Effective Team Member Part 3: Develop a Team Charter

I often get asked to work with groups who have been working together for a long period of time, and sometimes it is because they are not working in a productive manner. They are dysfunctional. I think one of the reasons why the dysfunction exists is because when the group of people came together, they quickly dove into the details of the task or project they were assigned, and they failed to focus on the relationship part of their group experience. In other words, they focused on the what of what they were doing, and not on how they were going to work together to accomplish their goal.

When teams fail to create some basic ground rules or group expectations for how the group will operate at the start of their group process; the members will operate under their own individual expectations. The result of this can be disastrous! I have witnessed cliques emerging within the group, people developing false assumptions about other team members’ behavior (i.e. “you did that on purpose”), poor responses to conflict (i.e. I will avoid you, or I will sabotage you), and these behaviors ultimately lead to a decrease in productivity and job dissatisfaction. Typically I find the manager is spending more of their time resolving issues as opposed to focusing on the business goals, and more importantly this behavior negatively impacts the customer.

The best suggestion I have is for groups to take time to discuss the team process and establish a Team Charter. A Team Charter is a list of agreed upon team expectations. At the forming stage of the group’s development, members should discuss expectations and a process for communication, productive conflict engagement and resolution, accountability for deliverables, sharing ideas, information, and learning, practicing respect, and giving and receiving feedback. The members of the team must serve as coaches for each other and a Team Charter provides a framework for achieving team effectiveness.

There are a lot of tools and reference materials for creating a Team Charter. You can find a lot of information by doing a Google search on Team Charters. The charter can be as simple or as complex as your group desires. It does take time to develop a good Team Charter, but the time spent developing one in the beginning of the team process, may save you precious time resolving major issues later in the team process. Developing a Team Charter and consistently following the guidelines of the charter will reduce individual team member anxiety, Manager stress, and will ultimately create a positive team experience for all those involved.

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Effective Teams Pt.II R-E-S-P-E-C-T

In my prior entry I wrote about the choice of being a member of a team. So now lets assume you made a decision to be a member of a team. In the book “The Five Dysfunctions of Teams” by Patrick Lencioni, the author believes that the foundation for a strong team dynamic is to establish trust. I agree with the author, but I also believe that for any relationship to be effective, each member must practice mutual respect. I often say – “you do not need to like everyone you work with, but you do need to respect the people you work with”.

I do a lot of work with teams and quite often I have found that the root cause to a lot of the conflict and dysfunction is because members of the team never established respect for or have stopped respecting other members of the team. I most recently did a team assessment with a group of people who had been working together for a few years. Some of the comments that came from the assessment were “I stopped sharing at team meetings because I didn’t feel that other members of the group respected my opinions”, “one of my co-workers is constantly blaming others for her own mistakes”, “when I make suggestions for improving on a process, I am quickly shut down, or worse others in the group just roll their eyes signaling disapproval”. In my opinion these are not symptoms of a lack of trust, but more so signs of a lack of respect. How can a group of people get to a point of trust and effective teamwork if they don’t respect each other? Webster’s Dictionary defines Respect as “a: high or special regard; b. the quality or state of being esteemed”. Where in the above mentioned examples is the high regard; the esteem?

People are unique and have different likes and dislikes; similarities and differences. In teams, you are going to have some players who are introverts and some who are extraverts. I may not like or agree with an idea you express, but what is a more respectful way of responding – rolling my eyes and making that weird sucking noise with my tongue against my teeth, or saying “I hear what you are saying, but I don’t agree with your idea and this is the reason why”? What response will make a more positive impact on the other person? I would say the latter. Practicing respect means always being cognizant of maintaining the esteem of others and in the workplace it also means you are behaving more professional. The impact of this behavior if practiced mutually will, most likely, lead to trust.

Some critics of my opinion have said “if I don’t like a person I probably am not going to respect them; I will just tolerate them”. This happens quite often, but I am talking about effective teamwork. Will you have an effective team if members are simply tolerating others in the group?

By Frank J. Ciccia

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Effective Team Member Part I

I often get asked by organizations to come in and do some teambuilding. The first question I ask is “what is the reason why you think you need teambuilding?” I get a lot of different responses, for example, “we are a newly formed group of people and I think doing some structured activities may help us to be more comfortable with each other”, or “my team has been so focused on getting the work done that we want to take some time to focus on relationship building”. However, I find quite often I get the response “I don’t think my team knows what it truly means to be an effective team.” I get intrigued by this response. Therefore, I would like to follow this idea of what it means to be an effective team member in my next few entries.

Step 1: Make the Choice to be a Team Member

I recently did some teambuilding with a group and what came out of the session was that there were some members of the team, for whatever reason, have become disengaged and distant from the rest of the team. They keep to themselves, do not share information nor participate at team meetings. Rather than express any of the issues that were making them feel dissatisfied with being a member of the team; they are choosing to withdraw.

I said the following to the group:

When it comes to teamwork, the only choice you have is whether you want to be a member of the team, but if you make the choice to be on the team, you do not have the choice as to whether or not you are going to play. Once you make the choice to be on a team; you must play. If you do not want to play, the best thing you can do for yourself and for the other team members is to get off the team.

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