Thursday, March 28

Tag: team

What the Greatest Teams Have …
Work Life

What the Greatest Teams Have …

The greatest teams have certain things going on that make them great. There is no team without what I call 'A Reason'.  Some call this a vision.  The word vision might seem a little too much for some team functions. But every team must have 'A Reason' for existing.  What is your purpose? There is no team without a 'Team Leader'.  About 15 years ago companies experimented with the concept of what they called 'Self-managed Teams' - it failed!  A team will never work at its maximum ability without a Team Leader - leadership is essential.  A leadership that can adopt a style suitable for any given moment of the day - coaching, directive, consultative, listening and developmental. Of course, needless to say, a Team is not a team without 'Team members'...
Personal Life, Work Life

What the greatest Team Leaders do …

I want to show you that a great team is helped to become great by the leadership style of the Team Leader. Leadership 'style' is almost as varied as personality.  However, there are 3 types of leadership traits that are absolutely essential to the success of a team.  If these aren't present 'team' will be dis-functional. 1.  Consultative Leadership - it should be the default behaviour of a team leader to consult with his or her team.  Although decisive in outcome a team leader is not primarily directive in nature.  The level of involvement of the team in idea generation and decision making should grow as time goes on and trust and cohesion is built.  Begin consulting on the 'easy give-aways' before you involve on the tough decisions.  This leader will delegate, involve and consult.
Work Life

How can I create ownership in my team?

People sometimes ask me the question “how do I create ownership amongst people in my team or Connect group?”  Like any question there is never one single answer, but rather a network of things we can do. But let me focus on one thing : "Don’t just give away tasks, give away jobs” If in your team you have a task called ‘buying a bowl of apples for the information desk’ - you can give that as a task to someone.  This means it goes on a rosta and when it is my turn on the rosta I go and buy the apples.  I don’t necessarily own it, or own the purpose of the team, I simply help out by buying the apples. Whilst this is a good entry point for helping people begin to serve, what is much better for ownership is to give this as a job to one person. Now a person in the team has a job, it’s their