Teamership : Test your assumptions

Assumption is the mother of all “mess”* ups.

This is something that my wife has regularly shared…probably because I’m pretty good at messing up.

I’m not so sure that it’s completely true. The assumption piece, that is. I am definitely good at messing up.

What is more accurate about assumptions and mess ups is that incorrect or unuseful assumptions usually lead to stuff ups. We rely on a range of useful assumptions all the time. For leading teams, the trick is to have useful assumptions.

There are some assumptions that we rarely question, like the fact that North is always at the top of the map. When I read (listened to) Tyson Yunkaporta’s book called Sand Talk, one thing that stood out and blew my tiny mind was when he challenged that North needed to be at the top of the map. The earth is just floating in space. Out there, there is no up or down, so any direction could be at the top of our maps. North is accurate - but South (or any point in between) could just as accurately be the to of our maps.

This idea helped me to realise that there are a bunch of assumptions that we all make regularly in our teams. Many of which we don’t even stop to realise that they are assumptions - and hence can be interrogated.

These are some assumptions that I often see in teams that are worth further interrogation:

• Your org chart indicates which teams you are on and which teams you lead.
• Leadership only exists with formal titles or by appointment.
• Team development and performance is linear, predictable and controllable.

I eluded last week to Jennifer Garvey Berger’s “mind trap” of simple stories. The simple stories we tell ourselves about team development are typically that they function in a linear fashion…

- ”Forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning” from Tuckman’s work in the 1950s

Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team from 25 years ago which prescribes the order in which teams need to address their dysfunction and move towards high performance - and is still incredibly popular.

Embracing complexity was the central theme of a 2019 academic paper reviewing the previous decade of team research. That paper looked at literally hundreds of studies either directly or through meta-analyses. In case there was any doubt, the opening page of the paper includes the line that in order to see teams, we can “benefit from a conceptualisation of them as dynamic networks and modelling them as small complex systems”.

This is a “complex story” as opposed to a simple one. It’s not as convenient to assume complexity, but often more useful.

This assumption means that leaders are not as responsive to the dynamics of the team and don’t support a high performance environment.

It sounds really conceptual, but your assumptions will dictate what you think is going to help/hinder team performance, whether you think you are doing a good/bad job, whether you think your colleagues are doing a good/bad job and ultimately, where you choose to spend your energy, attention and time.

I’ve listed a few that I see regularly - both explicitly and implicitly. Checking the assumptions that you and your teams hold can be a very useful place to start conversations about high performance in your teams.

*”Mess” is usually replaced by a different word.

Next week, I’ll explore another factor that leads to less high performing teams than leaders want.

This week, here are a few questions to consider:

• What are some assumptions do you have about team performance?
• How useful are your assumptions in your current teams?
• Are there any assumptions that you could challenge about team performance?

Go well,

Keegan