Stop Expecting Teams To Click Without Practice

“Cristina Amigoni: We know that musicians and sports teams spend way more time practicing and figuring out how to work together and play together than they do on stage performing. We know that. That's what we expect. But at work, that's not allowed, and that's never counted as, and that's never even included. And there's no way to do it. That's the other thing. It's like in music and in sports, there are ways, specific ways to bring teams together.”

 [INTRODUCTION]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives. 

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that's with our families, co-workers, or even ourselves. 

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni. 

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore. 

Cristina Amigoni & Alex Cullimore: Let’s dive in. 

“Authenticity means freedom.”

“Authenticity means going with your gut.”

“Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself, not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.”

“Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.”

“It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.”

“Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.

“It's transparency, relatability. No frills, no makeup, just being.”

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. Today it's a host episode. It's Cristina, me, and our mutual thoughts. 

Cristina Amigoni: And the additional personalities in there. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. And every personality therein. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Let's see how many come out. 

Alex Cullimore: So, one thing we wanted to talk about is something that I think is especially going to be prescient as people have to recover from all the unnecessary layoffs they made last year and are suddenly having to going to have to start rehiring. There's going to be a lot of team formation. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Well, and even the people that are left behind, they're reforming because now the team structure is probably completely different for 99% of teams. And AI is one of the members or multiples of the members. There's a lot of team formation need. 

Alex Cullimore: There's a lot of team change. And every time a team changes, there's a new team to be formed, right? There's a new dynamic. There's a new – I mean, have you ever been hanging out with two people, but a third one was going to come, and the dynamic is a little different when a third person comes. And I don't mean in a bad way. It's just different. It's just that now there are three people. Now all the interests of three people are in this. That's the type of thing that changes every time you change. The number of people, or the type of people, or whoever is in play. And that happens all the time in organizations when everybody goes a little trigger-happy on the restructures.  

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, indeed. But the fascinating thing is that team reformation also needs – happens in the micro level when somebody goes on vacation. It's a constant need because teams are agile. Not in the scrum master land agile. Not in the certification part of agile for software development, but in the sense that there's always something. There's something, whether it's one person's on vacation, or the energy of everybody in the team is changing, or the objective of what the team is supposed to be doing changes. 

 Yes, there's constant restructures that may need to be rethought at a different level, not at the team level. But there's also the fact that there's the dynamic. Being a team is a dynamic thing. It's not a static thing. And it's definitely not something that we've talked about many times. It's not something that just happens because you happen to put a group of people on the same spreadsheet. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Yeah. You can throw people in a room, you can throw people on a spreadsheet, and it just does not make a team. So, maybe we start this from what makes a team. What is a team? When it is formed. What does that mean to you? 

Cristina Amigoni: I would say what makes a team to me is people that understand each other, trust each other, communicate with each other, and focus on the connection and collaboration over the tasks that each individual and the team are supposed to be doing. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes, that's one of my favorite definitions of team actually came out of Google's Project Aristotle. They were trying to figure out what's a high-performing team. Aristotle. Named because of his quote, something about making the sum greater than the sum, or the whole greater than the sum of its parts. So, how do you make teams? Right? Because they're a team that is working well is better than all the sum of its parts. And I think they defined team not as a group of people on an org chart but as a group of people whose interdependence is necessary to complete work, a project, a task, whatever. That is the definition of team, not everybody who's under a certain leader, not a certain department. It is everybody who counts on everybody. 

And this is where, on a totally different soapbox, I really hate terms like overhead because you don't have overhead departments. They're necessary to some part of the work, or you wouldn't have them. There's not just a for-fun department. Anyway, that's beside the point. 

Cristina Amigoni: Different soapbox, different podcast episode. We can talk about overhead in the next one. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, I think we've talked about that one before, but just remind me of that. 

Cristina Amigoni: It's been a couple of years. It's a good reminder. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Interdependence as teams. I think that you're right. It's about when you're clicking, you're communicating, you're able to actually cooperate, you're able to collaborate. And that doesn't mean agreeing on everything. That means being able to have the discussions, the high-passion discussions that they can be to make sure you're on the same page, aligned, and moving towards the right part of the goal that you're all working towards. And so, I think those are all incredibly necessary portions of a team when it's functioning well. And again, defining a team as any group of people who are interdependent on each other for accomplishing something. 

Cristina Amigoni: And so in all these cases of teams, the key point that's very often missed, which is baffling to me. What was the word we used in the last podcast that we turn into – 

Alex Cullimore: It's a big kerfuffle? Yes. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. I don't know what a kerfuffle is. So, I don't know if this is the right way to use it. 

Alex Cullimore: I don't think so. 

Cristina Amigoni: Okay. We'll stick to baffling, mind-blowing, baffling to me, is the fact that, for the most part, most people will either watch sports, or music, or something, where a group of other people succeed in coming together and producing something. And it's very obvious when it doesn't work and when it works. You've got teams that win championships. You've got teams that lose every game that they play. You've got symphonies that want to make you poke your ears with pencils. And you've got symphonies that actually make it on stage, and people pay a lot of money, or groups, or bands to actually go watch. 

I mean, I think I just heard that Backstreet Boys at the sphere are $150 a ticket. So, when it works, it works really well. We can easily decide what works and what doesn't work when a group of people comes together, and it works. But somehow, we know that musicians and sports teams spend way more time practicing and figuring out how to work together and play together than they do on stage performing. We know that. That's what we expect. But at work, that's not allowed, and that's never counted as, and that's never even included. And there's no way to do it. That's the other thing. 

 In music and in sports, there are ways, specific ways to bring teams together when they're not performing. So most of the times, whether it's practice, whether it's traveling together, whatever it is. But there are specific ways and investment, money, financial time, effort investment in making sure that that happens. Because then the minute they have to perform, if that didn't happen, well, you might as well not have a team because you're not going to win anything, and you're not going to succeed. 

But then at work, we kind of flipped the whole thing and said like, "Well, no, no, no, no. Spending time, money, effort, resources, not people, resources as in tools to actually make sure that teams are formed, and collaborate, and become a true team. That's a waste. That's unnecessary. We don't have time for that. Nobody should have to do that because people should just know. Teams should just know how to work together. Why? Why do we have the contrast? We see it in the world. We expect it in the world but not in the workplace. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. We always have this magical expectation, which is never a reality, that if everything's just going to click, we're going to throw an extra cog on the gear and it's going to work exactly the same as before. No, it's not just physically. It just won't happen. And it's not even necessarily – it's not a bad thing. It's just stop expecting everything just to boom, everything's fine. Everything works. Everything is exactly as we expected it to. 

And it's not to say that those things can't settle, but there's a reason that some of those frameworks like form, storm, norm, and perform have become popular because it's a reminder that yes, you're coming together. But then there's a period of storming and trying to figure out what works, what doesn't work. Then there's a period of establishing norms, and then you can actually perform. 

And this is something that I think is – I love the sports metaphor, the symphony metaphor. I think those are great examples of you have to all be working well. You can have a whole bunch of all-stars, but you have to have them practice together. They have to know what to expect from the conductor, from the coach, so they're ready to actually give a performance together. 

They might all have PhDs. They might all be star athletes. They might all have been top draft picks or whatever from college. That doesn't mean they're just all going to click and immediately make everything work perfectly. You have to have time to gel and work together. And that's something that actually happens on things like improv teams, which it sounds funny to practice improv. You're supposed to be making it up on the spot, but you do need to understand each other's styles, what each other will pick up on, not pick up on, then you can build a show.  

And yes, the content is brand new every time, but your ability to lean on each other, trust each other, and know when to jump in, jump out, when to give them a little cue, what to serve somebody up with, because they can really do well in this scenario. Those are all incredibly important to becoming successful as a team. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, indeed. And that's a great example. Improv teams is a wonderful example because it is. It's not about learning to do. It's about learning how we connect. How do we connect with each other? That's the focus. So that then, we can do anything. We can ask the audience a word and do a whole skit on that one without previous knowledge that that's the word that was going to come through. 

And so that's what we see missing a lot in the workplace is the time, the financial investment, the outside help of how do we actually invest in how the team is connecting. Not what the team is doing, not the task list, but how are they connecting to be able to get through the task list. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, that's something I feel like happens a lot with yearly retreats or something with an executive team. They'll come back and be like, "Wow, we really needed the time together." I understand there's pressures of the day-to-day, and it's easy to start to slip that, to have it start to slip your mind that like, "Oh, I'm starting to get a little less fresh, a little less engaged, a little less connected." These things tend to happen very slowly or at least a little bit at a time. And so you don't always notice the change until you have a reset, like a retreat or something, where you're like, "Oh wait, no, this is much better." And then there's usually like, "Man, we need to do that more often." Probably. Yeah, 100%. You need a little more time to spend that time to reconnect. 

Cristina Amigoni: And 11 months and a half go by, and, "Oh, we need to do that more often." I'm like, "Yeah, you said that already." 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. And then you just pull out your tape recorder like, "Yes, this is exactly what you said last year. But those are the times to connect. You get that trust. And this is why Pat Lencioni has a great exercise called Backstories that helps break open teams. And it's very simple questions. It's just the idea of where were you born? How many siblings do you have? And where are you in that order? And what's something unique or challenging that you – a challenge that you faced in your childhood? And those are not terribly difficult questions to answer. They're very short. And yet you learn some new dimension of a person, and it becomes a more three-dimensional person. 

And we all innately have a much harder time, unless you're a total sociopath, just pushing back on somebody who's an actual three-dimensional person to you. You can yell at the people in traffic because you don't really know any of them. They're all just representations of nothing. 

Cristina Amigoni: You don't even see their faces. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. 

Alex Cullimore: But you start to know somebody, you start to really understand somebody, start to just know them as a human, it's much harder to dismiss them. It's much easier to engage with them. Suddenly, you get that collaboration starting to move. 

Cristina Amigoni: There is a playbook you can use. It's like you start deciding, "How do we want to communicate with each other? How do we communicate as a team? How do we communicate with each member of the team? How do we face disagreement? Do we disagree at the moment? Do we bring the whole team together?" All those things need to be figured out. That's how the actual work of forming the team, not a group of people, comes through, is by going through. 

 And it can be the same pretty much playbook every single time, but it also needs to be redone every single time there's a change in the team. One person is out, a new person is in. You got to go back to that. And it needs to be revisited. Even with the same team, it needs to be revisited every few months, and like, "Hey, what have we observed? What worked? What didn't work?" 

 We did it recently when we were working on the book. Besides the writing piece, which was Alex and I, then we had to pull in our entire team to actually make sure that the book got outside of our heads and hands and Google Drive. And so once the launch was finished, we spent a whole day together talking about what worked and what didn't work in our collaboration for that. And what can we do better next time? 

Alex Cullimore: And this is where it's helpful to have things – we use the working genius a lot for this kind of thing. Reevaluating what stages were we in. When? And how can we better distribute that so that everybody's working in their geniuses? I've seen companies that use things like the personalysis. The big five. Some people have gotten deeply into things like Myers-Briggs and tried to bring that to organizations and stuff. These are good ways to add to your framework of what you ask when you're bringing people in or when your dynamics are changing. 

 When somebody leaves the team, it's easier to identify what gaps you might have if you understand what that person was doing. And that means openly acknowledging to each other, like, "Hey, here's something you do that I appreciate. Here's something that – here's a gap I noticed. I can cover that," or whatever it is. When all of those are out in the open and people aren't feeling judged by them, and they feel like they can just let that be, it's a lot easier to know what is walking out the door. 

 And if you can ask that kind of question to people coming in, then you know what kind of dynamic might change, and you can start to play with that. And these things take a little bit of time. It's good to allow that to marinate a little bit and find its natural groove. A person might be really organized, and that will work with some people in the team, or won't work with other people in the team, or somebody else was already very organized. Now you got two different organization systems. So you got to figure out how to merge those. Whatever it is, there's just little pieces that need to be adjusted. 

 And none of this is a bad thing. You usually end up with a great, more diverse team if you can allow for the differences and if you can bring in all the special skills. But give yourself the chance to understand those, understand where people are currently. There's lots of frameworks to help you with that kind of thing. So you can give common language to it and use that when things change. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. And if you see that you're slipping into not doing it, then get outside help. I mean, it takes discipline. It takes somebody on the team making sure that it does happen consistently, and it does happen at all, the new formation of teams, or when things change. But then there is an element of maybe there's too many things, there's too many focuses, there's too many shiny objects for that to not slip into the, "Oh, now it's been a year since we came together." And like, "Oh, my god. We should do this more often," and then it doesn't happen. Then get the outside help. 

I mean, we worked with a senior leadership team for four years, meeting with them every single Friday. That was one of the many moments. But one of the moments that kept going where the team came together, to pause as a team, to talk about what's working, what's not working. Where do we see gaps? Where have things changed for organization and ourselves, where we need to readjust how we communicate and collaborate with each other? 

And so being that outside helped was the support that made sure that pause happened on a weekly basis. Not every once in a while, but on a weekly basis. And so there is an element of it could be intentionally happening because somebody's driving that within the team. And if it's not happening and there's too much, then there's outside help that's available for that. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes, that's a really good point. It's much easier. It's very easy to get hooked up into or just wrapped up into, "Hey, I've got a lot going on day-to-day. We've got to solve this, got to solve this." And that's how the year slips by. And then everybody's like, "Wait, we should probably do another retreat." It's natural, but it doesn't mean you can't have somebody else come and help you. 

 What we've seen often is that it gives people permission to do what already needs to be done. And it feels like a more official capacity. It's like having somebody invite you on your calendar to take the time, and you feel like, "Oh, no, I can do that." And that's great. I think is very helpful to have that because we live in such a pressure of like, "Oh, if I just need to get something done, I'll just put the thinking time on the back burner." And then a full year can go by. And if somebody else is helping you structure, navigate through and make efficient use of thinking time, as well as giving you repeated time to do so, it can be a huge boon. And it removes the pressure of like, "Oh, I know we should do this, but I don't really know where to start. And you know what? I have too many things to do right now." 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Exactly. Yeah. I love that because it does – when you have the accountability, and that somebody else is now responsible for this or driving this, it helps a ton. I know I need to go, and I want to. It's not just a need, but I want to go for a walk outside, especially since it's been beautiful weather in Colorado every single day. I would like to vary my walk or do the same one. 

But when I had the opportunity on Tuesday to meet up with a former client, and I know she loves to go for walks, and she loves to go for daily walks, I was like, "Wait, what if we combine that? Instead of meeting for coffee, it's beautiful outside, I'm going to go for a walk later today anyway. You're going to do the same. What if we merge that? We go for a walk together?" And it's two birds with one stone. We got to hang out with each other, and we got our walks in. And it was beautiful. I went to a brand new place that I had never been. Beautiful view. And it was such a wonderful way to spend an hour that would have otherwise been at a coffee shop or on Zoom. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. No, that's a great way of thinking about it. It's just these pauses. And can make it, you can structure it. And once you start to pay attention for it, you can be much more diligent and intentional about it. And those are the ways that you can find ways to connect and use the time efficiently to bring a team together instead of just being like, "Well, it'll take time." And then you just kind of watch all the ingredients in a soup pot sit and hope that heat magically happens and that they magically mix. 

Cristina Amigoni: And nobody's stirring, and nobody figured out that maybe – 

Alex Cullimore: Nobody stirs, nobody applies heat, nobody's sure what direction, whatever. You can be intentional. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. I mean, it's literally like baking, which I am horrible at. But it's literally like expecting. Not taking the time and investment to form a team to make sure the team is formed. It's literally taking all the ingredients that you need for baking a cake, dumping them all in a bowl, and then waiting and being like, "Whoa, where's the cake?" 

Alex Cullimore: And throwing it in the oven. 

Cristina Amigoni: But there's no steering. 

Alex Cullimore: I turned the heat up. I didn't stir it. I didn't mix anything in. I didn't adjust for altitude. 

Cristina Amigoni: I didn't follow the directions of what ingredients need to go first, and what second, and what's next. I didn't understand how ingredients actually connect with each other. I said, "Ingredients, go into a bowl." And somehow there's no cake. And then you get frustrated that there's no cake. 

Alex Cullimore: And my family keeps complaining about my brownies. 

Cristina Amigoni: And so, "Oh, I have the wrong ingredients. I need a different bowl. Let me come up with a whole completely different bowl, throw the ingredients in that one, and then wait for the cake." And it still doesn't happen. Maybe it's because you have work to do to get the ingredients to be with each other. 

Alex Cullimore: That's a great metaphor because you just keep throwing bowl to bowl. And then everybody eventually start pointing to – I mean, I feel like I see less of the whole egg. It seems like it's mixed in. I guess we could try another one. And eventually, like, "Well, I guess that egg is better." I mean, in the real world, at some point, one of those ingredients decides to join another bowl. 

Cristina Amigoni: I know. And in the real world, sometimes we think, "Oh, that didn't work because the egg wasn't needed. So, let me take the egg out and see if everything else will actually stick together." And then it doesn't stick together. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. 

Cristina Amigoni: And you still don't have a cake. 

Alex Cullimore: Just try watching some Great British baking show. And every once in a while, somebody will do something like forget to add flour or totally add baking soda instead of baking powder or something. And when you mix up those ingredients and treat them like they're going to do the same thing, you end up with a flat bread. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Exactly. If you look at that and you say, "Well, it's baking soda, baking powder, they do the same thing. I only need one of them, not both," you're not going to get the cake that you want to eat. 

So, yeah, spend time in the formation of the team, more in the formation of the team. Think about it like a band, a symphony, a sports team. More time in formation of the team and how we work together than on what we're actually doing. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Think about a sports team. I mean, that's a great metaphor for like, "Yeah, everybody can spend some time in their individual skills." If you notice some people are falling behind, find some training ways to get them up on those portions. But you spend a lot of time together practicing and going over the plays you're going to use. And what this is going to look like? And what to be on the lookout for? And how to collaborate? And what didn't work about the collaboration last time? The more you can incorporate that type of thinking in your own team building, the more you have teams. 

Cristina Amigoni: And there's lots of help out there. So look for help if you don't know where to start. Thanks for listening. 

Alex Cullimore: Thanks so much for listening. 

 Thanks so much for listening to Uncover the Human. We are Siamo. That is the company that sponsors and created this podcast. And if you'd like to reach out to us further, or reach out with any questions, or to be on the podcast, please reach out to podcast@wearesiamo.com. Or you can find us on Instagram. Our handle is wearesiamo. Or you can go to wearesiamo.com and check us out there. Or I suppose, Cristina, you and I have LinkedIn as well. People could find us anywhere. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, we do have LinkedIn. Yes. Yeah. And we'd like to thank Abbay Robinson for producing our podcast and making sure that they actually reach all of you, and Rachel Sherwood for the wonderful score. 

Alex Cullimore: Thank you, guys, so much for listening. Tune in next time. 

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you.

 [END]