When I first read this book I was new to organizational leadership. I didn’t realize the true implications of following or not following these principles would be. Three organizations later I understand that the principles found in this book are more than good suggestions for helping foster teamwork. They are rules that must be followed if an organization wants to succeed.
Since I’ve never done an official review of this book, you could say that this is not really a RE_review. But this is coconut island…and everything is from my perspective! So this RE-review is going to take a snapshot of just some of the things that stuck out to me this time through:
- Great teams don’t hold back with one another…They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal.
- Politics is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think
- Concerning goals: “If everything is important, then nothing is.”
- (No one) gets completely used to conflict. If it’s not a little uncomfortable, then it’s not real. The key is to keep doing it anyway
- By being even slightly connected to formal performance evaluations or compensation, 360-degree programs can take on dangerous political undertones.
- Team leaders must create an environment that does not punish vulnerability.
- By building trust, a team makes conflict possible because team members do not hesitate to engage in passionate and sometimes emotional debate, knowing that they will not be punished for saying something that might otherwise be interpreted as destructive or critical.
- …teams that avoid ideological conflict often do so in order to avoid hurting team members’ feelings, and then end up encouraging dangerous tension.
- …it is key that leaders demonstrate restraint when their people engage in conflict, and allow resolution to occur naturally, as messy as it can sometimes be.
- …reasonable human beings do not need to get their way in order to support a decision, but only need to know that their opinions have been heard and considered.
- …it is better to make a decision boldly and be wrong – and then change direction with equal boldness – than it is to waffle.
- One of the most valuable disciplines…a team should explicitly review the key decisions made during the meeting, and agree on what needs to be communicated to employees or other constituencies about those decisions.
- …one of the best tools for ensuring commitment is the use of clear deadlines for when decisions will be made, and honoring those dates with discipline and rigidity.
- The enemy of accountability is ambiguity…
- Teams that are willing to commit publicly to specific results are more likely to work with a passionate, even desperate desire to achieve those results.
Over the years I’ve learned that sacrificing conflict around ideals among team members for the sake of “harmony” is only a vain attempt at unity. Rather, this type of behavior only promotes unhealthy amounts of tension, and the conflict, in the end, is always messier than the conflicts that should have occurred.
In the end, the goal of effective teamwork for a leader is not to stand in front of your team and have all the answers or see your team as a group of people who carry out your goals. Rather, a good leader invokes the honest evaluations and even opinions of those around them, understanding that the goals set by a collective effort are always better than the decisions of one person – no matter how exceptional that one person is.