Every Moment Matters: Leverage Plus Points to Strengthen Your Team
Every moment is a chance to make a new decision. Your last decision does not dictate your next decision. Each moment is a fresh opportunity. Although this is true, it isn’t always easy to implement. Old decision-making patterns, perhaps to criticize without suggesting a helpful fix, can be difficult to break. Yet, the future of team performance relies on each member creating a positive feedback loop within the team. Countless moments, big and small, are moments that matter. We call these moments Plus Points.
Plus Points are opportunities to improve team performance. They range from simple communications to intense moments of conflict resolution. The decisions you make during each Plus Point can either create a positive feedback loop that continuously builds upon itself or can cause a negative feedback loop that subtracts value from the team.
On high performing teams, team members leverage their abilities to be inclusive, work towards the team’s goal and fulfill their psychological role during each Plus Point. They treat each circumstance as an opportunity to strengthen the team rather than weaken it.
Communication: It’s What You Say and How You Say It
At one point in the journey to the 2012 World Series baseball finals, the San Francisco Giants needed to change their momentum. “The team was down two games to none in its opening-round, best-of-five playoff series, and would have to win the next three games straight — all on the road,” writes Ben Rowen for The Atlantic. It was a tall order, even for a team known to have good chemistry. Mid-season acquisition player Hunter Pence gave a speech before the critical game. Even though he was a new player, he gathered his courage to rally his fellow teammates, urging them to “play for each other, not for yourself. Win each moment. Win each inning.” Third base coach Tim Flannery said Pence’s speech “moved me like I have never been moved before…[it was] purity, real, passion, soul.” Rowen writes, “Pence made feverish eye contact, and allegedly spoke with the passion of a revivalist preacher about the need for the team to reawaken.”
This was a Plus Point for the Giants. Pence leveraged his communication skills and fierce positivity to motivate his team mates. He backed up his words with intense emotion and action on the field — he made a driving catch in right field and made a big hit in the 10th inning. The Giants won that night and made their way to the finals where they defeated the Detroit Tigers in all four matchups. Barry Zito, a pitcher for the Giants at the time, said Pence’s speech was a turning point for the team. Pence’s speech fueled a positive feedback loop that helped lead the team to win the series.
Communication has the power to bring a team together but it can also split people apart along pre-existing faultlines. In a study of 183 hours of police body camera footage during routine traffic stops, a group of Stanford University researchers found that officers in Oakland, California communicated with more respect to white civilians than to Black civilians. This finding held true even after the researchers controlled “for the race of the officer, the severity of the infraction, the location of the stop, and the outcome of the stop.”
The researchers note that while many factors can influence the interaction, the officer’s words are critical because they can either “communicate respect and understanding of a citizen’s perspective, or contempt and disregard for their voice.” Apologizing is weighted high on the respect scale, while saying “keep your hands on the wheel” is weighted as the most disrespectful in these interactions. From their data, the researchers were able to predict the race of the civilian from analyzing only the officer’s words. The simple modeler was correct in its predictions for over two thirds of the interactions.
It makes sense that Black civilians do not trust the police when they are consistently treated disrespectfully. Each interaction between Black folks and police is a Plus Point. The words police use in the overwhelming majority of these moments contributes to a negative feedback loop instead of a positive one.
We know from Pentland’s research that communication is the key factor that influences a team’s productivity. Even though charismatic connectors are known for their communication skills, everyone on the team needs to make an effort to contribute to the positive feedback loop. Emails, online and in person office chats and phone calls can all be small Plus Points for your team. All of those daily actions add up to create a team’s chemistry. If you resent writing that email, your tone will come through.
We aren’t advocating for false positivity — do give your teammates constructive feedback. We are advocating for intentional communication that strengthens a team across faultlines. Communicate with your teammates as you’d like to be communicated with, not only during monumental Plus Points, but throughout the day. It all adds up.
We Aren’t Lone Wolves: Conflict Resolution Cultivates Interdependence
Wild wolves live in packs because they benefit from interdependent relationships. They rely on each other to survive. Wolves hunt together, raise their pups together and fight off rival packs together. This system works but it hinges on wolves’ ability to resolve inter-group conflicts. Researchers Candice Baan, Ralph Bergmüller, Douglas W. Smith and Barbara Molnar studied conflict management in two grey wolf packs in Yellowstone National Park. They explain that the benefits from living in packs “almost invariably come along with costs of conflicts arising from competition over resources.” When a conflict happens, wolves reconcile with nose to nose contact. However, this process costs the wolf who is engaging in the reconciliation. We know, apologizing can be hard, and it’s difficult for wolves too.
However, this is not an altruistic act for the reconciling wolf. That wolf benefits from resolving the conflict because reconciliation strengthens the pack, which in turn increases that individual’s chance of survival. Wolves don’t just reconcile with their partners, they invest conflict resolution energy in all pack relationships.
Baan et al explain that humans are interdependent like wolves. Our interdependence is key for the evolution of human cooperation, the researchers argue. They explain that conflict resolution is an important “investment in social peace as a common good in wolves and other species with high interdependence.”
Clashes are inevitable in our social groups. We know from Bezrukova’s research that baseball teams with more internal conflict performed higher than teams with less internal conflict. Conflict is not to be feared, rather it creates opportunities to strengthen the group. Moments of conflict resolution are important Plus Points. Although all moments, big and small, contribute to improving or decreasing team performance — conflict resolution deserves your full attention. These are moments where your team can deepen faultlines or bridge them.
If you can bridge faultlines, then your team can solve complex problems and advance towards common team goals. If you cannot resolve conflicts, then the team breaks down along faultlines and may dissipate into a low performing group of lone wolves.
Once your team is in the practice of contributing to the positive feedback loop, it will become easier for others to rise to each Plus Point occasion. Team members can treat each communication and conflict resolution moment as an opportunity rather than an obligation.
