Connecting today's teams to the future...

The future team is different from today’s teams in a number of ways.

I'm going to list out four defining characteristics here. You may recognise some from the team you're in right now. Maybe a team you've worked in before. Maybe they feel like a long way off.

If you want teams co-creating an organisation that really matters, they will always need these characteristics.

A warning though: this is not a list to create and tick off.

These require constant focus, continual growth, and evolution. The reason? Well, that's tied up in the first characteristic...

The Future Team... respects that everything is connected

That word 'respect' is really important in there. It's said we're currently living "at the edge of chaos". It certainly feels like that if you spend any time reading the news or scrolling on social media - but the edge of chaos is very different to the edge of disaster.

Right now, individuals and teams are certainly being stretched, challenged, tested. It can feel like there are so many dots making up the pictures we see that it threatens to be overwhelming.

It's only through seeing and respecting the connections in the chaos that opportunity is grasped. Creativity comes from joining dots, not ignoring them.

Teams of the future are creative and constant reinventing themselves, not because some external event has forced them to, but because it's simply the way the world works. It's always worked that way, we've just been able to ignore it and get away with it.

We can't anymore.

The Future Team…is made up of people who want to be there

On the surface, this feels obvious, which is usually because it's mistaken for, 'my team is made up of people who like or even love their job'.

This is a level deeper. Of course there has to be a sense of fulfilment or satisfaction or even love of 'doing the work' but future teams (working off the first characteristic of 'everything is connected') know that their work has an impact on others. The way they do their work has an impact on others. And likewise what everyone around them does has an impact on them. And where possible, teams of the future use that impact - even enjoy that impact.

Contribution, involvement, collaboration, support, friendship, kind tension... use whatever words you like. It's about people wanting to be around each other. Often.

People who make up Future Teams won’t have taken a job. They’ll have joined a team.

It’s subtle, but it’s a powerful distinction. The intent behind most people taking jobs is usually a very personal one. In fact it’s usually limited to a personal one by the processes used to advertise, apply for, and test for jobs. Very rarely do you get chance to explore the organisation’s purpose, let alone the team’s purpose who you’ll be joining. So it makes sense to fall back on your personal intent for taking the job. Progression up the career ladder. New challenges. Opportunities to gain new skills. More money. Better perks. Different lifestyle.?

I want to be clear, none of these are wrong. In fact, you need to know and accept your own drivers, your own purpose behind the work you do. This is key to self-awareness and the development and success of a team.

And of course there are people who take jobs for the wrong reasons. Just because it offers more money, or it’s an escape from something rather than an opportunity to move towards something.

What the future Team will do differently is continuously explore the compelling reason the team exists with an individual’s purpose. This is how you create a team comprised of people who want to be there. Knowing what a team does, why they do it, the impact that has, and the meaning of that for and on every team member is incredibly powerful. It’s what gets people up on a dreary Monday morning for.

The does not mean every single idea, aspiration, hobby, or interest needs to be fulfilled by one team. You can be the only person on your team that enjoys the odd spot of gardening. But if gardening is your passion, if you see it as not just a relaxing past time but a way of giving back to the planet, indulging your love of environmentalism and doing more than your bit for climate change where you can with your own little patch of green, then you are going to struggle to spend time with a team working in the fossil fuel industry.

Not everyone has to take your love of exotic and unusual flavour sensations to heart, but if you work in a sales team for cut-price porridge oats, you’ll find getting up on Monday’s a chore.

The members of a Future Team took their jobs for the right reasons. Reasons far more aligned with their personal purposes and that of their team than the teams of today.

The Future Team…embraces intimacy

I talked about intimacy in a previous newsletter, so I'll simply reinforce the message here.

Let’s be clear about what an intimate team looks like:

They know things about each other. Important, personal things.

Things that have been shared openly.

An intimate team is willing to test uncomfortableness when sharing, understanding that boundaries are discovered and respected through experimentation.

An intimate team recognises and embraces emotions as part of work. It’s encouraged.

The last decade or so has seen emotion labeled as bad at work. Methodologies and concepts such as emotional intelligence have arisen to help steer people through these minefields. Yet, somewhere in the conversation emotion has become labelled as something undesirable. Not encouraged. Logic, practical focus and tangible measures is what it’s all about.

Teamwork equals measures which equals results: the cognitive approach.

In the teams of old, where the job you did was crap and made you feel crap, then a level of detachment was absolutely needed. Survival often depended upon it.

But teams of the future lean into commitment.

Commitment to the reason they are a team, to each other, to themselves.

Sounds heavy, but it's not.

Love, understanding, decency, glee, and joy make you light.

In the future, teams will be intimate at work.

The Future Team…is a safe space to work

Physical and mental wellbeing is respected. Full stop.

Not just when things are good - all the time.

Not just when it will benefit hitting a deadline, make job adverts more appealing, or satisfy an HR policy - all of the time.

Not just when it's needed to avert or respond to someone in real trouble - all the time.

Many teams today are, at best, burying their heads in the sand, especially over mental wellbeing. At worst people within them are intentionally pushing as far as possible and ensuring backsides are covered when something inevitably goes wrong.

Future Teams get that it’s part of the team’s DNA.

It’s not left to one off activities to course correct, or to meet HR policies. It’s built into how the team operates and behaves from the ground up.

One of my most fervent frustrations with so many teams I work with, even today, is that they will willingly spend time, structured and unstructured, talking about the work they do, day in, day out. Yet, when asked to find some time to devote to talking about how they're doing, they start to shift uncomfortably, saying they're too busy.

It's there in the words used, the behaviours seen, the actions taken. It's also there in the words not used, the behaviours held back, the actions not taken.

And when it's not - because the real world isn't perfect - the gap is seen, reflected on, and words, behaviours and actions are used to close the gap.

Underpinning safety is trust.

Now, this newsletter is long enough already, and trust deserves far more words than I'll use here, but I want to point out something that teams of the future will have realised - and it's very different to how many organisations are talking about trust right now...

You cannot build trust.

Think back to your childhood, or if you have kids, think about what you tell them regarding trust...

Did you have a conversation about building trust?

Nope.

If you talk about it at all, you talk about earning trust.

Yet as soon as we get into the workplace our language shifts. Suddenly trust is something that can be 'built'. As if you follow a blueprint trust will automatically appear...

That’s not how it works.

Trust isn't built. It's given. And you only give it when you feel someone has earned it.

Each member of a team has their own gift of trust to give when they want to. And people will to give their trust once they feel it’s been earned.

This may be quick for some, ages for others, possibly only under extreme conditions for a few.

A safe space to work is a place where you feel your trust has been earned.

That's complex, messy, doesn't follow a nice linear path.

Teams of the future earn each other's trust through the words, behaviours, actions, and most importantly of all, willingness to close the gaps when they appear.

How far is your team from these characteristics?