What people get wrong about teambuilding

A former colleague of mine, Elizabeth Ayer sent a spicy mastodon post into the world asking "if diverse teams perform better, why aren't we seeing them radically outperform non-diverse teams?"

I think the question presupposes a lot of things, but I'm going to sidestep all of that and just get down to brass tacks about what people get wrong about teambuilding.

First, it's the new year and that means it's college football bowl season. These are exhibition games steeped in tradition dating back decades, but they're also playoff games that determine the national champion of college football. Whether you're a sports fan or not, there are fewer more diverse things than a college sports team. I'm not talking only about racial diversity, we're talking schematic diversity, because there are hundreds of college football teams – 236 in Division 1 – and because everyone can't recruit the "best" players, it means you have to figure out how to win with the guys you have. Also, when everyone has top-tier talent, the margins between winning on talent alone are very small and so you need other advantages. Coaching is one of them. Indiana University (in Bloomington, Indiana where I once lived) is having a historic run as the #1 football team in the country right now, famously behind a coaching staff who don't even have the "best" recruits, they're beating people by coaching them up and emphasizing core values that, to hear their coach (Curt Cignetti) tell it, it's the same principles he's embodied since its years at lower level college football.

I've been fortunate throughout my career to have managers who have empowered me, seeing my potential and nurtured it. I also had a lot of opportunities to perform "above my station" earlier in my career that set the tone for me moving forward.

By the time I experienced a challenging manager intent on breaking my spirit, I'd been built up by so many other people that it was both hard to recognize, but it also made me think about how different my entire career trajectory would've been had that manager met me earlier in my career when I was less certain.

I think the mistake of treating management like a performance rather than exercise is assuming that you can just give someone a title, a few books, a slidedeck training & maybe a 1:1 and assume they'll just absorb management. It's more than that, you have to be willing to invest in people. Not everyone responds to this, nor does everyone care as much as you do. That's okay, though.

Last year, I moved between contexts a lot. Whether it's was leading a design division by day, coaching high school at night, or various board and volunteer efforts (including the Portland Digital Corps) there was a consistent theme in achieving the goals of building strong teams. As a coach, I feel confident in my ability to get the most out of people, but this isn't a slow process. You have to understand them. Pattern recognition and intentionality, you're either interested in this work or not

I joke sometimes that winning high school state championships gets built in the pre-season when I order the right uniforms, and during the year when we make sure the snacks are consistently good. This is a joke because obviously there's a lot of work players put into making themselves better, and that we as a coaching staff do to ensure they're prepared through practices and game-day coaching. But again, everyone has practices and at least one coach. The differentiators are those little things that build trust in moments you can't simulate—like a state tennis final. When someone is looking to you for answers, you need to know them well enough to know what message will land.

Changing contexts for me is only possible because the throughline in my approach is consistent. The language and the details do change, but the intentionality remains key. Being in charge helped me approach team building differently, because you're dealing with a lot more people at each rung you move up, but I used the principles as a design manager to inform my leadership as a director, and much of the culture of my junior varsity tennis programs 15 years ago, would be recognizable if they saw my varsity teams now.

Teams don't build themselves. Instead of asking why teams of any shape don't perform well, we need to look within ourselves and organizations to ask whether we're providing the tools, structures and culture necessary to sustain winning teams.