Teamership: Be bothered (selectively)

Rocky (my former PE teacher and now a mate)?and Boomerang Adventures run great outdoor education experiences. Apparently about 20 years ago, he came up with about 35 bush rules. Rule 13 is “be bothered”.

It came about because he saw so many people having to deal with undesirable situations because they “couldn’t be bothered” taking an action at some earlier point. For example:

• Their rain jacket was hard to access because they couldn’t be bothered packing their bag with the jacket readily accessible.
• They have to deal with sunburn because they couldn’t be bothered reapplying sunscreen.
• Groups leave equipment behind because they couldn’t be bothered going through a checklist when they pack up a camp site.

In each instance, the short term inconvenience of “being bothered” would have prevented more significant negative outcomes.

In our teams, this sort of pattern happens a lot:

• We end up missing important details in a project handover because we couldn’t be bothered capturing and sharing them in a useful way.
• Our relationships become transactional because we couldn’t be bothered spending a little bit more time and effort connecting with our colleagues as humans, not resources.
• We run the same boring meetings each week because we couldn’t be bothered reviewing or changing the agenda.

Both in the bush and in our teams, it is understandable to avoid being bothered.

By definition, being bothered involves an inconvenience. It often also involves some risk - that risk in our teams is usually to our status or reputation.

The choice that we need to make is whether the inconvenience is worth the risk of a negative outcome in the future.

There are definitely things that teams can benefit from not being bothered by. This is not a post encouraging you to do more - or even everything on your list. If anything, it is intended to encourage you to do less.

The best teams and leaders tend to be selectively bothered with the actions that they have learned make their desired outcomes more likely and the undesired outcomes less likely.

Some questions to consider this week:

• What is something that you are often glad that you bothered to do?
• Are there some activities that you usually can’t be bothered with, even though you think you “should”?
• When has a colleague bothered to put in a bit more effort to make your work life easier? Could you do that for someone else this week?

Go well,

Keegan