The Burden of the Elite Team
As leaders, we spend a good deal of time building teams. Putting together the right group of people, giving them a good and meaningful task and allowing them to excel is the pinnacle of what it means to lead.
The problem is that we work so hard at creating the team of our dreams that sometimes we end up with more than we bargain for. Although we figure that our high performing team should make all of our problems go away, it’s often the case that our elite cadre simply creates new issues for us to handle.
There are two main areas that a leader of a great team will come under attack from and will need to learn how to manage effectively. Primarily, the dynamics within the team will be fluid and ever changing; requiring constant tweaking and adjustment. To a lessor extent, yet no less important (especially to new leaders charged with a team within a larger organization) will be the intricacies of how the team interacts with other teams and individuals.
Internal Dynamics
Elite teams are but a single part of a cycle of team building. As such, they are a temporary state and will only last as long as their members are personally fulfilled in their roles. Strong teams are made up of strong people, and these people will be unsatisfied if they are unable to pursue the growth and challenges they need to perform to their best.
As a leader, it’s your job not to fight this simple reality, but to embrace it and use it to your advantage. Work within the natural cycle to allow the veterans to mentor, the stars to have the opportunity to shine, the role players to feel secure and needed, and the rookies to learn. Allow those who are outgrowing their roles to move to the next level, even if it means temporarily weakening your team in the process. Be sure to promote from within whenever possible to give others the chance to fail. Failure is how we learn.
Additionally, you’ll need to manage the relationships and interactions between your team members as they change positions and roles. Try to avoid situations where you have too many people of the same type. Too many rookies will lead to undisciplined mistakes. Too many veterans, a lack of innovative thought; role players, a lack of dedication to the task.
Like a professional sports team, there are always going to be times within the cycle that you’ll need to rebuild, times when you are perfecting the team’s performance and times when you are at the top of your game. Your job is to roll with the situation, and tweak the team when needed to perform over expectations. The team life cycle is something I’m planning on covering in depth in a future post. For now, know that if you choose to fight it, you’ll lose.
Inter-Team Interaction
How your team interacts with other teams will become more of a concern as it approaches true “elite” status. You’ll be completing projects and tasks with higher outcomes than you imagined, your team will be thinking and acting as one, and then your manager or HR will come to talk to you about how your team isn’t playing nice with others. Perhaps someone has complained that they are arrogant. Maybe they feel that they can’t measure up to your team’s expectations of them. It might be said that your team is inclusive and “elitist”. Although as a leader you’ll need to address these concerns, it should make you smile a little bit inside. You have created a team that is truly exemplary.
Complaints of this nature come from jealousy and envy. Your team is better than their team, they know it and it bothers them. With high performance comes a level of pride, and once that pride is picked up by others, it doesn’t translate well. For the most part, you should be flattered that such a compliment has made itself your way and resist any attempt at corrective action. If your team is performing this well, a straight comparison to the bottom line usually works to end the controversy. Your bosses didn’t get to their positions by being stupid, after all.
I should point out though, that I did say that you’ll need to consider the concerns of others. There’s a fine line between pride and arrogance, and this is a great way to evaluate whether your team has reached the peak of the cycle. Perhaps there is an element of complacency that could be adjusted by making a change.
Respect the Cycle
High performing teams come with their own unique challenges for the leader. It is important to ensure for our own team’s success that we pay specific attention to the internal composition and inter-team dynamics at play during times of high quality output.
If we assume that we can rest once our team is performing above expectation, we’ll find ourselves surrounded by destruction caused by our own success. As leaders, we need to work to use elite teams to our advantage.
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