Effective Teams Creative Leadership through Quality Teamwork.

Effective Teams

Creative Leadership through Quality Teamwork

Gibson (1997)

Rethinking the Future

• In the 1960’s –70’s, there was a sense of certainty about where we were going as a society and how we were to get there.

• In the last 30 years, we have learned that we cannot run on cruise control.

• Many once successful organizations have fallen prey to the uncertainty that modern society brings

Gibson (1997)


• The uncertainty of all aspects of society makes it necessary to rethink our organizational leadership strategies.

• The future will not be a continuation of the past, but a series of discontinuities.

• Linear thinking is useless in a non-linear world.

Bennis (1997)


• The leaders of the future will be those who can:– Decentralize Power– Democratize Strategy– Involve diversity

in the process of inventing the future.


• In other words:– TEAMS of people who can:

• Collaborate

• Create

• See and think in new ways

• The complexity of the marketplace, societies, and the world as a whole require more vision than one brain can supply!


• As Bennis and Biederman put it:– Nontrivial problems require collective solutions– The Lone Ranger, the individual problem-

solver, is dead!– In its place, there is a new model for creative

achievement: the Great team.

Gibson (1997)


• For this to happen we must Rethink our leadership to find ways to:– Release the brainpower of the organization and

liberate the Genius within the organization.– Generate quantum intellectual capital.

Bennis (1997)


• In short, we must become “leader[s] of leaders.”

• Most organizations have extensive collections of brainpower available to them from within.

• The successful leader of the present and future, are those who can facilitate the intellectual capital of teams of people.


• There are many examples of creative teams in all kinds of organizations.

• Some of the clearest examples come from the performing arts:– Orchestras, Choirs, Bands– String Quartets

• These demonstrate: To lead, follow; to follow, lead.


• There are many other examples from sports to NASA to manufacturing.

• The focus of this discussion is:– Creative Teams

• The Question is:– How can we get any team to perform beyond

the individual capabilities of its members?

Bennis and Biederman (1997)

Organizing Genius

• Bennis and Biederman presented a descriptive study of some highly effective teams in Organizing Genius.

• They concluded that, while there is no way to guarantee greatness, there are some ways to maximize the likelihood that greatness will occur.

• Their 15 recommendations include:


Organizing Genius

• Great Teams and Great Leaders create each other.– Great teams are not mere shadows of their

leaders.– The leader’s responsibility is to devise and

maintain an atmosphere that allows others to create is the creative act of the leader.

– The standard models of leadership, do not work. Each situation is unique.


Organizing Genius

• Great teams have leaders that organize the genius of others.– The leader has an attainable vision.– This dream is only achievable if the team is free

to do exceptional work.– The leader frees the team from the trivial and

arbitrary.


Organizing Genius

• Leaders of Great teams love talent and know how to find it.– Leaders of Great Teams are confident enough

to recruit people who are more competent than themselves. They revel in other’s talents!

– Very often, talented people find the team.– Talented people find places of energy.– Build it, they will come.


Organizing Genius

• Great teams are full of talented people who can work together.– Team members have to be able to work

together.– This does not mean being amiable or even

pleasant, but respectful of the idiosyncrasies of others.

– Sharing information and advancing the work are the only real social obligations.


Organizing Genius

• Great teams are obsessed with their mission.– Great teams are filled with believers, not

doubters.– Great Teams generate “Flow” and “Peak

Performance” through being fully engaged in the task.

– It is the role of the leader to generate this engagement.


Organizing Genius

• Great teams are optimistic, not realistic.– Great teams believe that they can do the

impossible.– According to Seligman, optimistic people

accomplish more, even if the optimism is unwarranted.


Organizing Genius

• The leaders of great teams give the team what it needs and frees them from the rest.– Leaders of great teams understand what

creative people want.– Most of all, they want a worthy challenge that

allows them to explore the limits of their talent.– What they do not want is trivial duties and

obligations as part of the team obligations.

Gardner (1994)

Creative Teams

• What makes a team “Creative.”

• Creativity defined by Howard Gardner in a series of case studies in Creating Minds.

• Gardner says there are two kinds:– Big C (Eureka!)– Little C (better methods, efficiency)

Gardner (1994)

Creative Teams

• Gardner defines a creative solution as having two attributes:– Innovative– Must respect the constraints or rules

Gardner (1994)

Creative Teams

• For teams to be able to create a quantum result, the individual “genius” within the team must not only be allowed to flow, it must also be allowed to combine with the genius of the other members of the team.

• This is the role of the facilitator; to generate a constructive dialogue.

Gardner (1994)

Creative Teams

• There are at least three directions a discussion, dialogue, conversation can take:– Reduction (whole is less)– Consensus (whole is equal)– Quantum (whole is greater)

• All have appropriate applications.• Reduction and Consensus are common• Quantum is Rare.

Bohm (1996)

On Dialogue

• David Bohm suggests that for a dialogue to occur within a team, three conditions must exist within the individuals.– Assumptions must be suspended– The impulse of necessity must be suspended– Proprioception of thought must exist.

Bohm (1996)

On Dialogue

• Suspending assumptions– All people bring their assumptions.– Each must be allowed to suspend them.– They neither believe nor disbelieve them– They are not carried out nor suppressed

Bohm (1996)

On Dialogue

• The impulse of Necessity must be suspended. This is the way it must be!– Necessity demands that action conform to it.– If something is necessary, then there can be no

other way to view it.– Necessity limits our ability to see options.– This impulse must be eliminated.

Bohm (1996)

On Dialogue

• Proprioception of thought must be allowed to exist.– Our thinking creates problems that it must

solve. – The problem exists only in our thoughts and

compels action: find a solution.– Dialogue requires that we develop the ability to

see the results of our thinking.

Bohm (1996)

On Dialogue

• What all of this generates is collective thinking.– If the team members can share thoughts without

hostility arising, then it can begin to think collectively.

– The thought then flows between individuals.– One person creates an idea, then next adds to it,

the next adds to that, and so on.

Bohm (1996)

On Dialogue

• The object of dialogue is not to defend opinions, win an argument, or exchange opinions.

• Persuasion and conviction are not a part of dialogue.

• The objective is to produce a participatory consciousness that can only be produced by collective thinking.

Hargrove (1998)

Mastering the Art of Creative Collaboration

• To put this into action, Hargrove suggests that there are five phases:– Clarify the purpose of the dialogue– Gather divergent views and perspectives.– Build shared understanding of divergent views

and perspectives.– Create “new” options – Generate a conversation for action

Hargrove (1998)


• Phase 1--Clarifying the purpose – Are we here to talk about solutions or to

analyze the problem?– Are we here to discuss the complexity of the

problem?– Are we here to develop a “quick fix”?– Are we here to discuss fundamental causes?– Notice this is done with questions?

Hargrove (1998)


• The pitfalls of Clarifying the purpose– Guard against an imbalance between

community-building and task-orientation– Too many purposes for the conversation– A Purpose that is not well framed– Unproductive conversation—gossip, criticism,

reductionism

Hargrove (1998)


• Phase 2—Gather Divergent Perspectives– See divergent views as a source of strength;

lose the need for agreement– Seek input from all stakeholders– Get everyone to share views in a creative and

constructive manner– Empower people to come and speak with

authenticity and vulnerability.

Hargrove (1998)


• Pitfalls of Phase 2--Watch out for: – Relating hierarchically rather than as colleagues– Thinking diversity is not about thinking styles– Not including the views of people who process

more slowly– Two or more people monopolizing time.

Hargrove (1998)


• Phase 3—Build Shared Understanding– Assume positive intent behind all perspectives– Inquire into everyone’s thinking– Express emotions constructively– Recognize and disperse defensiveness– Generate open-minded and open-hearted

listening

Hargrove (1998)


• Pitfalls of Phase 3—Watch out for:– Presentation of views without inquiring– People who speak quickly without

understanding– Thinking there is shared understanding when

issues have not been discussed– Mixed messages or pretending to not receive – OK to not agree, but not to disagree

Hargrove (1998)


• Phase 4--Create New Options– Explore the “white space” to determine what is

missing– Expand personal views to include those of

others– Generate a creative synthesis of all ideas – Use metaphors to incubate ideas– Use analogies to distinguish what is missing

Hargrove (1998)


• Pitfalls of Phase 4-- Watch out for:– Assuming you have exhausted all options– Improving what exists rather than create new– Focusing on what is wrong versus what is

missing– Jumping ahead before allowing time to process– Not giving enough time for ideas to incubate

Hargrove (1998)


• Phase 5—Generate a Conversation for Action– Move the possibility into action by taking

experimental action – Make powerful promises and requests– Give people the power to say “no”– Set a time frame

Hargrove (1998)


• Pitfalls of Phase 5– Watch out for:– Setting ambitious goals and reducing when

anxiety sets in– Making vague promises– Making complaints instead of requests– Speaking in a non-generative way– Planning too much before a pilot test

Hargrove (1998)


• Hargrove suggests that creative performance is most likely to occur when people from different perspectives are engaged in working on a shared goal

• For the “genius” of a team to emerge, its collective intelligence must be cultivated

• This can happen with any group of people through Creative Collaboration.

Hargrove (1998)


• Roles of the facilitator in Creative Collaboration – Build a community of commitment– Create space for all ideas– Intervene with questions when the direction

seems to be getting “off-track”


• All teams do not have to be composed of “geniuses” to create quantum performance

• Through creative collaboration, the team can perform in a manner in which the result is greater than the sum of the parts.

Bibliography

• Bohm, D. (1996). On dialogue. London: Routledge.

• Bennis, W. & Biederman, P.W. (1996). Organizaing genius: The secrets of creative collaboration. Cambridge, MA: Perseus.

• Dilts, R. B. (1996). Visionary leadership skills: Building a world to which people want to belong. Capitola, CA: Meta.

• Gardner, H. (1994). Creating minds: An anatomy of creativity seen through the lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi. New York, NY: Basic.

• Hargrove, R. (1998). Mastering the art of creative collaboration. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

• Gibson, R. (1997). Rethinking the future. London: Nicholas Brealey.

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