How To Make Great Teams Quit
Let’s face it, we all know our teams could be better. Maybe they could take more initiative, handle more abstract problems, improve their capacity, address quality issues, or work better with peer groups. Every team has some areas it can improve.
What happens, though, if you invest heavily in your teams to make them truly exceptional?
They’ll probably quit. Well, roughly 50% of them.
Great Teams Have Great Expectations
A great team will raise their expectations of those around them. They’ll become more aware and critical of where leadership falls short, where product management is struggling, and much more. There isn’t anything wrong with this shift, but it becomes problematic if these expectations aren’t addressed.
A common example is after investing in making a development team great, they realize they’re a great development team building a terrible product. The team begins to apply pressure to the product management group, but the product management group can’t adapt quickly enough. The development team gets frustrated and begins to dominate the product management group. This leads to greater dysfunction and interventions by leadership to restore the status quo.
It is at this moment, when the once great development team is pushed back to how things used to be, that they quit.
To them, they feel like they were at their best, and now they realize they work in a place that wants them to be much worse. Not many people want to work in an environment where something great is taken away.
Leaders Don’t Know How To Lead Great Teams
I’m going to put this out here: many leaders struggle with the teams they have. The assumption that it would get easier or better once those teams are great doesn’t hold water. It turns out many leaders, without realizing it, are holding teams in place. Even if that place is frustrating, that team’s leader is keeping it that way.
If this sounds a little like a chicken and egg problem, it is.
You see, leaders help create the environment, structures, and processes that shape the world in which these teams operate. In a very real sense, teams aren’t great because the leadership doesn’t know how to shape the necessary elements for that great team to emerge, exist, and thrive.
This creates a serious risk for leaders who want to build their team up with outside help. If that consultant or group doesn’t simultaneously guide that leader to grow alongside the team, then that leader will struggle to adapt to the new team.
That struggle will eventually make most leaders force the team to revert to their previous ways, and the team will quit.
Balance Your Growth
The magic to building great teams is to realize it cannot happen in isolation. You have to look at the team as the center of a much larger sphere. If we only focus on the team and ignore the things around it, the team will collapse.
So, you must carefully observe the groups around the team and their leadership. Look at the groups closest to the team first, and as you invest in the team, grow the groups around that team as well.
You’ll see that many groups have significant struggles and need lots of help. This is normal. Your minimum target is that the groups know how to interact productively with each other. The newer team will raise their expectations of how this should look, so you try to anticipate this and prepare other groups.
Similarly, the leadership groups will need to grow. These newer teams will handle bigger problems, take more initiative, push back on things, and not accept bad decisions. Leaders may have dreamt of this, but often lack experience in it.
Sadly, many leaders overestimate their ability to adapt to a highly capable team, revert to old patterns, and the team eventually quits. Leaders of great teams focus on the environment, set clear boundaries, delegate, and allow the teams to succeed.
How Far Do You Need to Grow Surrounding Groups?
Well, this is where things get a little fuzzy. You need to watch how the team you’re investing in talks about other groups and interacts with them. You should be able to see and hear the increased disappointment and strain they feel. That will tell you what group needs to grow alongside your teams.
Next, as you invest in that other group, keep listening to your teams. You want to hear and see a difference in their interaction that is less strained, is more respectful, and shows less of one group dominating another. In other words, bring them back into balance as peers.
This, unfortunately, isn’t a science with clear metrics and a bulleted list of things to do. This takes paying close attention and monitoring small changes in behavior.
Is It Worth the Risk?
Yes.
Just about everyone remembers a time when a small team of folks seemed to be able to move the world. Building great teams is like going back to that time when an exceptional team could take on anything, deliver, and partner closely with others.
One of the things many people point out is that these teams did so well because of how few other groups and things were in the way. I’m not here to echo that removing peers, groups, processes, etc, is the key to exceptional teams. What I can say is that there were fewer things to get out of balance.
If you want those exceptional teams again, grow them and balance that growth with the groups that surround them.
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