We used to trade our time just for money. We used to work for someone or some company. Now we want to work toward meaningful goals. What are the fundamental values and practices will help leaders drive successful teams in this new landscape?
In 2009, Daniel Pink, in his book Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us, was already scoping three pillars:
Purpose - working for something bigger than just a job and having an impact
Autonomy - setting direction vs. being commanded
Mastery - being trained and having time to develop and apply the best practices
When employees feel a sense of autonomy in their work, they are more likely to be engaged and motivated to perform beyond basic tasks. Employees who feel they are mastering their skills are more likely to be satisfied with their work and feel a sense of purpose. Having a societal or environmental impact is critical. Businesses that focus on profits without valuing purpose will end up with unhappy employees who are less likely to be motivated to perform at their best.
It was true in 2009 and is now even more so after the 2020 pandemic. Teams must adapt their leadership to that shift as they move to Hybrid Work. They must promote new team values and practices that match their staff's aspirations. Leaders need to empower their team members to take ownership of their work and to be accountable for their results. They must also create an environment where team members feel safe to experiment and take risks. They must be leaders, regrouping and animating their teams with a regular rhythm.
This is the second blog post in a five-post series about the Future of Teams and their operation. It focuses on how team leaders can provide their team purpose, autonomy, and mastery. Part 1 discussed the challenges of Hybrid Work and Teams (link). The next post will provide ideas on how the idea of being autonomous at work is material and often misunderstood. Please subscribe using your email to get notified. Follow me on Twitter and Linkedin.
We before I
I used to do interviews for hiring. As a leader, I focused on candidates' motivations and tried to understand if they fit my group culture. I also take extra care to consider their past experiences and the likelihood of their success within my team.
Many times, I met great engineers who kept repeating during the meeting, “I need that,” “I have done that,” and “I want to learn that.” I certainly understand their desire to achieve autonomy and grow their skills. But when I consider hiring someone, I need to hear more. I need to know if that person can work within a team and is ready to work with and for the team. I am looking for a team player who will always put the progress and success of their team first before fulfilling their own objectives.
Leaders must adopt “We before I” as a motto. They need to value the team more than the individuals. What the team needs is more important than what a single individual needs. The team's needs are to be cherished and preserved. It does not mean that individual needs and requests should be voided. A leader must empathize with each person's needs and care for them. Each person in a group has their own opinion to be respected. We all have our family issues, and some have enormous difficulties. Each of us must manage our belongings, healthcare, and day-to-day life. But no team is to be sacrificed. A right balance between individuals and teams' needs to be found.
For example, being remote or at the office depends mainly on the team member's needs and the day's goal. Some members may need to stay home and care for a sick child. Others prefer to be at the office and hang out for a day or two with people they are working with to understand their thoughts on various topics better. Your mileage may vary. It makes the leaders' and project managers' lives more complex. But they must first stick to the team's needs and then accommodate individuals' needs and wishes. They need to make choices, and the “We come before I” value provides a framework they can use to drive their choices.
Implementing “We before I”
Implementing “We before I” requires some courage but also concrete practice. I want to talk about four areas, in particular, where this value is important: feedback, delegation, mentorship, and defining success.
Radical Candor
First, leaders can say what’s wrong when it is needed. It is imperative to value direct feedback without filters and without being a jerk. You don’t need to be aggressive or deny the personal views of your teammate - quite the opposite, you need to care for her.
As Kim Scott extensively depicted in her book, Radical Candor is a crucial principle for team leaders. Radical Candor is a management philosophy to help managers become better leaders by providing clear, honest feedback to their employees. The philosophy emphasizes that managers should care personally for their employees while also challenging them directly. It encourages managers to respectfully provide direct, actionable advice to help employees grow and develop. Scott argues that Radical Candor is the best way to build trust and respect with employees and to foster a productive and engaging workplace. Radical Candor aims to create an environment where people feel comfortable giving and receiving feedback and can have honest conversations and disagreements without fear of retribution.
With such attitude and management practices, team leaders can enforce “We before I” in their team. They can value their Team as a prime entity. And that goes far beyond the location aspect of where team members work.
Who is Doing What?
Secondly, leaders must create clear expectations that they value, first and foremost, what the team accomplishes rather than each individual’s contributions.
It starts by asking a single question: who is doing what in a team? A team is organized with various positions based on skills and different seniority levels. To complete a project, teammates need to work on multiple tasks. Some of them are exciting as they are ways to grow one’s mastery. As Daniel Pink reminds us, growing mastery and continuously learning new skills are excellent sources of satisfaction. Some other tasks may feel boring and repetitive. If you are an accountant, inputting the data into accounting software requires some typing. If you are a software developer, there is some code to develop. It is somehow always the same pattern that keeps repeating. These tasks create frustration for talented and brilliant team members who are looking for more valuable jobs where they will learn something new.
It’s easy to feel empathy with these accountants or software engineers. Everyone would prefer to do an exciting business review or be hands-on with new technology. Still, team leaders need to manage the situation. They need to get the work done and the project shipped, with its so-called “boring” tasks.
And there is a trap here! Team members who are not willing to sometimes do boring work do not value the team. They appreciate only their self-development and their own work. They must be committed to the team's success and help the leader resolve the situation proactively. And there are many ways to use this boring work as an opportunity to benefit the whole team. For example, they can look at how to automate part of the job and suggest a new process to relax the tedious tasks for everyone. They can help train and coach younger team members eager to learn and take on these tasks. Ultimately, they must also do many repetitive tasks to ensure their team's success!
In a team, there is no dirty job. Even more, being with a group is how We - knowledge workers - will get a purposeful and challenging career. We can pool our collective talents and resources within such a team to achieve our objectives. We can be encouraged to share our ideas and perspectives and be supported in our efforts to implement them. The reward for our hard work is the sense of accomplishment that comes from making a difference in our community and being proud of what we have achieved together.
Leaders as Coaches
As you already know, the times of top-down directed asks coming from micro managers are gone. And that’s good! Team leaders must now act as coaches. They don’t command and control their team. They nudge and influence it. Like sports coaches, they work on multiple aspects: team plans, projects, and individuals' moods and psychology.
In a coaching role, leaders have many opportunities to implement the “We before I” motto.
First, they can align individual aspirations with the team objectives – such as accomplishing this project or reaching a specific goal. When they meet with team members, they should adopt an active listening posture. To understand deeply what the person says, they can challenge them and reach a more nuanced position. Still being very open during their 1:1 conversation, they can restate what they already shared during project kick-offs or weekly staff meetings. The more they repeat what’s essential for the team, the better. In these conversations, there are no winners or losers, just two people aligning their points of view and sharing what they care about the most and what their team needs.
In Radical Candor, Scott encourages leaders to “care personally” about your team members. Her framework requires understanding the dreams and goals of your people and helping them take a step in that direction. She advocates having a once-a-year meeting to review these questions: “what motivates you? what are your career goals? tell me more, even outside our company!” It is pretty unusual to openly discuss what you’d like to do up to changing to another job. The corporate world is used to “performance review” or “OKR review.” But a meeting where the sole topic is the person's motivations and career dreams is rare. It is still a good way to align their aspirations with the team's needs. Nobody can promise to change everything over the next week, but each leader can help make a step forward in the person's aspirational direction.
Defining Success
When leaders coach their team, they can define “What is Success?”. What would be a successful project? What do we - as a team - need to achieve to be seen as successful? The leader's role is to answer and share these questions with the team. Leadership is also about defining how the team will reach the goal. Leaders don’t have the full knowledge of each action needed. But by defining success, they are taking the lead.
Once again, success definition must be a set of collective outcomes. It’s collective because it involves “We before I,” a team effort. It’s an outcome that is the consequence of the project's completion. It is why the team worked so hard on that project. Success definition must include a purpose, something that provides meaning. This will be the bond between teammates and why they work together towards these outcomes.
Let’s imagine two new year first team meetings at a local cafe, the leader giving a short top-of-mind speech to his staff.
Meeting Speech #1: Happy year team! This year I have great ambitions for us. I want us to reach the next level and go above and beyond what we are used to. The goal is to increase sales by 20%. To do so, you must work harder and attract more community members. The more they will walk by our shop, the better. You have to be pushy, work hard, and give your best. We will do it!
Meeting Speech #2: Good Morning! First, let me wish all of you a wonderful year surrounded by your loved ones. Health, Joy, and Happiness to you. We had a great year last year, and I also wanted to thank all of you. This year, I suggest a new ambition for our little shop. A local café like ours should participate in the fight against inequalities and global warming. We can make our little contribution. We are selling coffee daily, so I suggest we start by switching to a new coffee brand that gives a fair price to the local producer and limits the usage of chemical farming products. One issue, though, is that the cost is higher, so to keep our shop account balance sustainable, we need to increase our sales by 20%. I think it is achievable, and we are going to make it!
See the difference? In the first version, the leader is enthusiastic and pushes his team a lot. He starts by saying the objective is to “reach the next level” without defining the “next level.” He stresses that the team needs to work harder and increase sales for the sake of increasing sales!
In the second version, the leader starts by taking the time over two sentences to share his wishes and recognize his team. Then he shares a goal not directly linked to his business: global warming and inequalities. How can a local café with a handful of employees fight global warming? Well, he is showing that they can have their micro-impact but a true impact. Then, as the managing director, he also needs to make sure the company's operating margins are good, so he is drawing a connection between the purposeful new goal (e.g., new fair coffee beans) and the new sales target (e.g., + 20%).
Conclusion
Leaders will face many challenges as they drive the Future of Teams. Their people seek more purpose, autonomy, and mastery in their daily jobs. At the same time, there is a lot of pressure on the shoulders of leaders to produce more and to reach new objectives and targets.
This post discussed how we could provide more purpose and have more motivated teams. The “We before I” paradigm is a pragmatic way to align individuals’ aspirations and team life with team objectives. By acting with Radical Candor, taking care of a balanced task assignment, coaching their staff, and clearly defining success, leaders can implement this paradigm and put their team first.