Hootie and the Blowfish improving your team!
Hootie and the Blowfish - who knew that they'd be inspiring a post on team performance? Photo https://www.hootie.com/photos/
I love quoting song lyrics and intend to use them liberally in my book (writing it at the moment). Here's one from Hootie and the Blowfish that might be relevant to you and your team. It often rings true for me...
With a little love and some tenderness
We'll walk upon the water
We'll rise above the mess
With a little peace and some harmony
We'll take the world together
We'll take them by the hand
As I explore the research, science, and anecdotes and scratch the surface of what we know about teams it's not long before one is struck by the complexity of human interaction. One paper that I read (and almost ran out of highlighter in) made a very strong case to make sense of teams we need to consider them as multi-layered, complex and dynamic systems that change in response to their environment. If that sentence takes a few times for you to read it, imagine that it is my paraphrased version of the opening sentence - of a 40 page paper. That was how they were easing me in! Pretty soon, I found myself like Ron Burgundy jumping into the bear pit as I thought to myself... "I immediately regret this decision."
As I reflect on it, I notice that what is often most useful for most of us in our teams is this key principle.
Teams are made up of humanity...and humanity lifts teams up.
Here is that statement broken up and explained in order to provide you with a bit more of a connection to how this can be useful for our teams.
Teams are made up of humanity.
By that, I mean that teams are composed of people. Seems obvious and true. Remembering that is surprisingly useful for us as we work in teams.
Humans are not rational, we are not consistent and we are constantly changing. I have written before (and will again) that none of us are exactly alike or respond exactly the same to the same situation. Putting groups of us together increase the complexity exponentially and it is important to remember that. Unlike traditional “cause and effect” thinking, complexity science is characterised by less obvious connections between cause and effect.
Humanity lifts teams up.
During this complexity, we can often search for a way to rationalise our experience, to make sense of it and "know" what "the right thing to do" is. This is where Hootie (and the Blowfish) help us out.
Offering ourselves in service of others (with love and tenderness....with peace and harmony) is a useful thing to do. When we do that in teams, we turn up in a way that allows all of us to be better. It's weird to talk about love and tenderness in the context of business and organisational life, but the fact is that it is often (and supported by an increasing amount of peer-reviewed evidence) that fostering an environment where people feel OK about sharing their shortcomings, supported to develop themselves and able to express their talents then remarkable results can be achieved.
Here are some questions for you to consider this week inspired by my playlist from 1995:
What will it take for you and your team next time you need to "rise above this mess"?
How can you help colleagues feel like you are working alongside them as you "take the world together"?