Tag Archives: Teamwork
Great Teams are High-Performance
Teamwork
Good teams will be well-functioning, but great teams will be high-performance. We have already looked at the ten characteristics of the well-functioning team which included purpose, priorities, roles, decisions, conflict, personal traits, norms, effectiveness, success and training.
Please keep in mind the idea that a team is a group organized to work together to accomplish a set of objectives that cannot be achieved effectively by individuals.
What are the traits of the high-performance team? You might want to compare this set of characteristics of a superior team to one that is well-functioning.
In a high-performance team you will find:
Participative leadership–Being a participative leader means involving team members in making decisions. This is most essential when creative thinking is needed to solve complex problems. If the leader is an acting participant of the team, the team feels interdependent, empowered and freed up to serve each other. When the leader has the team participate in developing answers to problems with the project, the team begins to own the project and to protect it and each other as co-owners.
Shared responsibility— In a shared-responsibility team, That Leader no longer has the sole responsibility for the success of the project or for individual team member performance. That Leader’s new role is to develop the talents, skills, and mindset of all team members so they can participate, contribute, and share in the management and leadership of the team. The team members are empowered and feel comfortable holding one another accountable to the business’s goals. They do not do this using criticism, blame or going behind one another’s backs. Instead they listen to each other’s ideas, express themselves tactfully and praise each other’s good ideas.
Aligned on purpose—The team has a sense of common purpose about why the team exists and its functions. The Purpose is a moral conviction: a rationale that explains why a particular group of talented people—leader and team–should spend their valuable time working together in this group doing these particular things. They have a clean sense of what they are trying to produce, what the performance goals are, the value of a team that works well together, and a sense of interdependence.
High communication—High communication helps the team work in a climate of trust and open, honest communication. Some of the basic patterns for communications behavior are that the leader is clear in what is the important thing to discuss, whether the subjects under discussion support the main issue, are the members connecting with the message, is the communication clear and could this be explained with fewer words and less talk.
Future focused—The team is seeking change as an opportunity for growth, professional, personal and for the business.
Focused on task—The team will work together to see that meetings and interactions are focused on results concerning the project, not on each other or other topics.
Creative talents—All members come to the team with individual talents and creativity which all are encouraged to use on the project. But how does the team discover each person’s talents? Is this person more into people, projects, products or problem solving? To get the best out of a person, it is important to understand what he or she enjoys doing most.
Rapid Response—Not just a medical concept, rapid response refers to the team identifying and acting on opportunities quickly. If a project is not going to work as decided, the team must be able to respond to the problem and come up with some alternate solutions.
Do you see these traits as important parts of a high-performance team? Have you worked in one this these characteristics?
This information is from Washington State School Directors’ Association and found on http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/.
Jaco Grobbelaar, owner of BroadVision Marketing, helps business owners and business professionals put marketing strategies in place that consistently secure new clients. He can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.799.1238. You can “Like” him at www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing or connect with him on www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar.
Related articles
- Teamwork Pt. 1 (sellinginnovation.wordpress.com)
- Top 10 Management on Teamwork: An Overview and Analysis of Why There is No I in Team (socyberty.com)
Leadership Teams
Team work
A team is a group organized to work together to accomplish a set of objectives that cannot be achieved effectively by individuals. That Leader knows that a key to successful planning and implementation of any goal is the development of teams. He also decides which type of team he needs of the three types we are going to look at.
That Leader Knows When Conflict is Destructive or Constructive
Constructive Conflict Resolution
Just because conflict happens, doesn’t mean that it is always a bad thing. That Leader will know whether the conflict is destructive or is constructive.
How do you tell when a conflict is destructive?
That Leader will know that a conflict is destructive when the team is supposed to be working on goal setting and instead wind up in the middle of an argument that takes attention away from the purpose of the meeting. If someone is having a problem and decides that the meeting is the place to air it, That Leader needs to take control of the meeting back, offer to meet with the argumentative person later and return to the topic.
Conflict Happens—How That Leader Spots It
Team Member Disrupting a Meeting
Every project, every team and every team leader on all levels are going to come in contact with conflict. What That Leader needs to learn is how to spot it in others in order to minimize, divert or resolve it as soon as possible.
What are some conflict indicators?
Probably the most obvious indication is body language. If the team member is unhappy about something, his body language will be guarded, turned from the leader, he will have minimal eye contact with the leader and even show micro-expressions of mocking or frowning. A leader in the midst of conflict will show the same either to his up-line team or to his team members. That Leader will study body language in order to become conscious of the meanings of what he sees, but even an uninformed leader will subconsciously be aware of the signs and know there is a problem, even if he is only aware of it in his gut.
That Leader’s Communication Tools
Teamwork
Today we are going to look at some of things that you probably were taught at home or at school, but you may never have taken the time to look at them directly. As a result you may be at a loss when you need to communicate to your team.
How would you tell them what you want them to do without sounding like a nagging parent? How do you find out where they are coming from without sounding like the Inquisition? What do you say when you and the team reach an impasse?
That Leader-Knowing the Company Structure
Team Spirit
In order to be That Leader a person has to be able to comprehend the organizational leadership structure and how it impacts the business culture, its identity and the business norms. In other words, That Leader needs to understand how the company works. How does the company want leadership to communicate, enforce policies and provide feedback between it and its employees? How is the company organized in this regard?
That Leader’s Vision-Direction and Goal
Martin Luther King, Jr.
To be That Leader you need vision to be successful. What does the idea of having a vision mean in terms of leadership to you?
When I looked up the idea of leadership and vision, I was not sure exactly what having vision meant. Here’s what I learned. Vision has many varieties of definitions, but they all include a mental image or picture, an orientation toward the future and some of the qualities of direction or goal. Being a person whose primary sense is feeling I know now I was stymied by an aspect of leadership that is visual.
Team Leadership Accountability
thegoldguys.blogspot.com/
Congratulations. You are now a team leader for the first time. You have watched other team leaders, thought about what you liked about their styles and what you didn’t like, but suddenly Facebook ideas don’t fit what you need to know to be the team leader you want to be.
Let’s look at some accountability traits of a good team leader and see which ones describe you, which you read about that you wouldn’t consider desirably and what trait you would like to be able to describe yourself as.
Accountability traits come in subcategories. We will be looking at attributes, skills and knowledge. Each group has a set that will help you go from just Liking a team leader to being able to say why. This will also help you set goals for items that you need to work on.
