High Functioning Teams edit
Thu, Jul 20, 2023 6:50AM • 24:56
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
teams, teammate, people, high functioning, athletes, behavior, coach, understand, idea, inefficiency, work, talking, felt, real, friendship, cohesion, rival, friends, volleyball, compete
SPEAKERS
Hugh McCutcheon, Paul Barnett
Paul Barnett 00:00
Give a catch in. Welcome back to the great coaches podcast.
Hugh McCutcheon 00:04
Yeah, the great coaches podcast boomerang back again.
Paul Barnett 00:09
You were very happy to have you back today talking about, I think a topic that we all all of us think about a lot in life, which is high performing teams or is you've coined them in the book, high functioning teams? Well, we'll get into that in a minute. But you wouldn't be a podcast if I didn't start with the question of where are you in the world? And what have you been doing so far today?
Hugh McCutcheon 00:31
Well, yeah, Minneapolis, Minnesota today, and it's been a very productive day. I've been quite busy, had some really good meetings and felt like I've got some good work done. So I'm here feeling pretty good about things.
Paul Barnett 00:46
Okay. Well, we've got you at the, hopefully at the start of some momentum, which will carry us through this interview. Q In the book, you talk about high functioning teams, it wasn't a term that I'd heard before many people we've interviewed call them high performing teams. So I want to start with asking you what's the difference?
Hugh McCutcheon 01:07
Well, to me, the idea would be high functioning is about the actions and interactions, maybe high performing was more just the outcomes or the the achievements. But I think high functioning is, to me speaks to, you know, how people work together? versus maybe how they are in the moment of competition?[SB1]
Paul Barnett 01:32
How does that look like in an elite teams like the ones you've led?
Hugh McCutcheon 01:37
Well, I think the best teams probably understand a few different parts to, to teamwork, one of which is that you can't achieve anything alone that they that you need, your teammates. And to that end, I'd say the best athletes probably find ways to make those around them better. So nested with all of this idea of achievement that we we all get hooked into his athletes, the idea that we're going to be, you know, the best one on the team, or whatever it's balancing that, well, maybe you can still be the best one on the team. But can you also be the best one for the team, I think those things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. But as a coach, when you've got someone that, that understands the importance of a degree of selflessness around teammate behavior, and that invests in those around them, invest in the relationships and find ways to add value to the team above and beyond whatever it is on the on your team. You know, we all know that teammate, and we seldom teach to it, or even recognize it, but I think it's a really critical part of high functioning teams is having people that understand that we're all in it together. And therefore, our teammate responsibilities, our teammate, relationships are really critical to our success.[SB2]
Paul Barnett 02:56
When you pull together your teams, because they change every year, you've got students coming in student athletes coming in and leaving, how do you reset, potentially even reboot, this type of collaboration you're talking about?
Hugh McCutcheon 03:10
Well, like most things, I think it starts with really clear expectations, and not not just clear definitions of what are the behaviors that we want, but really trying to help people understand their meaning, I think, especially in this day and age, you know, our, our athletes have more knowledge than ever, but less experienced than ever. And so they might know the dictionary definition of a lot of these terms, but they don't really know how to live them. So trying to help them to understand, you know, that whatever hard work is, is easy to say. But it turns out, it's really hard to do. And but more importantly, that then you can learn to do it that, you know, we all that's a learned behavior. It's not a unitary kind of genetic thing. So, so just trying to try to help them through that. So yeah, every year that people change the principles driving the team, don't but their application surely does. Because the people are different. The personality is different. The level of skill, emotional range and intelligence, all of those different pieces change. So your principles are the same, but the way you the way you express them has to be differentiated.[SB3]
Paul Barnett 04:25
You mentioned selflessness in there, and I'm wondering, can that be taught?
Hugh McCutcheon 04:31
I think? I guess I don't know other than to say I believe yes. Especially when people understand that that selflessness is connected to their own success. So in a way, selflessness can be quite selfish, not disingenuous. But to understand that, if I'm going to if we're going to win the Whatever the championship, the trophy, the medal, whatever it is, that my ability to put team above self will actually help me to achieve the things that I want to achieve. Well, I think that's true. But that's not selfish. That's just the reality of being on a team.
Paul Barnett 05:18
You there's one thing I've always wanted to do ask a great coach. But strangely, I've never done it in all these interviews, and it's around the words cooperation, collaboration, and even cohesion. They get talked a lot about often interchangeably, but I'm not sure. Do they mean the same thing? Is the question.
Hugh McCutcheon 05:42
Cohesion was probably speaking more to chemistry and competing as competing, I mean, that's a whole different endeavor. So that's the moment of, of whether you're good enough for you or not. This idea of collaboration, I think, is part of, of teams, but obviously not all sports, a team sports, even though there is a social element, and even in individual sports, whereas the opponent can, can can be part of that equation as well. I mean, the, the Laramie Latin derivative of the word to compete is to strive with, not to strive against. So even if you're 100 meter runner, you know, having someone standing right next to you, your rival, in fact, I mean, they can, they can pull out a performance from you that you couldn't pull out of yourself. [SB4]
And, and I'm not to go on too much of a tangent here, but, but their idea of, of competing in, in having that be a learning opportunity, versus having it be a defining moment is really, I think, an important part of, of what we're talking about here relative to the championship behaviors piece, or the championship podcast, because, yeah, there's been research and all this, there was a guy that did a study, and he was out in New York, I think, University in New York. And he was looking at rivalries in runners. And he studied 1000 runners or something over six years. And what he found was, you know, with with runners who had their rival, whatever that however, that was defined their rival in the race, they were running an extra five seconds faster per kilometer than they were without their rival being. And so when you speak about that social element to competition, I mean, it's a real thing. But even if you're just a normal Joe Blow, and you're going out for a jog on the weekend, and someone pulls up and says on your left, and they start passing your bike, well, all of a sudden, you're going a bit quicker, or if they're ahead of you, and you're like, well, maybe I can catch them up. You know, I mean, so. So I think that collaboration piece can be expressed lots of different ways. So yeah, those words are all, maybe they get thrown in a similar bucket, but I think they're all quite different.
Paul Barnett 08:17
You, when I've spoken to you before, you've talked about the magic of high functioning teams being authenticity, and the ability to operate in truth, the truth can sometimes hurt. And I wanted to ask you, how do you find that line between being truthful enough, but not so straight? That the message doesn't land?
Hugh McCutcheon 08:39
Well, the idea of truth, combined with compassion, or empathy, those aren't mutually exclusive events. So it's not truthful to be mean, it's, it's, it's how you frame it, you know, hey, we care about your, you're a good person, and we like you a lot, however, you have this mechanical inefficiency. So therefore, we'd like to fix that, you know, because like we talked about, you know, the grass is greener, the sky is blue. This is this is the deal. That's it, it's not personal. It just is, and we happen to live on planet Earth and the laws of physics apply. So these inefficiencies have a cumulative negative effect. But I could also be like, hey, you know, make some comment about their person relative to this mechanical inefficiency and reduce it to somehow a personal deficiency, like somehow they're not enough because they have this inefficiency in place. So I could be mean about it, but that that's not going to help anyone it's not going to help them. It's certainly not going to help me. So yeah, I don't think operating truth and being hurtful or, or in any way malicious. Not that I think that's where you're going with it. But I think a lot of people think that being truthful is a license to be mean. And what I Think is it's just an off licence to be truthful, you're still going to be kind and compassionate. And with any message when we're communicating the goal of communication is to make sure you're heard and understood. And if you personalize it, well, you're probably not going to get either those.[SB5]
Paul Barnett 10:19
Best fascinating because in that example you just gave, then you did start by saying and the roleplay, you gave you did start by saying, you know, we care about you. But and I think this whole idea of couching it in this idea of care is potentially what you're also talking about when, when that when you describe high functioning teams,
Hugh McCutcheon 10:37
but just just think about it within the context of this. As a coach, you've hopefully talk to your team about what what are we doing here? What's the goal? What are we trying to achieve? And let's say the team said, Okay, we want to do this, okay, whatever win the championship. Sounds great. Okay. My job as the coach is to hold you to that standard. And that's it. So it's not like I like Tom more than I like John, or whatever. It's just like, hey, I'm here to meet people where they're at, but but I've got to operate truth otherwise. And obviously, I have to be a consistent source of knowledge and information and all the rest of it. But that's my job is to hold you to that standard. You say you want to achieve that, then that's what we've got to do. We've got to figure out what that level looks like what those behaviors look like, and hold you to that. That's it. It's not personal, even though it is personal, in that we're in investing our lives. But it's not a personal affront about that. No, I[SB6]
Paul Barnett 11:34
like it. And when you describe leadership in that context, it's almost like it's not servant leadership. But it's almost like, dare I say, it sounds a little bit like a service.
Hugh McCutcheon 11:45
Yeah, well, that's, that's exactly what I think it is. I'm not a fan of servant leadership, is I understand the concept. But it implies a power dynamic that I don't think is accurate. service leadership? Yeah, absolutely. I'm a service provider, as a coach, and the service I provide is I'm going to invest completely in your development, and hold you to that standard, relative to the goals that we've set out to achieve. That's a service. So that makes a lot of sense to me.
Paul Barnett 12:18
Who I want to take it from, essentially, from the cerebral the Danny to the feeling, you know, you've been involved in teams that have gone on great runs. And I wanted to ask you, if it's even possible, what does it feel like when a team clicks, and they go from being performing to high functioning?
Hugh McCutcheon 12:40
I think the best way to describe it is that it feels like it makes sense or something like that. Like when when when it's clunky, and we don't we know we're not firing on all cylinders. And it's not like, all of these campaigns are rainbows and ponies. And it's all magical. It's not like that. Sometimes it's hard and it's uncomfortable, and you're still finding ways to win. And to me, that's, that's a lot about what real championship behavior is, is getting it done when it's difficult, because we can all be good when it's easy to be good. But I think when the team is, is, is humming, when it's all gone, and it's working it there's there's clarity around what we're doing, how we're doing it. There's a lot of mutual respect and trust. Obviously, that's the that's the currency that makes it all work. But there's a lot of really good stuff that goes on. And like I said, it just makes sense. Like, oh, yeah, this is this feels right. And so I think that's the beauty of trying to create high functioning teams, because you can't read a book about what that is, you've got to feel it. And once you've felt it, and you know what that looks like and you've seen the actions and the interactions, well, then you can go on and, and in you can create your own high functioning teams, because you know what that feeling is?
Paul Barnett 13:58
I have this other fascinating quote from you in the book, I'd like to read it to you if I could actually before I ask the question. You say leading and building high functioning athletes and teams is not algorithmic, the same inputs seldom lead to the same outputs, year to year or even day to day, because the people and the competitive environments are constantly changing. The challenge is figuring out how to apply your guiding principles to the athletes in a way that works best for you. Now, my apologies for reading back your words too. But it's such a great quote. But I wanted to pack the principles element open actually the last sentence. And I'm wondering if you could share a story an idea or something you've seen where you have had to work with a group of people to figure out how to apply guiding principles in a way that's unlocked someone else's potential.
Hugh McCutcheon 14:49
Well, I think you know, even even if you look at the campaign we had with the USA men, it was really Ciao lunging, and I'd say with, with only, probably only the last eight months where we were really a high functioning team. And maybe, maybe even the last three or four months. I mean, once we really selected the Olympic roster, and we announced it early, once we were clear on who, who the 12 were, we announced it early, we didn't wait till the last day or whatever. And the net team was was, was pretty magical. But it wasn't like that for four years from for for the other three and a half years, it was. Well, it was clunky. At times, it was difficult. Remember, that group was 10th, at the World Championships in 2006. So it's not like we were locked to win anything. But to your point, you know,
when you think about applying principles, a big part of creating these teams is, first of all, making people understand that that high functioning teams are trying to leverage the synergy that's created by a group of people that are working in with with similar goals, similar attention, similar values driving the way that they're doing that, that's where you're hoping to capture the extra juice to get you that competitive advantage of the comes from being high functioning. Now, within that, obviously, you've got to develop your people, because the you know, I tell our athletes all the time, a better you makes a better us. So the better they get, the better we get So, but within that, we're also going to reconcile the fact that no one person is more important than the team's goal. So we've got to invest in personal development. But that shouldn't come at the cost or the expense of the team itself. [SB7]
So there are a number of examples of athletes who who had to change they had to make, I'm not sure if we would say sacrifices, but certainly we would say they had to make investments in the team that they probably weren't used to making. Some of that might be around playing time, some of them might be about the way that they chose to compete. Some of that might be their role on the team. There are a number of things. So I guess if, if you're looking for an example, we can pull out a number of them. But I think the biggest thing to understand is, you take each one individually, each person and you meet them where they're at understanding you, as the coach probably has an idea of have an idea, excuse me of where they need to get to, for us to become the best we can be as a team, and you try to help them on that journey. And then within that you've got all these different parts that you're trying to develop to make sure that when they all get together, that the whole is capable of creating those synergies that you know, come with high functioning teams.
Paul Barnett 17:55
You speak with such passionate about the topic, and I know that you're a real student of it as well. And I'm wondering, is there any research? I mean, you referenced the running research earlier, but is there anything else you've written recently on high functioning teams that you think could help people?
Hugh McCutcheon 18:12
No, but I'm a big I'm a big proponent of of this, this theme that we've talked about a couple of times around teams and teammate behavior, I think, I think for me, I think a lot of stuff about teams is not not formulaic, but I think there's just so many, because it's about individuals, and then getting them to work to be become the best they can be so that we can become the best we can be. There's probably a lot of different ways you can approach it. But but I'm, I'm certainly a big believer in giving teammate behavior, some framework, and talk about this a little bit in the book, when we get into some of the stuff around trust and, and talking about, you know, Trust yourself, trust your teammates, trust your coaches, but within trust your teammates, I think there's a real opportunity to give teammate or whatever that role is, or whatever the expectation is to give that some clarity that I think can really help people. So I don't know if you're interested in talking more about that. But I think I think that's that's something that I think there's some value probably,
Paul Barnett 19:22
well, let's talk about it. Because in the book, you actually say you only get to be teammates for a short time, but you get to be friends for the rest of your lives. On this line you between, you know, this line transcends sport, it spills over into corporate and community life. You know, this idea of being friendly, but not a friend is central to your thoughts. I'd love to hear more on it. Well,
Hugh McCutcheon 19:46
so I spent half my career coaching men's volleyball. And then you know about half again, coaching coaching, women's volleyball, and especially when I got into collegiate women's coaching And now you're out recruiting quite a bit. And it was quite different one, there were more teams more tournaments, women's volleyball was significantly larger in scale than men's volleyball in the US. But you know, they'd have, they'd have a timeout. And all the girls would come in, and they'd all put their arm around each other, or they hold hands or something. And I was like, Well, what's that about? And so I thought, well, that's a bit strange. Because that wasn't happening with with the guys. And then I would see, oh, it's not just happening on this court. It's happening on this court. And this court, and this Court was like, Well, what's that all about? And clearly, what it was, was that we, we were trying to force our athletes into expressing some kind of unity, or, you know, collaboration, cohesion, whatever it is, you want to call it. But it felt so disingenuous, because I will, every time out, we've got to do this, well, I think I really want to put my arm around. So when I want to put my arm around someone, and if I don't, well, that doesn't mean I can't be engaged in the timeout, or be a good teammate, or be ready to go compete.
So what became clear to me was, over the years is this ability to operate and truth is really significant. You know, we talk about trust, being the currency that makes high functioning teams work and part of being trustworthy is being able to be authentic, be real, right. So today, in this idea of forced friendship, or I call it in the book foe friendship, didn't seem to align well. And never on high functioning teams of I felt that when we force people to have to be friends, that somehow that got us a good outcome. So the first tenant of kind of teammate behavior is, hey, we need you to be friendly, absolutely. You know, inclusive and respectful, all these other things, we have to be friendly, we have to be cool with one another. But we don't have to be friends. And I don't know about you all. But you know, I think when you think about the number of really good, solid to the bone friends that you have, if you have a handful in your life, then you're doing pretty well. So the idea that every year we'd have, you know, whatever, 15 on the volleyball team, or, you know, 50 on the on the football team and American high school football or whatever. I mean, that seems unlikely. So that's what I mean, teammate is the real responsibility, friendship, well, that can evolve. But it turns out that if we're not faking our friendship, then maybe we actually give real friendship a chance. Because we're, like, again, we're operating in truth. So what I also found was that idea of friendly, not friends, it's not that we're opposed to friendship, or we're not trying to be friends, we just don't want to feel like you're forced to do that. Well, all of a sudden, giving people the freedom to develop empathy and understanding free of the expectation that we needed to be friends at the end of it was was really important for these connections that we talked about to develop it, it allowed people to operate in truth, develop empathy, to be better teammates, because we took that whole deal off the table. Now, don't get me wrong, a lot of people on those teams ended up being friends. But we just didn't require it.[SB8]
Paul Barnett 23:20
I read some research recently into to making friends and whites more difficult as you get older. And it basically said that you need to be vulnerable and have unstructured time together. Now, I'm not suggesting that your practices are unstructured. But I imagine there is a lot of unstructured time around the practice the traveling to games, the after game. And I think this lends itself to creating friendships. But I love this idea that you have, it's very free, I think for any manager, let alone whether you're leading big teams, but if you're just managing people to be able to say, you can be friendly, but you don't need to be people's friends. I think it's quite a strong idea. And I think it transcends sport and moves into society.
Hugh McCutcheon 24:00
I would agree, I think I think it's a similar. No, I'm not saying that anyone's at fault in this. But I do think people's expectations around teams are, you know, again, going back to this idea that we're families or we're all we're, you know, we're friends, there's social groups, but the primary responsibility is this professional context. And then yeah, from that there might develop these other social structures around them. But that shouldn't be the primary driver of our relationships.
Paul Barnett 24:30
Whew. As always, it's wonderful to spend half an hour talking to you about all things leadership, and elite sport. So thank you so much again, for your time today. I think this is the third or fourth time hopefully we can get you back for another time. You can delve into leadership or one of the other behaviors that you talk about quite quite deeply in the book.
Hugh McCutcheon 24:50
Yeah, no, it's truly a pleasure. I love it. And, as always, thanks for having me.