist Until You Succeed -- $15 US Both, co-bound: $35 -- Sent Priority Mail, Postage Included. Paypal accepted. |
