Leader's Digest #13 - 01 August 2018

LEADERS ISSUE 13

1 August 2018

DIGEST

E C N E I C S E TH K R O W M A E OF T

This fortnightly publication is dedicated to advancing civil service leadership and putting it into practice contemporary leadership principles.

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PUBLICATION TEAM EDITORIAL

Editor-in-Chief Segaren Assistant Editor Diana Marie Capel Graphic Designer Awang Ismail bin Awang Hambali Abdul Rani Haji Adenan

CONTENTS

ISSUE 13 I 1 AUGUST 2018

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IF YOU WANT TO GO FAR, GO TOGETHER. HERE’S WHY TEAMWORK MATTERS!

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HOW CAN YOU HARNESS THE POWER OF TEAMWORK TODAY?

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3 COMMUNICATION MISTAKES SCREWING UP TEAMWORK

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AUTHENTIC UNITY COMES WITH A MEASURE OF DIVISIVENESS

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Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.

– Michael Jordan

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If You Want To Go Far,

Go Together.

Here’s Why Teamwork

Matters!

BY ROSHAN THIRAN

Great teams always have the capability to go beyond and deliver much more than the sum of their parts. Yet, in business, we hardly see sustained focus on building high-performance teams. A lot of time, individuals get the limelight and little is done to highlight team performance.

THE FOCUS OF BUSINESS When it comes to business, phrases such as “competitive demands”, “personal branding”, and “growth and development” frequently pop up to remind us that we need to “up our game” and “stand out from the crowd” if we wish to be successful.

This dog-eat-dog narrative has been doing the rounds for decades as the de facto strategy for getting ahead of the competition.

In a world of scarcity, we’re told, it’s every man and woman for themselves: no-one remembers who came in second place.

I remember clearly when I first started working at General Electric (GE) and was advised by a senior leader during my orientation session on the importance of standing out from the pack.

According to him, the only way to do so was to work hard, communicate and execute relentlessly. He pumped me up to push, stand out and be successful. It worked for a few years too.

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But today, I am not sure if this approach is so effective anymore.

As the world becomes smaller and more connected, we become increasingly co-dependent and interconnected.

It is no longer the case that we should strive to succeed lest anyone gets there before us: success today is about collaboration and networking, building relationships and creating a legacy. At least that is what I am slowly learning in this brave new world!

IS YOUR COMPANY’S CULTURE CONDUCIVE FOR TEAMWORK? When we look at a company’s culture, it doesn’t take an organisational psychologist to see that toxic cultures are usually the ones in which fear, uncertainty and self-interest thrive. In such cultures, success is about who can get closest to the boss, who can get the most over on their colleagues – who can be the most Machiavellian in the pursuit to gain whatever they can for themselves.

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A culture is strong when people work with each other for each other & weak when people work against each other for themselves.

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BUT IF YOU WANT TO GO FAST, GO ALONE In 2017, I witnessed the Barcelona football team stage an improbable comeback from four goals down to edge Paris SG 6-5 in the Champions League.

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As the quote from Simon Sinek suggests, cultures that are weak tend to become so because people within an organisation stop working for each other and instead look out for themselves. That’s not to say it’s wrong to look out for our own interests, development and growth. But it is problematic when we begin to focus solely on our own progression, goals and achievements.

Conversely, we all know people who can’t help others enough.

They are always happy to give their time, knowledge and resources in offering their support, and they expect very little, if anything, in return. They are sincere, trustworthy and reliable. These are the people we want to help in any way we can. In fact, they are the people everyone around them wants to help.

Even at Leaderonomics, I often am amazed by some employees who appear on the surface to be excellent team players and show genuine care for our vision to transform the nation. Yet, when hardship and toil start to rear its head (who said achieving our mission would be easy!), it becomes obvious to everyone that they put themselves first, even to the peril of their own teammates and colleagues.

As Adam Grant puts it: “This is what I find most magnetic about successful givers: they get to the top without cutting others down, finding ways of expanding the pie that benefit themselves and the people around them. Whereas success is zero-sum in a group of takers, in groups of givers, it may be true that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”

Self-servers rarely succeed in the end, and even if they do, their success either comes at a hefty price or it doesn’t last long. In his book Give and Take, Adam Grant builds on this point, writing: “If we create networks with the sole intention of getting something, we won’t succeed. We can’t pursue the benefits of networks; the benefits ensue from investments in meaningful activities and relationships.”

Martin Luther King Jr. drove home a similar point through one of his many poetic and profound insights:

Sooner or later, we all need help and support to get to wherever we want to go. As the research suggests, it’s those who give freely, without expectation, who are much more likely to enjoy success, strong relationships, and a life or happiness and fulfilment.

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If we create networks with the sole intention of getting something, we won’t succeed. We can’t pursue the benefits of networks; the benefits ensue from investments in meaningful activities and relationships.

- Adam Grant, author of Give and Take

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Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

By working together, we achieve more. It’s true that being a selfserver, or a taker, can yield some returns over the short-term, but in the long run it’s not an effective strategy.

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However, when people continually put themselves first, it soon becomes obvious to anyone who is able to observe them for a time. And the reason why such people weaken a company’s culture is because they set people on edge, create divisions, and upset a lot of people in the process. They might even convince a few others to follow their lead, which only serves to spread and reinforce the toxicity.

If the opposite of self-serving is to serve others, doesn’t that mean that our own returns are diminished? Not necessarily. In fact, the reverse is often true.

ARE YOU A CHEERFUL GIVER? Think about those you have interacted with in business, or indeed in any area of life. The people who consistently seek favours without giving much back; those who try to negatively influence or push their ideas onto you; the colleagues who come across as being insincere and superficial when offering their help. . . how do these people make you feel?

Roshan Thiran Roshan is CEO of the Leaderonomics Group. He believes that everyone can be a leader and make a dent in the universe, in their own special ways.

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HOW CAN YOU HARNESS THE

POWER OF TEAMWORK TODAY?

BY VINESH NAIDU

In the future of work, the ability to work collaboratively in teams and to influence others are found in the top 10 soft skills which will determine organisational success or failure.

Massachusetts Information of Technology defined a team as:

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As humans, we are social beings. Can anyone really say they don’t want to be team players?

People working together in a committed way to achieve a common goal or mission. The work is interdependent and team members share responsibility and hold themselves accountable for attaining the results.

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Leaders need to lead, motivate, encourage, and provide support within teams. The “science of building leaders” (the tag line of Leaderonomics) isn’t going to be worth anything if there isn’t a team to lead in the first place. This is at the core of all our being, whether you are living, working or playing in a community.

A “team” is a dynamic entity and does not exist in the same way or form in every context. How a team is set up, what a team does, and more importantly, why a team is set up are crucial questions we need to ask ourselves at the workplace.

Isn’t it funny how you spend all your schooling years striving for individual honours and recognition, be it being on the Dean’s List or being the School Captain. Then boom, all the job ads are asking for this alien concept – “Must be a team player”. What kind of evil ambush is this, I hear you say?

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IT TAKES A LOT OF WORK TO MAKE IT WORK!

A group of people in itself does not necessarily constitute a team.

What gels a team together is when members of a team start complementing each other with the skills they have and begin generating synergy through a coordinated effort.

will inevitably drive the common benefit.

Similarly, with Barcelona, Bayern Munich, the Selecao – the success of every individual is inextricably bound to the success of the whole team. No significant task can be accomplished without the help and cooperation of all of the members.

This allows for the maximising of strengths and the minimising of individual weaknesses. When all these issues converge, it inevitably translates to better productivity at work. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the holy grail, isn’t it?

No football player, no matter how talented, has ever won a game by playing alone. (Maybe Lionel Messi is an exception to the rule!)

This is how an inter-dependent team is exemplified.

Teams can take many different forms. Let’s look at a few of these.

WHERE IS YOUR TEAM TODAY?

1. FUNCTIONAL OR DEPARTMENTAL TEAMS

This is the most common shape we encounter at the traditional workplace where a group of people come together and meet to analyse customer needs, solve problems, promote continuous improvement and share information.

A team in this form is where a member is recruited directly to perform a certain role and the power of team work is necessary to harness the best of talents in delivering the functional team’s goals.

2. CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS

That’s what we call medical surgery teams. Or something more easily identifiable – a football team! Each individual brings to the team a unique skill and experience, and the power of the team is witnessed in the collaboration of these individuals to achieve a particular goal (no pun intended!).

3. SELF–MANAGING TEAMS

With the advent of digital technology, this structure is becoming more pervasive. If you are an individual who works from home, works on the go and liaises with your group of people infrequently and only for limited purpose, but to achieve the same goal, then you are operating in a self–managing team.

TEAM-BUILDING APPROACHES

Understanding the motivation of a team forms a crucial part of deciding how to help build the team. It’s always a question of “why” before you proceed to the “what” and “how”. This is fundamental methodology across the board.

Bruce Tuckman, an American psychologist introduced us to the most popular method of breaking down the lifecycle of teams.

Identifying at which stage your team is currently at will enable you to correctly strategise on how to lead forward successfully.

1. FORMING

When you first pull together a group of individuals to begin the process of forming a team, everyone is at the forming stage. At this point, your group is still not considered a team. It is still a collection of individuals who are uncertain about roles, goals, and expectations.

The group is pliable and as a leader, it’s your job to seize this opportunity to form the team by setting up the rules of the game.

We can see what happened when the forming stage under the then new manager was not handled well by Andre Villas-Boas at Chelsea Football Club in 2011 – there was just no engagement from the team. This made for a quick exit even before the team was able to form.

The first and most important step in building a cohesive and functional team is the establishment of trust. Teamwork must be built on a solid foundation of vulnerability-based trust.

This means that members of a cohesive, functional team must learn to comfortably and quickly acknowledge, without provocation, their mistakes, weaknesses, failures, and needs for help. They must also readily recognise the strengths of others, even when the strengths exceed their own.

The intrinsic incentive for positive team behaviour differs from team to team and has to be understood before you can build an effective and powerful team!

What are the similarities between the Ryder Cup (golf), the Davis Cup (tennis) and the Thomas Cup (badminton)? If you answered saying Malaysia only has a chance in one of these competitions, you aren’t totally off the mark.

However, that’s not the point that we are trying to make here.

While the members contribute their own skills, the overall impact is on the team. The individual’s win or loss determines the team’s win or loss.

We call this an independent team and we see this happening usually within the sales teams in organisations. It is very ‘Adam Smith‘ in its fundamental form to believe that individual efforts

Are you a team player?

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2. STORMING

Following the forming stage, teams begin to storm. This becomes an anxious period as the team experiences conflict over goals and more often than not, personalities.

Michael De Saintamo, author of Teams and Teamwork says:

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Eventually, those unresolved issues transform into uglier and more personal forms of discord. It thus becomes crucial to the team that this storming stage takes place as it serves to clear the air before everyone can move forward.

3. Norming

When two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as he wants to be seen and each man as he really is.

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One of the greatest inhibitors of teamwork among executive teams is the fear of conflict, which stems from two separate concerns.

On the one hand, many leaders go to great lengths to avoid conflict among their teams because they worry that they will lose control of the group. Others do so because they see conflict as a waste of time. They prefer to cut meetings and discussions short by jumping to the decision that they believe will ultimately be adopted anyway, leaving more time for implementation and what they think of as “real work”.

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Whatever the case, leaders who go to great lengths to avoid conflict often do so believing that they are strengthening their teams by avoiding destructive disagreement. This is ironic, because what they are really doing is stifling productive conflict and pushing important issues that need to be resolved under the carpet where they will fester.

When we get through the storming stage, teams begin to ease into the norming stage at which we see the gelling of individuals crystallising. Teams begin to believe in their collective capabilities and start agreeing on processes and working styles.

4. PERFORMING

Finally, teams then move into the performing stage in which unity prevails and team members work positively, creatively and productively together!

BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER

So persevere in the creation of your teams – the outcome is always worth the effort!

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3 Communication Mistakes

Screwing Up Teamwork

BY KARIN HURT

“Oh she didn’t copy me on purpose.”

“He’s withholding information to make my life harder.”

“Making us guess what he’s thinking is just a big power play.”

“Why would she put something that important in e-mail?”

“What’s that supposed to mean anyway?”

“Why did she copy my boss?”

Some teams spend more time second guessing the intent behind poor communication than working to improve it.

“The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

- George Bernard Shaw 1. ASSUMING MAL-INTENT Sure people play games, but not most of us, most of the time.

Don’t let an innocent oversight, like being left out of an e-mail or meeting, degrade trust.

I’ll never forget the time a peer executive left me off a meeting invite. Our departments had some competing priorities, and I was sure it was intentional. I stewed on it for weeks. Finally, after I’d let the fuel from my fabricated fable of his intentions combust into full-on stupidity, I blew a gasket when he asked me to move one of my meetings around so he could attend. As the drama unravelled, it became obvious that the original oversight was just that, an oversight.

3. Failure to write down decisions I’ve seen great teams with excellent communication skills break down because they miss this simple step. High-trust teams would often raise a lot of creative ideas, debate pros and cons, and then challenge the decisions some more. All healthy. Once the debate has concluded, be sure to summarise the final decisions, along with next steps and timeline.

After all that discussion, I often find that each team member would leave with their own memory of what was decided, which may or may not match the recall of other team members.

Writing down and re-reading key decisions and next steps are important ways to keep the team moving in the same direction.

Communicating well builds the most important ingredient of any successful team: trust. Take the time to establish clear expectations on how your team should communicate, and to discuss where it’s working best and how it’s breaking down.

We cleared the air and it never happened again. I could have saved both of us a lot of angst by just picking up the phone and asking to be included.

2. Hiding behind e-mail E-mail is fast and easy, but rarely effective for important communication. Never assume “they got the memo,” and your work is done. Don’t use email to communicate bad news, or to escalate over a peer’s head by copying their boss.

The best communication happens five times, in five different ways. E-mail may be a great supporting tool, but it rarely plays well as the lead medium.

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THE COURAGE TO FACE THE TRUTH

Comes With A Measure Of

Divisiveness

BY JOSEPH TAN

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Authentic Unity

Superficiality is the curse of our age.

– Richard Foster

There can be no unity without first taking a real hard look at our current situation of disunity. The courage to face the truth can be summed up in one word: honesty. With so many policies being in place by government leaders around the world to rein in elements of disunity, there is the tendency to neglect the foundational truth about integrity – honesty is the best policy.

In this age of open communication, the constituents of any nation cannot be easily fooled by superficial policies or slogans. There is a fundamental need to first come clean on the elements of disunity, then we can begin the task of rebuilding.

The obstacle of “coming clean” often lies not with the mindset of the followers – it usually resides in the thinking of the leaders.

There is a blind spot in their thinking that all is well, when those on the ground are feeling otherwise.

COHESION: THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH As Malaysia’s National Day is around the corner, we are reminded of our national pride stemming from a multi-cultural society.

Slogans and depictions of different races living in harmony with each other represent a utopia of integration and cohesion.

While these are all worthwhile images of how things could be, there is a lack of understanding of how to get there. Unity is a look, like bodybuilding – we all aspire to have that “body”, but are unwilling to go through the process, effort and sacrifice of “building”.

Cohesion is the structure of what you see; however, there is a more fundamental precursor, which forms the foundation.

Does tolerance form the foundation of cohesion? I beg to differ.

In fact, tolerance by itself leads to an accumulated state of unresolved, unspoken grievances and misunderstanding, which can be triggered some time in the future.

Tolerance only makes sense if there is something pre-existing, which is deeper. What about love? Surely, love makes the world go round. Yes, love is important; however, love comes in many shapes and sizes.

What is the basis and foundation by which you define love? What is loving to one person might not be loving to the other.

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It is no wonder then that companies are now turning up their efforts to survey their employees for the state of engagement and connectedness. In Gallup’s worldwide study of the state of engagement in 2013, it is revealed that only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged.

The state of cohesion (or the lack thereof) is a serious issue, which requires the first step of honest reflection. When leaders humbly reflect on the real state of the union, then there is hope.

The false sense of security – believing that all is well when it is actually not – is produced when the leaders surround themselves with advisors who are more concerned with guarding their personal agenda rather than addressing the real needs of the followers.

Figuratively speaking, leaders who are disconnected from their followers seek advisors who tickle their ears with affirming feedback, rather than truthful messages.

If you are committed to face the truth, here are two important steps: 1. Seek feedback from your followers – especially the influential ones. Look beyond personality differences and be open to receive honest comments (the truth often hurts, but if dealt with objectively, it will have a healing effect).

2. Sincerely apologise – people are inspired by authenticity.

Although charisma gets your message across, it is sincerity that moves people towards cohesion. In other words, humility is key.

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THE COURAGE TO FORGE THE TRUTH

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The uncomfortable truth is this: In order to build unity, there must be a clear division between right and wrong.

Fame is a vapour, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character.

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THE DIVISIVENESS OF UNITY

– Horace Greeley

Unless leaders provide clarity about the current situation (facing the truth, acknowledging the deviations from agreed standards) and are committed to lead by example (forging the truth, demonstrating right behaviour and attitudes), then there can only be the appearance of integration and cohesion, because any perceived unity is built on very shaky grounds.

Nothing disperses cohesion as quickly as a hypocritical leader.

Most organisations spend a tremendous effort in crafting their vision and mission, hoping that inspirational copywriting will encourage passionate responses from their employees.

Yet, this is not balanced with an emphasis on ensuring that leaders are held accountable with regard to demonstrating the mission.

How can leaders expect the cohesiveness of people pulling in the same direction if they themselves do not walk the talk?

In my engagements with clients, the most common request I get is to provide teambuilding solutions. A factory manager once requested that I produce a two-day teambuilding programme to “fix” the morale and cohesiveness of the production team and yet, when I inquired about the participation from the teams’ supervisors, the response was that the supervisors are too busy to attend.

The manager wanted me as an external consultant to fix the problem on behalf of the supervisors.

In other words, “please baby-sit my people and turn them around in my absence”.

Leadership is more caught than taught. Managers should not expect integration and cohesion from their team members if they don’t bother to show up regularly.

In fact, research from Gallup indicates that as far as engagement is concerned, a negative manager performs better than an absent manager.

If you are committed to forging the truth, here are two bold steps to take: 1. Stand up for your team – it is common practice that we stand up for our clients and advocate their needs. Why not we demonstrate the same commitment to protect and advance the needs of our employees as well?

2. Speak up against corruption – not just on issues of bribery or monetary malpractices, but also on matters of injustice and deviations from agreed standards. Cohesion is determined not by soliciting popularity, but through standing by right principles.

Joseph Tan is a faculty member of Leaderonomics.

His passion is to work with performance-focused leaders to capture the hearts and minds of their employees through a strengths-based and accountability-driven approach. Much of what is shared in this article comes from his work as a Gallup-certified strengths coach.

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