Belonging + Challenge = Intensity
I often write about the importance of Belonging. Everything I’ve seen across the teams I’ve worked in or with tells me that the teams who have the best foundation for unleashing their potential are the ones where people know they belong. For a dive into the elements that are most critical in belonging, check out the article I wrote at Belong – I love what this group is doing to make belonging a more deliberate part of how we set ourselves up.
You’ve probably been in a team where belonging was strong. A team where:
You were well connected with each other;
You had genuine care for the journey each person was on, and their successes and failures; and
There was clarity about what was expected of anyone who signed up to be part of that team.
You likely also know that belonging alone isn’t enough when it comes to creating high performing teams. I reckon there are two other factors a team needs if the people in it are truly going to bring their best, most daring, most impactful selves to work. Those two other factors are Challenge and Accountability.
Because while belonging itself is essential, and requires of a team that it demonstrates those three elements of connection, care and clarity, you also want your people to experience growth while they work with you, and you want them to know they’ve achieved results beyond what they were capable of before they came into the team. Without that challenge and accountability, the limit of your team is that it becomes a (very) nice place to be. Kind of like the outstanding group of friends I have from my high school days, where the sense of belonging is strong. It’s great to be around each other; there’s not so much of challenging each other to bigger and better things, or holding each other accountable for those promises we’ve made about physical feats we intend to accomplish.
So getting the balance with your team is about these three – Belonging, Challenge, Accountability. Nailing these means you have people who say they are truly part of this team and know what they are here to do; they feel stretched in the work they do and know they are growing; and that they deliver high impact results that define this team – that what they do contributes to what this team is becoming known for. I’ll unpack this a bit more over the next few weeks.
For this week, let’s take Belonging and Challenge together. Belonging is connection, care and clarity; Challenge is goals, growth and grazing your knees.
Belonging tells me I’m part of this and I’ve got a meaningful role to play; Challenge tells me I can’t just turn up and be a passenger – I’ve got to bring the part of me that’s willing to get uncomfortable, learn, make mistakes, and then stretch a bit more. Challenge is as much about your team member growing as it is about serving your team’s or organisation’s priorities. One of the best lines I’ve ever heard that sums this up was from a CE of an organisation I was contracted into. He recognised that breadth of experience was critical to success, so that meant the organisation was better served by people coming in, bringing their expertise, being stretched, achieving good things and then going back out to other parts of the industry. They may return later with more expertise or they may not, but the industry as a whole became better for their growth. He’d often say, “I can’t promise you a career, but I can promise you’ll be more employable when you leave here.”
Belonging and Challenge together create Intensity – they tell me that it’s not going to be a comfortable ride, but I’ll get to bring my best in service of helping the team achieve great things. It’s intense in that it laser-focuses me on bringing my best to helping the team achieve what we’ve set out to do.
Sir Peter Blake created intensity in Team New Zealand with one simple question: “Will it make the boat go faster?” That question signalled to everyone involved what the mission was, what it meant to be in that group, and that every contribution should be in service of making the boat go faster. It signalled belonging and challenge – you’re part of this, now stretch yourself and bring everything you’ve got.
So what does this all mean for you? Belonging is still key. It’s the foundation you set so that people can then bring the daring that is required for Challenge. If you want to create Intensity in your team, start to combine the two. Here’s a previous article I’ve written that gives you some questions to uncover what Belonging might look like for your team. If you want to ramp up the sense of Challenge in your team, three questions that might be worth reflecting on are:
How many of my people have at least one goal they are working on that stretches them?
How often do I ask questions of my people and get them to do the thinking rather than provide them with solutions?
What are we working on right now that comes with some ‘grazed knees’ risk?
Have fun, and when you give this a crack with your team let me know how it goes!