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Module 5 Paper

Kyle Riggs

Arizona State University

OGL 320

02/20/2022
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High Performing Teams and Cross-Cultural Consideration

I think we can all relate to what it feels like to work in a team that connects and what it

feels like to work in a team that is dysfunctional or worse. Teamwork is everywhere and

regardless of our feelings to working in groups to accomplish goals, it is inevitable. Especially

today, with the oh-so-lovely intrusion of COVID-19 that was thrust into our lives like a runaway

dump truck, it is all too common to lose the face-to-face contact that is important for

teamwork. This means not only have we been forced to work with others through virtual

means, it means that there have been mass transformations in the way we conduct business

and many companies no longer require their employees to work from home.

This module was all about what it takes to create high performing teams. To me, a high

performing team means something completely different from most other people due to my

experience in special operations in the military. There, our teammates were our life, literally.

We relied on each other for our lives and one quote that has always stuck with me is “I trust

you with my life, but can I trust you with my money and my wife?” (Sineck, 2019). This course

wasn’t the first time I’d heard this as we used the exact words when we chose our teammates

before our combat deployments. We didn’t necessarily care that someone could run for 30

miles or do 25 pull-ups if we couldn’t trust them at the highest levels. So, when I think of a high

performing team, I think of working with people who I can trust to do their job without having

to check up on them. It means being able to assign a task and not have to question whether the

result will be quality.

Creating a high performing team sounds great on paper. In a vacuum, we should all have

the pick of the crop with unlimited possibilities of highly qualified and motivated people.
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However, this isn’t necessarily the case. Sometimes we have a limited pool of people to pick

from when it comes to building your dream team for a project, company, or in my case, military

team. This doesn’t mean that you have to settle for mediocrity. As a project manager, it is our

responsibility to create our teams with the right people. This second point is one that I hold

true to my heart and one that I will die on the hill for. Experience does not trump ability and

passion. I have worked in many fields over my career including military special operations,

medical equipment sales, construction project management, and now as an investigator. I

never liked working with the people who had been with the company for 15 years because they

usually weren’t as passionate and had created bad habits for themselves which would

inevitably be taught to me. I’d much rather work with the person who’s worked there for three

years and is still hungry to learn and innovate more. As a young Steve Jobs said, “do you really

want to work for someone that you can’t learn anything from?” (Jobs, 2015).

Finding the right people for the job is incredibly difficult. However, we have to look inward

at ourselves first and take an honest look in from the outside and ask ourselves if we are

providing a culture of trust, hard work, and positivity. Energy and positivity is contagious and

we all know how it feels to work for someone who is passionate and excited to do the work

they’re involved in and what it feels like to work for the person who comes to work unhappy

and complains to others about the work they’re doing. At the end of the day “you really are

that foundation for your team.” (Dean, 2011). If you are positive and have good energy, it will

trickly down to your team and the inverse is the same. I was told in the military that negativity

is a cancer and it will need to be removed for the team to function at its highest possible level.

Once the foundation is set and solid, the rest of the building can occur.
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Steve Jobs is considered one of the world’s best innovators and leaders. He talks about

how at Apple, there are zero committees and only one person in is charge of a piece of the total

pie. He ran his business like a startup. He firmly believed, like Elon Musk, that if you have

nothing to contribute, then you shouldn’t be there. There are a lot of parallels to Elon and Steve

in that regard. Elon Musk stirred up controversy a few years ago by firing his assistant because

he said there was nothing that she was doing that he couldn’t do with little change to his daily

workload. He also sent out a memo to his three companies at the time that if you are not

contributing to a meeting in any meaningful way, it would be expected that you would get up,

walk out, and go back to your job. To add to this, he also told employees to side step their

leadership if they felt it was hindering the goals of the company, and to even break the rules

occasionally. Elon’s leaked email said, “It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay

and waste their time…" (Musk, 2018). What Elon was really doing was empowering his

employees by creating a shared goal.

Empowering your team is probably one of the most effective ways to create a winning

team. I have never met a single person who likes to be micromanaged. As a matter of fact, I left

an incredibly lucrative medical device sales job because of my direct manager. I would be

hounded daily for not making more phone calls despite the fact that I was consistently in the

top three in overall sales across the globe. At one point, he made working so difficult by

creating unnecessary metrics that I had to cancel client meetings to speak on the phone with

him on the number of phone calls I had made this month. Anyone in sales knows that time is

not your friend and that a sale can turn into a loss for the smallest thing. If my manager would

have empowered me by cutting his reigns and allowing me to do what I did best, I would have
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been even more productive and most likely would have sold much more equipment. The

thought process always baffled me because his commission was directly related to my sales

numbers. So, when my sales suffered due to his micromanaging, his wallet also suffered. As

project managers or managers in general, we have to cut the cord and trust that our team is

going to get the job done. If we cannot trust them, then we failed to find the right people for

the job.

It is important that we start with ourselves when it comes to creating a great team. We

have to be motivated, positive, and have high expertise and energy that sets the foundation for

our teams. You’ll rarely meet a good project manager who is consistently negative or brings

stress to the table. I’d hedge a bet that apples to apples, a motivated and positive project

manager will outperform a negative one project to project. Once the foundation is set, finding

the right people is a priority. We need to take the time to find those who are motivated and

who we can empower. Micromanaging almost never goes well for high performers and will

most likely cause a project to meet more resistance and missed deadlines. Trust is key and

something that is sometimes hard to establish. However, if we create teams that are highly

motivated by a common goal and passionate about work, we will see dividends.
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References

BBC. (2018, April 18). Elon Musk: Just walk out of bad meetings. BBC News. Retrieved February
20, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/business-43809674

Carmichael, E. (n.d.). The real genius of Steve Jobs (this made him ... - youtube. Retrieved
February 20, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQKis2Cfpeo

Dean, D. (n.d.). Creating high-performing project teams - youtube. Retrieved February 20, 2022,
from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QjwoNVI1uU

Sinek, S. (n.d.). Simon Sinek performance vs trust - youtube. Retrieved February 20, 2022, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJdXjtSnZTI