Lessons in Teamwork from Middle School Band
Let me put my cards on the table: I’m a band nerd. (I’d like to say I was a band nerd, but I’m not sure the condition is one that can be outgrown.) I played the French Horn from sixth to twelfth grade in the band and was even in the full orchestra in high school. To top it off, the welcome message at drum major camp before my senior year included the oh-so-encouraging, “if you’ve been telling yourself you’re not a band nerd, stop. You’re officially the kings and queens of the band nerds.” Alas.
But I really did love band, and I learned a ton through the experience. In thinking about teamwork recently, I remembered just how awesome it felt to excel together. Yes, it took a lot of individual and collective hard work. But when we executed a difficult piece well together, it felt great! And there was a momentum to our success: we worked hard and did well, and our success fueled the motivation to practice even harder for the next performance.
Space Center Intermediate School Symphonic Band, 1997-1998
We had an engaging band director – Mr. Dick – who led sacrificially and engagingly, and we had a recurring guest conductor/teacher/coach who pushed us hard to execute well. (I don’t recall his name, but I remember that he drank caffeine-free Diet Coke and repeatedly told us to avoid the vacuum effect, which is a clever way to tell teenagers to stop sucking and do better.)
Ever seeking to integrate what I’ve learned over the years, the best way I can explain our success is an inspiring leader who encouraged us to have a growth mindset, along with hitting all the marks of GRPI. Let’s break them down.
Middle School Kim playing the French Horn
Inspirational Leadership & Growth Mindsets
Have you ever had a boss or teacher who just made you want to be better? There’s something about their enthusiasm, passion for the subject at hand, and care for the people around them that is contagious. I immediately think of my professor of Management Information Systems 301 early in my undergraduate years. He had clearly mastered the content, thought it was important, and deeply wanted us to understand. So, despite my low level of intrinsic interest in what we were learning, I put in extra effort because of him.
Mr. Dick, the middle school band director, invested a ton of energy and care in his students. He got to know us and made sure we had fun together outside of rehearsals. He had high standards and pointed out when we didn’t meet them, but it was with a soft edge rather than sharply delivered.
He also provided plenty of resources to help us learn and improve, helping us achieve a growth mindset, rather than a fixed mindset. (Here’s Carol Dweck describing the concept, which she pioneered, in a 10-minute video.) That allowed us to spend our time working to improve, rather than focused on not yet meeting expectations.
GRPI & Middle School Band
I’d also argue that we ticked all the boxes of GRPI. The GRPI framework helps us both design high-performing teams and diagnose what’s gone awry if a team isn’t working as well as we’d like. (See more on the GRPI model of team effectiveness here, from the Academy to Innovate HR.)
If this framework is new, it’s pronounced “grippy” and it stands for something like:
Goals
Roles
Processes
Interpersonal Relationships
Let’s run through each with my band example.
We had a clear goal of being the best middle school band in the state of Texas. We understood which pieces we needed to learn and by which concert, and the sheet music and conducting included sufficient instructions for us to understand what we were aiming for.
We each understood our roles, organized by instrument and part. We had regular chair contests to determine who would play which part, which was a predictable way to measure progress in comparison with teammates.
We had clear individual and group processes to follow. Everyone had a practice card, with a weekly goal of minutes to practice on our own, and one of our parents had to sign the card, affirming that we did as we said. (We had to practice 3.5 hours each week to get an “A” in the practicing category!) Intense, yes, but it got us ready for group rehearsals.
If you’ve attended a classical music performance, you know there’s an elaborate set of rules and procedures to follow. These extend to rehearsals, though there’s no need to hold your applause until the conductor lowers their hands. Our group processes included full-band rehearsals, in which the director led us through the pieces in our current set. We also had rehearsals by instrument group (“sectionals”), to make sure we were aligned in our approach. To top it off, many of us had private lessons after school to make sure we had the skill and technique to perform as required.
All of this was knit together with interpersonal relationships, strengthened through the activities we did outside of formal rehearsals. And, although we were competing against each other for chair positions, Mr. Dick and his team helped us emphasize our collective success over our individual portion in it.
All these factors came together to create a high-performing team, and we did well together. My eighth-grade year, we were named the Honor Band in Texas (that is, top of our statewide division) and got to put on a special concert in Chicago with a piece commissioned specifically for us – so fun! All our hard work paid off, and we even got to enjoy some extra days in the windy city around our performance.
GRPI & Business Transformation
GRPI is a helpful framework for designing and executing business transformation, too. Let’s run through the components again, this time with a transformation roadmap definition project as the example.
The FlexPoint team works hard with our clients to have clear goals on all the work we undertake. You’ll see this from the first week of the project, in which we ask multiple times in multiple ways, “what is the challenge we’re aiming to solve? what does success look like? how will we know we’ve achieved it?” Each version of this question is aiming to get at the heart of what we’re working toward.
In creating a business transformation roadmap, it’s crucial to get the right framing up front. If our clients are aiming to scale their business 10x in the next several years, that will result in a different set of focus areas than if they are hoping to convert customers to a higher-margin set of services.
With a clear goal pointing us in the right direction, we need to determine who’s going to do what to get us there. In our transformation roadmap definition example, the FlexPoint team will work with client sponsors to get clear on roles from the definition, analysis, and prioritization phases through execution and maintenance. Without a clear understanding of who’s responsible for what, we risk letting important activities fall through the cracks or having unproductive discussions around decision-making.
There are lots of ways to identify roles and responsibilities. RACI is a familiar one, a matrix in which you identify each person (or small group) who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. At FlexPoint, we’re partial to DARE, which stands for Deciders, Advisors, Recommenders, and Execution Stakeholders. A McKinsey organization blog article describes this framework well, summarized as:
Deciders: “We make the decisions”
Advisors: “We have a voice in the discussion”
Recommenders: “We explore and identify the options”
Execution stakeholders: “We carry out the decisions”
The transformation roadmap we’re creating in this example will take into consideration the organization’s processes, be they overarching methodologies and mindsets like agile, specific procedures, or typical ways of working. Process areas that surface during transformation planning often include intake and prioritization, work management practices, collaborating across departments, and more.
Your organization likely has a preferred approach for inventorying, grouping, and mapping processes. Don’t worry about choosing the “best” way – choose the way that works for you and be willing to make iterative improvements over time.
All these processes will rely on people working together effectively, enabled by productive interpersonal relationships. No one on the team will have all the information, insight, or expertise to work through the various challenges ahead in the business transformation roadmap. That means that they’ll need to learn together, provide constructive feedback, and incorporate new perspectives without getting defensive.
This is no easy task, though it can be made easier by understanding each team member’s strengths and working styles. This may look like understanding each other’s DISC profile, CliftonStrengths findings, or another individual assessment tool. It may look like using a tool like Harrison Assessments to identify job success profiles for key roles in your organization and having team members and recruits complete assessments to predict their fit.
Sophistication not required: identifying (and enforcing) what values your organization stands for and behaviors you expect will go a long way.
Closing Thoughts
As you can see, GRPI is a simple framework that provides a wealth of guidance for use in a variety of circumstances. I hope both the non-traditional team example and the business transformation thoughts prompted some fresh thinking about how your team can benefit from GRPI, inspirational leadership, and leaning into growth mindsets.
The FlexPoint Consulting team has a lot of experience building and working with teams. If you’d like to talk through how your team can benefit from these guiding principles, please reach out to us at info@flexpointconsulting.com. We’d be happy to connect.
