To build a boat without going to Abilene

(per una versione in Italiano clicca qui)

In my previous article, “The story of a sandwich”, we went through the trust concept and in which way it plays a so fundamental role to be considered the base of everything. Therefore if trust is the base to build a functional Team, then we can consider it our new boat’s keel we’re going to build: the keel is the load-bearing element for everything will come after, and above. Ribs are another strongpoint of a hull, they extend from the keel and they will be the main frame that will keep together all the rest. What can be compared to these ribs in a functional Team?

Last summer Sailing School experience evolved into a more consistent and interesting project that required (and still requires) a strategic and structural work much more important than the mere activity of teaching sailing. Finding a group of people that shares the pleasure to start and draw a path to do better it’s a beautiful thing, especially because the scope and beliefs are about promotion and development of Sport allocated to youth teams’ passion, education and growth.

It isn’t just an evolution of aims and programs, but also of the way to approach the new path. A group of people that until some weeks ago was working to do something started the transformation into a Team: the main difference between a group of people doing something and a Team stays firstly in shared vision and values, then, practically, in a built base of trust.

It could appear a paradox: strengthened trust doesn’t drive to exclusion of discussions and arguments; trust brings instead to get the maximum from conflicts, because trust brings transparency. There has been for sure meetings with open conflicts or debates, and this hasn’t weakened the result. Sure enough, it is the “fear of conflict” one of the primary dysfunctions in a team, and it is an imminent danger to always pay attention to.

A very frequent risk coming from the “fear of conflict” is ending up somewhere else compared the shared vision (it means going where an individual wants); even worst it’s ending up where nobody wanted to go! It is worth to read “Abilene’s Paradox” describing in an easy and funny way what happens when we are afraid to express our opinion. It’s an interesting matter this one, if the conflict, the contrast or the debate are transparent, then it is a constructive and positive process. To be transparent we need trust to glue each other and to allow a non-exclusion judgmental evaluation of what is exposed by someone else.

If we don’t want to end up all in Abilene we have to keep in mind and be ready to express always our opinion and to listen someone else’s. Be a Team doesn’t mean passively accepting what is proposed to avoid a conflict, it means bringing criticism and objectivity to pursue the Vision staying within the sphere of that Team’s values.

Now we can finally join the ribs to our hull’s keel and start preparing the rest of the structures. If we’ll go ahead with the same great job done until now, we can be sure we will be ready to take on challenging sailing when the time will come.

The Abilene Paradox 

Read “The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni (it’s a great in-depth analysis of this matter) and “Legacy” by James Kerr (lots of sparks about bonds in a team).

More on teamwork and leadership: “The story of a sandwich” and “A story from this summer”