When There Are Too Many ‘I’s in a Team

In last week’s post, I dove into the idea of the ‘Olympic Year’ and how we can use metaphor to gain deeper insights and uncover new opportunities. One of the insights gleaned from the metaphor was that unlike Olympians who get three years to develop the skills and teamwork before they’re expected to perform, newly formed local government teams (bringing together elected councillors and executives) are expected to perform immediately, with little or no time to prepare.

To be honest, the lack of time for preparation feels like a serious design flaw. Putting newly formed teams in a pressure-cooker environment, without adequate time to develop the trust and teamwork required for them to work effectively, is hardly a recipe for high performance. At the same time, the design of the system is unlikely to change anytime soon. Instead, we need to understand the risks, their causes, and how to make the best of a challenging situation.

The risk of dysfunction

In the previous post, we talked a little about what’s at stake, and noted that the stakes for local government are significantly higher than they are for Olympians. Local government impacts the social, health, financial, and environmental outcomes of entire communities. However, the extent to which councils do this well fundamentally depends on how effectively their teams function.

The biggest risk in the Olympic Year is that, in the rush to deliver on campaign promises and key projects, local council teams either fail to develop strong working relationships or unintentionally undermine the trust and collaboration required to work effectively for the remainder of the council term. This not only affects the delivery of value to the community but also has a personal and professional impact on the working environment of local council teams.

Question: What’s at stake for you in the medium term if the Olympic Year isn’t managed well?

A diversity of people and opinions

There is a well known saying: There is no ‘I’ in team. But, in newly formed local government teams there is not just one ‘I’ there are lots of them. Each councillor is elected individually on their own platform with their own agenda. They have also just come off the campaign trail, where messaging is almost entirely focused on how different they are from other candidates.

It’s unsurprising that a system like this breeds a certain level of mistrust and a high risk of misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Research by MIT in 2023 suggests there’s only a 20% chance that two random people will agree on the characteristics of a penguin – so what are the chances that nine councillors and four members of the executive leadership team will all agree on what ‘library’, ‘wellbeing’ or ‘strategy’ means?

Go slow to go fast

Unfortunately, we’re not always aware when misunderstandings happen. People tend to assume the same words mean the same thing to everyone, only to find out much later when this hasn’t been the case. This is why it’s imperative to spend time early in the team’s formation building shared understanding and common ground.

To be effective this should be done in a facilitated, face-to-face, and low stake environment. For example, I recently worked with a new councillor group to prioritise the key drivers of change they were seeing in the environment around them. Unlike prioritising projects, this was a much lower stake exercise, but one that still gave the opportunity for new team members to share their thoughts and to work collaboratively on a project. The outcome of the exercise was then compared to a similar exercise undertaken by community members and council staff, helping to bridge gaps in understanding.

Question: What else could you do to create shared understanding and establish common ground between councillors and members of the leadership team?

The conditions local government teams are expected to perform in are challenging, especially in an Olympic Year. There is often an understandable pressure to ‘just get things done’ but maybe it’s also worth asking: ‘What is the long-term cost?’

I would love to hear your thoughts...