Cover and Move - Working as a team through trust and empathy

"Stop! NYPD! Stop!"

The two police officers round the corner into an alley that is crammed full of trash bins. Shots ring out and impact the wall right next to one of the cops, she dives for cover. Her partner presses himself against one of the trash bins and returns fire.

Sounds familiar? It is what we all expect to see in any good cop series. Assuming the two cops in the above scene are main characters and are to survive this encounter, we can picture how this scene will play out: One cop shoots, whilst the other one moves closer to the perp and vice versa.

That is "cover and move". It is a gun-fighting technique. But it is also the most fundamental law that we need to adhere to when working with others, i.e. teamwork. You cover me and I cover you. When you move, I look out for you and cover the areas that you cannot observe whilst you are moving. Then you do the same for me.

Why is this important?

Because we want to win. And this is winning in the broadest sense of the word. Winning could be maintaining a healthy friendship with someone who is close to us. For a non-profit, winning means staying solvent to pursue the greater mission of the organisation. Winning small to make our slice of the world a better place.

The language used in gun-fighting is one that I could not employ for my team. It sounds disingenuous. But working as a team through trust and empathy, that one works. And what is key to have trust and empathy for one another? Relationships.

And relationships are the foundation for any successful team. By developing trust with each other through learning about what we are good at and where we need support we start to care for each other. So when our team faces adversity, I want to shield you from it. I cover for you, which allows you to continue to strive towards our common goal.

It sounds so simple. But in reality, we all fail to cover for one another all the time. Why? Because although it might be simple, it is not easy.

I have learned that bonds truly get forged in adversity. My Kokoro experience showed me that a crucible event can forge a team in an incredibly short amount of time. My experience at work has shown me that when you face financial challenges or difficulties around HR, you forge a bond with your co-workers that are by your side.

Equally we have all experienced situations when colleagues do not cover for each other, when they do not put the team first. For example, at a non-profit you could have a finance manager who is not looking out for what a service department head is doing. The latter focuses on his KPIs, which are primarily based around service provision, making sure that the people are served with maximum quality. Maybe he allows too much overtime for his staff to make sure that they feel less stressed to get the task done in their contracted hours. The quality is great and his team is happy, but now his department is running at a loss. If the finance manager had truly looked out for his colleague, if they had performed as a team, moving together, holding each other accountable, checking each other's weaknesses, they could have won.

As in this example, in the business world we might not face live rounds being shot at us and as a result we are technically still able to 'move'. However, all we are doing is moving further and further away from 'cover' to a position where we might just be too exposed. Now we cannot accomplish the mission. At one point we cannot move anymore. We have let the whole team down. We are fully exposed in that alleyway, never mind covering for our team mates.

Any time you are working in a team and I am hard pressed to think about a situation where you are not working with at least one other person, you need to think 'teamwork'. That means, you need to make sure everyone knows what the mission is. How you want to get there. Who is needed to move certain parts of the project further and how you can help each other.

When you have sold relationships with your colleagues based on trust, this will all come naturally. Formal structures help a company run, especially when the ties between people are not established. But once relationships have formed, once I trust you and you care for me, we will look out for one another. We will want to move towards the common goal together.

Photo by Artem Sapegin on Unsplash