Team Management

Character

-Character is about your intention to do the right thing. Your team members will trust you if they respect your character Others will view your character positively if they believe that you: -Value your team's and organization's work. You appreciate the inherent worth of the work you do, not just its personal usefulness to you, such as your own professional advancement. To demonstrate this, link your team's work to the organization's strategy, be a model of commitment to your team, and put the team first. -Value individual team members. You genuinely care about them and take their needs and interests into account. You treat team members with respect. You're forthright and honest and do your best to keep your word. To demonstrate that you care, help team members succeed and accomplish goals, treat everyone fairly, and show appreciation for each team member. -Are emotionally intelligent. You deal effectively with your own and others' feelings at work. To demonstrate emotional intelligence, acknowledge your own emotions, invite constructive criticism and feedback on your own work, and handle team members' mistakes constructively. -Are resilient. You recover from setbacks, frustrations, and failure. Having a healthy sense of self-confidence will help you avoid discouragement and stay focused on your team's work and ultimate purpose. To demonstrate resiliency, express confidence, take control of team setbacks, and swiftly identify actions that will improve a challenging situation.

Steps to Resolve Destructive Conflict

-Define root cause -Facilitate a resolution Stick to the facts. Conflict can erupt because people interpret the same data very differently—or they have different data to begin with. To keep conflict productive, impersonal, and on the road to resolution, help team members focus on the facts. Often, people assume they understand where a teammate is coming from, but don't allow your team to rely on assumptions. To avoid misconceptions and incorrect assumptions, paraphrase what each person says to be sure his or her message is understood. Focus on behavior, not character. Encourage team members to express their anger or frustration in terms of other people's behavior, rather than their personal character. In addition, remind people to use "I" language rather than "you" language. With "I" language, people describe the impact of another person's behavior on themselves. - Acknowledge all opinions. Make sure that all team members feel heard. Acknowledge that everyone has his or her own viewpoint. Don't allow the team to "gang up" on a member who has a different idea. Ensure that each member feels safe to offer a divergent opinion. Encourage your team to recognize each other's perspectives and share how they arrived at their position on an issue. Encourage active listening. Remind your team members to: Restate points made by a speaker to demonstrate that they understand what the speaker is saying. Control behavior that suggests a lack of interest in the speaker; for instance, doodling, fidgeting, or interrupting while someone else is talking. Ask questions that encourage a speaker to expand on his or her points with further information or lines of reasoning. Refer back to points made earlier and build on those ideas. - Remind team members to forgive

Strengthen Team Identity

-Recognize individuals' skills. Find opportunities to recognize the skills and contributions of individual members and explain how their efforts have helped the team make progress toward its goals. Doing so will make those individuals feel valued and strengthen their commitment to the group. -Encourage collaborative work. Find as many opportunities as possible to get people working together. Nothing builds team identity like collaborating on a challenge. Collaborative work is bound to be difficult for teams in different locations, so schedule regular conference calls or Internet chats and institute a process for virtual collaboration. Be cognizant of the demands this may place on remote team members, and try to avoid inconveniencing the same people all the time. Reiterate the team's common goals. Frequently revisit the team's shared goals and purpose to remind both the in-person and virtual members that the work they are doing is important not just to the team but to the organization as well. Instill a sense of urgency. To create a sense of urgency, impress on the team how their work will solve a problem or benefit the company. When team members feel that their work is crucial, they try harder to reach their goals. They have increased motivation to work together to meet the challenge at hand. Be transparent about your process. A high level of openness about processes and procedures promotes trust among team members. Besides fostering a sense of honesty and candor, clarity about processes enables a team to function effectively together. Integrate new members. Be particularly attentive to team identity when new members join the team. Newcomers are bound to feel like outsiders at first. Quickly engage them in team projects to integrate them into the group. If appropriate, hold a welcome lunch or other small social event to mark a new member's arrival. *

Encourage Collaboration

-Solicit members views In any team, it's common for some people to dominate discussions and others to remain quiet. The longer the team works together, the more entrenched members become in these roles—and the more the team loses out on valuable input from some members. Take steps to ensure that all members contribute their views and ideas during team discussions and meetings. For example, if you notice someone remaining silent during a discussion, invite him or her to provide input. Point out, "During any discussion, we need each team member to provide input—no matter how brief." Tell team members that you are interested in their unique points of view. -Keep members informed To get everyone's views, it's important that team members—especially those working virtually—are up-to-date on work that has been accomplished and decisions that have made. Ensure that team members communicate progress on their parts of a project and that the information and updates circulate easily across the team. To do this, consider sending out weekly status updates outlining recent decisions or action items. Or post team progress reports on a project management platform and require all team members to regularly review them. -Follow communication best practices To foster effective team communication, follow certain communication best practices: Use inclusive pronouns such as "we," "us," and "our" when referring to your team. Use questions to open space for dialogue and feedback. For example, ask, "Can you tell me what makes this issue important to you?" "What are your reservations or concerns?" "Let's stop for a minute and revisit our objectives (or examine our process)." Seek clarification as needed. Ask, "I don't understand. Could you explain what you're saying in another way?" Don't interrupt team members who have less authority than others in the organization. Draw everyone's attention to the team's goals. Talking about goals helps to focus team communication and direct people's attention away from interpersonal conflicts or other distractions. Increase team participation -Stay attuned to participation levels. Watch for members' failure to complete assignments, as well as poor attendance at team meetings or get-togethers aimed at celebrating achievements. Lackluster energy and attention are additional symptoms that someone is feeling disconnected from the team. Reiterate the team norms. Remind people about the importance of these norms: They create shared expectations and make it easier for people to work together. Acknowledge that outside pressures and demanding schedules can sometimes make it hard for people to participate in the team as fully as they should. But stress the importance of participation. If team members no longer believe that certain norms are valuable, ask why. If necessary, create new norms—but ensure that they specifically encourage team participation. Make it easy to meet expectations. If team members are having difficulty fulfilling agreed-upon expectations about participation, find out why and then develop solutions to make the situation better. Ask for explanations. Simply asking people why they're having trouble meeting deadlines or participating in team meetings can reveal valuable information you can use to develop solutions. Asking for explanations can also uncover problems that you and other team members weren't aware of. Work with the person to identify any barriers to achievement and brainstorm solutions. Assess the fit between team members and tasks. In some cases, low participation stems from a poor fit between team members and the tasks they have been assigned or have agreed to take on. Remember virtual team members. You may need to make extra effort to ensure they feel engaged with the team. For example, you might partner someone in Bangalore with a coworker in the home office. If one of them has to miss a team meeting, the other takes responsibility for keeping their partner up-to-date on any key information that was shared.

What is trust?

-Trust is the belief that a person intends to do the right thing (character) and knows what to do and how to get it done (competence). When your team members trust you, they believe that you: -Intend to do what is best for them and the organization -Have the skills needed to achieve mutually important goals -Deliver on your commitments Genuinely care about others' well-being

Competence

Competence is your knowledge of what to do and how to get it done. To view you as a competent leader, your team must see you as having three types of competence: -Technical.Technical competence means you know enough about the work your group does to guide others and make intelligent decisions. Technical competence can be viewed as "theoretical" knowledge—what you learn in a classroom or a textbook. It's how things are supposed to work. -Operational. Operational competence is practical, "how to do it," real-world knowledge. When you have operational competence, you know how the theory behind your team's work actually gets applied. You acquire this kind of competence through on-the-job experience. -Political. Political competence means understanding how to get something done in your organization. It requires knowing company practices and processes, recognizing who has real influence, and being clear about other units' goals.

Assess Decision making methods

Determine if your team's current decision-making methods are working. Are sound decisions being made? Assess whether your team is following their agreed-upon processes and rules for making decisions. If not, remind members of the decision-making methods they agreed to follow and help them get back on track. Decision-making processes that include these five characteristics have improved odds of being successful: Multiple alternatives. Generally, successful decisions result from a review of many alternative solutions. Be sure your team considers several alternatives before making a decision. This "point-counterpoint" approach helps to ensure that at least two alternatives are considered. Remember, a "go/no go" choice involves only one alternative. Open debate. To generate creative alternatives, you need to facilitate open, constructive debate. Debate should be task-related, not emotional or personal. Silence or suppressed arguments are signs that the debate is not sufficiently robust. Assumption testing. It's unlikely that your team will have complete information at the time a decision needs to be made. The team will have to make assumptions as it proceeds. Make sure members recognize when they are relying on facts and when they are making assumptions. They may still choose to use untested assumptions in the decision-making process, but should reevaluate the plausibility of these assumptions throughout the process. Well-defined objectives. The team should continually review the objectives during the decision-making process to ensure that the discussion stays on target. If conditions change, the team should refine the objectives or even the definition of the problem to meet the new conditions. Perceived fairness. Engagement throughout the process is critical to the success of a decision. Team members should feel that their ideas are being considered in order to feel ownership of the final decision. If team members stop participating in conversations or are doing so reluctantly, they may be dissatisfied with the process. Examine whether or not the team is using the best method for the decision at hand. Determine if the decision-making method your team selects is appropriate for the types of decisions your team needs to make. Know the consequences of unproductive decision-making processes. These include lost time, poor choices, and decisions that team members won't support. Additional costs are erosion of morale, wasted energy, and the diversion of the team's attention from its goals.

Facilitate the Process

If your team gets stuck, your job is to facilitate an effective process. Try the following techniques to help your team make a decision: Break big decisions into smaller ones. If your team gets bogged down trying to reach agreement on a big decision, break the decision into smaller pieces that may be easier to agree on. Suppose the team is trying to select one of three product designs. Focus members' attention on smaller aspects of the decision. For example, ask: "What are the most important features that the new product needs to have?" If members can agree on the answer to that question, they may find it easier to agree on the selection of the product design. Shift people out of their comfort zones. Ask team members to research and argue for a point of view they don't necessarily support. Or ask people to play functional or managerial roles different from their own; for example, have a frontline employee assume a CEO's perspective. Ask what needs to happen to reach agreement. If your team is stuck, it may be that their needs—conscious or unconscious—aren't being met. Have each member identify what it would take for them to agree on a path forward. Once these needs are visible, you'll find them easier to address as a group. You may even discover that people are closer to coming to agreement than they thought.

Choose Evaluative Methods

In addition to your team's overall performance, assess individual members' performance. Each of your team's members serves in a number of roles—individual contributor, member of your team, and member of the larger organization. So it's helpful to evaluate each person's performance in each of them. Consider these evaluation methods: Team leader review: You evaluate each member's performance. Management review: Your supervisor evaluates individual and team performance. Self-appraisal: Each member rates his or her own performance. Peer rating: Team members assess each other's contributions. Customer satisfaction rating: Internal and external customers rate the team's and individual members' performance. A single method may not be enough for a comprehensive picture of an individual's performance. Consider combining several methods to get a more complete view.

Bring the Process to Closure

Making a decision too early- Occasionally, people's desire to be seen as team players outweighs their willingness to engage in thoughtful debate. Consequently, the group accepts the first idea offered without generating alternatives and debating their relative merit. To defend against premature decisions: Pay attention to body language. Be aware of body language that suggests discontent (i.e., furrowed brows, crossed arms, audible sighs, pushing away from the table). To get team members actively engaged, consider taking a break. Talk individually to the team members who seem most upset and encourage them to speak up—remind them that their input is valuable in reaching the best decision. Reconvene the group and try again. Designate a "devil's advocate." Appoint a respected team member to play the role of "devil's advocate." Charge this person with challenging the assumptions and conclusions of the majority. He or she should represent dissenting ideas and contrary information. Making a decision too late. * Sometimes teams hit gridlock—people with conflicting opinions refuse to yield and conversations loop endlessly. Other times, team members strive for fairness by listening to every view and resolving every question before reaching a conclusion. Teams replay the same alternatives, objections, and requests for further information. To defend against lack of closure: Help your team become comfortable with ambiguity. Encourage members to make timely decisions in the absence of comprehensive data or answers to every question. If your team is unable to make a decision, you may need to end the debate, thank everyone for their valuable input, and make the call. Create a culture based on trust. Sometimes teams are unable to come to decisions because members aren't comfortable saying what they really think. When you engage in conversations with openness and honesty, you set the tone for your team to do so as well.

Balance Contradictory Characteristics

Successful teams balance a number of seemingly opposing forces. For effective collaboration, you need to embrace these characteristics on your team: Expertise and fresh perspectives. Your team needs a balance of experience and new ideas. To strike this balance, bring in outsiders to augment the more seasoned members. Professionalism and play. Creativity thrives on playfulness, but business must be conducted professionally. To maintain this balance, provide time and space for play, but clarify the appropriate times and places. Planning and flexibility. A team must plan projects carefully while also improvising when things inevitably don't go as planned. To balance planning with improvisation, encourage team members to look for ways to turn unexpected events into opportunities. And keep plans flexible enough to incorporate new ideas. -Engage in divergent and convergent thinking A team's creativity stems from two types of thinking: Divergent thinking—seeing and doing things in a range of nontraditional ways and viewing familiar things from new angles Convergent thinking—channeling the results of divergent thinking into concrete proposals for action To generate the most creativity, a team needs to engage first in divergent thinking, and then in convergent thinking. Divergent thinking generates a wide variety of options that in turn trigger new insights and ideas. Encourage team members to engage in divergent thinking by: Asking questions that haven't been asked before Analyzing problems and situations from different perspectives Making connections between facts or events that others have missed Once the team has completed its divergent thinking, guide them toward convergent thinking. Through convergent thinking, your team members evaluate the ideas generated by divergent thinking to determine which are worth pursuing. Convergence also sets limits, narrowing the field of solutions within a given set of constraints. Your organization's strategy and culture and your team's priorities can help you determine what is out of scope. You can facilitate this process by asking specific questions.

Strengthen Team Identity

Team identity—team members' sense that they share a bond and a purpose—is critical for high performance. This ability to bring people together around a common mission is particularly important in today's organizations, where cross-functional teams frequently form to complete a project and then disband when the assignment is done. Teams with a strong identity benefit from: Greater willingness to collaborate Freely shared information Increased effort and commitment Joint decision making Prioritizing team goals ahead of personal goals Team identity is also important because it encourages mutual accountability for results. When team members see themselves as mutually accountable for achieving goals, they help teammates who are struggling or falling behind. Poor performers feel motivated to do better, and team members drop the "I did my share" attitude that weakens overall performance.

Foster creativity

Teams can achieve greater creative output than individuals working alone, because they bring varied competencies, insights, experiences, and energy to the effort. That variety has several benefits: Individual differences can produce the creative friction that sparks new ideas. Diversity of thought and perspective are safeguards against the tendency of people's ideas to converge around a particular point of view. Diversity of background, thought, and skills gives good ideas more opportunities to develop.

Encourage Constructive Conflict

To encourage healthy, constructive conflict: Establish a shared method for resolving conflict. * Teams without defined processes for dealing with discord either get stuck squabbling with each other or end up avoiding conflict entirely, missing out on opportunities to work together effectively. Establishing a structured method for dealing with team issues and resolving disagreements will help your team engage in healthier conflict. If team members know what to do when friction arises, they won't shy away from necessary disagreements-and they'll be able to solve their own problems. Design and institute clear, step-by-step protocols for handling conflict. Following these guidelines should be a central part of your team's processes, not an exception to the rule. Provide criteria for contentious trade-offs. When contentious, or even zero-sum, decisions arise for a team, having specific criteria for making trade-offs can be helpful. To define these criteria, make sure all team members are clear on the organization's strategy. Be specific about the team's goals and highest priorities. When all team members are clear about the team's and organization's goals, they are better able to make trade-offs. Set conflict ground rules. * Setting simple ground rules for your team—"as a team, we will do this and we won't do that"—can help keep conflict from spiraling out of control. Rules around behavior or language, for example, will help team members know what is expected of them when conflict arises.

Build Trust Between members

Trust between members is one of the most essential elements of an effective team. When team members trust each other, they are more productive. They embrace the constructive conflict and healthy disagreement that lead to better decisions and more creative ideas. In managing your team, you should explicitly communicate the importance of trust for your team's success. -There are many ways to build personal bonds: Host an off-site team meeting. Convene your entire team, including remote members. Time spent together outside the office creates opportunities for team members to get to know one another on a personal level. These events help team members debunk stereotypes—for example, "the technology folks are hard to work with"—and find common ground for collaborative work. -Hold team lunches. Encourage casual conversation for a half-hour. Prompt team members to reveal a little bit about themselves—their upbringing, families, hobbies, travels. Whenever possible, have your virtual members attend by phone. -Add a personal touch to meetings. At the beginning of a meeting, ask each member—those in the room and those joining virtually—to give a brief personal or professional update. Building relationships before the meeting begins improves communication going forward. -Encourage periodic face-to-face meetings. As time, geography, and budget allow, bring virtual team members physically together at important junctures, such as when key decisions must be made or when new members join the team. Use videoconferencing if physical meetings are not possible. This will reinforce the group bonding necessary for trust. -Build team cohesiveness. Have team members take a personality test, such as Myers-Briggs, and share the results with the group. Being aware of each other's personality styles helps people feel more comfortable airing conflicts and collaborating.

The causes of weak team identity

Weak team identity can be caused by many factors, including: -Newness of the team. It's natural for new teams to suffer from some lack of identity. A feeling of team identity builds as people have opportunities to interact, discuss a common goal, or join forces in attacking a problem. -New members. When new members join the team after the work has begun, team identity can suffer if the newcomers are disruptive or made to feel like outsiders. -Diversity of members. The very differences that give a team its potential for high performance can sometimes make it difficult for members to develop a sense of team identity. Differing assumptions, cultural backgrounds, and ways of working and thinking can lead to misunderstandings or tensions among members. For example, people from a culture that values formality might be offended by counterparts who address them in an overly casual and familiar way. -Lack of a shared sense of purpose. Without a clear and compelling reason for working together, the individuals who make up a team are likely to put their own interests above those of the group.

Gain team members trust

When teams trust their leaders, they: -Work better through the disagreements that inevitably arise in teams -Work harder -Stay with an organization longer -Contribute better ideas -Take smarter risks

Evaluate Performance

Your team must periodically evaluate its performance on accomplishing its goals and make any necessary midcourse corrections. As the team leader, you help guide these evaluations. Some performance measures focus on results—the measurable outcome of the team's work. These measures are determined by the team's objectives. Results-based performance measures can include: Improved customer satisfaction Lower production costs Enhanced product quality Faster delivery time Other performance measures focus on process—the way the team is achieving its results. Process-based performance measures can focus on behaviors such as: Collaboration and information sharing Conflict resolution Positive interpersonal relationships Willingness to make changes and take risks Effective problem solving and decision making Adherence to agreed-upon processes and procedures