Are you really on the same page ? Take care of the mantras

How many times have you felt the energy of the discussion in a team shift, and the desire to ‘just move on’ takes over? Many times, that is exactly the right thing to do as you would certainly be flogging a dead horse to continue. However, does that really close out the issue you were discussing or does it leave it hanging on in the background? For some less critical things, that might be fine, but be careful when those things hanging around are really just waiting to bite you again in the future.

I have had the privilege and pleasure to work with a great number of teams, through consulting and project teams and especially sales and marketing teams over many tears. One thing I learnt really early on, in the project and consulting environment, is that it is really crucial to nail the upfront work that is needed to establish that project for success. If you did not get that part properly thought through – the scope, the expectations, the people, the timelines, the risks – you invariably paid the price down the line with problems that were harder to control. In fact, whenever I started any new project with a new team, I took the mindset that the hardest work is up front and generally upped the intensity of my own role in getting established during those opening stages.

Latterly, I have come across little phrases and mantras that have crept into teams that are well intentioned but have not necessarily yielded the outcomes that were first envisaged. Here’s my favourite “we are on the same page”. A good friend and work colleague of mine found ourselves facing exactly this phrase in a recent discussion with a client, whilst looking at their reflections of the work they were doing. In reality, similar statements taken separately from each of the team members of what they were trying to achieve together were actually quite easy to unpick into areas where they  potentially meant quite different things. While these differences might seem small at first, in typically complicated environments that we all work in, even small differences can lead to large long term differences in expectations and outcomes – with inefficiencies, frustrations and even failure becoming more likely. It’s the classic snowball effect over time.

I’ll give you another example. Ask two or three people to reflect one what they perceive is meant by a working culture of openness, transparency and respect. Just have them give you a few words or phrases of what this means to them individually and I guarantee you’ll find they have different perspectives and priorities on what this really means to them. In this case, being “on the same page” means we agreed on the same words – but being truly agreed would mean understanding what we actually mean behind those words and then sharing a common sense of what we mean together.

I have another favourite well intentioned, but potentially fatal mantra. “Progress over Perfection”. This one I particularly like because in fact it’s very much the way I like to work. I would much rather iterate and improve, make progress, keeping moving, rather than get stuck and stalled. However, here’s where it can go wrong – when the phrase is trotted out mainly because the issue is a ‘bit boring’ or ‘hard’, and it doesn’t really want to be addressed by the group. This is where I believe you need to reflect on the issue you are facing and, just for a moment, decide on whether this is really a ‘just move on’ moment or something you really need to deal with beyond a cursory close. Whether you deal with it right now or agree to come back to it, if it’s important enough it’s certainly not a good idea to put it to the side, ignore it and never really revisit it again.

Going back to the principles of setting yourself up for success. One of those areas that is typically quite hard to do, but well worth the effort, is to properly prepare the working foundations of your team. Those things that lie just beneath the surface, but which deliver the team mindset that prepares everyone for success. These are the values and behaviours, the inherent beliefs, expectations, the shared sense of purpose and clarity of direction. With these underpinning the goals and objectives that you put into timelines and plans, you will be able to navigate the choppy waters that inevitably come when things don’t quite go as planned, but also the successes along the way that you can celebrate together. I guarantee that you really do need to be properly “on the same page” in doing this – which means taking the time to understand the words and plans you are writing together, and how your team really feels in taking them on and what that means in the way they will work together to achieve them.

Here’s a great example of another of mantra that Richard Tyler uses in his book “Jolt”, and which I personally loved when I was working with him a few years ago. “Dare to Start”, or more specifically “Dare to Begin before you are Ready”. This is the idea of not waiting for that perfect moment before you begin. Allow creativity to evolve and upgrade as you go, and don’t get stuck before you even begin through hesitation and uncertainty. This, for me, has been a hugely powerful mantra and unlocked a few pathways personally for me. For teams, it’s a great one to work with too but here’s the thing – rather like “ progress over perfection”, just make sure you’ve done your homework to accept that failures along the way can be a natural way of working, a way of learning rather than applying pressure and fear, and that you really do want and can accept the energy of this mantra together. I can guarantee that if you have not baked into your teams adopted ways of working - that together you will find the way through - then you might be surprised that you get something quite different to what you intended. Done right, with the right foundations in place, this can be a hugely powerful force for everyone involved.

In the end, mantra’s and team phrases that you can bond to can be massively useful in building purposeful teams. We should use them, absolutely. Use them with preparation and care and you’ll be rewarded. Throw them around, make them sound smart, use them like candy, and you might not get what you want…