Hamilton Lindley

Charlie was a fighter pilot in Vietnam. The enemy shot Charlie down during his 75th combat mission in the war. He ejected from his jet and parachuted into enemy territory. Charlie spent six years as a prisoner of war.

When Charlie was released, someone recognized him when he got back home to the United States. A stranger asked him, “Are you, Charlie? Didn’t you fly jets from the Kitty Hawk? Charlie was confused. He didn’t know how this man knew that. “I packed your parachute,” the man said. “I guess it worked!”

If that parachute hadn’t worked, Charlie would be dead. Someone Charlie did not even know held Charlie’s life in his hand. Charlie kept reflecting on how many times he must have seen the guy. He never talked to him because Charlie was a fighter pilot, and the stranger was “just a sailor.”

None of us succeed alone. It takes a team for us to achieve. Many people have a hand in our parachutes. Are we taking the time to acknowledge, thank, and reward them? It is easy to ignore the work of many. It takes many people to build a collaborative team that looks out for each other.

Creating a Collaborative Team

Large, diverse, virtual teams of specialists are less likely to collaborate, absent other influences. To get these teams to sink or swim together, it takes deliberate effort from management. When the team focuses on collaboration, workers feel a part of something greater than themselves.

Example Set by Senior Leaders

Teams do well when managers invest in improving social connections and show collaborative behavior themselves. Better teams are formed when employees see teamwork as something be prized and unselfishly offered.

At Standard Chartered bank, the executive team will frequently serve as stand-ins for one another. Each of the executives can fill in for the other for nearly any task despite the business operating in 57 countries across the globe. Internal communication is frequent. This collaboration flows throughout the organization. Workers soon recognize that the most desirable way things get done is by informal networks.

Creating a Culture of Mentorship

Collaboration is higher for the teams where mentoring is embedded into everyday tasks. Employees must be encouraged to appreciate others, engage in purposeful discussions, and creatively resolve conflicts. By instructing employees in those areas, relationships are developed beyond the transactional “tit-for-tat culture.”

Tasks and Relationships Oriented Leaders

Balance is the key to many examples in leadership. Relationship-oriented leaders create an environment of trust and goodwill so that knowledge is freely shared. Task-oriented leaders make objectives clear, create a shared awareness of the task’s dimensions, and provide monitoring and advice. Both types of leadership are helpful for teams.

In a study by the London School of Economics, the most productive, innovative teams were typically led by leaders showing task and relationship-oriented skills. Those leaders changed their style during the project. At the first stage of a project, the best leaders displayed task-oriented leadership. The goal was clear, and so were the individual roles of team members. Once team members had nailed down the plans, the best leaders shifted to a relationship orientation.

To promote these skills company-wide, an organization can implement the relationship skills in its annual review process. For example, ask employees to describe their peer network and show specific examples of how the network helped them prosper. They should also share instances of how they’ve used relationship-building to get things done. To improve their task leadership skills, encourage people to engage in project-management certification programs.

Understanding Role Clarity and Task Ambiguity

Collaboration improves when individual team members’ positions are clearly defined and understood—when workers sense that they can do a substantial portion of their work independently. Without that clarity, employees will probably waste too much strength defending turf rather than concentrate on the job. Suppose a team perceives the task as one that requires creativity. In that case, its members are more likely to invest time and energy in collaboration. So to foster collaboration, it’s vital to encourage team members to solve problems creatively.

Encourage Inter-Departmental Task Force

Build trust and cohesion among various departments so that marketing, accounting, sales, and legal work together for a common goal. Cross-functional workgroups help people learn from each other and see how their core abilities add to aspects of the company and the team’s overall success.

Encourage teams to hold brainstorming sessions. It’s great to ask team members to share their ideas frequently. That exchange of ideas will motivate them to achieve and exceed expectations.

Conclusion

Resilience is a shield protecting us from perpetual change, persistent stress, and constant pressures—it leverages our most challenging situations towards our growth. The story of the donkey and the farmer illustrates the power of resilience.

One afternoon, a farmer’s donkey fell into a pit. The creature bellowed for hours as the farmer analyzed how to get his donkey out of the well. He decided the animal was so old that he wasn’t worth retrieving. And the pit was dangerous. So he decided to cover them both up with dirt. He would bury the donkey alive.

The farmer and his friends grabbed shovels and began to throw dirt on the donkey. When the donkey realized the farmer was burying him, he roared horribly. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the donkey calmed down. That donkey must have surrendered to his fate. They kept shoveling.

After loads of dirt down on the donkey, the farmer looked down in the well, expecting to see a layer of soil where his old donkey used to be. But instead, he saw his donkey on top of the fresh dirt. With each shovel of earth, the donkey shook it off and took a step up. Eventually, with enough dirt, the donkey stepped over the edge of the well and trotted off to safety.

Life shovels dirt on us. We can either surrender and get buried alive or shake it off and step up. Each of our struggles is an opportunity. That obstacle may be the way out of your pit of despair. When life shovels dirt on you, or something stinkier, shake it off and take a step up. You can get out of the deepest wells by not giving up.

What does a resilient team look like?

Researchers at Harvard Business School have identified four main elements of resilient teams.

Humility: Can your team ask for and accept help from other team members? Resilient teams admit when a problem is unmanageable and ask for help. They do not conceal their failures but lean into the team for finding solutions.

Resourcefulness: When confronted with difficulties, does your team develop practical and creative answers? Resilient teams bounce from setbacks. They remain focused on outcomes no matter the external conditions.

Candor: Does your team honestly share feedback? Resilient groups vocalize truth to teammates, collectively identifying and solving challenges they face together.

Empathy: Does your team authentically care for teammates in both failure and success? Resilience is a devotion to elevating the team instead of seeking personal recognition. Talk with your employees frequently and actively listen. Help them recognize triggers of stress that are affecting their work and wellbeing. Social support is vital for managing stress among groups. Empathy creates a loyal and committed team. It also teaches us to be present, improves happiness, and cultivates collaboration.

How do I build a resilient team?

Create bonding activities. Your coworkers need to know about each other’s lives outside of work. Without a bond, they will fail to rally around each other in a time of difficulty. When your team lacks a dose of social interaction from the workplace, the leader must keep them feeling that they are a vital part of something greater than themselves. In team meetings, start them off with both a professional and personal update.

Encourage your team to give positive feedback daily, play remote games, or enjoy virtual coffee breaks together. Make sure that they are taking advantage of video calls and chat applications to foster interactions. Share a funny meme daily. Ask a group question of the day to foster discussion about something other than work. People need to know they are not alone.

Encourage collaboration. A resilient team is a supportive network. Reassure your employees that they can rely on each other When an employee is faced with a difficult situation, ask her to think who on the team could help. That will build resilience in both the person seeking help and the worker providing it.

Communicate with certainty. When your team lacks information, they will begin to let anxiety take over. In uncertain times, we can become more anxious and almost obsessed with the unknown. No matter how bad the news is, don’t hide information from your team. People would rather know reality instead of being kept in the dark.

Consistently make your team members feel valued and appreciated. Promote the appreciation of the gifts that each team member brings to your group. Make sure that you compliment each individual for their specific accomplishments. Create a place that celebrates the whole person by paying attention to your workers. Did someone mention a new hobby? Ask them about it. Buy supplies for them. Remind them that you deeply value their contributions.

Reframe your employees’ insecurities  

Give a positive spin to the circumstances that frustrate your workers. Help them look at change as an opportunity instead of something to fear. In the book How Great Leaders Think: The Art of Reframing, the author advocates that we should only focus on what we can control. Encourage your employee to spend her energy on concerns within her influence while letting go of things outside of her control.  

To reframe our way of seeing a situation, we should ask ourselves whether there is a genuine loss or just guessing an adverse consequence? We cannot get our minds stuck on how things ought to be. Ask ourselves what we can improve for next time. What was within our control and what was not?

Perfectionism is the enemy. Trying to be perfect will erode the resilience of your team. For years, I strived for perfection to hide my shortcomings. I believed that I needed to project an ideal image to dodge criticism. But perfection is unattainable. As my desire for perfection grew, I risked explosion or collapse. It requires a tremendous amount of energy, with no energy left over for a crisis. Your team will be awash in a sea of fear if you expect perfection from them.

A perfectionist is prone to ask himself questions that are reactive and unproductive, for example, “who is at fault for us not outperforming our competition?” To avoid perfectionism as a leader, ask yourself, “What am I missing? What actions might I take?”

The opposite of a resilient team is a fearful team

Fear causes more errors. Rather than use common sense, workers attempt to read their boss’ mind. So the employees drop the ball over and over. Constant criticism has the same effect.

Resilient teams are not fearful. If your team is continuously afraid, it is not resilient. Do you fear making a mistake? A team that isn’t resilient is consistently afraid of reprimands, demotions, or firings. That isn’t an environment that fosters innovation. Fear is an awful motivator. It drives us to make irrational decisions. When we are motivated by fear, we react without thinking things through, lash out in anger, and isolate ourselves. A workplace awash in fear won’t last long. Fear focuses on the short term instead of the long term.

Resilience requires a psychologically safe workplace

To be resilient, we must understand what we cannot control. We need to remain calm to make responsible choices for things we can control. We must stay positive.

To build resilience in the workplace, teams need a psychologically safe atmosphere where the following conditions are met:

Workers trust that supervisors won’t penalize them for individual mistakes – don’t create a tattletale culture.

Employees are held accountable for their good and bad actions.

Teams uplift each individual’s strengths rather than concentrating on their weaknesses.

Workers feel respected so that they raise their hand when something could be improved or is not right.

People are accountable for the organization’s prosperity and share praise.

Teams uplift each individual’s strengths rather than concentrating on their weaknesses.

These qualities are the way a resilient workplace keeps focused on the company’s vision. Resilient teams have the mental toughness to respond to crises. With a resilient group, a catastrophe goes from a volcano to a speed bump.

Conclusion

There are many significant traits of exceptional leaders. Integrity is at the top. Two stories show the power of integrity in the lives of others.

Story One – Easy Eddie

Al Capone owned virtually all of Chicago in the 1920s. He had a net worth of more than one billion funded by his organized crime, including murder, prostitution, and bootlegging. Capone’s lawyer nicknamed “Easy Eddie” promoted Capone’s continued dominance. Easy Eddie’s skills kept Al Capone out of the prison sentences that Capone deserved.

Capone showered Easy Eddie in excess for keeping him out of jail. Easy Eddie had every luxury available. Easy Eddie’s estate filled an entire city block. Eddie ignored being awash in evil because of the lifestyle it afforded. His heart was hard, except for Eddie’s one soft spot — a son he loved completely. He wanted his son to have every advantage that Eddie didn’t have while growing up.

Despite everything he had was the fruit of crime, Eddie attempted to teach his son morals. Eddie wanted his son to be a more honorable man than Eddie. But with all of his influence and wealth, there were two things Eddie couldn’t pass on to his son — his example and good name.

Eddie was faced with the question, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” That question provoked Eddie. He began to change. Easy Eddie chose to make his wrongs right. Eddie tried to clean up his name by telling the police the truth about Al Capone. That required Easy Eddie to witness against Capone and his organized crime syndicate. Eddie testified, and within a year, the mob murdered Easy Eddie. He died after a tremendous flash of gunfire on a desolate Chicago street. But his life was not in vain. He had given riches to his son worth more than an estate. Eddie gave him integrity.

Story Two – Butch O’Hare

World War II revealed many heroes. One was a fighter pilot named Butch O’Hare. His hero story started after he was airborne with the rest of his squadron. Butch looked at his fuel gauge and, to his surprise, saw that the groundcrew had not refilled Butch’s fuel tank. So Butch would not have enough fuel to complete the mission and return to the aircraft carrier. Butch’s commander ordered Burch to return to the ship immediately. He did so grudgingly. As Butch returned, he saw a sight that turned his blood cold. An enemy squadron was racing to the American ships. With the entire division on a mission, it left the whole American fleet defenseless. Butch had no chance to bring back his squadron, and he couldn’t warn the fleet of impending peril.

So Butch decided there was only one thing he could do — divert the enemy from the fleet. Ignoring his safety, he plunged into the Japanese formation, firing his guns as he stunned enemy planes. The Japanese airplanes fired on him from all angles with their fierce machine guns and cannons. Butch just kept moving. After his winged guns emptied all their ammunition, Butch dove his aircraft towards the enemy aircraft, attempting to clip an enemy wing and send them down in a spiral. Ultimately, the shocked and stunned Japanese squadron changed directions.

Butch O’Hare returned to the carrier. Once he landed, Butch told of his adventure. And the movie from Butch’s gun-camera showed the tale. Butch shot down five Japanese aircraft. Butch was the Navy’s first flying ace of World War II. He was the first Naval Aviator to win the Congressional Medal of Honor. Butch was killed a year later, at age 29.

Butch’s hometown was proud of his name, and today O’Hare Airport in Chicago is named for this American hero.

What do these stories have in common?

Butch O’Hare was “Easy Eddie’s” son. Easy Eddie didn’t just give Butch the lesson of integrity. He gave him a good name. That’s the way integrity works.

There are two donut shops near my office. The donuts taste identical. The interiors are similar. The locations are equally convenient. But at one donut shop, the employees mumble and are more interested in the cash register buttons than the customer in front of them. At the other store, the workers make eye contact, engage in friendly small talk, and serve me with a smile.

I also noticed that one of the stores had an angry, frowning woman behind the counter wearing a tag that said “manager.” She barks at employees, telling them that they didn’t know what they were doing. She focused her efforts on command and control. Guess which location she was in.

Leaders as coaches

Our leaders influence everyone around them. Innovative companies realize that managers can’t have all the technical answers when industries are in constant disruption. Many businesses are moving from the traditional command and control model to promoting coaching instead. A coach asks questions rather than providing answers, supports employees rather than judges them, and encourages employees’ development instead of directing them. In this model, employees learn how to adjust to regularly changing conditions in ways that unleash innovation, energy, and commitment. The leaders who coach aren’t know-it-alls. They are learn-it-alls.

Coaching feels too soft for managers who tackle performance problems by telling employees what to do. It makes them uncomfortable because it strips them from asserting their power. So these managers oppose coaching. In a leadership style study, leaders ranked coaching as their least-favorite method, telling the polling company that they didn’t have time for the slow work of educating workers and encouraging their growth.

By coaching employees, blame gives way to advice and education, and outside motivators are displaced by self-motivation. Obstacles fall, teams build, and change is welcomed instead of feared.

The GROW Model of Leadership Coaching

The GROW model of coaching involves four steps that give this method its name (Goal, Reality, Options, Will). It is effective because it requires educating yourself to think in new ways about your purpose as a leader. This model involves managers responding to worker’s dilemmas by asking them questions like:

What are you trying to do?

What’s working?

What’s not working?

How can I help?

What have you already thought of?

What really matters here?

You’re on the right track when you ask good questions and assume that you don’t have all the answers.

The GROW action steps are:

Goal.

The goal is what the person expects from the conversation right now, not the project’s ultimate completion. People don’t do this naturally in most discussions. An excellent approach is to ask something like, “When you leave this conversation, what do you want that you don’t have now?”

Reality.

These questions assess how the employee perceives the situation in a nonjudgmental way. As a coach, you should ask questions rooted in “what, when, where, and who.” In these conversations, don’t ask why. The focus of reality must be facts. Asking why calls employees to explore ideas and motivations instead of facts. That can create self-justification, which is counterproductive in these discussions. A good question to ask is, “What are the important things we need to know?” Listen mindfully to the response. What are they missing? This action is crucial because it prevents them from jumping to conclusions. The coach’s job here is to ask the correct questions and step out of the way.

Options.

Your job as a coach is to encourage people to think about solutions they haven’t considered. They often feel stuck. “There’s nothing I can do,” they may say. Or “I’m split between X and Y.” Or “I have one option.”

Ask something like, “What would you do if you had a magic wand?” That question is liberating. It promotes people thinking in productive, fresh ways. Once they’ve expanded their perspective, your role is to help them deepen their ideas by encouraging them to examine these new options’ risks and rewards.

Will.

Ask, “What will you do?” This prompts the employee to talk about the next steps to execute the plan that emerged from the coaching. If they appear to be hesitant about implementation, then ask them to rate themselves, “On a scale of one to ten, how likely are you going to execute this plan?”  

Is there ever a time that command and control leadership is better?

For teams that must meet precise deadlines and specific procedures, a command and control style is beneficial. But it doesn’t promote the growth of individual team members. Leaders who have invested time coaching employees will likely have better results when projects need a command and control leadership style.

Conclusion