How are teams defined and developed where you work?

It struck me that I am a multi-role participant in a wide range of changing teams. Sometimes in a leading role, sometimes in another.

On-site teams, distributed teams, and virtual teams; intra-organisational teams, supply chain teams, and wider societal teams; fledgling teams, mature teams, and fading teams; great teams, not-yet-great teams, and maybe-never-will-be-great teams.

Dynamic and connected

It’s easy to draw a line around some teams and say they are discrete entities with defined tasks. But they all exist within a web of relating, purposeful doing and wider contextual influences. None of these teams are static or exist in isolation. And different people will define and categorise them in different ways.

Design and emergence

How much thoughtful design goes into this notion of teaming I wonder?

And when deliberate design is not appropriate or possible, who is creating or noticing emerging game changing conversations and creating the notion of team and fresh purpose around these?

How easy and common is it just to stay within existing budgetary and organisational boundaries and team as you have always teamed? Shifting the proverbial deck chairs as it were? How much vision, courage and persistence is needed in your organisation to shift budget and boundaries to re-
define collaborative effort?

Connecting conversations

When your organisation invests in team definition and development, is it polishing an antique or turbo-charging a new set of connecting conversations that will create something great? What is the guiding philosophy and design?

Dave

Dave Stewart
Director
The Fresh Air Learning Company Ltd

How do you answer questions like “How are you?” or “How was it?” or “What have you been up to recently?”

Do answers like “Not bad thanks”, “It was fine”, or “A bit of this and a bit of that” sound familiar?

Automatic, thoughtless, colourless stuff isn’t it?

How engaged and energised do you feel as you recall some of these moments? On a scale of zero to something big, how would you rate them? How much of your time with colleagues and clients do you spend like this?

Try this now…

Ask a question which demands an appreciative and personal response.

For example, “What was the best thing that happened for you today?” Or, “What was really special for you about that event?” And then maybe probe a little, “That’s really interesting. Can you say more about that?”

How does it feel for you to ask this sort of question? What do you notice about the quality of conversation that follows? How would you describe the energy of this? What fresh perspectives are revealed? What is the difference in tone you notice in one another’s voices?

Changing conversations…

Actively experiment with changing some or more of your routine work, and wider, conversations. Notice how things start changing around you.

And if you consider that a team or an organisation is simply a collection of ongoing conversations, what is possible in terms of change when more and more people start to get positively personal?

Dave Stewart
Director
The Fresh Air Learning Company Ltd

I am having coffee with Stuart Johnstone, one of the most highly qualified and respected mountaineering instructors in the UK and leader of the busy Tayside Mountain Rescue Team.

We are discussing how leaders deal with tricky events.

Leaders plan, prepare, execute, sense the present, think ahead, create atmosphere, adjust, remain poised and, of course, dynamically manage events as they arise.

Preparing for the journey…

In two recent incidents a woman broke her ankle and a teenager fractured her skull. Both injuries were the result of simple slips on uneven ground.

The casualties were in capable company, however.

Their leaders were prepared, skilled and calm. They were able to organise their groups, stabilise the casualties, summon help, and hand them over safely to the rescue team.

No panicking and unpreparedness, no floundering and noisy heroics.

The incidents were inconvenient and tricky, but not wholly unforeseen. The group leaders managed these unique situations slickly using skills and drills they had rehearsed practically and mentally before setting out.

Architecture and artistry…

What is your approach to capacity building? Do you try and lock things down in fine detail, grasping at the slippery notions of certainty and control? Do you just get going and see what turns up? How well do you improvise? What underpins this? How much architecture and artistry is there in your way of doing things?

Now would be a good time to invest in some reflection and capacity building.

Dave Stewart
Director
The Fresh Air Learning Company

Moving from comfort, through stretch, to the edge of panic. That is how I felt half way up Jack’s Rake, a rock scramble in the Lake District.

A drop of a few hundred feet on my left, loose rock underhand and underfoot, badly stowed walking sticks bumping off bulges of rock on my right, and some nervously stretchy leg moves….

And ringing in my ears – Mark’s cautionary lunchtime stories of people who had slipped.

This was our second climb of the day, and followed on from an airy climb the day before. Nothing really by the standards of “real” climbers. Well within their comfort zones.

Less so for me. But I had put myself here. It had been my intention to explore some edges…

Listening to the quiet voices…

My body and mind were fully engaged, talking loudly; seemingly drowning out the quiet words of my heart – “just get on with it Dave” – and my soul – “isn’t all of this awesome?”

Mark of www.mountain-journeys.co.uk seemed to sense I needed my own space to let these quiet voices take charge. No jokey blokeyness; just a wise, watchful space-givingness.

In the end, of course, it was fine.

I shunned my self-invented invitation to panic. Instead I worked with the stretch, keeping the volume turned up on my heart and soul, working in sync with the now more measured tones from my mind and body.

So what…?

For me, in those moments, it was interesting to learn about my loud voices, of body and mind, and how bringing the quiet ones, of heart and soul, into balance seemed to improve my capacity to act. There was also something powerful about being able to draw non-verbally from Mark’s presence.

For me, as a business owner, the parallels are strong. The big stretchy moves are only mine to make. Yet there is a huge capacity to achieve these through attention to inner balance, and the wisdom and experience of those around me.

As you step beyond comfort, what is your learning?

Dave Stewart
Director
The Fresh Air Learning Company

The teenager hadn’t a map, had been scared when the mist had come down, and had run out of water. He was just a few miles into a long walk.

The very soggy group of four adults were wandering lost in torrential rain trying to find their way off the cloud-enveloped and wind swept mountain.

I am writing this in a Lake District café at the end of Day 2 of a week of personal mountain training and preparation for a trip to the Himalayas in November. It is also a week for reflection, and reconnecting with a number of friends.

Both incidents happened in the last 48 hours. I am an experienced mountain leader and was able to calm the teenager, give him some spare water, and guide him on his way. And I was able to lead the soggy group off the mountain and down to safety.

Providing help was instinctive; yet my later reflections on their planning, preparation, and performance were judging and uncharitable. “How could these people be so stupid and unprepared. Have they any idea of the danger they were in?!” Probably not.

Most people don’t knowingly place themselves in un-assessed danger.

And so the nature of my reflections shifted. “Maybe these good people were benignly ignorant, rather than stupid. They were just unaware of the possibilities. Maybe their difficult mountain experience was a new one; one full of new learning.”

Tapping into others’ learning…

When you engage in new projects and endeavours do you ever wonder if others might be able to guide and advise? Before the journey? Can their learning and experience also help you along some or all of the way?

What value do you place on this? Do you know what your learning curve looks like? How much are you leaving to hope and good fortune? Learning -by-doing can be fun and exhilarating, but how amazing could the journey be with tailored expert support?

Team GB athletes haven’t achieved their medal haul on their own.

Who is in your team?

Dave Stewart
Director
The Fresh Air Learning Company Ltd