About the Author: George Karseras, MSc, is a sports psychologist and the founder of Team-Up, a UK-based digital training and management consultancy firm.
Could you hike the 4,000-mile length of the Amazon River? Ed Stafford did.
In 2008, good friends Ed Stafford and Luke Collier decided to hike the 4,000-mile length of the Amazon River together, a never-before attempted feat. They planned to establish a new Guinness World Record with this ambitious, dangerous trek.
“Team working is no walk in the park.”
It looked impossible. The two could not possibly carry sufficient food for their trek, and the terrain was perilous – far too challenging for a lengthy journey by foot. A million dangers lurked in the jungle: killer bees, snakes, jaguars and other lethal predators. Either territorial, indigenous tribes or covert, armed drug carriers could attack them.
“The expedition community felt it was just too long and the terrain too challenging.”
Stafford and Collier would have to deal with constant fatigue and lack of sleep. Their acquaintances’ consensus was that if the two men entered the rain forest, they would never leave alive.Undeterred, Stafford and Collier began their Amazonian journey in 2008 in Camaná, on Peru’s coast. In months, the teamwork between the two men deteriorated, and their expedition was in chaos. Collier abandoned the pair’s great adventure and returned home, leaving Stafford to face the Amazon on his own.
Stafford soon found another partner, Peruvian guide Gadiel “Cho” Sanchez Rivera. Originally, Rivera planned to lead Stafford through the jungle for only a few days. However, he ended up accompanying the English explorer for two years of trekking through the wildest regions of the Amazon. The men were very different, but they completed the adventure together in 2010, and left the jungle at Marudá, Brazil, at the mouth of the Amazon.
Trekking in the Amazon involves extreme conditions – and business teams face extremes of their own.
The short-lived Stafford-Collier saga, and the longer-lived Stafford-Rivera saga provide real-life examples of teamwork. The first team failed, and the second succeeded. The challenges Stafford and Rivera experienced provide parallels to the difficulties teams encounter in the corporate world.
“Just like today’s teams…[Stafford and Rivera] had to manage their mental health in the most pressing of circumstances.”
Like a member of any team, Stafford had to deal with outsiders – in his case, via his laptop – including sponsors and the media. Further, he was operating in one of the world’s most volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environments. Business teams must routinely deal with VUCA challenges, though generally minus killer bees and jaguars.
Stafford and Rivera experienced other challenges a business team might face. For example, they were operating, of necessity, with a highly unstable plan featuring many “known unknowns” and more “unknown unknowns.”
Stafford didn’t know how long his adventure would take or how local people would react to him and his partner. Would indigenous people accept them and grant passage through their lands, or capture and harm them? When Stafford communicated with Amazonian tribes in advance by radio, they told him more than once that any white man would be killed if he dared to show up near hostile settlements. Stafford and Rivera did their best to circumnavigate these villages, but that often meant extensive backtracking on their already arduous journey.
At one point, Stafford was arrested, accused of murder and temporarily locked up when a resident of an isolated hamlet inexplicably went missing as he and Rivera passed by. They had to constantly change their plans, again and again, depending on what they might encounter during their trek. And, they faced other dangers, such as punishing rainfall.
Despite these hurdles, Stafford and Rivera prevailed as a two-man team. While trekking through the jungles, they exhibited the kind of teamwork conventional teams strive to achieve. Working together, they
became role models for teams from organizations of all types. While conventional teams don’t have to worry about deadly snakes, they often face their own extreme circumstances and must find ways to come out on top. Territorial disputes aren’t limited to the Amazonian jungle.
As technology prevails, firms and their teams face continual disruption.
The digital revolution and advances in virtual-technology present tremendous challenges to organizations and their teams. These challenges can burden team member with worry, tension and exhaustion.
“It is much tougher to lead and participate in the virtual team, or partially virtual team, than a non-virtual one.”
As technology rudely pushes companies ahead into radically new, often confusing areas, business teams must make equally radical and difficult adaptations. Often, companies and teams don’t understand the intricacies of technological challenges and may have a hard time figuring out how to best respond to confusing new circumstances.
How do you manage a team with members ages 20 to 75? Diversity is important, but not always easy.
In recent years, organizations and teams have become increasingly diverse. This long-overdue dynamic is equitable, but also challenging.
Today, diversity doesn’t pertain only to ethnicity, race or gender; it encompasses different age groups. The worldwide average age of retirement is now 65, not 60 as it was for many decades. Experts now expect the average retirement age eventually to become 75.
“Undoubtedly, team working has never been so important and never been so complex.”
The world’s workforce now encompasses five generations: the Silent Generation (born before 1946), Baby Boomers (1946 to 1964), Gen X (1965 to 1980), Millennials (1980 to 2000) and Gen Z (1995 to 2010). Upcoming generations will join their ranks, adding to the generational potpourri of the international workforce.
Having different generations working in the same office raises the potential for conflict because variously aged workers often view their jobs differently. Such conflict makes team management increasingly complex. Effective team management relies on shared understandings and common points of view, which may be harder to achieve when team members range from 25 to 75. This level of managerial flexibility is possible, but it takes considerable skill.
Other diversity and inclusion factors are also important organizational concerns, including gender, racial and ethnic equity, as well as inclusion of handicapped team members, “multi-team diversity” and “job diversity.” Teams face social pressure and regulatory limitations, among other issues, and must adapt.
Leading a team has never been more difficult.
One UK executive recently described leading a team under modern conditions as “a relentless slog.” Members and managers must move as quickly as possible, learn with agility, “innovate, pivot” and work together with other teams. Successfully coordinating complex team activities while minimizing conflict draws on a leader’s full capacities.
“We can take heart from the accrued knowledge we’ve acquired about how to team.”
Unfortunately, many team managers don’t know how to lead. Some are excellent, but some are shockingly dysfunctional, even mentally unwell. The placement of poor – and sometimes unbalanced – team leaders may explain why many modern teams are simply ordinary, if not mediocre.
To develop top-quality teams, create a “team-building” code.
Organizational teams are “complex emergent systems.” You can’t create such complicated entities by simply rounding up selected individuals, putting them in the same room and instructing them to pursue a shared
goal. Creating a great team often requires expert guidance and a “team-building code,” a game plan for constructing and managing teams.
“Today’s teams have to be able to pivot and adapt at lightning-fast speeds.”
A team-building code helps leaders optimize their team’s performance; it’s a tool for team leaders, not consultants, coaches or other external parties.A well-conceived team-building code should meet these criteria:
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Simple – Increasingly complex information is inundating people. Don’t add more burdensome instructions. Keep your firm’s team-building code simple, direct and easy to understand.
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“Comprehensive and measurable”– Your team-building code should connect performance metrics with team members’ achievements and behaviors.
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Actionable – List the concrete steps team leaders must follow to create the best teams.
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Sequenced – Make sure team members “play” the correct notes in the proper order.
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Scientific – The best teams prefer “function over form and substance over style.” Your team-building code must outline expected outcomes and help team leaders predict performance based on quantifiable factors.
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Generates “swift trust” – Teams can’t function without trust; and in a fact-paced work environment, teams must develop trust quickly; think of this as “swift trust,” which leads to quicker outcomes. How important is the emphasis on speed? The future will belong to the speediest teams.
A team-building code shines a spotlight on building quality teams and knowing what makes them special. Develop a team-building code that specifically fits your company as a blueprint for creating effective working groups.
Heed these pointers as you develop your teams:
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Seek “high-trusting individuals” as team members. Involve the entire team in recruiting new members. A member must be task-oriented, so the team will be productive.Select people with fortitude, grit, flexibility and skill.
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Teams that excel can’t play safe. Experimentation is necessary, so seek team members who are open- minded and willing to try new approaches.
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Understand that virtual teams require more care, time and attention than co-located teams.
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Openly communicate clearly with your team members. Be explicit about their responsibilities,
particularly with virtual teams.
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A team’s resilience depends on the resilience of its members.
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Teams can’t accomplish anything if their members don’t get along. Leaders must ensure that
members treat each other with respect and listen to one another.
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Teams must hold themselves accountable for what they are able to achieve – and also for what they
are unable to achieve. This works best when team leaders empower “sub-team accountability as well as
individual accountability.”
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Organizations and their teams must collaborate to meet the larger society’s vital needs. However,
companies can’t achieve this “macro-level” goal unless they first achieve “micro-level” improvements team-by-team.
