I was once working with the leadership team, of a construction company, to develop a new corporate strategy. The company had grown quickly, but saw their profits shrink as a result. And all of the sudden they found themselves in a difficult financial situation. I and my colleague organized a retreat for them to come up with a plan for growing profits again. The top executives of this team were all talented and had deep experience. That's why I was surprised when they seemed to have a tough time getting a good conversation going. The company's CEO had even started off the day by telling them, we need your help. We need to think creatively, so there are no dumb ideas. Let's just get everything out on the table. So after a slow start, we were finally able to generate some dialog. More and more of the executives chimed in, they talked about what they were hearing in the field and they started coming up with insights about the company's strategy. I wondered why it had taken so long for these bright leaders to start engaging each other. Then, in the middle of the discussion, the CEO who had been pretty quiet up to that point, started banging his hand on the table, and yelled, folks, we're in a serious situation, and all I hear is a bunch of dumb ideas that won't work. The room fell silent. And all the sudden the problem became clear. The CEO who had told them to open up at the beginning of the day, turn out to be the type of boss who would shut people down when he didn't like what they had to say. Fortunately, the CEO missed the most of the following discussions for other meetings. It was a good thing because as soon as he left, the dialogue became a lot more free flowing. The executives created the foundation for a solid strategic growth plan and when the CEO came back at the end of the day, he was happy with the results. He seem to have absolutely no idea the effect his attitude having on his teams ability to speak up and think critically. The point here is not that the CEO was a bad leader. On the contrary, he had been really fundamental to the company's success before this crisis. But, good leaders make mistakes, and even the best performing teams get misaligned. They can lose commitment, and their performance can suffer for reasons that they may not even notice. Just as the CEO was blind to the ways he was bringing the room down. So what can you do about this on your team? In the last module, we talked about the foundations of high performing teams. We went over how to create the right rules, the right goals, roles, and norms, to gain commitment from a group, and to put them in position to get better results. In this module, we'll look at why teams still eventually get off track and stop following their original roles. You'll learn how to be a good observer of your own team and to notice these issues as they arise so you can fix them before they really hurt your group's chemistry and drive. First, we'll talk about why some of the biggest team problems, the real elephants in the room, can actually be invisible to us. It has to do with the way group culture becomes ingrained in everything we do. This has its benefits, but, as we'll see, it can also lead to bad habits that are hard to change. We'll then talk about the specific ways in which groups get misaligned, both with each other and with their environment, such as their larger organization, the market, or their customers and stakeholders. Next, we'll talk about tools and strategies you can use for bringing these misalignments to the surface and understanding them in very specific terms. Since it can be difficult to understand and diagnose a team's bad habits, this module is really oriented toward helping you develop more self awareness and situational awareness. You'll get better at reflecting on your team dynamic and testing your assumptions about what the problems might be. To help you build this skill, we'll look at cases of team misalignments, so you can get some practice with the perspective and tools we'll be using. So, let's dive in.
