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Leading Workplace Teams

Most organizations will say that they understand the value of teams, but few can articulate a vision of what "teamwork" really means.

To be effective, a team must have:

  1. A shared and meaningful purpose: each member understands the goal and its significance
  2. Specific and measurable goals: there should be a clear and unambiguous goal
  3. Clearly defined roles: each member should know his role, and roles should be designed/defined to avoid conflicts
  4. Complementary skills: specifically, the skills of the team as a whole should be applicable to the task as a whole.
  5. A collaborative process: a clearly defined method of how they will work together
  6. Mutual accountability: while the entire team is responsible for the greater tasks, individual members must be accountable for doing their part

One of the most widely used forms of team is the "project team," where individuals in various departments are pulled together to accomplish a specific goal (project) that requires their various skills. To help such teams succeed, a manager needs to provide them with: a clear definition of the problem, key criteria for success, and adequate resource to accomplish the goal. The manager must also ensure the team is properly designed, with a purpose for each member and a member for each need.

There's a bit on how to encourage creative thinking in teams. While this is important, it seems random and out of place here, and the surface is barely scratched.

Six strategies for keeping teams on track:

  1. Review the basics - See the list above, beginning with "A shared and meaningful prupose"
  2. Evaluate team meetings - There are generally too many meetings that are unnecessary for all members to attend, ro there may be too few to adequately share information
  3. Help the team take responsibility - Mostly, this means keeping your hands off, delegating to the team members, and empowering hem to do what they must
  4. Encourage participation - Mitigate among personality types so that the experts don't dominate and the introverts don't withhold their expertise.
  5. Keep communication clear - Ensure that communication is frequent and open among team members
  6. Reward team performance - Tie incentives and rewards to collaborative behavior rather than individual achievement.
  7. Facilitate - The manager should facilitate cooperation among teams and departments as needed

A note on conflict: it is not always bad. Conflict can help to bring issues to the table, resolve problems, gain new information, release emotional tension, and discover common ground. However, conflict is destructive if it destroys morale, diverts efforts and slows the process, deepens interpersonal differences, and is not directed toward resolving the problem.

And there are five steps to resolving conflict:

  1. Allow both sides to freely express their perspective
  2. Require both sides to indicate why their choice is important
  3. Focus on areas of agreement (rather than disagreement) to define common ground
  4. Limit discussion to shared interests rather than differences
  5. Ensure both groups are at peace with the solution chosen

The role of the leader is as a facilitator and coordinator to the steps above, but another important role is as an ambassador to maintain communications with other teams and business units. Another responsibility that is imp-lied, but should be explicit, is that the leader should coach team members in developing their process and interpersonal skills along the way.

Traditionally, teams were in physical proximity (present in the same space), but there ahs been an emergence of "virtual teams" where members are not collocated (they may be in different offices, or different departments). While most of the principles above apply, there are a few special considerations for managing a virtual team: arranging meatspace meetings when possible, communicating more frequently, mitigating competing loyalties (when team members are from various departments).