10 Goals and Practices for Leading Teams: No 6. Make performance a team game

Introduction

One common mistake inter-dependent team leaders make is thinking that mutual accountability means holding each other accountable for individual effort. It’s not. Mutual accountability is recognising that if a teammate falls short, everyone suffers. Making an individual account for their individual effort only goes so far. And too often it goes too far and destroys psychological safety in the team. 

What makes the difference in teams is stepping in to provide support - no-one works alone. In teams where everyone has different skills and roles, support might simply be empathy, a listening ear, or coaching through a problem. Where the skills allow, teammates can take the pressure of a teammates workload. Or it might mean rejigging the team so that what was thought to be a single person’s job, is dealt with differently. The guiding star for all this is the team's purpose and the overall objective rather than simply who’s responsible for what. See articles No 1 and No 3 - links below.

The Goal

For the team to learn how to perform together, with each other, for each other. They then feel psychologically safer because of the team, not despite it. Team leadership is enabling the enablers.

The Practice

Monitor progress, invite the team to call out what’s working well and what’s falling short (see #7). Don’t always “take it off-line” to discuss with individuals separately. Keep issues on the table for the whole team - for them to understand, explore, experiment with and solve, together.

If you wish to reward stand-out individual performance, then focus on rewarding those who help the team be more than the sum of its parts: those who step in to help, provide the empathy, the listening ear, the coaching conversation; not those who only looked successful because they delivered their individual part in isolation.

Links to the other nine Goals and Practices for Leading Teams:

No 1. Be clearer on the team's purpose

No 2. Appreciate team dynamics - and use them to team better

No 3. Let's ditch SMART objectives and replace them with OKRs

No 4. Empathise with our stakeholders - more, with skill

No 5. Don't motivate your team - create the conditions for them to motivate themselves

No 6. Make performance a team game

No 7. Agree on how to disagree

No 8. Don't delegate, or empower - coach

No 9. Let the team engage with uncertainty

No 10. Learn to self-manage - together