Mastering the Self to Improve the Team

In business, in our activities, we run a lot of meetings, and many of these meetings are ineffective.  They take too long, they are unfocused, they leave people feeling tired with little gain.  After all that is said and done, a lot is said and little is done. 

In the average meeting, we have people talking, sometimes to each other, sometimes in groups, sometimes to no one at all.  It is unclear who leads the discussion, and the objectives of the discussion.  Because of this, the conversation strays off topic, and they drift further away.  Inevitably, some resentment creeps in.  We are committing the cardinal sin of wasting people’s time. 

Paradoxically, the key to gaining control of the meeting is not necessarily found in the meeting chair taking control directly, because it would mean people switch off, which defeats the purpose of the meeting.  It is found by empowering the people by making them responsible for their behaviour.  We need to ask them why they react the way they do, and what they can do to fix it.  Leadership is not found in the blame game.  Poor leaders complain about how the team is not performing, dysfunctional, or recalcitrant.  When such leaders are questioned, we generally get vague reasons why people are problematic, without actually being able to identify the real issue. 

The team dynamic is complex, with many factors of consideration.  We are talking about getting disparate people of varying levels of skillsets, experiences, habits, baggage, perspectives, and even culture, to come together for a common goal.  They have to understand that they are part of something greater than they are.  There are three aspects we must master: knowing ourselves, knowing our environment, and having a sense of values. 

Before we go anywhere, we must know where we are.  In this instance, we have to understand our emotional state, the intent of our actions and words, and the dialogue within us.  Too often, our interactions are coloured due to our misunderstanding of the intent of others due to the inherent biases and prejudice we hold.  We may not even be aware of that bias.  This lack of understanding of the prism of our perspectives is the first barrier of effective communication.  It also leads to us discounting valid perspectives, and disenfranchising team mates. 

An example of this impediment is when we have, in a meeting, tactical thinkers and strategic thinkers.  A good team requires both.  A strategic thinker is concerned about the overarching narrative, and the vision.  A tactical thinker is focused on immediate roadmap, and the details of the programme.  If either of them has a deficit of internal cognisance, and is unaware of themselves, there is a sense of frustration, and the other perspective is taken as a challenge and a personal affront.  This is unhelpful.  This is the first basis of conflict.  This is why we need to spend time considering and reflecting, especially when we feel emotionally challenged by others.  We have to ask ourselves whether this is their intent, or an inadequacy in our thinking. 

The second one is knowing our environment.  To paraphrase Sun Tzu, to know our enemies and know our friends, our victory is certain.  But know heaven and know earth, our victory is complete.  In this case, we must be able to see people as they are, they strengths, weaknesses, idiosyncrasies, foibles.  This allows us to leverage on their strengths, and cover the weaknesses of our team.  This is the other side of the coin.  Understanding people, our team, is only useful if we know how to bring that knowledge to bear, to bring it across to them in a manner where they can improve themselves.  To make them productive, we must be able to evaluate them, and criticise them creatively. 

This ability to evaluate our team is gained through observation.  This is especially useful when we are the ones chairing the meeting.  We not who raises their voice, who is agitated, who sits back, who leans forward, who interjects at specific points, who interprets and reinterprets others, and so forth.  When we are able to see people as they are, it helps us understand their perspective, and benefit from it.  And then, it helps to directly aske them for feedback to confirm what we have surmised. 

Finally, we must have the right values, because values are part of our personal accountability.  We must measure our acts and our intentions against those values to ensure we adhere to them, before applying them to how others interact with us.  This is actually the hardest part for most of us, because we do not want to diminish ourselves. 

If a team is not working well together, it’s highly likely that every team member is contributing to the difficulty in some way, and each of them could be taking personal accountability to make the team more effective.  Our measure of values begins when we recognise that there is a situation, a problem.  And then we must understand that even by virtue of being there, we are also part of that problem.  The next step is to take responsibility of it, and seize the situation.  And finally, persevere at it, until we have addressed the situation. 

Ultimately, these are three steps of a paradigm shift in our mindset.  By addressing the situation positively, we have impacted the entire team, the entire discussion, in a positive manner.  The trick is to ensure that all members of the team have that same epiphany.  And that is the communication part of leadership.