1. Shared purpose or mission (Your WHY)
2. Shared behavioral norms (How you do things? What is acceptable and unacceptable on the team)
3. Shared commitment (What are team members committed to?)
4. Shared performance goals (How are people measured? How do your goals align? Overlap?)
5. Shared team practices (Teams that work together effectively share common practices such as a Monday morning huddle, a Thursday night out or some other regular event).
6. Clear Roles (How our roles overlap, align and connect).
What can you do this year to harness the best of your team? What practices, such as Monday morning huddles, or more time out of the office working on projects, will bring the team together and boost not only results but the relationships that exist?
Five practical things you can do to harness the best in your team is:
1. Clarify expectations - Make sure everyone is on the same page and that the six factors when rated area at an8 or 9 out of 10 with everyone. Read two past posts on clarifying expectations (Teams365 #134 and #239 - Trust Builder #6)
2. Get to know your team members, and have them get to know each other. Business is done through relationships. What are people’s strengths? Preferences? Real talents? What special projects could they lead this year? Assessments such as the Everything DiSC opens up dialogue and creates common language for exploring differences.
3. Dedicate time to team focus - Great teams don’t just happen. They evolve through focus, practice and working together. We need to dedicate time to making a team work well together, not just expect it to happen by itself.
4. Dedicate time to regular 1-1s. These should not just happen around performance review time, but every week, if not every day! Read this blog post for some questions to incorporate into those conversations. Read what I've written on 1-1s in the past.
5. Create shared success measures and revisit these regularly. Together create a vision of success and revisit these regularly. Schedule them in and be ruthless in maintaining that meeting!
Jennifer Britton, MES, CPT, PCC
Potentials Realized
Supporting Team Leaders to do their best work, one conversation at a time
Coaching | Teamwork | Leadership
Author of From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013)
(416)996-TEAM (8326)
Eager to focus on your development as a leader during 2015? Consider joining me for the Teams365 group coaching program or Teams365 Team Leader Foundations course.
Looking to create your plan for 2015? Participate in the on-demand Inner Biz Leader(TM) Virtual Retreat Program.