Leadership Blog: Team Principles

Authors: Hugh Tychsen, Adrienne Costello, CJ Zeilenga, Ahad Hosseini

Reading time: 10 minutes

Principles have been used throughout history to guide actions and thought in science, law, and morality. These values provide a way of thinking that enables groups to explore ever more complex problems. Similarly, when teams or organizations develop their own guiding principles, the common values enable deeper conversations, better decision making, and shared purpose.

In 2019, our team leadership,?comprised of Ahad Hosseini, Olivia Kopicky, Adrienne Costello, CJ Zeilenga,?and Hugh Tychsen,?came together to develop and agree on a set of principles that we could work and live by. We wanted a formal agreement to adhere to and hold each other accountable. We started out with an inventory of leadership ‘mindsets’?that, though not exhaustive, covered approximately 90% of what we wanted to account for when we created our principles. These team principles would be a living document that could be revisited at any time. The purpose of this article is to help others guide their own team principle development.?

Our team principles workshop output:

1.?????Know yourself and how you interact with others:

a.?????Understand your ego barrier and blind spots

b.?????Invest in learning about yourself and others (+psychometrics)

c.?????Make good decisions using a transparent, disciplined approach

d.?????Lead by example and take accountability

e.?????Focus on “what is right,” not “who is right”

2.?????Culture is built on candid communication and collaboration:

a.?????Be radically open-minded and transparent to build trust

b.?????Tell the truth, candidly, tactfully, and with urgency

c.?????Agree or disagree, then commit to solving the problem

d.?????Lift up our teams and peers and help them shine

This is the story of how we developed those principles.

We were inspired by multiple resources that are outlined in the rest of this article. Your team’s discovery may follow an entirely different set of principles; however, the general approach can be summarized as such:

-???????Leader Discovery: Leader comes up with their ‘inspirations’

-???????Team Discovery: All team members share their inspirations

-???????Prioritization: Team democratically prioritizes the principles covered

-???????Dissemination and Reinforcement: Communicate and ask others to hold you accountable

Leader Discovery:

Hugh started with the disciplines of the ‘multiplier,’ inspired by Liz Wiseman’s book of the same name (2010). We discussed how multipliers believe their people to be smart enough to “figure it out.”?Diminishers, on the other hand, are those leaders that believe their direct reports will never solve the problem without them. After discussing these differences, our team unanimously aligned to the values of a multiplier.

Next, we discussed the Marine Corps leadership principles established in 1983:

·???????Know yourself and seek self-improvement

·???????Be technically and tactically proficient

·???????Know your team and look out for their welfare

·???????Keep your team informed

·???????Set the example

·???????Ensure the task is understood and accomplished

·???????Train your team

·???????Make sound and timely decisions

·???????Develop a sense of responsibility among your team

·???????Employ your team in accordance with its capabilities

·???????Seek responsibility, and take responsibility for your actions

Being further inspired by these Marine Corps leadership principles, we were drawn to the West Point integrity-based honor code with the maxim “I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do” (1947).

During this time of exploration, we discussed the book The Pursuit of Perfect by Tal Ben-Shahar (2009). The author writes about a spectrum between two key types of individuals, the ‘optimalist’ and the perfectionist. A perfectionist does not seem to embrace reality, but instead, ask themself what they believe should have happened. A perfectionist limits themself with the worry of failure which leads to anxiety and procrastination. An optimalist, on the other hand, accepts reality and failure, yet keeps moving forward. The optimalist accepts the raw emotions of reality, luck, and success. They live in the full scope of the human experience. Our team vowed to strive to be optimalists.

Our next subject was ‘growth mindset.’ After studying the behavior of thousands of children, Dr. Dweck coined the terms ‘fixed mindset’ and ‘growth mindset’ to describe the underlying beliefs people have about learning and intelligence (2017). Students who believe they can increase their level of intelligence (growth mindset), understand that effort makes them stronger, therefore they put in extra time and curiosity which leads to higher achievement. Students with a fixed mindset seem to view themselves as incapable of improving and ‘victims of the system.’

Our next topic was Servant Leadership. We talked about Hermann Hess, and his book, The Journey to the East, from 1932. We also discussed Robert Greenleaf’s article Essentials of Servant Leadership from 1970. We agree that as managers we aspire to be humble, servant leaders to our peers and direct reports. The essence of Greenleaf’s theory is that the natural feeling that one ‘wants to serve’ must come first. Only after this, a conscious choice can bring someone to aspire to lead others, with their heart in the right place. Servant leaders care deeply about other people’s highest priority needs, and ensuring they are being served. The best test for a servant leader is to answer the question “do those being served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, and more autonomous? Are they more likely themselves to become servants?”

Next, Hugh shared a personal list titled ‘expectations of a people leader.’ The first thing Hugh needs from his manager/leader is the highest level of integrity. He also needs to witness their sincere enthusiasm for the mission and team, and they need to have strong communication and collaboration skills. They need to be confident enough to empower those they lead to act autonomously. They must have managerial and subject matter proficiency. And finally, they need to lead by example, with humility.

Team Discovery:

We then turned to ‘philosophy of mind.’ The book As a Man Thinketh, by James Allen (1903), contains the idea that today is known as neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. Allen’s book can be summarized by this line: “In his own thought-world, each man holds the key to every condition, good or bad, that enters into his life, and that, by working patiently and intelligently upon his thoughts, he may remake his life, and transform his circumstances.”

We considered historical philosophers, and their guidance for satisfaction in one’s career. We began with Plato, in 400 BC, when he illustrated the distinction between happiness and fulfillment. Yearning for happiness suggests continuous cheeriness and dopamine release. Whereas fulfillment is more compatible with the difficulties of life and suffering. We continued to Aristotle in 350 BC and his table of virtues. For each virtue, he identified an ‘excess,’ a ‘mean,’ and a ‘deficiency.’ An example would be for Confidence, the excess is rashness, the mean is courage, and the deficiency is cowardice. The Stoics, primarily made up of Nero, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius, bring the concept that anger is the product of a situation in which ‘hope’ does not equate with reality. We considered Michel de Montaigne’s teaching, in 1550, not to model your life after current day heroes of society. He believed that living ‘justly and gently’ within your community and household is much more difficult than becoming a narcissist or celebrity. Adam Smith in the 1700s had a very interesting insight: the specialization of labor (example, an assembly line) improved communities by allowing the mass production of products, yet it removed a key sense of purpose and fulfillment in humans because workers were no longer able to see the end-to-end fruit of their labor.

We discussed several current articles that researched the key ingredients of ‘success.’ We acknowledged humans need to find a deep purpose in their work and they need to have deep relationships within their work community. They must feel respected, valued, challenged, trusted, and a sense of belonging. When leading, it is critical to hone your skills of persuasion and influence. Leaders must influence others, overcome resistance, and negotiate. They must empower others, mentor and coach, and build authentic team spirit. Interpersonal skills are critical. So are building relationships, showing authentic caring, active listening, and clear communication. When problem-solving, leaders need to be able to plan and execute. This includes the ability to manage priorities, create a sense of urgency, and delegate. When creating solutions and making decisions, leaders must be able to analyze information well, use foresight to play out different solutions, and focus on customers. When leading a change, leaders need to be able to create a shared vision, innovate and pivot, and communicate risk appropriately.

We went over the Prosci model of change management by Jeff Hiatt. In order to get an organization or an individual to accept change you must build awareness of the reasons for change. Next, you must build desire for the individuals to participate in the change. Only then will the individual accept new knowledge about how to change. Once they have the knowledge, they have the ability to realize or implement the change. Finally, reinforcement and incentives are needed to ensure that the new behavior ‘sticks.’

We studied human-centered design, with the problem-solving process of starting with inspiration, leading to ideation, and then implementation. It requires a formula of divergent and convergent thinking, repeated several times, to reach a prototype. The mindsets of human-centered design are empathy, optimism, iteration, creative confidence, embracing ambiguity, and learning from failure. We looked at the rules of good design for a product. A good design is innovative, makes a product useful, is aesthetic, makes a product understandable, is unobtrusive, honest, long lasting, thorough down to the last detail, environmentally friendly, and involves as little design as possible.

We discussed lean leadership (1988), developed in Japanese engineering and manufacturing. You must lead from where the action happens, on the front lines. You must observe the actual product, process, or service in action to gather facts. And you must follow the principle of continuous improvement. The principles of lean management include a focus on effectively delivering value to your customer, respecting and engaging the people involved, improving the value stream by eliminating waste, maintaining flow, and ‘pulling’ work through the system (versus ‘pushing’).

The agile manifesto (2001) was discussed as a good model for teaming and general problem-solving. It asks us to value individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and responding to change instead of always following a pre-determined plan.

We spoke about talent management in professional services firms, referencing the book Aligning the Stars (2002) by Jay Lorsch and Thomas Tierney. In professional services firms, humans are the primary source of competitive advantage. The best service firms are consistently able to identify, attract, and retain top performers. They are able to get top performers committed to the firm’s strategy, and they’re able to manage them virtually. Strategy execution is a historical challenge for professional services firms. A firm’s top management can set strategy in one direction, but if the partners and key leaders in the distributed offices pursue individual strategies that do not align to that set by their leaders, the official firm strategy gets overruled. Because of the high degree of autonomy within professional services firms, the partners typically have the power. Managerial success in consulting requires a higher set of people skills than is required in more traditional hierarchical workplaces, because the people are truly the product. Because people are the product, they are most critical to future success, so the top priority is investing in the development of talent. High performers need to encounter appropriate challenges and receive sufficient feedback and mentoring. Mediocrity of peers cannot be accepted, or the top performers will be tempted to leave for higher-performing companies. Finally, Tierney and Lorsch teach that the leaders within a professional services firm need to be rewarded for diverting time and resources away from serving clients to training and mentoring their colleagues and direct reports.

Our next resource was Patrick Lencioni’s book Getting Naked (2009). It was written for professional services firms and contains the principles a ‘trusted advisor’ should follow. This includes becoming comfortable with extreme vulnerability and transparency by working through the fears of losing the business, being embarrassed, and feeling inferior. By doing so, you can deliver the best solution, and build a trusted relationship with the client.

We walked through our firm’s Core Values: do what is right always, drive connection and teamwork, celebrate authenticity, fuel growth and innovation, take ownership and get it done, stay humble and curious, inspire passion and adventure, build and shape a better future, focus on outcomes, and smile. The patterns within our core values are humility, transparency, trust before profit, having fun, caring about people, seeing things through, and being optimistic.

Then, we discussed the big five model also known as the five-factor model. It is currently the most widely accepted personality theory backed by psychological data. The theory is that an individual‘s personality can be boiled down to five core factors, and each factor represents a continuum. Individuals can fall anywhere on the continuum for each factor. The first is extroversion, with reserved and thoughtful on one side, and sociable and fun-loving on the other. The next is openness to experience, with routine and practical, versus imaginative and spontaneous. The next is neuroticism with calm and confident on one side and anxious and pessimistic on the other. The fourth is agreeableness with suspicious and uncooperative versus trusting and helpful. The final factor is conscientiousness with impulsive and disorganized versus disciplined and careful. Each of us took an assessment and discussed where the team had overlap, and where the team had gaps. Olivia and I had opposite scores on the continuums. We discussed how we may end up having the most friction due to this. Surprisingly, the opposite occurred! This was an interesting insight; those similar to us and polar opposite could all team well together.

Finally, our last resource ended up becoming the most important: the book Principles by Ray Dalio (2017). Ray was trying to solve the age-old problem of building a high-performing workplace. He believed two things were required, yet they seem to be at odds. The first is being ‘radically truthful with each other at work,’ and the second is ‘having happy and satisfied employees.’ He was obsessed with figuring out a solution to both. He realized how essential it was that people in relationships be crystal clear about their principles in dealing with one another. There are two parts of each brain, the logical part and the emotional part, the rational brain versus the ‘lizard brain.’ Learning how to work with both is the key to his success. He aspires to develop psychological safety so that people can be honest and have thoughtful disagreements in which everyone is willing to shift their opinion as they learn more. Also, he found that creating agreed-upon formulas for making decisions and acknowledging disagreements allows teams to move forward with the least amount of resentment.

Prioritization:

Taking the previous material into consideration, we prioritized them by subject. We wanted less than ten principles, so we had to decide on a “cutoff point.” This resulted in a short list of principles we were willing to operate by hold each other accountable:

1.?????Know yourself and how you interact with others:

a.?????Understand your ego barrier and blind spots

b.?????Invest in learning about yourself and others (Big Five personality traits)

c.?????Make good decisions using a transparent, disciplined approach

d.?????Lead by example and take accountability

e.?????Focus on “what is right,” not “who is right”

2.?????Culture is built on candid communication and collaboration:

a.?????Be radically open-minded and transparent to build trust

b.?????Tell the truth, candidly, tactfully, and with urgency

c.?????Agree or disagree, then commit to solving the problem

d.?????Lift up our teams and peers and help them shine

Today, we freely share our team principles with internal and client teams we interact with. This includes printing them and displaying them in our workspaces, and explaining ‘how we work’ with others, when appropriate. They are reviewed quarterly, at a minimum, to allow for evolution and growth.

That was the story of our team forming exercise. The payoff in investment was timely, as 2020 brought a new backlog of challenges and stressors, and having shared principles allowed us to work more effectively through an unprecedented pandemic crisis.