High Performing Teams: Commitment, Collaboration, Camaraderie

Photo by Cameron Jordan, Bay Farm Island, Alameda, CA. 2022

Greetings -

I hope you, your families and friends are well!

I am back from a wonderful visit to my hometown of Portland, OR, where I spent time with family and friends. It was nice catching up, hearing about folks' lives and slowing down, even for a bit (so needed, especially at this time of year). I was also the beneficiary of some beautiful Pacific Northwest Fall weather and amazingly vivid colorscapes!

While Mother Nature continues to guide us into our next seasonal change, predictability and stability are all too uncommon and/or in short supply for many professionals and their teams. With the rate of change unyielding and the ability to meaningfully thrive in uncertain environments challenged, teams can find themselves at significant inflection points. Current mental models and methods of working may no longer suffice. Behaviors and leadership attributes that previously guided successful work won't necessarily guarantee future results.

To effectively transform to meet both near and longer term organizational needs, teams need to strategically evolve their leadership vantage points, skill sets and knowledge bases. That evolution starts with each individual and coalesces into a shared commitment to deliberately contract around and collectively hold each other accountable to a new set of norms. In this edition's featured article, A New Social Contract for Teams, Keith Ferrazzi details "...several practices designed to move members away from outdated behaviors and facilitate lasting, positive change [include]: collaborative problem solving, “bulletproofing,” candor breaks, red-flag replays, safe words, and open 360s...They can be implemented in any context but are especially effective in virtual environments, where tools permit a broader range of collaborative practices."

For an excellent companion piece, please refer to High Performing Teams Don't Leave Relationships To Chance. As Ron Friedman notes, "...feeling connected to our colleagues elevates productivity, reduces turnover, and fosters better teamwork. As such, it’s [friendship] a powerful and underutilized tool for creating high-performing teams...By utilizing insights from the science of close connections to promote bonding, teaming, and productive collaborations, any leader can fuel their team’s need for relatedness and elevate performance."

In addition, this edition's collection reflects an eclectic range of reading and listening. Diverse in content and sourcing, these pieces offer a variety of perspectives that piqued my curiosity and desire to learn more. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

I would like to wish you, your families and friends a happy and gratitude-filled Thanksgiving holiday. Safe and expeditious travels for those of you on the move over the long weekend.

As always, happy reading and listening!

Be well, take good care of your families and community.
-kj

Articles

Harvard Business Review: Should You Really Be “Indispensable” at Work? "Certainly, all people have value and bring capability to their jobs; however, some make themselves more valuable than others. It’s rarely because you can’t function without them, it’s because you would never want to lose them. They not only play big, they help other people play bigger too. So, instead of making yourself irreplaceable, make your most valuable contribution."

Harvard Business Review: The Hard Truth About Innovative Cultures. "Creativity can be messy. It needs discipline and management."

Psychology Today: Did I Really Just Say That? "Our conversations are sprinkled with slips, pauses, lies, and clues to our inner world. Here’s what we reveal when we speak, whether we mean to or not."

Fast Company: This is why no one wants to be a middle manager anymore. "Have pity on these poor souls. Corporate life has changed irrevocably—and the person at the center of it is the mid-level manager."

The New York Times: How LinkedIn Became a Place to Overshare. “'This isn’t Facebook,' users complain. But others are finding it a valuable place to talk about much more than work."

Blog Posts & Opinions

The Marginalian: 16 Life-Learnings from 16 Years of The Marginalian. "Several years in, I thought it would be a good exercise to reflect on what I was learning about life in the course of composing The Marginalian, which was always a form of composing myself. Starting at year seven, I began a sort of public diary of learnings — never revising those of the previous years, only adding some newly gleaned understanding with each completed orbit, the way our present selves are always a Russian nesting doll containing and growing out of the irrevisible selves we have been. And now, at year sixteen, here they all are, dating back to the beginning."

Seth's Blog: "How Can I Help?" "It’s a simple question that can open doors. But it also creates tension."

Podcasts

TEDxBend: Why some of us don't have one true calling. "What do you want to be when you grow up? Well, if you're not sure you want to do just one thing for the rest of your life, you're not alone. In this illuminating talk, writer and artist Emilie Wapnick describes the kind of people she calls 'multipotentialites' -- who have a range of interests and jobs over one lifetime. Are you one?"

WorkLife with Adam Grant: Breaking up with perfectionism. "Perfectionism is on the rise -- and not just in job interviews when people claim it's their greatest weakness. But the desire to be flawless is not always productive or healthy. As a recovering perfectionist, organizational psychologist Adam Grant dives into how he managed to abandon the quest for 10s while holding onto his drive for excellence."

Arts, Music, Culture, Literature & Humor Corner

PetaPixel: Photographer’s 3,200 Undeveloped Film Rolls Hold History of Rock ‘n’ Roll. "Photographer Charles Daniels has been photographing famous rockers like Rod Stewart, Jimi Hendrix, The Who’s Pete Townshend, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, and others since the late 1960s. However, tens of thousands of his photos have never been seen — they are sitting in roughly 3,200 rolls of undeveloped film in his Boston home."

The New Yorker: Two Indie Rockers Rediscover Country Music Together. "With Plains, Katie Crutchfield and Jess Williamson turn back to the sounds of their Southern youths."

Vox: Why we need rituals, not routines. "How rituals can help you approach basic tasks more mindfully."

Walking The World: Why I Walk. "Walking as learning."

The New Yorker: Helicopter Parents Are Last Year’s Model. "Aggressive but not really effective at cleaning up your kid’s messes? You’re a Leaf-Blower Parent. Quiet but sanctimonious? Tesla Parent, for sure."

Reflections

“What is common to many is taken least care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own than for what they possess in common with others.” - Aristotle

"To me it seems to be important to believe people to be good even if they tend to be bad, because your own joy and happiness in life is increased that way, and the pleasures of the belief outweigh the occasional disappointments. To be a cynic about people works just the other way around and makes you incapable about enjoying the good things." - Isaac Asimov

Aphasia
by Lou Horvath

for John Acklin, “the narrator knows the origin of jean vu, 1900”

I take meticulous care in noticing the ground
under my feet
as i walk slowly
preferring to describe minutely detailed changes

For that’s what they are
differences between one pebble & a stone
or a rock

And certainly i guess i see events
that i couldn’t even mention
passages from green to verdant folliages
or bits of it, really

And it begins to get more different
as i go slower
and slower

Along what appears to be an endless path
for it keeps on in a certain way
without regard to what i will call
time

And so it doesn’t matter so much
how long i am out here
once i decide when to come back
how ever that is

But what i am bringing back with me
like an explorer

And how i will show someone, too
all that looking down like this has taught me.