Team Leader as Beach Lifeguard, Protecting Spaces for Change Work and Regular Work
In my last article, I told the story of a surfer whose ride on a wave was rudely interrupted by a swimmer in his path. From her perspective, the swimmer felt the same way. Of course. Yikes all around.
I compared swimming to our regular work (down in the waves, steady, a little plodding sometimes) and surfing to our new work where there is personal learning and innovation (fast progress in a new direction, a bit bolder and faster, direct). At the individual level, we can help ourselves and our colleagues to do their regular work and learning work, if we know what everybody is up to. Jump over and read the whole article if you want examples and the full story.
Now, let’s take it up a level, from the relationships of individuals to the communication and operations of a whole team. Where a team has someone in the role of team leader (supervisor, manager, director, project manager), that person can help us all as surfers and swimmers to keep learning, keep doing, and to stay out of each others’ way.
The main point of the surfer/swimmer metaphor bears repeating, as that’s where we want to get:
Evolution and change are ongoing and require everyone’s involvement. In an evolving and growing team, everyone should do both the regular work of swimming along in the regular waves, and the change work of learning and moving in new directions.
We can avoid moments of conflict and confusion, like the moment of shared terror in the waves, by defining and communicating where each person’s change work meets up with other people’s regular work.
When we think about people in the waves, there’s an obvious parallel to the team leader: the lifeguard.
In the most exciting moments of the job, the lifeguard saves lives! She charges into the water to pull people back onto dry land. 99% of the time, though, the lifeguard is on the beach, taking the wider perspective, watching the group on their beach and in their water that day. She is an operations manager for the beach.
To help the lifeguard fill this role, she uses rules and structures. In San Diego, our busier beaches have separate parts of beach for swimming and surfing. From the county website: “Water areas off the major beaches are divided into swimming and surfing zones to separate these users.” A black and yellow checkered flag is posted in the middle of the beach by the waterline to mark the boundary. (The beach where my husband the surfer had his close encounter with a swimmer is not a “major beach,” so no separate zones, so near-smash.)
The leader of a work team has a similar role to the lifeguard: Keep everybody doing their thing and prevent harmful conflict between people. When harmful conflict does happen, and it will eventually, the leader swoops in if needed.
To wring the last ounce of metaphorical value out of this beach people scenario, here are a few examples of beach safety management 101, with ideas for how a team leader in the workplace could mimic them to help teams keep moving and changing, while keeping the regular work going.
Separate zones for surfing and swimming, with a clearly marked boundary. Establish the two different types of work - regular work and change work - and set up the time and space for the change work, out of the way of regular work. Give the change work space out of the flow of the regular work. For individual priorities like professional skills growth, this zone could be simply the manager telling the person to set aside time to learn and practice. For change work in groups, the zone is the set of meetings and other work as a team. The question: Do you have a separate space for change work, a mental or even a physical space? Do your people know how and when to use it?
The lifeguard monitors the boundary between the swimmers and the surfers. It’s no accident that the lifeguard tower sits on the line between the swimming zone and the surfing zone. That checkered flag flaps in the beach breeze, reflected in the lifeguard’s mirrored sunglasses. At work, the manager or supervisor keeps the change efforts on track and separate from the regular work, so that work succeeds and doesn’t confuse everybody doing their regular work.
As a change leader for a team, we can ask:
What changes are we making as a group and who is involved? What wave are we riding together? Who needs to be up on the wave, and who needs to keep from getting smashed by a board? Do my fellow surfers know how to surf?
Does each person have their own personal growth and development goals? What is everyone learning individually? Do they have the space to do this, to surf their own waves safely and happily? Do we keep each other up to date on our individual learning and how we can help each other?
For all of us as swimmers with regular daily work, does everybody know when they need to worry about all the surfing/change work and how they will be included in that? (Or are they looking over their shoulder while navigating the daily waves, anxious and gossiping about what might happen and when?)
The punchline: Teams succeed when everyone has their regular daily (swimming in the waves) work and the opportunity to do some individual or group change work (surfing on one wave), and the two types of work are managed in harmony.
A plug: Six Culture Builders for Team Leaders is an 8-week course that starts on September 14. We will get into this idea about individual and team goals and harmonizing the work across a team as part of Culture Builder 3: Lead for Purpose and Goals, and Culture Builder 4: Develop Others for Growth and Learning. Find out more here and join us if you can.