What if we taught team-building at school?
Rainhill High School Football Team in the mid-1980s (L-R Back - Roscoe, Douse, Gore, Desmond, Plant, Collings, Quinn; Front - May (c), Fearnyough, Stinson, Wilson, Frost, Ellis)
I recorded a podcast with Dominic Price last week and he asked me when my interest in team culture first began. As a child growing up in the Liverpool area, it has a lot to do with sports and this is the picture that always comes to mind.
It is one of the best school football teams that I played for when at Rainhill High School.
Yet despite being part of a great team, I never really learned - until much later on - how to create one myself. In my opinion it’s a missed opportunity to help young people to transition into work.
I know you can make an argument for many things to be taught at schools that aren’t currently - empathy, dealing with complexity etc. - however, for 99% of young adults leaving school for work, ‘how to build a team’ remains a mystery until they see adults get it right or screw it up enough times to learn themselves.
As well as all of the usual things such as strong leadership ‘on the pitch’, good communication, individuals playing to their strengths and so on, this particular team also had four other attributes that I wished I'd have known more about when transitioning to work in the mid-1980s. And these are still often overlooked when organisations are looking to build great team cultures today:
😊 Emotionally intelligent leadership - the teachers (nattily dressed in mid-80s attire here) were really good human beings. They knew how to motivate a group of people trying to do their best, rarely, if ever, lost control of their emotions and went to great lengths to keep players involved who weren’t regulars every week. They made playing fun
🎯 Practice and dedication - we worked hard in training, not because we were told to do so, but because we didn’t want to let each other down. We knew we had good individual attributes (although we didn’t have any ‘stars’ per se), but we wanted to ensure that complacency didn’t set in, so we would work hard to ensure it wouldn’t
🏂 Willingness to take risks - aligned to the first attribute, we were encouraged to try different things. Obviously, not at times when it would invite unnecessary risk, but when we saw an opportunity, then we went for it. There was no blame from teammates or teachers, just encouragement that it might work out next time
🏆 Celebrate success - and when we won, we celebrated together. All of the differences that we may have had during the day in the classroom were put to one side, and we enjoyed the moment of success. The teachers took a back seat and let us take all the credit, then we would use that as fuel for our next challenge.
It took me 10 years to learn these things and I often think, 'how different would our workplace cultures be today, if we taught team building at school?'
What else would you include?
