What still needs to change for teams?

I hope you like my first LinkedIn newsletter. Every two weeks I’ll share a topic you can draw ideas, questions, tips and strategies from to help you and your team become better, safer, and happier. Mostly they’ll be by me, but some amazing, like-minded people will join us too.

Usually these topics are seen as the sole responsibility of the ‘leaders’ in organisations. There are plenty of newsletters out there for them. This is about you as a team member. No matter your job title, no matter your position, step up and make a difference.

If you want to know more about me, go here , but the short version is I’m a coach, mentor, trainer, and speaker, who also loves yoga in the garden, geeking out on geeky stuff, seeing how much heavy stuff I can lift, and playing boardgames with my family (who are all incredible cheats).

I don’t want to exploit FOMO, so I’ll say this just the once now: if you haven’t subscribed yet and don’t want to miss an issue, please just click the “subscribe” button in the top right hand corner.

One of the key challenges my clients face is actually seeing how far their teams have come - that it’s not all bad. This first issue will help you reflect on where you are right now, as well as setting out where teams of the future need to get to.

Enjoy, Col.

If you were to go and google ‘future teams’ you’d have to look hard to see something that’s not about Microsoft Teams and upcoming features.

It seems knowing where the chat button is going to be moved to in video conferencing software has somehow become more interesting than how you and those around you will work, laugh, cry, rise and fall together as we face into an ever-more challenging world of work.

I’m not sure about you, but work doesn’t seem the same as it did ten years ago. Possibly not even the same as just a year or two ago.

That said, as far as teams I'm spending time with, I can see change going in the right direction. For instance, there's…

• Much more dialogue about what's actually going on at work
• A recognition of the power of inviting people to change, rather than inflicting change
• The focus moving steadily from ‘what’ and ‘how’ to ‘why’
• Much more scrutiny on, and calling out of, bad practices and behaviours
• A recognition that flexibility helps people, which helps productivity
• A deeper understand of the impact work has on the whole of life experience

So we’re heading in a decent direction. More talk and more action being taken, even if it is often forced upon organisations as a result of outside factors (it’s safe to say the workplace discussion would be nowhere near as active as it is without the small matter of a global pandemic…).

But as can be seen from a quick google search, the focus on the team - the most powerful unit within an organisation - is still lagging behind. We’re still focused on ‘leaders’ as the answer, and on individuals to express their concerns and desires.

This is good insofar as it's moved the conversation on, but we’re missing a huge set of possibilities and potential that’s sat right there in the room.

So, what’s not changed, and needs to?

• We’re still fixated on the ‘myth of one’ - that a leader, that some specific job title, some amazingly humble yet focused, driven and creative single person?is needed to stand up, create, and set a vision, so everyone else can follow in their wake
• We seemed to have stopped at ‘why’. There’s something more interesting and useful beyond ‘why’ we need to get to: ‘who’
• We’re still fixated on symptoms not root cause - workplace discussions (remote, office, hybrid, working patterns etc) are still looking for the new normal, the perfect answer, instead of looking at why the discussions are needed (and will continue to happen)
• Beyond ‘team work’ activities, the team doesn’t really get any air space or time to practice and develop the necessary skills and experiences that will help them soar
• We’re limiting growth, potential, and opportunities with formal structures and hierarchies and not respecting and adapting the informal ones that exist whether we like it or not
• Outdated practices espoused and inflicted upon us by the big consultancy companies of Yore still reign supreme as ‘best practice. We need to step over these dangerous models - like shared values, building trust, 7S models and so on - and lean into the experience in the room

We’ve focused a lot on the outside influences on teams,. On the plus side this has kept buzzword generators in business as we go through Great Resignations and create Quiet Quitters.

So we need to focus less on what's going on outside (not ignore it, but I think it's fair to say it's had its moment in the sun), and instead refocus.

The future of teams will only be found from the inside out.

The next organisational revolution won’t happen because of a few individuals. It will happen because of the power, the talent, and the experiments that happen when individuals come together - together as a team. And then explore. Together.

In these newsletters we’ll dig into all of this. We’ll work through each of the ideas about where teams need to go to become the true driving force of a progressive, interesting, safe place to work.

And it starts now.

I mentioned above how it’s positive that we’ve moved from a less ‘Inflicting’ style of inclusion to one of ‘Invitation’.

Let’s go one "I" further: Involvement.

Involve is one of my favourite words, especially as an answer to most team-related questions. From the biggies to the specifics...

?? How do I help my team grow? Well, involve them in creating ideas about growth…

?? How do I get my team to turn on cameras? Involve them in talking about it…

?? How do I win over my new team? Involve them by listening to what's important to them right now…

So, get involved in this dialogue. Please comment and share. Send me your ideas about what the future of teams looks like and we’ll create a newsletter together. I’m also going to spin back up the Team Huddle live video chats where we can go into more detail on newsletter topics - if you want in, shout. If there’s another way you want to be involved, shout.

Inside out involved teams start here.

Let’s make the future of teams one we want.