You Can Grow a Productive Team, Including Your Marriage
The couple sat across my desk, both looking uncomfortable. I initiated small talk for a few minutes before asking how I could help them. The wife started describing their crumbling relationship. It felt like a shotgun firing off a shell full of tiny, b-b sized issues as her complaints erupted. Her dialogue was all over the place while the husband sat there expressionless. The longer she talked, the louder and more emotionally charged were her words.
After a few minutes of hearing her grievances, I asked the husband his take on their marriage. His comments were equally scattered, and though he did not reveal it, I could tell he was very emotional about what he was saying. His feelings were well hidden, and his comments seemed perfectly logical to him.
We chatted for a few minutes when I asked them to explain how they wanted their marriage to work and what that would look like. I asked them to describe their marriage when it was “good.” Neither partner presented a concrete picture of their preferred future. They could barely define a pleasing destination, and the period when they enjoyed their mate seemed like another lifetime.
Like most couples who initiate counseling, they have long since lost track of the hopeful outcomes for their marriage. They were just angry, really angry. Anger is rarely a helpful tool in solving problems. It clouds judgment and vaporizes valuable results. This would be a lengthy discussion, and only after two or three meetings before any solid possibilities would emerge.
Whether it is a marriage, classroom, department at work, sports team, or a church committee, we sometimes struggle to find beneficial solutions to our challenges. Why? Because people are involved, and sometimes, we don’t play well together. Here are a few suggestions for problem-solving and planning involving teams – including your marriage team.
Clearly define the issue you are trying to resolve. We sometimes try to plan solutions but end up on a merry-go-round of data and feelings that are symptoms of something deeper we want to fix. So, we wind up putting a band-aid on a gaping wound and wonder why we’re still bleeding. We should be able to describe the root problem in in a sentence or two.
Always start with the end-user in mind. In a marriage, that would be your mate. In business, this is the customer. The customer is king. In a church, there are two end-users: First, the goal of a church is to facilitate ways to help people find their way to God. Secondly, once someone has started this journey, a church must promote possibilities for those people to grow closer to God their entire lives.
It is common for businesses to lose track of their customers. I frequent a local supermarket where customers are encouraged to check out their groceries through scanning devices. Self-checkout is a fine idea, but for most people, the first few times they use this device, they feel uncomfortable and stupid. The point is to make checkout as painless and smooth as possible. I use these machines and like them except for one issue.
The devices’ designers did not seem to place themselves in the customers' shoes. Each time one scans an item, the lady in the machine says, “Place your item in the bag.” Now, I’m not the brightest banana in the bunch, but I do know that I need to place my items in a bag unless I want to carry armfuls of groceries to my car by hand. By the time I’ve completed scanning a large cart full of groceries, I have heard this lovely lady tell me fifty times to place my item in the bag. I always want to say to her, “Okay, I get it. Scan the item and put it in a bag. For Pete’s sake, stop telling me you’re annoying me.” To me, this process is insulting and annoying. Please don't insult me if you want to make my checkout experience pleasing. It feels like designers did not fully place themselves in the end-users’ shoes. My friend who works at this store has told me I would not believe how many people leave in a rage because of their experience. However, I realize there is a good rationale for this practice, but it is not my favorite part of the shopping experience. I just wish she would at least tell me I did a good job when I finished checking out.
Okay, enough of the rant.
Start with the end in mind and work backward from there. If you don’t know where you are going, which road you take doesn’t matter much. God spent several thousand years of human interaction with one goal in mind. Have His Son execute a way to reconcile Him with His creation. This is a supreme example of one starting and completing a project with a singular outcome intended. If you do know where and why you are going in a specific direction, how you get there matters.
There is always more than one way to get there. This means “My way or the highway” thinking must go.” Productive team members learn to solve problems by first analyzing how each team member is generally approaching the problem. Two people affirm the same information from different perspectives. Experience, personal investment, personal preferences, skills, and perceived rewards cause us to view the same thing differently. There is usually no one right way to solve a challenge.
Consider a football team. When a team takes to the field offensively, there is one desired outcome – get the ball across the opponent’s goal line. This objective happens as the coach and quarterback orchestrate a team of people who approach that goal differently. The center thinks, “I’ve got to snap this ball perfectly and immediately protect my quarterback.” For him, that is what the game is all about. Pick a position, and you’ll find each person brings unique, required skills necessary for reaching the goal. A good leader recognizes their job is not to run the show. It is to orchestrate it.
Creativity will flow freely if we recognize and affirm each team member’s perspective and contribution. Creativity is how things get accomplished with maximum results. This principle applies to marriage, a classroom, or any other endeavor.
The Apostle Paul put it like this, “15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not, for that reason, stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.”
Asses every step along the way. I am reading an outstanding book written by an Air Force fighter pilot. The point of the work is to teach us how to build great teams through clear thinking. In one chapter, he explains in detail the process of evaluation that takes place at the end of each mission and training exercise. As you can imagine, people’s lives are on the line, so this part of training is critical. Comprehensive assessment is paramount for pilots to consistently improve.
The author explains an instructive part of the process. He says there are no ranks when they enter the debriefing room; everyone in the room stands on equal ground. The lowest-ranked pilot can critique the highest position in the room. This kind of evaluation creates an atmosphere where maximum learning can happen.
The questions are: What did we do, how successful was it, where and when did we make mistakes, and what can we learn from them?
This practice is also why sports teams watch footage of their games over and over.
Optimum teams, including marriages, improve as there is an ongoing assessment process. Teams do not work well on autopilot for long because life is too dynamic and constantly changing. What worked yesterday may not work well today.
Be open to change. All growth requires change. The only people who are not changing are in graveyards. Many marriages fail because one or both of the partners refuse to grow.
Have fun! “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Every team gathering doesn’t need to be a party, but many studies reveal that people enjoying an upbeat, positive culture get more done. Marriages sometimes struggle because the pressures of everyday life have sapped the fun out of the relationship. I’ve heard the sentiment described like this. “We used to have so much fun together.”
Unfortunately, some of the couples I worked with didn’t make it. Their relationship was beyond their ability to repair. But take heart, many other couples found their way back to a healthy, growing relationship. It is no different for work, church, sports, and other teams. Some make it, while others do not. If you are leading or participating in an unproductive group, it might serve your team well to work through these suggestions.
I’m headed to the grocery store soon and will check myself out – and I won’t forget to put the groceries in bags.
Live Inspired!
Don Mark
