What They Don't Teach You In Leadership Class

I was suffering from a serious case of confirmation bias. I was picturing a room full of quants immersed in a world where everything, including people, can be measured. Rob Delaney, CEO of Infinia ML, had asked me to conduct a leadership workshop with his executive team. Infinia ML is a machine learning company, headquartered in Durham, North Carolina. They have developed a platform that uses machine learning to analyze unstructured text and content, enabling their customers to streamline workflows and uncover fresh insights.

Leadership is an art based on relationship-building. I was convinced that this concept would be too messy and inefficient for a group that would seek to quantify everything. Surely they would prefer a more scientific approach to people matters. Wouldn’t they be more comfortable with a management consultant, someone who is fluent in the language of systems and processes? Managing people is a lot cleaner. You can measure their performance by reducing them to numbers on a spreadsheet.

If my modus operandi was to provide teams with a path of least resistance I would probably get more business, but it’s not in my DNA. I help executives transform from ‘manager’ to ‘leader’ by challenging them to embrace discomfort, not avoid it. Making this transformation is challenging for every group I work with, but with this group, I expected to run into a wall.

There are two ways to lead: leading self and leading others. Everyone on a championship team accepts the challenge of leading themselves. It’s impossible to effectively lead others if you are not leading by example. This is achieved by constantly working to build strong relationships to self, team, and boss. Relationship to self - the conversation you have with yourself - is the most important relationship. Self accountability is the foundation of a championship team. Before you can build strong relationships with your teammates you must develop a strong relationship with yourself.

I started the workshop with Team Infinia by facilitating an exercise that addressed relationship to self - the conversation you have with yourself. I asked each team member to take notes about a project they were involved in that failed and reflect on their role in the process. Then I broke them out into pairs and asked them to tell their story to their partner. After letting those discussions play out, I asked if anyone wanted to share their story with the entire team and include thoughts about how they could have been better in their role. When things go south there is a human tendency to look to others to assume responsibility. As with most groups, members of Team Infinia initially resisted the notion that when adversity hits the team the first place for each team member to look is inward, but in the end, they definitely got the message.

After finishing our discussion about the relationship to self, we moved on to a session on relationship to the team. Going into it I was convinced that members of Team Infinia would have no conception of the personal qualities required to build strong relationships with teammates. I had bought into the stereotype of a quant that every challenge a company faces can be solved with an algorithm. Most business teams struggle with the intangibles involved in relationship building, but at least they understand it. With this group, I was expecting blank stares.

I was in for a big surprise!

I started the session with an open-ended question: “What attributes are essential to building a strong relationship with a team?” One of the executives quickly made the first offering with a single word: “Tension.” I was stunned. I asked him why this was the first attribute that came to mind. He said that his team is regularly confronted with difficult problems and that quite often there is no clear path to a solution. Other times there are multiple solutions and the team must select one of them. He said that this can create tremendous stress because team members often have very strong, divergent opinions about which direction to take. In these situations, he said, everyone must contribute and when necessary, challenge each other. I was shocked by his insight. Usually, it takes several follow-up questions to get teams to this place that he landed on right off the bat.

I wanted to build on the momentum that he had created so I quickly followed up with: “What if a meeting becomes especially contentious and two of your teammates leave the meeting angry at each other?” Again he was right on point. He said that it is their responsibility to clear the air without involving others. This executive had zeroed in on two key attributes - assertiveness and communication - that separate championship teams from the rest. He had provided a level of insight that I had rarely encountered during engagements with head sport coaches and had never experienced before with business leaders.

When I ask most groups “What is the key to building strong relationships with teammates, ‘supporting teammates’” is typically the first response. Supporting teammates is crucial, but if you are not being assertive and directly communicative with teammates you’re not truly supporting them. And when support is offered unconditionally it eventually becomes fake and empty. This creates a catch-22. The “Way to go!” and “Atta boys!” become knee-jerk responses and praise becomes meaningless. Teammates become dependent on receiving kudos for every single micro achievement. But if the flow of empty praise recedes for some reason everyone goes into withdrawals.

A championship team is not like a family in the literal sense. Family members can have goals that are conflicting, but support is unconditional because “We’re family!” Members of a championship team are aligned with a common goal. The road to achieving that goal can be filled with obstacles that must be confronted openly and directly. Team members must stand up for their positions, not hesitate to challenge each other's viewpoints, and remain open to being challenged. They must also communicate directly with the source when a serious issue arises with a teammate. On a championship team triangulation is a disease.

A quest for harmonic bliss within a company is a recipe for disaster. To the outside world, everything is hunky-dory. Every day is a pep rally. But the flow of positivity in this kind of environment is superficial. Behind the curtain, issues are not confronted and communications become increasingly triangulated as conversations are brokered by third parties. Eventually equivocation and back-stabbing become pervasive breaking bonds that were held together by a thread, to begin with.

On championship teams earning ‘respect’ is more important than being ‘liked.’ When I coached teams where the athletes prioritized getting along over earning respect the team always underachieved. When I had teams where the athletes were committed to earning each other’s respect the team overachieved. On championship teams that I was fortunate to be part of the athletes pushed each other relentlessly and confronted personal issues directly and openly. Often at the beginning of the season, the ‘respect factor’ was high,’ while the ‘like factor’ could be tenuous. But in the end, the ‘like factor’ caught up and teammates established an unbreakable bond that remains strong well beyond their sports careers!

Until we meet again, Strive On!