Teams that Work Key Terms Term Definition Introduced in
Transcript of Teams that Work Key Terms Term Definition Introduced in
Teams that Work Key Terms
Glossary Page 1
Term Definition Introduced in:
Four Stages of Team Development Stages defined as Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing developed by Bruce Tuckman Module 1
Mentor To provide instruction, leadership, and support to a chosen candidate Module 1
Orchestra conductor In music, the individual who directs the orchestra; keeps pace and organization. Module 1
Work groupA work group is typically defined by some external competition, is task focused, is static, and the boss is decision-maker Module 1
TeamA group working together toward a goal or objective; demonstrates more internal competition and innovation Module 1
Circumventing Maneuvering, avoiding, and/or going around an object or person Module 2
Team charter Documentation created to define the team's purpose, expected outcomes, and mode of completion. Module 3
ConsultantAn individual or group that lends assessment and expertise to an entity, e.g. an organization or business, for improvement Module 3
MetricsProvide a method of measurement or assessment to analyze business effectiveness, efficiency, constraints, and productivity Module 3
Abdicate To step down from a position of authority Module 4Delegation The assignment of tasks to be done by several in order to more effectively complete projects Module 4Accountability A being is held responsible for actions and/ or inaction(s) Module 4Budget constraints Limitations set due to cost or the availbility of funds Module 5
Active listeningA type of communication technique where the listener is engaged and entirely focused on the speaker Module 5
Teams That Work Module 1 Page 1
TEAMS THAT WORK MODULE ONE – FUNCTIONAL TEAM DEVELOPMENT Module number one – Functional Team Development. Now certainly as we begin here,
it’s important to understand that a team just doesn’t form and instantly become
effective and successful. And if you’re a new manager, you may not be aware of
that. But many years ago, an American psychologist, Bruce Tuckman, stated
that there are four stages of team development: there’s forming, storming,
norming, and performing. And depending on what stage your team is at will
determine how healthy and how driven your team is. So don’t get frustrated if
your team isn’t at the performing level. This is a process. So let’s go through
each of those stages so you can recognize where your team might be. I want
you to think about today what level is your team at? We’ll talk a little bit more
about that in a minute. So in the forming stage, team members can be cautious.
They’re non-committal. They may have been just thrown together in a group.
They don’t necessarily know what they’re doing yet. They don’t know everybody.
Their walls might be just a little bit up. Maybe they worked on another team
where it just didn’t work out so well. And maybe they’re just a little shy about this
whole team idea. So we have to keep that in mind when they’re in their forming
stage. They’re not going to be a high performing team the second they come
together. It’s going to take some time. Storming is the next phase. During this
phase, there’s some things that are going to happen that you need to be aware
of, such as conflict, blame, finger pointing – this isn’t unusual during this stage.
Unfortunately a lot of times, this is the point at which the team gets killed. The
team is just starting to figure things out, just starting to put things together, and
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upper management might say, “Well, you know what? This isn’t what a team is
supposed to look like,” and dissolve everything. We have to be careful. We
have to allow a team to go through a little bit of this phase because that is
normal. Now the norming phase, if you stay with it and work through some of
these conflicts in a positive way, you can move the team to the next stage, which
is norming. During the norming phase, team members develop roles. They start
to see how they fit in. They start to see how the team can work best. This is
when rules are made. This is when relationships are bonded. And there’s a
considerable amount of growth in the team during this phase. This is where
almost all the growth occurs. This is where the team really starts to come
together. But it does take going through the norming and storming stage to get
here. So if your team isn’t quite here yet, you may still be in the forming or
storming phase and you may not be yet in norming. Now of course the team
we’re all looking for is the performing team, and that’s the final stage, and at this
point, the team has taken on a life of their own. The leader knows when to be
back and when to let the team just run with it. And during this period, the team
leader also needs to be looking for leadership candidates. So while the team is
developing, you’re now looking at who can you mentor? Who can you take to the
next level? Because these are the folks who are willing to carry the flag. They
are willing to run for the team. And so you want to be aware of these four stages
– the forming, storming, and norming stages. So doing a quick – a little
assessment right now, where is your team at? Are they forming, storming,
norming, or performing? Depending on that will tell you a lot about the health of
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the team and the motivation of the team. Certainly during the streaming phase,
motivation is going to be a bit lower than in the performing phase. Now your role
is almost like an orchestra conductor. As an orchestra conductor, your job is
really to define the purpose of the group, just like a conductor does. They define
the musical purpose of the group. They decide what type of music the members
are going to play. And say, for example, if the orchestra conductor all of a
sudden said, “you know what? I know we’ve been playing classical Bach forever.
We’re all of a sudden going to do country music”. Some of the members might
say, “you know what? That’s just not me. That’s not who I want to be. That’s
not what I want to do”. And they may find themselves withdrawing. So it’s
important as an orchestra conductor you understand the purpose that you set
forth for that group, and that if you decide to change that purpose midstream, you
may lose some of your members. We want to remember that this is important
and that we work for the results. So a second analogy I want you to think about
is that of the geese. Some of you may know this, but when geese fly in a V, each
goose’s wing creates an uplift. So when you combine all of that, the geese can
fly 71 percent farther than if they were flying by themselves. This is really kind of
true of a team. When a team is put together and they’re cohesive and they’re
feeding off of each other, they can certainly get a lot more done a lot faster. But
again, it’s putting together that team in a way that works. On top of that,
something else you might not have known is that to ensure the success of a
flock, when the lead goose gets tired one of the other geese from the front takes
over. So it’s not always the same goose up front. And if you’ve ever seen a flock
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of geese, you might have heard them honking at each other. Now why do they
honk? Well researchers believe they’re actually cheering one another on. So
another thing you may not know is if one goose is shot down or is injured and
falls to the ground, two other geese will follow it down and stay with it until it dies
or it’s healed. Then they rejoin the flock. This is really the epitome of teams –
it’s taking care of one another. The thought came to me, do we have that kind of
care for our people and our teams? And it’s something to consider. Are our
teams that strong that if one were to go down the others would bring them back
up? That’s a healthy team. We also want to remember the term “work group”
was thrown around quite a bit in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and early ‘80s and that’s not
really the same as a team. See, in a work group, you’ve typically got external
competition where in a team, you’ve got more internal competition. In a
traditional work group, you’ve got more task focused whereas in a team, you tend
to have more results focus. As a manager, as a leader of a team, you want to
remember you’re going to manage the results – not the task. Oftentimes if you
put a group together, they’ve got much more creative ways to solve the problem
than the one you currently know. And really in the end, all that we’re looking for
as leaders and supervisors of our teams is to get the results done. Now next,
oftentimes work groups, they’re static where our teams are more innovative.
Word groups tend to be the decision by the boss. They do the work, then they
bring it to the boss to decide. In teams, that’s not the case. In teams, the
decision is influenced by the person closest to the work. So the person who has
the most information is the one that gets to decide how that really should be
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done. Now the next point is the kick starters who simply take action to avoid
negative consequences. But teams, they tend to be made with self-starters who
have internal motivation. A work group tends to have either overly dependent
people who are waiting for others, or people who completely act independently
and not really caring about the effects on others. Teams are much more
interdependent where they consider how does this affect everybody else in the
group – not just me? And lastly, teams tend to have a little bit – excuse me, work
groups tend to have a little bit of a scarcity mentality where teams operate on
abundance. And when things are scarce, think about it – how do people behave
when things are scarce? They hoard them. They don’t want people to get them.
In the workplace, they hoard knowledge, they hoard power, they hoard praise. If
you believe that you give something up, somehow it diminishes it. And in teams,
that’s not the case. They work in an abundance where there’s enough for
everybody – there’s enough credit for everybody so we don’t have to fight for
credit. There’s enough power for everybody, so we don’t have to fight for power.
These are things you want to keep in mind. So take a moment and look at your
team. Are they more of a work group, or are they really a team? And mentally,
you may have to make that shift. I know it took me a while to convert my mental
thinking from work groups, which is what I was accustomed to, to really having
self-evolving teams that were able to operate almost solely without me.
[End of recording.]
Teams That Work Module 2 Page 1
TEAMS THAT WORK MODULE TWO – EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP Module number two – Effective Leadership. Of course we want our teams to work. We
want our teams to do the best that they can do. But the truth is: the team that
works starts with the leader. See, there’s an old Turkish saying that says the fish
stinks first at the head. What that means is when an organization is not working
like it should, or it fails, it’s due to the leadership. It starts at the head. So to
ensure our teams work, we need to make sure the leader is prepared for running
a winning team that can work. I mention this because if we take a look at your
leadership – let’s just take a moment and evaluate ourselves. On a scale of 1 to
10, 1 being you couldn’t lead somebody if they pushed you in front of them, 10
being you can lead just about anybody on the planet. You have that much
influence, you have that much power, you have the ability to influence people like
the President of the United States – that’s your leadership level. Where would
you rank yourself? Maybe a 5? Maybe a 4? Maybe a 6? Where are you at?
This is what I want you to think about. You will never lead somebody who is not
at your level or below. Think about that. So imagine I’m a 5. I’m an average
leader, and someone who is a 6 comes into my organization. They’ve got
stronger leadership skills. They are now able to influence me because a 6 has
more influence than a 5 does. Am I leading them anymore? No. They’re
leading me. And now, what ends up happening is they probably aren’t going to
stay in my organization and they’re going to move on to somewhere else where
there’s someone with a higher leadership. And I oftentimes hear managers and
supervisors tell me, “well I wish I had stronger leaders on my team”. It starts with
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your leadership. And if you consider, say for example your leadership was a 3,
you’re only going to ever bring in 2s or 1s. A 3 may stick around, but they’re not
going to stay. They’re going to find someone else that can lead them, because
3s often create conflict with other 3s. If your leadership is a 5, then you’ll
probably attract 4s, 3s, 2s, and 1s. But as you progress up the leadership scale,
you’re going to find that you bring in higher level leaders into your team, and they
stay. Sometimes great people won’t stay in in a group, or they’ll escalate
themselves up to a higher leader. When I was in the Netherlands at a very large
organization, one of my leaders was not very strong. And consistently on a
weekly basis, I would have their people coming to me because their leadership
wasn’t strong. They were circumventing their own leader. And that’s what
happens when our leadership is not where it needs to be. Now everyone wants
to bring in an awesome leader into their team. But that leader’s not going to stick
unless we work on our leadership skills. And it starts with remembering the law
of the lid. In John Maxwell’s book, 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, he talks
about the law of the lid. The way the law of the lid works, if you were to put a flea
in a jar, the flea would simply just jump out. But if you were to put that lid on the
jar and the flea would eventually jump and bang its head, jump and bang its
head, jump and bang its head, eventually it would only learn to jump as high as it
could without banging its head. What’s interesting is you could now remove the
lid, and that flea would never jump out. Sometimes, depending on our
backgrounds, we’re like that flea. Someone told us we couldn’t do something
that has limited us, and it’s become our lid. Or maybe you’re at another company
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where the lid was very, very low and now you’ve changed positions. It’s time to
jump higher. And I want to say to you, take a moment and ask yourself, are you
really jumping as high as you can? Or is an old lid holding you back? The only
way you’re going to jump higher is you’re going to have to learn more. You’re
going to have to realize that you’ve got a lid, and you’re going to have to learn to
jump higher. Now if your current company has put a lid on you, there’s always
other opportunities out there. You may need to learn to jump higher, or you may
need to find other opportunities in order to jump higher. And I will tell you
whether it’s reading the newest book on leadership by John Maxwell, or listening
to an audio training by Anthony Robbins, when we hear new ideas or ideas
presented in a new way, it expands our thinking. And the more our thinking is
expanded, the higher we can jump as a leader. The higher we go as a leader,
the higher our team can go. See, our leadership determines the leadership of
our organization. So in order to help you polish your leadership skills, let’s look
at the five leadership skills that really are the secret to motivating a team,
because if you’re not doing your part as a leader, it’s very hard for the team to do
their part. So let’s talk about these five. First is being a servant. Second is
having compassion. Third is sharing your vision. Fourth is managing
expectation. And fifth is being the example. So let’s start with being a servant.
The best way to be an effective leader is to be an effective servant. That might
be a new term for you. It may not sound like the two things fit together. I mean
how can you be a servant and yet a leader? Let me explain. A servant leader is
someone who has a clear idea of what needs to happen. They don’t make
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apologies for it. They know what needs to get done, and they’re willing to
sacrifice themselves for the sake of the team. There’s no room for ego or self-
indulgence here. The servant leader lets people know that they’re there to lead
because they care about the people. For example, let’s say you had an
employee who wants to have Friday off, but you’ve already given everybody else
Friday off. The serving leader might say, you know what? I’ll take your Friday off
so you can go see your kid in school in the school play. A serving leader is
selfless. They take the time to understand their people, and that’s the first role of
a servant, is understanding your people. Many years ago in Seven Habits,
Steven Covey wrote, “Seek first to understand, and then be understood.” As a
serving leader, you understand your people. You understand where the team is.
Your job is to remove roadblocks. How can we help them to run faster on the
road that they’re on? Empowering your people – providing them the tools, the
information to be a conduit for their success. It’s not to take all the credit. It’s not
to be the one that gets everything done. It’s really to be a servant to their
success. Now compassion, sometimes I hear people say, well do you want to be
respected or liked? And that’s an old controversy in leadership. I want to be
respected. Well, then you can’t be liked. Well I want to be liked. Well, you can’t
be respected. Well I say why can’t you be both? Why can't you be liked AND
respected? The people that are liked and respected are the people that truly
care about the people that they work with. The old saying goes “people don’t
care how much you know until they know how much you care.” And part of that
compassion is really sitting down with each individual, understanding their
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situation, becoming more of a coach for them. And this might be a biweekly
event. This might be a monthly event – certainly nothing less than quarterly
event. But it’s taking the time to understand them. What’s important to them?
What do they need? And this includes understanding their strengths. Not every
person is going to have the same strengths. Oftentimes, as a manager I knew I
found myself sometimes trying to work on people’s weaknesses instead of
focusing on their strengths. And part of being a good leader is understanding to
make their strengths their key and making their weaknesses irrelevant. And this
is all part of having compassion for people and understanding that people really
have four parts to them – they have their head, they have their smarts, their
intelligence; they have their heart, what they’re passionate about; they have their
conscience, what they believe in; and of course they have their body, what they
physically can do. As a manager, we want to make sure that we cater to all four
of those parts. In the Eighth Habit by Steven Covey, he really talks about when
you can align all four of those, people will run through walls for you. They will go
the extra mile. They’ll do whatever it takes, because you’ve aligned everything
that they are with everything that they’re doing. Oftentimes when we hire, we
hire people just for their head and their hands. We want to know what they
know, are they smart enough, and can they do the work? We don’t always look
at do they want to do the work? And do they believe in the work? And when we
can do that, that’s having compassion for our people – understanding them,
taking the time to know them before we try to get them to understand what we’re
doing. And the next one is sharing your vision. In the old book, it says without a
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vision, the people perish. It’s easy to think that well, their vision is get the work
done. Well, it takes a little bit more than that. And I’m sure you’ve probably
heard the story of the old bricklayer. There was three bricklayers, and one
bricklayer was building a church. Someone came up to him and said, well what
are you doing? He goes, well can’t you see? I’m laying bricks. I’ve been doing it
for 20 years. It’s what I do every day. The person said okay. Went to the
second bricklayer and said, tell me what you’re doing. He goes, I’m building the
most beautiful church in this town. He goes, oh okay. He talks to the third
bricklayer, all working on the same project. What are you doing? He says I’m
building a place where people are going to commune. I’m building a place where
people are going to celebrate births, celebrate deaths, celebrate the most
important moments of their lives. And I’m so excited about building this
community location. They were all building the same thing. The third one had a
vision. He had an idea of something bigger – something that was more
motivating for him than just laying bricks. Admittedly your team might be just
laying bricks. But what is the bigger vision that you can share with them? And
here’s what I want you to remember. A small vision, a medium vision, even a
large vision is not motivating. It has to be a compelling vision. It has to be
enormous. It has to be huge. And it has to be something that impacts people’s
lives. See, you want to remember what is it your product does? What is it that
that team’s result is going to do for somebody else? When you paint your vision,
paint it with broad strokes. Show the massive effect it could have. Give them
something to work for, something to believe in, something to dedicate
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themselves and something to be willing to make sacrifices for. I know personally
I wouldn’t many sacrifices to lay bricks. But I might make a whole lot more
sacrifices if I knew I was building one of the most important buildings in the entire
community where people are going to celebrate the most important events of
their lives. I’ll make more sacrifices for that. So remember that as you paint your
vision. Share with them where you’re going, and roll them in your vision. Help
them see their part of what’s happening and you’ll find this will be more
motivating than any of the other things that you can do. Now another area that
we have to talk about as being a good leader is managing expectations. People
have a tendency to live up to or down to the leader’s expectations. And knowing
what to expect colors so much of our life’s experience so often, and so much
more than the experience itself. Take for example, if you expected to pay
$21,000 for a car, $20,000 seems like a deal. If you expected to pay $19,000 for
a car, it seems like highway robbery if the car was priced at $21,000. Either way,
the car is still $20,000. But your expectation determines your color of it. And
here’s what happens. When we set expectations way too high, they become
unrealistic. And unrealistic motivations unfortunately demotivate people. When
people become demotivated, they dis-attach. So too high of expectations is
ineffective. Too low, and unfortunately people don’t even give it an effort. They
figure I can do that in my sleep, and they don’t even try. So both are ineffective.
This is where coming to know your team is critical, is you’ve got to manage their
expectations. Are you setting high expectations, low expectations, where are
you setting the expectations? What are the standards for your team? Say for
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example you said that your meetings start at 9:00 AM, and you expected them to
be there at 7:30. That’s a little too high of an expectation. An hour and a half
early? People won’t even try. But if you say it starts at 9:00 AM. If you’re not
five minutes early, you’re late. 8:55, you close the door. Anyone who’s late has
to walk and open the door. It makes them feel really uncomfortable. Now all of a
sudden, you’ve got a meaningful expectation. When setting effective
expectations, make sure they’re clearly defined. Make sure you’ve
communicated what they are. Many times I see leaders who don’t communicate
what the expectations are and then get frustrated when people don’t meet them.
You have to tell them what you expect. Make sure they’re effectively
communicated, and then frequently enforced. When you can do this, you can
have your team performing to the expectations that you’ve given them. Lastly,
be the example. I know you might be thinking, but they’re the team. I’m the
leader. I get exceptions. They have to rise up to the level, but I don’t have to.
Well, that’s not true. People follow you. And people do what you do – not what
you say. I’ll give you a real good example. Take for example you’re the type of
leader that tends to fudge the numbers on your reports each month. You tend to
make them look a little better than maybe they were. But you notice your team is
fudging their numbers, and you get mad at one of the team members for
providing inaccurate numbers. We call this hypocrisy. You can’t set a standard
different for yourself than you set for them. If you’re fudging your numbers, you
can expect they’re going to fudge their numbers. If you’re coming in late, you
can expect them to come in late. Whatever standard you’re holding yourself to is
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the standard they’re going to expect you to hold them to. So when you hold
yourself to a higher standard, and you expect more out of yourself, you’ll find that
you’ll get more out of your team as well. And these are just five tips to be able to
help you get the most, and really get a team that truly works.
[End of recording.]
Teams That Work Module 3 Page 1
TEAMS THAT WORK MODULE THREE – TEAM DEVELOPMENT ESSENTIALS Module number three – Team Development Essentials. I’d love to believe that a
successful team just happens – that somehow, some way, when you put it
together it just – it all works. It’s magic. But the truth be told, of all the teams I’ve
put together, very few of them have come together effortlessly. In other words, a
very few of them did I do anything. All the rest, I had to put in work. I had to put
in a plan. And that plan allowed me to be able to put that team together in a way
that was going to ensure it was going to work. Now many of us have never been
trained in how to assemble a team so that we get the best results. So this area is
an area you may want to pay specific attention to. So let’s go over some
specifics of the plan. We’re going to look at the logistics of putting a team
together; we’re going to look at assembling a team; and then we’re going to look
at the development of the team leadership. Let’s start with the logistics. The
logistics are quite interesting. There’s several areas we’re going to look at.
We’re going to start with establishing a vision and values. Unfortunately, it’s a
big mistake to assume that although people have worked together in the past
that they are already a team, because a lot of times they’re not. Each time a
group of people come together around a new project, regardless of their past
experience together, they need to clarify expectations. Even ongoing teams
need to clarify expectations when they approach a new initiative. So Jesse Lyn
Stoner at the Seapoint Center uses a team charter in order to set up a team, and
that’s what you see here. And it starts with establishing a vision and values. So
consider, what is the purpose of the team? Why does it exist? Why is it worth
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investing their time and effort into? What shared values need to guide how they
approach their work and how they work with each other? Let me give you an
example here. I recently worked on a course for a very large organization where
they’re having a hard time deciding whether a project should continue or not.
And the reason they were having a hard time is because they didn’t have shared
values in deciding when it was still valuable and when it wasn’t. So because of
that, until we can establish those shared values of what’s most important, is it
most important that we get a patent? Or is it most important that we get
something that’s sellable? And sometimes, depending on what was most
important determined whether they continued to keep a project alive long after it
should have been laid to rest. So when you have a team, it’s important you set
up the values. What is more important? When you come to a roadblock, is it
more important that we get it right, or that we get it done? Should we spend
more time on it even though we know it’s not right? Is 80 percent good enough?
Is 90 percent good enough? These are things we have to decide when we set
up the teams so they have a common structure to make decisions around. Next
is establishing the team process. This is how we’re going to organize the work to
get accomplished. What’s the best structure? What roles are needed? What
planning and problem solving are we going to use? How are we going to make
decisions? Next is establishing the goals. What are the deliverables? How are
we going to measure our success? What are our time frames? Next is
establishing communication and coordination. So what information needs to get
shared? When will we meet? How frequently? How will we keep up each other
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up to date on the team’s progress? How will we communicate between
meetings? Next is establishing authority and accountability. What is the team’s
decision making authority? What decision requires outside approval? How is
approval obtained? What decisions can be made by subgroups? How will we
track and report the progress? And lastly we have to define resources. Who are
the members of the team, and what are their roles of expertise? Is there any
other expertise needed? What other groups can be consulted with? How is the
team financially supported? And these are all things we have to consider in
order to get the best results. Now a lot of times, we throw a team together and
we don’t consider any of this. But if we can follow this team charter established
by Jesse Lyn Stoner at the Seapoint Center, we’ve got a much better chance that
our team is going to stay focused, regardless of the economic situation,
regardless of the outside distractions. They have now got a focus, they’ve got a
paradigm, they’ve got a road to run on. Next comes to assembling the team. For
a team to be effective, you need to make sure you’ve got the right team
members. It’s not how many people on our team that makes it successful. You
need people who work well together. They must share the common goals,
vision, agendas, and timelines. If they don’t share these things, it can be
extremely difficult for them to move forward and accomplish anything, no matter
how many people are on the team. And a person should never be added to a
team simply because they wanted to be on the team, or because they whined
and complained long enough. The needs of the team should be considered
above the desires of the individual. You want to ask yourself, does this person
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have something to offer to the team? Can they fit in and flow with the team
dynamics? Will adding this person increase the effectiveness of the team? And
these things should be considered before making any changes. Take a
basketball team, for example. The coaches invest a lot of effort into making sure
they choose the right players. If the players don’t decide – and the players don’t
decide who gets to be on the team or what role they have or what they’re going
to play. It’s the job of the coach. It would be unwise for the coach to take his
focus off the team and put it on just one player that does all the work and gets all
the glory. And it would be equally unwise for him to make decisions about the
team based on the whining and complaining of one person. The coach’s job is to
consider the overall needs and effectiveness of the whole team. The dynamics
of a team is a significant part of its success. And the best, most effective teams
are able to accomplish a lot, partly because they’ve established relationships.
They know and understand each other, and they enjoy working together. If you
add the wrong person to the team, the whole dynamic can be destroyed. The
wise manager understands the importance of team dynamics, and will not try to
force someone on a team who doesn’t fit. He’ll put the needs of the team before
the needs of the individual, and will not allow the complaints and demands of one
person to affect his decision regarding the whole team. He’ll recognize in order
to have a successful team, you absolutely have to choose the right people on
that team. Now once the team is up and performing, we’re at the fourth level –
now is leadership development. And many leaders I hear say, well what do I
have to do? They’re doing all the work. What am I supposed to do? We’re there
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as a consultant. You’re there to help them. You’re there to remove any
roadblocks, you’re there to escalate anything, you’re there to run interference as
needed, you’re there to remove anything that can stop them from getting their job
done – and your second job is to develop your leaders. And here’s what’s
interesting. I truly believe leaders are born, not made. What I mean by that is
someone either has a desire to be a leader and wants to be a leader somewhere
deep, down in them, or they don’t. And I’ve met many people, and you probably
have as well, that you’ve tried to put into leadership roles that absolutely hated it.
They didn’t want to be a leader. They wanted no part of it. They didn’t want the
responsibility. It was a burden to them. So we have to consider when we
choose our folks that we’re going to monitor, do they want to be a leader? And if
they don’t, we don’t want to force somebody into a role that they absolutely do
not want to be in. So we want to consider that. Now in considering that, we want
to identify our leaders. And I joke that there’s ducks and there’s eagles. Some
folks, they’re ducks. They don’t want to be leaders. They don’t want anything to
do with leadership. They don’t want a part of it, they don’t want the responsibility,
and I call them ducks. And others are eagles. And the rule we have is don’t
send ducks to eagle school. It’s very simple. Don’t send ducks to eagle school.
Here’s how you know if you’ve sent a duck to eagle school, is they don’t want to
be a leader. They don’t want to lead people. They don’t want to have
responsibility. You’re getting a lot of resistance. And you know at that moment,
you’ve sent a duck to eagle school. Now when you’re coaching people for
success, you want to consider – you’re coaching your potential new leader for
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success, I want to talk about some coaching principles here. And coaching is
different than monitoring, which is different than consulting, which is different
than counseling. Coaching really means that you’re asking questions and you’re
allowing them to provide the answer. As a coach, when you’re in your coaching
role – not your manager role, not your leadership role, your coaching role – your
job is to get them to provide the answers. They’re smart. They already know the
answer. Your job is to ask the questions in the appropriate way to help them get
the answers. And it starts with understanding what are their goals? These can
be personal goals. These can be business goals, because remember, when
we’re coaching, we’re coaching for success. And we’re dealing with a whole
person here. If they’re struggling in their home life, they’re going to have a hard
time potentially being successful at work. Many people have a hard time
separating home from work. We’re whole people. We don’t just turn off when we
walk into the office. And it’s important as a coach to understand that and help
them put some things in place in order to mitigate any challenges that they are
having in the home place. Ask them questions. Well, what could you do about
that? What options do you have? What could you try to maybe overcome that
hurdle? And help them come up with some ideas – not give them answers, but
help them come you with the answer – so that they can get past it. Remember, it
starts with understanding their goals. What are they trying to accomplish?
Where do they want to go? Remember this isn’t you saying, okay, here’s your
five year plan, here’s your eight year plan, here’s where you’re going, and just go
do it. No. It’s where do YOU want to go? Where do you see yourself in three
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years? Where do you see yourself in five years? What are you looking for?
Then establishing the metrics – how are you going to know that you’re on the
right track? What are we going to measure to get there? And then establishing
milestones – okay, within the next 30 days you’re going to do this. For the next
six months you’re going to have this accomplished. Then lastly is reviewing it
regularly. How are they doing per their goals? Being a coach is really a lot more
than telling them what to do. It’s really helping them stay on track. It’s holding
them accountable to where they want to go and allowing them to flourish and
grow without telling them where to go and how to do it. Effective leadership
development, so as you’re developing your leaders, there’s a couple of things
that kills leadership development. The biggest is ego. We have to be careful.
Sometimes, especially if our management isn’t doing it with us, if they’re not
encouraging us and they’re not giving us power and telling us we’re doing a great
job, and maybe there’s a little bit of competition there, we might find that flows
over into our teams. We have to be careful of that. We can’t let our own ego,
our own desire or need to be important, destroy our own teams. I see this
happen in organizations where there’s ego issues at the upper level, and the
middle management picks that up, and then they put it into the lower levels as
well. We have to get rid of ego. And ego really comes from insecurity, maybe
lack of confidence, and some things like that. We have to set our egos aside in
order to have success. Ultimately this is about having a successful team, and
helping our people get where they need to go. And this comes back to being a
servant. This comes back to serving our team and not serving ourselves. Now
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we have to also make sure that our up and coming leaders are getting trained.
Although I truly believe leaders are born, not made, I do believe that leaders that
are born may not be born at a level 10. They may be at a level 1 or 2 and they
have to develop it. So leadership training becomes critical for them - helping
them understand what is leadership, how to be an appropriate leader. And I
know sometimes leaders themselves get nervous. Well what if the people I’m
training get better than me? It’s okay. Any good leader will tell you they smile
widely when they can produce a leader that’s better than them. Leaders really
work for bragging rights. They work for the ability to say, look what my people
have done. And when you can do that, that’s when you know you’ve gotten past
some of the challenges. We also have to be able to release tasks. Sometimes
we get so hung up that we’re the best person to do it, we stay focused on our
tasks and we don’t give it to the team. We need to be able to give it to the team,
and that’s the next thing we’re going to look at, is how do we delegate those
tasks to the team?
[End of recording.]
Teams That Work Module 4 Page 1
TEAMS THAT WORK MODULE FOUR – EFFECTIVE DELEGATION Module number four – Effective Delegation. Being able to let go of tasks takes growth.
That takes your confidence in your team. It takes growing as a person to be able
to have that confidence. And I know a lot of mangers in a leadership role really
struggle with delegation. I know for some people, delegation is natural. But for
some of us, I know for me, I was really worried about other people doing it the
way it needed to get done. And you really have to practice delegation, because it
allows not only growth for yourself, but growth for your team members. And it
builds stronger people. It helps you create synergy. And this is where 1 + 1 + 1
= 4, 5, 6 or 10 sometimes. And it frees you up to be effective in other areas.
Now I can hear you, and I know what you’re thinking. There’s a lot of reasons
why you might not delegate. And trust me – I’ve had them all. And I’ve used
them all. Unfortunately there’s only a few of them that are really acceptable. If
you look here, here’s some of the common ones: the work is too important;
delegation will undermine my authority; no one else can do it like me; I don’t have
the time to delegate. And I understand. Some of those, and I’ll highlight two of
them, are absolutely valid – the work is too important. I agree. There are some
projects that absolutely YOU and only you are qualified to do. They’re too
important. I get that. Some of them, your staff might be incapable of doing.
They might not have the skill set. They might not have the ability. I get that.
Certainly that might be an opportunity for growth by bringing in another person,
or assigning a project to another group. But that might be one you have to keep
because the skill set is not there. I get that. But the rest of those – those are
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really just excuses. We need to be able to get over that, because some of them
you’ll notice, like delegation will undermine my authority, that’s really an ego
issue. That’s saying, you know what? I’m afraid of someone else taking over.
And you know what? As a leader, your job is to make your people better than
you. That’s when the team really wins. And when your people are progressing,
and your people begin advancing, that’s where you want to go. See, the smart
leader knows that when his team advances, he advances. Now I understand not
all companies are set up that way. And if yours is not set up that way, I do
apologize. But there are many that are set up that way. And there are many that
understand this concept and understand that when the leader’s winning, the
team’s winning, everybody moves up the line. It’s a much better way to work.
So it’s important that we learn the process of delegation. And sadly, having
worked with many, many managers across 20 different countries, I’ve come to
find out that typically there’s two levels of delegation, and these two levels are
just do what I say. I’ll tell you exactly what to do, and just do it. And the second
level is, just go do it and tell me if you need help. So it’s the all or nothing
approach. It’s, let me micromanage you, and I’ll tell you exactly what to do, when
to do it, and when not to do it; or the just go do it, and let me know how it works
out approach. Neither one is appropriate. Most of the time, you need something
in the middle. So let’s go over those four levels and help you understand when
each of those levels is appropriate. So let’s start with level one – just do what I
say. This is really for the new person. This is for a new employee, or those on a
disciplinary plan. If you have employees that have been with you more than a
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couple of months – maybe even a year – that are still on this level, you need to
replace those employees. Those are not effective employees. If you have to tell
them exactly what to do step by step, this is the wrong fit for your team. You’ve
mis-hired. You need to move that person on to a different role, and you need to
replace them with somebody else. But oftentimes as managers, we don’t
recognize that. So level one is really for new employees or disciplinary plans.
They should be on it for a limited time. This is not a normal operating method.
Level two, do what we talked about and let’s confirm shortly. That’s for some
employees that will need close supervision. That’s okay. That’s usually a small
amount of employees. It happens. There are some folks that need that. They
need that reminder, they need that updating, they need that supervision. The
third level is do what we talked about, and then let’s confirm in a while. This is I
trust you. Let’s check in, maybe it’s every couple of weeks, maybe it’s every
couple of months, depending on the project they’re working on. But you have set
times to check in with them, and you make sure to give them exactly what they
need. But you’re checking in with them. This is most employees. Now level
four, just do it and ask me if you need help. This is the person who is highly
competent. This is going to be probably only a few employees. It would be nice
if there were more. Sadly, many employees need help along the way. They
need to be held accountable. They need to be checked in on. So very few of
your employees are probably going to be a level four or a level one. Most are
going to be level two or level three. And this is why most managers get
frustrated with delegation, is because they do level one and level four, ignoring
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levels two and three, which is where your employees really need the help. So
let’s go through the process of delegation. If you’re taking notes, take a few
notes on each of these. Define the task is first. Oftentimes we try to define the
process instead of the task. And I mention that because sometimes as a
manager – especially if you were an employee to begin with, or a staff member to
begin with and you got promoted up, you know exactly how to do the job. You
know exactly how it should get done. You know probably step by step, and if you
were good, you probably even know one of the most effective ways to do it. But
here’s the problem – not everybody is going to do it your way. And maybe
you’ve had this experience. Have you ever asked somebody to do something
and they did it in a way totally different than yours, and they got the same
results? It amazed me the first time that happened to me. I’m like, but you did it
differently and it still got the results. We need to define the task – what are the
results that we’re asking for, and make sure that we define those for the
employees and not focus on the process. Let them define the process. Number
two is we’re going to select the appropriate team or individual. Sometimes we
delegate information or delegate programs or projects to the wrong groups. So
it’s important that we do delegate it to the right group. Number three is explain
the reason. Why are you giving it to them? Let them know why you’ve chosen
them. Number four, provide appropriate resources. Let’s go on to the next one
here. Provide appropriate responsibility, accountability, and authority. These
resources, responsibility, accountably, and authority all go together. A couple of
things we need to talk about here – even though it is your task to get it done, you
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are the manager of that department. It is your task. You have ultimate
responsibility. You cannot abdicate your responsibility. So in other words, if you
give it to your team and your team does not do it, you cannot go back to your
higher powers and say, well I gave it to them and they messed up. You cannot
abdicate responsibility. You can abdicate accountability and authority, but not
responsibility. You are ultimately responsible for the success, and that’s
important that you remember. Now accountability is: you’re going to hold them
accountable for the results. If they don’t get it done, they are responsible for
fixing it – not you. You need to set up accountability. At what points are you
going to check in on them to make sure they’re doing what they need to do? And
lastly, you need to give them authority. What I mean by that is oftentimes, let’s
say for example you have a janitorial team, and the team was responsible for
purchasing and cleaning – purchasing all the supplies and cleaning all the areas.
It would make no sense for you as the manager to make the purchasing choices
when they’re the ones using the supplies. So you give them responsibility to
order the supplies, but what if you don’t give them authority with any budget? If
you don’t give them a budget, they have no authority. They still have to come to
you, and that’s not an independent team. So it’s important that with authority
comes the appropriate resources, which can be financial. And again, if you’re
concerned about it, instead of giving them a whole year's worth of budget, give
them one month and check in on them. Give them two months and then check in
on them. See, the more authority you give people, the more responsibility they
have, the more they’re likely to take their position seriously and to have success.
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Number six is establish the required result. Once we define the task, what needs
to get done, we want to make sure we’re communicating the results that we’re
excepting to the team or the individual. Number seven is make sure we agree on
deadlines. What are the deadlines? Where are the milestones? Where are we
going to check in on them? If they’re a level four team where they just go do it,
the check in point is at the end. But too often, our teams aren’t level four.
They’re maybe a level two or a level three delegation where we need to check in
with them maybe weekly - maybe monthly, depending on the size of the task that
we’re talking about. Next, we need to communicate as agreed. So if we said
we’re going to meet weekly, we need to meet weekly. If we said we’re going to
meet monthly, we need to meet monthly. We need to check on them. It’s not a
slap in the back and a kick in the butt and a go-get-them-tiger. That’s what
doesn’t work. Number nine, we have to have feedback on the results.
Depending on how they did, we need to let them know. And if we see that
they’re off track, it’s our responsibility as leaders to let them know and help get
them back on track so they do meet their deadlines. The result of an effective
delegation is that the work gets done defined to the standards. Too often I see
managers – I’ve been guilty of it. I tell them what I want, I don’t clearly define it, I
don’t manage the process, can the work doesn’t get done to the standards that I
need it to get done. Then I get frustrated. I have to redo it, and I say I’ll never do
that again. Wrong. It started with me. I didn’t delegate appropriately. But when
you can follow those nine steps, your delegation goes so much easier. It’s so
much sampler when everyone knows what to expect. In the end, when you can
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effectively delegate and transfer the expectations, you can have the higher
performing team.
[End of recording.]
Teams That Work Module 5 Page 1
TEAMS THAT WORK MODULE FIVE – KEEPING THE TEAM ON TRACK Module number five – Keeping the Team on Track. Certainly with tough economic
times, cut backs, budget constraints, irritability at work, teams can get off track.
You know, people are people. Sometimes we focus inward and bickering starts.
Sometimes stagnation occurs. Let’s look at some of the common derailments.
Sometimes it’s trust issues. Sometimes it’s a lack of role definition. Sometimes
it’s even weak leadership or ineffective feedback. All of these things can cause
our teams to get off track and not to be performing as high as they can be. So
we’re going to go over ten ways to eliminate toxic team dynamics and to really
help you to be able to keep your team on track, regardless of what’s going on.
The first dynamic is to encourage frequent and open communication. We want to
have a policy where people can communicate with us if there’s an issue.
Oftentimes, and I know I used to be one of these managers where if there was a
problem, I kind of didn’t want to hear about it. I didn’t want to hear the
complaining and the issues and the whining, and there certainly is a difference
between complaining about issues and whining and communicating. Sometimes
a team has an issue and they need to talk with someone. We are that someone
that needs to have that communication. Now is this communication always easy
or fun? Absolutely not. But is it necessary? Absolutely. So let’s take a look at
five communication rules that we want to use when we engage. First is focusing
on the main thing. Have you ever had a team member that comes up to you with
things that just are irrelevant? They get caught up in the silliest of things. I know
I’ve had it happen, and it gets frustrating. And sometimes we’ll even get caught
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up into it and we end up in this spiral. It’s important to remember what is the
main thing? And if it’s not important or it’s irrelevant, we’ve got to remember to
de-focus on those and focus on the things that really are important. Second, we
need to actively listen. Actively listening doesn’t mean we’re thinking up an
answer while we’re listening; it doesn’t mean we’re interrupting; it doesn’t mean
that we are interjecting. It means that we’re quietly listening without thinking
about the answer in our head, but hearing what they’re saying. We’re listening to
them fully. We’re listening to their emotion. We’re listening to what they say and
how they say it, and maybe even what they don’t say. Another communication
rule of engagement is re-stating the issue. Sometimes when people
communicate, they don’t always communicate effectively. I know that sounds
crazy, but I’ve been guilty of it myself. I’ve had things fall out of my mouth, and I
went ooh, that didn’t sound right. But because they already fell out of my mouth,
it was really hard to correct. So when we restate what we see the issue, it gives
the person who’s communicating with us a chance to correct it, because
sometimes it’s not correct. Sometimes it fell out of their mouth. They really didn’t
mean it that way, but unless you give them a chance to correct it, they’re not
going to be able to correct it. Number four is empathetically listening.
Empathetically listening is not judgmentally listening, it’s not critically listening.
It’s really listening with empathy for the individual. And number five: make sure
you put your objectives in writing. This way, you can always refer back to them,
the team understands what their objectives are, and it makes communication
flow a whole lot easier. Number two: take time to create team cohesion. What I
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mean by that is these are people you’re working with. Take time to build the
team. Take time to invest in the team. Take time to create that team. You want
to remember you’re a farmer and your team is your soil and your seeds. You
need to prepare the soil. Where are they going to be working? What’s their
environment? You need to choose the right seeds, choose the right team
players, choose a good place to plant those seeds. Make sure they’re in an
environment where they can win. Nurture the seeds and then you can be able to
reap the harvest. So it’s important that we take the time to invest in our teams to
make sure that they’re working together. Number three: make sure to give
honest and regular feedback. I know part of my challenge being a leader is I
hate having to give negative feedback, especially when I know somebody’s
trying. For me, it’s one of the toughest things. But we really need to care
enough to confront. And where there’s an issue, we as the leader need to take
that on. And we need to do it sooner than later. We don’t want to wait until it’s
been six months or a year. As we start to see an issue developing, we need to
address it immediately. And remember, when we do address an issue, separate
the person from the action. They’re not a bad person. They just made a
mistake. So focus on the specific action or specific behavior that you want to
have changed and not the person. And confront the person only on the things
they can change. Remember, it’s very hard for people to change attitudes. They
can always change actions. But it’s very hard to change attitudes. Say for
example you have somebody on your team that’s arrogant. This person is just
so arrogant. Trying to come to them and say, you know what? You need to be
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less arrogant. They don’t know what that means. They don’t have a perception
of being arrogant. But when you say, you know, look, when you interrupt people,
it makes them feel less important. Can you work on not interrupting? That’s’
something they can do. They can track not interrupting. But being arrogant is
very hard to change. And also consider giving the person the benefit of the
doubt. We all make mistakes from time to time. It could have been an innocent
error in judgment. So do give them a little leeway. But when you do address an
issue, make sure it’s specific. Just like we talked, identify the specific actions.
And if you need to, tell them how you feel about what was done. It could be
something like, “Jane, when you interrupt Joe in the meetings, it really makes me
feel like we’re losing control and we can’t stay on track.” And establish a game
plan to fix the problem. In the end, lastly, make sure to affirm they’re a valued
person and a valued part of the team. Something like, “Sue, I just want to make
sure that you know I’m addressing this because I feel you are a valued member
of the team, and I want to make sure we can keep you on the team.” You want
to make sure to let them know that we care, and that we’re addressing this
because we do care. Now a couple of things – never, never, NEVER use
sarcasm. In fact, some of you are not going to like me for suggesting this, but
remove sarcasm from your vocabulary completely. Sarcasm is a prickly, prickly
thorn and it’s often used to keep people at bay. I know some people think they’re
being funny when they use sarcastic remarks, but what happens is people don’t
know how to read you then, and they get off balance with you. And that’s where
the prickly thorn part comes in. So as a general rule, avoid sarcasm. I know
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sometimes it’s funny. It’s good to get a laugh. But honestly, it doesn’t do much
for your leadership style. And of course avoid the words always and never.
Number four: make sure you’re building cooperation into your team. Get your
team members to work together. Try to avoid anything that will push your team
members away from each other. Number five, your team should be functioning
democratically. You shouldn’t be favoring one person or another. It’s not a
monarchy, so one person is not the king of it all. It’s important that it is a
democracy. And make sure your team members are well trained. Make sure the
people who are on the team are getting the training and information you need.
Number seven, play to their strengths. Remember people’s strengths, and they
have weaknesses. Ideally you want to put them in a role that acknowledges their
strengths and makes their weaknesses almost irrelevant. And of course
celebrate diversity. This may be something that may come as a little bit
uncomfortable, but when we put people of a different nationalities together, of
different ages, different backgrounds, what happens is we have different thinking
styles. When we have a problem, each person addresses it slightly different. So
depending on their background and where they come from – their education and
all of that – will determine how they go about solving that problem. And
oftentimes, teams that are flat, where they’ve got all, say white females age 20 in
there, they all have the same thinking style, and that doesn’t create a dynamic
result for the group. So it’s important to create diversity. Now with that, is there
going to come some conflict? Absolutely. And that’s okay. We need to learn
how to manage conflict in order to get the best results. But the best teams come
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from diversity – not from similarity. And lastly, number nine – oops, number nine,
manage results, not tasks. This is important that we decide what our results are
going to be, and we’re going to manage them – not the tasks that are given. And
lastly, leverage your competitive spirit to create competition. When you can do
that, you’re going to have a winning team. You’ll have a team that will run harder
and faster and farther than you could have ever imagined.
[End of recording.]