Your ‘Tribes’ Are Important For Your Career Success

What Are Your Tribes?

Broncos, Seahawks.  Democrat, Republican.  Christian, Jew.  We belong to ‘Tribes.’  The correct definition of this is a social group that preceded the “state,” small in size.  The current use of the word is more of an ‘aligned’ group—somewhat informal with common interests and loyalty.  Some of these ‘tribes’ are ok to talk about at work.  Your sports team, unless it is the arch enemy of the prominent group’s team.  Your hobby group, unless it is politically incorrect.  Sometimes your tribe and your company are one—maybe Google is a tribe—but usually your tribes and your company are concentric circles with some overlap.  Sometimes your team/project/department is a tribe within your company.

It is an interesting question why we feel so strongly about the interests of our tribe.  This is probably one of the reasons that we don’t talk about some of this at work very often—religion, politics, gun control, abortion.  If I find out that you are not IN my tribe in one of these areas, it makes it harder for me to work with you.  Why is that?  You are the same person you were before I found out that you have a view that I completely disagree with (outside my tribe).  You are the same person.  If I liked you (or at least was neutral) before, why does knowing that you are in another ‘tribe’ change my opinion so much?

What Do You Do About It?

One of the most important things to acknowledge is that there are tribes and there are tribes.  Each of us has had the experience of thinking badly—ok, if you can’t admit that—not as highly of a group of people because of something.  We applied stereotypes to them.  And then you became close to a single member of that group.  You made that person an exception.  S/he was different from the rest of the group.  S/he was an exception to all the characteristics you didn’t like/objected to.  And so it was ok to like her.  It was ok to think highly of her—because all that stuff didn’t apply to her.  It’s as if we’re hard wired to think like this.

So, take advantage of the fact that we make exceptions when we get to know someone.  Create more tribes.  Create cross-tribe tribes that are based on something else—fun, work, teams, companies, hobbies, interests.  Get to know people.  Make them exceptions.  Get to know people you admire. I once went out of my way to meet the two women who wrote a book, Success and Betrayal, that changed my life.  Who do you admire?  Who do you want to learn from?  Who do you want to be like?  Inside and outside of work—seek them out.  Make them your tribe.

Eventually, you’ll see that the stereotypes you believe about certain groups are just that—stereotypes—not reality.  People are individuals.  They fall on a continuum.  They are like others in their tribes in some ways and not like them in others.  I’m talking about ALL kinds of tribes:  religious ones, political ones, gang ones, 1% ones, creative, etc.  It is insane to write off a person because they disagree with you on one continuum (or four).  Find something to agree with them on.  Get to know them.

Why?

We’ve moved past our caveman days.  We need to interact with all kinds of people.   If you want to have career success—I mean career SUCCESS then all kinds of people have to want you to succeed.  Success doesn’t just come from the quality of your work.  Sure, you have to have that, too, but someone has to want to move you up the organization.  Someone has to want to buy your product.  People have to help you succeed.  Your tribe.

Some great books about Tribes:

• Moral Tribes, Emotion, Reason and the Gap Between Us and Them by  Joshua Green
• Smart Tribes by Christine Comaford

The Dark Side of Tribes

Tribes are the way we interact, but there are some tribes that can get in the way of effectiveness, and therefore get in the way of your career.  Be on the lookout for these.  Sometimes a department is a tribe—a silo—and it is in the way of optimizing the whole organization.  This can bring you down as well if you are too closely aligned with the silo.  You can be too closely aligned with the boss, or with the industry or with actions of a group.  You need to pay as much attention to that as to aligning with better tribes.

Understanding tribes and how you interact with them can give you a new set of tools to improve your career.

Lessons From The Oklahoma City Thunder

I admit with some embarrassment that I am a total, absolute, over-the-top OKC Thunder fan.  My family and friends are pretty incredulous about this—I’ve never shown any interest in sports that weren’t related to my children.  Ever.  Nevertheless, my move to Oklahoma City closely correlated with the arrival of the new Oklahoma City Thunder (transferred and renamed from Seattle).  The team was young and was definitely an underdog in those days and I quickly became a fan.  They were so energized and persistent.  Some of their members were enthusiastic (at least to our face) about being in Oklahoma City and I embraced them along with the rest of the fans in Oklahoma City.

I don’t know how different the Oklahoma City Thunder is from other teams, since I never was interested enough about other basketball teams to pay attention.  It is likely, therefore, that the lessons I lay out here are true for other sports teams.  I just don’t see and hear the same things about them.

Leadership

Successful teams have several leaders and have people who aren’t traditionally leaders step up into those roles when needed.  Sure Scott Brooks is a great coach/leader, and Kevin Durant is a leader.  But so are Russell Westbrook and Derrick Fisher (the old guy) and Serge Ibaka and Thabo Sefolosha.  When the situation calls for it, someone steps up.  They aren’t lost without ‘the’ leader.

Constant, Persistent Hard Work

They REALLY work.  They take their work seriously.  They practice, practice, practice, practice.  Malcolm Gladwell says in Outliers that REALLY good people practice more than the rest of us (in fact he says the number is 10,000 hours—which has been disputed by some).  We know this in our heads.  Most of us don’t want to be great enough to put the work in.  The Thunder is an example of what happens when you do.  (At the moment they have the best record in the West and the second best in the East).  They have risen to Playoff level very quickly for such a young team.  They wouldn’t be there without the hard work.

How many of us approach our work that way?  Or how many of us put in “enough” hours and go home?  How many of us are considered the ‘best’ at what we do?

Teamwork—Support Each Other

They talk a good story about team.  They say all the right things.  When you watch them, you can actually see that they aren’t lying.  In the recent game against the Miami Heat, Kendrick Perkins had only five minutes playing time (his lowest amount of time since 2006).  If you don’t know Perk, he tends to be a bit grumpy (looking, anyway).  So there was discussion among the press of what his reaction would be.  We only had to wait a day.  He tweeted,

“What’s good my peeps? Great teams win. Whatever it takes. Sacrificing is what good teams do. When my name is called I’ll be ready. 9 in a row”

Kevin Durant, the leading scorer on the team, ALWAYS talks about team.  Coach Scott Brooks ALWAYS talks about team.

Teams support each other.  Teams work together.  Teams use each member’s strengths to achieve the team goals.

Do you even talk the “team” talk?  That’s a place to start, especially if you are the leader.  Do you walk the “team” walk?  That’s what it takes for people to believe it.  Teams get better results.  Do you believe that?  Do you see it?  Thunder makes it obvious.

One Day At A Time

As Kevin gets better and better (currently he is the leading scorer in the NBA by quite a margin), and as the Thunder’s record grows, the pressure is mounting to continue the performance.  Can they?  Will they?  These are the questions that get asked of Brooks and Durant and the other players.  Their answer is always the same.  We focus on the next game.  We are thinking about today’s game.  They refuse to engage in the discussion of anything but the very next obstacle ahead of them.

Do you do that?  Or are you thinking about the next three things?  Or are you consumed by the 3,000 things that must get done before the project is done?  Yes, you have to be aware of the things ahead.  Your focus, however, should be on the NEXT thing.  FOCUS on what is next.  Get it done.  Then do it again.

It seems to work for the Thunder.

Roll With The Punches, Figure It Out, Keep Going

Related to taking it one day at a time, when things go wrong—lose a game, lose a player—start again with the next practice, game, emergency.  Get it out of your head.  Get on with what is next.  This is an extremely helpful (and hard to do) tactic.  If you let the loss go, and FOCUS on what is next, you are starting fresh.  You have a much better chance of changing the future with this tactic.

Don’t Freak Out

It is not unusual for the Thunder to be behind by twenty points.  How, you might ask, can they be a great team if they are behind by that much?  They just don’t freak out.  They just keep plugging away.  They keep trying.  They keep playing.  And usually, they catch up and get ahead.  They don’t freak out when they are behind.  They don’t rest and relax when they are ahead.  They keep playing HARD.

So . . . Go For It!  And Watch The Oklahoma City Thunder😉

Why Is It So Hard to Build A Team?

 

Teams Are Easy, Right?

In theory it should be easy to create a team.  Each stakeholder part of the organization sends their best and brightest, outside expertise is brought in, the goal is explained and the “team” gets to work.  The reality is almost always different.

The reality is that each stakeholder part of the organization has a different agenda.  Some parts of the organization really want the goal to happen.  Some kind of want it to happen, as long as it doesn’t disrupt other things.  Some parts of the organization emphatically don’t want it to happen.  In fact those parts of the organization and their leadership will work hard to keep the goals from happening.  Leadership in some parts of the organization may feel that the project goals have been inflicted upon them.  When they select team members, they may choose people who aren’t the best and brightest.  Or they may instruct their team members to protect the suborbanization’s interest at all costs.

Frequently the people who are chosen to join the team are not relieved of their day jobs.  The people in their home organizations don’t have a real appreciation of the team demands being placed on the team member and just see a diminishment in performance.  They don’t see the massive increase in responsibility and demand being created by team responsibilities.  This creates a tension for the team member that is painful.  It actually puts the team member’s career at risk.

Ideally the outside expert resources are there with the best interests of the organization at heart.  Frequently, however, they are the “them” to the organization’s “us.”  There are rules about how these outside resources can be treated by the organization–there are barriers to keep them from being identified as employees for tax and regulation purposes.  These differences just enforce the ‘outsider’ aspect.  It is hard to create a team when you’ve got the them and us dichotomy.

According to Wikipedia, a dichotomy is “any splitting of a whole into exactly two non-overlapping parts, meaning it is a procedure in which a whole is divided into two parts.

It is a partition of a whole into two parts that are:

• jointly exhaustive: everything must belong to one part or the other, and
• mutually exclusive: nothing can belong simultaneously to both parts”

How do you create a ‘whole’–a TEAM–when you start out with the split between the outsiders and the insiders? How do you build a team when each member comes from an organization, led by a leader in control of the team member’s career, with a different agenda?

Start with the Goals

• The goals must serve the ORGANIZATION.  The goals may serve one part of the organization more, but the WHOLE organization must benefit from project.
• The team members–all of them, from every part of the organization, from the inside and the outside–must be able to see the benefit to the whole organization.  This may be a process.  Every team member comes to the team with his/her own organization’s perspective.  Changing that perspective to see and want what is best for the whole organization is a process, it takes time.  It must start, however, with goals that DO benefit the whole organization.  Without this, creating a ‘team’ is a non-starter.

Build Relationships

People will work to benefit their friends.  I’m not saying that all team members have to be friends, but there have to be cordial, complex, willing relationships among team members.  That transformation from us to “US” must take place.  This is what organizations are trying to create and support when they bring in “team building” activities.  These help.  They are not enough, though, especially when the team is dipped briefly in the team building and then goes back to whatever business as usual that happened before.

Things that help build relationships:

• Proximity–teams that work together and live together (in a work sense) form relationships and are forced to work through problems among themselves.  In a virtual world, you have to figure out how to do this.  Things like Lync and Skype help with this enormously, but creating opportunities to really get to know each other are essential.
• Eating–human beings feel better about people when they break bread together.  Why is that?  Who knows–it probably goes back to the cave days.  At any rate, eating together helps build relationships.
• Playing–it helps to see each other in different roles and places.  Outside the work context.  When you play together you start to see each other differently.  You develop inside jokes, fun memories, even trust.
• Talking–encourage people on the team to talk about things beyond just the tasks of the project.  It is NOT a waste of time.
• Solving hard problems–let the team, rather than their leadership, solve the hard problems.  At first they will resist that.  At first they will delegate up.  If they start working together to solve the problems, they will form different, more integrated relationships.
• Celebrating–all kinds of celebrations create and cement relationships.  When people feel happy and proud, they feel connected. They associate with positive celebratory feelings help cement the relationships.

Discipline and Execution

Get the project done.  Enforce deadlines–for everyone.  The chief complaint for people on teams is that some people do all the work and everyone gets all the credit.  If there is a system that assigns tasks and enforces delivery on those tasks; if team members see steady progress and see that everyone is working; if leadership sees things moving along and meeting expectations, then the team works better.

Bottom Line: Do What It Takes

Building teams is work.  Don’t take the team creation be the end.  Keep trying things until your done.  A great team delivers a project.  It’s worth it.

Stand Out: Work On Projects

Internal People on Projects

When I work as a consultant on big change projects in companies, there are always consultants (outsiders) and business representatives (insiders).  The insiders are usually identified as subject matter experts, business leads, and sponsors.  Despite what the consultants would like to think, they are pretty replaceable.  This is much less true of the business representatives.  Their knowledge of the internal workings of the existing processes and their understanding of how the change will significantly impact the future processes are essential to the success of these projects.  Their ability to navigate the inner workings of the organizational politics and to get answers and cooperation from key people make the difference between delivering as promised or not delivering at all.

When the opportunity to participate on one of these projects arises, most business people don’t jump at the chance to sign up.  They have ‘real’ jobs and not all companies lighten the responsibilities in day-to-day job for project participants.  Besides, the kind of people who are identified as potential business leads and subject matter experts are usually pretty happy in their current gig.  Why give up something they like for the wear and tear of project work?

What Project Participation Gets You

Project work teaches you more, faster, than practically anything else in an organization.  You get to see across the organization in a way that is hard to do below the Executive level.  You get to see how to organize and deliver significant change in an organization–again, excellent training for being an Executive.  You have a different kind of visibility in the organization, especially if you throw yourself into it and stand out as a cooperative expert. You get to work on a team that crosses the organization, growing your internal (and through the consultants–external) network.  You get to watch and learn and practice how to actually make a team work through all the stages of team development.  You get to learn a system (usually) or process up close and personal and become the company’s expert on how that system or process works in your part of the organization.  Other executives outside your organization get to know you and your work and that provides longer term career possibilities.

Over the course of hundreds of projects I’ve seen it happen over and over.  People get assigned to a project, they really take to it and do extremely good work in helping the project get off the ground and succeed.  Company Executives notice and start to seek the project participants out for their expertise. Opportunities open up and the stand out project participants are first in line.

Volunteer, Participate, Learn, Accelerate Your Career

So . . .  stand out by volunteering and participating and learning in projects in your company.  It’s worth the effort in the long term.

Why Doesn’t Your Team Work?

All of us get to spend time on teams.  Some of us spend all of our time on teams. There are terrible teams, good teams and great teams.  Most of us rarely get to spend much time on great teams.  For one thing, it takes time to build a great team–more than a few months, usually.  Few of us know how to build a good team, though, even with enough time.

Let’s talk about what makes a great team.

Unlike the common assumptions, great teams are not made up of friends, or people who are the same.  The best teams have lots of different kinds of people, with different temperments and skills.   Meredith Belbin, a British researcher who focuses on teams, started his research with the assumption that if he created a team of the smartest people–”A” players–then it would be a high performance team.  What he found was that intelligence itself was not enough.  A high performing team needs team members with a variety of skills and perspectives.  He identified the following roles necessary for a high performance team:

• Plant:  Someone who is creative and who brings ideas to the table. (For my non-British readers:  think of this as someone who is embedded in the team who is a source of ideas.)  Someone who looks at things differently and is the team problem solver.
• Resource Investigator: Someone who is the networker of the group.  Someone who is ‘connected’ in a way that helps the team find the resources and/or sources for whatever they need to be able to deliver team results.
• Chairman (called the  Coordinator after 1988): Someone who ensures a balance among the members of the team–making sure that they all contribute to discussions and decisions. Someone who makes the goals clear, and ensures that the roles and responsibilities are clear.
• Shaper:   Someone who challenges team members and who pushes them to overcome barriers.  Someone who pushes for agreement and decisions.
•  Monitor-Evaluator:  Someone who is able to point out the challenges to other people’s solutions.  Someone who sees all the options, asks questions, points out the issues.
• Team Worker: Someone who focuses on the interpersonal relationships within the team.  Someone who is sensitive to the nuances among the interactions of the team members.  Someone who helps ensure the long-term cohesion among team members.  Someone who helps deal with conflict, the group mediator.
• Company Worker ( Implementor after 1988):  Someone who can figure out how to create the systems and processes that get the team the results they want.  Someone who is practical and pragmatic.
• Completer Finisher:   Someone who is detail-oriented.  Someone who sees the defects before anyone else.  Someone who is clear on where the team is in relationship to its deadlines.  Someone who focuses on completing tasks, finding errors, making deadlines and staying on schedule.
• Specialist: Someone who brings specialized knowledge to the team, like someone who is the Finance expert, or the Supply Chain expert or the Contract specialist.

Remember, these are ROLES, not people.  One person can potentially fill more than one role, but ideally not more than two.  We are more naturally comfortable in some of these roles than others.  The Plant (the idea person) is usually not good at being a Monitor–figuring out all the problems with the ideas.  Many of these role-fillers drive others crazy.  They balance each other out and reduce the risks of rushing to decisions or dragging to decisions or running people off or being too focused on deadlines or too focused on people or too focused on details.  Belbin has written several books on his research on teams.

When team members are presented with Belbin’s Team Role Assessments® it is amazing how they stop being irritated with each other and start appreciating the traits that had previously driven them all nuts.

Let’s Talk About the Work of Being a High Performance Team

The “who” of a team is only half the battle, though.  The other part of a high performance team is the work that teams have to go through to become great.  There are two models that help describe that work.  The first is the Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing stages of Bruce Tuckman’s model of group development.  Most of us have heard of this one.  It is useful to acknowledge that group behavior goes through stages and movement through these stages is necessary to develop the trust and authentic interactions necessary to be a good team.

The other model is less well-known, but is the one that I’ve taught to my graduate management classes.  It is the Drexler-Sibbett Team Performance ™ Model.  The Drexler-Sibbett Model acknowledges that team development is dynamic.  Teams have set backs, add people, change goals, get new managers, have failures, traumas, successes and constantly need to back up and ‘re-do’  some stage in the team’s development.  It is this focus on dynamic/interactive progress and re-setting that seems to me to be extremely realistic.  The Drexler-Sibbett stages are:

• Orientation:  Why am I here? (Note–it isn’t why are we here–if you don’t answer for each and every person why s/he is there, they won’t even begin to engage.)
• Trust Building: Who are you? and you? and you?  (Most ‘team building’ activities are focused on this stage.
• Goal Clarification: What are we doing here? Few teams get very clear on goals.  They rarely get past the goals of all the individuals to the team goal.  The person from finance is there to protect finance’s interests, the person from IT is there to protect IT’s interest.  It is only when the individual goals are replaced by the team goal that the team begins to move to high performance.
• Commitment:  How are we going to do it?  This gets into the messy part of resources, who, when, how.  This is when the theory and planning turn into reality and the trouble really starts.
• Implementation:   Who does what, when, where and how.  The real stuff.  Things start to be hard.  Things start to get delivered.  Things don’t work and have to get fixed.  Misunderstandings and mistakes are uncovered and dealt with.  The struggle and the payoff happen in this stage.
• High Performance: This is where things really hum.  People cooperate and trust and do and finish things.
• Renewal:  This is where it all starts again.

The important concept of this model is that teams move forward and backward as the situation warrants.  New people come in, the Orientation and Trust Building stages may need to be done again (sometimes in an abbreviated way).  If Implementation isn’t working, then Commitment may need a refresh.

A Powerful Career Tool

Getting teams to high performance is hard work.   It can’t be done through a team building exercise, or through the boss announcing what the goals are.  Learning to build great teams, however, can be enormously helpful in getting you to the next level of your career.  People who know the mechanics of building great teams can do it over and over and over.  They can do it in different organizations and they can  deliver different kinds of goals.  They can do it at all levels of the organization and in all sizes of organizations.  Well worth learning!