Every team, to perform at it’s peak, requires a clear vision of where they’re going, honest, immediate feedback, deep focus in the present moment, 10,000 hours of domain specific “practice,” and enough passion to fuel the journey.
AND, every team, on this journey toward peak performance will have an abundance of “tension.”
The vision will be clear to one and hazy to another. The moment will require multi-tasking and the feedback will lack timeliness. There will be too many days of never ending dullness and drudgery. There will be only occasional and momentary times of rocket fueled passion.
Some practices will produce magic and some will simply be stale. Some team members will be on when others are off. We will all assume too much and understand each other too little. Some members will shut down in these moments of tension and some will explode with anger. Some will tend toward thinking their way forward at the exclusion of their emotions and some will tend toward feeling and finding their way. The result will be an abundance of…
CONFLICT.
Transformational teams have the same amount of conflict as normal, dysfunctional, and transactional ones. The difference lies in how they see it. Transformational teams understand that conflict is not the problem. They embrace it. Mine for it. Allow the individuals involved to experience it in different, even conflicting ways.
Transformational teams don’t bury it. They don’t sweep it under the rug. They deal with it in often clumsy, messy ways. But, the difference is that they deal with. They learn how to honor their differences and to fight to improve performance, not simply to prove their point. They do all this with a strong sense of purpose because they clearly know where they’re going. The clarity of their vision guides them.
AND, they are comfortable with the fact that they will never be on the same page, never share the exact same vision, never take the journey toward that end on the exact same highway, never be completely understood by those around them, and never be recognized for all that they’ve done. And, still, they will show up. They will, “Look up, get up, and never give up,” as Michael Irvin once said.
AND, they do NOT hold back. They do not play it safe. Freedom and honesty are the default. Chemistry breaks into these teams in much the same way that buried conflict breaks up most others. In an unexpected moment. The truth is that both have been building for a long time. A very long time…
Today, I invested a few good hours with ONE such team. They are embracing the tension together. They are on the road to peak performance and they are struggling. Very cool.
Which are you building?
What part of this rant describes you?
Is this the way your team sees you?
Are you getting comfortable living in the tension?
Do you see why this is the road to peak performance and why the struggle aint going away?
Do you see why this is true for your team at work and your team at home?
Is one more tense for you than another?
Tell me more, my friend.
Tell me more.
BUILT TO LEAD 