The Innovative Brain Archive
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Shouting good news from the mountain top: How to sustain team-building efforts“Take Babe Ruth, one of the greatest players to ever play the game. For a long time, he held the record for the highest number of career home runs, before Hank Aaron broke it. He, as it happens, also held the record for the largest number of strikeouts too. A bad publicist could have billed Ruth as ‘the Great Bumbler’ instead of the ‘Sultan of Swat!’” — Michael Scully
Should we bother?So does team-building really work? Well, we should answer that carefully. After all, a big part of our business is working with teams to help them function more effectively to achieve growth through innovation. Yet we’re compelled once again to write an article that could easily be entitled “Why Teambuilding Doesn’t Work”. Instead, we’ll call it: “How to sustain team-building efforts.“ The latter spin works better than the former self-defeating one. After all, we care deeply about delivering quality programs, and want to increase the likelihood that our teambuilding interventions — and those that others deliver — will have a positive and lasting impact. Great (yet unrealistic) expectations
And yes, that’s true! But how much and for how long? And if things do get better, how will we recognize the early stages of decay and backsliding? And if we are aware that we are backsliding, then what do we do about it? Great Expectations
So much thinking has gone into getting to that peak, and describing how nice it is up there, yet so little thinking has gone into describing the early evidence of decay. It is these symptoms of backsliding that we want to look at in an effort to decrease the depth and width of the valley. We can’t avoid them entirely, and like floodplains in valleys, they can be very fertile places. In the case of teams, the height of a well-fertilized negativity crop can totally obscure the vision of the mountaintops on the horizon. That’s why it’s necessary to look — and think — beyond the negative evidence of decay. If you focus on the decay, you’ll slide further. Yet if you think differently… The unconscious primitive thinking pattern:
So, as the natural decay curve from team-building activities occurs, there is pressure to devolve to telling stories about the less than perfect performance of others as a gator-brain survival strategy. If I can lower the overall standard of excellence, I can still look good, or at least be safe from being the scapegoat. That’s what usually happens. But there are other choices you can make. The conscious, evolved thinking pattern:
Why bother? One reason is so that we have good role models; another is so that a subtle pressure is created for them to continue to live up to their great reputation. If I say great things — which are true about others — it’s also likely that they’ll brag about what I might be doing well. That’ll improve my reputation (or personal “brand”) and keep me safe, and it will also create a subtle pressure for me to keep living up to my reputation. And each of us as individuals need as much help as we can get. Which in turn helps the entire team. Which serves to incrementally raise the standards and behaviors of the team. How to build a better team by sharing good news:In order to make that happen, have an honest and straightforward conversation with your teammates. Find out what each of them is good at and wants to be known for. Share what you’re good at and want to be known for. And then begin to share their accomplishments inside and outside of the team. Let others know just how great they are, and what wonderful innovative things they’re doing. It may feel strange at first, and may take some getting used to, but the dividends will be much more rewarding than what people normally do: “talk trash” about others. Let’s face it, trash talk leads to steady decay. But “talking up” what your colleagues are doing lifts the reputation of the individuals, the team, and all team members… including you. So if you want to decrease the decay curve, you need to honestly and regularly brag on your colleagues. Any chance you get. If you combine that with some personal humility and by regularly asking the question “how can we get better?” you’ll increase the height and duration of the peaks, decrease the depth and breadth of the valleys and find out what the view is like from increasingly higher and higher mountain ranges. And isn’t that easier than mucking through the fertile mud of the valley floor? That stuff really sucks… you lose your boots in it! And without boots, progress is slow and painful. |
Ever notice how following a team-building program, team innovation and productivity are very strong,
but then inevitably begin to fade? This decay curve is a natural after-effect of any intervention. As
many days as we — or any teambuilding practitioner — spend working on changing the dynamics
of a team, it pales in comparison to the amount of time the team has spent developing the bad habits
leading to the point when a team-building intervention was required.
When someone calls a team-building practitioner for help with their team, they are generally looking for a
permanent change in the group’s dynamics. And while you may expect — intellectually — that all
group development strategies like this go through a natural decay curve, there is an unconscious desire that often
fuels unrealistic expectations in both the “purchaser” and in the team undergoing the training. This
expectation goes something like, “If this works, things will get better around here.”
There is an expectation about teambuilding that if we can attain a high performance team dynamic, then we’ll
keep it. In fact, team performance falls on a graph in the form of a sine wave. The best we can hope to do is decrease
the time in the valleys, and change the peaks into longer lasting plateaus.
Being a member of a high-functioning innovation team is demanding. It requires a level of commitment that is
nearly impossible to sustain all of the time. And because I can’t sustain it all of the time, the primitive
“gator brain” dictates that I protect myself from my shortcomings by making sure that others know about
shortcomings of my team mates, that way, they look worse than I do. 
In order to meet the demands of being a member of a high-functioning innovation team, I have to be very vigilant
about how I see and talk about my colleagues. If I want to make it easier for the team to live up to a better standard,
I have to keep sharing news about the colleagues who are doing great stuff — in essence, “bragging on” my colleagues.