George Bernard Shaw famously said that progress only ever comes as a result of unreasonable people bending the world to their will, and yet in an organizational context such mavericks are often pretty unpopular. Various studies have proven Machiavelli’s dictum in The Prince that innovators tend to have no friends among those whose status quo they promise to disrupt, and lukewarm support from those who might benefit from the future they are bringing about.
If anything however, that merely serves to emphasize the importance of mavericks in the workplace, as whilst research has shown that these people don’t tend to come up with more ideas than the average Joe, they do have the force of personality to drive those ideas through to fruition.
Research has shown that emotional intelligence is a key component of being a successful maverick, as this enables one to pick their battles and appreciate when it’s wise to force your ideas through and when it’s more sensible to step back. Just as it’s beholden on mavericks to understand how best to operate in a world that may not share their unique perspective, so to is it beholden on managers to adapt their style to get the best out of these free thinkers.
Managing a team of mavericks
In a world in which something like 90% of job adverts request proactivity from applicants, free thinkers are clearly in demand, but managers continue to struggle to integrate them into their teams. In his latest book, author Ben Lyttleton argues that sport offers many lessons in how to manage mavericks.
He cites examples from the world of soccer, where the best players are so often the toughest to manage, and in particular the Argentine team that was dragged to glory by Diego Maradona, arguably the ultimate in sporting mavericks. Team mates regarded the boost he provided to their collective performance as so great that any challenges he brought to the team were worth working to overcome.
The world of cycling tends to attract more mavericks than many sports, and none more so than American Jonathan Vaughters, who famously trained as a youngster by putting his turbo trainer on the roof of his house. He’s taken that quirky and humanistic style into his latter role as a team manager in the pro peleton, with his EF Education First team recently competing at the Tour de France.
Cycling is a unique sport in that it is inherently an individual sport in the sense that one rider wins the race, but it requires intense team work in order for that individual to thrive. It offers a fantastic petri dish to explore how individuals can come together, often sacrificing their own chances for the good of the team leader.
Encouraging quirkiness
The team was recently bought by education company EF Education First, and Vaughters told me recently how important it was for the team to work with a company that shares its informal and quirky structure that aims to create an inclusive environment that can get the best out of all employees, especially given the multinational nature of the team.
Central to their success has been a relatively hands off approach that empowers individuals to make their own decisions. Vaughters told me that he strives as much as possible to give people the responsibility for their own decisions and not stand looking over their shoulder. It’s a form of self-managed team that is commonly seen in tech circles, and has attracted a certain kind of rider to the team.
“It’s one of the big reasons why I’m on the team. I’m 32 and love being treated like an adult, as it’s very unlike on other teams where you’re treated like an automaton and you have no say in your schedule,” star rider Mike Woods told me at the Tour. “Teams don’t place trust in you to be professional, but on this team they do, and for me it’s invaluable in ensuring I’m in the right place mentally to train effectively and I really enjoy being here.”
Dealing with an adaptive world
Such an approach is especially sensible in a rapidly changing environment, such as you might find in a pro bike race. Nowhere was this more typified than during Stage 10 of the race, where crosswinds had a profound impact on the outcome. Most of the teams had identified the potential for wind to affect the race, but the conditions out on the road forced riders to respond and think for themselves in a split second.
Leadership in such an environment requires less command and control and more catalyst. It requires the leader not to be the one with all the answers themselves and more someone who can help to create the right conditions for the team to find the right solution to whatever challenges emerge in the future.
“At EF, many of our people are entrepreneurial types who don’t really need motivating to do a great job, but rather in many instances helped not to overtrain and do too much,” Vaughters explains. “The staff are really self-reliant and aren’t being told what to do as they know what needs to be done as they have autonomy and ownership of their role.”
Warwick Business School believe there are four key dimensions involved in creating such agile leadership:
- Context-setting agility – with a particular emphasis on the ability of the leader to combine situational awareness with a robust sense of purpose. The ability to look outside of one’s immediate environs offers a great way to achieve this
- Self leadership – the finest adaptive leaders have a strong sense of awareness about their own strengths and weaknesses, and have a fervent desire towards self improvement and betterment.
- Stakeholder agility – complex environments have a wide range of possible stakeholders involved, and it’s vital to be able to manage them effectively. The best leaders are able to gauge the multiple perspectives of this stakeholder ecosystem and unify them behind a common vision.
- Creative agility – complex environments are seldom black or white, and so it’s vital that one is able to appreciate the nuance involved in situations.
By incorporating these four characteristics, the researchers believe that leaders will develop the ability not only to incorporate the unique characteristics of mavericks into their team, but to incorporate the many and varied motivations of the numerous stakeholders involved in the success of any team.
It’s not an easy balancing act to pull off by any means, but sport offers numerous examples of this in action, and the strong desire among senior leaders at EF to tap into the wisdom, expertise and experience of the leaders across the cycling team showcases the potential for those in the business world to learn about team building in the most complex of environments from their sporting peers. In a volatile and complex world, it truly could be the difference between success and failure.
