Manila, 10 Aug 2022 — Team tension is productive, friction is not. How to overcome it?

Story

It happened in 2013. Liane Davey, an organizational psychologist, was called by a CEO to help him solve a crisis in his executive team. She accepted the assignment, and when she met with the ‘terrible’ team, she found that everyone was focused on their grievances with the other members. They felt wronged and “had stopped trusting each other and essentially stopped communicating,” as Davey put it. Needless to say, their business wasn’t going well either. 

This is not an isolated story. Probably, you will remember a case where the relationships among members in a team degraded to a point where it endangered the performance or even the survival of a company or organization. Davey’s story, and her commentary on it, show how easy it is for teams to run into trouble, and that the resulting energy will affect everyone. Moreover, she explains that friction can happen in any team. In my experience, it often does. 

I learned several lessons from Davey’s work on teams. First, that tension is healthy and friction is not. Second, it’s not just the team leader who can solve problems of friction — every member can make a difference. And third, in times of friction, there are three roles to avoid: the wicked, the wounded, and the witness. Let’s take a deeper dive and explore the challenge.

Challenge

For teams to be productive and high-performing, the members need to feel tension — collectively and individually — between what they bring to the table and the goal they want to achieve. To use a metaphor from archery, think of the tension in a bow, and the concentration in the archer’s mind, before the arrow is released to fly to the target. Tension is what produces the desired result.

Friction in teams, on the other hand, is something to be avoided according to Davey. Friction happens when a lack of effective communication results in a poor connection and a deficit of trust. In such situations, it becomes easy to believe the stories that our minds will concoct about the other team members, which in turn will increases our bias and prejudice. I noted how this mostly happens quietly, under the surface. The emotion, however, is palpable, like the feeling of an open hand closing into a fist. We experience that feeling in our heart or gut. 

Using Davey’s framework, there are three roles to avoid. First is the wicked one who causes harm through their behavior, often inadvertently. Second, being the wounded who feels wronged. Davey’s research shows that members who fall into the victim trap find it hardest to release their grudges and make peace. They often end up leaving the team. The third role is the witness who stays on the sidelines and avoids taking action from a sense of responsibility.

Question

What resonated with me from Davey’s work is the good news that you can change your team from any seat at the table. And you can do this at any time. “A dynamic is affected by any party to that dynamic,” she explains. “You changing how you show up different will change the team dynamic.” That is also the spirit with which we started our leadership practice TransformationFirst.Asia. When you see yourself as a leader in a situation, you know that it’s always your turn to transform first and decide what you can do with a sense of responsibility. 

On the journey to become a high-performing team, Davey’s work prompts us to explore what we can do to help our colleagues move forward. To find out how the story ended, read Davey’s article On a Terrible Team? Maybe You’re Making It Worse, in the Harvard Business Review of December 2013. You might also want to look up her two books. While written for a North American audience, there is much to learn about the underlying human dynamics. In Asia, these might play out more quietly, yet no less powerfully.

My question to you this week is what tools you have in your metaphorical backpack to help you make your best contribution when you observe friction in your team. Remember, what you do — or don’t do — will matter to the outcome. And you can do more than you think. That’s what developing your leadership is all about. If there is a learning transition ahead of you for your leadership, book a free strategy call to discuss where you see yourself going.