339 Building A Team In Stages In Japan

Team building is fraught. Actually, when do we create teams? Usually we inherit teams from other people, stocked with their selections and built around their preferences, aspirations and prejudices, not ours. In rare cases, we might get to start something new and we get to choose who joins. Does that mean that “team building” only applies when we start a new team? If that were the case, then most of us would never experience building a team in our careers. This concept is too narrow. In reality, we are building our teams every day, regardless of whether we suddenly became their leader or whether we brought new members onboard or we started from scratch.

Teams are fluid. People come and go, so there is never an end point to team building. “Yeah, it’s built” would be fatal last words for a leader. Before you have even drained the champagne flute in celebration, your best performer is planning to head off to bigger and better things with your competitor.

 So we are constantly adding people to the team, even if we kicked it off ourselves. New individuals arrive with their own work culture, cobbled together like a coat of many colours from their previous employment. The team has to coalesce again and again and we are the orchestra conductor. Our job is to get all the specialists to “play nice” together and in harmony. It helps to analyse what we are doing and remind ourselves that there are four stages of team building.

1.     Uncertainty

If we have newly been parachuted into a team as the boss or whenever new members are injected into the existing team, we are in stage one of team building. In Japan, this is a tricky stage. If we are new, the team is uncertain of us. They have been moulded by our predecessor and have worked each other out. Here we turn up, all shiny and new with our “whacky” ideas , idiosyncrasies, foibles, penchants and talents. If we later bring in someone new, now the whole team has to regroup again. What will this person be like, are they going to be cooperative, nice, trustworthy? What will happen to my role – is it safe, will it change?

If we know in advance that there is this uncertainty stage then we can prepare for it. Often though, the “new broom” boss arrives, puffed up with their own massive self-belief, hubris, ambition and zeal.   They scare the team because they blow up everyone’s comfort zone. Things start to change rapidly. Few in Japan are up for the roller coaster ride about to commence.

People’s roles start to change as the new boss reorganizes things. Performance standards are invariably raised, because the new leader is here to demonstrate their metal to their boss. Life becomes more fragile for some and they look for ways to protect themselves. In foreign multi-nationals, if things become too intense or too dire in Japan, then the real trouble starts. Senior executives at headquarters start to receive anonymous communication, telling them what a jerk this new boss is and pointing out in florid detail how they are destroying the Japan business.

In smaller Japan operations, there is a possibility some people are going to be moved out. “Am I next?”, is a permanent question in the minds of the survivors. New people are being absorbed into the team, but this takes time. Change creates a sense of instability in the team. Are these new folk going to be “teacher’s pet” because the new boss hired them or are they going to become part of the existing team? The key question for everyone is are they with “us” or “them”?

The card carrying “boss watchers” in the team, that is to say, the whole team, start to work the new boss out. Their intelligence, skill set, experience, capability, emotional quotient, etc., are very carefully calibrated. The navigation required for dealing with the new boss is gradually discovered. People adjust to the new style or they just leave if they don’t like it. As we know, people don’t leave companies – they leave bosses.

The new mid-career hire arrivals get a similar ruler run over them, to measure how well they will fit in. If they don’t fit in, then the herd groups together and tries to isolate them out. So, if they stay, then they have been successfully acclimatised to the dominant culture of the work group. This is often the opposite of what the new boss desired to happen. They expected the new people would be sprinkling their pixy dust on the “old” team members and creating the internal changes needed.

Presuming the new boss doesn’t blow the whole thing up and go down in flames, then things start to settle down. People get used to the new work requirements, their new colleagues, new boss, new targets and get back to focusing on their work. The team might even improve their performance and enjoy the recognition which comes with success. If the boss is any good, then the team now have a greater sense of shared responsibility toward achieving the targets and to supporting each other.

Just when all this harmony and light comes together, the boss gets sent somewhere else to a new role and a new shiny boss arrives. “Here we go again”, is the common refrain. The team has been here before, so they know the clock is ticking on the new arrival.  Many have worked out how to slow down change and ride the wave of instability. Building the team is complex anywhere, but short stay bosses in Japan really have their work cut out for them.  These four stages will help to provide a framework for context and agility to make the decisions required to be effective here as a team leader.