“Herb Brooks, God rest his soul, wasn’t coaching a Dream Team. He was coaching a team full of dreamers.” – Jim Craig (Herb Brooks was the head coach of the 1980 gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic hockey team at Lake Placid)***
Once upon a time, in a far far away land, I was visiting one of the sister companies of the organization I worked for. There, in Indiana, I spent time with a young man who was my professional counterpart. He held similar responsibilities with one exception, he was responsible for leading a program there that I did not have, nor did I wish to have under my leadership back home. He kept telling me that because of my work with diversity and inclusion, I was the best person to take on this program – interpreting and translation, and that I should add it to my responsibilities. Over the next 18-24 months, he and I would talk or email occasionally about various work related issues, always attempting to find new and improved ways to get the job done. He always made it a point to ask me if I had taken on the leadership of the interpreters yet. I adamantly responded, “No.” I had a dream… a vision for diversity and inclusion for the organization but I had no dream, no vision for interpreting and translation! To make a dream become a reality, it takes commitment, vision, visualization and of course the right team.
The Dream Requires Commitment
A commitment is an obligation. It is something that we dedicate ourselves to, until we have accomplished whatever it is we committed to do. Another way to put it might be ownership. If we see something as belonging to someone else, we might not put forth much effort to bring it to fruition but if we see it as our own project, process or mission, we’ll do everything we can to make it happen. It takes commitment.
The Dream Requires Vision
We should have a clear image of what we want to accomplish. That accomplishment or set of accomplishments should exemplify the mission or purpose that supports or drives the vision in the first place. I like the way one writer put it… that writer was me (lol)… “Vision takes discipline, prayer and contemplation. It is then laid out like a beautiful artistic canvas in your mind, shared with designated partners to help it take shape, then systematically revealed to the world one accomplishment at a time until it is complete. Mission Accomplished! Then what? We start again; adding to the adventure.” (What a Visionary Leader Taught Me About Vision, 05/19/20)
A vision statement helps to encapsulate a person’s, organization’s or group’s core principles and provides a roadmap to where they want to go. Even the Bible tells us that without a vision, the people perish!
The Dream Requires Visualization
While one might ask what the difference between vision and visualization is, I’ll simply say nothing and everything. The vision normally requires visualization but people can visualize something without ever coming up with an actual, planned, well thought out vision for life or targeted accomplishment. When I say visualize the dream or vision I’m saying, we have to actually paint a picture in our minds of the desired outcome. When it’s all said and done, what will it look like and how will our lives be different when it’s done? The dream requires visualization.
The Dream Requires the Right Team
A vision requires planning, prioritizing and pacing each step in a timely manner, but none of that can happen without the right people on the team. A dream requires a dream team. I heard someone recently say that if you have a small team you have a small dream and if you have a big dream then you need a big team to make it happen. The bigger the dream, the bigger the team we need to handle it.
The size of the team is not the only concern. The quality of this team is a major issue as well. In the process of planning, we should determine what needs to be done, then deliberately set out to find the individuals who can successfully carry out those tasks. Depending on the tasks that need to be completed, we determine how and where to garner those people. It is not necessarily an easy task but it is an important one.
Don’t get into the midst of the plan and decide, “Maybe I need someone to answer incoming calls and receive membership inquiries,” then two months later you get another epiphany and decide, “I think we could use someone who helps track and complete client requests, then you change your mind because maybe the person taking calls and inquiries can do this; later you realize this could have been helpful after all but you held off so long that you’ve begun to lose potential members. It is ok to come up with new ideas along the way but not all the time. Don’t do everything “flying by the seat of your pants” as the old saying goes. Try to think this through in the beginning and get input from the members of your team. They are often the ones to tell us what the realities are and what they are not, in the real world of what we are doing. I know we like to act like we have all the answers, especially when it’s our dream, but the right people on a team, with the right level of commitment or ownership, can help answer questions just as well if not better.
As previously stated, quality is key. We may sometimes surround ourselves with people who are not really on the team but who are there for their own selfish reasons, not the benefit of the team, some who are there to undermine the goals of the team because they feel their own goals are more meaningful and others who are determined to prove their worth by outshining everyone else and riding off into the sunset with all the accolades that would otherwise be shared with others.
One way to slowly dismantle a dream is to put it in the hands of those who don’t really care about its success. Identifying such individuals sounds easy but it is not. The accolade thief may appear to have a great passion for the work of the team but when you look closely, you find that they continually undermine the mission and values of the organization. This is how and when we can see the meaningful application of values in any team or organization.
Identifying Quality Team Members
- First and foremost a quality team member will adhere to the basic tenets that govern the team and its work.
- A quality team member should be able to articulate the mission, vision and values that govern the team and the dream of which they are an active part. – It doesn’t have to be verbatim, but they should be able to explain and share the crux of it with anyone who asks and anyone who doesn’t ask. I once asked a group of leaders to share any aspect of the vision of their organization that was most meaningful for them. From the muddled answers I was hearing it was apparent that no one was very clear on what the vision actually was. The way in which I asked the question, dictated that almost anything that touched on the mission or vision would suffice. The comments were all over the place but really did not embody the content that should have been shared. The point of the discussion was to refresh and reflect on the work the team was assembled to carry out. Needless to say, they were lacking in those accomplishments, I’m sure because no one really knew or remembered what it was they were supposed to be doing. That means people were doing tasks and making decisions but those tasks and decisions were not coming from a common place. That’s a recipe for disaster. It’s the equivalent of rowing a boat toward the southern part of a lake, while some in the boat are paddling in the opposite direction while others are just rocking the boat and another group are sitting still – just along for the ride!
- A quality team member can effectively proceed behind the vision (follow), once they are fully trained and engaged, they can teach the vision to others (coach); but a quality team member after having spent time engaged in the follow-ship and coaching, can also run with the vision (lead).
With the right team we can lead more effectively and achieve the vision with the help we need and celebrate achievements along the way. If you follow this blog regularly, you know I eventually did develop a vision for the interpreting and translating program for that company. It was lofty but with the right team, we developed a strong patient driven program that provided a robust service for those in need. The customers were internal and external because it wasn’t just patients who needed help understanding providers, but providers who needed help understanding patients. I didn’t only develop a vision for the program but I also developed a commitment to it and to the benefits it could provide. I made a commitment to lead that vision because there was a lack of committed leadership and I decided to pursue that vision because I wanted to see it happen for the benefit of all involved.
My colleague kept trying to get me to take on the challenge but I didn’t want it. When I saw the need and the fact that no one else saw what I saw or even cared that the need existed, I had to give in. I was driven to not only take on the challenge but to pursue it. Since I only speak English, that was going to be a challenge but I saw the need, I started dreaming of what could be, I visualized it then I recruited my dream team and we made it happen.
Not to brag but that team went from one full time Spanish speaking interpreter to 15.84 FTEs (full time equivalents – employees) who spoke Spanish, Russian, Hmong and ASL. We implemented an in-house video interpreting system in addition to face to face and in-house and external telephone interpreting. We had implemented an assessment process to ensure the qualifications and competence of all interpreters providing services for our facilities. The last year I was there, we had provided interpreting services for over 32,000 patient encounters (21,153 handled internally) in 31 languages at a record low cost. Over a ten year period we had systematically reduced the average cost to $26.25/encounter. That might not mean much to you but by the time we reached that accomplishment, there was no other organization I could find that could say the same and it was about half the cost it was when we started.
That’s vision! Let me restate that. That’s shared vision! I could never have fulfilled that vision alone. I thank God for the people who helped make it happen. So I ask you, “Does Your Team Match Your Dream?”