Roy was pensive. "You mean, you think, that my team only resists my ideas when I tell them they are wrong?"

I looked at Roy. "I don't know. What could you do differently to test that?"

"How can you test it, if they really are wrong?" Roy challenged.

"Let's assume they ARE wrong," I matched. "In what way can we move them toward your idea without telling them they are wrong?"

"Oh, you want me to coddle them," Roy pushed back. "I'm sorry, that's not me."

"I don't want you to coddle them. I want you to challenge them, with the same energy you are showing me, now. In what way can we challenge their thinking without telling them they are wrong?"

"I understand that it would be helpful to know about Julio's value system," Nelson pushed back. "But what am I supposed to ask him. Are you honest?"

"My guess is that he would say, yes. Yes and no questions seldom give us much information that's really useful. And remember, this would be most helpful if it's about the work he is doing."

Nelson was still puzzled. "I am supposed to ask him how he values the work?"

"He won't understand the question if you ask it that way. Try these questions.

• Before we ship this product to the customer, what is the most important thing we have to remember?
• When the customer receives this product, what is the most important thing they look for?
• When we show up at the customer's location, what do you think the customer expects from us?
• Before we leave a customer location, what is the most important thing we have to remember?
• When you look around at your team mates, thinking about their work, what do you find most helpful to you?
• What do you look for in a new person joining the team?

"All these questions will give you insight into Julio's value system related to the work." -TF

"Do you, as the Manager, sit with your team and talk about the decisions they have to make as they collect this data?" I asked.

"Well, we go over how to fill out the information on the form. We have training every month on changes to the form or changes in the way it is processed," Arlene replied.

"Have you ever had a team member follow all the instructions, complete every box on the form, but at the end of the day, there were problems?"

Arlene started laughing, nodding her head. "Oh, yes!" she blurted. "We had this one guy, we had to let him go, finally. And it was difficult, because he did everything he was supposed to, but he was such a mess, disorganized. It was all last minute with him. I mean, he would get the filings in just under the wire, but the underwriter, who had to approve the paperwork was always kicking it back. In the end, the customer would not be approved and they would be mad at us. But remember, all we do is the paperwork, we don't approve the underwriting."

"That's not true," I countered. "You could tell the difference between poor performance and good performance with this guy. As his manager, when did you know you had a problem?"

"Oh, it was the first week. You could just tell," Arlene explained.

"And, how long did it take before your company terminated him?"

Arlene hesitated, "Eighteen months. But we had to give him a chance. We had to make sure he had the proper training and that he didn't just get a batch of problem customers."

"He didn't fail because of the training," I replied. "And customers are always problem customers, so that's not it. And he did not fail because you didn't tell him what to do, the prescribed duties. He failed in the discretionary part, the decisions he had to make as he approached the work. These are the decisions that managers never talk about with their team. And it is these decisions that make the difference between success or failure." -TF

The past couple of weeks, we have been looking at teams and accountability, some great comments.

Don writes:

Team responsibility is a nonsensical theory developed by academics that have never functioned in the work place. No one is ever responsible for the ultimate outcome of the group or the damage done to the company. Every major crash in American business can be tracked to every level of management claiming they were never informed of a problem by their "team". Group rule equals wasted time in the form of unproductive meetings, unrealistic goal setting and the pushing of responsibility to the lowest level. If American businesses doesn't wake up, this team business format will be called the predecessor to economic depression.

Colleen writes:

I work for an internet marketing company with team members all around the U.S. We've never even met in person, know very little about each other, but somehow we accomplish a lot together. I guess it's about the quarterbacking, huh. Just a matter of doing the task you're assigned and letting the quarterback do the coordinating.

The essence of accountability. The manager is to be held accountable for the performance of the team. This simple concept is a game changer. -TF

"At first, this group dynamics stuff looked interesting, you know, everyone together under a team incentive bonus. It sounded exciting in the seminar, but in real life, this is painful," Naomi explained. "The worst part, is we're not getting any work done."

"So, who is accountable?" I asked.

"I think everyone has to take a small part of the responsibility for the team not cooperating," Naomi replied.

"No, I don't mean who is responsible for the mess. I mean, who is accountable for the goal?" I insisted.

"The goal? We're not even talking about the goal. We are just talking about cooperating better together, as a team."

"Perhaps, that's the problem," I suggested. "You are spending so much time trying to cooperate as a group, that you forgot, we are trying to get some work done around here.

"Is it possible," I continued, "that you have been misdirected to think more about shared fate and group dynamics than you have about your team. A team is not a group. A group may be bound together by shared fate, but a team is bound together by a goal. Stop thinking about group dynamics and start thinking about the goal. That's why we are here in the first place." -TF