Advocating for your Team… but which Team?

Leadership is about purview, how broadly or narrowly we focus in approaching a decision. Or, in this case, a high-pressure negotiation.

Years ago, my company was moving into a new office. I was a director, with 12 people on my team, including two managers. We had to negotiate the seating chart across all departments and teams, in a well-considered three-week process of proposals and counter-proposals. Our CEO had done this before.

Hoo boy! My team members were at my door several times a day. At that old, sad, beige door we were leaving behind. 

Charlotte lobbying for a spot close to a window.

Brian asking if all supervisors would get an office with a door. Brian was a supervisor. (Names have been changed, btw.)

Juana urging me to make sure our whole team got desks right next to each other, because she heard that some teams would have to be split up. She didn’t care if that meant she herself was further from a window. Bless you for that, Juana.

These kind of floor plan showdowns may be less tense and dramatic now, in a world of desk hoteling and more part-time and full-time remote work. But 13 or so years ago, it was a Big Deal. 

Meeting with my boss, the C-suite executive, I felt like Rocky going into the ring for a fight, with my team cheering for me from my corner, waving pointedly with that crook-neck-straw squirt water bottle thing boxers have. 

I was fighting for my team! Our happiness and success was at stake. My team needed me to win for them against the other teams in our department.

But when I sat down at the little meeting table in my boss’s office, with the paper map of desks and offices, my righteous fighter mindset felt being strident and unreasonable. A little deranged, even. My boss was a good boss. She was telling me in a calm voice that her job was to do what is best for the six teams in our department, not just mine. 

She said something that, eventually, once I accepted it, changed the way I think about the relationship between a manager, the team they supervise, and the rest of the organization:  

“Your peer team of directors is your A-Team, even more than the team you manage. That’s the only way we can achieve our strategy. This is how we fight those ‘siloes’ we don’t want.” 

At first, I was taken aback. I didn’t want to agree with her. I was in Rocky mode. I was advocating for my team. I was good at advocacy. I could make a case and stick with it. It was the team I supervised whose success I was responsible for. It was my job to make their lives easier, and help them do their work well, right? 

Once I slowed down to think about it, though, I broadened my purview to see the whole organization as the group I could help succeed. From that moment on, I worked very differently with the managers from other teams and other departments, like IT, and finance, and operations. 

Here’s where I am now: When you have a zero-sum situation, when you are sure there is no win-win or compromise between you and your team and another team: 

Pause your Rocky fighter spirit, and your righteous pride (deserved! I’m sure) that inspires you to go hard for your team, back up to strategy. Take a breath and zoom out to department- or organization-level goals and mission.

Ask yourself and your team, “Where is the biggest benefit to the larger organization?” In this case, “Does that other team’s success rely more on them having adjacent desks than mine?” 

Since trust is our currency for getting things done in complex situations, ask yourself, “How do I risk trust, or gain trust, by pushing for my team against others?” 

I don’t remember exactly what my team did or didn’t get from our wishlist, from my own and Charlotte’s and Brian’s and Juana’s requests. I remember there were compromises in this case. I was able to back off of my must-have list for my team, and we got almost all of what we wanted. 

What happened with the floor plan? I don’t remember much, really. Once it was done, people settled in. My team and the teams around us were fine. I felt good about not being any more pushy with my boss than I was. I didn’t hear much more about it.

I do remember that from that point, I took more of an interest in the goals, priorities, and needs of other teams. I was more at ease and connected with other teams and departments. And my team still got what they needed to do their work.