How to Transform Teamwork at Your Company
Andrew Vargas Delman, MPPA
Nonprofit Program Manager | Bilingual English-Spanish | Project Management | Analytics | Organizational Development
Arguing, Fighting, Disengagement…
Business owners tell me all the time: my employees don’t get along, there’s fighting between departments, they don’t show up on time…
In short, what’s missing is teamwork. Commitment. Engagement. Peace, for Pete’s sake!
We’ve all been there. Now, what to do about it?
One of the classics on team-building and culture, The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, describes the main symptoms of poor teamwork:
The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team
- Absence of trust
- Fear of healthy conflict
- Lack of commitment
- Avoidance of accountability
- Inattention to results
Which leads us to the opposite of all that — the long-term goals of a happy team:
The 5 Hallmarks of Excellent Teams
- More trust
- Healthy, constructive conflict
- More commitment
- More accountability
- Attention to results
You Need to Understand Your Team!
Of course, changing company dynamics is complex and is affected by many factors: the CEO’s personality style, profitability, hiring and training processes, and so on.
But here’s where successful teams start first: you have to really understand each other. Not just your job title, but how you think, what you value, your preferences, concerns, fears, goals, triggers, etc. You need a tool for truly understanding each member of your team.
That’s why I recommend Team Dimensions Profile 2.0 (DiSC) to ANY business owner. It is a powerful tool that helps “demystify” other people and understand your own blind spots as a leader.
I had a client who had no idea how high he was on the Refiner (analyzer) scale — he had this moment of realization where he understood how his need to analyze every small puzzle in detail had caused him to isolate from his team and leave them frustration with the lack of communication. Change was a lot smoother once he had a framework for understanding his own pattern. It’s been amazing to watch.
If you’re an entrepreneur working with employees, you need an effective tool to understand how other people think! The Team Dimensions Profile is not the only out there, but it’s simple, quick (10-15 minutes) and extremely informative. I can’t recommend it enough!
Signing off for now,
Andrew
P.S. I have access to a number of psychometric tests at wholesale rates. Please email me ([email protected]) for more info if you’d like to talk further.