Getting Down to the Business of Teambuilding

“Who is Wise? The one who learns from everyone.”  (Mishnah Avot 4:1)

Over the years I have been consciously trying to build a sense of teamwork among synagogue leadership teams. I have tried to identify synagogues and leadership groups ready to make an investment in leadership development. My first book was called Byachad - “Working Together.” I even named my blog “Byachad Leadership.” Despite all this, though, I have often been put on the defensive by leaders who want to know why I am wasting time on teambuilding. They know I was once a businessman. They want to see me “get down to business.”

At Alban Institute we emphasized the importance of action and reflection. Leaders should be encouraged to try new practices and then take time to reflect on what they learn. With new learning in hand they step forward with new initiatives. In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge describes this process as the “wheel of learning.”  The balanced leader would take time to reflect on past experiences, connect that learning to the organization’s environment and challenges, decide on a course of action, and do something- take action. This rotation would be followed by additional reflection.  In my early consulting career, teambuilding tool kit in hand, I ventured out to a Long Island congregation. As I began to review the agenda, one leader looked at the topic of reflection and said to his friend, “Reflection?  We brought this guy from Ohio for reflection?”

In a recent article, “Why Some Teams Are Smarter than Others,” management scientists argued that teams with emotional intelligence performed better than those who have participants with greater individual IQs. The authors write, “The most important ingredients for a smart team remained constant regardless of its mode of interaction: members, who communicated a lot, participated equally and possessed good emotion-reading skills.”

Sure, smart problem solving is important. Financial and other analytic tools are critical.  How we go about doing things can be equally important. Three qualities of emotionally intelligent (SMART) teams were:

• They help leaders to communicate
• They strive for more equal participation
• They learn to read each other's emotions

In USCJ’s Sulam for Current Leaders curriculum we build in text study, case study, interactive exercises and readings to increase the relational capacity of leaders. We hope that an outcome of this work will be new team strengthening practices.

The following are some examples of Sulam team building practices that seek to nurture SMART teams:

Strive for more equal participation - let them be heard:

• Put leaders in pairs to tell their stories to a partner practicing active listening
• Create board practices that ensure key committees all have access to share their goals
• Create meeting designs that allow everyone to speak once before others speak twice
• Teach brainstorming techniques where all voices count

Help leaders to communicate - encourage leaders to share vision, values, strategies and goals:

• Invite the executive committee to describe the kind of leadership community they seek to become. I press them to describe this community in rich details so that they might imagine what leaders would be doing, saying and feeling. 
• Give leaders an assessment in which they reflect on their commitment to board expectations and share their commitments.
• Assess and share their experience about their committee work.

Learn to read the emotions of others:

• Encourage leaders to take assessment on personalities that would help them see some of their preferences in both paid and volunteer work. Through self-reflection, leaders will be better able to read the preferences of others.
• Help leaders diagnose their approach to conflict so they can better read the approaches of others.
• Give leaders tools to understand why they find some leaders difficult to manage and try to increase their coping skills

Without a Vision of Teamwork, Leadership Development Perishes

As we approach a leadership community we try to engage them in a leadership vision activity. When leaders are invited to dream about the kind of community they seek, they often talk about collaboration and teamwork but do not have a firm understanding of how either can be successfully accomplished. In order to engage leaders in SMART team building, they need to affirm that leadership teamwork is part of their vision. They need to reflect on their practices and look at the gap between their vision and their practice.

Most leaders focus on the next 3 months, not the next 3-5 years. Few look at the long-term goals of developing leaders. Leaders can be defensive about their current practices. They may resist outside programs or outside consultants that challenge them to reflect on what they are doing. Without leadership vision, the will to improve leadership practices perishes. It withers under the force of resistance from those who feel leadership development is a waste of time.

If new ideas are seen as coming from a few leaders or outsiders the change agents can become the lightening rod of resistance. Our Sulam exercises were designed to help create shared vision, shared goals, and shared sense of accountability. The key word is shared. By doing the same exercises and using a common vocabulary, individuals begin to think as a “we” rather than an “I”. We have worked on slowly increasing teamwork intelligence and it has laid a foundation for better work. These Sulam principles have been at work whether we were building teamwork in a planning committee, an emerging leaders study group or an executive committee.

The Quick Fix

Despite the success of Sulam programs, I am constantly pressured by certain lay leaders to cut back all this teambuilding “stuff.” “Bob,” they ask me, “can’t we do this in 30 minutes? Why do we need 60 minutes? How important is this? Our leaders want to ‘get down to business’ and ‘”fix the board.’” When leaders show up late and it looks like we will have less meeting time than we planned, the first things these leaders want to cut out is the segment on teambuilding so they can get down to what matters.

Sulam Leadership’s approach is informed by the contrast between technical change and adaptive change. A surgeon may create technical change when they fix a broken arm. Their personal IQ and expert skill are by far the most important factors. The patient is passive. In contrast, when a person goes to see a nutritionist they understand that they need to work together. The nutritionist must provide information and support but the client needs to develop a new practices. The client needs to work with the nutritionist on goal setting and the rate of change. They both need to disclose what they are experiencing and give each other feedback in order for adaptive change to occur.

Who is wise? The one who learns from everyone.  (Mishnah Avot 4:1)

Sulam for Current Leaders negotiates with board leaders to give up three hours of board meeting time over a 12 month period. These three hours require the board to allocate about 15-20% of their time for leadership development for one year. Congregational leaders learn to share (disclose) what they are learning and give us feedback on our programs. Adaptive change requires Sulam Leadership and congregations to learn something together.

Judaism is very process oriented. It cares a great deal about how things are done. If leaders are going to speak with authenticity and integrity they should be challenged to grow in learning and in service. They should be judged by how they develop and nurture emerging leaders so that leadership can continue l’dor v’dor, from generation to generation. What modern business research is showing is that leaders who understand and care for each other, strive for participation, and communicate their vision and goals do better. Teamwork is not just good Judaism, it’s good business. The next time one of our leaders is challenged for taking time for teambuilding study and reflection, hopefully they will remember to say, “I was just trying to get down to business.”