I spoke to an old friend today and listened to his issues finding quality people to support a super important mission. He spoke at length about the complexities of the team due to everyone working remotely and the diverse personalities that have the potential to cause friction. My advice, even though he didn’t ask for it, is to decide whether you’re going to recruit or grow.
Recruiting a team sounds easy but in the military, you will always face obstacles. You may have the perfect person in mind, perhaps even a civilian contractor, but getting them released for your mission and timeframe can be a monumental task. If you want to recruit, I hope you’ve been reading and attempting every MaxDis post on building and maintaining relationships. If you are an influential interlocutor, you can move people around the battlefield or country, whether they belong to you or not. Relationships are important. If you’re committed to recruiting that special team then use those relationships to get the people you need.
If recruiting isn’t an option or relationships don’t exist, you’re left growing. You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit. You can pout about it or step-up to varsity where we build teams and make them great because the mission is important and our leaders deserve competent PAOs. There are lots of methods out there but below are a few to get you and your complex team mutually learning and becoming more effective.
- Your team will not grow itself, not as an entity and not as individuals. Take the lead, friend. Introduce yourself (and them) to mutual learning and incorporate it with intention and attention.
- COVID-19 has everyone working from home so build a OneNote and use Slack to talk in real time. What do you talk about? Introduce a topic that is relevant and that everyone can contribute to. Conduct a quick AAR through Zoom of how your team adapted to working from home. Write the notes in OneNote. While everyone is on the video call, choose the next topic and leader. You choose the frequency, but the goal is to encourage your team to conduct mutual learning.
- Examples: learn in real time how to use Microsoft Teams, Slack, Adobe Photoshop or anything else the majority of your team will benefit from growing.
- Examples: Choose one conflict/current event and conduct a deep dive. What are the implications to the military (branch specific/your unit) if x happens or y doesn’t work?
- Conduct a Zoom meeting with a PAO varsity player. They’re all over Twitter, folks. Invite them to talk to your team about x. Get them pumped and inspired about being a PAO by talking about current missions. Choose someone with experience as a PAO doing out-of-the-box PAO stuff – grab a spokesman, talk to the PAO team in Afghanistan about the ceasefire, what is the Guard PAO team doing to counter disinformation campaigns about martial law?
- COVID-19 has everyone working from home so build a OneNote and use Slack to talk in real time. What do you talk about? Introduce a topic that is relevant and that everyone can contribute to. Conduct a quick AAR through Zoom of how your team adapted to working from home. Write the notes in OneNote. While everyone is on the video call, choose the next topic and leader. You choose the frequency, but the goal is to encourage your team to conduct mutual learning.
- Conduct a five-year career planning session with each of them, individually. We had just finished a 14-hour workday fighting disinformation campaigns, wrestling with demands from CENTCOM and announcing the death of a U.S. soldier when my boss skipped dinner to whiteboard a five-year plan for a young PAO captain. You have the time – use it.
- Develop team culture. If you’re building a team then you also have to build culture nearly simultaneously. If you have the time, read Daniel Coyle’s book The Culture Code. In his book he suggests great teams are built from strong team cultures that stem from building safety, sharing vulnerability and establishing purpose.
- Let’s make it real. Build trust by using COVID-19 to create opportunities. Don’t micromanage their project choices and don’t insist on everyone completing one. Throw the option out there and see who bites. Reward and recognize their effort when the task is accomplished – not before- we don’t get credit for great ideas.
- Propose someone host a Zoom webinar for other PAOs to teach a skillset they are experts at. Maybe it’s a historical deep dive, highlights a technical skill, walks fellow servicemembers through USAjobs for future transitions or a 30-minute class on healthy meal prep. They choose it, present it, collaborate with their team and make other PAOs better, together.
- Let’s make it real. Build trust by using COVID-19 to create opportunities. Don’t micromanage their project choices and don’t insist on everyone completing one. Throw the option out there and see who bites. Reward and recognize their effort when the task is accomplished – not before- we don’t get credit for great ideas.
Ensure they’re applying this to the team culture…WHY are they wasting their time giving classes and spending an hour on Zoom? Time isn’t wasted when you’re growing an expert, competent team to accomplish missions that protect our homeland.
(Photo by Sgt. David Nye, DVIDS)
