The most fun I ever had in leading organizations was when we had all learned to work together in self-organizing ways using Partner-Centered Leadership ideas and the Process Enneagram to guide our inquiries.
People were full of creative energy, coming up with good ideas about how to solve their problems and do better work. We shared information about all that was going on – feedback was straight forward and useful. We all learned together through teamwork, became more resourceful, and better able to handle the chaos and complexity of the world around us.
In the old days, when I was driving the people from the top down, the work was hard and not a lot of fun. Many days I was just worn out with all the negative energy bring sucked out of me.
As we all learned to work this new way, my role shifted to being a cheerleader for all the great work that people were doing. The gift of their energy above the minimum made a huge, positive contribution.
Why Teamwork Works
Everything that happens within an organization depends on the agreements that the people co-create together about how to self-organize and do their work. Every part of the organization lives within these bounds and standards. In using the Process Enneagram, the people talk together, listen, share, learn and do the work. The people at all levels are engaged and participate in this work. They build together on their shared values.
Every part of the organization, including those at the top, those in research, sales, manufacturing, maintenance, purchasing, human resources, etc., have these ways of working together.
If someone tries to develop separate ways of working, the organization begins to crumble. For example, if I try to do things differently in safety that conflict with these shared ways of working, people get confused and trust drops. Over time this can lead to the sorts of dysfunctional organizations many of us know so well.
We all have a shared responsibility to nurture and develop this way of working together because the results that are achieved are so much better than dysfunctional organizations can achieve.
At one level, each part of the organization is engaged in different sorts of work, but at a deeper level everyone is engaged in this same way of working and building together. Trust levels got a whole lot better. Interdependence among the various groups became stronger. Disagreement and arguments were fewer because we had learned to talk together and listen for the best ideas.
Our organizations are full of people who are quite intelligent. As we worked and learned together, the collective intelligence of the entire organization got stronger, problem solving got stronger, cooperation and helping each other became more common. As we became more successful, we celebrated each other’s successes.
The Payoff of Teamwork
In one plant of over 1,000 people, in working this way, we went from one of the poorest performers to one of the best of all the 150 plants in the company in just four years.
That was a lot of work, but it was so much fun and satisfying. People are still talking about the experience 30 years later.
Path Forward
If you want to learn more about this way of working and learning together, please give me a call at 716-622-6467 between 10:00 am and 4:00 pm EST.
