Last year I received a call from a manager of a design team at a hi-tech firm; this manager complained that his people were a team in name only. In practice they were really a collection of 9 very bright solo contributors that were herded together for organizational convenience. All of them preferred to work on their own or in small cliques, collaborating across the team only when absolutely necessary. But their company needed them to work closely together and speak with a unified voice to major clients. They had to be able to share ideas and develop highly integrated solutions.
At first this manager tried fixing the situation himself. He had shipped the team off to hear an inspirational speaker. He sponsored team-building events wherein they solved problems involving blindfolds, cups of water, tennis balls, balloons and ropes. He had put them through two expensive business simulations. He even considered taking them all white-water rafting for a day. But his herd of cats still refused to cooperate when they got back on the job.
Knowing that this was a very smart collection of professionals, I knew that further exposure to games, simulations and the usual hardware of teambuilding would only deepen their cynicism and make my client’s job that much harder. But a more traditional approach involving a classroom seminar with handouts and PowerPoint slides would just feed their negativity. “Been there, done that,” I could here them grumble. What to do? I decided to try changing their mindsets by providing them with new information. If I could show them that there was a benefit to working together and there were things they could do to enhance their team effectiveness, perhaps they would listen to me. More importantly, maybe they would start listening to each other.
My first step was to circulate a two-page confidential questionnaire in which I asked open-ended questions about the current state of teamwork at their firm, their perceptions of the barriers and benefits to working more effectively as a team, and the actions that would have to happen in order for things to improve. I invited them to respond anonymously.
Their replies were surprising. They knew full well the benefits of working better together as a team. They also knew where they were at in terms of mistrust and failure to use each other as valuable resources. And they knew what actions they had to take in order to improve as a team. Where they were totally off the rails was in their perceptions of each other. They had assumed the worst and never bothered to challenge their own assumptions.
I prepared a document containing all their answers without attributing names and distributed copies as the first agenda item in a one-day workshop. Being highly analytical people, they had no difficulty in identifying the major trends in the data. They knew what was wrong. They knew what they had to do to improve. Their only disagreement was over whom to blame.
Then I assigned a self-assessment tool. This assessment tool gave them feedback on their own thinking styles. I happened to use the Style Delineator developed by Dr. Anthony Gregorc because people really understand their results right away. I could have easily used other assessments such as True Colours. As they shared their results from the Style Delineator they quickly realized why they had so much difficulty in trusting each other: They really saw the world in very different ways.
Some of them were highly structured in their perceptions. Everything had to be done in an ordered, logical way. Others were very creative and random in how they worked. These people detested rules, procedures and bureaucracy. Others were very patient and analytical. And there was 1 individual who lived in a constant ‘just-in-time’ state of hyper-alertness. She had no patience with considering options, deliberating, or analyzing; she was only interested in getting results, pronto. All these thinking styles are valuable. But they have to understand each other.
Next I asked the team to divide into the four main thinking styles and asked them to describe how they would make an imaginary presentation to someone of an opposite style. The very logical, ordered people had to present to the creative types and vice versa. I compelled them to try walking in someone else’s shoes for a few minutes.
As soon as this team understood that they perceived and organized all information in very different ways and as a consequence their disagreements were not resolvable, they began to laugh at themselves.
Then I invited them to complete a complex team activity in which they had lots of opportunity to practice their new understandings of their different thinking styles. Now they were ready to learn as never before. We finished the day by making action plans about how to work better together.
The combined effect of the survey, the assessment tool and the team activity was to give this team a greater sense of tolerance and acceptance. They taught me that teams, with just a bit of help, often know what is best for themselves and as managers we need to know when to get out of the way and trust the team process.
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Bill Templeman is a coach, facilitator and partner in the Edgework Leadership Group, www.edgeworkonline.com or 705-745-6925
To learn more about this author, visit Bill Templeman's Website.
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