Why Your Team Doesn’t Think As You Do

Because you don’t let them think at all.

Like a wine glass knocked to the floor and shattered into hundreds of shards, my coherent thoughts abruptly splintered into tiny fragments as I heard the voice over my left shoulder sneer, “Watcha working on?”

The familiar refrain was coming from my recently promoted team leader. It wasn’t a sincere question, as he had already presumed the answer: nothing, because I wasn’t typing.

Truth be told, I don’t know how long I had been staring into the distance. Long enough that my eyes were dry and irritated when I finally blinked, but not so long as to have drool appear at the side of my mouth. Time had no relevance as I performed mental combinatorics in search of solutions to a difficult problem. I was getting closer to a resolution with each permutation. But what is not seen is often not valued. And I hadn’t been typing.

I realized the Team Lead had fallen prey to a common problem: he had confused motion with progress. He had gone against the advice of one of the greatest coaches of all time, John Wooden, who said, “Never mistake activity for achievement.”

Never mistake activity for achievement

— John Wooden

Activity is doing anything; achievement is accomplishing something worthwhile. Though achievement requires activity, not all activity leads to achievement.

Consequences of Emphasizing Activity

Resentment

In our scenario, the entire team room would stiffen whenever the Lead walked in, and frantic motion would ensue. Talk about climate change. The unspoken team goal was to satisfy him and usher him out, allowing us to get back to productive work.

When you value only activity you witness, you send a powerful message to your team: I don’t trust you. No one longs to be distrusted. Your team will resent this lack of trust.

Deception

The team learned the importance of looking busy at all times. We understood his perception was more important than reality. A culture of deceit is toxic and will destroy the cohesion required to be productive.

High Output, Poor Outcomes

The activity that turned up when the Lead entered had little context or purpose. Lots of things got done. But little of purpose was accomplished.

I recall arriving at work one morning to see a dozen emails a coworker had sent after 11 PM. She could have combined several of them into a succinct summary. The others could have been handled at our daily stand-up meeting. But that colleague had left the office early for a personal errand, and she felt the pressure to show “output.”

Techniques to Encourage Thinking

The best way to promote thinking is to model it, give permission to do it, and reward it.

Circle Back With Your Thoughts

Many managers will utter the phrase, “Let me think about that,” to signal the end of a conversation. Forever.

Show your team you value thinking by setting the example. Take the time to ponder thoroughly something they value. It may be within a team project, or related to the organization. Instead of only presenting the outcome, walk them through some considerations you rejected, and how it led to a better result.

Ask Good Questions

Ask questions that require a bit of reflecting. It’s essential you are engaged and patient as you do so. The specific questions you ask will be unique to your work, but here are some simple and generic examples:

• How would you improve ______________?
• What did you assume might work, but rejected along the way?
• If we started ______________ over, what would you put as the first priority and why?

For any question that someone cannot answer, arrange a follow-up. Show them you’d like to understand more after they’ve put in some time thinking.

To get the reaction you want — your team members understand they have the approval to think — requires a degree of trust. Your team must believe you care about the process they went through to find a response. Expect to replay this often. It is not a one-and-done type of thing.

Schedule Thinking Breaks

Set a time on certain days where laptops are closed, and mobile devices are out of sight. Perhaps it’s Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:00 – 11:15 AM. Ask the team to engage in a problem or opportunity of their choice. Or, for fun, prompt them with a specific challenge (search for “problem solving challenges” for examples).

At the end, take 5 minutes to have one or more share. As with brainstorming, require everyone to respond with affirmation or building upon the ideas shared.

You Got This!

Understand the temptation to equate busyness, to be doing anything, as an inherently worthwhile venture. Before your team jumps into doing something, consider how much better it might be to do the right thing. Even if it isn’t typing.