The Secret To Effective Team Building

One hot Saturday night, about ten years ago, I was standing on a hill overlooking a ball field in South Tempe. The Tempe South 10-year-old All-Star team was getting their heads handed to them by the Ahwatukee All-Stars. I rooted for Tempe. The other sidelined virtually every pitch into the outfield. They hit frozen rope, after frozen rope into the gaps between outfielders. Ten-year-olds from across town rounded bases joyfully while players in white chased dejectedly after the ball. I turned to my fellow coach and friend, Ed. "How do they do that?" I asked. I had meant, how did they learn to hit like that?

Our boys were the best in our league. They had been selected, trained, and were ready to compete. Or so we thought.

He answered in his slow, deliberate, lawyerly voice. "They hit."

"I can see that," I said. "But how did they learn to hit like that."

Ed turned to look at me. "They hit. They hit all the time. They hit constantly. The only way to learn how to hit is to hit."

Knowing how to match Ahwatukee's offensive prowess was of paramount importance for both Ed and me because next year, our boys would be old enough to make the all-star team. I wanted to avoid the painful humiliation happening in front of us for our kids. If we wanted to compete, we needed to get a lot better. Fast. We had less than 12 months to figure it out.

Seven years later, researcher Angela Duckworth would publish her amazing book, Grit. In her book, she explained why Ed and I had managed to coach our kids to win the district all-star championship. Her study confirmed his instinct. It wasn't about talent. It was true that talent played a part. Achievement, however, she wrote is rooted in determined, focused practice. Talent counted, but effort counted twice as much. She expressed it this way:

Skill = Effort x Talent

Achievement = Skill x Effort

There is a hidden piece of knowledge in this equation. I'll give you a hint. Professor Duckworth did not write her formula in one line. It is not:

Achievement = Effort x Effort x talent

Skill Development and Achievement have to are developed separately. You can't combine them into one step. You have to build skills. Only after they are ingrained can you focus on applying them to produce results. In his excellent book, Uncontainable, Kipp Tindell, the founder of the Container Store, wrote:

Inspiration does not come to the untrained mind

Learning is separate from execution.

As an engineer, I struggled with this for a long time. I could deliver massive value by focusing on technology. Early in my career, I harbored an intense dislike for training. I wanted to be left alone with my computer. I knew I could deliver what everyone needed if they would leave me alone to work. Decades later, I interviewed one of my top franchise owners, Erik Maxwell. I wanted to know how he trained his team. His staff consistently delivered the highest customer satisfaction scores in the system. Erik's answer was simple.

"I train my staff to know how to use the equipment. Before a new employee ever goes to their first party, they are comfortable and confident. That way, they can focus on the customer instead of the equipment."

Intuitively, Erik had separated the skill development (learning to use the equipment) from the achievement (throwing a great party). With sufficient effort from his staff, he could turn virtually anyone into a great Game Coach. And he did. His coaches consistently rank among the top-rated event hosts in the GameTruck system.

It is easy to see that many organizations frequently try to compress learning and execution into a single step. Why doesn't this work?

The Ultimate Drill

When I was coaching, I had found a "5 in 1" baseball drill that I was excited to try. This magical drill would let us work on FIVE different areas at once. I was a big believer in maximizing practice time. I wanted the kids to be as busy and productive as possible. No standing around. I imagined this drill would be super-efficient. What that drill taught me was never do that drill. It proved to be a huge, confusing waste of time and energy. Human beings do not multitask. We context switch. If we're outstanding, we fast context switch. The trouble is, it makes it harder to learn. Learning requires focus.

The Big Mistake

The reality of most team building activities is that in trying to be "fun" (or social, or memorable), they are like my "5 in 1" drill; they lack the focus to let people develop the skills they need to work in a team. The biggest mistake most team building activities make is that they collapse the Skill & Achievement processes into a single step. Unfortunately, this means the event neither delivers skill development nor achievement. Think about how often team "building" activities break down into frustration or disengagement? A friend of mine who runs an escape room recently complained to me about the maintenance costs of running his business.

"Maintenance Costs?" I asked. "Yes," He replied. "Corporate team building. People are animals. They have to win."

Frustration or disengagement, both are typical human responses to protecting the ego. It takes an exceptional environment for people to learn under pressure without getting angry or checking out.

Harvard Professor Amy Edmundson revealed in her outstanding TED Talk that one of the most significant barriers to building teams has to do with our fear of learning in front of each other. She called this "Impression Management." We don't want to look ignorant, incompetent, intrusive, or negative." So we stifle our curiosity, and we plow ahead. When we dive into meaningless competition with each other, we can stress this very profound, very ingrained emotional protection mechanism. The activity intended to bring a team together can push it apart. Scolding people doesn't work either. You can not merely tell them to be more open, to be more easy-going, to be more engaged.

A Better Way

What I learned from the Five In One Drill, is that I could get better performance from my team if I isolated the skills they were trying to develop. I removed the need to perform and gave them the space to practice those skills in a controlled environment. Hit a baseball off a tee instead of off a pitch. Field grounders rolled on flat ground instead of hit off a bat. Only after players had lots of practice did we increase the challenge. We moved from skill to performance. We separated the two.

We removed distractions so players could focus on getting a feel for the skills. There is this wonderful term from Robert Heinlein's classic science fiction book, A Stranger In a Strange Land. His hero would GROK things. It was a word that meant to understand something beyond thought, to the point you internalized it. Grokking is the essence of skill development. When you grok something, you can execute without thinking. Once you grok it, you can focus on achievement.

The real purpose of team building is to improve team productivity and harmony. It is fun to be good at something. Team building would be more effective if activities are structured to allow for players to develop skills. People need to practice. Competition should follow skill development, not lead it.

Team Building is about more than just getting along. Great teamwork is more than achievement. Great collaboration comes from mastering the skills that allow teams to learn together. Because you know what happens when teams win? They want to do it again.

NOVEMBER 18, 2019