Intention

CHAPTER 24Focusing Teams

“Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”

—Andrew Carnegie

Becoming masters of our own attention is one thing, but creating an attentive team is a whole new game. There's only so much we can do to focus the attention of others. Instead of attempts to micromanage our team members, we need to create an environment that sets them up for success and supports that flow-like state where a team can surpass itself and become truly greater than the sum of its parts. But that's hard. In our survey, almost three-fourths of the respondents said that they had never experienced flow as part of a team. It is up to us all as team members and team leaders to create the environments where this is possible.

73% of people report having never experienced flow in a team setting.

One summer, Mike worked at Kijiji, a Canadian online classifieds startup owned by eBay. Having worked mostly in law before then, Mike was surprised at how much disagreement there was within the product team he worked on. After a tough meeting, where Mike's ideas were roundly challenged—with one particular team member vehemently questioning his approach—Mike took action. He asked his boss, Andrew, if he or the team member could be moved to another group. Or at least maybe Andrew could have a word with his opponent about the severity of his objections. Andrew responded that a move was out of the question and that he was not going to reprimand the team member. ...