How To Lead Freelance or Unconventional Teams

How To Lead Freelance (or Unconventional) Teams

By Steve Farber

Author of The Radical Leap

Way back in 1995, I had the great pleasure of seeing the legendary management sage, Peter Drucker, speak about teams and teamwork at a conference for training industry executives. Keep in mind the context of that now bygone era: CD-ROM was the latest, sparkly new technology, the internet was essentially a network of electronic brochures downloaded via modem to your computer at the rate of a millennium per page and The Wisdom of Teams by Katzenbach and Smith, first published in 1992, was all the rage in management circles. “Everybody’s always asking me about the best way to build a team,” said Drucker in his thick, German accent. “But it’s just a silly question, really, because it assumes that all teams are alike. But they’re not. A baseball team is different from a football team is different from a tennis doubles team. You have to have the right team structure for the business and challenge.”

THE FREELANCE ECONOMY

How To Lead Freelance or Unconventional Teams 2

That had never occurred to me before, but it seemed so obvious after I heard him say it: Build your team structure to best suit your business need and be willing to tear it down and start over with a new structure as the needs change — and change they will. Here we are 20 years later, living in a technological world more globalized, interconnected and mobile than even the venerable Peter Drucker could have imagined, and new kinds of teams — driven by new media, challenges and opportunities — are sprouting up every day: virtual teams within a global company and project teams composed of people from different companies who may have never met in person. We’re working in what some have dubbed a “freelance economy,” where it is no longer necessary to have a company or formal team in common in order to work together to accomplish a project. All over people are using the internet and cloud-based technologies to form teams and collaborate on and see a project through to completion. This is the case at large companies that recruit freelancers and contractors to help accomplish projects. It’s also the case for less formal groups of people — people who may come together only to accomplish a single task for a company that may not even exist yet. When the project ends, the team dissembles. Or not. Some go on to work on other projects together. This is the freelance economy, and it’s a faction of the remote and distributed workforce, adding to the complexity of managing teams.


1. They are all made up of human beings. 2. Human beings perform better with great leadership (although not

necessarily the traditional top-down kind). 3. Great team leaders foster meaningful connection among the members of

the team.

No matter the structure of the team, no matter the challenge the team is working on, and no matter the proximity (or lack thereof) of its members, there are three things all successful teams have in common:

Teams thrive on collaboration made up of meaningful connection with one another, and individual team members will perform better when they feel like they’re all in it together. You need to connect your team members to one another on a personal level. So, if you find yourself leading (or being expected to lead) a virtual team, your primary job is to go out of your way to facilitate the very interpersonal connection that remoteness tends to inhibit.


And while nothing encourages trust and connection better than good old locked-in-the-same-room, face-to-face, oxygen-sharing meetings and social time, assume that you’ll never have that luxury with your virtual team. Even though it is, arguably, easier to lead a team that lives under the same roof, that’s a rarity these days. The good news is you can still get your team to know, trust and commit to each other by using virtual collaboration tools like web conferencing and social workspaces to enjoy face-to-face conversations and continuous collaboration. Connection is all about conversation, and, as the team lead, you’re in charge of making sure those conversations happen. To help you get started leading a virtual team, here are the conversations you need to facilitate between your team members to get them connected, on the same page and ready to work together across time and distance. How To Lead Freelance or Unconventional Teams 5

Conversation 1: Personal Discovery To prepare for Conversation 1, write down the names of the people on your team. Now, list everything you know about each person—beyond the team function he or she serves. Do you know anything about their family? How about previous companies they’ve worked for? Can you list any successes they may have had or failures they’ve endured? Do you know anything at all about their personal and professional hopes, needs, dreams and aspirations for the future? Assess how much you know or don’t know about each as a human being. The less you know, the more tenuous your trust and connection is with that person. Each day for the next week, connect with as many people on your team as possible through a medium other than email; video conferencing is the best alternative to an in-person meeting, but you could use the phone too. And instead of getting right down to business, spend some time checking in on a personal level with the goal of learning as much as you can about who this person is and what makes him or her tick.

THE 3 CONVERSATIONS YOU NEED TO HAVE WITH YOUR TEAM


As uncomfortable as this might be at first, ask each person to share with you his or her number one business/career/work challenge. Now dig a little deeper, and try to uncover a personal goal or dream. And if the opportunity presents itself, learn at least one important story or event from his or her life. With some, you may have to coax a bit — but you’ll be surprised how many will open up right away. And once they do… Ask if there’s some way you can be of service — is there something you can do to help with their challenge or get them closer to their personal goal? Even if that person declines your offer, he or she will appreciate your asking. At the end of the week, you’ll not only have a much deeper knowledge of each individual on your team, you’ll have shown each individual that you care. And then you’ll be ready for…


Conversation 2: What Is This Project/Team Really About? John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, once said in an interview that a business should be able to identify and articulate its “higher meaning and purpose.” Yes, money is important. So are the deliverables, client outcomes, job descriptions and expectations etc. — all those things we learned back in Project Management 101. But human beings have a deep, primal need to be a part of something great, something significant, something meaningful. And if you can tap into that need and help to fill it for your team members, they’ll put much more energy and creativity into their work. Your job as a leader of this virtual team, therefore, is to cut quickly through the transactional elements of the work, go right to the essence of its meaning and then lay it out clearly for all involved. The first step is for you: Carve out some solo time to think about your project and reflect on the challenge ahead. Ask yourself the following questions and write down your responses and answers:

1.  What is this project really about — beyond its obvious transactional activities and details?

2.  What kind of impact are we trying to have on the lives of our customers/end users?

3.  How does each of us contribute to the enhancement of our end user’s life and business?


Feel free to add other similar questions and allow yourself to follow your musings wherever they take you. When you’re satisfied with your answers (you’ll know because of how energized and inspired you feel), the next step is really quite simple: Talk about it with your team. Share it on your screen in your web conferences and ask people to respond. Ask them to think about the same questions and share their answers at a subsequent meeting. Watch what happens to the energy of the team.


Conversation 3: What Does Success Look Like For Us? It’s become conventional wisdom that in order to get people excited about the present, you should talk about the future. You should have a vision of where you’re aspiring to go and communicate it clearly to all the stakeholders. Well, the conventional wisdom is true, but the practice is rare. As important as vision is to us, the act of having and communicating vision is mysterious and even intimidating to most. But there’s really nothing mysterious about its value: The clearer and more inspiring the picture of our end goal is, the more committed we are in the work we’re doing today to make that vision a reality. Your job, then, is to paint a clear and compelling picture of the end state of the project. Not to worry, though! There’s no crystal ball required for this. Vision isn’t about predicting the future, it’s about envisioning what you’re striving to create, then describing that end-state in vivid detail.


A.  Roll the clock forward and imagine that your project is complete, and that it was a phenomenal, earth-shattering success.

B.  Make a list of everything you accomplished as a team. C.  Write down all the ways you and each of your team members

gained personally from having worked on this project. D.  Describe the legacy you’ve left behind, the reputation you’ve

established individually and collectively, how your clients describe the impact you’ve had on them, etc.

E.  Now, using those notes as a guide, write at least one paragraph to complete this statement: “At the end of our project, here’s what our success will look like…”

F.  Share it with your team and get their input.

These three conversations do require some time and energy (what great relationships don’t?), But they don’t have to be an all-consuming effort. Even if your team is working on a tight deadline, or if you’ll only be working together for a short period of time, your investment in these conversations will, I believe, ultimately save you time. But you’ll need to be smart about the platform you use to create the dialogue and share your perspectives.

Here’s a simple process that you can do on your own or with your team:


We can’t talk about connection without talking about technology and its offerings and shortcomings. If you are providing team updates through email and conducting team meetings by phone, you’re behind the times. Web conferencing with video and screen sharing bridges the gap between distributed team members. It’s the closest thing you can get to meeting in-person, and it’s more productive than an audio conferencing. People connect better with each other when they see each other, and the more our virtually-working world becomes the norm, the more we crave quality, face-to-face connection and communication — the kind of meaningful, personal interaction we’ve talked about here. The kind that brings teams closer together. The good news is, we now have the tools to create that closeness, even from a distance. If you’re serious about leading teams, you need to consider the technology you’re using to help you foster that connection efficiently. And if you’re thinking that email is the easiest, most efficient conduit for communication, think again. According to CareerBuilder, 89 percent of American workers say email, text and voicemail actually get in the way of workplace relationships. Instead, you and your team will be better served to invest in a project management work platform where teammates can provide updates, track progress and collaborate with each other asynchronously.

THE RIGHT WAY TO HAVE THESE CONVERSATIONS


The right technology can help you accomplish more, so make sure you’re offering your team the technologies that keep them virtually connected. Looking ahead into this post-Drucker, increasingly chaotic and simultaneously exciting world of work, not much is clear, except for this: No matter how much the world we live in and the technology we work with changes, no matter what unforeseen structures future teams will require, our success will ultimately be tied to the quality of our leadership. My mentors, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, said it beautifully in their classic book, The Leadership Challenge: “Change is the province of leaders. It is the work of leaders to inspire people to do things differently, to struggle against uncertain odds and to persevere toward a misty image of a better future. Without leadership there would not be the extraordinary efforts necessary to solve existing problems and realize unimagined opportunities. We have today, at best, only faint clues of what the future may hold, but we are confident that without leadership the possibilities will neither be envisioned nor attained.” Are you ready for the challenge?


Steve Farber is the former Vice President of legendary management guru Tom Peters’ Company and is the founder of The Extreme Leadership Institute—an organization devoted to changing the world through the cultivation and development of Extreme Leaders in business, non-profits, and education. Farber is an executive coach, speaker and a best-selling author. His third book, Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson of True Leadership, debuted as a USA Today and Wall Street Journal Bestseller. His second book, The Radical Edge was hailed as “a playbook for harnessing the power of the human spirit.” And his first book, The Radical Leap: A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership, is already considered a classic in the leadership field, and was recently named one of the 100 Best Business Books of All Time. His newest edition, The Radical Leap Re-Energized: Doing What You Love in the Service of People Who Love What You Do, is available now. www.stevefarber.com.

About Steve Farber


http://www.stevefarber.com/

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How To Lead Freelance or Unconventional Teams