| |
| TEN
TEAM TIPS |
 |
| |
| Wear One Hat |
| |
Team leaders often
confuse their team mates by not making their role clear. Are you
participating as a team member? Or as the team leader? To alleviate
the confusion, let your team mates know which hat you are wearing
and when you change your role. |
| |
| Focus on the
Deliverable |
| |
Teams can get off-track
pretty quickly without a purpose, agenda or defined outcome. When
gathering together, get a clear picture of the meeting deliverable
by asking, “What do we want to walk away with today?”
All your efforts should support the development of the deliverable. |
| |
| Do Collective
Work |
| |
Teams are great for
collaborative work such as planning, coordinating, decision-making,
evaluation, brainstorming and sharing information. So use teams
where appropriate and farm out tasks more suitable for individual
work to one (or two) people to do. |
| |
| Share the
Wealth |
| |
There is so much to
do and so little time. So make sure you share the tasks fairly
among your team mates. Leverage their talents and strengths, provide
developmental opportunities, coach them into accepting responsibility
so that all members of the team can share the work and the resulting
rewards. |
| |
| Encourage
Robust Dialogue |
| |
Discussions within
teams should be candid and straightforward, bringing out the positive
and the negative. It’s a Socratic dialogue where team members
ask the right questions, debating them and finding realistic solutions…
Larry Bossidy, in his book Execution, insists that “debating
the assumptions and making trade-offs openly in a group is an
important part of the social software…As they construct
and share a common comprehensive picture of what’s happening
on the outside and inside, they hone their ability to synchronize
efforts for execution. And they publicly make their commitments
to execute.” |
| |
| Suffer the
Silence |
| |
The currency of teamwork
is airtime and no one likes to see time being wasted. So when
we pose a question or ask for a volunteer, it’s easy to
rush in to fill the void and continue talking. We need to “suffer
the silence” to allow our team mates to think through the
question, evaluate the options and then to raise their voices. |
| |
| Get Naked |
| |
One of the cornerstones
of cohesive teamwork is trust. To build trust, Patrick Lencioni
encourages team members to “get naked” - a process
of getting to know your team mates at a deeper level. You can
get naked through behavioral preference and conative profiles
such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
and the Kolbe Indexes,
reading professional books, sharing personal histories, conducting
team activities and experiential exercises, using feedback instruments
and frequently communicating with each other. |
| |
| Take a Straw
Poll |
| |
For really important
decisions, it is worth taking a moment to poll your team mates
on where they stand on the issue. Provide an opportunity for any
objections to be raised…and then discussed to create an
even better solution. It’s better than having the objections
raised much later…out in the parking lot or in the middle
of a sabotaged implementation. |
| |
| Follow Through |
| |
The enemy of accountability
is ambiguity. So never finish a meeting without clarifying what
the follow-through will be, who will do it, when and how they
will do it, and how and when the next review will take place.
Follow through ensures that people are doing the things they committed
to do, according to the agreed upon timetable. |
| |
| Celebrate
Success |
| |
Look for ways to celebrate
even the smallest of victories (even though you may have mentally
moved onto the next task or project!) Your team mates need to
know that their efforts are recognized and appreciated…so
they are willing to continue their labors! |
| |
For more information
on how QPC can help your teams to be extraordinary, contact
us.
For more team tips, subscribe to our newsletter
|
| |