The People In Your Neighborhood: Elevating Synergy Through Embracing Leadership and Diversity

If leadership is a wheel, the central and core place at which all spokes connect is purpose. One of the key challenges for you as a leader is building that connection to purpose among team members so that your team can achieve synergetic energy. Tapping into the diversity of your team can help you elevate that energy by investing in people and building on their individual strengths.

The lack of trust on a team is often identified as the first step in the breakdown or dysfunction of a team. But trust on a team is often more complex, starting with the relationship with leadership.

In other words, a breach of trust becomes a point of inflection, altering the tone and pitch of one’s perception of themselves as a member of a team. Here’s what this can look like:

There are various roles at a school, from the classroom teacher to you as an administrator to the other members of the school team, including the janitorial staff, librarians, cafeteria workers, and the list continues. All of these are members of the school team and community. And, to go back to the image earlier, it’s important that the core of this connection is shared purpose. But what can happen when trust is breached is that there can be misalignment because of the change in the way identity is viewed.

A breach of trust becomes a point of inflection, altering the pitch and tone of one's perception of themselves as a member of a team.

Breach of Trust Attacks on Team Identity

There are 3 attacks on team identity that can happen when trust is breached: the attack on purpose, the attack on identity, and the attack on the standard of leadership.

Attack on Purpose

A person enters a team from a position of strength. They’ve seen the job description. There’s some innate confidence that the team member has in their ability to fulfill the role. They’ve had their skills honed and tested through education and experience. During the interview process, they’ve experienced a show of confidence in them in the form of the affirmations the process provides.

Each new school year, there are continued affirmations provided through assessments, reviews of key performance indicators, feedback from students and families, and also more organic feedback from the school team. When a breach of trust happens, and support is not found in the face of challenges, this feedback that may have happened in the past loses its power and influence and may be replaced instead with questions: Do I belong here? Is the place I thought I had on this team really my place, or am I easily replaceable? If I am easily replaceable, what can I do to change this and make myself more valuable? Self-talk may lead to the unspoken conclusion that greenlights being provided can’t be trusted and that the team member themselves needs to establish a separate set of metrics so that they’re not caught off guard again.

Attack on Identity

There’s also the damage that can happen when a member of a team stretches themselves too thin under the weight of these unclear expectations. The effects of this breach of trust can then start to reach into a team member’s home and personal life. Click here to open a new tab and access an article that dives more deeply into challenges associated with burnout.

Attack on the Standard of Leadership

The attack on purpose and the attack on identity can also result in an attack on the standard of leadership as a team member begins to question the type of leadership that lends itself to these kinds of violations of expectations and inconsistencies between what you as a leader do and say.

3 Responses to Attacks on Personal Identity in a Team Context

All of these attacks are ones on identity and purpose and can result in one’s retreat from, redrawing of, or warped recommitment to what it means to be part of the team.

In the case of warped recommitment, a team member decides to override their own needs and boundaries out of what they see as a commitment to the team. The reality is that this may be more of a result of a team member’s seeing the dopamine hit that comes from formalized praise as something that is of greater benefit to them than the pain registers to them as harmful.

Redrawing of boundary lines after a breach of trust is a healthier approach because of what it communicates. According to this approach, team members are stepping back from the situation to take a closer look and determine the nature of the problem. They’re looking specifically at what worked and was helpful, what didn’t work and was not helpful, and where the areas of improvement are and what changes can happen so that the team member’s own needs and the needs of the team as a whole can be met in future interactions while mitigating the risk that past challenges will happen again.

In retreat, a team member makes the decision to withdraw from the team or to set a boundary that, once crossed, will trigger an immediate or eventual self-removal either completely or into a different mindset because of the breach of trust that’s been committed.

Attacks on purpose, identity, and the standard of leadership come down to attacks on identity and purpose and can result in retreat, redrawing, or recommitment to what it means to be part of the team.

Leadership and the People in Your Neighborhood

Miscommunication happens in the course of relationships. Unfulfilled expectations can happen in the course of being human and life happening to us all. But a key difference between these things and the inflection points mentioned earlier is the communication of value in times of both conflict and ease. When a major change happens and schedules need to change, prompt communication is more helpful than ghosting. When you respond or don’t respond based on a misread of a situation, accountability, careful listening, and solution-oriented collaboration can be game changers.

As a leader, understanding the needs of your team and the individual members of your team is important. Frameworks like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs provide some insight into this. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in particular highlights how the meeting of needs contributes to the ability of the individual to pursue self-actualization. Click here to open a new tab and explore Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and its connection to self-actualization in greater detail.

Maslow identifies several characteristics that the self-actualized person possesses:

  • Perception
  • Acceptance both of others and of self
  • Spontaneity
  • Autonomy
  • Greater emotional fulfillment
  • A greater number of peak experiences
  • Creativity
  • Appreciation

The needs of the individual inside of the team context will differ and complement those of the individual apart from it.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in a Team Environment

Physiological and Safety Needs

For the individual, physiological needs are those needs that keep the individual alive. These include food, water, shelter, and clothing. This is also when looking at the needs of the individual and their place in the workplace becomes more complex. To get these things, a job is necessary. This makes a job itself a physiological need. Depending on how a team member views their experience on a team in relation to this, their mindset can be a healthy one or an unhealthy one.

You, as the leader, are also informing this through your feedback and your methods of communication. Less feedback and unclear or faulty communication can contribute to feelings of insecurity. Constructive feedback at the right times is healthier and creates a feeling of security. Safety needs for the individual include those needs that bring about a sense of security, like health, freedom from danger, and security. In the workplace, the physiological needs and the needs for safety are locked together because of the ways in which they’re provided for the team member.

Love and Belongingness Needs

Love might seem like a different kind of word for the workplace, but when you look at it for what it is, the human need for connection and belonging, it starts to enter the frame more clearly. The main idea here is how you, as the leader, communicate appreciation and value and how each member of the team comes together to fulfill the purpose of the team. This comes down to making sure each person knows the value of their role and how it contributes to the team and is coming together under the banner of the alignment with the team’s mission, vision, and values.

Providing your team with a sense of belonging comes down to making sure each person knows the value of their role, how it contributes to the team, and how it all comes together under the banner of alignment with the team's mission, vision, and values.
Leadership and Communication Styles

A lot has been said here about communication. But the quality and nature of communication may change depending on the diverse nature of your team. For example, different generations have different communication preferences. Being able to adapt to these preferences yields both clarity and a sense that you want to meet each team member in the ways that best resonate with them.

  • Baby Boomers prefer communication styles that provide greater context like in-person conversations and phone calls. They can have more of a tendency toward workaholism and a greater orientation toward independence, goals, and career.
  • GenX team members prefer to prioritize work-life balance and to receive communication through primarily visual modalities. They value clarity and speed over modalities that provide more information but less value and clarity. They also prefer creative uses of technology.
  • Millennials prefer communication modalities that place collaboration at the forefront and that allow for greater communication speed. Examples of this would be direct and text messaging.
  • Gen Z team members prefer direct messages and other communication modalities that allow for stream-of-consciousness communication.
  • Cultural alignment is important for both Gen Z and Millennial team members.

Teams are more effective when they can put into place a number of communication modalities, both because of the extension of reach and because information communicated in multiple ways helps leaders achieve such objectives as information retention and innovation in the fulfillment of team goals. This also has implications for communication as it happens in times of conflict. Specific insights that can be drawn from this include the realization that face-to-face communication might not be the best way for every person to experience or work through conflict, the recommendation that visuals be used in connection with words to increase information retention and to drive home critical points, and the strategic indicator that you as a leader may benefit from conducting a survey at the start of the school year to determine preferred communication modalities, preferred ways of receiving feedback and encouragement, and even things like what time of day team members may feel like they’re at their best to process information when collaborative conflict resolution or other difficult conversations may be the goal.

Esteem Needs

Esteem needs that an individual may have include things like status, recognition, and appreciation. These variables build on the need for the sense of belonging. But it’s also important to realize that, for a team member, esteem might not look the same way for one team member as it does for another. McClelland’s Human Motivation Theory indicates that there are 3 core motivational drivers of which an individual will likely have one. He identifies them as achievement, affiliation, and power. Click here to open a new tab and access an article that talks more about McClelland’s Human Motivation Theory.

  • Achievement: A team member who is primarily motivated by achievement has a drive to set and achieve goals that are more difficult or challenging. In the pursuit of achievement, they are likely to take strategic risks and, as a result of these risks and their primary drive, benefit from feedback that is regularly given. They like to do projects and tasks that enable them to work alone.
    • Team Member: An educator with this kind of drive may also enjoy independent research projects that enable them to highlight their skills and talents. They may enjoy the journey of this and also the challenge present in the process.
    • Administrator: You can support this kind of educator by understanding that this is their primary driver. When it comes time to complete projects as a team, it may be helpful for this person to be assigned a challenging portion of the task that they can definitively accomplish on their own, but that is still contributing to the goals and tasks ahead of the team. Feedback will continue to be an important part of your interactions with this team member. When it isn’t possible for them to contribute to the team project as an individual contributor, it can be helpful to map out the individual parts of the project so that the achievements being made as a team can be easily noted and, in this way, the achievement drive is still being fed.
  • Affiliation: Someone with an affiliation drive has even more of a need to feel like they belong. They may go along with decisions or desires of the rest of the group because they want to feed that desire for belonging. They like to be collaborative and don’t really like for there to be uncertainty or high risk.
    • Team Member: An educator with an affiliation drive is going to perform best when they see what they’re doing as something that contributes to the team. They will thrive on committees but may struggle a bit more with the independent tasks associated with their role if they don’t see the connection between those tasks and the team. Where they may also struggle is disagreeing with the rest of the team.
    • Administrator: As a leader, keeping the mission, vision, values, and their importance to your school’s mission is paramount. It is also important to make sure that this person sees opportunities where they’re invited to provide feedback as ways in which they’re adding to the team. Providing positive feedback when they offer ideas and suggestions will encourage them to continue to do so and to see themselves as members of the team who belong on your team.
  • Power: A power-driven team member has a desire to influence or control others. They enjoy winning arguments and other opportunities for competition. They also enjoy recognition and status.
    • Team Member: An educator with a power core is more likely to be competitive. If there are competitions between classrooms or with other teachers or other schools, this is more likely to be their happy place. But, with every core driver, there are challenges that accompany it.
    • Administrator: There may be times when a person with a drive for power forgets the soft skills involved in working with people because of their desire to win. As a leader, being mindful of the challenges associated with this drive will help you work with power-driven team members to bring out their best. It will also be important with each project to make sure that goals and objectives are at the front and presented in a way that highlights why they’re valuable to the team.
As a leader, being mindful of the challenges associated with a motivational drive of power will help you work with them to bring out their best.

Team Diversity, The Johari Window, and the Importance of Life Experience

The backgrounds of the members of your team are another part of elevating your team’s synergy through a focus on purpose and embracing your team’s cultural diversity. As a leader, you can’t be everywhere at once or know everything there is to know. You can be committed to listening, embracing a growth mindset, and having and modeling an attitude of humility. Learning from the diversity present on your team will help you to approach all of these things from a position of strength. Understanding or actively seeking to understand the unique cultural background each team member brings to the table will also help you to show that you appreciate and value each member of your team. The Johari Window provides insights into how you can build this understanding.

The landscape of the workplace provides opportunities for discovery and depth of relationship to develop and be uncovered. It’s a process of knowing, becoming unknown, and discovering the unknown together.

The Known Self

This is the part of yourself that is known both to yourself and to others. It can be developed through accountability, willingness to learn, and by being open and honest about what you know and what you don’t. Others observing you in this space do so in a work environment through how you provide feedback, your openness to listen, and the trust you show through delegating responsibilities, investing in opportunities for each team member to grow in their strengths, and your willingness to let each team member bring their life experience into the roles they fulfill on the team.

For example, a Black student on your campus may benefit from the life experiences of Black instructors and staff. In some cases, this may even change feelings of isolation and uncertainty into feelings of belonging and being seen, which can positively affect academic and social and emotional learning and wellness outcomes. A similar effect can be seen with more experienced teachers and staff mentoring those who are incoming and just beginning their journey with your school.

The Known by Others Self

Each person has blind spots when it comes to their own life and experiences, and how this affects how they show up in the world. One of the places this can be challenging in school environments is in working with parents, guardians, and families. An interaction can be meant in one way by someone who lacks an understanding of the students in the community they serve. The interaction can raise conflict, and the person in the situation can be confused about why. Someone else who shares a background with the students in that community might hear the situation and be unsurprised that conflict occurred. On the other hand, if there is more of an immersion in the community in which a school is based, more time spent getting to know how others outside of oneself see and experience the world, these kinds of outcomes would be less likely to happen. The sharing of culture and life experiences as part of the normal course creates a relational curb effect that enriches your team and your community. As the leader of a diverse team, you can provide opportunities where life experiences can be shared as part of this normal course and even where the members of your staff can interact with members of the community they serve apart from the school day so that there can be a greater and more organic depth of understanding. This will also help you as a leader to build more trust as you serve the community around your school.

The sharing of culture and life experiences as part of the normal course creates a relational curb effect that enriches your team and your community.

The Introverted Self

There are parts of each person that they would rather stay hidden. As a leader, it can be tempting to lean into this and to make more of yourself hidden so that you can uphold an image of yourself that you feel like you need to be to be respected as a leader. To grow in this area, it’s important for you to change the way you feel about vulnerability. A healthy approach to vulnerability doesn’t mean that you share everything with your team. That would also be unhealthy. What it does mean is that when you make decisions about what to share, you do this from a growth mindset and not a mindset where fear is used as a shield. Learn more about the vital role of vulnerability when you click here to register for the 5 Essentials of Christ-Centered Team Building Webinar led by Scott Gostchock, Ed. D., co-founder of Partner2Learn, LLC.

The Unknown Self

Yes, there is the challenge of the unknown. But there’s also the adventure of the unknown. You experience the adventure of the unknown when there are things about you that are unknown both to you and to others. The dynamic of a team is strengthened by the shape of this exploration and the collaborative nature of how experiences unfold through conflict, celebrations, and shared formal and informal learning. As the leader of your team, your approach to this in the workplace contributes to the way each team member approaches the process.

Synergy and The People In Your Neighborhood

Ultimately, a team is best able to be greater than the sum of its parts when each of its parts is in alignment and encouraged to be the best that they can be. As the leader of your team, you set the tone. You build a community where team members either feel appreciated and valued for the skills, experiences, and backgrounds they bring to the table or where they feel overwhelmed by pressure, insecure in their roles, and burned out by unwritten and undefined rules and expectations. These are the people on your team, in your neighborhood.

Register Now for 5 Essentials of Christ-Centered Team Building

Not ready to register yet? Click here to uncover 3 keys to establishing a framework of trust through transformational leadership. 

How can trust be an inflection point for a member of your team?

Trust becomes an inflection point because of the way it affects a team members perception of themselves as a member of the team. If trust is present and the validity of that trust is confirmed, that placement becomes something that a team member learns it’s safe to lean into. When trust is breached, the team member begins to question their role as part of the team. 

3 attacks that can happen as a result of a team member experiencing a breach of trust are: 

  • An attack on purpose
  • An attack on identity
  • An attack on the standard of leadership

According to Maslow, the self-actualized person possesses these characteristics: 

  • Perception
  • Acceptance both of others and of self
  • Spontaneity
  • Autonomy
  • Greater emotional fulfillment
  • A greater number of peak experiences
  • Creativity
  • Appreciation

Feedback and communication are important features that help team members navigate the landscape of the workplace. Less feedback and unclear or faulty communication can contribute to feelings of insecurity. Constructive feedback given at the right times is healthier and can contribute to a team member’s feelings of security.

As the leader, your approach to exploring the unknown about yourself in the context of the team helps to guide the approach your team takes to this. Your healthy vulnerability and openness help to facilitate the same in your team members. Learn more and grow as the leader God has called you to be when you register for the 5 Essentials of Christ-Centered Team Building Webinar at this link.

This Webinar will help you to:

  • Build vulnerability-based trust.
  • Lead with positive and necessary conflict.
  • Utilize true accountability as the highest form of praise. 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *