Unity Archives - Team Leadership Culture

Truth, Love, Beauty, Unity.

You’ve heard this several times from me as a saying from Aristotle. I actually use it for building teams.

Truth – be honest with each other and the team
Love – Show respect for each and every member of the team.
Beauty – Don’t make things complicated, make them simple. (I’ve talked about the beauty of Einstein’s genius. It was not his mathematical genius that helped him stand out as a pillar in his field. It was his ability to simplify things.)
Unity – Work as a team. Build unity.

In one sense we can view these as a progression. By bringing out the truth, showing respect for individuals, ideas, and opinions, and boiling things down to the simplest of forms: we can then reach unity. This doesn’t create uniformity; it creates unity through diversity.

Another Ancient Text

Many of us have heard the story about the Tower of Babel. Most scholars put the writing of this book as much as a thousand years before Aristotle. Most of us think this story is about the people of earth at that time building a tower so that they could become gods of their universe. The reason this might have been possible is that the text says they had one language and the same words. They had uniformity. Earlier text indicated that the intent was for a diverse language and people. The children of Noah (after the great flood) spread about the world and created different tribes and languages. The intent was diversity.

The story of the Tower of Babel was about building a nation with one language. In the passage from Genesis 11, God once again caused the nation to disperse into different tribes and different languages. The goal was always diversity!

Uniformity vs Unity

These are close words but they mean different things.

Uniform: The same in all cases and at all times. Unchanging in form or character.

Unity: The state of being in full agreement: Harmony.

The keyword in uniform is “unchanging.” Nothing changes. Beliefs don’t change. Arguments don’t create change. Different beliefs and opinions don’t change. Referring to Aristotle’s statement, there is no need for Love (Respect) because nothing is going to change. Without respect for other beliefs and opinions, nothing changes.

The keyword in unity is “Harmony.” Have you ever been part of a choir, quartet, or jazz band/quartet? I’ve been part of a choir off and on for many years. I sing bass. My sound and notes are very different from the altos and other sections of the choir. But when we join all of our voices together, we create a wonderful and enjoyable harmony.

Have you ever listened to a great jazz quartet? There is no written music, just great blended sound. In fact, any instrument may take the lead at any time. All of the other instruments listen, blend in, and create a great harmony together. They create unity.

Uniformity or Unity

We’re seeing a great deal of uniformity in our nation at the moment. Because of the lack of respect, there is no change, there is no listening. There are only hard stances with an unwillingness to be open (and show respect for) other beliefs and opinions. There is no ability to build a great nation in unity.

Business Teams have the ability to overcome this uniformity and create unity. Business teams have the ability to be together because they are smaller and closer—although I worry about virtual teams. Business teams have the ability to share beliefs and opinions and listen to each other to build unity.

Our nation has less of a chance because of the desire to push an agenda to create a uniform belief (at least at a tribe level).

Build Unity

Build unity where you can. I believe it’s easier at a team level because of the personal connections and a fewer number of members. But, where ever you can, build unity on a national level. This means examining your own “unchanging” views and being open to others’ believes and opinions.

Unity can save us from ourselves.

A new year, a new series. Ready to talk teams?

When Wayne Hastings and I began writing our first book, Trust Me, I assumed we would cover all three areas that I focus on, building Teams, Growing Leaders, and creating Cultures—TLC. As we began to work with the publisher, it became obvious that the first book was going to focus on the leadership area. The team and cultures would have to wait their turn to be covered in future books. The good news is that over the years I’ve learned more about what makes great teams work.

A few of the things that I’ve learned about teams include:

Hitting the sweet spot of TLC
Team is the leading element
Being a great leader, functioning as part of a great team and creating great cultures makes you happy!

Hitting the Sweet Spot

When I formed my company in 2000 (I had been in the business for ten years at that point), I wanted to give it a name that described what we did. Reflecting on the previous ten years, one pattern that emerged was that new clients hired me at one of three entry points:

Leadership

I was being asked to help improve the leadership skills of existing or up-and-coming leaders.

Or a slight variation was the young hotshot contributor that the company thought would make a great leader someday but was currently advancing based on some great competency and had not learned the role of being a leader.

Or sometimes I was being asked to help save a derailed leader who had been in the organization for a long time but had gotten off track.

Team building

Team building was the second point of entry into a client. The work wasn’t necessarily related to a leader (at least in their mind), but the team wasn’t performing well.

Many times, these were existing teams where:

Productivity had fallen off or never existed.
There was a conflict or rift in the team that they couldn’t get past.
The team was facing dramatic change they weren’t handling well.

Sometimes they were ad hoc teams where:

They were pulled together for a short-term project that needed a quick launch to get productivity levels high as soon as possible.

A side story to that scenario was my first taste of team building when I was a young engineer. My company brought in a consulting firm (HRDA—Human Resource Development Association) to help facilitate communication, understanding, and decision making between ourselves (the constructor) and the design engineers. The process was called “Face-to-Face.”

Both companies had good people. We were all good engineers but weren’t communicating or more importantly, understanding each other. I began to realize that understanding relied more on good relationships and character than it did on competency.

Corporate Culture

My third possible entry point is corporate culture. When I started in the business in the early 1990s, the idea that you had to understand, pay attention to, and mold corporate cultures wasn’t well known, understood, or accepted. By the early 2000s, it had become an accepted fact.

Those seemed to be the solid entry points for me to provide services and add value to all the companies I worked with in those early years of my consulting work—leadership, team building, corporate culture.

Team is the leading element

After ten years I could see that my three entry points were leaders, teams, and cultures. The challenge was what do I name my new company that reflected those points?

Leaders—Teams—Cultures LTC

Culture—Leaders—Team CLT

Teams—Culture—Leaders TCL

Teams—Leaders—Culture TLC!!

TLC, that was it. Team Leadership Culture, LLC. That was my new company, TLC!

I must admit that I still thought of leadership being at the core and many of my presentations still reflected that belief. But how could I pass on TLC, so that became the name of my company, Team Leadership Culture, LLC.

What’s interesting is that over time, I’ve come to believe that great teams are the essential lead element. I’ve seen more corporate failures caused by the lack of teamwork than either of the other two elements. Great teamwork can overcome mediocre leadership and lack of a good culture, but neither leadership or great culture can overcome a bad team.

TLC is indeed the right sequence.

Happiness

One of my friends is Jim Berlucchi, who is the executive director for The Spitzer Center. Jim introduced me to the four levels of happiness that were described by Aristotle and greatly expanded into a mental model of leadership by Dr. Spitzer.

Aristotle concluded that what makes us uniquely human is our pursuit of happiness. That is why our forefathers included it in the Declaration of Independence.

It seems even more visible when we see the opposite. Despair and depression seem to occur when there is a loss of hope or happiness. If the ability to pursue happiness is lost, depression fills the void.

The pursuit of Happiness has Four Levels

Level 1 drives our basic needs for food, money, and sustenance — anything that relates to the senses. Without level 1, we don’t survive.

Level 2 drives us to win, improve, get better, achieve, grow. Without level 2, we don’t thrive.

Level 3 is focused on providing blessings to others. These are the elements of our book “Trust Me” which provide great leadership.

Humility – “I don’t have all the ”
Development – “I want us to grow through the ”
Focus – “Let’s not get ”
Commitment – “We’re looking for the greater ”
Compassion – “I care about what you think and who you ”
Integrity – “I will not hold back, I will share who I am and what I ”
Peacemaking – “We want divergent perceptions leading to ”
Endurance – “We will endure to a committed ”

Level 4 is described by Aristotle as

Truth
Love
Purpose
Beauty
Unity

These become the elements of great teams and deliver the greatest level of happiness.

Over the next several blog posts, we will be exploring each of these “Team” elements in more detail.

The team is the sweet spot. The team is what makes you happier. The team is what provides the greatest value to your organization. A great team will provide the greatest of memories when you think back over your career and lifetime.

Unity

Unity Through Diversity