Good Teams/Bad Teams
“None of us are as smart as all of us.”
Great minds in business, psychology and academia have proven empirically what you and I sense intuitively: great teams perform best when teammates like each other and enjoy working together. This is especially true in Podcasting.
Sure, it sounds all touchy-feely kumbaya, but seriously, there’s science to it. Okay, science and kumbaya, sue me. But for the purpose of this conversation, let’s talk about the science.
According to the Harvard Business Review, teams yield better results when teammates like and respect one another. They devote more energy to their work, they’re palpably more creative, and more satisfied with their job, less prone to burn out, and less inclined to move on.
One reason is mission focus. A team without that mutual sense of ‘like’ can get bogged down with internal tensions and petty rivalries, while a like-balanced team is busy opening a can of whoopass on its external competitors.
Sometimes talented teams fall from the sky. But they can also be built, through shrewd management. Writing in Fast Company, psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic cites three characteristics of teammates: ambition, creativity/openness, and conscientiousness, noting that great leaders understand how to balance the three. The most conscientious teammate, for example, is naturally disposed to respect goals and deadlines. Well Shazam! There’s your project manager.
So why is this especially important in Podcasting?
Because podcasts are the most intimate, most relational of media. Host and listener are linked one-on-one by human voice, with all its nuances, shared, not on a screen across a room, but directly in one’s ear. And with the images and ideas it stirs in the listener’s imagination, it’s the most visual of all media. A podcast made with skill and passion rarely gets in its own way. A podcast made by a dysfunctional team, like a knockoff sport coat, can never achieve the same kind of connection.
The production team’s relationship to a client is no less crucial. Everyone must be in sync, like the silky pucketa pucketa pucketa of a Rolls Royce engine on a vintage aircraft.
And if they’re not? Even Dream Teams fail.
I’m talking to you, 2004 Yankees. And you, the movie cast of Cats. And you Taylor Swift and Matt Healy. And, well, Calvin Harris. And Joe Alwyn. And Tom Hiddleston. And Harry Styles.
Regardless of your team’s individual talents, when a puzzle piece doesn’t fit you can’t just slam it into place with your fist. All right, yes, you can. But you’re going to have to explain what the parrot’s beak is doing swimming with that pod of whales.
It’s when a team can’t find that relational balance that science applies its knee to the groin of kumbaya, providing actionable means of correction. A dysfunctional team should be quickly dismantled, its flaws identified, and then rebuilt. Was the balance of creativity/openness sufficient for teammates to build on one another’s ideas? Was competitiveness focused within the team instead of outward? Was the project leader the right jockey for the horse?
But what if the problem is external? What if a team’s working well, but they can’t get in sync with the client? Serious business, but the principle is the same. Some careful analysis should be made, all options exhausted, and if no remedy seems possible, it could be time to part ways with the client.
Science, and countless case studies have spoken: relationships matter. Not just here and there, but in every facet of the podcast. Getting a team 80% right won’t do. That’s no better than hearing:
PILOT: (aircraft P/A): Ladies and gentlemen, rest assured that our flight mechanics have completed an exhaustive inspection on some of this aircraft.
