How the Seesaw Predicts Career Success

Shame on you. At four or five, when you were playing on a seesaw, you never stopped to realize that this simple piece of playground equipment was all you needed to construct a highly effective career strategy. Instead, you simply ran off to play on the swing set.

Playing nicely on a seesaw requires you to accept two very basic principles:

1. Go back and forth in your actions: one person pushes up, then the other pushes up.
2. Go back and forth in your communications: watch for signs that the other person wants to go faster, slower, or stop.

Back in February, the New York Times published a superb article, What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team. Google studied hundreds of teams and considered many different theories about why one team worked so well and others - with equally talented members - disappointed. At first, the researchers were baffled.

It turns out that the best teams share two characteristics:

1. Members all talk about the same amount of time, which means they go back and forth equally.
2. Members are sensitive to the reactions of other members, which means that communications are truly back and forth.

Sound familiar?

In effect, Google discovered that to be a successful member of a high-performing team, you have to master the back and forth pattern of the seesaw. Brilliant people who dominate discussions... won't work. Talented professionals too quiet to contribute... won't work. People in love with the sound of their own voices... won't work.

These principles have other subtle and powerful implications. Just as seesaw riders go back and forth, you have to be willing to get your way sometimes and not get it other times. If you despise the words compromise and collaboration, you probably hated the seesaw.

In fact, let's stretch past the boundaries of career success for a moment, so you can see that our world is suffering from a proliferation of leaders who couldn't last 30 seconds on a seesaw.

Virtually no one is willing to go down in order to go up.

We are surrounded by people who say, "If I can't have my way, I'm going to stop you from getting your way."

In other words, they are motionless across the bottom of the seesaw, keeping the other end high up in the air and preventing you from getting on (or off).

Don't be this person. In fact, don't do business with people like this.

Our business world is filled with overly complex theories about teamwork, achievement, engagement, and leadership. Fortunately, it turns out that the best way to be effective is quite simple: be a good seesaw partner.

Bruce Kasanoff ghostwrites articles for innovators, investors, and professionals like you.