“Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo … survives by bending with the wind.” ~ Bruce Lee
Pedro stood at the front of the room and told a story about how, when struggling with a difficult class, he’d received advice to “be like bamboo” from a fellow teacher. He went on to tell us how this advice helped him at work but also made him a better father.
“Be like bamboo”, “bend, don’t break”, “what looks weak is strong”, “be rooted deeply, but at the same time be flexible”. These phrases have been rattling around my head for weeks. I’ve been thinking how this relates to working with teams. In particular, how I like to work with teams.
There are many people out there who have strong roots. They know the principles, have been around the block to gain experience and understand why we are working in a certain way. But they don’t bend. They mistake flexibility with weakness, so they deliver a dogmatic approach. They know the rules and they will ‘teach’ them. Whether this is due to arrogance or insecurity, the effect is harmful: ranging from unhealthy and undermining, to toxic and destructive. Often the damage causes ripples out to future teams and institutions, causing castigation and repudiation of entire approaches further down the line.
I try to be like bamboo. I have strong roots and understand the concepts and principles, but I am flexible; I don’t force an approach on anyone. I wait. I let the team form. I listen to how they think we should work, imparting experience and asking questions to generate thoughts when appropriate. But I don’t break either: I don’t believe a team should work in a bubble, therefore I will always ask the team to give time for introspection. I don’t care if you do it once a month, what you call it or how long it is, but I do care that we try to improve as a team.
It’s not an easy approach. Most people think that the difficulty lies in maintaining enough discipline to hold back disorder and chaos. It’s not; experienced teams value the freedom and use it to build something great; inexperienced teams look for help very early on if they feel it’s not going well. The problem is confidence. I used to worry that the people who were paying me to build a great team wondered why I wasn’t being more proactive. Did they wonder if they’d made a mistake? Of course, they weren’t thinking that; they trusted me, as the expert, to do what I do. They had hired me because of my successful approach.
So now, if I start to doubt my approach, I remember that “what looks weak is strong”. I trust my approach. I am like bamboo.
Picture credit: “Korakuen Bamboo” by Julia Moore