Mastering Team Dynamics: Challenges, Rewards, and Resources

Introduction:  James Scouller spent 15 years researching and writing his trilogy of books, how to build winning teams again and again…  

He led three international Companies as CEO for eleven years before he founded his executive coaching practice, The Scouller Partnership in 2004. Today he coaches Leaders and their teams. James is the author of the bestselling book, The Three levels of Leadership: how to develop your leadership presence, knowhow and skill. He is the holder of two postgraduate coaching qualifications, and he has trained in applied psychology at the UK Institute of Psychosynthesis.

In addition, James holds a 4th Dan Black belt in Aikido. He lives in London with his wife Tricia.

Podcast episode Summary:  This episode explores what you need to know, what you need to do and how you do it to become a winning team. James shares his passion for teams and his quest to reveal what it takes to build real teams. It takes effort.

Questions asked & points made throughout the Episode:

o    How would you like to fill in the gaps, in terms of my introduction? James is an ex-CEO and that is an important part of his identity. James firmly believes that if individuals and team want to grow they need to address their unnoticed psychological obstacles. Peoples biggest obstacles are not to do with technical stuff, but it is more to do with psychological blocks. James believes that most people, if they can recognise these psychological blocks and work on them they can not only see greater improvement in work results but also greater levels of personal satisfaction. James has been working for nearly 48 years. 20 years ago he decided to set up on each own as a Coach, to train as a coach and along the way he wrote the book The three levels of leadership which he calls a self-help psychological manual and for the last 10 years his focus has been on writing the trilogy on teams. -that’s James story in a can.

o    What does your first book unearth in terms of the psychological principles you speak?  The first book has a role in the trilogy to describe what you really need to know about teams. What you need to know about teams is firstly the distinction between what a team is and is not, the definition of a team and the many alternative work group units. You also need to know about the psychological forces that are going on beneath the surface and if you do not know about them you are going to end up a victim of them and you will not act and succeed as a genuine team. The third big thing that you need to know is the commit, combust, combine model which James explains is a psychological model but it is also a practical model and a team can use it to determine which issue they are facing.

o    How do you help teams you work with through the collective forces and individual forces material you describe in your book? James is clear that he doesn’t, certainly not in the way he described in the book. He does not take teams into the dual forces model, it is a little academic and doesn’t give a team an immediate “so what”. James remains as a coach with his clients and not an educator, although now the books are out he may find himself having to spend more time in an educative role. What James really wants teams to know is that there is stuff going on beneath the surface. He will use a scaling question from 0-10 where he asks a team how well they can skilfully assert themselves in a conversation 1:1 and with the same question in a group. Typically the response is much lower in the group setting and this helps sensitise a group to the knowing that something more is going on in a group setting. This question and revealing is about as much as James will ever do with a team when it comes to the dual forces model. James will more readily use the other psychological model, Commit, Combust, Combine as well as the material from his second book with teams. James wants to make his sessions with teams as experiential & as developmental as possible. James will always explain The Team Progression Curve, which features in book one, which differentiates the different work groups such as task group, potential teams, pseudo teams, real teams and high performing teams. James find that most teams and in particular senior teams like this mapping. Teams get it, it intuitively makes sense and they see things that they didn’t know that there is a choice of unit and there is a trap called the Pseudo Team. On the same flip chart James will draw arrows on the ascent between the potential team to the real team that shows Commit, Combust and Combine. James is intent on allowing the teams he works with experience what each of these psychological elements feels like and it is only when he is bowing out of a team coaching assignment he will refer back to the explanation of the Commit Combine and Combine model. Instead James gives teams the team fixer model, book three so the team can self-diagnose. In summary James does not give his teams intellectual food on the models discussed in book one.

o    How did you find the synthesis of these three models helped you and your practice? I am a synthesiser. The world of applied psychology frustrates James because he finds that there are so many people describing the same things using different language. The work has an application for James because he can assess which issue is foremost in terms of commit, combust and combine to help him figure out which of the seven principles and action keys, in his 7 principles model described in book two will be most useful for the team and which to zoom in on. 

o    James what do listeners to this podcast need to know in terms of the interplay between the three models described in book one? The only thing that team members or team coaches need to take away from this conversation is that there is a model, a dual forces model that explains what is happening beneath the surface that is making it difficult for teams to form easily. James wrote book one to make the point that if a team does not take the material seriously enough it is unlikely to succeed in building teams. He wanted to create some pain to make the point. Book one is going to be of far more interest to psychologists and coaches than to teams other than to make this important point, you have to understand it takes effort to build winning teams. The Commit, Combust, Combine model is much better for teams to help them answer the question “what do I do with this information?”

o    Can you give the listeners a thumbnail sketch of each of the three elements in Commit, Combust and Combine? James starts by saying that the world has been fascinated with the idea of Psychological Safety and he will put it in perspective with respect to the C-C-C model. Trust and Psychological Safety are not the first immediate issue with a team. Commit, Combust, Combine is an attempt by James to take the brilliant work of William Schutlz who first came up with a model called FIRO-Elements in 1950, to make this work applicable to teams. Commit is the first issue for Teams. Commit is all about engagement. It asks am I psychologically in this team or am I not? This is not about whether you are physically present on a team, very often you do not have a choice but you do have a choice about whether or not you commit to the team. The commit issue gets revealed with these questions; what is this team going to be like?, is this going to be a good team, what do we have to do here? How does the Leader react to me? How are other people reacting to me? Can I sense a role that adds value to what I think this team is about? Do I feel included and noticed based on  the behaviour of other people towards me and on my experience to date? If team members can say, yes I understand why this team is here, I like the purpose of the team, I can be part of this and I feel noticed & valued and the leader pays attention to me and I can see a role for myself here, then they will likely declare “I’m in” That the simple way of describing the Commit issue and what has to happen to navigate through it successfully. This phase can go on indefinitely and many work groups do not get past the commit issue.

o    Is ambivalence the shadow of commit? Yes because if a team is unclear about the aim of a group, or they do not care about the aim, or they cannot see a role for them in the team then they are unlikely to be able to commit and the result is ambivalence.

o    How long does it take to help a team see their order of Commit? The elements commit, combust and combine do not work like a ladder or linearly. There can be recycling of issues. Moving through or getting commitment can take minutes or months especially with work teams who can often be so fuzzy about their purpose.

o    If we continue with Combust and Combine what do they both mean? When Commit is resolved enough and enough people declare “I’m in” this is when the combust issue emerges. Combust is essentially about Power. Now the team is asking itself questions like; how do we get things done here? How do we make decisions here?, Is that clear and acceptable? Individually questions are asked like; what is my part in those decisions?, how happy am I with my influence over those decisions? Combust is all around influence, power and role. In commit we are trying to sense our role and in combust we are trying to settle into a role that meets our power needs. Not everyone has the same power needs. Combust is resolved when people are happy with their role, influence and how decisions are made.

o    How was the choice of the word combust made? Is it indicative of this phase that combustion will be likely? James lets us into a secret about the naming of his model. He shares that Bruce Tuckman admitted that the real success of his model was because it has a neat rhyming to it and similarly James wanted a memorable model. Psychological Safety comes in at the third issue of the C-C-C model. James restates that in his view, based on research by William Schultz, Psychological Safety it is not the first issue. Combine is a bit more intricate because there are two sides to it. The first side of combine is about trust  & intimacy and the second side is about focus. This is where we have questions like; Is it safe to say what I am really thinking? Who can I trust here? Do I trust? Is it safe to be the real me or if I express myself naturally and honestly will I find myself being rejected. Is it ok to be open, to say what is really on my mind. The other side of combine is about focus. The first two and half parts of the C-C-C model has been about the individual. This second half of the combine issue is about the team or “we” This is where a team member asks if they are prepared to put the groups agenda ahead of their own. The focus needs to be on “we” if the team is to navigate Combine successfully.

o    How do you segue into your 7 principles model? If you apply these 7 principles in a sequence that makes sense in the situation you are in, you will nail the three psychological issues of Commit, Combust and Combine to form a winning team. The 7 principles and the action keys underneath them are designed to try to help a team address the issues described in the commit, combust & combine model.

o    How does resistance feature and where? Because James works mostly with senior teams he finds that they are likely to resist when team coaching is introduced. If you can work quickly on helping a team work on something to do with commit you will find the scales of resistance drop. There are occasions if teams have gotten into the habit of lying to each other and are well down the path of becoming a pseudo team, James will work to help the team become more genuine with each other, otherwise James will start with a team’s motivating purpose. It’s a great piece of work to starting being honest with each other and feeling valued & noticed and feeling that their collective objective is something they care about.

o    What is the difference between a team’s basic purpose & their motivating purpose? The motivating purpose comes from James first book where he describes Leadership as paying attention to four dimensions, and the first of the four dimensions is motivating purpose. A motivating purpose for an organisation is a vision and for a team a motivating purpose Is their number one goal. The distinction between basic purpose and a motivating purpose is an essential distinction. So many thought leaders and books blur the two. A basic purpose and a motivating purpose are connected and distinct. A basic purpose answers the question “why do we exist” and a team needs to get that clear because it signals what kinds of skills and people are required to fulfil the purpose. Most teams that James works with do know what their basic purpose is and it is not a problem for the team, however on two occasions he has met teams where the basic purpose was not clear and its affects were devastating. James has described the two cases in his second book. Sometimes it’s enough that a basic purpose says something like “our job is to lead the company to enjoy continued success and growth” A motivating purpose brings urgency, it is much more localised and specific. It answers the question, what is the most important thing we have to get done together in the next 3-12 months. This purpose will reflect the basic purpose but it is much more here and now. A motivating purpose is a device for building a team. You are not going to have commitment if nobody knows exactly what they are committing to and typically the basic purpose is not enough. If you have a sensational basic purpose like “to get Tara Nolan to the moon by Christmas and bring her back safely” that is a serious purpose or for a project team it could be “to save the business from going under by finding €15 million in savings by the end of February” That is a basic purpose that can function as a motivating purpose. A basic purpose if often more philosophical.  A Motivating Purpose is very specific and urgent expressed in emotional language, with no more than three metrics and targets against these metrics and you check to see that team members care about its achievement and if they don’t they will feel pretty awful they will feel that they have let themselves down. As a device developing a motivating purpose helps a team speed through the commit issue.

o    What is Leadership in your 7P model? It is the third principle that James calls shared flexed principled leadership. Essential for Leaders to grasp. The word leadership is a massive problem for executives. They have a very unhelpful mental model about Leadership. It is not a person, an office or a role, it is a process, it is in fact a four dimensional process, the process of paying attention to a motivating purpose, task progress and results, upholding group unity and paying attention to individual nuances. This definition according to James is very significant. People need to make a shift in the way they see leadership. The way Leaders see leadership is making it difficult to lead a team and the way team members see leadership makes it difficult for them to share leadership. Asked to define leadership most people say something reasonable like, “leading a team of people to realise its purpose” James will then ask and “how useful is that definition in guiding you about what you do and how you do it? To which he will invariably get the response “not helpful at all” When James digs further to probe the definition of leadership he gets answers like “leadership is done by people with remarkable capabilities who get sensational results” This definition affected James when he was a CEO and it has affected every CEO client he has met and sadly we are not aware of it consciously. This definition sets up leaders to feel an incredible inadequacy and it can set off defensive behaviours like becoming task obsessed, micro managing, or over criticising because leaders are simply terrified of failing.

Leaders and the people they are trying to lead are conflating leadership with leader. Shared Leadership as a principle recognises that there is an official leader, who in difficult circumstances will make the ultimate decision if the team is stuck and everyone is there to move things along in terms of the four dimensions mentioned. Shared leadership means everyone is paying attention to the four dimensions  of leadership which for James means motivating purpose, task progress and results,  team unity and individual nuances. Interestingly The SAS, Rangers, Special forces in the USA have got the idea of shared leadership that is so obvious on a sports team. Hierarchy means nothing to these entities. In business we haven’t yet grasped the idea of shared leadership.

o    James what keeps us attached to this idea of Leadership? The false idea of what leadership means and its conflation with the leader and the second thing is that people are unaware of the distinction between performance groups and real teams.

o    James in your third book you call out your team fixer approach to apply the material from book two, what surprised you? How difficult it was to answer the frequently asked questions. James wrote answers to 40 and about 5 or 6 were really tricky.

o    What is the current state of teams and what would you like to see happen? There are a couple of myths I would like to bust and a trap I would like everyone to know. Myth number one: Team building is not rocket science and we do not have to put great effort into it. Team building is tougher than rocket science, you do have to put effort into the process. Putting a rocket into space can be solved with mathematics. Teams are comprised of human beings, different human beings with free will. Members can change their minds at any time and you have these subterranean forces causing havoc. Building winning teams is demanding. Why do so many elite sports team leaders gets fired every season? This work is difficult and these leaders, sports leaders have been learning the art for years unlike business leaders. Myth number two: Team building is not easy to do consistently. If you put the effort in you will get better results and you will enjoy the experience The trap is the trap of a pseudo team. Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith came up with the  term sixty years ago. Most people do not know it or have forgotten it and James has resurrected it. James invites us to visualise the team progression curve and to see that between the potential team and the real team there is marshland or quicksand. This represents the pseudo team trap. A pseudo team trap is a common one. They are not rare and probably more common the more senior you go. The pseudo team chases the idea of being a genuine team, not because they have a collective something that they have to achieve together but because they assume it is what you do in the 21st century. These types of teams put all the emphasis on teamwork, being emotionally supportive, asking supportive questions being nice to each other. Essentially this team is pursuing harmony above all else and they end up achieving poor results because they lose their focus and they give teams a bad name. Pseudo teams do not have a highly motivating performance goal that demand they pool their efforts.

o    How would you like to close. This is not an easy area. This work is difficult and it is why top team sports coaches get fired. Accept this work is difficult. If you put the effort in you can learn the art. You have to practice. You can realise that working on a team can become one of the most interesting and joyful of experiences. You have to put effort in and there are things to learn but you can do it!

o    How can we be in touch with you? www.leadershipmasterysuite.com

and for listeners who are interested if you add /GOT you will go to a welcome page where James has offered sets of tools to download for free.

Resources shared across this podcast 

o    www.leadershipmasterysuite.com

o    www.leadershipmasterysuite.com/GOT

o    How to build winning teams again and again – a trilogy by James Scouller