In an era of spiralling aspirations and conflicting world views, it is important to factor in people's aspiration to get work out of them in an integrated manner. A team will hold together only so long as the people see it as a vehicle for fulfilling their hopes
Context is its culture. It comprises desh (territory) and kal (the time). Culture is often perceived as the acceptable pattern of setting relationships, managing work and the values of the doable and the not-so-doable. Culture is all this and more.
Culture is also the definition of the optimal style acceptable to a group of people for its functioning. This is not necessarily confined to operation. It can also cover the aspiration. It is this aspirational platform towards which organisations, groups, and individual actions has to move. This is the role of the leader and the facilitator.
This road cannot be traversed without the help of the guru — who may be the leader himself or a facilitator who has to put together the group. Often, such a person is labelled as a trainer. Willy-nilly a facilitator/trainer’s position is the role that people look for in organisations. While this common perception may not be inaccurate, it is certainly incomplete.
A leader can be found anywhere from Government cadres to political parties. Indeed the biggest contribution to this concept has often been from the Armed Forces. This is understandable because the services often operate in an environment of do or die. The price of not carrying others along can be heavy.
This enables us to recognise that it is never possible to operate without a cohesive group. One needs to recognise that creating a team, therefore, is not an idealistic luxury but an operational necessity for consistent execution. It is possible to confuse this with ‘team building’ or creating a harmonious group. That it will have to be minimally so, is true to an extent. However, the core concern remains: What kind of harmony and what does it entailIJ
Harmony would be needed in work methods and not in terms of individual likes and dislikes. Similarly, to achieve this harmony, the task content will need to be identified and to the extent possible, broken up into its constituent components. This is an operational necessity. These days, almost nothing gets done with single specifications. Different domains have to be molded together and integrated.
Consider the operation of an IT company. It requires systems specialist, content writers, model developers, those who test out the model and a person putting all this together. It will be rare to have a content developer who is equally good in developing a code. Hence, teams become an operational necessity.
Often team building has been seen as a behavioural issue where people are taught to be decent and understanding. Unfortunately, while behavioural dimensions are important, they do not go far enough. One often requires integration of specialties for a team to meet its goal. This kind of integration is needed almost universally, from election campaigns to dealing with vendors.
The leadership function, therefore, has become increasingly synergistic. Today’s leader has to lead in today’s context. In an era of spiraling aspirations and conflicting world views, it is important to factor in people’s aspiration to get work out of them in an integrated manner. Spend time orienting leaders to be understanding and helpful is important, but does not go far enough.
Ultimately, a team will hold together only so far as the people see it as a vehicle of fulfilling their aspiration and their need. To this extent, a leader may have to forgo to his claim to credit and project the members of the teams as achievers. Simply, put he may have to stoop to conquer because he cannot leave the goal unachieved.