(Note – this is a 2016 summer addition ‘best of the best’ blog from the past.) A few years ago Google set up a research team to find out the elements that create high performing teams. What they found and the length of time it took to find it surprised them. For several years they studied over 150 teams working within Google. Many of the senior executives in the company believed that the best teams developed when the best people were put together on a project. After gathering an enormous amount of data, the researcher found it was almost impossible to find meaningful patterns. In an article recently published in the New York Times’ Google’s lead researcher on the project Abeer Dubey stated, ‘‘At Google, we are good at finding patterns. But there weren’t strong patterns here.’’ The people comprising the team didn’t seem to matter. This finding didn’t surprise me. Leading wilderness expeditions for years with new teams, people would often ask me “what do you do if you get a bad team and you are stuck with them for a month in the mountains”. Strangely enough, that was never a concern of mine. As I gained experience leading, I came to realize that leaders play a more significant role in creating effective teams than the people who make up the team. Frustrated with the lack of patterns in the data they collected, the researchers delved further into reviewing past academic studies on how teams work. In the literature, they discovered that psychological and sociological research kept using the term “group norms” when describing successful groups. Norms are...
(Note – this is a 2016 summer addition ‘best of the best’ blog from the past.) As a leader, you are doing things with groups of people, meetings, meals, events, travel, etc. The one thing these all have in common is that you are all gathering at a specific time and place. As the saying goes, ‘time is money’, but time is more than money. Time is freedom. The more discretionary time you have, the freer you are. In our overscheduled world, time is the most precious resource you have. Is this someone you meet with regularly that is consistently late? What does this say about their respect level for you? Don’t be last…. Every time. I first heard this expression many years ago when I did a short stint of tree planting in Northern Ontario while in University and I have used it ever since. Anytime you have a gathering of people, there has to be someone who shows up last (I guess you could have a tie). In my tree-planting example, time really was money and freedom. If you were late to get on the bus in the morning, you cut into the team’s working hours and a chance to make more money. In the evening, if you were late to the bus, you cut into people’s coveted free time back at camp. One of the best ways to lose respect from a team is to be consistently late to show up to gatherings. Showing up last or late once or twice is excusable in most circumstances, especially if you were able to give notice ahead of...
(Note – this is a 2016 summer addition ‘best of the best’ blog from the past.) In 1965, psychologist Bruce Tuckman developed his now popular theory on the stages of group development. The original phases were Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing. Around 1975, he added another stage to the theory, the final stage which he called Adjourning. You can find Tuckman’s original article “Developmental Sequence in Small Groups.” here and a nice summary of the stages on the businessballs.com site here. This article addresses what I believe is the most challenging stage: Storming. The storming phase comes second in the stages after the initial Norming phase. In Storming, team members have gotten to know each other adequately and have established some baseline norms for the group. They are no longer trying to just “fit in” they are now trying to establish them selves within the group by expressing opinions and challenging others opinions. Members are now confortable to express dissatisfaction and push the edges of the team standards laid out in the norming phase. Storming may even be directed to the team leader when individual roles have not been clarified or developed into what they expected. Growing Pains I remember as a teenager just about every ache and pain I had, that was not directly from a bruise from my chosen sport of the day, was attributed to “growing pains”. The Storming stage is the growing pain phase of group development. No one likes it but it is essential part of growth. Unlike the teenage growing pains, there is no ibuprofen (what we call ‘I Be Broken’ on expeditions)...
I know most of you read my weekly posts to gain valuable leadership insights but there are also those who check it out to see what its going on in Shawn’s world. This post is a short update on the big move my family is about to embark on and what you can expect from the blog over the summer. Several years ago, when living with a Maasai tribe in Serengeti in Kenya, a Kenyan friend mentioned to me that these people could move from their huts with everything they need and all their worldly possessions on the back of one mule. Wow, I thought, partly in jealousy and partly in sadness. I have been thinking of my Maasai friends this week as I attempt to pack up my house. Moving to Oxford, England, For One Year Moving a young family of 4 overseas, to another continent, is no easy task for anyone. To make matters more challenging for us is that we don’t know where we will be heading after we leave England in a year. As daunting as the task of dealing with all our stuff is, I am starting to realize the hardest element of a move is the mental strain it places on you. The biggest challenge is that we are trying to only move our family with what we can take on the plane. When you live in a 4-bedroom house with kids and a home office, it means there are a lot of decisions to make about your stuff. The good thing is that it’s all only STUFF. One thing I have learned...
