Everybody Paddles

A Leader's Blueprint for Creating a Unified Team

Charles A. Archer

• Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781626341012
• eBook ISBN: 9781626341029
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Everybody paddles at the same time, in the same direction, toward the same goal. Drawing on his extensive background as a lawyer and the head of a large New York social service agency, management guru Charles A. Archer has created a completely fresh blueprint for building office teamwork and camaraderie. Used by companies in the United States and abroad, his comprehensive program, Everybody Paddles, is a management model focused on reaching strategic alignment and accelerating change through respect and collaboration.The Everybody Paddles principles provide an outline for successfully building company consensus and developing effective behavioral dynamics within an organization. Additionally, the principles are important problem-solving tools that provide techniques for solving interpersonal issues within an organization and how to remedy nonproductive dysfunctional patterns. You’ll learn how to put the right metrics in place, enabling teams to translate operational outcome into business solutions. Each foundation builder outlined in the book—partnerships, associations, collaborations, and teamwork—teaches facilitation skills aimed at helping you increase values, services, experience, engagement, and feedback. Whether the CEO of as global company or the head of a nonprofit, Everybody Paddles provides the insight and guidelines leaders need to unify their team.

Principle One

UNITY STABILIZES THE BOAT

Focusing on individuals who are building teams inside an organization raises two important questions: (1) What separates us? and (2) What brings us together? (The goal of the second question is so we can work hard and achieve great things.)

Every organization—whether a group, a company, an association, or any other entity that relies on the cooperation between its members—is simply a collection of individuals. As a result, the success of any organization depends totally on individuals. Obviously, most of us want to achieve success both on an individual and on a group level. We identify with success: Winning sports teams gain followers, for example. WE win, not just the team.

An excellent organization has quality people who have been allowed over the course of their lives to develop great qualities like independence (responsibility), creativity (permissive flexibility), and accountability (getting the job done), but who can also cooperate and subordinate themselves when necessary to the mission at hand inside the organization. So, the core requirement of team building is a certain amount of freedom that both develops an individual and creates collective discipline. Unfortunately, not every organization can do that. And this brings us back to the first of our two fundamental questions.

What Separates Us?

There’s no question that we have a hard time working together, whether in our families or on the job. According to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau report, the divorce rate of first-time marriages is 41 percent; second marriages, 60 percent; and third marriages, 73 percent. That’s a lot of dissension.

Some of that comes from our upbringing. For most of us, the pronouns we were most familiar with were I and me. Conversations typically emphasized how much I wanted to accomplish my career goals, how stressful the whole process was for me, how I could better a better me, and so on. Country singer Roy Clark encapsulated this notion of total self-absorption in his popular 1969 song “Yesterday, When I Was Young.”¹

Early in my career, the more I focused on where I wanted to go, the less I focused on ways to achieve the success I craved. As I matured, however, I began to realize that we meant much more than I.

Another element that often keeps us apart involves how we perceive one another. Humans developed as members of small clans, and anyone not within that family unit was considered an enemy. We now have developed far more sophisticated relationships, but our brains still contain the primitive elements inherited from our hunter-gatherer forebears.

Us vs. We or They

As a result of how we perceive one another, we inherently assign everyone to a category, either We or They. “They” are everyone else who looks or acts a little differently. So, for centuries, groups of people have been discriminated against by other groups because of their gender, ethnicity, religion, age, or socioeconomic class. This blind prejudice has led to inequality, mass murder, and enslavement.

Our country is no exception. Throughout U.S. history, we have witnessed great periods when every American has been asked to align him- or herself with American values. These usually occurred during times of war or injustice: For example, during World War I and World War II, women were asked to support men particularly by working in various industries; during the civil rights movement, to secure equality for African Americans, women rallied for constant unity at home, at work, and in the voting booth; and, most recently, after 9/11, Americans united against world terrorists. That’s why President George W. Bush’s ringing declaration that you are “for us or against us” struck such a chord with so many people. That same attitude spiced up the Vietnam War era, when bumper stickers proudly proclaimed “America: Love It or Leave It.”

In the United States, the divisions have often focused on gender, sexual identity, and race. Discrimination has often resulted. Individuals are defined as they are stereotyped and isolated from the rest of the society, which believes they are nothing more than the embodiment of the perceived notions of those who consider themselves a superior we. Within our society, discrimination is rampant and on most occasions crippling, effectively demoralizing people without reason.

I know about this firsthand. I was an individual inside a family, and I was also part of a larger group of the local community. We lived inside the dangerous Brooklyn projects, but it was clear to outsiders that as a family we were different. We stood out by certain peculiarities in our behavior.

What probably set us apart most from American Blacks inside the projects was our West Indian blood. My mother is a Black woman from the southern United States; my father is a Black man from Barbados. We walked in and out of the buildings in single file, like a small military regiment, played together, and kept to ourselves. My parents and grandparents were strict, and I learned to be the same with my brothers and sisters: I was usually telling them what to do. We participated in our own Caribbean culture-based church groups that were very tight communities. As a result, the neighbors usually left us alone.

My separation continued as a Black man in the legal profession and as a CEO among my middle managers and coworkers. I learned that how I handle the perceived differences is critical to my own well-being and success.

I also found that there is a fine line between being different and alienating the larger group around me. Every social organization around me tends to be tribal in some way, and I stand out in any number of ways, including by being different culturally or professionally or because of my social status or religious affiliation. And there are subtribes within the tribes. The way I talk or dress is often enough to stir animosity or suspicion if I inadvertently cross the line into another group.

Those distinctions begin to fade, however, once we realize that we really aren’t different: We are all trying to survive every day. After all, today through genetic research we know there’s no such thing as race. In fact, there’s no we or they; there is only us. We are all the same, divided only by our own individual abilities and not by any artificial aspect of appearance, religion, or gender. We are not forced to limit ourselves or anyone else with these manufactured perimeters.

As the Indian philosopher B. R. Ambedkar said, “We have liberty in order to reform our social system, which is full of inequality, discrimination and other things which conflict with our fundamental rights.”²

The Generation Gap

A third element that separates us involves generations, each of which is different. Back in Ancient Greece, Plato complained about the younger generation of his day. In truth, though, at that time there wasn’t much difference between one set of children and the next. Most of humanity lived similar lives for centuries: Sons followed fathers into professions; women learned to be housewives. But that’s not really true anymore, at least on a behavioral level.

That consistency was shattered in the nineteenth century as factories began siphoning children off from farms and creating the urban sprawl of modern society. The differences became even more apparent in the twentieth century. Famed newsman Tom Brokaw wrote about Americans who endured the Depression followed by World War II, calling them the “Greatest Generation” in his popular book of the same name. People who lived through such cataclysmic turning points didn’t complain; they survived.

The next generations, however, were catered to and pampered. The excesses of the 1960s, tempered by the Vietnam War, reflected the results of overindulgence. The process has continued, creating what New York City behavioral scientist Deborah Bright names “entitleists.” They shun responsibility for their own behavior. Of course, they happily take credit for any good things that happen. They rarely see how their actions affect others. They don’t see themselves as part of a team, but rather as individuals with others around them. They expect promotions and raises based totally on their presence, not their actions.

Their children are even further from what had been the norm. Generation Y, also known as the “Millennials,” consists of 80 million young people born between 1980 and 1995. They represent the fastest-growing segment of the American workforce today. In many ways, Gen Y varies greatly from any previous generation. For starters, they were born in a world awash in technology. They don’t know anything else and consider their parents woefully ignorant in that area. For them, cell phones, computers, and the Internet are necessities and have always existed. They are always connected via headphones or earplugs, their eyes riveted on some screen.

Divided by Technology?

In a recent AT&T commercial, the camera revealed people everywhere listening to music playing through their phones. They were in crowded libraries, on the subway, at the beach, or walking down the street, completely oblivious to their surroundings. In October 2009, for example, there was a subway shooting in an American city. A madman chose a victim at random on a train. No one noticed the gun, though the shooter went so far as to wipe his nose with it several times as he taunted people verbally. No one looked up from their smartphones or iPads.

At work or at home, day or night, Generation Yers check their Facebook pages and read email on their iPhone, Black-Berry, or other device. There is no difference between work and private lives; they get personal email, instant messages, texts, and tweets in both places. Their parents isolated the public and private parts of their lives, but Gen Y doesn’t see any distinctions.

Millennials also expect immediate answers and instant gratification. They know every piece of equipment and eagerly snap up the latest innovation to come onstream. As a result of that need for immediacy, most recent college graduates are unhappy employees. For example, University of New Hampshire management professor Paul Harvey found that members of Gen Y have a “very inflated sense of self” that leads to “unrealistic expectations” and, ultimately, “chronic disappointment.”³ Their only interests, according to a separate report in the September 2010 Journal of Management, are “high salaries” and “lots of leisure time off the job.”⁴

I remember interviewing one young person for an entry-level position. He couldn’t write; he simply didn’t know how to put two words together in any form. I asked him why he didn’t learn even the basics during his years in high school and college. His answer was that he expected his secretary would do his writing for him.

“What happens if you don’t have a secretary?” I asked. He wasn’t sure (but I knew for certain he wasn’t going to have a secretary at our agency).

He didn’t get the position he applied for, nor was he unusual. Members of Gen Y have been brought up with everyone telling them that they are great and that they can conquer the world. They believe it. They expect to be the boss the second day after joining some organization. They figure they’ll magically float to the top of the ladder. Naturally, with such lofty, implausible goals, they are easily prone to disappointment.

The problem may be simple: Maybe they are just misplaced. Many people have taken jobs they just aren’t suited for simply because they needed to find work. That doesn’t mean they can’t be motivated or capable in a job they like and can handle.

A manager’s responsibility is to put an employee in a place where he can achieve the best results. That’s the mantra of coaches in sports as well. Successful coaches use the strengths of their team to build success. A baseball manager who relies on home runs to win would be hard pressed to rack up victories with a team long on speed and short on power.

I take that same approach with my agency. Some people might not be good social workers; they may not enjoy working with clients or have the patience necessary to aid disabled clients with severe needs. However, they may be superb in arranging for treatment and identifying resources. They can be vital members of a team by contributing where they can help the most and achieve the most satisfaction at the same time.

Employees who like what they are doing are far more content. “If you’re engaged, you know what’s expected of you at work, you feel connected to people you work with, and you want to be there,” wrote Dr. Jim Harter, Gallup’s chief scientist of workplace management and well-being. “You feel a part of something significant, so you’re more likely to want to be part of a solution, to be part of a bigger tribe. All that has positive performance consequences for teams and organizations.”⁵

However, any employer has to recognize that today’s employees are not the same as those of previous generations and to be willing to understand the differences. Gen Y members are fully capable of doing anything; they just work differently. They need to set short- and long-term goals. Helping them do that is part of my job. They also have to realize that goals change; they evolve, just as mine did. I set out to be an accountant and shifted to law, only to end up running a social service agency, which, it turns out, requires knowledge of both accounting and law.

Technology advances are also separating us into haves and have-nots. As I mentioned, Gen Y members in general have no problem with technology; they know—and often purchase—all the most recent upgrades. Many others, however—from both the younger and the older generations—are not as comfortable with high-tech device...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword: The Boat by Peter F. Borish, President, Computer Trading Corporation
• Preface
• Introduction: Building Consensus with the “Everybody Paddles” Concept
• Principle One: Unity Stabilizes the Boat
• Principle Two: Purpose Provides Propulsion
• Principle Three: The Captain Sets the Course, the Whole Crew Paddles
• Principle Four: Communicate Clearly to Stay on Course
• Principle Five: Problem Solving, Course Correction
• Principle Six: Every Crew Member Matters
• Conclusion
• About the Author
• Endnotes