Teamwork

I have been working a lot lately with teams and a focus on Teamwork.  This might be because with all the changing and moving of roles at the moment, there are existing teams that are adding or removing certain members and need to re-form.  There are other, special purpose teams, being put together to accomplish a key goal or new opportunity.  And of course, there are existing teams that for whatever the reason have become a tad stagnant.

With all of these groups of people it is important to focus in three primary areas.  Teamwork itself, of course, and what it means to put team above self.  Communication, and how we share messages and information that we need to succeed.  And finally, dealing with Ambiguity and learning how to navigate through the “squishy” unknowns of normal everyday life.

In a Team setting, we all play distinct roles and share different behaviors.  Some of these behaviors help the team progress, while others hold us back.  It is always important to review what these are and how we show up in our work as a team.  We can learn to understand the why behind our thoughts and actions and see how they can be managed to leverage the synergy and accountability of a true high performing team.

The way we interact and communicate is also an area that we can sit with, analyze, and understand with a view to improve and increase effectiveness.  The components of messaging are critical to assess so that we know we are interacting clearly and completely with each other.  Where there are blockages to communication, either on the giver or receiver end, we are not able to accomplish team goals and we settle to suboptimize at the individual contributor level.

And lastly, Ambiguity is rampant in all that we do, especially as a team.  There is no choice but to see a setback as an opportunity, or a gap in knowledge as a learning moment.  This positive approach to accepting and adapting to the unknowns is a critical success factor in all teamwork, especially right now.  There is more uncertainty and stress in everything we do than most of us have ever experienced.

Teamwork is essential to leveraging our talents for the success that none of us can accomplish alone.  It is clear that all teams need a special focus on this set of skills right now as we all set our sights on new accomplishments and continuously improve the engagement of our members.