What We All Get Wrong About Teamwork

“Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs got it wrong” - Simon Sinek

“Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs got it wrong”.

I was chatting with my friends Michael and Simon. Ok so they aren’t actually my friends. And I wasn’t really chatting with them.

I was driving, and listening to a podcast (what else is new).

They were on the podcast.

“Maslow put food and shelter at 1 and relationships at 3”, Simon Sinek insisted.

I turned up the volume. Car rides have always been where I think best. Well, that and when running. Today was a car ride.

Maslow only accounts for individuals, not groups.

The smeared colors of the New England fall landscape scurried by steadily as I meandered north on 91.

Michael Gervais, a sports psychologist and the host of the Finding Mastery podcast, chuckled as Simon processed in real-time.

“He’s only half right. If you only think of us as individuals, food and shelter absolutely come first, belonging comes later, with self actualization at the top”.

Courtesy of SimplyPsychology

A former boss once gifted me a copy of Simon’s book Leaders Eat Last. I’ve since worked my way through his others and have heard him speak on a variety of business topics over the years.

I’d never heard him share these thoughts.

Sure, I’d heard him tackle the concept of creating workplace trust before. But directly untangling the responsibility of individual needs from team contribution was new and different.

Simon continued, “The problem is we’re also members of groups. Which means, in a community scenario, belonging comes first”.

He rounded out his freshly formed thoughts on Maslow’s misstep, “Food and shelter is probably number 3, and at the top is shared actualization. Which is how we find purpose at work”.

Leaders solve for themselves by focusing on the group & juniors solve for the group by focusing on themselves.

This breaks businesses.

And it creates dysfunction.

People think that stress increases as your career climbs — The Whitehall Study found the opposite to be true.

This conversation with Simon and Michael shifted even more toward validating what I, and many others, have experienced.

I shifted in my seat to prop my elbow on the window and pinch my pointer finger and thumb around the steering wheel’s crossbar. My other hand reached to tap the rewind 15 second button.

The Whitehall study looked to better understand this topic referred to as Executive Stress Syndrome. Interestingly, they found that as you make your way up the ranks, your stress goes down. The reason is that with seniority, you gain agency. Or, the ability to make decisions for yourself.

To choose.

This is the same reason cited by the study that junior level employees are more likely to die of a heart attack than senior level employees.

Lack of agency creates increased stress.

Simon Sinek understands what many, unknowingly, get wrong. He said, “we teach people how to be good at their jobs, but we don’t teach people how to look after other people”.

Then, he summed up the discovery by asking the inevitable question “do I put myself first at the expense of the group, or do I put the group first at the expense of myself — and the answer is ‘yes’”.

Michael Gervais agreeably capped the claim, “We are social beings masquerading as individual contributors”.

He added, “we’re more like a coral reef”.

I’d never thought about it like that.

Producing work without documenting it will flatten you.

You have to make your work visible.

Now humming along 89 north, my mind raced with the passing exits.

Simon and Michael were chatting through the very reason I’d spent the last 10+ years finding ways to overcome impostor syndrome. Feeling flattened by trying to meet the demands of getting ahead.

I wanted to close my laptop at the end of the day without taking the crushing anxiety of the next one with me. I wanted to get enough sleep… to find time to cook healthier meals, to make it through an entire conversation with friends without reviewing my mental checklist. I wanted to read regularly and journal like I’d used to.

In my search for relief, I accidentally created a system that allowed me to take on highly visible projects and get meaningful results.

As Simon talked about how to have hard conversations with team members, I thought of all the ways we set people up to fail.

Most companies I’ve worked for have been disorganized.

Most teams I’ve worked on have been overwhelmed.

Most leaders I’ve worked with have been stressed.

• We don’t know all that’s being asked of us.

• We don’t know what’s being worked on.

• We don’t know where to find updates.

• We don’t know who is keeping track.

• We don’t know when we’ll know.

Most workloads are hard to see. I thought about it while making out the blurred reds, yellows, and oranges among the passing trees.

The people I’ve worked with will complete a task and immediately grab the next one. They just want to keep up.

Simon’s voice rebounded through my head and back out of my, now open, mouth when he said, “Leadership is not about being in charge. It's about taking care of those in your charge”.

My brakes went to work as I tried not to miss my exit.

Team performance is a reflection of our leadership. Duh, it’s so simple. But I was struck by just how many ignore this part.

The ability to lead others, then, depends on the ability to coach yourself.

Simon suggested unfailing honesty, even in discomfort, when having a conversation with a teammate struggling to keep up “Us having this conversation is more important than me doing it perfectly”.

Then Michael chimed in, “loving the person and coaching the behavior — that’s what you’re talking about?”.

Yep, he was right.

Showing your worth is how you get to act your wage — especially if you’re a remote worker.

Most of us learn that the hard way.