Teamership - The impact of anchors
As an anchor, we make it hard for the team to move towards its goals and serve its purpose. Photo by Luke Bender on Unsplash
Very few of us wake up in the morning and hope to have a detrimental impact on the teams that we are part of at work. Most people come to work with the intent to do a good job and make a positive contribution.
Experience tells us, however, that this is not always the case. Sometimes, we fail to bring our best and bring out the best in others. Instead, we are holding ourselves and others back. It’s a way of turning up in teams that I refer to as an anchor.
While I’m not a boat person (my wife is the one in our house with the boating licence), I know enough to realise that anchors can be useful on boats. They help us stay where we are and prevent the boat from moving from a fixed position. This is rarely useful in modern teams.
As an anchor, through our words and actions, we make it hard for the team to move towards its goals and serve its purpose. Unlike when mariners use a boat anchor, we (and others) are probably not deliberately deploying this capability. That intentional type of toxic behaviour in teams is rare and requires the attention of teams when it occurs.
If that is the case, either the people need to change (the members of the team change the way that they are behaving) or the people need to change (team members are removed or replaced).
As I said, this level of anchoring is rare. Instead, most instances of team members showing up as anchors occur inadvertently. This can seem like a disadvantage to addressing the challenges. Instead, I think it offers a shortcut.
If we are inadvertently holding ourselves and others back, by definition we are not doing it on purpose. Once our attention is drawn to it, we can shift the behaviours or beliefs that are impacting others negatively. This is like a warning light in your car that tells you that you didn’t close a door properly before you took off. Once our attention is drawn to the fact that we are holding ourselves and others back, there are often quick fixes to improve the situation.
For example, if someone doesn’t realise that turning up late and unprepared for meetings is having a negative impact, a great place to start is letting them know about it - with compassion and frankness.
A challenge with addressing anchor behaviour is resisting the temptation to think that our colleague is doing it to us on purpose. That they are doing this through spite or apathy. Whether or not it’s true, it isn’t the most useful approach for us to take. Instead, the assumption that our colleague wants to do a good job, but is just having an off day (or week) - and we’ve all had those - is more useful.
If it turns out to be otherwise, the people need to change or the people need to change.
To foster that approach, I recommend that you reflect on times when you have been an anchor on teams. We’ve all had them. Sometimes it lasts for a few minutes, other times days or weeks. When it happened for you, my assumption is that you’re probably not a bad person, probably weren’t attempting to sabotage those teams and probably don’t want to repeat that behaviour.
Knowing that anchor is a state, not a trait helps all of us.
Assuming that team members want to make a positive contribution, we can compassionately point out the behaviours and their impacts without labeling them as an anchor (in some parts of the world, this could be mistaken for a more derogatory term!).
Some questions for you to consider this week about showing up as an anchor in our teams:
When have you noticed that you are holding yourself and others back?
How can you productively help yourself move out of anchor mode?
What might help others identify and shift from anchoring behaviours?