The Complex Simplicity of Great Teams

Almost nothing of importance in our lives happens alone. We humans are social animals after all.

If you want to change the world or change your life a good place to start is who you spend time with.

The team at?Yale’s Human Nature Lab?has even mapped this idea out for us statistically. Their research shows that who we spend time with can have a deep impact on our lives.

For instance if your friend’s friend gets divorced your likelihood of getting divorced increases significantly. If they get rich or get really sick, you have a significantly increased chance?of experiencing these outcomes too.

The quality of our work and our lives is at least in part socially determined. But it’s not just who we spend time with, but also?how?we spend time with them that’s important.

Social science, systems theory and cognitive science all look at the world as a series of nodes and links. A human brain has neurons connected together via synapses. Groups of humans are connected via formal and informal connections. Tools, habits, customs, biases and more bring people together — and can also drive us apart.

The practice of teaming is about bringing people together to get things done.

To get teams right we have to get a lot of things right; but getting even one thing wrong means a team will fail (or fail to reach its full potential). This is what Tolstoy was getting at when he opened?Anna Karenina?with the line: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Happy families, and great teams, get many things right — and nothing truly wrong.

In systems language this means assembling the right nodes with the right links. Or, put more simply, bringing together the right people and then taking care to connect them well.

This description of teamwork may sound simple but individual people are complicated and this compounds in groups. We are not purely logical — we are emotional, relational?and?rational.

Every human on the planet is a complex array of logic, emotion, experience, identity and more. Not only do individual team members each bring skills and knowledge to the table but they also bring life experiences, identities, emotions, biases and more.

This exponentially complicates how connections between individuals form. And team performance is perhaps determined more by the quality of the connections between people than it is by the capability of the individuals themselves. I’d almost always rather have a team of mediocre performers who get along with each other than a team of superstars who don’t.

Complexity is a gift. Bringing together people with different skills, knowledge and experience allows us to create new and novel connections — which is the essence of disruptive innovation, social progress and scientific advancement.

All this means that teamwork is both an art and a science. It is impacted by straightforward operational details like tools, resources, meeting schedules, role descriptions, metrics and goals. And also by emotion, identity, values, experience and all the things that make humans so beautiful?— and often so frustrating.

The good news for team leaders is that the very best teams tend to be self-managing and intrinsically motivated. Once you get the basics right you can step out of the way and let the team perform rather than be a micromanager or taskmaster.

In my 4-week class "Leading Great Teams" I’ll help you see the complex matrix of individuals and connections between them that add up to great teamwork. You’ll learn to not only analyze your team but also how to launch a new team and what to do to improve and existing one.

To be a great team leader you don’t need to be a charismatic visionary (you also don’t need to be an asshole). You simply need to understand your team as an ever-changing, ever-improving community of people and know how to nurture the connections between them.

Please join me — and a group of other dedicated and thoughtful leaders — as we explore the simplicity and complexity of great teaming.?Apply today?to join our first cohort starting January 20, 2022.

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P.S. Go straight to the Leading Great Teams page here to see more and sign up:?https://maven.com/bobgower/great-teams