When does a group become a team?

Yesterday I was working with a group in an organisation and we were wrestling with the question above. Lots of things were coming up for them

o   Are we a team?

o   Do we need to be a team?

o   Are we more different than similar?

o   Does it matter?

o   Why are we working in this way?

o   People don't understand why we have been grouped like this - what's the benefit?

o   What is our identity?

The leader of the team had created a clear set of statements which showed how and where they had commonality but it hadn't sunk in or been ingrained. The whole company has just gone through a reorganisation and there is pain associated with that process including redundancies, so people throughout the organisation were and are smarting.

The new shape, for some of the group, doesn't feel right and some of them are looking back to the 'old days.'

So when is a group a team? And what difference does it make?

There appeared to be a desire to be more than just a group who get together once in a while and, as senior people with big workloads and plenty of responsibility they need good reasons to diary in time together. If this leadership team doesn’t feel bonded and committed to the function – how then can the staff who report to them?

My sense is that organisations can gain in big ways when cross functional teams spend time together. It is hard to explain how in brief terms but Barry Oshry in his book ‘Seeing Systems’ explains it very well. In short, when cross functional teams understand each other and have insight into other parts of the business new levels of connection, support, sharing of best practice and cross fertilisation of ideas occurs and the business benefits. Not only that but employees are more engaged and are allowed to develop their own creativity.

Former delegates if mine from a long standing leadership programme say one of the most powerful things is the cross functional networking they get to do during the 7 days on the course. It makes them more effective as a leader and better able to do their jobs, influence the business and manage their own careers.

So, a group begin to be a team when they can see the benefit of being together, personally and professionally, individually and organisationally. What they choose to do with those beginnings is another matter.

Now, back to yesterday's group. They had had months of working in this group and reflected that they had done lots of ‘task stuff’ but no ‘team’ stuff. Some said they did with their own teams but hadn't with this group - maybe now was the time, time to get to know each other, to meet the people behind the job functions, to build social cohesion so that the task cohesion has a foundation upon which to rest. I have spoken about relationships in business before and I'll say it again. Business is built on relationships. Without them there is less trust and without trust, things take longer and cost more. With trust things are quicker and cost less. It is all about the relationships. We work with people, not job roles.

If you lead a group, ask yourself what's in it for the members? What extra can or do they get out of it? When you get that right the team feeling will grow - follow this with some purposeful team development work and a clear objective or performance standard and you will be well on the way. Shine your light of attention on the team needs, then task needs then the individual needs and keep it shining in the right place as appropriate and you will achieve the balance.

Are you a member of a group or a team? And where does your light need to shine?

Piers Carter

Coach & Leadership Consultant

How busy is too busy?

I opened a leadership programme this week with 3 questions

o   How are you feeling, right now?

o   What do you want from this event?

o   What are you going to contribute to this event?

It was the first question which prompted this blog post. All 10 delegates said how busy they were. That it’s busier this year than ever before and next year is set to be busier.

They all said it was great to be away from the office, that it was great to have some breathing space. They said it was good to have time to think and to refocus. We had a great programme and it was the 2-day follow up to an initial 5-day course we did in the summer. But they all craved space. Time to think. Time to look at their values and explore possibilities, to reassess priorities on a micro and macro scale.

It was time well spent, however, my opening question is more about the opposite end of the spectrum of busyness – is it possible not to be busy enough? What happens when there is too much time to think. When there is lots of head space and time to explore priorities.

I suggest it can be as difficult. It can lead to over analysis, too much self reflection and exploration of what is wrong or what is going on or what needs to happen. Not enough action.

I am speaking about myself when I say this – you may well be different. I have had the luxuary of time recently, with my time getting to grips with my eye problem (see last entry) and more recently with work being quiet. It has led to me over thinking things. Too many questions crop up in my head, I have many, many conversations with other consultants about the way of the economy at the moment, about why work is scarce, about what we can do to generate work and income and I love these exploratory conversations.

They are thought provoking and interesting, they take me down lines of investigation I wouldn’t have gone down but ..... but they can lead to frustration, to finding myself repeating my thoughts and thinking in circles and principally over thinking or worrying a problem.

This afternoon a great piece of work came in and I set up a series of meetings in the Big Smoke. Suddenly all the conversations and thoughts slipped away and I was left with something to do, some action to follow up on. I have a list of purposeful activity which will result in work, satisfaction, money and intrinsic reward – the reward of manual labour. Well, not quite, more the reward of doing an honest days work but you get the drift.

My point is, the balance between being so busy we can’t think and not busy enough so we think too much is a fine one. It is one we need to pay attention to and to work at balancing. I know I like to be busy and I like to have head space. I need to ensure I get both. It’s all about noise and being sure we get the right kind and amount of noise. The balance to noise is silence but too much silence is scary. Noise can be fun, silence can be restful, and noise can be stressful. Noise can be a distraction for good and bad. Silence can be overwhelming or just what we need to recover.

So, how busy are you and are you busy enough? Do you need to step into the noise or out of it?

Piers Carter

What did you do this week?

Life’s funny isn’t it? The only certainty is things will change, if things are going well then things happen, if things aren’t going well then things happen, the only certainty is things will happen. It’s how we respond, react, and deal with that make the difference because the things will continue to happen.

On the 21^st of this month I developed some eye problems, a huge amount of floaters in my vision. It looked like someone had dropped black ink into my eye. I know I’m high risk for retinal detachment so I went straight to hospital. Smart move, they did laser treatment there and then. Unfortunately it didn’t settle down well and, cutting a long story, a retinal tear, a vitreous bleed and multiple visits to the eye clinic later they decided to operate the following Thursday.

If you’re squeamish don’t click the link below however if you want to see the skills and magic of modern medicine check out this link on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FJYeEGl98g

Post op I have had to stay almost totally still in a seated position including sleeping nights on the sitting room sofa bolt upright. I’m allowed 10 minutes every hour to walk around and get a brew otherwise its back on the couch which has been very interesting. Very thought provoking, quite a lot runs through you head in 7 days doing nothing.

My biggest reflection is how grateful I am. Here are a just few things for which I am so very lucky.

ü  If I lived in a less developed country I’d have lost the eye.

ü  There has been nothing but love and support from my wife, children and friends

ü  The NHS – I can’t say enough good things about the care I’ve had from Sheffield Hallamshire Eye Clinic

ü  Soon, I should be able to see again

ü  I got to recover in a seated position, some folks have to do it lying down ... for 7 days, face down, can you imagine!

ü  Day time telly – actually, that’s been the thing I’ve done least of

ü  The internet – How amazing is it to be able to keep so connected from your sitting room

ü  It could have been so much worse

ü  Most of my other bits seem to work pretty well

ü  Books – anything you ever wanted to know or understand is in a book

There are loads more but I’m in danger of sounding a bit sickly aren’t I? So to answer my own question about what I did this week? Well, I had a brand new experience, I had so much time to think and I’ve got a new perspective on what’s important.

What did you do this week?

Piers Carter

Do you like poetry?

I was struck by this poem by Samuel Ullman. I hope you like it.

Youth is not a time of life - it is a state of mind,
it is a temper of the will,
a quality of the imagination,
a vigor of the emotions,
a predominance of courage over timidity,
of the appetite for adventure over love of ease.

Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years.
People grow old only by deserting their ideals.
Years wrinkle the skin,
but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
Worry, doubt, self-distrust,
fear and despair - these are the long,
long years that bow the head and
turn the growing spirit back to dust.

Whether they are sixteen or seventy,
there is in every being's heart
the love of wonder,
the sweet amazement at the stars
and starlike things and thoughts,
the undaunted challenge of events,
the unfailing childlike appetite
for what is to come next,
and the joy and the game of life.

You are as young as your faith,
as old as your doubt;
as young as your self-confidence,
as old as your fear,
as young as your hope,
as old as your despair.
When the wires are all down
and all the innermost core of your heart
is covered with the snows of pessimism
and the ice of cynicism,
then you are grown old indeed.

But so long as your heart receives messages
of beauty, cheer, courage, grandeur
and power from the earth,
from man and from the Infinite,
so long you are young.

Piers Carter
Leadership Coach and Consultant

Do you know how to play?

Here is an exert from an article by George Sheehan, former runner and philosopher. The longer version is in his book Running and Being, one of the best books I’ve ever read. I like it and I thought you might too.

Play is where Life Lives

To play or not to play? That is the real question. Shakespeare was wrong. Anyone with a sense of humor can see that life is a joke, not a tragedy. It is a riddle and like all riddles has an obvious answer: play, not suicide.
Think about it for a minute. Is there a better way to handle "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" or take up arms against "a sea of troubles" than play? You take these things seriously and you end up with Hamlet or the gang who came back from World War II, wrote Wilfred Sheed, "talking about dollars the way others talked about God and sex."
Neither of these ways work. Neither will bring us what we are supposed to be looking for, "the peace the world cannot give." That is part of the riddle. You can have peace without the world, if you opt for death, or the world without peace if you decide for doing and having and achieving. Only in play can you have both.
In play you realize simultaneously the supreme importance and the utter insignificance of what you are doing. You accept the paradox of pursuing what is at once essential and inconsequential. In play you can totally commit yourself to a goal that minutes later is completely forgotten.
Play, then, is the answer to the puzzle of our existence, the stage for our excesses and exuberances. Violence and dissent are part of its joy. Territory is defended with every ounce of our strength and determination, and moments later we are embracing our opponents and delighting in the game that took place.
Play is where life lives, where the game is the game. At its borders, we slip into heresy, become serious, lose our sense of humor, fail to see the incongruities of everything we hold to be important. Right and wrong become problematical. Money, power, position become ends. The game becomes winning. And we lose the good life and the good things that play provides.

I play mostly when I am on my bike, my mountain bike. I go out nearly every Sunday night between 20.00 and 23.00 and me and some friends get muddy and have fun. It gets me through the winter months, it inspires me in the summer, it is social and keeps me off the red wine for an evening and out of trouble. I think about the last ride until about Wednesday then look forward to the next ride from Thursday onwards. It makes me a better husband and father and feeds a part of my soul which I haven’t found a better way of feeding. My riding is evolving and the latest project is unicycling ... now that’s play!

What do you do to live a life with play in it?

Piers Carter

Leadership Coach and Consultant

Are you capable of remarkable things?

We all are. I believe so anyway. It all depends on your definition of remarkable. For some, it is a sales target, for others it is a sporting achievement. Some see it as a business growth thing and others as acts of kindness and charity.

My point is we are all remarkable and can do remarkable things; we just have to set out the parameters of remarkability - the standards by which we measure how remarkable we want to be.

Once you know that the rest is easy, well, when I say easy there is some planning, hard work and a little luck topped off with some good old fashioned motivation.

What would be a remarkable thing for you to do today?

What would you need to do to look back say your life was remarkable?

On Friday I saw something being done which was remarkable. Sarah Outen set off to go from London to London via the world - all by ‘Sarah Power’. Just to be really clear, she is kayaking, rowing and cycling round the world. The 20,000-mile trip will see her cycle across Europe and Asia and row solo across the North Pacific. She will then get back on her bike to cross North America before rowing home across the North Atlantic. Do you realise how few people have rowed the Pacific? Check out www.sarahouten.com

Rosi, my wife, and I went to see her off from Tower Bridge on April 1^st, very apt some might say. We thought it was so remarkable we took our 2 boys out of school to wave her off from HMS President.

    

Think of all the remarkable things Sarah had to do to get to the start line. Training, both mental and physical, selecting kit, arranging sponsors, supporting 4 amazing charities, talking to the thousands of school children, route planning, getting support crew and PR people in place etc, etc and now she is only 5 days into a 2 ½ year journey ... remarkable.

For me, she is an inspiration; she is a catalyst to be my own kind of remarkable. The important thing is to choose how I want to be remarkable. I’ll never be her, do the same as her but I know I can be good at being me, in fact I know I’m the best in the world at being me.

How good at being you are you?

How great would it be to have that level of clarity and to go out there and to feel it, touch it, be it, achieve it, live it, grasp it by the horns?

Now, round the world adventures may not be your thing, it might not ‘float your boat’ (pardon the bad pun) but the thing about Sarah is she knows what is remarkable in her mind, what she needs and wants to do to be true to herself and her life.

Do you?

Piers Carter

Leadership Coach & Consultant

What happens when we talk to people?

I’m self employed, have been since 1997. I don’t think I am employable any more. This gives rise to some challenge at in the current economic climate. Between September and Christmas last year work was very quiet, I used to think the good people, in my business, were busy and the bad ones were quiet – I’d always been busy so I assumed it was because I was good ... then I got quiet.
It dawned on me, I was either bad at my job or any of us could be quiet. I then had 2 options, sit there and wait for the phone to ring, as it always had, or start talking to people.
Now, even as a confident person socially, I’ve always disliked the ‘selling’ word, felt it was pushy or manipulative. That was until a good friend of mine, Richard, showed me another way, a different perspective. If you are reading this Richard, thanks and hi. Actually, selling could be just talking to people, about stuff, about what is important to me and what is important to them and sometimes, there is a cross over and we can do business.
So for 3 months I started talking to people and amazing things happened. I met some very interesting and fascinating people, I travelled to some great places, I learned some really interesting things and, since Christmas this year, I have been really busy.
Funny that, I started talking to people and I started working again.
I wonder how that happens, what forces are at work?
On the question of what I say and what do we talk about I have taken to contacting people with whom I might have something in common and asking to meet up, asking for advice, asking questions about what they do and how I could help them and their work. Yesterday I met a guy called Julian, I’ve featured his creative artwork stuff on my blog previously, and we had a great chat about everything from business and permaculture. If you are reading this Julian, Hi.
Will I get any work from it? I don’t know and as I think about it I’m not sure I really mind. I think he will be great for one of my clients and I’m going to put them in touch. If I can be of real use to my clients then they will keep me in mind for the stuff I can do and if it isn’t my specialist area then I’ll introduce them to someone whose it is.
Those forces I asked about above, I think they will bring it all back around somehow anyway.
What happens when you talk to people? You set the forces in motion, the ripples begin to spread out and when they reach the edge of the pond they bounce back and you feel the effects of them again.
Who have you talked to lately?
Piers Carter
Coach & Leadership Consultant