3 ways to make teamwork easier
One of my highlights of 2024 was publishing an article in the Leader to Leader journal. In it, I wrote this about teamwork:
“A string quartet and an orchestra of 65 both function as a team. When we add more musicians, teamwork just becomes a harder task… It’s not that musicians suddenly become helpless and thoughtless when they play in an orchestra; the conductor simply makes teamwork easier.”
I rarely quote myself (!) but this really got me thinking over and over: how do we make teamwork easier?
After chewing on this a bit more, I share 3 ways we can make teamwork easier:
1. Articulate shared goals
It is easier for us to all go in the same direction if we know where we're going.
What do we care about? What are our priorities? What are our non-negotiables - things we must achieve? What are our desired outcomes? What do we hope the audience will get out of their experience? What do we hope we will get out of the experience? How would we know if we've achieved these? How would we measure success?
When we can answer these questions as a group, we can clearly see our individual roles and responsibilities - and how they contribute to the shared goal. This also gives us flexibility in the process. When we know where we're going, we feel more confident about choosing alternative, better paths that are revealed along the way. Our how can change, while our where remains constant.
2. Make it safe to dissent
Creative work takes experimentation, taking risks, and productive conflict. It’s not teamwork if we acquiesce to only one person's ideas and wants. It's not teamwork if we are afraid of sharing our artistic ideas. It's not teamwork if we don't have open (or any) discussions.
We can remind ourselves that it's more important for people to be heard than get their way. We underestimate the power of simply hearing someone, without the need to always be in agreement or go in that direction. Creating space to be heard leads to safety. Safety leads to speaking up.
The challenge is it's easy to see artistic discussions (especially in a power dynamic between a conductor and musician) as a zero-sum game, where there is a winner and loser. Favoring one idea typically means the diminishing or rejection of other ideas. In fact, it doesn't need to be that way. We can choose one idea and still find value in the other ideas. We just chose that particular one - ideally as a result of productive discussion. This can be artfully framed by the leader.
3. Demonstrate belief & trust (in ourselves)
We know how important it is for leaders to believe in their teams, to show that belief in their words and actions. This includes refraining from adding too much value (doing so much that it disempowers), sometimes allowing their teams to fail, or avoiding micromanagement.
At the same time, it can be easy to overlook the fact that in order to do that, leaders need to believe in themselves and trust themselves too, perhaps before they can have the capacity to do that for others.
When we don't believe in ourselves, we find ourselves in survival mode, searching for validation in others (including our team) to boost that belief. We end up focusing on ourselves and neglecting our team's needs for belief. So, we can believe in ourselves more to reduce our need for external validation and spend that energy on believing in our team.
When we don't trust ourselves, we micromanage or force certain outcomes that feel safe and known to us. That doesn't always result in behaviors that demonstrate trust in our team. So, we can trust ourselves more to be able to let go of control in order to trust our team.
Which ones resonate? What could you do to better articulate your shared goals, make it safe to dissent, or believe and trust in yourself?
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