Gathering A Team

A team is a curious thing.

I’m working these days on routes and presentations and lots of other stuff that will involve our team on FRONT RANGE FREEDOM TOUR ’14. It’s curious to think about twelve individual riders and two SAG drivers, while realizing that I’m planning for this other entity called a team that may have different needs, goals, strengths, and weaknesses than any of the individuals involved.

If all goes well, we’ll become a team. The individuals will arrive at a sense of common purpose, and each of us will buy into that purpose enough that we’ll sacrifice individual needs to accomplish it. That might seem obvious on a mission trip with a designated cause, but words on a page fade quickly when muscles ache and sweat drips into eyes. “Shared sacrifice” sounds noble, but it only works when team mates have each others’ backs.

A team is a community, and there’s no magic in the process of building a cohesive community. It takes some time, some shared values, some common goals, and leadership. That’s the interesting part, because you never know who the leaders will be until you get together and start sweating a bit.

I chuckle when someone’s appointed as a leader. You can put someone in the corner office, but the true leader’s the one who actually leads. Most appointed leaders are really coercive managers.

You can’t manage people effectively. You can manage processes, but the best you can do with people is lead. Leaders simply say, “Here’s where I’m going. Wanna come?” And then they go.

It’ll be fun to watch our team come together, to see who assumes which roles and how it all plays out. I watched classrooms work together for thirty-five years and the only thing I learned for sure is I could never be sure what would happen. This team will be the same.

It’ll be fun.

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