This weekend is the start of the Australian Football League (AFL) competition. In a couple of hours I am heading off to see my team the Richmond Tigers play (http://www.richmondfc.com.au/).
The start of the season is always a wonderful time. At that stage it seems that your team is potentially capable of anything. Every supporter of every team is convinced that this is “their year”. No one has won, and no one has lost. Ah ... the possibilities.
But from a leadership perspective, what I have found increasingly interesting over the past couple of years, is that clubs and coaches are no longer appointing just one captain and a vice-captain. Instead, they talk about the “leadership group” or “co-captains”.
Of course, leadership groups have always existed in all sporting teams, in businesses and in organisations. What’s interesting to me now is that this being formally acknowledged. I wonder why?
A well-known Australian - Ric Charlesworth (http://www.riccharlesworth.com/) (Australian representative hockey player, former Federal politician and coach of the Australian women’s hockey team that won the Gold Medal at the Sydney Olympics) wrote about creating “leaderful teams” in his book The Coach: Managing for Success. What did he mean by this?
Charlesworth’s theory, that he implemented in the undeniably successful women’s hockey team, is that there are a number of downsides of appointing a single team captain - just one leader. Not only does it put a lot of pressure on that one individual, but perhaps more importantly, it often means that the rest of the team tend to sit back and wait for the leader to tell them/show them what to do.
His alternative is to create a team atmosphere where everyone is a team leader - the so-called “leaderful team”. But Charlesworth doesn’t mean some anarcho-syndicalist commune! Instead, he argues that at different points in a game or in the life of a team, different team members with different strengths will assume the role of leader.
And that’s the evolution that we are seeing in AFL teams at the moment. There’s no longer one leader, there are many.
How does your work or sporting team do it? Does this approach make sense to you?
Saturday 31 March 2007
Saturday 24 March 2007
Optimism, laughter and leadership
I’m always intrigued by the answers I get when I ask people how many terrific leaders or managers they have had in their working lives. Invariably the answer is very low. Often none, and never more than two or three. But why is that?
Simply put, it’s bloody hard to be a terrific leader. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give up the challenge of becoming one.
In fact, one of the very real ways that terrific leaders distinguish themselves from the masses is their sense of optimism, and their ability to infect others with those same feelings.
John Seely Brown, the Chief Scientist at Xerox, describes this ability eloquently:
The art of making an impact through people is the ability to pull people together, to attract colleagues to the work, to create the critical mass ...To communicate is not just a matter of pushing information at another person, it’s creating an experience, to engage their gut - and that’s an emotional skill. (www.creatingthe21stcentury.org/JSB.html)
An emotional skill? I have just been rereading Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee’s 2002 work Primal Leadership: Learning to lead with Emotional Intelligence (www.amazon.com/Primal-Leadership-Realizing-Emotional-Intelligence/dp/157851486X - 144k - 23 Mar 2007 - ) and I was struck by their opening chapter as they argue that one of the most important roles of any leader is a “primal” role. That is, driving a team’s collective emotions in a positive direction and avoiding any “toxic” emotions.
Sounds a bit wishy washy doesn’t it? Certainly leaders have more sway over a team’s emotions than others. They tend to talk more, they have greater formal authority, and they are also often the team member who gets to frame the discussion.
I was really struck by a study that Goleman et al quoted that was run by Yale University School of Management in 1998. Not only did this study find that cheerfulness spreads more easily than depression (that’s got to be good news!), but upbeat moods increase cooperation, fairness and therefore business performance.
However, to me the most interesting thing of all was that these scientists also found that laughter was a terrific team performance barometer. Laughing together signals trust, comfort, empathy and a common view of the world.
About six weeks ago I caught up with about ten of my ex military mates for a very informal dinner and a few cold beers on a hot Melbourne evening. At work the next day I was struck by how sore my jaw muscles were. With my tetanus shots up to date I realised it was simply from spending so much of the previous evening laughing with my friends - a group that enjoys a strong sense of trust and a common view of the world.
So what? We probably all enjoy the company of our friends and a few laughs. How does optimism and laughter impact on the performance of a team, organisation or firm?
Psychologists regularly talk about “mirroring”. That is, how moods or emotions spread in a group of people through verbal and non-verbal signals in a relatively short period of time (less than 15 minutes). Ask yourself, who would you rather be working with, that touchy, cranky and domineering boss, or that optimistic and enthusiastic one? And that’s the first example of how optimism can positively impact your team performance. Optimistic people attract followers. Negative leaders repel them.
A second way in which optimism and laughter help is simply that by generating upbeat moods in teams, people view themselves, others and events more optimistically. This has been shown to enhance creativity and decision making skills.
Don’t believe me? Then take a look at a 2000 study in Administrative Science Quarterly (www.johnson.cornell.edu/publications/asq/) that looked at 62 Chief Executives and their leadership groups, comparing their energy, enthusiasm, determination, and emotional conflicts with their business results over time. The conclusion? The more positive the senior leadership team was, the more cooperatively they worked together and the better the business results.
So, think positively, enjoy a laugh and give off that vibe. Your team will thank you.
Simply put, it’s bloody hard to be a terrific leader. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give up the challenge of becoming one.
In fact, one of the very real ways that terrific leaders distinguish themselves from the masses is their sense of optimism, and their ability to infect others with those same feelings.
John Seely Brown, the Chief Scientist at Xerox, describes this ability eloquently:
The art of making an impact through people is the ability to pull people together, to attract colleagues to the work, to create the critical mass ...To communicate is not just a matter of pushing information at another person, it’s creating an experience, to engage their gut - and that’s an emotional skill. (www.creatingthe21stcentury.org/JSB.html)
An emotional skill? I have just been rereading Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee’s 2002 work Primal Leadership: Learning to lead with Emotional Intelligence (www.amazon.com/
Sounds a bit wishy washy doesn’t it? Certainly leaders have more sway over a team’s emotions than others. They tend to talk more, they have greater formal authority, and they are also often the team member who gets to frame the discussion.
I was really struck by a study that Goleman et al quoted that was run by Yale University School of Management in 1998. Not only did this study find that cheerfulness spreads more easily than depression (that’s got to be good news!), but upbeat moods increase cooperation, fairness and therefore business performance.
However, to me the most interesting thing of all was that these scientists also found that laughter was a terrific team performance barometer. Laughing together signals trust, comfort, empathy and a common view of the world.
About six weeks ago I caught up with about ten of my ex military mates for a very informal dinner and a few cold beers on a hot Melbourne evening. At work the next day I was struck by how sore my jaw muscles were. With my tetanus shots up to date I realised it was simply from spending so much of the previous evening laughing with my friends - a group that enjoys a strong sense of trust and a common view of the world.
So what? We probably all enjoy the company of our friends and a few laughs. How does optimism and laughter impact on the performance of a team, organisation or firm?
Psychologists regularly talk about “mirroring”. That is, how moods or emotions spread in a group of people through verbal and non-verbal signals in a relatively short period of time (less than 15 minutes). Ask yourself, who would you rather be working with, that touchy, cranky and domineering boss, or that optimistic and enthusiastic one? And that’s the first example of how optimism can positively impact your team performance. Optimistic people attract followers. Negative leaders repel them.
A second way in which optimism and laughter help is simply that by generating upbeat moods in teams, people view themselves, others and events more optimistically. This has been shown to enhance creativity and decision making skills.
Don’t believe me? Then take a look at a 2000 study in Administrative Science Quarterly (www.johnson.cornell.edu/publications/asq/) that looked at 62 Chief Executives and their leadership groups, comparing their energy, enthusiasm, determination, and emotional conflicts with their business results over time. The conclusion? The more positive the senior leadership team was, the more cooperatively they worked together and the better the business results.
So, think positively, enjoy a laugh and give off that vibe. Your team will thank you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
