For all its import, the Supreme Court seems pretty darn opaque, and even a bit mysterious, to those of us peering in from the outside. I’m sure constitutional scholars have better insights than we casual observers. But we’re curious, no? What really goes on behind those closed doors? A 5-to-4 vote on a key issue can have wide-ranging impact on the liberties of future generations of US citizens, and yet we’ll never know if they reached consensus about gun control rights after a couple of hours playing Grand Theft Auto in the Court’s video lounge.
Like most organizations, the effectiveness of the Court’s “executive team” bears uncommon significance. With the departure of David Souter and the arrival of its newest member, Sonia Sotomayor, the team now faces the complexity that accompanies these transitions. How will they handle this turmoil? Team members often use a mix of nostalgia (“Remember when David put Vaseline on John’s gavel and it went flying out of his hand? Yeah, I miss that guy”) and initiation (“Hey, it’s the new kid on the block.”) But as leader of this team, what’s the Chief Justice’s role in helping this group of people form relationships, have effective conversations, work well together despite their differences, and create meaningful outcomes?
The following farce may (or may not) be what happens when the Court kicks off its new session in October. I’m kind of hoping it’s not what happens.
[Editor: The vignette below may best make its point if the reader has an accompanying picture of the current US Supreme Court.]
++++ Setting: October 5, 2009, 9 am, 1 First ST NE, Washington DC ++++
John: Morning, everyone. Welcome back. Relaxing summer break? We’ll get started if everyone can take their seats. Ruth: Oooh, new leather chairs…Ruth l-i-i-i-k-e-s!
John: [aside, in whisper] Yeah, can you believe it? Didn’t think it would survive the latest budget cuts.
John: Antonin, would you grab a chair please?
Antonin: Sam’s in the seat I usually sit in.
Sam: Leg room, Antonin. Just like last year, I need it, you don’t.
John: People. Please.
[Sonia rushes in with an armful of folders, laptop, grade latte, and a plastic Safeway bag filled with unidentified clothing.]
Sonia: [smiles] Hi! Sorry I’m late! Couldn’t find the conference room, and the numbering system in this building is something straight from a behavioral rat lab gone horribly wrong. I’m not going to get shocked if I sit in the wrong chair, am I?
Ruth: [aside] Sweetie, most everything around here is shocking, one way or another. Plant yourself right here, next to me.
John: No problem. Glad you made it. We meet in here every Monday at 9. By the way, what’s in the bag?
Sonia: I wanted to bring everyone something special on my first day. So, I got T-shirts made! There’s one for everyone…it has your name on it. [She starts passing them out.]
Stephen: Uh…it’s “S-t-e-P-H-e-n.” With a PH. Not a V. Nice embroidery, though. This is real professional work. From that little shop over on Wisconsin Ave?
Clarence: Really? Seriously? Sonia, teal just isn’t my color.
Sonia: Sorry about that. Just thought I’d spice things up with some diverse, festive colors. Those black robes are slimming, but just a bit depressing.
Ruth: I like what’s on the back -- “We’re gonna habeas a good time! Top Court, 2009-10 World Tour.”
John: Thanks, Sonia. I like mine. It’s been years since I wore a shirt that said “The Big Kahuna.”
Anthony: John Paul…you’re awfully quiet this morning. Everything OK?
John Paul: Mostly OK…thanks for asking. It’s just…this is the last kick-off meeting I’ll have with you people, and I’m already thinking about how much I’m going to miss this next October. And I’m missing Dave.
John: Yeah, we’ll likely have some turnover in the team in the coming months. Probably something to pay attention to. Sonia, this team has been around for a number of years, and admittedly we’re probably not all that good with change. Are there things you need from us to help you hit the ground running?
Sonia: John, with all due respect, while this institution has been around for a long time, this team is brand new. Someone left, someone arrived. That changes everything except our team name and our mission. It’s been my experience that when you have turnover, you change the dynamic between the people. And when you change the dynamic, you change the process and the outcomes. I’d rather think this is a brand new team.
Antonin: Listen. We have ways of doing things. This little welcoming thing here is nice, and the T-shirt idea is cute, but we have work to do. This team has been here since before your, or my, parents landed on this country’s shores. We already know the ways we work together, fight, make up, disagree…whatever. Learn the rules, keep your head down, and you’ll do fine.
Sonia: OK, I hear you, but listen: I’m here, and not necessarily to “fit in.” I’m here with my beliefs, aspirations, preferences, and foibles. Dave’s gone, and I’m here. That changes things. Sure, we have patterns and norms, and every Monday we sit around this table, but for me, it’s a brand new team. I think for all of us, it’s a brand new team, as much as that might annoy – or frighten – some of us.
Samuel: [with his new T-shirt tied around his head, looking decidedly like a Sikh, beginning with strains of Gershwin] ‘You like potato, I like potahto, You say tomato, I say tomahto…let’s call the whole thing off…’
John: [sigh]
Well, let’s not call the whole thing off. Not yet.
Two views of what it fundamentally means when someone joins a team have begun to emerge, well-argued by Justices Scalia and Sotomayor. And they’re hard people to disagree with.
Justice Scalia asks us to consider that teams are entities that transcend individual comings and goings, things that have a life of their own despite changes in membership. Dave retires? Get him a framed picture of the team at last year’s go-kart offsite signed by the whole crew. Sonia arrives? We can tell her the ins and outs of how the group ticks and make sure she knows how to get her expense report approved.
While Justice Scalia is surely partly correct, Justice Sotomayor asks us to broaden our thinking on this issue. Sure, a team as an institution, or perhaps as an artifact of a culture, has a kind of existence. But fundamentally, a team is the current aggregation of the people around the table, in this irreplaceable constellation, and their unique patterns of conversation, interaction, and productivity.
The team is not just the “who,” but it’s also the “what” and the “how.” The conversation that lives in smoldering fires, the debate waged with worn and pitted axes, the reconciliation reached with calloused hands, the quiet pride shared when success is achieved: how these people do those things is the functional definition of their team.
Justice Sotomayor’s perspective invites us to honor teams as the unique, ever-changing crapshoots that they are. Stephen has a bad piece of fish for lunch. John Paul inks a lucrative deal with a publisher. Ruth gets disappointing news on her recent medical tests. Team members confront daily gusts of change that impact their life-long work, whether acknowledged or not, in addition to more profound changes, like comings and goings, retirements and deaths.
In my years as a consultant, this is where I see leaders like John struggle with these issues. They come to a place where they confront the implications of these two alternative meanings for “team.” They run into questions that get harder to answer. If a team is a well-oiled machine, then why does simply replacing one cog sometimes throw everything into chaos? Why did Thurgood’s departure leave such a vaccum? Why don’t some of the team’s members seem to trust Sonia? And why does that suspicion of trust have such an impact on how the team works and what it produces?
In place of that somewhat worn “well-oiled machine” metaphor, perhaps new, non-mechanistic metaphors would help us navigate these points of critical transition.
Maybe a team is more like a spider web, and each team member a twig or anchoring point that enables the web itself to exist. Delete a twig and the supporting connection it provides to the whole, and even the web itself, loses much, if not all, of its functional capability. The web needs re-threading, but this can only be done when a new anchoring twig is found.
Broadened then, leadership during team transitions is perhaps like a spider carefully tending its web after a storm has passed. An inventory is required:
- Which anchoring twigs are still here?
- Are they strong and reliable?
- What’s the state of the web between the anchors?
- What connections need strengthening?
- What threads must be built from scratch?
- Is the web strong enough to catch bugs?
- And can we get this re-woven in time to catch the days’ first flies?
With the correct support though, attending to the team’s anchors and linkages is not only possible, it’s rewarding. Those rewards are intangible, such as a sense of collective that’s been built by everyone to withstand the tough times. They are also tangible, such as a greater ability to achieve shared goals that have hard metrics.
Hopefully, in the weeks and months leading up to the Court’s first session on the first Monday in October, Chief Justice John Roberts will feel spidery and attend to the silk that bonds his team. Pundits indicate this is already something he does in the realm of legal argument -- working with his justices to forge consensus (though this would seem a Sisyphean task). It would be fascinating to watch that first team meeting in October to see how he handles the new team’s dynamics.
So, I’m interested in your perspective. What’s a team? Does a brand new team emerge when membership changes? And if so, how do we approach it?
Ben Bratt is an executive team effectiveness coach and organizational development consultant based in Seattle, WA. He merges business acumen with a strategic perspective and 15-year track record of consulting to enable bottom-line business results.His clients appreciate his creativity, systemic design, and clear-headed pragmatism. His global experience and broad-based expertise accrued through hands-on senior contributor and leadership positions in Fortune 500 IT and automotive companies.
He can be reached at bennetthbratt@gmail.com
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