Is your team following the ball?

Gathering around the ball doesn't always make things easier. Photo by Antonio Vidal on Unsplash

It's a pleasure to watch my daughter and her friends playing in their netball games despite the fact that they are yet to win a game. They are learning and demonstrating a lot of admirable traits. Each of them are tenacious, resilient and energetic. They are developing skills and learning the game.

One thing that the team are very good at is chasing the ball. When there is a loose ball (and there are a lot in the Under 9s!), the players are always determined to be the one who gets it for their team. The equivalent in your teams' setting might be a willingness to help a colleague or respond to an urgent task with a short deadline.

This desire to chase the ball can also lead the Under 9s to congregate around the ball. If they have possession, they are so keen to get the ball passed to them that they congregate around the ball. It's a natural response and one that holds as a metaphor with work teams. Despite the best intentions, the gathering around the ball doesn't make things easier. It clogs up the court and makes it hard to achieve the objective - moving the ball up the court and eventually into the goal.

In many sports, following the ball is a good thing for some of the players to do and a bad idea for all of the players to do at the same time. The analogy for work teams is relatively clear - the "ball" is whatever task is at hand for the team.

With time and space, each of us can get much better work done and often make a better contribution to the team. We all need an awareness of the ball and to be ready when the ball gets to us. We don't all need to be near the ball and it can often be counterproductive. Perhaps the most important thing that we can do is to provide our colleagues with the cognitive and calendar space to do our best work.

The ability to give each other space on our teams is a gift.

Of course, as is often the case, there is a tension at play here. Too much space and working in our teams can feel isolating and we lose the benefits of operating as a true team. More often, we err on the other side of that tension - we limit our team's effectiveness by smothering with kindness or attention. This looks like everyone being copied in on every email, attending every meeting and feeling like they need to sign off on every decision. These actions are often well intended and often less productive than we think.

Congregating around the ball is not the fault of the Under 9's - many in their first season of netball. It is something that is much easier to observe from the sideline than from the court (an almost direct correlation to the balcony vs the dancefloor) and also something that comes with more time and experience. I'm not a pediatrician, but I wouldn't be surprised if spatial awareness was something also that 9 year olds are still developing.

For our teams at work, we don't have the same excuses. We have been here many times and experienced what it's like when we feel crowded or overwhelmed. Having the "ball" is the most obvious way that we can contribute to teams. Finding ways to contribute to team performance without the ball is a skill that great team members and leaders possess.

Here are a couple of questions for you to consider this week:

1. When is following the ball helping you and your teams?

2. Would creating more space benefit your teams' performance?

3. What stops your team from giving each other the gift of space?

P.S. As always, sport is a simplified version of a more complex real world. If this metaphor were to be extended more realistically, there would be multiple balls in play, more than two teams on the court and those infamous "moving goalposts" would almost definitely come into the conversation. That only serves to highlight the point that always chasing or following the ball is counterproductive way of operating.