Damien B Consulting, Leadership, Team Building

Common Goal or Common Enemy

There has been a lot posted lately about my efforts in Veterans Transitions – and there will be more.  But today, I wanted to take a step back and bring up something that has more to do with general Leadership and Team Building.

While there are many “definitions” of Leadership – most generally focus around the idea of organizing a group of individuals into a team with the focus of reaching a common goal.   Most importantly – there is a focus on a common goal.  There are many studies, theories and methodologies out there that speak to the multitude of motivational theories and personality matching that goes into building a cohesive team that will reach and set new goals.  For fun, I’m going to dumb-down to look at a comparison.

I’ve seen motivation of 2 or more individuals based on their desire to achieve a goal that benefits both to a level greater than could be obtainable if each attempted to do so on their own (This would suggest synergy – a more comprehensive and overall better explanation can be taken from Stephen Covey’s The 3rd Alternative.  Is the bond, and level of cohesion in that scenario as strong, stronger, or inferior to the bond and level of cohesion obtained when 2 or more are united by a common enemy?

Now I have thought about this… and I am not sure which is more powerful in the long run.  However, in thought – I believe being united by a common enemy is often more influential and bonding when dealing with a diverse group of individuals with pre-existing aversions towards each other.  I’ve also seen many examples of manipulating individuals into bonding through the threat of a common enemy – as I am sure most of you have.  Let’s look at some.

If you have had siblings – How many times were you and your sibling punished after bickering or fighting by your parents?  So much so that the punishment dealt by your parents made you and your sibling work together to bare the punishment, or even more so, try to out-smart your parent – after such you and your sibling(s) were left with a tighter bond and deeper understanding of each other?

If you are in a direct sales role, where multiple sales teams operate in the same region – there is that one sales team that always wins the contests and bonuses.  You find yourself teaming up and sharing ideas with another team – that would normally be competition, almost solely for the sake of keeping the top team from winning once again.

In the military – it happens EVERY DAY at the ground roots.  In one of the finest and most renowned leadership courses our nation has seen, high school graduates by the hundreds, from all over the nation land on yellow foot prints at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego or Parris Island.  Many times with the testosterone drive, A-type personalities sought after by USMC recruiters.  Once assigned to a platoon, before they can figure out if they like each other or not – recruits realize their greatest, and only ally against the wrath of Drill Instructors is each other.  If you’ve yet to see what Recruits will do, as a cohesive unit, in an effort to avoid the wrath or even further impress their Drill Instructors – you might be grossly underestimating the power of unity through a common “enemy”.

Anyhow, there are many ways to motivate a group of individuals in order to create a team.  But many of the most cohesive, successful and well-oiled teams I’ve formed, been a part of, or observed have all at some point, experienced a period of bonding induced by their own unity against a common enemy.  By no means is that the solution to building a team – but a very interesting piece of the puzzle to be considered.

 

How have you seen it in your situation?

Damien B Skill Building

It’s Not Education; It’s Just a Distraction

Alright, we are going to dive into something a little more on a limb, but something I have been thinking about since I wrote a note about the subject during my Youth and Society, Sociology class in college.  We were discussing how recent studies have shown that youth who were in preschool at earlier ages were more successful in grade school, middle school, high school and had higher acceptance rates to colleges.  Please don’t ask for a citation to which study, because I did not make that note in my notebook when we had the class discussion.  We were often led to believe that the reason for this was earlier exposure to learning methods and general academia.  But I had a question… was THAT really the reason?  I think it might have more to do with behavior and human interaction.  Perhaps the children who start school at a younger age, do better because they learn intangible interpersonal skills during early developmental stages.  This allowing them to battle less complexities as they grow older, and are able to focus more on academics and less on how they interact with their peers as they go through school.

Are academics and school curricula what are bringing success to our children, or is it all a distraction that allows the real magic to work?   The teachers are assigning, the students are completing.  But what makes one student more successful than the other?  More importantly, what seem to be the catch phrases in corporate America?  There are some words I have noticed: cohesion, teamwork, network, personality testing; putting the right people in the right seats on the bus; EQ v. IQ.  With exception to specific technical trades, academics have reached a plateau as to what one can use to truly excel.  And in today’s business, I think our Kindergarten teachers were on to something they didn’t even know they were on to: If you don’t know how to play nice with others, you don’t get to play at all.

I’m not saying I think academics are to be valued less.  More so, I am calling attention to the importance of interpersonal skills.  Today, HR and business students learn about IQ, which most are familiar with, but also EQ… the measure of one’s awareness of others’ emotional states and how one’s actions affect those around him.  Knowing how your actions affect the rest of the process in an organization has proven incredibly yielding in corporate America as well as the government.  Zappos, the online super-store with the zany-creativity of Founder Tony Hsieh (who is rather not so zany in appearance) has a training program and incredible level of success that incorporates this theory.  Every Zappos employee, upon hiring, goes through their training period where they spend time working in all the departments of the company (Shipping, warehousing, customer service, etc) before starting in the position they were hired for.   If you are curious as to just HOW successful Zappos has been, and you aren’t already wearing shoes you bought from the site, then just enlist the powers of Google and you will see.

The Marine Corps is touted as one of the most effective and cohesive martial cultures and fighting organizations in the world.  It is also the only US service where all enlisted personnel attend the same basic training before continuing in their respective specialties, and all officers attend the same 6-month basic school before going off for additional training in their respective specialties.  By the time a Marine Officer has made it to his or her assignment in the fleet of combat ready Marines, they have a respect and understanding for what their counter-parts are contributing.  This greatly helps in implicit (commercially read: efficient) communication and coordination.  There is also a great bond and commitment to all members across the organization.  This breeds greater efforts and higher yielding results.

For the most part, we’ve all been student drivers.  When we first started driving, blind-spots could be a complete disaster, or negligible.  But checking our mirrors and checking for the vehicles around us were conscious efforts when we first started.  But once we learned, we were able to do all of that effectively, and spend more attention focusing on more precise driving skills.  Are those blind spots to new drivers the same thing as EQ to preschoolers? I think so.

If you have input or believe there is something I have missed, as always, I encourage your input!  Thank You!