The New Manager's Guide To Building A High Performing Team
Why do some teams outperform bigger and better resourced competitors?
In Map 2 I took the opportunity to crow about my football team Liverpool. They went from 8th in the league to winning the title. At the same time Manchester United went in the opposite direction.
Even after starting with a better squad and spending three times as much money.
The secret to Liverpool’s success was that they worked as a team. They bought underrated players for lower prices. Their training, man-management and team style made them better players.
No player performed as well in any other team.
That is the ultimate dream. An environment and leadership style that whoever you hire performs at a higher level. This is the key to outperforming your competition and any benchmarks you are judged against.
A key factor to this is how unified the team are.
Individually we bring a lot of raw ingredients together. But it’s in melding these together into a unified force that maximises the impact these have. This means that the resources you have create outsized results.
Think like a chef… how do we bring together these raw ingredients to create the most delicious meal possible?
In this map we will look at how we build a group into a unified force that can punch above its weight?
The Team That Saved Democracy
The democratic ideals that our society is built on… are the result of one team.
While it has its problems, democracy has enabled us to enjoy the prosperity we do. It’s easy to complain about politicians, but the alternative could be far worse. Those democratic ideals though are down to one team of 300 individuals.
They took a stand for what they believed in and their story has a lesson for leaders today.
Democratic ideals and our legal system came from the ancient Greeks. They broke from the more dictatorial and authoritarian styles to develop a Republic. The Roman Empire grew on the same core ideals.
And our legal and political structures have grown out of these same ideas.
In 480 BC Greece was under threat from Xerxes’s huge and powerful Persian army. The Persian Leader Xerxes was believed to be a God King. Divinely chosen to rule.
As such all-powerful and not inclined to democratic ideas.
Had he conquered Greece, democracy would have been lost to a more dictatorial style. And so the basis for our social structures wouldn’t have developed in the same way.
What is most interesting for us, is the way one unified team of 300 Spartans was able to thwart the alleged million strong army of the Persians.
King Leonidas of Sparta refused to submit to Xerxes threats. He took his personal bodyguard of 300 with him to head off the Persian advance. Those and other Greeks, outnumbered massively, fought Xerxes’s huge army.
It was a suicide mission.
But it delayed Xerxes long enough for the rest of Greece to gather together enough might to repel the advance. They did. And the rest is history.
The 300 of the Spartan army was able to fight a much bigger army because of their unity.
Spartan society was a warrior nation built on collective strength. Their shields were the symbol of that unity. Because in their battle formation, it is the shield that protects the man to their left.
A helmet or spear is for the individual.
The shield created a formation that made the line resistant to their enemy. If one broke the formation, it made everyone vulnerable. And so the shield was an emblem of their social code:
This is my shield. I bear it before me into battle, but it is not mine alone. It protects my brother on my left. It protects my city. I will never let my brother out of its shadow, nor my city out of its shelter. I will die with my shield before me facing the enemy.
Everything in Spartan society was aligned with this philosophy.
The soldier who lost his spear or helmet would be fined. The soldier who lost his shield was executed. It was the biggest disgrace a Spartan could suffer.
Mothers sending their sons off to fight would tell them to come back with their shield or on it.
While we might not hold the same values today, it’s a great example of a unified culture. Everything we do should be aligned with the values we want to instil these into the collective. And those values should align with the purpose we articulate for the collective.
Three Key Benefits Of A Unified Team
There’s three key benefits to a unified team..
The first is mathematical. A divided team doesn’t communicate as effectively. As a result they duplicate effort and leave gaps.
A unified team keeps communication flowing. So resources go to where they are most needed. Because they know where everyone is and what they’re doing they don’t leave gaps or duplicate tasks.
This allows them to produce maximal impact for the resources they have.
The second is morale.
When everyone works well together, they are working from enthusiasm and generally are happier. And so they contribute more. This is like a flywheel speeding up performance time.
The opposite is lots of friction that keeps holding progress back.
Resistance to new ideas or new ways of operating. Conflicts within the group. Divided agendas wasting resources in different directions.
The third is in decision making.
However accomplished you are, you will make mistakes. Groupthink has made many great people look like fools. When you have a diverse group of people willing to challenge ideas, we can find errors in thinking before they embarrass us.
More than this though, we spark ideas off each other to generate more creative thinking. We have a more accurate perspective and we make better decisions.
But why do so many organisations and managers struggle to engage their staff?
The Organisational Problem
Most organisations fail to engage their staff.
Only 15% of workers are really engaged with their work. Most are there because they have to be. And many are actively looking for their escape route.
It’s because most organisations start from the premise of how do I get what I want.
Usually it goes like this…
A founder has an idea. They grow the business and recruit lots of others to help them achieve ‘their goal’. The bigger they get, the more diluted that vision and goal becomes.
Eventually it’s a massive organisation with lots of bureaucracy focused on maximising profit.
The leadership team comes up with values and visions that bear no relevance to most of their workers. They put it up on the wall and send it out on memos. Most of their employees give it no attention because it means nothing to them.
Then the board decide a new initiative and want ‘buy-in’.
In other words, I want you to follow ‘my plan’. What do I have to say to get you to do what I want? But the problem is they start by trying to shoehorn people into their plan.
It’s much like men learning how to pick up girls.
When I used to help singles dating, I always used to get a man ask me this question…
“But what should I say?”
“What’s the right answer?”
There are whole communities that make money selling men courses to become master seducers. Rather than become a more attractive partner or develop real connection, they want the hack of ‘what do I say’.
And that applies to organisations with ‘buy-in’ as much as men dating.
The premise the men start from is I want to seduce you to get what I want. This then becomes what do I have to say to get what I want. Organisations do the same thing.
And while it might work for hookups, it sets the seed for the problem in the relationship.
Because you might be able to keep up a persuasive pretence for a while. But no-one like being manipulated or tricked over time. We get into a relationship for our needs and wants as well as yours.
Over time what counts is real connection.
This is as true for organisations as it is for dating and relationships. When you start with the answer, you aren’t engaging. You’re manipulating.
Democracy Doesn’t Make Great Decisions
Yet organisations can’t make decisions based on votes.
It’s not practical for monolithic organisations to open up all their decisions to every worker. The people who set the strategy should have the best information and the perspective to make those decisions. The job of a leader is to have the wider perspective.
Yet it’s all about how we engage people on the decisions we make.
Engaging is a two way dialogue. You can’t have a two way dialogue with 1,200 or 12,000 people. But you can with your team.
The key element is if someone raises a flaw you haven’t considered will you rethink your plan?
If not, first of all you are potentially setting yourself up for failure. Would you rather have your pride hurt in private or embarrassed with a public failure? The best idea has to win… not the person who thought it.
This is why research shows projects with junior managers have better outcomes than senior managers.
People think senior managers know best. They are less likely to be challenged. And so their mistakes don’t get picked up early.
If you aren’t open to changing a plan based on logic and reason, then you’re also failing your team.
How would you feel if your partner did what they wanted to do regardless of your thoughts or feelings? Most of us would be unhappy with that arrangement. And we’d disconnect and switch off from the relationship.
Your team will do the same.
Your moral authority over your team comes with the caveat that you’ll do the best for the team. When you put your own goals above the team, you lose that moral right. Then you lose the team.
That equally means that you don’t chop and change plans because someone else wants to do something differently.
Your moral authority comes because you are willing to take a stand if you believe it truly is in the collective best interests. The key distinction is the concern for the collective good. Not yours or any other individual.
The key factor is your willingness to stand for the team.
Like a parent who has to enforce rules at times you have to do what is unpopular. Tough times need tough decisions. The nuance is we decide without ego after taking in all views.
People respect that kind of leadership because they trust their intent.
When You Hire You Get Attendance + Basic Performance
Most companies work on a basic negotiation.
If you turn up and do this level of performance you’ll get paid. Do a bit better and we’ll promote you. That’s why they only get a basic level of performance.
We hire people because they can code, do our accounts or sell our stuff.
So we negotiate a salary, terms and so on. Then we think the deal is done. But that’s not how people have evolved to work.
Remember… people will fall to the lowest level you accept.
Organisational structure originated from factories a couple of hundred years ago. Life then was a bit like what we hear of in sweatshop factories in third world countries. People took a job in poor conditions because it beat starving.
They were hired and if they turned up and produced a certain output the factory owner was happy.
Workers didn’t like it, but they had little choice. Supervisors watched over them and made sure they met their quota. They weren’t engaged, but the model worked for both sides.
The Changing World Of Work
The factory evolved and developed and now most of us do knowledge work.
But knowledge work doesn’t work in the same way as physical work. Knowledge work are factories of creativity, insight and so on. Our knowledge, judgement and creativity are based on our quality of thinking.
As we saw in Map 2, access to that is dependent on stress levels.
First, it’s hard to know what someone’s best is because someone can always produce more. Second, it’s hard to do your best work if you don’t care. When we are tapping into people’s inner resources, we need to engage them emotionally.
Otherwise you cannot get the best from them.
You can’t force them. You can’t manipulate them. You can’t bribe them.
Not for long term results… you have to engage and align with them.
When You Hire Someone You Have A Puzzle To Solve
When we need a role filled we hire a new team member. We hire them because they have certain skills we need. But sooner or later we hit problems.
Because with people we don’t hire resources… we hire access to resources.
This is the key most managers misunderstand. We want people with skills. But access to those skills comes through the person.
If all we want is to press buttons or move the factory line we can measure and monitor performance.
But when we want a more abstract result, we can’t necessarily see the impact as easily. We pretty much know the limits of physical performance. But knowledge work has unlimited upside.
If you want that upside. Or even just a normal worker to raise their game a bit. You have to create the environment where people thrive and want to produce more.
We engage the person to engage the resource.
We can’t rely on genius insights coming, but we can prevent the friction that blocks them.
If we can create the right conditions for people to thrive, people will find inspiration for breakthroughs.
If we create friction though, we can block them from ever occurring.
To do that means looking at people differently. They aren’t a set of skills that perform to your command. They are a person who wants to thrive.
How you get them to thrive (and perform) is the puzzle you need to solve.
Don't Manage People... Manage Relationships
I had a great conversation with Matthew Ward on one of my podcast episodes.
I was telling him how I didn’t think you could manage people. People aren’t resources, but they have resources organisations want access to. Between us, we came to the understanding that what you manage isn’t people… it’s relationships.
Gallup tells us that Manager’s account for 70% of the variance in team engagement.
So by far the biggest factor in how your team performs is your relationship with them. Other research shows that managers on average spend over two hours a week managing conflicts within their team. So managing relationships with and between your teams is key to getting your teams to perform.
But most new managers struggle because none of us get taught how to manage relationships.
The biggest factor in how happy people are at work isn’t how much they’re paid. It isn’t even the work they do. It’s the relationships they have with the people around them.
Most people don’t leave because they don’t like the work, but because they don’t like the drama.
Even if you have an income you enjoy and work you like. It can still make you miserable when you have to work with people that undermine you. Over time, that is what grinds people down.
But before they leave, they disengage.
Disengagement is a strategy people use because they haven’t yet decided to leave. Or they need the money, until they can find a better source of it. Either way it’s costly.
To know how to engage people we have to understand them.
Understanding The Drive To Join
To get engagement and commitment we need to understand what the other wants.
We know what we want. But we need to understand what they want. Then we can create a shared goal and sense of purpose.
Of course everyone is unique, but beneath what their individual answers we can abstract to some universal principles.
We’re going to start with a deep question to reflect… who are you?
Some people will answer with their name. Others with their title. And some with reference to a relationship, characteristic etc.
The answer to that question shows their identity.
What they identify strongly with will be referred to. Parents often see themselves in relation to their children. Football fans call themselves by their team nicknames.
Someone’s sense of identity is core to how they act.
Family, nation and creed are something that traditionally shows our roots. They define where we have come from. Many people operate how they do because of where they came from.
Then we have aspirational identities.
Apple famously capitalised on this Mac vs PC people. Brands, sports teams and Influencers charge a premium so we can identify with them. The difference between commodity and premium offer is in a sense of identity.
If we want someone to work at a premium we have to give them an aspirational identity.
We all start with our core identity. This is who I am. However the individual frames this.
But we then expand our identity by joining with others.
We become a couple. We are part of a family. And likewise join work teams and groups based on our interest.
Politicians get elected when they create a message that people identify with.
Donald Trump created a strong following. Not because of who he was. But because he portrayed himself as the choice for patriotic Americans.
No-one really loves anyone else.
They love how they make them feel. They love what they say about themselves. Because in the end it is about us reflected in others.
Identity Change Is The Key to lasting Change
Identity is the deepest form of motivation.
We sometimes do things for external rewards. We often do things because they make us feel good. But we always do things that are in line with the person we see ourselves as.
So the key is finding the common purpose that everyone can tap into and see as their purpose.
When you boil down the leadership journey it is a journey of going from Doer to Leader.
As a Doer our sense of pride is based on an identity of producing. As a Unifier it is based on how you can bring together your team. As a Leader it is based on your team producing.
All of the little steps on the journey culminate into an identity shift.
The little steps are incremental quantitive changes. Together they lead to a massive qualitative shift. A shift in perspective that changes everything because we see the world differently.
This same process is what we want to lead our team through. So they go from an individual part of a group to a part of the team. When they see the team as an extension of themself, the goal of the collective is no longer competing with their individual goal.
In our personal lives we go from me to we when we become a couple.
As a single person we have an identity. As a couple we create a new identity with new friends and rituals.
When we identify deeply with any group we form a new identity as a member of that group.
Patriotism is identifying with your nation.
Religious people identify with a denomination. We might also identify through our sexuality. Or even through being neuro-diverse and so on.
Your success or failure as the leader of a team comes down to how much you can get people to identify as members of the team.
Humans get their strength and fulfilment from joining with others. Alone we can only do so much. But in joining together we gain more strength and capacity.
For example, the most basic first bond is marriage.
We join together and can now have children. This gives us a wider sense of identity. We take pride in our children because they reflect us.
Then we join a team at work.
We want our team to win. We can brag about our achievements. And we also share in the rewards gained.
We join because it gives us a place to belong, a place to gain recognition, respect and to contribute to something meaningful.
The Relationship Problem
The problem is that we’re not good at maintaining the bond between us when we have differences. Because when it’s down to just ourselves our goals and values are clear. With even just one other person, it becomes more challenging.
This is why only half of marriages last.
But it’s interesting to see why they break. They break when we want different things and don’t reconcile the differences. Then as we break the relationship we detach from the identity.
The problem with difficult breakups is because we don’t want to lose the identity.
And this is exactly the same with all identity bonds. We lose a sense of belonging or status. Or we lose the identity of contributing something useful.
Someone is joining your team with the hope that together they will achieve more as part of the team than alone.
It’s because leaders and organisations don’t understand this that they struggle to engage their team. This is why people are quitting because they are not getting enough return for what they give. It is why so many people are want to jump ship and do their own thing.
You might not be able to change your organisation and how they treat people.
But you can be the bridge for your team. If you create a microcosm of an environment where they can get what they need. They will repay you by performing.
How you do this is by understanding the true nature of the relationship.
Most people start with trying to create the relationships they want. Every relationship is a question to be asked. Given the deep underlying motives we have to join together, can we join together for mutual gain?
Then the relationship stops being a mystery we hope for and becomes a puzzle we solve together.
How do we join? What is our bond? How do we maintain it from the challenges we will face?
That is the key leadership task.
Purpose For Joining Frames Everything
People often read or ask for advice.
How should I give feedback? Which leadership style should I use? Should I be friendly or authoritative?
The key answer is it depends.
It all depends on what you are trying to achieve. Who with. And the nature of your bond.
We have to start with the purpose of why people join.
If you are a high performing sports team, this defines the nature of your relationships. It’s a very different dynamic to a family. We don’t pick our best child to go on a trip with and bench the other.
The common purpose for joining is what frames everything else.
The style of relationships. The style of leadership. The nature of interactions and the values they uphold.
What we want to collectively achieve is the why for us joining.
Who we want to be sets the tone for our relationships. How we achieve our goals sets the standards we have to uphold. Then it’s just about the details of what we do.
The Leader’s Five Responsibilities
A Leader’s goal is to unify a team into a force that can perform more output with less resources… that’s the measure of effectiveness.
I see there being Five critical elements for the leader to achieve this.
Creating the environment for people to thrive
This is about creating trust through the relationships we have. Letting people know it is ok to be who they are. Setting the tone for each to feel comfortable to contribute.
Opening up dialogue
Often leadership from a naive perspective has been about issuing commands. In truth it is about taking in feedback to get the lay of the land. As well as to share your vision and perspective.
The best ideas have to win or you are working to puff up someone’s ego.
Articulating a vision, purpose, values and strategy your team can unify around
A leader is the hub at the centre of many spokes, a bit like the air traffic control. When you have taken in and assimilated feedback from everyone, you can share your vision. The vision, purpose and values are yours made from the assimilation of all the input from your dialogues.
Being a steward of the group’s resources and holding everyone accountable
Naturally from time to time we all slip off the wagon of whatever we have committed to. The authority we give to a leader is to hold us accountable so we achieve those goals. At times we will have differing agendas and priorities.
The job of the leader is to keep us all on track and make decisions in the best interest of the collective.
Representing and advocating for the group
The group will face pressures and need resources from outside the group. Your team has to integrate and work with other groups. A key part of your job is representing and advocating for your team and the resources they need.
The Three Dangerous Mistakes Leader's Make
There are three key mistakes Leaders make with their teams that reduce their impact.
Abdication
The first is when they abdicate.
This is the more Laissez-Faire manager who hasn’t embraced their power and responsibilities. If you assume that your team are adults and they don’t need you to manage them. Then everyone will end up doing their own thing.
And so you’ll end up with a divided team.
People will work on their own interpretation. They’ll seek their own individual goals. And the culture will become political as each seeks to influence others to fit with their own goals.
Dominate
The second is when they try to dominate.
Sometimes a leader has their own plan. And they try to shoehorn everyone else into that plan. Your team will feel trapped and limited.
They may go along with you, but they won’t be with you in spirit.
And so you’ll get low engagement. You’ll get lots of resistance, spoken or unspoken. And you’ll struggle to motivate people and raise morale.
Duplicate
The third is when teams duplicate effort.
This can be because the manager micro-manages, rather than trusting their team. Or it can be because communication is so poor that one doesn’t know what another is doing. Either way, it’s expensive for the team’s resources.
And it’s demoralising for team members.
A high performing team is one that maximises their resources. Each person covers their own area and while they may need to cover each other at times. They aren’t duplicating their efforts.
Each is focusing their resources where it makes most impact.