WHAT DOES IT REALLY MEAN TO BE A COLLABORATIVE AND VALUED TEAM PLAYER?

Jeff Bezos describes Amazon’s culture as following: intense pace and high speed, blunt communication and bias for action, customer obsession and cross functional teams. Team leaders are expected to think big, to show candour and respect, to earn trust and deliver outstanding team results. They enjoy both autonomy and accountability. This type of culture is widespread in the digital economy.  Even Chinese tech companies are notorious about their work schedule of 9-9-6. It is now making inroads in more traditional sectors. Companies are marking up the pace internally and are pushing for more agility. They hire professionals who are expected to hit the ground running, with natural collaborative skills and the potential to lead diversified teams. For young professionals, their reputation on collaboration will quickly open or close doors in this environment. Here is a couple of tips to flourish in this world of collaboration as a valued team player.

1.      First, understand team deliverables and what success looks like for the team. You need to be well aligned and not make the mistake of misunderstanding performance expectations. This individual mistake happens way too often, even at senior levels.

2.      No sloppy preparation: people expect you to do your homework and fulfill your commitment to deliver. This is all a matter of trust: can we trust you in terms of effort, contribution and outcomes? Trust, a fickle attribute, is the token of collaboration. Painstakingly earned, dropped in minutes if you break it.

3.      Your behaviour in meetings is paramount. Your people and communication skills need to shine when interacting with your team mates.

a.      Active listeners ask the smart and relevant questions. If you sit down at the table as a plain observer, your sharpness sits down as well, your reaction time blunted. Active listening is not especially natural to most managers. It is a skill that can be nurtured, practiced and made to stand as a rare quality. it is well worth it.

b.     Active listening also helps you to better read people: their personality, agenda, intents and their half-hidden frustrations. In many circumstances it pays to listen first, understand the issues, and then choose the right moment to speak up, or shut up. At one point, and with sufficient practice, one can come to properly read a meeting room at a glance.

c.      When you speak up, speak with candour and directly on issues. By all means do it with respect and avoid becoming personal. Remember, any form of bitching is a boomerang, coming back to hurt your reputation. There is no exception to that. It is a natural law of management.

d.     Managing differences and conflicts in fast pace settings should be part of your skills. Most people feel under listened, under appreciated and under respected, in any combination. As a result they often try to be right and win the argument. They do not check for understanding, become defensive and even fall victim of their own confirmation bias. On the contrary be generous in positive remarks and thanks, and you will be amazingly surprised at the effect. Be respectful of others by showing first merit in their positions or proposals. Only then will you earn the right to be right (or partly). People listen more if they have been first listened to. This is the reciprocity principle in action.

e.     Pay attention to the impact you have on people. Beware your dead angles, unconscious behaviours that affect your reputation such as the urge to be right, lack of empathy, confirmation bias, affinity bias, etc. A study by Google found out that more 100 biases exist in the work place. Remain open about the background of people and discover their unique angle.

f.       You need to practice the art of pitching presentations, decks and short talks. A common mistake for young professionals is to make a presentation that will outline all the work done and steps accomplished. This is a waste of time for all and death by PowerPoint. Team members want to hear your conclusion and arguments sustaining it. Great pitchers combine content, style and persuasion. A pitch is an opportunity to create impact and embark people on a plan of action. Practice until you find your speaking voice.

g.      Human psychology reveals a ton of secrets on persuasion. Our brain takes a multitude of shortcuts to treat the massive load of information hitting it every minute. Advertisers and politicians take advantage of these well documented automatisms lodged in our frontal lobe. You need not study psychology, but you should learn about the 5-6 fundamental principles of persuasion and raise your pitching game. Robert Cialdini is a good reference to start with. In this world of hyper information, the absence of persuasion technique leads to disappointment.

h.     Help others achieve their goals and share laurels. Progress is accelerated and what goes around comes around.

i.        From time to time you will need to step up for the greater good of the mission and the team. This will be a test of courage and integrity. Will you cross a red line even under pressure? Will you step on your deeply held values in times of adversity or stand your ground?

4.      Your ability to generate and deliver new value to your team and organization is likely to propel your own professional value. Consider that here is a scale in value creation: 

a.      Computers can now tackle a wide variety of problems and will automate many tasks. You are left to solve the complex problems requiring team work. They occur all the time and acutely in 10X projects. Can you be a reliable provider of ideas in problem solving situations? This is becoming the basic benchmark.

b.     Insights are like gold nuggets, usually hidden but not far away. Most people hear without listening and see without observing, As a result they may stumble upon truths but most often carry on empty handed. Insights on industry, technology, markets and customers are precious. Make a habit to find them. Insights will often highlight undetected problems and solutions.

c.      Intrapreneurs are on the lookout for new opportunities. They have an eye and a mindset to see and register new openings amidst changes. They connect dots and anticipate new waves. Because they nurture a good network they tend to be luckier as well because they know how to read situations and sense timing.                     

d.     It is therefore highly advisable to figure out your creativity profile and find ways to improve it. You need to protect your best creativity periods. Which creativity skills are you good at (check out the Tarrance test!)? How can you best leverage and apply your creative thinking potential? Can you go beyond problem solving to finding insights to creating new concepts? What creativity potential do you bring to work every single day?

e.     Finally, strategic thinking skills are always well valued: the ability to discern the big picture and sort out the details (you can see the trees but not get lost in the forest), to recognize the critical issues and how they link up, to define the right options and to exercise sound judgment in decision-making. 

More than ever, it is the same package that will make you stand out: 1. your people skills, 2. your communication skills, 3. your core values that drive your behaviors, and 4. your ability to create new value. As you build a track record with this package, people will bet on you.

The next step might be for you to figure out how to become the team leader. 

Millennials log in years of team work but feel unsure about what it takes to get promoted to team leadership. Consider that additional skills are required and will be assessed on top of your technical core, all depending on circumstances:

-the ability to build teams and hire the right people

-the ability to craft and inspire team synchronicity

-your capacity to motivate and engage your team in the right direction

-your capacity to share knowledge, experience and learnings

-your decision-making style, i.e. how you handle delegation and autonomy?

-your leadership style: do you exploit people or do you grow their potential?

-your level of trust and integrity: how do you handle adversity?

-your level of likability: do people like to work with you?

-the ability to shift from a personal interest point of view to a corporate perspective.

You need not tick all the boxes but rather show a potential to command these abilities. Focus on the right training and coaching for a noticeable progress. Team leadership is now a sine qua non condition for a digital future.

André Du Sault, 19 May 2020