TEAMWORK = The state achieved by a group of people working together who trust one another, engage in healthy conflict, commit to decisions, hold one another accountable, and focus on collective results.
–Patrick Lencioni
Dear Leaders,
Have you had the opportunity to gather a group of individual contributors and create a high performing team? Did you look for similarities for the team members or did you look for individual strengths and differing skills?
A critical step for building a team is that the leader and each team member to understand and appreciate the strengths of the other team members. Maximizing collective strengths provides greater results, fosters creativity, and increases inspiration, motivation and satisfaction levels.
As individuals, we don’t always want to invest the time required to build relationships within the team. As leaders, building team dynamics will serve us, and the team well, and enable the team to build trust and hold one another accountable.
Strong teams:
- Share their successes and failures.
- Address conflict in a healthy, honoring manner.
- Speak up when they feel other team members are out of line.
- Support the common goal.
- Replace individual needs and focuses on what is best for the team as a whole.
- Use “we”, “us” and “the team” instead of “I”.
- Readily share information and knowledge.
There are many tools available to help teams and individuals better understand their strengths, appreciate differences, and build trust. Examples include MBTI, DiSC, Listening, Conflict, and 360’ feedback.
Are you enabling your team to thrive and leverage their collective skills?