In last month’s blog post we revisited the concept of ‘above and below the line’ and explored what we can do to move ourselves above the line, to a higher level of emotional health, should we find ourselves below it.
In our work with organisations, a similar question often arises with respect to teams. A team is obviously a lot more complex than a single individual, however there are parallels.
Like individuals, teams can operate above the line or below the line. Like individuals, a team operating above the line will generally be more effective and higher performing. And like individuals, given the right circumstances a team can choose to work together to move themselves above the line.
A team operating above the line displays similar emotionally healthy characteristics to an individual. They will, collectively, be constructive and show up in a way that has a positive effect on the other teams around them, on their organisation as a whole and on any external stakeholders they deal with.
In contrast, a team operating below the line will likely be characterised by various signs of dysfunction. Members of the team will commonly have a silo mentality, their attention turned inward and focused on their own self-interest. They will have little sense of moving together as one. Most, if not all, members of the team will exhibit one or more below-the-line behaviours such as defensiveness, blaming, self-justifying and denial directed at each other or externally towards other teams.
A common scenario we come across is where there is antagonism from one team towards another where the first team relies on the second for certain actions or information. We hear comments like, ‘They are never doing what we want, never giving us the things we need. They don’t give us the right information.’
Accepting this situation without doing anything about it is an indicator that the team is operating below the line. They are attributing blame rather than taking collective responsibility to improve the situation. Often we will ask the first team whether they have spoken to their counterparts to explain their needs. Perhaps they have run an information session to share knowledge and expectations? Almost always they have not.
When a team is above the line, they take responsibility. They are proactive in working out a way to navigate a situation and make it better.
And this is where the choice comes in. A team that recognises these below-the-line behaviours in itself needs to take conscious action to move themselves above it.
Very often, of course, much of the onus here falls on the team’s leader, at least in terms of proactively instigating the shift. There are three areas on which they need to check in first: shared vision, co-creating goals and facilitating results, and mutual accountability. We’ll touch on these briefly here and explore each further in future posts.
Building a team shared vision, sometimes framed as the team’s ‘brand’, can take time. It’s important at the outset for the team to come together and explore ‘What do we want to be known for?’ What is it they aspire to? Ideally this vision will be co-created by the team themselves, not dictated to them by others in the organisation. Successfully defining the ‘what they want to be known for’ of the team will help them look outward, which will help them move above the line.
Co-creating goals and facilitating results is usually an area teams do partially well. They usually have higher, organisation-level goals or KPIs that have been set for them, with various team members having specific sets of activities assigned to them in pursuit of these goals. However, it’s less common for teams to jointly create a more specific, shared subset of activities for themselves that are clearly linked to the team’s vision. Developing such clarity about how they will enact their shared contribution to the bigger picture plays a big role in a team feeling as though they are moving together as one.
Finally, there is mutual accountability. As we said earlier, individuals working in silos is a common characteristic of teams operating below the line. However, when there is a strong shared vision and co-created goals, the team operates as more of a unit – including taking shared accountability for their performance. When this happens, blame and self-justification often dissolve away, and the team moves above the line.
Teams operating in very large organisations can find extra challenges. There are often aspects of their work that are out of their control, as individuals and as a group. However, again, when a team is able to operate above the line they will focus on those things they can control and support each other in building a strong culture together.
Malcolm and Gayle
