Chapter 1

What Is a Team, and Why Does It Matter?

Kris has recently been promoted to project manager of a software development team that works remotely, mostly from home, across three countries. Several of the team members have worked together on past projects, but many are new to the company. She has six direct reports, but each works on their own tasks and seldom interacts with their teammates. Although the work gets done, she doesn’t feel they are a team so much as a bunch of people who all work through her. Even though tasks are completed, and deadlines met, she wonders if there isn’t something missing.

The last few years have changed how we work. When working from home exploded, a lot of leaders focused on just keeping the organization going. Can people meet deadlines and do good work when they aren’t co-located? Will people put in the discretionary effort and communication efforts that have always been hallmarks of great teams? Can we keep the (figurative) doors open and stay in business until we go back to the office?

Those concerns were (and are) important, but they focused on immediate problems—putting out fires, as so many of us call it. Although it is easy to stay in fire-fighting mode, as leaders, we must put down the firehose and look to the future. When and where do people need to work to create great results? Can we collaborate effectively in new ways we haven’t yet thought about? Although a two-year pandemic forced some of those questions on us, we can’t let the need to look forward and be proactive and intentional be a one-time pandemic-related response.

One of the most common questions we hear across organizations is this: “How do we create a ‘one-team’ workplace when we aren’t in close proximity to each other all the time?”

Since you’ve invested in this book, you’re probably at that stage yourself. You want a work environment that is more than individuals working for and answering to the same manager. Whether you’re an individual contributor looking for the perfect workplace, a manager responsible for getting work done, or a senior leader charged with becoming an employer of choice, you have something in common. You want to be part of a high-performing, collaborative, innovative team. Whether you are leading a team that’s been together for years, taking over an existing unit, or starting from scratch, you will be far more successful when you have considered answers to these questions:

■ What kind of team is necessary to get the work done?

■ What kind of team do you want to be part of?

■ Can you create a team culture that meets those aspirations?

These questions are all important, and answering them is the focus of this book. But you can’t really answer them without clearly defining one term.

What do we mean when we use the word, team?

Our old friend Merriam-Webster defines the word team this way:

1. A group of people who compete in a sport, game, etc., against another group

2. A group of people who work together to achieve a goal [for our purposes we can assume together doesn’t have to mean physically]

3. A group of animals used to pull a wagon, cart, etc.

Assuming you aren’t an athlete or an ox, definition two applies to most of us. Technically Kris, in the earlier story, has a team. All those smart programmers working on their tasks and answering to her are her team. But she (and likely you) feels like that isn’t a satisfying answer. There must be more to being a great team than simply sharing a manager.

We agree.

A Quick Exercise

Take a blank sheet of paper and a pen. (You can use your computer or phone, but you’ll likely get better results if you engage kinesthetically. Trust us.)

Set a timer for five minutes. When it starts, write down all the words, positive and negative, that you associate with the word team. When time is up, stop and look at the list. What words came to mind?

Everyone’s lists will be different, but we have been doing this exercise for over twenty years and it’s a good bet you included terms such as these:

■ Helpful

■ Aligned

■ Collaborative

■ Friendly (or at least collegial)

■ Supportive

■ Focused on the goal(s)

■ More than the sum of its parts

You may also have included some words you might consider negative, such as these:

■ Conflict

■ Disagreement

■ Inability to reach decisions

■ Inefficient collaboration

Now stop and look at your list. If you are part of an existing team, which words reflect your current reality? We’re betting that some of the traits you listed are present; after all, you’ve been together a while and work gets done. There are also features of a good team that you want—but aren’t always experiencing.

Whether your team is brand new or has been together for a while, the overall process we will share is the same. Any time you have a gap between what you desire and what exists, you have room for improvement. We will take a deep dive into interpreting this exercise and turning it into action in the next few chapters.

An old Chinese proverb says, “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is now.” Whether your team has been together for years, or you’re starting from scratch, it’s always the right time to be intentional about what your team should, and can, look like.

In order to design a team, you first need to know what you want to achieve and recognize the circumstances under which that work happens.

Kevin has written and talked about two fundamentally different kinds of teams for years. We believe this distinction isn’t considered often enough. The two types of teams are interdependent and independent teams; let’s use a sports analogy to help us understand each.

Interdependent Teams

Basketball (or soccer or hockey) teams are interdependent. They require, by the nature of their work, that everyone play as one unit. On teams in these sports, the players rely on each other. At any moment of any game, to be successful, the entire team needs to be working in harmony. The role of each player is designated by their position (which considers their innate strengths and acquired skills). However, at any moment during the flow of the game, the situation may require any player to take any role, and use overlapping skills.

On successful teams of this sort, all players are willing to be flexible, to assist, to change roles, to “do what it takes,” because they know that without working together, they can’t achieve their team goals or victory—the nature of the game forces interdependency among the team members.

In the real world, an example is a customer service team in which people rely on the knowledge and experience of all their teammates to solve problems as quickly as possible, yet all can handle the emails and take the calls.

Independent Teams

Players on track-and-field teams, on the other hand (except in a few relay events), are part of an independent team. Shot putters have a skill set that is largely unrelated to the skills of sprinters. And the high jumpers can be personally skilled and successful without any tangible help or support from the distance runners. Sales teams are often independent in this way.

At the end of the day (or meet), if enough individuals win, the team wins. The most successful of these teams will have highly talented individual contributors supporting each other to reach their common goal of winning. In this way, they are surely a team. In the best cases they will feel allegiance and have pride in being a part of the group. They want each other to be successful. They know that they can all be more successful when each individual is more successful. They can have a common goal (to win the meet or championship). But the fundamental relationship between the players isn’t the same as it is on a basketball/soccer/hockey team.

Why This Matters

In your organization you likely have both types of teams. You have teams that work in a process flow or project where the outputs of one person directly affect the work of the next, where the work and the people are highly interdependent. In other situations, people work toward a common mission and goal, but their work doesn’t intersect in nearly the same ways as for the highly interdependent teams.

This difference matters because in our experience, and in most of the conversation surrounding Long-Distance Teams, people assume we have and desire interdependent teams. If the work or project dictates that focus, great. But if you have a track-and-field (independent) team, you don’t need the same focus on interdependence and traditional team-building activities nor the same needs for interaction and collaboration.

If you lead, form, or are a part of teams, you need to think about this distinction. We will help you with it throughout the book. Once you determine the type of team you want and need, you can set appropriate and effective expectations and design accordingly.

Finally, a Definition

For simplicity, let’s define a great team this way:

A group of people working together to achieve their common goals through an intentional culture, positive energy, collaboration, innovation, and human connection.

So, a Long-Distance Team is this:

A group of people working together to achieve their common goals through an intentional culture, positive energy, collaboration, innovation, and human connection, regardless of their physical location.

While we’re at it, we should probably get specific about some terminology we will associate with teams. Our definition applies whether people work in a common location or not. All teams operate in similar ways, but Long-Distance Teams vary in form, and there are subtle differences between them, which we’ll discuss as we go.

For now, let’s think about them in three forms:

■ Remote Teams: Teams whose members do not share a common workspace. They may work from home or from third spaces such as remote offices, but seldom do they see each other in person and they communicate almost entirely through technology.

■ Hybrid Teams: Some team members work in a central location or office, whereas others are remote, some or all the time. In essence, nobody is co-located all the time. There are endless combinations, and all of them have nuances and challenges to consider.

■ Flexible Teams: The nature of the work may dictate that there are no hard-and-fast rules for who works where, and when. On any given day, people may be in the office or not.

None of these types is “right,” but one is right for you and the team you want to design. This book will help you think about all those options and variables.

Now that we’ve defined what a team is, let’s talk about the kind of team you want to have. Let’s talk about culture.