I get asked a lot if I talk about teamwork and teamship.

I completely understand why someone might ask the question. For a start, I served in the RAF for 21 years. The military is renowned for being all about teamwork. And there are inspirational speakers out there like Mandy Hickson and David Coulthard, who champion teamship. They have both achieved phenomenal things in their life. Mandy as a fast jet pilot and David as an F1 driver and they will both tell you, (because I’ve heard them say it) that they couldn’t have done the things they did without their team.

I’ve seen Mandy enthrall her audiences as she regales how every engineer, every air traffic controller, every admin assistant, every logistics officer has an integral part to play in a successful combat mission. And she’s dead right. 

So I’m not surprised people look to me, an RAF pilot, leadership and performance coach and motivational speaker and ask what I’ve got to say about teamship. And I’m going to be honest here; Whenever someone asks me that question my heart sinks a little bit. I’m just not sure teamship was ever really my forte. 

"I admire people who can stand up and say that it was really all thanks to the team.

If I’m honest I’m actually kind of envious.

They talk of this belonging.

This togetherness.

And I wish I’d felt that". 

But I didn’t. 

And that’s not because we weren’t a team. That’s not because we didn’t need to be able operate as a team. And it’s certainly not because I could have done my job without the team. Its just that I never felt that sense of teamship in the way I imagined I should feel it. I always felt like an outlier. So if I stood up and talked about teamship, I’d feel like an imposter.

The truth is, I never felt like was one of team. So I don’t feel like I have the right to speak for them. 

Everyone in your team is afraid of rejection

And that might just be the reason that I can offer a slightly different perspective on teamship. Because what I’ve come to learn is that I wasn’t the only one who felt like an outlier. I wasn’t the only one who battled with that feeling of rejection.

In fact if there is one thing I can say about human beings is that we all want to belong. We are all afraid of rejection. And that means that every person in a team is afraid of rejection too. In fact they might feel it so strongly that it will interfere with their ability to contribute meaningfully to the team. Because they’ll do just about anything to stay in the team.

I saw it time and time again in the military. Strong, confident, perhaps even downright opinionated people, would adapt their behaviour so they could fit in. I saw the rise of the “ladette”. Women who swore, had casual sex, and skulled pints so they could be part of the “good lads club.” (I tried this but it never worked. I was way too much of a “moody cow” to fool anyone). And it’s not just our identity we are willing to sacrifice to belong to a team. Sometimes we’ll even sacrifice the safety of others. 

There was a famous case study that dates back to 1994 when soldier, who was standing on the roof of a land rover (rumours suggested this was part of an initiation ceremony) was decapitated by a low-flying Hercules aircraft. When the incident was investigated it was found that this was the culmination of years and years of recklessness within that Squadron.

A major factor that contributed to this culture of recklessness was the kudos that surrounded being selected to be part of this elite tribe. It was highly desirable to be picked for that team. And once you were in, you were all in. “What goes on tour, stays on tour.” That was the code. It took someone to lose their head before they finally changed their behaviour. And these are all good people. Who wanted to serve their country. Who wanted to do the right thing. It is a chilling reminder; we would rather die than be ejected from our tribe. 

The point is the desire to belong is so incredibly powerful that it can really interfere with our judgement. And I think that throws a very interesting spanner into the workings of an effective team. In my view, everyone within an effective team must feel empowered to think for themselves and disagree with the rest of the team. In other words, I think strong teamship comes from an ability to reject and be rejected. I know rejection has quite a jarring feel to it. I can almost feel people recoil when I say the word. As if it were contagious. That in itself is an insight into how powerfully we resist it. And a reminder that we all put our own meaning onto words, especially emotive words like “rejection” which can bring up painful memories. But I’d encourage you to think of rejection in it’s literal sense - “the dismissing or refusing of a proposal, idea” and remember that it’s our choice whether or not to take rejection personally (which I totally did for many many years so I’m not judging.) The point is, rejection doesn’t have to be negative or insulting. It can be positive. It can even a sign of respect. When we can reject and be rejected we can turn conformists into disrupters. We can turn censorship into dissent. We can turn group think into collective intelligence. We multiply the power of the team, not dilute it. 

Rejection turns group think into collective intelligence.

I remember the most vivid example of this was when I was leading a detachment of pilots in Kabul. We had been given the nod that we may be required, on short notice, to do a hostage rescue mission. We were asked to be ready for a 6am start so I briefed the crews and sent them to bed early. At about midnight I had a call to say it was unlikely to happen before 10pm the following day, at which point my crews would have been on duty for 16 hours. It has been conclusively proven that error rates dramatically increase when people have been on duty for more than 14 hours, so launching a politically sensitive mission when the troops are fatigued, is not a great idea. I could have woken them and then told them to have a lie-in. But rather than disturb their sleep, I decided to let the crews have a full night's rest and accept they would be doing a long day. When they crewed in early the next morning I briefed them the new plan and told them they could relax for the day and I would call them back into the operations room when they were needed. It wasn’t an ideal solution but it was the best I could think of at the time. Two of the crew were outraged by this decision. They complained bitterly about being asked to do a very long day. They ‘couldn’t possibly’ go back to sleep during the day. I was asking them to “stag on”, they argued. I told them that the hostage was the priority and to “get on with it”. I know they grumbled bitterly behind my back about it. 

I’ll be honest, at the time I was quite upset by this. I felt totally rejected. And of course I’d rejected them by telling them to get on with it. And I was upset by that too. They were good guys. I liked them. But on reflection I think the rejection on both sides was totally healthy and critical to the mission. My priority was to protect the interests of the hostage, which in that scenario was more important than the feelings of my crew or my own ego. I couldn’t have done my job properly if I’d been limited to only making decisions that were popular. I needed to be able to reject the people in my team to be able to do that.

But I also needed them to reject me. Because no matter how much I wanted to get that hostage out, there is no point sending 6 people on a suicide mission to try and save one person. I needed to know they could do the mission safely after a long day. And if I’m honest, I was very task focussed at this point, such was my desire to save this woman, that I probably needed the people in my team to be as robust with me as I was with them. I needed to know they would say No to me. And because I knew they would reject me that meant I could make that decision to send them on that mission. So now rather than one person making that decision I’ve got the weight of 6 people behind that decision. 

This is why rejection is so crucial. Giving people permission to reject you and giving yourself permission to reject them will set the conditions for every member of the team to stand by what they think is right. And that means you have increased the collective intelligence behind that decision and your probability of success.

I’m not telling this story as a shining example of faultless leadership by the way. There might well have been ways I could have handled the situation more skilfully. But the conditions clearly existed for my team to challenge me and I’m glad about that. And it’s taught me that strong teamship relies on everyone in that team having the ability to reject and be rejected. It may seem like the ultimate paradox, but I actually think rejection and teamship are complementary.

Rejection starts with you

So where to start? How do we set the conditions for healthy rejection to create better teamship? It’s all very well championing rejection in theory. But, as we’ve seen from the examples above, most of us would rather die than experience rejection. Remember, you’re asking your people to open themselves up to something unpleasant, counterintuitive and scary. 

Well how about this.

Start with you. Great teamship starts with every individual in the team showing up as themselves. And that starts with you. 

So start by showing up as you. And then give the world permission to reject you. 

The next time you feel the urge to say something that you think might be unpopular try this:

“I’m sticking my head above the parapet here, but I’d like to offer a different view….” And then be prepared to listen. And then listen some more. Resist the urge to defend yourself. Seek to only to listen. It might feel uncomfortable but I promise you it won’t kill you. You may even surprise yourself at how good it feels. It takes courage to be put yourself out there. And you don’t have to lose all your friends in the process either. Giving someone permission to reject you is actually the highest form of respect you can pay them. Because you’re allowing them to show up as them and you’re signalling that your relationship isn’t predicated on them agreeing with you all the time. So give it a try. See your relationships flourish. See your teams go from strength to strength. 

A great team starts with you. 

So start with you. 

Remember, fear is contagious. So is courage.