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Team Building – Commentary

Hello, this is AJ and welcome to this months’ commentary; team building, team building.

I remember the last mile of my first marathon, my very first marathon. It was Atlanta, Georgia. It was Thanksgiving in the United States, Thanksgiving Day, cold; it was kind of a cold day, kind of gray and it was the first one, so I trained and trained for like six months for this marathon. A lot of work. A lot of work, it was the first time I’d ever run that far and I wanted to get a decent time. I wanted to finish in less than four hours.

And so I was coming up to the last mile and my legs were just so painful right? My knees, my legs, even kind of my back and shoulders were all painful, and my energy had dropped. I was using, burning up all of my, what’s called glycogen, the sugar that was in my muscles, so every step was difficult.

I was watching the time on my watch because I really wanted to beat that four-hour mark. So ugh, the last mile I just kept saying to myself over and over again, keep going, keep going, keep going, just keep going, keep going, keep going don’t stop, keep going. Don’t stop keep going; don’t stop keep going. Just talking to myself, and I had kind of a tunnel vision, meaning I was just only looking straight ahead. Anything to the side I didn’t even see or look at.

Finally, I came up to that finish line and there was this great sense of victory as I crossed the finish line, raised up my arms (yay!) and I did it in three hours and, I can’t remember what it was, three hours and fifty minutes, I think, something like that. So I accomplished my goal and I finished, and I did I felt this incredible feeling of success, of satisfaction with accomplishing this very big goal that was tough for me; it wasn’t easy. It was a struggle and it felt like a big accomplishment and so I felt proud about it. I felt great.

But the truth is, it was also a little bit of a lonely experience, because I did it completely alone. Nobody else came to my first marathon. Nobody came to watch me. You know, my family they were all at home, so I just drove to the marathon by myself. I finished it and so, after that great feeling of crossing the finish line, yay I did it! Then I kind of walked around a bit, but then it was just me alone. I went and grabbed some snacks that they gave us and got my little medal they gave for finishing. I was totally exhausted and then I had to drive myself home about an hour and a half, I think it was. I was living in a town called Athens, at the time.

It was a great experience. It was a very positive experience, but there was something just a little bit lonely or a little something missing because there was no one to share it with, right, it was just me. I’m not complaining it was still great. I’m still glad I did it. I still like doing individual challenges like that in my life, they’re still satisfying.

But when I think about another one, the Shikoku 88’ pilgrimage. Now this is a pilgrimage, it’s a route in Japan, Shikoku, Japan. Shikoku’s the name of a really big island in Japan and 88 means there are these 88 temples, and so you walk this path all around visiting all of the temples. You need 30-40 days to do the whole thing. You’re carrying a backpack. You know you need to carry everything you have. You have to carry all your clothes, anything you need you must carry with you on your back. This is a very old path. It’s similar to the Camino De Santiago, which I’ll mention later. So this was another great big accomplishment. My wife and I did that one together. So Tamoi and I did it together. You know, we started off at the first temple and it took us a bit over a month to do the whole thing. You know, walking through the mountains and yeah, there were times when our legs were sore and tired. But it was just this incredible experience, and so again we arrived at the finish, the very last temple so again that similar feeling, that great satisfaction of having accomplished a big goal and had this incredible experience.

So in that sense it was similar to the marathon, but there was something additional with Shikoku, because I was doing it together with my wife. There was also a feeling of connection, because it was a shared accomplishment. Right, it’s something we did together, so you know we hugged each other and we were so happy together. We took pictures together at the end. There was this shared feeling and we could talk about how we felt and how excited we were, and we could go celebrate together afterwards, you know, go get like a big dinner or something together.

And so for that reason it was really, a more satisfying experience. I mean, the marathon wasn’t bad, it was great, but there was something extra with Shikoku and that was that I did it with my wife, that it was a shared experience. And it’s something that we still talk about. We still look at pictures sometimes. We still talk about that experience and can remember stories or experiences we had during that make us still feel closer and that’s really that incredible benefit, I think personally, for your happiness of being part of a team, of team building.

There are times in your life, of course, that you will need to succeed individually, that you will need to develop your individual skills. We all know that, of course that’s true, but I think in our modern time we have that a little too much, right? We’re doing things individually too much. We’re isolated. We tend to be isolated more. Everything is individual and we sometimes miss out, we miss that incredible feeling of working together, being part of a team, working for a common purpose, a shared purpose.

And I’ll tell you too that, even failing with a team can be a good experience. When you fail as an individual, ugh, it usually just kind of sucks. It’s no fun, I mean, you can learn from it. You don’t have to get depressed or anything, but most of us don’t enjoy the feeling of failing as an individual. But, you know, there’s actually something about failing with a group that can be quite positive. It’s hard to explain, but I’ve had maybe a few moments in my life where my I’ve gone through some difficult situation, but I did it with other people.

Like, for example, traveling, where if you look at it, if I tell you the story, it was really just kind of a terrible experience, but somehow over time when you look back, it’s actually something positive because you shared it with other people, again, it actually brought you together. It made you closer, because you shared that tough time. You shared the failure or you shared the difficulty. And it actually created a stronger connection with each other and therefore, later when you look back it actually seems like a good memory, because it created that togetherness.

So this again is one of the big advantages and one of the great pleasures of team building. So let’s get into some more details about how you do it; how do you do it? Let’s talk about the dangers, now in that interactive lesson from Robin Benacasa, she mentioned the dangers of finger pointing, of blaming and really there are three things, three big dangers on a team. Whenever you’re part of a team or building a team, it doesn’t matter if you’re the official leader. It doesn’t matter, but any time you’re part of a team you have to watch for the three big dangers of a team. They all start with a ‘C’ so it’s easy to remember. 1. Comparing 2. Competing 3. Criticizing

You can think about this even with your own family, like if you have a wife or husband, if you have children, definitely you can think of them as a team. They are, they’re your team in life, your most important one. Or you can think of your own extended family, your parents, your brothers, your sisters, your uncles and aunts, whoever you’re close to, even your closest friends.

Well, with those teams especially and any team you’re a part of, you must avoid these dangers.

Comparing – what does that mean? That means no comparing of team members. You don’t compare one team member to another, oh, you’re better than him or she’s better than you or I’m better than the rest of you. And that might be obvious not saying you’re better, but it also hurts if you say you’re worse. Oh, I’m not as good as you. You’re not as good as him. Okay, that doesn’t help, it just makes people feel bad when you compare. It actually destroys togetherness. It destroys that unity. So comparing individual members is not good, it’s not helpful.

Of course, some team members are better at some things, everyone has their own strength or weakness. Most of us have several strengths and several weaknesses, and one of the advantages of a team is that we can complement each other. We kind of help each other, right? I’m weak in one area but you’re strong in that area, so together we’re better. I’m strong in one area, but you’re weak in that area, so I can help you, again, as a team we’re stronger.

So there’s no point in comparing, because on any team, especially good teams definitely you will be better at some things, other people will be better at some things. So you don’t want to get into this mindset, into this habit of comparing; it’s toxic, it’s poisonous, it makes people feel bad. Don’t do it.

Competing– competition is very, very, very, very, very bad within a group. This is the key. Because, many teams do compete and you want them to have a competitive spirit that’s fine, but the competition needs to be outside. We’ll talk about that more in a minute. But competing inside a group when you have individuals inside the group trying to be better than other individuals. It destroys the group, it’s also poisonous, it destroys the unity because everyone starts thinking about me, it’s not we it’s me. Me, me, me, me, me; I’m better, I’m faster, I’m smarter, I finished first, I’m stronger, right? I won I did better than you did. It’s I, I, I; me, me, me that destroys the team unity.

That individual might do well, but the whole team will do worse when people are competing with each other inside of the team. You must stop it. You must avoid that and stop it.

Finally, the very obvious one, the finger pointing, criticizing– this means actually saying bad things to people when they make a mistake. Everyone’s going to make a mistake. You will and your team members will. When you point out the mistakes too much, that criticizing really destroys the feeling of togetherness. It destroys morale, the positive feelings. And I know it’s hard and it’s gonna happen sometimes. I mean, sometimes when things are really bad and you’re stressed out it’s really, really tough not to criticize someone when they make a mistake, especially if it causes a big problem or a lot of stress for you. So yeah, you’ll do it sometimes but the key thing is just apologize afterwards as soon as you can, as soon as you regain control, apologize… I’m sorry I criticized; I’m sorry I blamed you; sorry I just got stressed out… just explain that and make sure everybody on the team does that. This is a good thing about having larger teams, like if it’s just two of you it can be tough because then if they make a mistake you get stressed then you might criticize and there’s no one else there to try to stop you, right? So it can kind of get bad and this is why with couples it can be tough sometimes. You just gotta do your best.

But the good thing is when you have a bigger team, you have three people, four people, five people, well, then hopefully at least one person on the team can stay calm in a tough situation and that one person can come in and calm everyone down. So if other people start criticizing, the calm person can say okay remember, we’re not gonna criticize, just calm down, take a break, take a minute, right? We’re competing with each other we need to stop. So that’s the advantage of bigger teams, and that calm person, it’s usually a different person in different situations, you never know right? One day one person might be the calm person and in another situation it might be someone else.

Some days we’re tired, some days we feel better. So you never know, but that’s one good thing about a bit of a larger team, there are more people there who can come in and help. Now I recommend that, again, as a team you write down these as rules, as a family or whatever. We’re not going to compare, we’re not going to compete, we’re not going to criticize. Write them down as rules and agree. You can even write them down and then everyone signs it; I agree I won’t do this and if I do these things then I’ll apologize and I’ll try to stop myself, and we’ll help each other stop doing this. So write it how you want, but make it like a contract and everybody signs it on the team.

Okay, those are the dangers to avoid, let’s now talk about the positive things that you want to make stronger, that you want to focus on.

1. Number one is a strengths focus, a focus on strengths. Find and accept each member’s strengths and their weaknesses.

But you want to focus on your strengths, focus on each member’s strengths. Everybody has a strength. Like, even as an athlete, say an adventure race like this woman does. Okay, let’s say you’ve got at some of these adventure races they’ll have four men and a woman and usually the woman is not as strong as the men. Maybe the woman, she’s not strong she can’t lift heavy things, she can’t run as much, but she might have other strengths. Maybe she’s the patient calm one, for example, and that’s a huge important strength, so even though she can’t carry as much weight or go as fast, more often she can be the one who comes in and keeps people calm so the team doesn’t fall apart.

Or maybe one person is just more organized and they can help keep things organized and take care of details. But another person on the team, they’re better with the big vision, the big leadership vision. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s physical, mental, emotional we all have our strengths, our strong points and we all have our weaknesses and we have to accept that. We have to accept our own weaknesses and ask for help when we need it. We have to accept our teammate’s weaknesses and not get angry about our teammates weaknesses, because of course, everyone has weaknesses. So we just try to help them with their weaknesses, we ask for help when we need it, but mostly you focus on their strengths, each person’s strengths. What are their strong points on the team? 2. Number two, competition is good but you compete outside of the team not inside.

So inside the team no competition between the members. So you focus the competition outside, compete with the other teams, compete with the enemy, compete with the other company. You can even have a friendly competition with other families. If you’ve got a family and maybe some people in your family are competitive, well, try to do some family team things. It could be sports, it could be games, but where you’re working together against other groups. So you focus the competition outside of your team that’s fine, that actually brings you together because then you’re all working to win against another opponent that creates team work instead of destroys it.

Finally, you want to coach and compliment. Instead of criticizing, coach and compliment, coach and compliment.

Compliment– is obvious, that’s where you say nice things to people. When they do a good job you notice and you say something, good job you did that. You notice their strong points and you say something; wow, you’re really patient. I’m so glad you’re so calm that helps our team a lot or, wow, you’re really strong I appreciate you doing all that hard work, I couldn’t do that. Give genuine sincere, real compliments as much as you can.

Now, when someone’s struggling, when someone makes a mistake, when someone has a problem, instead of criticizing the best thing to do is coach, and that’s where you just offer a suggestion. You offer a suggestion. Both those words are important… offer, not tell, not yell, not do this. Do this! Is a command not a suggestion, and in stressful situations nobody wants to hear those commands. But instead, a suggestion is something like try this. Let’s say someone is trying to lift up something heavy. You could say hey, try this, try straightening your back and using your legs more. I think it’ll help you. That’s a suggestion that’s coaching, try this, try this.

You can do that with your kids, instead of saying hey, I told you not to do that. That’s criticism; they don’t like that, nobody likes that. Instead you can say hey, why don’t you try this instead? Or let’s say they’re in your house and they’re throwing things and going crazy, your kids. You could criticize them, I told you not to do that. You could yell at them and then that creates bad feelings. Instead, you can coach them by giving a suggestion. You could say, we can’t do that in the house you’re going to destroy things, why don’t you go outside and do that? Why don’t you go outside and play that game? Again, you’re coaching, you’re giving them a positive thing to do instead of just criticizing.

All right, a final story, another one that I mentioned at the beginning, the Camino De Santiago. It’s kind of a similar experience to the Shikoku pilgrimage. It’s another pilgrimage. It goes through Spain, and a lot of you know that I did this with my very good friend, Joe Weiss, from Learn Real English. We walked through Spain, again, it took about a month and again when we arrived in Santiago at the finish, again, it was that incredible feeling of accomplishment, but it was something special because we did it together. We did it together, we shared it together and again, Joe and I still tell stories to each other.

Do you remember when we were in Pamplona? Do you remember when we did this? You know, we have so many stories because it was a shared experience. So, you know, those shared experiences, failures, difficulties and successes, those team experiences are profound, they’re meaningful and I think they tend to be more meaningful for us than just individual ones. So I encourage you, build your team. We all have families of some kind, so you can start there, start with your family and use these techniques. Write them down. Have a team meeting. Discuss these things with your team, write them down. Have everyone sign the contract agreeing with this and just work on it. It takes time, you will not automatically do all of these things.

You know, when things are really easy then there are no problems, but when things become stressful, when there’s lots of problems and challenges, when you’re failing, when mistakes are happening that’s when it’s tough. And yeah, sometimes you won’t do everything correctly, it’s okay, but just keep focused on these ideas of being we, we, we, of avoiding comparing, competing and criticizing; focusing on strengths, competing outside not inside your team, coaching, complimenting and we, we, we thinking. You’ll get better and better and better and those team experiences will become more and more pleasurable.

This really will add a lot of happiness to your life. I encourage you to do this. You can do it at work. Do it in your family for sure, any other time you have a chance to work with other people.

All right, tell me about your experiences. Send me a message on Twitter telling me how it’s going. All right, see you next time. By for now.