David Ferrucci, leader of the Watson artificial intelligence project , has just written an article for the New York Times in which he describes how he pulled together the multidisciplinary research team behind this great achievement. He had to overcome the researchers’ natural inclinations to stick with their own individual projects and to foster an environment in which they collaborated intensively and shared ideas. He won them over with the vision of how they together could achieve something grand that none of them alone would ever manage. He reinforced the team collaboration with what he terms the “war room”, where the researchers from all the different disciplines worked together in the same big office.

The grand result was due to many insignificant breakthroughs, as if each researcher was delivering one tessera for the overall mosaic.

While winning a quiz show is impressive, it’s just a milestone. IBM is already investigating how Watson’s ability to understand language and crunch data can be put to good use to suggest diagnoses and treatment options to doctors. If you would like to know more about this research, visit IBM’s own site about Watson.
Ferrucci has the last word: “In the end, the hero was the team, not any individual member or algorithm.”

Step 1 Make sure they understand that they belong

When people join a team they are usually both optimistic about the new challenge and at the same they’re wondering whether they’ll fit in. You need to remove this question mark. When I moved to ABB in Switzerland, it was a big adventure for me: new industry (gas turbines), new company, new country, new language (Swiss-German). On my first day, my new boss assigned me to one of his long-time engineers to show me the ropes, both inside and outside work. This had a powerful effect, as well as ensuring that I could be quickly productive. Clients with whom I’ve shared the story, report to me that positive effects of helping their people to settle quickly.

Once they’re settled, it is also important to give praise and recognition, when due and to ensure that they are included in any social events you or your team organise.

Steps 2 and 3 Tell them where you’re going and help them understand how they can contribute to this

One of the main differences between a team and a working group is that in the latter each person is basically working on their own and the output is the sum of individual efforts. In a well-functioning team, you can achieve more than just the individual outputs through a high degree of cooperation. One way to do this is to make sure that they understand where you are taking your research, what the long-term focus is and how their work fits into this picture.

Having such a common goal provides a focus for all activities in the team. When your people see that their work is not only serving their own interest, but is also contributing to something bigger, this helps to provide their work with more meaning, which also helps their motivation and energy levels.

Step 4 Ensure they have the skills required to contribute

There’s not much worse than being asked to do something and you have no clue how to tackle it. There’s not much better than being given a something you don’t know how to do and being given the appropriate coaching, tips or training to complete the task. I spent a year in a compressor design team to help me better understand how research could contribute to the product. On my first day I was asked to solve a technical issue about which I had no clue. Upon noticing my mild panic, Wolfgang stepped in and told me he’d show me how to work out the solution after the meeting.

Step 5 Give and receive regular feedback

It’s important regularly to give your staff feedback on their performance – this is one of the key contributing factors to high energy levels at work.  I’ve written a blog article on how to give feedback.

If you take this one step further and establish a feedback culture in your team, the multiplicative effect is powerful as the Johari window shows. Everything about a person can be assigned to one of the four panes; a team’s effectiveness can be estimated by looking at the size of the Public pane. When someone receives feedback, their blind spot pane reduces and their public increases in size. This means that more of their qualities are known and can be accessed by the full team.  In addition, any of their annoying behaviours have been addressed before they start to generate conflict.

A feedback culture usually has a positive impact on trust levels in the team. When trust rises, then people are more willing to move something from private to public to help the team further. For example, many years ago, my boss’ boss was told to run a summer school on fluid mechanics. This was new land to him and he asked for input. I told him about my experiences growing up in my parents’ international summer school in Dublin (which had been in my private pane) and got the task to set up a series of CFD summer schools close to Oxford.

I’d like to hear about how many of these you have in place and what their impact is. I’d like even more to hear about other ways you have to get your team moving.

Level 0 never made it onto their scale, yet it seems to have been a beloved strategy in the financial services industry in recent years. The presence of Level 0  is a sign that a company needs urgent organizational developmental help.

Level 1 describes behavior you would prefer to eliminate from your own working habits, as well as those of your subordinates. People who indulge in this have no control over their time or the content of their work – it increases the chances that the working day turns out to be full of (stressful) surprises. Leaders who encourage this behavior get what they ask for: overworked, poorly motivated yes-persons.

In classical management (and the scale was written in 1975), Level 2 is also a candidate for banning. Oncken & Wass recommended that managers never indulge in this behavior, since it can surrender control over the content of one’s job. However, understanding of leadership has developed over the past thirty years, so we need to be careful here. An unthinking, “what do I do now, boss?” deserves to disappear. However, thoughtful questioning to elicit understanding of a problem and to identify possible next steps belongs in any leader’s toolkit.

Many managers, when they first see this scale, state that it’s impossible to get subordinates even to Level 3. In practice, it’s not too difficult: As long as you have basic mutual respect, you only need to make a habit of asking people for their suggestions to get them into the habit of bringing suggestions to you, and not just a problem for you to solve. They’ll get the hang of it and save themselves the routine question.

As trust and understanding of how each other works develops, subordinates will naturally arrive at Levels 4 and 5 over time. Part of this development involves exposing people to your thinking processes in decision-taking and values, so that they have a good idea what’s expected; they won’t get it by osmosis or telepathy.  I recently spoke with one senior manager who was frustrated that his secretary was not screening his e-mails adequately. It turns out, he expected her to know which ones deserved his attention, which ones should be diverted to other people, and which ones binned. He has now scheduled some time with her, so that they can go through his in-box together and she can understand how he would like her to deal with his mails.

At first, many people don’t see a problem with Level 6. Indeed, when managers are suffering from data overload (too many mails, messages, meetings), it can be tempting to allow staff to drift towards Level 6. However, you lose the overview of what’s going on, which impairs your ability to lead. One client, Director of Sales & Marketing, was delighted about how much initiative his staff showed.  It was only when his department began to miss its targets that he realized his sales team was neither sharing important customer information with him nor each other. During their next meeting, they looked together at how their enthusiasm and independence was turning counterproductive, and moved back to Level 5. Sales improved in a tough market.

Where are you – or your staff – on this initiative scale?

As she points out near the end of the article, maybe a typology doesn’t offer the best way to resolve the issue in this team. On reading this, two related approaches occurred to me spontaneoulsy: the first from Moreno’s theory of roles, the second from Rosenberg’s non-violent communication.

In Role Theory, many of the problems in the workplace occur because people have unpoken expectations of their colleagues. There’s no need to mention these expectations, since “everyone knows …”. However, the other person, operating from a different mindset and, possibly, personality, doesn’t know what is expected of them. Simply surfacing these expectations and addressing them gets rid of most conflicts. Responses to expectations fall into three categories:

• “I’m doing that already, good to know it’s important to you.”
• “That’s news! … Now that I know, I’ll take it on board.”
• “Grow up! That’ll only happen in your dreams!”

The third response is best understood as the starting point for a negotiation.

Non-Violent Communication (NVC) gets to the same place from a different starting point. Instead of expectations, it focuses on needs and strategies to meet those needs. In many a team conflict, the needs of one or more parties are not being met. NVC provides a framework for each person to identify their needs and also the strategies they follow to meet their needs. It’s important to separate these two. For example, I may have a need for Connection and choose to fulfill it (my strategy)  by discussing my work with a particular colleague.  If that person is not interested, then tension is predictable.

I’m looking forward to learning more from the rest of the discussion on this blog post over at Sandy’s blog.

I asked her how she wanted to give the feedback. Like a first attempt by most of us, the message was vague, general – and it hurt. (I checked this last piece by letting Jane imagine she were Mary for a moment and then repeating her own words back to her: she winced!) I coaxed her to describe more precisely what it was that Mary did that triggered Jane’s frustration. (This took a couple of iterations.) Then I asked how Jane felt and if she could imagine saying this to Mary. New land!

Finally, I asked her if she knew how she could make the suggestions without Mary snapping. Puzzled silence. I suggested she ask Mary directly, how Jane could make the suggestions.

The next morning Jane told me that the two of them had had a quiet word during the evening. Mary apologised for blocking the feedback. Jane delivered what she had practiced. Mary let it sink in, mentioned that Jane’s reporting on her emotions helped Mary understand what was happening in their interaction and she came up with a suggestion that was acceptable to both of them.

So far, so good. Have you ever asked yourself how to deal with a jerk on your team? One method is to set a boundary, to say that jerkish behaviour will not be tolerated “We have a no-jerk rule around here”. The acid test comes, when someone acts like a jerk. Unless you call them on it and, where appropriate, discipline them or even fire them, the behaviour becomes established as acceptable. If you want to use the last option, you need to weave the rule into your employment contracts.

This is not a call for a wimps paradise. It is possible to “fight fair”, a.k.a discuss constructively. One way to encourage this is to treat your staff like adults and avoid talking down to them like children. The example starts from the top and will be adopted by all staff pretty quickly. You can accelerate this process with targeted training.

You will find more ideas in the article and even more in the book itself.

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Through this involvement in formulating the goal, staff are prepared to do everything in their power to help achieve the target. It is no longer something handed down “from above”.

Many managers find it difficult to let go and to involve their staff actively in the goal-setting. If this sounds familiar to you, then think for a few moments about what is holding you back. Usually it has something to do with fear. How real is this fear? What could really go wrong? Maybe everything is starting to look dark. Now just imagine that you can feel the relief of knowing that you don’t have to have all the answers yourself.

The final decision rests with you and at the same time you can find out what potential is in your staff.