It isn’t easy to drink anything out of a glass that’s filled to the brim.
I work with teams often that are overwhelmed, have more requests coming in than they can deliver, and yet are very, very skilled at what they do. Highly capable, yet feeling stuck. They move fast every day, checking off tasks, but not making the progress they want to.
A team can accumulate skill with individual members shining, but the true depth of the team doesn’t get better.
If we have a glass that’s always full, it’s useless to take on anything new.
“What if we take some time to go slow?”, I might say.
The response? Usually a laugh, followed by “Are you kidding? C’mon, we don’t have time to slow down!”
And that’s exactly when they need to work on their glass.
Think about it. We’re constantly pouring more water (e.g. projects, initiatives, stories, sprints) into an already full container. No wonder it spills over the edges! Meanwhile, we’re frantically hiring more experts, adding more skills, stretching in all directions. That’s horizontal development, and it’s like trying to balance more water on top of an already full glass.
But what if instead, we made the glass itself better? Deeper, more adaptive, more resilient?
This is vertical development, and it’s about the team taking time to work ON being a team. It’s those moments when you step back from the daily hustle and ask: “How do we actually work together? What gets in our way of being effective the way we want to be?”
When teams do this work, even for just a few hours a month, something shifts. The sighs in meetings disappear. The conversations shift from “my idea” to “our approach”. People start finishing each other’s sentences in a good way. A shift from “I” to “we” begins to happen.
The funny thing about team development is that it feels like a luxury when you’re drowning in work. But teams that make this investment find they can suddenly hold so much more without the constant spillover.
So next time you’re rushing from meeting to meeting, wondering why your brilliant team isn’t making the progress you know they’re capable of, ask yourself:
“Are we working on our water, or our glass?”
The teams that thrive aren’t just skilled, they’re connected deeply. And that connection doesn’t happen by accident.
It happens when you choose to go deep.
Here are a few resources that I’ve found interesting and have been sharing with clients:
1 // There’s a “trivial many versus a vital few“. Listen to Greg McKeown talk about what’s essential. (9 min video)
2 // We’re all “bundles of habits”, and the invisible one’s are driving us. (5 min read)
3 // Can you recognize the roles of other members on your team? (12 min video)
