I’m recently casted to investigate and fix culture issues, which are known to be the hardest and trickiest bugs to fix than actual product bugs that can be measured, reproduced, and tested with engineering tools. An unfortunate team worked hard on its goals for a year but ended up with people leaving the team. What are the secret ingredients for building a great team?
Over 5 Years ago, when I worked at Google I read an article, “What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team”. A researcher analyzed data from 180 teams internally and identified the most important factors toward building a highly effective team. Not too surprisingly, on top of the list, it is Trust and Psychological Safety.
The world is a dangerous place. Thousands of years ago, a leader from our human race is someone who can draw people into a circle of trust and safety, an individual must trust another person to be the night guard to watch for wild animals and enemies, so they can take turns to sleep and to protect their offsprings.
However, we’ve all seen movies where a few people in a survival group started fighting with each other for food, recognition, or rank. When we fight with each other, we are forced to spend our time and energy to protect ourselves from each other, instead of combining our talents and strength to face dangers outside and seize opportunities.
In the modern world, we are less likely to face dangers like wild tigers or an enemy tribe, but before a leader can navigate a group of people to the dreamland and achieve their goals, the leader has to build trust and psychological safety first.
1. Trust and Safety
Trust is not an order or instruction, it’s a feeling.
As a leader, building trust takes both energy and time, both empathy and authenticity. You can’t expect people to trust you in just a few days, see more details in “Use Your Leadership Capital as an Investment”.
It’s equally important to cultivate a culture where people trust each other. People want to collaborate instead of fighting with each other, because when whey do, it weakens the organization.
Companies create ranks and ladders for employees to grow and continuously feel motivated. However, imagine we’re mid-level engineers in an environment where promotion became the primary goal because we have to achieve senior level within a timeframe or will be fired. This is our first job after college yet we’re on a working visa so we can’t lose the job. It’ll be challenging for us on the same team to collaborate, as we would compete and start to protect ourselves from each other. This can be manifested as fighting for projects, opportunities, resources, scope, and ownership. So we are like the players in the Hunger Games.
Switching back with a leadership hat, use your empathy to feel those players in Hunger Games, and set it as a priority to create a psychologically safe environment for your people. Because if you don’t, they will fight for their own safety which weakens your organization. Aggressive high achievers are likely to win, while others might naturally become disengaged and start looking for alternatives themselves. A team can hardly function when everyone is trying to demonstrate that they are more capable of leading and thus deserve that senior title, but no one wants to follow and support others.
A more balanced and diversified team with members who trust each other is a more effective and happier team.
2. Vision and Value
”I have a dream that one day …”
Dr. Martin Luther King said, as opposed to giving a much less motivating “I have a plan” version.
Inspired leaders lead with vision and value. If you don’t know or don’t communicate why you do what you do, how can people believe in you, and want to be part of what you do? By providing a clear vision statement that is touching, exciting, and arousing, people are equipped with the “why” which helps your team to make decisions more autonomously and move faster.
Junior managers often hire people with what compensation and position they can offer, so they hire people who need a job and work for a paycheck. Senior leadership recruits talents who believe in what they believe, thus they hire people who are committed to making our shared dream come true.
3. Sacrifice Yourself First, but Eat Last
Why sacrifice yourself first? As leaders in business, you often have a higher compensation package and a more aggressive bonus structure, it’s not a fair game if your game is low risk but high reward.
Leadership is a choice, not a rank.
By choosing to sacrifice yourself first, taking the risk, and being held accountable for failures, you may have some loss in the short term by taking the hit for your people, but in the long term as a response, people will follow you and make your vision come true.