Group Dynamics | Building An Effective Team Culture
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GROUP DYNAMICS. BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE CULTURE
When a group of people fails in some enterprise, we often see the following dynamic play itself out: The first reaction is to look at the actors involved and affix blame. Perhaps it was the overambitious leader who led the group into failure, or the incompetent lieutenant, or the very shrewd adversary. Perhaps some bad luck was involved as well. The leader or lieutenant may be fired and a new team brought in. Leadership learns a few lessons from the experience, and these are shared. Everyone in the group feels satisfied and ready to move on. Then, a few years down the line, nearly the same problem and the same type of failure recurs, and the same tired solutions are recycled.
The reason for this common pattern is simple: what is really at fault is the dysfunctional dynamic of the group, which tends to produce incompetent lieutenants and grandiose leaders. And unless it is fixed, the problems keep recurring with different faces.
In a dysfunctional culture, the members are often confused about their roles and the overall direction of the group. Amid such confusion, people start to think more of their own interests and agendas, and they form factions. Worried more about their status than the health of the group, their egos become touchy, and they obsess over who’s getting more. In this contentious atmosphere, the bad apples—the Stirrers, the men and women of low character—find numerous ways to stir trouble and promote themselves. Those who excel at schmoozing and playing politics but little else often thrive, rise to the top, and become lieutenants. Mediocrity is preferred and rewarded.
Leaders find themselves dragged down by all the internal dissension and gamesmanship. Feeling vulnerable, they surround themselves with courtiers who tell them what they want to hear. Inside this court cocoon, leaders hatch ill-conceived and grandiose plans, which are encouraged by the spineless courtiers. Firing the leader or lieutenants won’t change anything. The next ones will simply find themselves infected and transformed by the dysfunctional culture.
What we must do to avoid this trap is to alter our perspective: instead of instantly focusing on individuals and the drama of the failed action, we must focus on the overall group dynamic. Fix the dynamic, create a productive culture, and not only will we avoid all of the above evils but we will trigger a much different, upward pull within the group.
What creates a functional, healthy dynamic is the ability of the group to maintain a tight relationship to reality. The reality for a group is as follows: It exists in order to get things done, to make things, to solve problems. It has certain resources it can draw upon—the labor and strengths of its members, its finances. It operates in a particular environment that is almost always highly competitive and constantly changing.
The healthy group puts primary emphasis on the work itself, on getting the most out of its resources and adapting to all of the inevitable changes. Not wasting time on endless political games, such a group can accomplish ten times more than the dysfunctional variety. It brings out the best in human nature—people’s empathy, their ability to work with others on a high level. It remains the ideal for all of us. We shall call this ideal the reality group.
5 STRATEGIES FOR BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE TEAM
1. Instill a collective sense of purpose. That social force that compels people to want to belong and to fit in you want to capture and channel for a higher purpose. You accomplish this by establishing an ideal—your group has a definite purpose, a positive mission that unites its members. This could be creating a product that is superior and unique, that makes life easier or brings pleasure; or improving conditions for those in need; or solving some seemingly intractable problem. This is the ultimate reality of the group, why it was formed in the first place. This purpose is not vague or implied but clearly stated and publicized. No matter the type of work, you want to emphasize excellence and creating something of the highest possible quality. Making money or being successful should be a natural result of this ideal and not the goal itself.
2. Assemble the right team of lieutenants. As the leader of a reality group, you need the ability to focus on the larger picture and the overall goals that matter. You have only so much mental energy, and you must marshal it wisely. The greatest obstacle to this is your fear of delegating authority. If you succumb to micromanaging, your mind will become clouded by all the details you try to keep on top of and the battles among the courtiers. Your own confusion then filters down through the group, ruining the effect of the first strategy.
What you need to do from the outset is to cultivate a team of lieutenants, imbued with your spirit and the collective sense of purpose, whom you can trust to manage the execution of ideas. To achieve this, you must have the right standards—you do not base your selection on people’s charm, and never hire friends. You want the most competent person for the job. You also give great consideration to their character. Some people can be brilliant, but in the end their poisonous personalities and egos make them a drain on the group’s spirit.
You select for this team people who have skills that you lack, each individual with their particular strengths. They know their roles. You also want this team of lieutenants to be diverse in temperament, background, and ideas. They show a willingness to speak up and take initiative, all within the framework of the group’s purpose. They can even challenge some rules that seem outdated. Feeling a part of a team but able to bring their own creativity to the tasks will bring out the best in them, and this spirit will spread throughout the group.
3. Infect the group with productive emotions. In the group setting, people are naturally more emotional and permeable to the moods of others. You must work with human nature and turn this into a positive by infecting the group with the proper set of emotions. People are more susceptible to the moods and attitudes of the leader than of anyone else. Productive emotions would include calmness. Phil Jackson, the most successful basketball coach in history, noticed that a lot of other coaches would try to rev up the team before a game, get them excited and even angry. He found it much more productive to instill a sense of calmness that helped the players execute the game plan and not overreact to the ups and downs in the game. As part of this strategy, always keep the group focused on completing concrete tasks, which will naturally ground and calm them.
4. Forge a battle-tested group. It is essential that you know your group well, its strengths and weaknesses and the maximum you can expect of it. But appearances can be deceiving. In their day-to-day work, people can seem motivated, connected, and productive. But add some stress or pressure or even a crisis, and suddenly you see a whole other side of them. Some begin to think more about themselves and disconnect from the group spirit; others become far too anxious and infect the group with their fears. Part of the reality you need to be on top of is the actual strength of your team.
5. Finally, we like to focus on the psychological health of individuals, and how perhaps a therapist could fix any problems they might have. What we don’t consider, however, is that being in a dysfunctional group can actually make individuals unstable and neurotic. The opposite is true as well: by participating in a high-functioning reality group, we can make ourselves healthy and whole. Such experiences are memorable and life-changing. We learn the value of cooperating on a higher level, of seeing our fate as intertwined with those around us. We develop greater empathy. We gain confidence in our own abilities, which such a group rewards. We feel connected to reality. We are brought into the upward pull of the group, realizing our social nature on the high level it was intended for. It is our duty as enlightened humans to create as many such groups as possible, making society healthier in the process.
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