Who’s on your team?
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the people surrounding me, both at work and in my broader life - my teams.
This reflection comes from leaving behind a team at LinkedIn, both the team I built and the broader team that I spent five years with, as well as finding my space in new teams at Thrive Global. I’ve also been spending a lot of time thinking about how to effectively show up for people who are going through hard times and tackling major life challenges: teams really matter when life throws you curveballs, when a setback is too big to handle on your own. Only teams can tackle the biggest challenges and opportunities that we face.
We’re all part of teams: teams at work, in family, in friendships, in communities, in cultures, in countries; in big teams, and small ones; some that change our lives and make us better, and others that might actually end up bringing us down. Today, I want to talk about how to consciously think about your teams and why they matter.
You might have heard about a little movie on the subject of teams that came out this weekend, which already earned over $1.2B dollars and smashed every existing record along the way.
I am convinced that we all really want to be on amazing teams. We’re called to it. It’s hardwired within us. Every study makes it clear that we truly need other people in our lives to have any semblance of lasting well-being. Strong, positive social relationships:
Strengthen your immune system
Extend life
Speeds recovery from surgery
Reduces the risk of depression and anxiety disorder
Being on a team takes those benefits of positive relationships and cranks the volume up. Belonging to a group is the most common source of meaning out there, and it is characterized by having caring relationships with people who you frequently share positive interactions with.
Unfortunately, finding a good team can be hard. Social isolation is growing, people report being lonelier then ever, and we’re seeing clearly from the data what that impact is: loneliness has astonishingly negative effects on your overall health and longevity.
None of us can get through life on our own. We need other people. This has never been clearer to me than in this season of my life. My partner has been suffering from a rare, mysterious illness for the last fifteen months, a challenge that has surmounted any I’ve ever known and truly required every reserve of grit I have (and about a hundred times of hitting what I thought was the bottom of my reserves and having to go deeper.) This weekend, my mom flew out to help take care of us. She came to our home and like a whirling dervish, set to making life a little bit better. She took him to appointments. She bought us tons of new supplies. She reorganized the entire house. She walked our dog. She cooked dinner. She cleaned up. She took every responsibility off of my plate so that I could take my very first break as a caretaker in these 15 months. She is my team member, not just because she is my mom, but because she shows up, she makes me better, she challenges me, and she offers me all of the love and compassion she can.
I’m very lucky - this team member is inextricably bound to me. But it definitely made me reflect on what it means to be on a team, and what I want to model for my teams: how I want to hold myself accountable for showing up, and what type of people I want around me, and crystallized why I’m so passionate about creating a team of people who are making the world a better place.
There’s an old management saying that goes: top performers are not well rounded, but great teams are. This also translates to life in general. Someone on your team is always going to be facing something hard, needing you to battle alongside them against their monster. Great teams are great because they move with agility, supporting different members as they go through their respective challenges. On a team, there’s always someone who is a bit stronger in that moment, who can lean down to offer a helping hand. Being a good team member means always keeping your eyes peeled for the help your fellow members might need, and offering it proactively, even if they don’t know how to ask for it. That’s how pain, loss, and suffering can bring us together, helping us to rise above challenges: great teams that show up for you in the worst of times make it clear what the best of life has to offer.
Being on a team can be hard sometimes. It’s hard to hit pause on your own interests, even temporarily, and show up for the people who need you. My mom has a ton going on, including writing a book (!), and I’m sure she was very unexcited in contemplating cleaning my apartment and running errands for four days straight. But she still did it. She showed up for me. Being on a team requires courage, the courage to show up and be there with your community and stand with them in their pain and challenge, even when you don’t know what to do, how to do it, or if it’s useful or helpful or exactly what the want. You just go and do it, because that is what team members do.
It’s important to be thoughtful about what teams we join. Every single team we are a part of changes us. We are much more porous than we think we are, and every team we are a part of changes us in some way. Our brains were actually built to be influenced by other people and shaped by the perceptions of those around us. Emotions become shared within groups, too. There is a phenomena called emotional contagion that happens at a non-conscious level wherein we ‘catch’ other people’s emotions, a tendency which is particularly likely in close environments.
There’s an old piece of advice from the motivational speaker and writer Jim Rohn that says that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Who do you spend your time with? What do they value? How do they influence you? Do they make you better, stronger, kinder, more courageous or more compassionate? Do they see the best in you and hold you accountable for delivering upon it? Do they flex with you for your needs, and you flex with them for theirs?
Here are a few questions I think about when I’m considering my own teams:
What is the team working towards?
Benjamin Franklin started a society called the Junto, a mutual improvement endeavor where each member supported one another’s goals of bettering themselves. Is this team working for the betterment of themselves and the world, or are they concerned merely with their own satisfaction and pleasure? For me, the answer to that question instantly determines whether or not I’d like to be a part of their community.
Am I the least ____ in the team?
I want to be able to learn from my team, and the best way to do that is to self-select into a team where I am the least something. For example, I set a strict rule for myself as a manager that I would only hire the people who I thought would do far better than I had done at their job, with a goal of making myself redundant. If there’s a value you’re trying to cultivate in yourself, try to find a team where it’s embodied and mastered so that you can learn from the best.
How do members of the team show up for one another?
Do they rally around one another? Do they listen and take feedback? Do they respect one another? Is there kindness as a prevailing feature? Teams have to come with day-to-day positive interactions to be able to withstand challenges. A team will never make it through a storm without having spent the time building the strength to face it.
Will the team’s culture help me to grow?
Elite coaches know that the best way to make a great athlete is to put them on a great team. We often think it’s the other way around, but in fact, coaches say that it is the culture of the team that brings about the person’s best self and top performance. I always ask myself if a team does things about 2 notches better than my current one does, because like it or not, I will conform to the standards of my team.
You don’t have to start afresh, either. You can start with your existing teams and take responsibility for improving their culture and raising their standards.
Here’s the secret: if you want to be on a great team, be a great teammate.
Be the best teammate to everyone. Show up. Care for them. Put yourself out there first. Fight to be there for them. Tell them you appreciate them. Look them in the eye. Give them your full attention. Remind them of why they are special. Think often about them and what they might be feeling and needing. Facilitate connections to your other teams if it might help. Set an example for what you would want in your team, and invite people to meet you there.
Everyone loves to belong. Everyone needs to belong. I hope that you have a wonderful team around you right now, that you find joy in your belonging, and remember that I am always here and on your team if you need me.