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I recently was contacted by a university professor asking for some success tips in giving team assignments to university students.
As a visiting faculty member in the mid-90′s I experimented to find out what worked best. My students were generally Juniors and Seniors at The University of Texas at Austin.
Here’s what I learned and shared with the fellow who asked.
Conditions for Success
1) I gave students the opportunity to form their own teams. We played some fun relationship-building games and gave them class-time to interview each other so they could get to know one another and gain some insights about what it might be like to work together.
I told them if they did not choose a team, I would assign them to one.
I never had to assign a student to a team. However I was prepared in case I did get to make such an assignment. I would ask the team if they were willing to accept him or her and I would ask the individual if they are willing to accept the team — of course looking for a “yes,” indicating a level of ownership of the decision.
2) The team earns one grade. No individual grades. No individual appeals will be heard. Period. Don’t ask.
This is key (and seldom considered). Why? For two important reasons:
- The team’s performance comes at least as much from their interactions as from their individual contributions (from Buckminister Fuller’s definition of synergy: wholes unexplained by examining the parts). When teams click (i.e., work well together) no one outside the team is ever in a position to know who contributed what, so it isn’t fair to try to figure out who did or didn’t. When managers and professors intervene with individual grading, we actually create a scarcity condition (where individuals compete for attention) that would not otherwise exist.
- And, for clarity of focus and attention, I wanted every student to know that the only game available to themselves and others for getting a grade was through the team.
3) The members of a team can choose to distribute the grade evenly or unevenly. That is, they can negotiate for how much effort/reward they each want.
They must turn in a statement signed by all members stating how the grade is to be divided among them. They can turn it in anytime from the initiation of the project to the conclusion. And they can modify it anytime as long as all team members sign the statement. However, I strongly recommend that this decision be the first piece of business they address as a team.
Why? Effort versus reward is always the issue in team assignments, right? So why not call it out, drive it forward, have the team negotiate it, and give them a practical means to manage it? Make it visible and transparent.
4) I taught them the framework for individual success in shared responsibility situations (discussed extensively in this site and blog, and in my book and workshop).
Predictable Results
These team projects have been an unqualified success. Most were “A+” projects. The students were thrilled with the experience.
I never had a team choose to distribute the grade unevenly and I never had a team produce a poor result. I have never had an individual student appeal or complain, and received stellar feedback from students in these classes.
Why? I’d like to hear your thoughts about this (leave a comment). Here is one of mine: The conditions for success (and failure) were straight forward, known, clearly put in place, minimized “gaming” the system, and communicated in a way that put maximum freedom, power, and choice in each student’s hands.
In fact, I recently heard from a student in one of these classes that it was the single best class of her college career. Why? Because she learned high-integrity life-long principles for taking responsibility for herself in groups.
Some Final Tips
Always teach the Leadership Gift and it’s application to team building and to leadership.
If you are required to grade on a curve, then that requirement can be treasonous to this framework (see Jerry Harvey’s Learning to Not*Teachchapter in his book How Come Every Time I Get Stabbed In The Back My Fingerprints Are on the Knife? And Other Meditations on Management.) When I was an instructor, I was a visiting faculty and not held to the faculty grading curve policy.
Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or family) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.
Some people exhibit such a need to be right that they can’t stand evidence to the contrary. Do you work with someone like that?
These are the folks who work overtime to prove others wrong and disparage anyone who has a different point of view. This type of communication stance makes team communication difficult because it sends most discussions rapidly into debating “right” versus “wrong.”
People with the leadership gift, however, listen completely and respectfully to speakers representing different views.
Why? Because they know that “right” and “wrong” is always relative. They don’t fear different points of view: they know different points of view offer new opportunities to build and expand, rather than to threaten each other with extinction.
Consider this. What’s right in your _______ (fill in the blank: family, department, culture, classroom, market, organization, religion, etc.) may well be wrong in another one.
Judgements of right and wrong always emanate from a particular point of view that is based on values, beliefs and attitudes, which are always relative.
Take for example a relationship between marketing and engineering (as bodies of knowledge, or as divisions in a company, take your pick). Marketing and engineering come from and operate within very different points of view which, sometimes, have great difficulty working together.
But marketing would have nothing to sell without engineering, and engineering would have no niche for their product without marketing. In fact, each is only part of – and add value to — the bigger picture and requires the other part for completion.
To adopt the leadership gift theory of relativity, consider all of your knowledge, ideas, and opinions as functions of your unique perspective or point of view.
Consider each other person’s knowledge, ideas and opinions as functions of their points of view. All are valid and true. Some are more applicable than others in certain circumstances. But all are equally valid and true in their own realms.
The fun part of life and of practicing the leadership gift is taking every opportunity you can to integrate your point of view with as many others as you can.
To do this, though, you have to be willing to hear, and validate, all other points of view. And not just when you agree with them — all the time.
Get Started With This Week’s 5-Minute Practice Tip:
Remove “right” and “wrong” from your vocabulary. Replace the words with “works” and “doesn’t work” — as in “that works for me” and “that doesn’t work from my point of view.”
Try it for three days and see if you can feel the increase in your team power.
Want more practice?
If you want to learn a lot about yourself, pay attention to your own point of view, especially when different from others. It will help you discern your beliefs and values.
Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or family) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.
 An entrepreneur friend of mine has built and sold eight companies. His new venture is a massive, important economic development project that requires the simultaneous launch of three or four different companies with a large number and variety of partners.
As my friend told me about his plans, I found myself leaning farther and farther back in my chair — as if to increase my focal length for a wider view so I could attempt to grasp it all.
Finally, I raised my gaze over his head to the sky to find a space large enough to grasp the enormity of his vision.
I was so impressed with the size of his “game” that I asked him, “How is it that you think so big?”
He answered, “I have to think that big to have a chance to create anything worthwhile at all.”
When I asked how he planned to keep the game manageable, he replied that he didn’t plan to manage it.
He believes firmly that when he’s clarified the opportunity sufficiently and attracted talented people to the opportunity, all he will need to do is grab ahold of the part where he can best add value and ride along.
What a difference there is between managing and leading.
Managers are taught to envision things they can completely control. They operate, thereby, in a realm of self-limited resources, i.e., small games.
Leaders, through their dedication to their vision, create opportunities that can attract an unlimited number of voluntary followers and resources.
Collaborative leaders create expansive opportunities for partners!
Expansion, the second key to collaboration, is the most powerful tool available to any leader.
The essence of expansion is opening to abundant opportunity, usually by reaching for a goal that is larger than you and requires many collaborators to achieve.
Here are some guidelines for generating expansion:
- An expansive goal must be larger than any participant can achieve by his/herself. Otherwise no one will need collaborators, and playing such a small game makes it easy to see others attracted to the opportunity as “threats.”
- The more expansive the goal, the more opportunity will be created. Some teams never turn away newcomers because they see every newcomer as an extender of opportunity. My firm Partnerwerks was once consulting to a save-the-customer team on a $60,000,000 account where the customer had threatened to de-source the supplier. The number of volunteers to the monthly customer-focus meetings swelled from eleven to thirty to seventy-five. The leaders welcomed all comers into the team and allowed them to self-organize into sub-teams to find ways to contribute. The result? In a little over a year, the customer not only re-committed but added another $190,000,000 to the account.
- We can either create a goal that attracts collaborators to us or generate a goal in conversation with chosen collaborators as a way to enrich the collaboration. Both approaches are widely used and successful. We–Partnerwerks–are currently working on what could be a very large joint venture with two partners. I identified the ill-defined opportunity and framed it well enough to attract the other partners. Now we are working together to better understand the opportunity and to c0-create clear and compelling goal for our venture.
- The greatest opportunities for expansion often arise from what appear to be the most scarce and threatening circumstances. Expert problem solvers and the most expansive leaders know that the greatest breakthroughs occurs where opportunity appears to be the most scarce (see this 2009 post for a fine example from a client). This is a fundamental principle of my approach to team building and team leadership.
- Expansive goals are usually so clear and specific that they require little if any measurement to verify they have been reached. (Example: To put a man on the moon and bring him safely back to Earth by the end of the decade.)
- Expansive goals are usually so bold that, when set, participants don’t yet know how they’re going to achieve the result. So the goal affords collaborators a sense of urgency and the need for learning and discovery. (Example: When Kennedy set the goal above, rocket scientists were only pretty sure they could launch a rocket and have it hit somewhere in the ocean.)
- Expanding a goal is one of the best ways to integrate people’s views. At the same time, integrating people’s views is one of the best ways to expand a goal. The actions–expand and integrate–are reciprocal.
This Week’s 5-Minute Practice Tip
This week, evoke expansion in one group gathering (a meeting, committee, family outing, lunch group, etc.) by posing this question: “What could we pursue together that would create attractive opportunity for each of us?”
As the conversation develops, apply the guidelines above and watch yourself raise the level of collaborative energy in the group.
Expansion is a powerful force! Start 2012 with a renewed belief in the power of collaborative teamwork that benefits everyone and will lead to expansion.
Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or family) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.
 In my email newsletter today I invite readers to come here to comment on the following:
Can social responsibility really be achieved through corporate policy? I firmly believe social responsibility only flourishes from a base of personal responsibility. That means we must scale responsible behavior starting with ourselves, rather than scaling process or policy.
Here’s a tough question to ask yourself: Are you lending your skills to, and taking a paycheck from, a leader, organization, or clients with whom you are not totally aligned in terms of the true net value (i.e., taking into account the costs to people and planet) they are adding to society? Why?
What if we each just stopped working for such employers?
What do you think? Leave a comment.
P.S. See the rest of this email newsletter.
 In comments to my last post about making faster and better team decisions, Europe-based agile coach Yves Hanoulle asks me to list examples of the large group consensus techniques I know. I’m not sure I can do that or that it is important to me to make a list.
More importantly, my success depends not on techniques but on
- my stance or attitude (how I hold myself in my mind and the vision and possibilities I hold for the group)
- the purpose of the group
- my first principles (responsibility, collaboration, servant leadership, value, choice, etc.) and
- constraints (time, space, authority, etc.)
Here’s an example: Last May at the RallyOn conference in Boulder, CO, Rally’s VP of Products Todd Olson asked me at the last minute to facilitate a lunch meeting of about 10 VIP customers.
Todd’s goal (purpose) was for the VIPs to become a team-based counsel that would meet regularly, prioritize a requested-features backlog, and speak to Rally with one voice.
Our principles included collaboration, participation, servant-leadership (Todd spoke for two minutes at the beginning and later acted as group recorder; other Rally attendees served and bussed tables), value, and inclusion.
Constraints: We had 60 minutes between conference sessions, were in a 7 meter by 5 meter hotel conference room with 15 people (including some Rally directors), and a plated lunch would be served — it was too late to switch the lunch to a buffet.
What to do? I recommended a World Cafe style rapid round-table conversion around three questions from my Team Orientation Process℠ (for more about orienting teams, see my teamwork book or workshop):
- What’s our task?
- What’s in it for me (to work with you on this task)?
- What agreements do we want with each other?
I asked for the plated lunch to be served immediately at the start and that all the VIP’s be seated at two tables.
I cleared three tables for the World Cafe and equipped each table with large sheets of paper and felt pens for idea capture and doodling. I assigned one of the three questions to each table, wrote the question on the paper on that table, and circled it.
I gave VIPs 20 minutes to eat, meet each other at the table, and get ready to answer these three questions. Todd said a few words about his request for the group. I asked the other Rally folks to stand or sit on a counter along one wall.
When 20 minutes for eating was up I asked the 10 VIPs to self-organize around the three World Cafe tables. Instructions:
- One person agrees to “host” or “co-host” the conversation at that table for at least two rounds
- Dialog with others at your table to propose answers to the question assigned to that table
- Capture the ideas on the paper
- Change tables every five minutes with some people remaining to host the dialog at that table while the other members separate to different tables.
The idea is that each table’s conversation overlaps and flavors the conversations at the other tables and that everyone is deeply involved in each conversation.
I think we did five rounds of five minutes each. At the end I asked Todd to record on a flip chart as I attempted to facilitate consensus from the group. I was amazed when the VIP’s said that wasn’t needed — they had already done that at each table.
I responded, “Really?Are you really all on the same page with each other?” And they all looked at me and said “Absolutely.” So I said, then what are the next steps? And they said they had a conference call scheduled in two weeks.
Results? Todd was extremely pleased. The VIPs were energized.
Seven months later: I ran into one of the VIPs at an AgileNYC meeting last month and he told me that group continues to operate very effectively.
What might you have done? Or share one of your examples. Leave a comment.
 Some people have a strong distaste for consensus.
They say it takes too much time. They describe the painful details of the myriad ways in which group members polarize on issues and then threaten to use their veto power when they don’t achieve their individual purposes.
I find these processes distasteful myself. They take up too much time and can definitely sap participants’ energies.
But these are not consensus processes — they are debate processes.
To achieve rapid consensus it’s essential that group members gather around a clear, shared purpose and then mobilize around a sense of urgency to make progress together.
In my experience, the following five practices fuel fast decision-making:
1. Consider more rather than fewer alternatives. And generate them together. Teams that move fast know that generating lots of alternatives actually clarifies decision-making. Criteria for choosing among them then surface in the group and, in the process, myriad contingencies are aired and shared.
Trying to analyze and choose between only two (or even three) alternatives stresses making the “right decision” (choosing between opposite poles), which can easily trigger parochialism and paralysis.
2. Involve more people and points of view in the process. When a large number of participants are heard, unique points of view can emerge, which actually increases the probability of discovering creative and expansive alternatives.
3. Integrate with more and/or other parts of the organization. Teams that move fast invite other departments to participate. Doing so enables them to coordinate in real-time, rather than learning after the fact and then having to play catch up. An added bonus is that other departments may actually bring better solutions.
4. Draw on the wisdom of “gray-hairs.” Teams that move fast check their thinking with mentors, sponsors, or coaches whose experience, intuition, and situational knowledge helps the team make smart choices.
5. Consensus with leader as time-breaker. The secret to leading consensus successfully is to establish collective action as more important to the group than complete and total agreement. To fast teams, getting a result and learning from it together is more important than being right. Fast teams also make sure that everyone is heard, especially minority views.
A smart consensus-focused leader will create “hang-time” in the conversation to allow for this. Then, if a consensus doesn’t emerge in a reasonable time, the leader makes a call for group action on the alternative with the best chance of succeeding.
This Week’s 5-Minute Practice Tip
This week, include more voices in decisions that affect others. And stress the urgency of action, steering away from “right versus wrong” arguments (use “Works for me” instead). Keep asking the group, “What could move us forward together?” but start your practice on less-than-critical decisions.
Everyone has experience with this issue. Tell me yours in the comment space below.
Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or family) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.
Can you believe it — the holidays are here, again.
The change of a calendar year can be a wonderful time to acknowledge the investment required to maintain growth and development, including the quality of your relationships at work.
One of my favorite tools for team maintenance is the Reorientation Process.
Assembling all the players for reorientation is a powerful way to acknowledge that ALL productive relationships go through periods of being highly oriented — aligned, in sync, in the flow — as well as periods of not being so.
When teams get out of sync, committed members feel they have to “push harder” on the content of the team’s work.
A more fruitful strategy would be for them to notice — and acknowledge — that the team seems to have lost energy and/or direction (energy and direction are my simplest indicators for a team being “built”).
When this happens (and it may happen several times in the life of a team) I like to say, “It’s always a good time to reorient.” Get started with this week’s 5-minute practice tip.
5-Minute Practice Tip
To orient or reorient a work relationship, gather the players together and ask each of them to articulate their views of the following:
- The WHAT — what are we as a team to do together?
- The WHYs — why am I here? What’s in it for me to be on this team?
- The HOWs — how are we playing? What are our team rules and agreements?
- The WHOs — who’s doing what where? What does each of us bring to THIS task at THIS time?
When everyone has been heard, asking the group to craft a clear and elevating goal together (one that’s meaningful to every member) will help refuel the WHY for energy and the WHAT for direction.
You’ll always know when this conversation is on track — because you can see, hear, and feel the group’s energy increase and the team members’ direction come into focus.
Reorientation is a great way to start a new year with your teams — with renewed, positive energy.
Let me know your thoughts and experiences with a quick comment below.
Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or family) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.
 I am pleased to add Dutch and Swedish translations to the growing list of full color Responsibility Process™ poster PDFs that you can download, print, and post or distribute. Find all the translations here.
These posters are increasingly being seen in offices, conference rooms, kitchens, and schools all over the world.
In my recent post, we looked at what to do when we’re left in the uncomfortable position of “holding the bag” and I suggested a straightforward 7-step process for calling others on broken agreements.
It’s a great process. And it’s simple. But it can be very difficult to apply. Why?
Many of us have one or more emotional blocks to effectively calling others on irresponsible behavior.
To better position ourselves to use the approach, let’s look at what makes it seem easier to “hold the bag” than to confront others when they let us down.
We’ve all been in dozens of situations where co-workers’ behavior was irresponsible, in direct violation of a promise, or damaging to our productivity. It hurts.
So, why do we tolerate someone’s irresponsible or damaging behavior? In my experience, most of us feel one of two basic emotional responses, or “blocks,” to taking responsible action:
- the need to be nice
- the addiction to criticism
Needing to be nice — or to be seen as being nice — is evidence that we need social approval more than we need inner congruence.
Social approval is great to have. We all need and enjoy it. But as health professionals tell us, when social approval is in conflict with our personal experience, it actually becomes a destructive force in our lives. It’s called lying.
To overcome this block, we can reduce our willingness to tolerate irresponsible behavior and increase our “provocability,” that is our ability to show what really happens inside us when someone’s behavior hurts us.
When we chose to show our true–provocable–response to irresponsibility, we actually foster greater collaboration with others.
How? Because provocability signals integrity. And it’s integrity that builds trust between co-workers, not apparent–but false–tolerance.
Provocability is part of a collaborative communication strategy called “tit-for-tat.” To play tit-for-tat, start interactions with cooperative behavior and, after that, match your co-worker’s behavior. If they cooperate, then you cooperate. If they are uncooperative, or defect on you in some way, then show provocability.
Call them on their uncooperative behavior and let them know you hold them responsible for the relationship: they can have it be cooperative or uncooperative. It’s up to them.
Then match their moves. When used compassionately and proactively, tit-for-tat is a great strategy for teaching others how to cooperate with you.
Get started with this week’s 5-Minute Practice Tip:
Provocability is best learned by removing small tolerations first. They’re easier to call. Today, pay conscious attention when a co-worker bugs you slightly.
Here is a hint: When you’re “bugged,” you’re provoked — that is, the other person’s behavior is in some way unproductive or uncooperative in relation to you.
Use the 7-step process to show an appropriate level of provocability. Remember, if you’ve been tolerating a particular behavior for some time, a relationship pattern has been set and your demonstration of provocability can be seen as “over-the-top.” Start small and easy, then build.
Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or family) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.
“Constructive” criticism is still criticism. Instead of criticizing, “feed back” your responses with compassion.
A huge block to giving others feedback effectively is our addiction to criticizing (i.e., providing criticism).
When we criticize, our tonality (if not our words) assigns others to a potentially harmful status of being — i.e., being “wrong.”
No one likes to be labeled as being “wrong.” Most people get defensive when they’re labeled, even when they’re sure they’re not “wrong.” And people feel defensive, they block messages.
So, unless you’re trying to not be understood, criticism is less than effective as a communication strategy.
And, it doesn’t help to call it “constructive” criticism by saying, “This is for your own development….” Criticism is criticism. It blocks understanding.
So what replaces “constructive criticism” for the responsible team member? Compassionate revelation (i.e. telling your truth with compassion) is quite effective.
Compassionate revelation is the essence of feedback. It’s the process of pointing out the consequences of someone’s actions on you or someone else.
My dictionary defines feedback as “the return of part of the output of a system to its input.” This is exactly what we do when we feed the consequences of someone’s actions back to them.
Now, with this distinction in mind, step your way through the 7-Step Feedback Process and see if it isn’t easier to apply.
This Week’s 5-Minute Practice Tip
Notice when you begin to assign someone the condition of being “wrong” and remain silent until you can compassionately feed back to the person the results of their behavior on you or your teammates.
Hint: Criticism usually includes phrases like, “You are (favorite judgement here)” or “This is (favorite judgement here).” Feedback includes phrases such as “When you (specific action here), I (your response here).”
Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or family) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.
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