01 02 03 "CorporateTheatre": Natural Teams 04 05 15 16 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 31 32 33

Natural Teams

A typical "CorporateTheatre" workshop does not use any notes, formal presentations, projectors, or handouts. Participants take back what they experience. Once experienced, like cycling, swimming or driving, it becomes a part of the experiencer. One may not swim again. That is a personal decision. But ten years later, when you hit the water, you know you have not forgotten swimming. In numerous programmes and workshops throughout my own corporate career, I have got bundles of handouts which I never looked at afterwards. Worse, I realised that I was paying less attention to the process, thinking that I could always go through the handouts later. As a facilitator, I therefore took the decision that I would do my best to create a platform for directly experiencing the learning rather than talking or hearing about it.

All the same, often, during the course of the workshops, as concepts are explored and redefined, participants have expressed the desire to get some kind of handout that could capture some of the very exciting insights that were experienced and shared, for future reference, as well as for circulation among Team members. I will be using this forum to share those insights and how they were experienced and defined. As these insights contain the distilled wisdom of thousands of participants with considerable experience and expertise, readers may find them relevant and useful.

While going through these concepts and definitions, kindly keep in mind that they have come out of experiencing and not from a conscious, deliberate attempt to create a new concept or definition. What is more, these have been powerfully and consistently reinforced over hundreds of workshops, with participants from various backgrounds that represent almost every segment of industry or hierarchy.

To start with, let me share the definition of a "Team":

Team: A Team is a group of people who have the following essential attributes:

Integration as 'actors' and not as 'characters'. Once bonding has taken place at the level of the actor, people can take on functional hierarchy and even functional conflict, without experiencing human hierarchy or human conflict. For instance, one actor plays the role of a King cruelly mistreating his slave. Another actor plays the role of the slave. The King abuses the slave, beating and chaining him. At the level of 'characters' there is hierarchy and conflict. There is even respect for the functional hierarchy. The actor playing the slave will not sit on the King's throne. However, at the level of 'actor' neither actor feels 'superior' or 'inferior'. At the level of the actor there is no hierarchy and no conflict.
Clarity of the same task and ALIGNMENT to the same success. Every member of the Team, irrespective of their role or designation must have absolute clarity on what will make the Team as a whole, win. Further, every member must be aligned to that winning. This is not about the individual 'surrendering' to the Team, or adopting the attitude that 'we' is more important than 'I'. While that may sound very noble, it need not be practical. Instead, what is required is to ensure that every individual's concept of winning is aligned to the Team's winning. This is primarily a function of the mission statement, goal setting, and appraisal and reward policies.
Trust in each other's clarity and alignment. When everyone in the Team has complete trust in each other's clarity and alignment, various other attributes like Communication, Collaboration, Delegation, Time Management, and Acceptance of Critical Feedback, become available at the level of primary attitude, and not as technique. Without this trust, no amount of training in communication, collaboration, or delegation will bring forth the desired behaviour. With this trust, all these become instinctively and abundantly available, as the basic behavioural ingredients of Natural Teams.

Once these three pillars are created, you have a 'Natural Team'. A Natural Team is a very powerful entity. They will find the competencies, create the resources, manage time, enjoy change and challenge, and communicate powerfully irrespective of voice, accent, or vocabulary, simply because no natural Team wants to be second to another Team. The basic programming of a Natural Team is to win, to be first.

The ultimate challenge of Leadership is to create natural Teams. Once you do so, you don't have to make people perform. People WANT TO PERFORM. Still better, a Leader who creates a natural Team becomes an Enabler of Leadership - where the Team becomes the Leader. Individuals take on situational leadership, irrespective of designation or seniority, depending on who has the greatest clarity, creativity, and energy in a given task at a given time, and the designated Leader enables and empowers this process.

(I am only giving the concise definitions here. In case any reader asks for greater clarity, I would be happy to elaborate .)

Labels: "CorporateTheatre" # 2

35 36 37 38