Face Your Fears: Problems and Change Can Strengthen Your Team
Unlock Your Teams’ Problem Solving Potential
In 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank two hours and 40 minutes after impact. 705 people survived because they had a spot in one of the 16 lifeboats. Tragically, there weren’t enough lifeboats to save all 2,200 people aboard the Titanic. However, could people have been saved with the other materials and objects at hand? For example, could the Titanic’s crew have maneuvered the ship alongside the iceberg where people could take refuge atop the 400 foot long floating platform?
Researchers Tony McCaffrey and Jim Pearson argue that although it is difficult to know what would’ve worked in hindsight, there were potentially more possibilities than the lifeboats alone. They explain that the crew and passengers might have overlooked the alternatives — like creating makeshift rafts out of clothing trunks and car tires — because of a barrier called “functional fixedness.” This type of cognitive bias “limits people to seeing objects only in the way in which they’re traditionally used.” The iceberg was seen as the cause of the problem, not a potential solution.
You can overcome functional fixedness and tap into your team’s problem solving potential by describing the problem in as many ways as possible. Art Markman, Professor of Psychology and Marketing at the University of Texas at Austin, explains that the key to problem solving is unlocking the solution amongst the collective brain power of the group.
Our brains offer memories in response to a stated problem. For example, Markman says if he asks you to think of a salad, you can access “information about lettuce, tomatoes, and dressing.” A way to access different solutions to the same problem is to state the problem in different ways to the brains of each team member. Markman explains that “the most consistently creative people and groups are ones that find many different ways to describe the problem being solved.” For example, the iceberg in the Titanic scenario could be described as a large floating object. With this practice, you can unlock your team’s creative potential to solve problems in an effort to move a team towards its goals. Similar to moments of conflict resolution, you can leverage each problem solving situation as a Plus Point that can strengthen the team.
Large and small challenges that your team faces daily requires creative problem solving. These are Plus Points because the response to the situation can either weaken or strengthen the team. Thanks to Q theory, you know how to build a team with the right balance of folks with seasoned experience, fresh perspectives and previous collaborations. Based on what we call the “It Factor” you know to create a mix of personalities, including charismatic connectors who bring new information back to the team from outside sources. Teams built on these principles can access each individual’s creativity and work together to solve problems.
The relationships amongst members and with outside members — strong and weak ties — are the ingredients for innovation. When the team works according to the Plus Principle, folks critique each other and build upon ideas to overcome challenges. Under the Inclusion Rule, everyone is always working to bring out the best in their fellow teammate, which is necessary to solve the toughest problems. These principles and practices create a foundation that supports creativity and innovation in each problem solving Plus Point moment.
Treat Change as an Opportunity to Learn
The only thing that is constant in life is change, wrote ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. We know this, yet we may still resist those inevitable times of flux. Plus Points arise each time a team is asked to adapt to change. In these moments, how the team responds can move it further towards its goal or toward the team’s disintegration. Psychology researchers Elaine D. Pulakos, Sharon Arad, Michelle A. Donovan and Kevin E. Plamondon define aspects of workers adapting to change as how they:
“adjust to and deal with the unpredictable nature of these situations, how efficiently and smoothly they can shift their orientation or focus when necessary, and to what extent they take reasonable action, in spite of inherent uncertainty and ambiguity in the situation.”
Jazz musicians are excellent examples of highly adaptable team members. In The Jazz Process: Collaboration, Innovation, and Agility, Adrian Cho explains that “the greater goal of a jazz musician is to create something unique. In other words, the musician aims to innovate.” In order to reach their goal, jazz musicians improvise and change the notes and tempo of the music. This not only happens during their solos, but also in musical conversation with their bandmates. When the pianist changes the chords, the other players need to adapt to the change in that moment. Change is inherent in the art of being a jazz musician. It isn’t something to fear, rather it is an opportunity to create something new.
In the business world, change is now the norm rather than the exception. Companies who adapt are the ones who will continue to have a chance to adapt again in the future. Consultants Martin Reeves and Mike Deimler write in the Harvard Business Review that “instead of being really good at doing some particular thing, companies must be really good at learning how to do new things.” Inherent in the process of doing new things is failure. They write that “adaptive companies are very tolerant of failure, even to the point of celebrating it.” Those moments of failure can be Plus Points for your team to learn what went wrong and how to improve in the future.
Your team needs folks who can take change in stride. Based on the “It” Factor, you know to cultivate a team of people that includes Informal Captains, who are open to new ideas, and Team Players who are focused on collaboration. These psychological roles are key to help a team’s resiliency.
In addition, psychology researcher Jeffery LePine found that each person’s goal-orientation is key to their team’s performance in times of change. When teams needed to quickly adapt in the lab decision-making simulation, folks who focused on performance faltered, while teams that focused on learning succeeded. This is because those performance oriented teams:
“tended to focus attention on how the team was doing relative to their goal, and these teams did not share the type of information necessary for learning and developing appropriate strategies.”
The performance-oriented teams contributed to a negative feedback loop during the Plus Point while learning-oriented teams strengthened their team. Instead of seeing how far behind they were, the learning-oriented teams cooperated, shared relevant information amongst each other and made helpful suggestions for how to adapt.
What a relief to know that learning leads to success, instead of a tunnel vision focus on results. If you extrapolate this finding out to a human’s lifespan, it mirrors the teaching that life is about the journey, rather than the destination. We all end up with the same result. It’s how we experience all the Plus Points along the way that matters.
