TRUST—THE FOUNDATION OF THE TEAM
,Even when the right people whose values are aligned with the organization are in place, very often they still act like individual players. However, it is not the individual talent of the star players but their cohesion that matters the most. As we've seen in sports, an assemblage of talented and ambitious individual players often does not make the best team. Players who function well together always put the team first and their own aspirations second.
Your job as the leader is to motivate and engage the group and transform it into a team. For you to succeed, people will need to know that you are true to your word, that you will treat them fairly and with respect. They want to know that if the project goes well, they will all share in the credit for its success. They also want assurance that if things do not go as planned, you will not pin the blame on them. There may be individual issues for each person as well. Some people are motivated by the chance to learn something new. Others look to network outside their departments to advance their careers. For most people, recognition is very important.
As the leader, you need to understand how best to connect with each person you are trying to influence, including those whose backgrounds are completely different from yours. For example, you're in finance, whereas he is a supervisor at a manufacturing plant or she is a PhD scientist in an R&D department. In a global company, there will be cultural aspects to motivating individual team members as well. Although many people equate motivation with monetary rewards, other incentives can work just as well if not better than money and cost very little. In fact, the best motivational tactics that I saw during my years at Baxter were often the least costly. For example, in our distribution division, the top-performing salespeople were awarded a green jacket (perhaps inspired by the Masters Tournament with its fabled green jacket for the champion), based on sales, profitability, how they operated within their team, team development, and so on. Although I don't claim to have much of a fashion sense, it struck me that this jacket was plain and rather unattractive. Nevertheless, people would go to extraordinary lengths to earn one. It only goes to show that you can motivate people in very simple ways, especially by publicly recognizing them for their hard work.
One of the best motivation tools is your own ability to relate to others, letting them know that you understand who they are and that you value them as individuals. Your ability to relate to each person is a real talent that will serve you well in your career because, quite frankly, many people just do not get it. They believe that the only motivation people require is to be told what needs to be done. The truth is that as a values-based leader, you must first understand your team members before you can motivate and engage them.
When trust and respect are established on both sides, people will devote themselves to the project and to each other. They become committed to a successful outcome because they see how important it is to the entire organization. Knowing that you, as the leader, are genuinely interested in their viewpoints and perspectives is very motivational. When you ask for their opinions, they'll gladly give them. The bottom line is, when people trust that you have no agenda other than the good of the organization, they will be far more likely to sign on to a project that is above and beyond the duties of their “day job.”
A key component in engaging and motivating others is influence, which is really a two-way street. The more people know that they can influence you because of your open-minded attitude toward feedback and input, the more you will be able to influence them into thinking holistically about the entire organization instead of just focusing on their department or unit. Influencing others doesn't mean being the loudest person in the room, or the most persistent or persuasive. Having influence does not mean being a steamroller, flattening any opposition or contrary opinions in your path. Influence is possible only when others truly understand your values, where you're coming from, and what you consider to be most important.
Now things really get interesting. The people coming together on your team will recognize that you are someone who has values and are focused on accomplishing something that truly is worthwhile. You find ways to build loyalty within the team, such as offering to help team members with other tasks that they're working on so that they have more time to devote to this project. The attitude is “we're all in this together,” which is the essence of teamwork.
The ability to influence people is an incredibly valuable skill. The earlier you start, especially before you have people working for you, the better senior leader you will become. When you're a vice president with fifty people reporting to you, your leadership must be grounded in helping others recognize why a particular initiative or project is important to the organization. Otherwise, you will only be one of “those guys” giving orders to people who will comply because you're the boss. This dynamic does nothing to foster true creativity, initiative, and problem solving in a group. Groups tackle problems and opportunities with energy and insight when members understand that they are truly important to finding the way forward.
Going back to our example, my challenge as the vice president of finance for the division that needed to cut costs by 10 percent was to create a cohesive team. I knew that the only way to accomplish this objective was to get all the department heads focused on a common goal through an understanding of what was best for the entire division and not just their separate departments. I knew that this shift was not going to happen automatically, especially when our task involved reducing expenses, an emotionally charged topic.
As we started discussions, everyone was entrenched in the “not my department” mentality. People did not want to cut expenses at all. They viewed their budgets as already tight; they couldn't possibly cut any further without severely impairing the viability of their function. This was turf protection time.
As the discussion became more serious, we moved into the “equal pain” phase, in which the expectation was that everyone should give up the same amount. If sales had to cut 10 percent of its expenses, then the sales manager believed that every other department head should make the same reduction. At this point, the expense cuts were not being proposed on the basis of what was best for the division overall; instead, positioning and posturing were foremost. No one wanted to be seen as less important, so no one was willing to commit to making a larger expense reduction than anyone else. This was hardly team thinking.
Before the team could enter into the last and most productive phase, as the leader I had to change their orientation from their own department to the division as a whole. To do that, I needed to establish a clear, elevating goal.