Creating Self-Aware Teams: Worth the Effort?

Many years ago, I had an interesting conversation with my son's hockey coach, Mike, who had stepped down from college-level coaching to work with younger, middle school kids. Our conversation wasn't about that transition but about a chance encounter Mike had with an NHL scout who happened to be sitting next to him at a college game. Mike asked the scout, "What do you look for in a player?" The scout responded, "That's easy. I see a lot of young players who can skate fast, shoot the puck hard, and play with the physicality needed. But that's not what I'm looking for." Mike paused before asking again, "What are you looking for in a player?" Without taking his eyes off the game, the scout replied, "I'm looking for the player who, as soon as they step on the ice, makes the other five players better."

Bam! As Mike told me this story, I started to wonder—a lot. I understand how important this quality is in an intense team sport like hockey. But in the business world? How many hiring managers put "Makes everyone else better" first on their list of desired attributes when selecting a candidate? Is that even possible?

In reading popular narratives of high-level executives at prominent technology firms, I sometimes wonder, is it always like Game of Thrones or King Lear, with leaders vying for position and plotting their next maneuvers even against their own teammates? Having been around long enough in a few technology firms, I've found that is the case more often than leaders admit. I have witnessed it firsthand and played in a few rough, sharp-elbowed environments myself.

Contrast this with professional sports. Post-game interviews of top athletes tend to be joyful, full-throated celebrations of consummate team play. These do not strike me as rehearsed responses but as genuine expressions of the critical need for high-quality teamwork. In sports, performance measures and outcomes are not only transparent, they are often the basis for gambling bets. In the business world, teamwork is a bit more opaque. Fostering great teams is not in the wheelhouse of many managers, especially in IT organizations. When teams do gel, they usually do so serendipitously.

To make matters worse, silos reign supreme in much of human organizational life. They often appear without any effort and grow recursively, like Russian dolls. One might assume this tendency is hard-wired in our DNA, and in a sense, it is. Humans share an instinct for hierarchies and tribal rivalries with other primates.^Footnote1 While tribalism is natural, the resultant silos create barriers that stifle cross-functional teamwork, especially when groups begin to view one another as competitors.

Fortunately, our genetic history also includes a penchant for collaboration, arguably one of the most important traits behind our success as a species. But while we are able to create silos easily and unconsciously, exquisite collaboration requires work to develop and maintain, often requiring leaders to step in.

The Three Ts of IT

As a leader, I am inspired by high-level sport teams, especially women's sports, and have focused my IT teams on the three "Ts" of IT:

1. We are better together. With each of us working well together, we accomplish so much more than we do alone.
2. Improve your teammate. While we all strive to improve ourselves, we need to help our teammates improve. We not only work together, but we must also improve each other together.
3. Let's tighten up. IT work is ever-changing and gives us many opportunities to strengthen what we do in terms of quality, efficiency, impact, and client satisfaction.

The first and third items are self-evident. Every IT team, and any business unit of any kind for that matter, accomplishes more together and tries to improve their unit, their silo. It is the second point that causes people to pause. While leaders understand that they need to improve the people reporting to them, they often don't think their job is to make a peer—especially a peer in competition with them—better. This sentiment occurs among front-line employees, too. Why should one employee try to lift up a lower performing peer?

That's not the spirit of the three Ts. Any player or manager on a successful team is unlikely to invest resources into a significantly underperforming member. Management at all levels must get the right employees on the team and part ways with individuals when necessary. Setting that aside, the second "T"—improve your teammate—is more nuanced and profound than the other two "Ts."

To borrow a softball or baseball analogy, consider a third base player and a shortstop. If the shortstop has some difficulty covering toward the third base player, then it is good for the two players to be aware of that challenge. They should be able to talk about it and embrace it. The third base player can cover a little more to the left in certain situations. Rather than bicker about each other's shortcomings, the two can collaborate to field ground balls before they become hits in left field. This mutual self-awareness must hold for all team members and, quite frankly, all units that collaborate to achieve organizational goals.

This is difficult to do. Most people are not ready for this kind of radical transparency about their strengths and weaknesses. Our natural tendency is to hide our weaknesses and highlight our strengths. However, this behavior undercuts superior team performance and requires leaders to step in and help. But before leaders can assist others, they need to develop additional self-awareness and collaboration skills. Not only do managers need to make their fellow managers better, but they also need to assess talent and performance collectively and accurately.

Most managers cherish their teams, especially after painstakingly selecting and building working relationships with individuals. They take pride in and ownership of their direct reports, sometimes in ways that irritate the direct reports. The goal for top leaders is to shift the organizational culture away from an ownership mindset to one in which managers can assess and develop team members regardless of where they sit.

Again, a sports analogy may help. In baseball and softball, a team may have coaches who specialize in positions, such as infield, outfield, or pitching; however, these coaches don't "own" the players in these positions. They develop them. And coaches collaborate with each other, sharing their different experiences. A pitching coach may have a valuable opinion to share with an infield coach and vice versa.

The coaching staff has to do several things:

• Coaches need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their own assessment abilities. An infield coach and a pitching coach will see things differently.
• The coaches need to discuss differences in their assessments with each other.
• Coaches need to appreciate, value, and seek out these differences as part of calibrating their evaluations.

In short, managers need to perform multilateral assessments of their staff and learn to calibrate their assessments openly with each other. In most organizations, performance reviews are cloistered within the manager who performs the review. The review becomes a kind of contract between the manager and the staff person. This needs to change. Performance reviews should be shared among managers. While one manager has day-to-day responsibility for specific team members, that manager should share and discuss team members' abilities and performance with other managers.

The Implications of Practicing the Three Ts

Practicing the three Ts has four important implications for how managers and employees experience leadership and teamwork.

First, it makes it clear to employees that they are not potted plants that get watered or put in the shade capriciously by a manager who may have limitations in their assessment skills. Let's take non-performing or significantly underperforming team members or managers off the plate for this discussion since these types of personnel problems require different interventions. The focus here is on nuanced differences in skills, where harmonizing individuals' abilities and the assessment of those abilities can yield performance gains for the group. Ignoring these differences will inevitably degrade team performance, whereas addressing them empowers employees to take ownership of their own professional growth.

Second, this approach breaks down silos by shifting commitments. Rather than structuring units around "tribal affiliations" with a single leader, organizations should prioritize a collective commitment to the larger enterprise first and team member development second, giving senior IT managers the flexibility to develop and move staff inside and outside of their unit. This signals to staff that lateral communication, collaboration, and movement, whether within a unit or between units, are valued.

Third, it clearly distinguishes manager and team members roles. For IT professionals seeking leadership roles, the new skills and expectations are made clear. While every manager wants to lead a high-performing unit, this goal is secondary to overall team coordination and player development.

Fourth, it opens up growth "swim lanes" for both staff and managers. No one is held captive within their silo. Everyone can have opportunities for growth.

Is this hard to do?

Not really. Of course, silos are naturally created by humans, probably reflecting innate behaviors that grow from the family unit outward. But people are also natural collaborators. Executing exquisite team play in IT organizations requires intentionality, persistence, and diligence from leaders. Once the team philosophy is absorbed and turned into behavior, better collaboration becomes possible and begins to feel natural.

What are the impediments?

Perhaps the biggest obstacle is a lack of confidence or uncertainty around being transparent about individual and team performance. This challenge is easier to address in IT departments because there are so many standardized, objective, widely shared performance measures. In this way, IT departments are more like sports teams than other departments might be. Regardless, some individuals may need extra support in transitioning to this kind of radical transparency.

Are the benefits tangible? Are they measurable?

Some research indicates so. Expert teams (not just teams of experts) have higher reliability, faster coordination under time pressure, and fewer critical errors.^Footnote2 An expert team consists of interdependent members with high-level, unique skills who adapt and coordinate to produce superior, sustainable, and repeatable performance. These teams are also self-regulating.^Footnote3 High-performing teams often operationalize team self‑awareness via shared reflection on strengths and weaknesses, awareness of impact on others, and alignment on goals and norms, linking it to performance or decision‑quality outcomes. But beyond the numbers, the biggest benefit is the experience itself. The memory stays with you. It is a lifetime reminder that collaboration, trust, and shared achievement are what make work meaningful.

Great teams can often wildly outperform mediocre ones, resulting in millions of dollars in savings, benefits, and revenue growth, as well as large differences in team productivity. In my own experience, I have seen and measured substantial benefits.

The Problem with and the Promise of Leadership Development

Leadership development programs for IT leaders abound. While these programs are valuable, they often do not explore intangible aspects of leadership in a deep and meaningful way. They don't always prepare leaders for the profound shift in personal orientation required to sustain high-performing teams and organizations. Because leadership programs are typically short-term, they cannot provide the years of coaching and skill development required to lead at this level. Sustained, exquisite teamwork requires constancy in executive leadership. Newer leaders and leaders who are over-promoted or promoted too quickly often fall back on old behaviors that worked for them in the past.

I worked with one such manager years ago, shortly after I had been appointed CIO. My direct reports, the senior IT team, all came to me and said, "This person, Keith, has to go."^Footnote4 I immediately checked Keith's performance review, and unsurprisingly, it was good. The organization had never told Keith about his leadership deficiencies. I spent the next two months carefully observing him. And sure enough, I agreed with my direct reports. Keith was gruff and often mean. He barked orders and had teams performing out of fear. He did not exhibit the team traits we needed. He didn't make anyone better.

I called Keith into my office and let him know what I and others had observed. I explained that I would keep him in the organization because he had skill and desire, but that I needed to pull him out of management. Keith responded angrily, protesting that I was wrong and that he was a leader. I paused and said, "Let's work on this," and gave him the famous book Good to Great. I mentioned that he should pay close attention to the sections on Level 5 leadership. We parted from that meeting abruptly.

A month later, I checked in on him to ask how his reading was going. He responded curtly, "Fine." I bit my tongue and said, "Let's check in with each other in a couple of weeks." We met again just before the end of the year break and had the same short, gruff conversation.

Early in the new year, Keith burst into my office, closed the door, sat down, firmly slammed the palm of his hand on the table, and said, "I am angry." A bit bewildered, I asked him what was up. "I read the book carefully. I reread the sections on Level 5 leadership. You are right. I am not ready to be a leader." He paused for a moment and then continued. "I was just mimicking behavior from my old football coaches and some prior bosses I had. I thought this was how I should lead." He then asked if he could make just one request. "What is that?" I asked. "Can I just have any job here at all?"

I replied, "Keith, you are two-thirds of the way there. Self-awareness is the largest part of effective leadership. But before we get you back into leadership, let's spend about a year in some focused leadership development work where together we can learn the team philosophy." We did just that.

Later, I assigned Keith to a totally new area out of his normal data center role and into the role of a field support unit leader responsible for direct client interactions. Along the way, I began to observe him and his team, which over the next year blossomed into an extremely successful team. Later, his spouse shared with me that whatever I was doing with him had changed him at home, too. My response was simple: Keith had done the work. I only supplied the spark.

To catalyze high-functioning team play where teammates improve each other, IT leaders need to develop a team philosophy that encourages frank, vulnerable conversations on a regular basis. They must also develop managers who can openly share and calibrate their assessments of team members, while holding one another accountable for being good coaches and team leaders. CIOs, IT leaders, and all managers everywhere need to create more teams like this and have more of these team members promoted up and out to apply these concepts into their new roles.

Most leadership programs don't teach this way of building teams. Our instinct to protect our reputations and our reluctance to expose our vulnerabilities hold us back from exceptional team play. But we can build collaborative, supportive, and radically transparent teams. The exemplars are right in front of us—showing how great teamwork can move us from siloes to teams where every member lifts each other up and helps create shared experiences that last a lifetime.

Notes

1. Christopher Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior,(Harvard University Press, 2001).Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.↩
2. Shirley C. Sonesh et al., "What Makes an Expert Team? A Decade of Research," in The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, eds. K Anders Ericsson et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 506–532.Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.↩
3. Gustavo Razzetti, "How to Build Successful Teams,"Culture Design (blog), Fearless Culture, July 5, 2018.Jump back to footnote 3 in the text.↩
4. Name has been anonymized.Jump back to footnote 4 in the text.↩

Vince Kellen is Chief Information Officer at the Texas A&M University System.