Managers who can’t build teams

A unified team is more effective at accomplishing objectives than a group of loosely organized individuals. When a company forms a team, they select a manager to be in charge, and make the team report to that manager.  The issue with this approach is that only some types of managers are capable of building a group of individuals into a team.

Companies do the following to form a team:

1. Select a group of individuals.
2. Pick a manager.
3. Put the manager in charge of the group of individuals.
4. Assign the team one or more deliverables.
5. Plan how those deliverables should be met.
6. Track progress until the deliverable is met.

The prevailing wisdom is that – given enough time – a team will emerge.  To hasten this process, “Team Building Exercises” may be attempted, which often have the effect of strengthening cliques and making management look foolish.

The result is what can be referred to as a “team” only in the sense that they report to the same person. These types of teams have the following characteristics:

• Use of scheduled meetings to get everyone together to talk.
• Use of earphones to avoid being, “distracted” or to “get more done.”
• Pushing to work from home or outside of core hours as much as possible.
• Formalized communication such as, “excuse me”, “please” and “thank you”.
• Gossip and the formation of cliques.
• Sentiments such as, “It’s just a job.”

True teams, however, have the following characteristics:

• Strong leadership willing to make command decisions, and deal with the consequences.
• Pride in the team they belong to, and a desire to maintain that feeling of pride.
• Focus on a single goal, where the whole team wins when that goal is achieved, and the whole team loses if the goal is missed.
• A strong desire to collaborate with their teammates as often as possible.
• A trust in their teammate’s abilities and work ethic.
• Open communication, including compliments and criticism.
• Belief that one teammate’s weakness can be balanced by another teammate’s strength.

True teams are what companies want, but they place the responsibility of building the team on a manager without fully realizing that they are in a bad position to do so.

The stigma of the “manager” title

The title of “manager” implies someone who is managing a situation, rather than leading a group.  When put in a position of leadership, this implies that the “situation” is the group of individuals.  This has the effect of making a manager’s role more Human Resources (HR) than leadership, as HR tends to deal with “situations”.  This results in the manager being positioned as a warden governing a prison, rather than a captain leading their troops.

Shedding the stigma of a management title is no easy task.  From first introduction, there are assumptions made, which come from experiences many have had with past managers:

• They are not qualified to be a manager, as they probably got the title based on sucking up to upper management.
• They are only concerned with being promoted to the next level, rather than the welfare of the team.
• They will secretly report what you do wrong to upper management, while neglecting to report your successes and accomplishments.
• They are lazy, which is why they drove their career away from being a worker.
• They don’t do anything, which is a product of their being lazy.
• Aside from calling and attending meetings, micromanaging, and reporting on status, they serve no purpose.

For a manager to convince their team that they are “Not like other managers,” will take diligence and patience as the team warms to them.  The team will look for the smallest mistakes to support their assumptions, and will even doubt if efforts taken on the team’s behalf are sincere.  If the manager fails to differentiate themselves from the stereotypical manager in a timely manner, they may be ostracized by the team, forever losing the chance to win their respect.

How did the manager become a manager?

Even more damning than being given the title of “manager” are the circumstances under which one became a manager.  The further one progresses down the following list, the more impediments exist to building a team:

1. The employee, buoyed by the adulation of their peers, earns the title by popular vote.
2. The employee, through repeated demonstration of the characteristics the company expects of a manager, is given the title.
3. An employee is hired into a management role due primarily to their past experience.
4. The employee has been with the company for enough time that “manager” is the only path available for career advancement.
5. The employee has earned a Masters of Business Administration (MBA), and with this education is considered qualified to manage.
6. The employee, being unsuccessful at job execution, is promoted to manager to, “Get them out of the way.”
7. The employee successfully executed a calculated campaign to become a manager, often involving political strategies and an array of subversive tactics.

This categorization can indicate the likelihood of success in forming a team:

• Category A has almost guaranteed success.
• Category B and C have a decent shot.
• Category D and E will have a difficult time.
• Those who fall into F and G have almost no shot whatsoever.

Only some types of managers are in a position to build a team

If one considers the term “team” overused and inaccurate in corporate culture, then “leader” would fall into the same category.   While leadership is not implicit to the title of “manager”, it is often an implied requirement.  This notion of a manager who may or may not be required to lead can be thought of as follows:

• The Administrative Manager – Has HR responsibilities such monitoring employee work hours, settling interpersonal disputes, scheduling vacation, and career development coaching.
• The Project Manager – Has responsibility for planning and tracking an initiative.
• The Delivery Manager – Has responsibility for the team’s ability to execute on their objective.

With these clear lines of delineation, it appears that only the Delivery Manager has the necessary elements to form a team:

1. They have direct authority over what team is working on, and how they work on it.
2. The have an objective that they can rally the team around.
3. They have skin in the game, as if the team fails to execute they have failed.

The manager doesn’t know how to lead

At this point, we have identified the profile of a manager who is in the best position to build a true team:

1. They have overcome the stigma associated with the title “Manager”.
2. They became a manager in such a way that the team still respects them.
3. They are the type of manager who is directly involved in the fate of the team, rather than a casual observer.

With all of these in place, the manager must have a quality critical to building a team: Leadership.  The topic of “Leadership” is so broad, that discussing it further will be a recurring theme of future articles

Stay tuned…