When team falls apart

Recently, half of ReMaking a Living’s team of two decided to leave the project. This was a bit of a blow to both sides of our duo. We felt like we’d failed. Our coaches at InWithForward and Manager at COIN followed up with both of us to see if we couldn’t get things back on track. It was clear that we both cared deeply about the project, but that wasn’t enough! We both felt regretful but we didn’t know how to make our team work again.

There was a whirlwind of debriefing. For me (Natalie) that process was incredibly helpful. Also quite painful. I reviewed my own choices and tendencies. I considered why I hadn’t been able to see the cracks, or take them seriously. Having intermediaries who talked to both of us helped me see a bigger picture of how my assumptions blinded me to what my teammate was experiencing.

On top of the turmoil of our team ‘failure’, I needed to figure out how to hire someone new for a short term position and not repeat the same mistakes. So I asked Gillian to meet up and give me feedback on the job posting. That was when things began to turn around for me. Gillian gave really positive, constructive, and insightful feedback. She caught a couple of typos too (that’s Gillian!) She pushed me to be clearer and more specific about what was required of the position. After that I proposed we write this blog. What could we extract in the way of lessons? We all know we’re supposed to turn our failures into learning moments but it’s easier not to. I was very conscious of how much I was asking of Gillian. Here she had resigned and I kept asking her to come back and back, to do difficult, potentially gut-wrenching work, for free. But she kept saying yes.

It took a few pass-backs before we got to the good stuff. Some of what we learned could be filed under self knowledge. Here, we’re sharing what we learned about good teams and their practices.

1. Hiring processes are important, not just formalities. They are about finding a match. The job interview should be as much like the job as possible. For this job, activities and tasks are at least as important as questions. It’s crucial to present the job in a way that allows people to decide for themselves if it is something that they want. When you’re hiring, this should force you to think very carefully about what someone needs to know or experience in order to make an informed decision. Gillian and I talked over a cup of coffee at a bar during the grant-writing stage of this project, six months before it started. I was super excited. The project was still in development. Gillian’s interest was piqued and it was an energizing conversation. The project is exciting, but it’s also intense, amorphous, and can be emotionally charged. We didn’t really scratch the surface. And we never looked back, before now. It would have been good to write up more detailed job descriptions for both of us as the project evolved. This time around, interviews will consist of a social design challenge that we’ll work on together.
2. It’s scary not to know the answer to a pressing question when you are a project manager but good management takes creativity and perseverance. A lot of management advice is about sticking to your guns and laying down the line. At the same time, managers are responsible for making sure that people who aren’t anything like them thrive in their roles. For most of us, that’s quite a confusing task. We learned that managers need to move through their own fear and confusion to respond with ingenuity. A reasonable solution should recognise people’s need for different tools and routines and accommodate them where possible. When a crisis arises, it might be important to slow things down so that we can create space for that creativity.
3. A project that vows to question assumptions also challenges ‘best practices’. Challenging a best practice is fraught with moral and ethical questions because there is no road map and it flies in the face of what we understand to be appropriate behaviour. If we’re going to do that kind of work as a team, we need to really understand each other’s values going into the project. We need to really understand each other. We wish we’d done more ‘getting to know you’ work before diving in. We could have established a protocol for waving a red flag early on when something made either of us ethically uncomfortable. We could have discussed how we each deal with red flag situations and how we’d like to deal with them.

That’s no horrible failure. Team work is hard. Ask anybody. You might love working in teams but that’s not because it’s easy. We’ve decided successful teams learn, reflectively. They commit to finding the resources and support that each person needs to do their job. They respect people’s diverse needs and priorities, non-judgmentally, in order to have 20/20 vision about what they can achieve together. It’s sad when teams fall apart, but we’re not lying in a heap, thwarted. We’re moving on with new insights.

G: That’s a fantastic list.

N: I just want to say how good it feels to get something meaningful out of what was, at one point, a situation that felt painful, to me. It was work but I think we learned from our failure. I hope I can really change the way I do things based on this and make it stick.

G: You’re right, it feels much better to view this as a genuine opportunity for personal and professional growth than as a painful failure. It’s really not a failure! And I’m glad that we’ve been able to work through it in this way.

End of Chapter.