The power of these questions cannot be underestimated, especially if you want to lead and not manage."
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Successful in Teams
Step 5 of Stop Telling... Start Leading! is:Make Your Team Work
Manchester Inc., a consulting firm near Philadelphia, surveyed more then 825 human resource managers nationwide to find that 82% of the respondents named the failure to build partnerships and teamwork the number one problem confronting newly appointed managers.
Working in a team should be more efficient and successful then working alone. But every team has to be put together properly and has to follow a few rules to be a success.
Working alone makes sense when:
- The work is independent from work others have to do
- Fast results of routine work are needed
- The team players is everything but a team player
Team work makes sense when
- The results are driven by the motivation of team players
- Fast reactions to changes are important
- The task at hand is complex and the solution has to satisfy many
- The result has to be very practical
- A single person can not reach the needed outcome fast enough (many then fall in the trap of adding more and more bodies which then lead to an extended overhead and the need for more time)
Let's take a look at this graphic:
The success factors for every team can be divided into measurable (hard) and non-measurable (soft) factors. Both are important for the success of a team but very often we find that team leaders concentrate more on one and not both.
Can you name some hard and soft factors?
Designing a successful team is an art. You can't just throw a few folks together and then expect great results. Not that it doesn't happen all the time...
Do you know how to design a successful team?
Some say that every team needs rules given from the team leader. I have seen teams with and without rules functioning very well and also being dysfunctional - it all depends on how the team was designed!
Every team has to deal with conflicts - do you know which ones are constructive and which ones are destructive?
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