Coach to the Contrary

Sev­eral years ago, I spent 2 days in a win­dow­less Los Ange­les hotel meet­ing room. I was work­ing with a senior lead­er­ship team dur­ing their all-day meet­ings. For­tu­nately, the loca­tion was not any­where that you would care about hav­ing a win­dow view.

At the end of the sec­ond day, the CEO pulled me aside and said, “OK, you work with a lot of teams. I want your take on my team. Specif­i­cally, are they as imma­ture as I believe they are?”

Hmm… Care­ful with this one, Coach.

I did not want to respond with a sim­ple “Yes” or “No.” To do so would mean that the client and I were assum­ing the same def­i­n­i­tion of an “imma­ture” team. Same word, dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tions… a bad foun­da­tion for coaching.

This sce­nario did bring forth a point that I have since pon­dered: What makes for a mature or imma­ture team?

The easy answer would be to throw the “kitchen sink” of solu­tions, like the 270 Habits of Effi­cient and Effec­tive Teams or How to Mature your Team in 3 Days.

Instead, I went with Eleanor Roo­sevelt. I think her expla­na­tion of peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ca­tion most sim­ply and elo­quently defines the dif­fer­ence between a mature and an imma­ture leader, and a mature and an imma­ture team.

Here is what she says:

 

If, as a leader, you allow your team to spend a dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of time talk­ing about peo­ple or events, your team lacks matu­rity. The more that a team dis­cusses events and peo­ple while exclud­ing ideas, the greater the immaturity.

If you lead a team or work group that meets at least once a week, here’s a very reveal­ing exer­cise I want to chal­lenge you to try for the next two to four weeks.

Cre­ate a sim­ple Excel spread­sheet. Along the top, enter the 3 cat­e­gories: “Ideas, Events, Peo­ple.” Down the side, list the names of your team mem­bers. Bring this spread­sheet to your next meet­ing, and as the dis­cus­sion pro­gresses, record how many times each per­son talks in these three zones.

By chang­ing the way you view these dis­cus­sions, you may very well learn some things about your lead­er­ship and your team mem­bers. This is one of sev­eral tools I use when I am work­ing with a leader and her team who are really open to learn­ing and developing.

Mature teams will spend a lot of time talk­ing about ideas, and less on events or people.

What else do I con­sis­tently observe about imma­ture lead­ers and imma­ture teams?

1. Every­one seems to be an expert on “trivia” – who did what when – but lit­tle time is spent dis­cussing impor­tant ideas. Imma­ture teams feel more com­fort­able dis­cussing trivia because there is less at stake.

2. Imma­ture lead­ers pre­fer when there is only ONE right answer because it alle­vi­ates the risk of mak­ing a mis­take (espe­cially in front of the very peo­ple who report to them).

3. Imma­ture lead­ers and teams don’t change. They stay in their com­fort zone. (As a leader, where are you most comfortable…..people, events or ideas?) Instead, they live by Admi­ral David Farragut’s edict, “Damn the tor­pe­does, Full speed ahead!”

4. The “experts” in the group (either self-appointed or through posi­tion) tend to be the great­est lim­iters of dis­cus­sion.  Not sur­pris­ingly, experts have the most to say when peo­ple are the sub­ject of dis­cus­sion, and less so with events and ideas.

5. Indi­vid­u­als on imma­ture teams accept lit­tle respon­si­bil­ity for mis­takes result­ing from their own advice, and yet gladly accept full respon­si­bil­ity for any suc­cesses that have resulted from their own advice.

Here is my chal­lenge to you: Even for just 2 meet­ings, use the sim­ple tool as I’ve out­lined above. You’ll gain a while new per­spec­tive on your team and yourself.

What do you observe about the matu­rity vs. imma­tu­rity of your team? If your team did come out as “imma­ture,” what would you do to mature your team? As a leader, where do you most com­fort­ably reside…..large, aver­age or small?

No related posts.