to team or not to team?

Twenty years ago, when my husband did his military service, he was in a group of trained lieutenants. They had to learn how to give orders. Everybody had to go forward and give one command to the others in the group. The most popular command was to order the gun on the shoulder. “On the shouldeeeeer Arm!!!” As the time past their shoulder was in pain. The ones in the group begged their colleauge in the front not to give the same command again. He did though. In a strange way almost everybody going in front gave the same order even if he was begging before the others not to do it.

Why do you think he did so? Perhaps revenge, perhaps not thinking enough,  or taking power out of it. All those years I’ve realised that many people on the low layer of the hierarchy spend their time critisizing the ones having the power. When those people though take a leading position they do the same as the ones they’ve critisized so long. What did I when I became a parent? Guess.

Well, I’m on the way to change. What had slowed down my controlling behavior was something my mom used to say. “What are you going to be without me…?” Actually I’ve turned out to be doing pretty well in my life and I kept her out of it. I wanted to prove her wrong. I could achieve something without her. So I thought my kids can find their own sit in the journey of life. If I want to exist in their journey then I’d better be aware of my own attitude so that I don’t miss their flight. If I spend my time trying to make them like me, then I’m wasting my time and I’ll miss the plane. They’ll take off anyway and I’ll stay back complaining that they don’t care about me.

To let my kids go their own path it’s a difficult thing. I have to change my core character. It’s not easy to get rid of the curse of power, being the boss. The curse of power, controlling and commanding the people around me, may cure my old traumas or fulfill some of my needs but do I make a team in this way? Definitely not. Neither me nor the trained lieutenants could gain the role of the natural leader in the mind of the group. We both ignore the needs of the people around us. My kids and my husband have the need of autonomy, the soldiers of physical relaxation. If you have a leading position and you want to build a team you’d better take into account the needs of the people instead of bossing them.

Once I talked with a colleague about SRUM. The dialog went like tthis:

C. Who has the responsibility in SRUM?

Me. Everybody in the team is responsible for the project.

C. If I go on vacations and the team takes a wrong decision it will affect me as well. It will affect my bonus. I’d better depend on somebody who knows what he/she is doing . We need somebody to have the responsibility of the project and gives the direction.

Me. Hm…

A dialog with another colleague went like this.

C. We don’t have any software architect to give detailed requirements.

Me. You are designers and testers in the team. You can discuss  the requirements with the product manager and find out the details by yourselves.

C. I’m not get paid to take decisions. If the company wants me in this position it should give me a higher salary.

Me. Hm…

What do you take out of those discussions?  Do we need a leader to tell us what to do and take responsibility of our actions?

Definitely we didn’t want it when we were children. I’ve never met a kid saying they wanted their parents to tell them what to do and take decisions for them. What happened next? Did we forget our desire for autonomy?

I guess we’ve grown up and become what our parents have shown us with their behavior. And they became what their parents have shown them and so on. This is tradition. Can we break it?

Let’s go back to our childhood and remember how we wanted our parents to be with us. Keep this wish in mind and return to now. We are adults and we can make our wish real for our own kids. Finally we can build the family team as we wished it to be. At least for me it is without a CEO.