ONE IS TOO SMALL A NUMBER TO ACHIEVE GREATNESS

Like Lyndon Johnson says: there are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few we can solve by ourselves. Individuals play the game, but teams win the championship.

Throughout human history whatever the endeavour, great individuals still had teams of people supporting them along the way, but as humans, we still somehow want to do things ourselves for various reasons:

EGO: A good team is established when we simply remove the “me” and concentrate on the “we”, letting go of your ego to become part of the team is a big development step to take when it comes to the realization that other people can offer help doing a job better than you could’ve done it yourself.

INSECURITY: Some individuals fail to promote teamwork simply because they feel insecure and threatened as the law of empowerment proposes, Insecure leaders usually fail to build and lead teams because of one of two reasons: Either they want to maintain control over everything which they are responsible, or they fear being replaced by someone more capable.

NAIVETE: Some people do underestimate the difficulty of achieving big things and don’t think in terms of team building and participation, so they decide to take the journey alone. In some cases where the situation the big enough, the decision can be drastically fatal.

THE GOAL IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE ROLE.

The law of the big picture

People who build successful teams never forget that every person on a team has a role to play, and every role plays its part in contributing to the bigger picture. Without this perspective, a team cannot accomplish a goal, and this is the case within sports, where individual accomplishments help the ego, but only good teams win championships.

So how do people start to become a more unified team?

LOOK AT THE BIG PICTURE: A real team only works when there is a goal, an individual without a goal can end up anywhere but a group of individuals without a goal can go nowhere. This is why you need to have a clear vision and communicate it to the other team members because people on a team will work together only if they see what they’re working towards.

SIZE UP THE SITUATION: one good thing about seeing the big picture is being able to size up the situation and seeing how far away you are from obtaining your goal.

LINE-UP NEEDED SOURCES: no matter what the goal is about and how big it might be, you cannot make progress without the support of the appropriate equipment, facilities, and funds… because the better-resourced the team is, the fewer distractions the players will have as they try to achieve their goal.

CALL UP THE RIGHT PLAYERS: losing with bad players is possible but it’s impossible to win with the bad ones, and if you don’t have the right ones, you aren’t going anywhere.

GIVE UP PERSONAL AGENDAS: Teams that win have players who continually ask themselves, what is the best for the rest? They continually set aside their personal agendas for the good of the team. The motto needs to be, no one is more important than the rest of us.

STEP UP TO A HIGHER LEVEL: This means subordinating your role for the team’s success. Only when players come together and give up their own agendas can a team move up to a higher lever. That’s the kind of sacrifice required for teamwork so that when you see the big picture clearly, you serve the team more quickly.

SAFETY MEANS PROGRESS. AND LEADERS PROVIDE SAFETY.

Our brain always defaults to safety mode, and the reason is simple: it had to in the past, or we wouldn’t be here. The reason we could focus entirely on making progress on something we care about is that our basic needs were already secured at that particular moment.

During our days, almost all our safety problems revolve around money, while many many years ago our ancestors had tons of safety problems. They had to hide from enemies, run away from diseases, go on the hunt for food and find a place to stay in. But the progress only started happening when they gathered and moved around in groups and distributed tasks.

That is exactly why a leader’s job is to provide safety to his followers, so they can focus on making progress toward their shared vision. The bigger the circle of safety around the group, the faster the progress. As an example, Google draws an awesome circle of safety around its employees. Free food, ask-any-question meetings, and 20% time for your own experiments are safe environments to be in. Once we stop getting worried about avoiding threats, we start improving.

RESPONSIBILITY MEANS TRULY CARING ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE, SO DON’T GET DETACHED.

When managing a company’s finances, your job is to allocate the company’s budget to maximize its profit, but your real job is to make sure the money goes to the right people that will use it the best, but maybe you want to shut down a division. If so, you’re not only shutting down a part of the company, but you’re also robbing people of their safety, by firing them from their jobs, and this is why being an empath is a very important treat for a leader, and people will find it worth of them to follow you if you actually put yourself in their shoes.

Very often that leaders make decisions at other people’s expenses and when that happens it becomes easy to get detached when companies grow. And an example of that is The Peanut Corporation of America in 2009 when they shipped tons of contaminated peanuts causing a nationwide salmonella crisis just to maintain cashflows.

STICK TO YOUR GOALS DURING THE DISCUSSION SO YOU DON’T GET OVERLY EMOTIONAL.

We all no longer feel safe in a conversation when emotions start to run high, and there are only two ways to face it: silence or violence. And none of the two options provide us with an actual solution.  And the only way too avoid being stuck in such situation is to remind ourselves of the goal we’re working towards.

We’ve all been in a position where things might get too heated and something offensive is said, and in this case silence or even violence wont help at all. And that’s why its important to remind ourselves of what we’re working towards by asking questions like What is my purpose in this conversation? and What information do I want to get across clearly to this person?

The thing is once we realize what we want we will realize what we don’t want. So just stopping to think about the goal can be a great solution to keep us from getting angry and maintain one’s emotions. By asking ourselves “What do I want to avoid?” or “what do I really want here?”, to maintain both parties calm and make the conversation go better.

USE THE STATE ACRONYM TO RESOLVE A CONFLICT.

Conflicts are highly charged with tension and arguments, but they don’t need to end in silence or violence, and the best way to resolve conflict before it escalates is the STATE method.

  Share the facts. When beginning a conversation, only facts must be shared first and not one’s story.

  Tell your story. Next, you can tell your story and then share the assumptions you made.

  Ask for the other’s paths. They must be given time to tell their story as well.

  Talk tentatively. Remind yourself that your assumptions are not facts.

  Encourage testing. Encourage the other person to tell their viewpoint, even if it’s the opposite.

But let’s not forget that it remains important to work enough to find a solution after calming down the conflict through setting boundaries, having a vote, letting one person decide, brainstorming a solution together, or ending the relationship entirely if best for both parties.

” It’s the most talented, not the least talented, who are continually trying to improve their dialogue skills. As is often the case, the rich get richer” -Kerry Patterson

REFERENCES

2013. Maxwell J. 2013. The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork: Embrace Them and Empower Your Team. Reprint edition. HarperCollins Leadership.

Sinek S. 2017. Leaders Eat Last. Unabridged edition. Brilliance Audio.

Patterson K. Grenny J. McMillan R. Switzler A. Rauppe L. 2013. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition. Brilliance Audio.