Recently, I was working with a husband and wife who also own and run a business together. One of the issues that came up was their differences in communicating, and how this creates challenges in their relationship (both personally and as co-managers).

I used a “word picture” that helped illustrate the difficulties they are experiencing in communicating with one another. [Like most things, word pictures have their pro’s & con’s. On the one hand, they can powerfully paint an image that drives home a key concept. On the other hand, if taken too far they “break down” in their ability to communicate clearly.]

Women often say to me, about their husband, “He just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand what I am trying to say.” They go on to complain about how he is a poor communicator and a terrible listener. While this may be true, I try to explain the situation this way.

Communication is not “all or nothing”. Most guys can communicate some (give us a break here, gals). But how they communicate and what they communicate are often qualitatively different than the messages their wives send.

It is like this. There is a broad spectrum of communication media. In the old days (only used rarely now), there was morse code. Morse code is made of those beeps that make up dots and dashes on telegraph wires. Beep, beep, (pause), beeeep, beep . . . There is a single tone. It has no words (the sounds make up letters, which make up words) but it is a form of communication.

Then there is AM radio. More information is sent — including words and music. But the spectrum of the frequency of sound communicated is limited — it can sound sort of “tinny”. But it is a lot more full than morse code. We then can move to FM radio – a deeper, richer fuller sound and tone. There is a richness communicated in classical music (and classic rock) that AM radio just can’t do.

But we are still only sending audio information. So let’s move to television — starting with black and white, and then color. Now we have a whole new set of information being communicated — auditory + visual — we get pictures and moving visual images versus just sound. The breadth of information that is communicated has multiplied significantly.

Finally, let’s go to 3D movies (with THX sound, of course). Wow, now you are talking! Rich, loud sound. Beautiful color images that look like real life in three dimensions. The breadth, depth and scope of what is being communicated is amazing.

The problem is: some people (usually guys) are only built with the equipment to send and/or receive morse code or AM radio frequencies. So it doesn’t matter how hard their wife tries to communicate effectively in television or 3D mode, he only “gets” part of the information. The rest of the waves just harmlessly bounce off of his forehead. He truly doesn’t get it. And for many, guys. They just can’t. They don’t understand the depth of feelings and emotions their wives experience and try to share.

So now matter how hard he tries, or how hard she tries, there is an element of lack of connection. It (usually) isn’t because he doesn’t want to; he just can’t communicate at the same level — he doesn’t think that way (e.g. in color, if he is a black & white TV), and the messages don’t get through to him.

Sorry to burst some of your bubbles, gals (some of you younger wives won’t believe me yet) with a shot of reality.

So what is the answer? Several applications, really.

1. Understand the level of complexity at which you communicate. Then try to understand the level at which your spouse/significant other communicates. Do your best to match your communication with their style (”Just the facts, ma’am).

2. Don’t expect your AM radio partner receive and understand TV signals. Adjust your expectations to reality. (A special word of encouragement for those of you married to male, introverted engineers and accountants.)

3. Find others in your life — friends, sisters, mothers — who communicate at the same level you do, and experience your deeper life support and communication with them. Living a life in an AM radio world when you have color TV capabilities is boring and frustrating. Get your needs met in these relationships, and continue to communicate as effectively as possible with your spouse.

A couple of other suggestions. Morse code receivers cannot receive as much information as an FM radio. They can’t process it quickly enough and get overloaded easily. Too many words and too much emotion can do the same for guys.

Also, note that I have been largely talking about male/female differences, but these issues occur within same gender relationships as well. Some guys are wired more complexly than others, and are more reflective and aware of their feelings. These guys have a hard time connecting with those who are more “just the facts, ma’am” type. And some gals want to go “deeper” in their conversations and relationships than others.

Not sure how to end this, except: beeeeeep, beep (pause) beep, beep, beep. Hang in there, gals. I am sure there is a good reason why guys can’t communicate at the deeper levels you do — we just need to figure out what it is. [Kudos to my wife, who as a 42″ flat-screen HDTV, has endured living with an old FM tube radio for 30 years.]

Over the past few months, I have had the opportunity to work closely with business teams comprised of highly talented and successful professionals. Some of these high-powered teams work together well and achieve amazing results, while some of the teams are struggling a bit in working together effectively. And one of the teams had to reorganize because the team members couldn’t figure out how to work together.

I’ve made some observations as well as pulled some information from other sources, about what needs to happen for a team of “All Stars” to be successful as a team.

Characteristics of Successful Individuals

First, let’s look at some of the characteristics of highly successful individuals. Successful people:

*Know how to accomplish tasks. They get things done. And typically, they have found ways of doing things that work for them. (With a team, they may have a hard time approaching a task differently from their personal strategy.)

*Are confident in their abilities. Since they have had success, they have developed confidence in their abilities and their approach. They believe their way works (and sometimes believe that their way will work for everyone.)

*Are proactive. They take initiative, develop action plans, and act on the plans made. (In a team context, they sometimes can act before coordinating with other team members.)

*Persevere. Persevering, “stick-to-it-tiveness” is generally a positive personality characteristic. (But perseverance can translate into stubbornness, if the individual is unwilling to accept and adapt to reality-based feedback – that this strategy just isn’t working in this context.)

*Have high energy. Most successful individuals have a lot of energy – mental, emotional and physical. They often run at a fast pace. (But in the context of working with others, they can have difficulty waiting, and sometimes can “act” before they should.”

Characteristics of Successful Teams with Highly Talented Individuals

Although working with a team of very talented, capable and successful professionals can be challenging, there are ways that these “All Star” teams can become incredibly impactful. There are many areas of life from which examples can be taken: music groups, sports teams, legal and political teams, strategic business partnerships. (And unfortunately, there are probably more examples of “Super Teams” that failed.) What seems to be necessary?

*Team members voluntarily submit to a selected leader. There has to be a clear, designated leader. And the team members must consistently follow their leadership, even when they disagree with the leader (and they will).

*Individuals “hold back” in fully using all of their talents and focus their efforts on what is needed for team success. In a team setting, individual stars don’t “shine” and do everything they do as individual stars. They have to pull back and figure out how to mesh with the other team members.

*Team members value and appreciate the role and contributions of other team members. Not only do team members constrain their performance, they also truly value the strengths of others and the strengths their teammates bring to the team effort. There is usually a genuine mutual respect among the teammates.

*The approach or strategies used by the team to reach success may be different than previous successful strategies used by the individual team members. Certain strategies work well for individual tasks, but frequently different approaches are needed for cooperative ventures. Deference to the team leader and accepting their approach for the team is critical in this area for the team to be successful.

*There is a disciplined, strategic approach to reach the team goal that the team members are willing to submit to. This may seem redundant, but the issue is that many times “All Star” teams are put together for a specific project or limited time. Otherwise, most successful professionals would not be willing to participate in a cooperative project – because it would interfere with their personal career and requires them to perform in ways they are not typically used to.

Lessons from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

(by Patrick Lencioni).

Finally, let’s look at lessons shared by Patrick Lencioni in his best-selling book. These principals dovetail nicely with the observations described above.

Issues That Lead to Problems on a Team

*Absence of Trust (resulting from a lack of vulnerability among team members)

*Fear of Conflict (which can lead to artificial harmony). Team members need to be able to engage in passionate debate about ideas.

*Lack of Commitment (by keeping goals and plans ambiguous). Lack of true “buy in” by all team members leads to poor execution and implementation.

*Avoidance of Accountability (which keeps performance at low standards of acceptability). Team members must be willing to confront off-task or counterproductive actions and behaviors of other team members.

*Inattention to Results (stemming from a focus on individual needs such as status, ego and recognition). It is critical for team members to agree on the categories of results to be tracked to assess success for the team as a whole.

Five Aspects of Functional Teams

1. They trust one another. (The confidence that their team members’ intentions are good.)

2. They engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas.

3. They commit to decisions and plans of actions.

4. They hold one another accountable for delivering against those plans.

5. They focus on the achievement of collective results.

So take a look at yourself and the teams on which you are functioning. See which of these issues are strengths and areas which need to be strengthened. It is pretty fun to be on a successful team, especially when the other team members are really talented!

This week I had the opportunity to attend a conference where both John Townsend (author of Boundaries) and Henry Cloud (author of Integrity) spoke on leadership.  Here are some notes of thoughts that I felt were interested and helpful.

John Townsend

Research is verifying the relationship between character, interpersonal skills and performance outcomes.  That is, if you work on the “inside” issues you will see improvement in performance outcomes. (See below for why this is the case.)

Life is more than making right choices – doing cost/benefit analyses.  There are two sets of information that leaders need to listen to – external (verifiable objective facts) + internal (listening to your ‘gut’).  True reality is a combination of objective information plus subjective intuition.

Values  — values are those things that you believe in to the point that they dictate your decisions.

Leaders need to focus less on what the mission statement says their core values are, and get an objective observer to share the values they observe in how the organization actually functions (i.e. focus on what their values are versus what they should be.)

The pendulum is swinging in leadership development from a pure focus on strategic planning, setting goals, managing by objectives, and the variety of technical processes to improve performance to also paying attention to the emotional side of life (and business).  Not focusing on feelings for feelings’ sake, but understanding that feelings play a role in both decision-making and in working as a team.

In decision-making, feelings play the role of relaying signals to the leader – signals that need to be paid attention to and investigated.  Anxiety (or concern or fear) is signaling that there may be a potential danger to heed.  Investigating the reality of the risk and taking steps to manage the risk (if it is real) is wise.  Ignoring the signal could be reckless.

Interestingly, Townsend indicates that the positive function of anger (irritation or frustration at lower levels) is an indication that you have a problem to solve – something is going on that you don’t like.  Now the problem may be internal – that you have unrealistic expectations that aren’t being met.  Or the problem may be external – that someone’s performance is not acceptable and needs to change.

A third emotion he cites that is critical to the business world is passion.  I personally have never considered passion as an emotion previously.  But it makes sense.  Townsend describes passion as “focused desire”.   And most successful leaders have or have experienced passion – that burning desire to do what they are called to.   A challenge for some leaders is that they lose the intensity of their passion / desire over time (which is a whole additional topic of discussion), while others struggle in maintaining the focus of their passion.

[Out of deference to Dr. Townsend and his intellectual capital, I am not going to list all of the positive and negative emotions he addressed in his book Leadership Beyond Reason:  How Great Leaders Succeed by Harnessing the Power of Their Values, Feelings, and Intuition.  Get the book – it is a good, solid leadership book with a unique perspective on the role of feelings in leadership.)

Townsend also believes that emotions play an important role in working effectively together with team members  — negative emotions among team members impede effective functioning, while positive feelings between colleagues facilitate better performance, both individually and as a unit.

He also describes the power of emotions in bringing to mind past relationships (what he and other psychologists call “internal relationships”) – those people who influenced us significantly in the past (parents, teachers, mentors, coaches) and still influence us “in our head”.  Dr. Townsend gives excellent examples of how leaders become stuck in their personal and leadership development because they can’t get past old messages from internalized relationships (“You’ll never amount to anything.”  “In the end, you’ll always screw it up.”)

A key application for me is that both Dr. Townsend and his colleague, Dr. Henry Cloud (whom I also heard) are seeing the need for coaching in the “middle space” for leaders.  There is plenty of coaching and leadership development in the strategic planning, becoming a change agent, etc. space.  And many leaders don’t need (or won’t get) heavy duty “counseling” focusing on personal problems.  But Dr. Cloud argues that there is the “middle space” that needs to be addressed – where a leader’s personal development has not kept pace with the growth of his organization and his or hers resulting responsibilities.  So there is a gap between the weight of their professional responsibilities and the development of personal skills and abilities to effective manage the demands.  Issues in this middle space include recurrent patterns of interpersonal difficulties (types of people you don’t work well with),  anxieties and fears that are making you hesitant to make decisions, personal and family  issues that are interfering with your performance by sapping your emotional energy, etc.  Business leaders need help working though these issues so that they can continue to become more productive leaders (which is the goal of the process).

One last interesting point Dr. Townsend  made about leaders.  Leaders are essential persuaders – they persuade others to follow them.  Initially, they do this by casting vision, identifying goals that will lead to the vision, communicating out a plan to reach the goals and then inspiring his team to share the vision and implement the plan.

But there is a difference between initially persuading followers and keeping them engaged.  For team members to continue to stay engaged with the vision and task, they need a sense of being listened to , understood and cared for by the leader.  This is a different skill set than the initial persuasive skills and many leaders either haven’t developed, don’t value or don’t practice the empathic listening to their team – and this ultimately leads to loss of enthusiasm, discouragement and conflict – for the unheard team member will find someone who will listen to them (other colleagues, other leaders) and this can lead to discontent and division within the team.

I’ll stop there.  “He who has ears to hear, let him listen (and act!)”

This week I have had the privilege of participating in a summit meeting of advisors who work with some of the most successful individuals and families in our country (and even the world).  Approximately twenty-five professionals from a variety of disciplines gathered to learn from one another and discuss how they can best work together to serve their clients.  Clients of the advisors present include royalty of countries around the world, former Presidents of the United States, top entertainers and sports figures in the U.S., leaders and innovators in the field of technology, “household names” of financially successful families, and generally very successful business families from various industries.

It was a fascinating two days of listening to presentations from the professional participants — who shared the latest advances in their field of service, and then to hear the team members discuss together the implications of the advances and how they can be utilized to help the families we serve.  The areas of expertise included:

*investment advisory professionals (one of the leading theorists in the field whose firm has outperformed the S&P 500 every year for the past 10 years)

*open architecture financial reporting (being able to report all of a family’s assets in one report — from multiple investment firms to including non-traditional asset classes)

*risk management  (an independent consultant who advises clients in assessing the various types of risks associated with their holdings and businesses and helps clients find the best provider for each type of risk)

*security of family members (a former intelligence agent whose firm provided security at the last World Cup games and who has successfully returned every kidnap victim safely)

*life insurance professionals (the ex-chief underwriter of one of the top five life insurance companies in the world)

*estate and tax planning attorneys (a team of attorneys who together train estate planning attorneys across the country and some of whom are involved in framing state laws in the area)

*business valuation and business succession experts (individuals who have been involved in helping transfer billions of dollars of business value from one generation to the next)

and more.

What was fascinating to me was to observe the following characteristics of these individuals:

• Humble.  Although each person was a leader in the own field, to a person they were not proud, arrogant nor self-promoting.
• A learner.  Each person was there to learn from others and people repeatedly commented on the privilege to learn from one another.
• Service-orientation.  These professionals saw their role as to serve their clients to the best of their ability.  Although everyone is also professionally successful, they were not focused on image or making a lot of money — they knew that if they served their clients well they would be fairly compensated.
• Collegial.  Although there were professionals from the same fields (e.g. accounting, tax law) as well as a variety of areas, there was no sense of “turf wars” or trying to take over areas. Rather, these professionals see and know the value of working together with others who are also competent.
• Integrity.  Repeatedly the issue came up that “we are not willing to do [x, y, or z] just to make money. We will only do what is best for our client.”
• Enjoyable to be around.  We laughed a lot.  The group was positive, caring for one another, and respectful.  I did not hear one cutting or sarcastic remark during the whole event.  And people genuinely expressed their appreciation to one another in numerous ways.

The group reminded me of an old proverb I have tried to pursue in my life:

“Do you see people skilled in their work?  They will work for kings, not for ordinary people.”

The lesson for all of us is this — do whatever you do well, learn and keep learning from others, and take the initiative to do what you can to be around those who are the best in their field.

A practical example: one of the participants who was younger (early 40s), but already extremely successful in his own field [he serves royal families in the Middle East], sought out one of the older participants and asked to be mentored by him stating “I’ll do whatever you need — carry your bags, sit in the corner and be quiet — I just want to be there, observe and learn from you.”

Share that perspective with your kids and junior managers.

This week I had the privilege of experiencing two tremendous demonstrations of teamwork — one in basketball, and the other in a music theatre production.

As I reported last week, I am a University of Kansas (KU) basketball fan. And my family and I enjoyed the experience of watching the game together this past Monday night. “Enjoyed” may not be the right word, at least not for the whole game, but the result created a magnificent celebration in our home. (It was one of those — this doesn’t happen very often in life so let’s enjoy it to the fullest!)

While much of the media attention has been on the shot made by Mario Chalmers in the last two seconds of regulation time (for those who don’t follow basketball, he made a long shot to tie the game and send it into overtime), but obviously the win was created by both a whole team effort and a series of events by a variety of team members. The combined defensive play on Memphis’ outstanding guards by Russell Robinson, Brandon Rush, Mario Chalmers, Sherron Collison allowed KU to stay close throughout the game. Darrell Arthur’s game leading 20 points, along with the inside play of Sasha Kahn, Darnell Jackson and Cole Aldrich wore down the big men of Memphis to the point of exhaustion. The steals by Mario and Sherron down the stretch provided the opportunity to score and catch up at the end of regulation. And obviously, the coaching by Bill Self and his staff gave the players the instruction and guidance they used to build and regain the lead.

In spite of Chalmers’ amazing shot at the end, the emphasis all year has been on the balance of the Kansas team in scoring, in rebounding, and in leadership in various games. The season and the championship game were a prime example of how excellent teamwork leads to success. (Since this is such a discussed topic in the mainstream media I won’t expand further here.)

But let me turn to a less well-known example - the production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by the high school which my daughter attends. The school is relatively small (about 285 students) and there were 50+ high school students (plus about 20 elementary school students) in the production. What was amazing to me, as I watched the production “come together” over the past week, was the intricate synthesizing of numerous pieces into a unified amazing production. For weeks, the music department has been practicing the songs, the drama instructor has been “blocking” the scenes, the choreographer fashioned the dance steps and taught the chorus, costume designers created and made numerous costumes, while artists constructed the sets and scenery. Then in the last week, the “tech team” kicked into high gear — creating the lighting schemes and figuring out the sound systems. And then the drama and music directors integrated all of the pieces and players — with increasing polish each night — into a wonderful mutisensory experience of music, color and light, dance, humor.

Here are some pictures of Joseph, his brothers, and my daughter, Lizz (one of the narrators) taken by my good friend, Michael Bankston.

Both of these events were sources of joy to me (and others). And they were the results of countless hours of practice (not only in preparation for these specific events, but in the development of skills over the years) of both individuals and groups of people into the resulting product. And the comments by observers were the same: “Amazing!” “WOW!” “Can you believe it?” “Incredible.” “Outstanding.” “A once in a lifetime experience.”

The power of teamwork can be amazing — the culmination and synthesis of individual talent and skill, combined with creative and dynamic leadership, along with each team member being willing to follow directions and do their part, putting the purpose & goal of the team unit ahead of individual glory. And, interestingly, the glory which returns to the individual from being a part of the team, is greater than the person could have accomplished on their own.

Just ask Mario Chalmers.