Last time I wrote that a team-less team cannot invent its own reason to become one, and that the first work belongs to the leader. The comments on that article sharpened this one, so thank you to the readers who pushed from both directions. Let me share an example of what that "first work" has looked like.
When I was hired to lead a team, the mandate was clear from the interview process: the clients were frustrated with the function, and a clear expectation was made to transform the team. So I knew the symptoms before I ever met the people. What I did not know was the cause. This concept of feeling team-less was something I only learned by watching and listening.
I did not run a formal diagnostic with structured interviews. That is simply not my style. I prefer something a bit more personal: grabbing coffee, lunch, and dinner with the clients we served, to build relationships while listening for what frustrated them and what they wished for.
What I heard was a pattern. Each specialist area was seen narrowly. One group was viewed as purely operational when the business needed advice. Another had become known as the people who say no. And the members closest to the business, who should have been the connectors, bounced questions back to the others. So our clients had learned they needed to know everyone in the team to get anything done.
Then through similar informal chats, I took that back to the team in 1:1s, and heard the other side. Those seen as too operational felt they did not know enough about the business to be anything more, and had no one nearby to mentor them. The people who said "no" were measured on global processes that were ignored locally. Those expected to be connectors experienced their colleagues as territorial.
And one detail still makes me smile. The clients felt they had to ask several people to get one answer. My team's biggest frustration? Those same clients were asking all of us the same question to find the answer they liked most. Both were right.
I also collected views from my manager, my predecessor, and other colleagues on what they felt a high-performing version of this function should look like. Mapping that against what our clients needed, the story began to form.
And this is where leaders have to be honest with themselves: these people were never going to work together on daily tasks. But there were some real benefits to being in this team. There was knowledge to be shared that would make each person better at their own job. There was a reputation that could only be rebuilt together. And there were a few initiatives too big for any one person, which happened to be exactly the exposure some members needed to grow their careers.
Their identity was not as simple as they thought. It was complicated, in a good way. They already identified with their specialty. What they could not yet see was that they also shared a profession, and an organization they were dedicated to supporting.
I was not trying to replace their current identity. I was trying to complete it.
There is a saying that has stayed with me: "our profession is more than a job, but less than a life." Work becomes meaningful somewhere in that space, and a real team is where you feel it. Otherwise, well, it makes me think of what Ally McBeal (you know that tv show?) said - "the times I have felt the loneliest was when I was surrounded by people." I see this as the downfall of being a "collection of people" versus identifying as team.
I wasn't totally certain I could turn this team-less team into having a real team identity because the opposition was real: not everyone above and around the team was keen on more cross-collaboration, and the team itself resisted at first. But our clients were beyond frustrated, and I was accountable for making this better. For them, for the team, and honestly, for myself, because I did not intend to fail either.
What I never did was announce any of this. A vision declared is just another agreement for people to nod at. A great leader once advised me: rather than teach people how to climb Mount Fuji, focus on co-creating the vision for why to climb it. When people believe in the vision, they will find their own way up the mountain.
If this has sparked some curiosity, I would love to continue the conversation at diane@ptminsights.com.
