If you think about your current team – whether it’s a formal and ongoing team or whether it’s more informal and temporary, then sooner or later you’ll have to face the reality of things slipping through the cracks and balls getting dropped. A lot of times this is okay and par for the course. Stuff happens and you learn from it and move on. That’s part of a team’s journey.
But what about those things the slip through the cracks that blatantly (or secretly) undermine your team’s values and culture? I’m not talking about a task here or a task there, but about decisions or even passive choices that conflict with stated and understood values and the integrity of the team or organization. It might be different for your context, but I’ve seen how some of these big misses can take place and more often than not no learning takes place, no accountability takes place, and spin – positive or spiritual or otherwise – encourages people to just move on. Evaluation happens without its sister – accountability.
When watching a little bit of the World Cup I saw a parallel. You’ve got a team working together to preserve the integrity of the team. When a goal is scored, it’s a clear indication that something has broken down. And things break down more often than goals are actually scored thanks to the goalie – who represents the last line of defense. When the defense doesn’t do their job, the goalie can bail them out some of the time; however, the constant pressure that comes from defensive breakdowns sooner or later will overwhelm even the best goalkeeper.
One of my favorite images from the NBA playoffs this past year was Celtic Coach Doc Rivers in his huddles in the fourth quarter. I’ve always liked Doc back to his playing days and I loved him as a broadcaster, but he’s an awesome coach. But I found it compelling watching him look at all his players in the eyes and say, “Everybody needs to do their job. Do your job!” His message was that if everyone is accountable to do their part and if they preserve the integrity of their teamwork and defense then success would follow. Maintaining the integrity of their teamwork would lead to results.
Working on teams together, I see integrity-undermining misses as “goals allowed.” In a team sport, people are held accountable because of instant replay and video analysis. After a goal is scored there is a total analysis of who didn’t do their job and what caused the goal. On typical teams this type of accountability is more rare and it’s more difficult to produce. What message would it send if a World Cup team allowed a couple goals in a game, but never thought to look at the video or learn about where the breakdowns were and talk about how to better protect the goal? But I would say many teams do the equivalent of that with a “let’s just keep moving on” mentality. They have no passion to protect their “goal” which is the symbolic metaphor of the integrity of their team and its vision and values.
So nurturing team and individual accountability is vital to team integrity, but as I’ll post in part two of this post – accountability needs to extend beyond just people’s job descriptions or individual responsibilities or else the goalie’s on your team will get disillusioned and the culture of the team will be dictated by job descriptions rather than core values.
So in the spirit of soccer, I want to remind you of Doc River’s exhortation to “Do your job!” as you reflect on the photo below of defenders “doing their job” to protect their goal 
And can you guess which guy is my favorite in this picture?
What do you think is involved in “protecting the goal” on your team?
