Teamwork in the unknown
“I feel thick” said a good friend and former colleague. “That sense of clarity and focus I used to pride myself on… It’s eluding me. I just feel… a thickness to my brain…”. We know what she meant. We feel what she meant. Many of us are operating with a cloudiness that comes from too many video calls and too much time under tension — the tension of holding infinite unknowns and unspoken worries in our hearts, waiting for some kind of definitive ending.
This lack of clarity is testing our ability to lead teams in a moment when we need teamwork more than ever. One leader we heard from said his team is weary of writing and rewriting goals and objectives and has lost focus — what’s the point, when the goalposts keep moving? Another worried that she couldn’t show up as her normal positive self, because she might appear tone deaf to the team’s different experiences of lockdown. How do I balance optimism and realism when I communicate?
Now that businesses are moving through this messy middle and turning their attention to some kind of return (yet another acronym to absorb: “RTO” or “Return To Office”), we thought it would be a good idea to revisit some key factors in building thriving teams, through the lens of this extraordinary moment of uncertainty.
A model for thriving teams
We synthesized our past experiences with leadership teams and a lot of recent research on the social processes of teams to land on a series of factors that include structure (e.g. design of the team) as well as three essential skill factors: mutual accountability, inclusive communication, and continuous learning — all of which can be thoughtfully developed to create a host of downstream human and business outcomes.
The problem of a pandemic moment
Those skillsets are particularly challenging to master in this moment. The extreme uncertainty has made it harder to be accountable to a plan, for example. How do you stay focused when the goalposts keep moving? Physical distance has made it harder to connect. How do you communicate inclusively over video? And the added stress and additional responsibilities at home have made it harder to focus. Where’s the emotional capacity to learn, in a moment like this?
The good news is that even under these circumstances there are things we can do to take better care of our teams, and in turn, ourselves.
Below we list out the core thriving leadership team skill sets, and offer specific actions you and your team can take right now to improve each one during this unprecedented time.
1 | MUTUAL ACCOUNTABILITY
The first factor of our leadership team model, Mutual Accountability, refers to the ability to commit to a shared purpose and goals, to translate ideas to action and to see them through to completion. Teams skilled in mutual accountability are able to clarify expectations and delegate ownership, to hold themselves and their teammates to a higher standard, and to trust that each person will follow through on their commitments to the team.
What it does:
counters diffusion of responsibility
improves motivation and speed of execution
allows for accurate forecasting and more timely and successful goal attainment
Trouble signs:
lots of high-level discussion and little identified actions
hypothetical, wishful language (e.g., “could,” “should,” “would”)
poorly defined timelines and avoidance or continual disregard for deadlines
Pandemic complication:
In the messy middle of this pandemic, goal posts seem to shift constantly — there’s so much out of our control that some teams are feeling a loss of motivation. What’s the point, they may ask? On top of that many people are overwhelmed and distracted, meaning they have less available will power to focus on follow-up actions. So it’s more important than ever to focus on process over outcome.
Here are two things you can do:
Focus on quick wins. As a leadership team, you’re expected to set your organization’s long term vision and strategy. By nature, this task is already a daunting one; add the additional stress and uncertainty of the moment to the equation and you may find yourself struggling to stay motivated or meet your objectives.
Now, more than ever, it’s important to recognize the power of proximate goals and quick wins. You may not be able to plan for next year or even next month. But you can plan for next week. You can plan for tomorrow. Bring your focus closer.
We aren’t suggesting you forsake your organization’s higher strategic goals entirely, but rather break them down into smaller actionable steps. The satisfaction you will get knowing you have checked something off your list and made a positive impact (even if small) for your team or organization might be just the boost of motivation your team needs to stay on track.
Try this: As a team, shift your focus to immediate actions and results. Ask yourselves, “what one or two things can we accomplish today to support our team and organization?”
Make sustainable process improvements. The teams that have found their grooves already are those that spent the time up front to establish a routine that works for them. If you haven’t done that yet, do it now.
Use this moment as an opportunity to get organized, to adopt a new process or technology that will allow you and your team to easily track progress toward your goals.
Try this: Create a RAID (Risks, Assumptions, Issues, and Dependencies) log to stay on top of your work together. This can be as simple as a 5 column shared spreadsheet:
Description (i.e., What things have you observed that might influence the effectiveness of your work together?)
Category (i.e., Is each observation a risk, assumption, issue, or dependency?)
Degree of Impact (i.e., If left unchecked, how much of an impact might each have on your project?)
Action (i.e., What action(s) will be taken to address each?)
Responsible (i.e., Who will be responsible for taking the action(s) identified?)
Build in a few minutes at the beginning of your meetings to review the log, make any updates, and identify any necessary next steps. If you make it a habit to do so, the impact the log will have on your team’s effectiveness will extend long after quarantine has ended.
2 | INCLUSIVE COMMUNICATION
The second factor, Inclusive Communication, refers to the ability to listen deeply and consider outside perspectives. Teams skilled in inclusive communication are able to draw out all voices in the room. They question their own ideas and admit their limitations. They effectively manage conflict, ensuring fairness and avoiding emotionally-charged personal attacks.
What it does:
boosts creativity
drives better decisions
fosters psychological safety and connection
Trouble signs:
overpowering voices, notable imbalance in contributions, or back-channel conversations
decisions are too easily made
teammates are quick to align and slow to disagree with one another
Pandemic complication:
Remote collaboration and less-than-ideal work from home set ups make it harder to communicate and interpret emotions so it’s all the more important to increase the level of inclusion. (See here for Laura’s more in depth piece on communicating online).
Here are two things you can do:
Practice empathy. Don’t assume that everyone is experiencing the moment in the same way as you. Even if everyone on your team is at home in quarantine, each person could be having an entirely different experience.
For some, the experience may mean total isolation, bringing with it loneliness and sadness. For others, the experience may mean juggling childcare and work responsibilities, pushing stress and exhaustion to the forefront.
These differences in experience can influence how each of you shows up and how you interact with one another as a team. Take time to acknowledge these differences, to uncover the diverse needs of your teammates, and offer support and care.
Try this: Start team meetings with a quick check-in to understand the emotional and/or motivational level of your teammates. This ritual can be as simple as asking everyone to share where they are on a scale of 1–5 (1:Very low motivation / energy, 5: Very high motivation / energy). If you’re on a video call, teammates can raise the appropriate number of fingers to the camera. Invite others to share why they’re especially low or high but don’t force disclosure that may be uncomfortable for them. The more often you do this ritual and the more you personally model vulnerability and transparency, the more likely you are to see the rest of your team opening up as well.
Prioritize flexibility. Many people are having to adjust their schedules to accommodate additional responsibilities around the home, like caring for a child or other family member. Not only does this increase stress and divide attention, but early evidence suggests that those who are traditionally at a disadvantage for having their perspectives heard (e.g., women, people of color) are facing even more challenges now as a result of these added home responsibilities.
Use this moment to close any existing gaps in opportunity, not widen them, by offering greater flexibility in workstyles.
Try this: Set and respect each other’s working hours. As much as possible, avoid scheduling meetings for times any one of your teammates can’t attend. If you’re unable to find a time that works for everyone, supplement your meeting with additional opportunities to offer feedback. Take notes of the conversation in a collaborative document so those who missed the meeting can review them and offer their perspectives after the fact.
3 | CONTINUOUS LEARNING
The third factor of our leadership team model, Continuous Learning, refers to the ability to grow individually and collectively from each success and failure. Those adept at continuous learning view failure as an opportunity for improvement. They dare to give and receive feedback, no matter how hard. They challenge themselves and their teams to learn a new skill, consider a new perspective, and step outside of their comfort zone for the sake of continuous improvement.
What it does:
promotes greater innovation and collaboration
instills a stronger sense of ownership and commitment to company
improves resilience and enables individuals to better manage and navigate change
Trouble signs:
stagnation and boredom; mindlessness; lack of ambition
alternatively, the feeling of always building the plane mid-air — never having the chance to pause, reflect, and plan thoughtfully after a major milestone
Pandemic complication
It’s harder than ever to find the emotional bandwidth to learn, given our level of distraction and lack of stability. So, prioritize ways to increase your team’s emotional bandwidth.
Here are two things you can do:
Make time to reflect. With so much changing on a daily basis, it can feel a bit like treading water — like you’ve only just caught your breath when another wave hits. Experiences like this can feel incredibly disempowering and have major consequences for our attention and emotional wellbeing.
If you have found yourself in survival mode, it’s important to take a step back and reflect. Research has shown that reflection exercises like journaling allow you to better regulate your emotions and build resilience in the face of adversity. But don’t stop at personal reflection — encourage your teammates to join you.
Try this: Hold weekly reflections. Come together as a team to discuss what you have learned from the past week. Use questions that invite curiosity and destigmatize failure. Ask, “what’s working well and why?” For weekly setbacks or failures, lean into improving the underlying process rather than focusing purely on the negative outcome. Ask, “how might we approach this challenge differently next week?”
Get in the right mindset for growth. When under stress, negative emotions take over and work to narrow our focus. We home in on trying to overcome the immediate threat in our environment and, as a result, end up overlooking alternate solutions and opportunities around us. The last thing on our minds in these moments is how to prioritize team growth and improvement.
Add to this the tendency to rely on the same set of behaviors, the same technologies and modalities of communicating, and you’re left having largely uninspired, ineffective, and fear-driven interactions.
Try this: Introduce variety. Distinguish different types of meetings (e.g., brainstorming versus decision making meetings) by adjusting aspects of your surrounding environment. Try changing your physical location or introduce new modalities to your meetings (e.g., taking notes with pen and paper versus on the computer). Videoconferencing is great for allowing others to read your facial expressions and nonverbal cues; yet back-to-back video calls for hours on end can be more draining than effective. If your circumstances allow it, get outside and get moving. Take 1:1 calls over the phone while walking or break up meetings with stretching / standing breaks.
Lead bravely,
Laura Kurtz and Tom Andrews
Additional reading:
https://hbr.org/2016/01/what-having-a-growth-mindset-actually-means
https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-be-more-empathetic