Making Teamwork part of your Team's Work...

What would you think if a professional sporting team (pick whatever code you like) only came together on occasions they had a match to play and never practiced in between games? I don’t think they’d be too many winners and grinners if that was really the case....

Yet many workplace teams actually do pretty much just that. They show up, do the work they’ve got to do either together or often alone, then repeat the same the next day. Because the pressure is on in busy cultures to get through often over-demanding workloads, many teams tell me they simply don’t have any time left, or allocated, to practise developing or fine-tuning their teamworking skills.

1. Taskwork and Teamwork

Naturally we learn as we go on the job, and a lot of learning at work actually happens in a team context, as Peter Senge pointed out about Team Learning, one of the 5 Learning Disciplines he popularised decades ago.

• But by far the major portion of what many teams learn tends to be about the tasks, work processes and technical skills behind what the team does to improve the operational side of the work.
• Nothing wrong with that. It’s about the team’s work yet it’s not about teamwork – the skills and tools teams need to converse, collaborate, connect and culture-build.
• Learning about teamworking is often done on the fly, doesn’t happen at all, or not regularly enough to change practices and integrate new behaviours, tools and operating principles deliberately into the functional fabric of the team.
• Teams can focus so much on plans, quality, standards, schedules, service-delivery or resourcing, they overlook this equally vital area of team-working.

Yet it’s a fact. Many teams fail not at the technical but the team level, where continual conflict over roles, goals and priorities or a ‘me first mentality' mars co-ordination, creates competition and the fall-out detracts from task focus?and accomplishment...

No matter what kind of job you do, or where you work, working together takes teamwork. It’s vital for all of us. It’s hard not to be part of a team these days. Any time people come together to work on a common task, teamwork come into play.

• We naturally form teams to do what we can’t by ourselves. Being able to work well together in a team doesn’t come naturally.
• Working in a team is different to doing a job alone. Working in with others isn’t always that easy. We have to learn how to do this.
• It’s hard blending different work styles, personalities, priorities and personal needs. It can lead to frustration and conflict.

Knowing what it takes to work well in teams makes a big difference to how we fit in, get along and get work done. Without team-skills, we bumble along, making the same old mistakes that always get teams in a tangle.

2. Teamwork is Hard Work

Teamworking can covers lots of different things and everyone seems to have different ideas about what it is – from ropes-and-rafting, team bonding or social get-togethers, to talking better together, handling difficult team moments, building resilience or respecting and connecting more.

There’s no one right path or process to follow. It’s different for different teams. But two things always seem the same to me:

• Every team can find ways to improve how they work together. In fact, improving your team is an everyday thing you should be doing. It's an ongoing job...
• All teams have trouble working together at times. Frictions erupt, tempers flare, things get tense. Learning to handle such things is something we can all get better at
• Like most things, teams break down or don’t work as well as they could. They need a bit of maintenance and fine-tuning now and again.

There’s 5-Ps that really matter if you want to make learning teamwork part of your team’s work and progressively improve how you work together….

1. Pinpointing – there’s no standard, single set of tools or actions to suit every team. Each team is different in terms of its stages of development, challenges faced, team culture and context, strengths and drawbacks and directions that make most sense to pursue.

So, the first thing most teams need to do is take some of these things into account to pinpoint what they most want to work on.

2. Protocols: Teams need to identify Operating Principles to guide them to work better together. These are not so much to do with the work itself. They’re more to do with how the team interacts, relates and collaborates – how we decide things together, get along and work in with each other, we talk together in teams, and how to make our team meetings and conversations more constructive.

3. Practice: Teams need tools they can use to help them work better together. This means assembling a toolkit over time everyone on the team agrees to use.

There’s a stack of tools teams can use. In our Working Better Together guide, we’ve curated a collection of them we think are the most simple, useful and versatile from what’s available. For example, tools to deal with difficult team moments, to enhance meetings and conversations, or plan action together.

These tools require the team to put aside some time to learn and practice them before they can become of how the team works

4. Performance:?Once a team has decided on tools and actions to improve particular aspects of teamwork, there has to be a will, intention and commitment to put them into action. This means moving from practising them in team action-learning sessions or toolkit tutorials, to performing with them in real work situations and settings

5. Perseverance: It’s rare that any team will always get a tool or team action to work well for them first-time. It’s practice and perseverance that perfects. Instead of giving up on a tool, teams need to try out a tool then try it again and again until they get it to work well for them.?

Of course, this doesn’t mean that sometimes a team may choose a tool that doesn’t fit their bill and they need to go back and select one that does.

This diagram shows 5 team foundations from our Working Better Together Guide.

Download our 5 Team Foundations Tool to pinpoint what your team may need to work on n relation to each foundation.

3. Teamwork Talking Points

Learning to work better together starts with leaders finding time to sit down with their team and have a few talks about teamwork challenges, priorities and directions. A few talking points to start with that we have excerpted from our WBT Pocket Guide include:?

We all know teams don’t change or improve just by attending a workshop or having a one-off meeting. The real work of building better teams starts when:

• Can identify with our team, feel a part of it, want to be in it, and take responsibility to make it work.
• We’re willing to put our strengths and talents together to work in with each other and commit to entire team success.
• We can raise issues openly with each other, forget the past and make fresh commitments to new ways of working better together.

In the end, working in teams won’t always guarantee more satisfaction or better work performance. But lack of teamwork almost always spells dissatisfaction and poor performance.

Till Next Time...

I’ve spent more than 25 years helping leaders to work better together with teams. Whether remote or right here, many challenges teams face remain the same. How can we connect better? How do we handle disruptive emotions, or difficult team moments? How can we make our meetings more constructive, work more as one-team or ensure visions, values and directions are shared?

Keeping teams on-track together calls for constant maintenance. I’ve had extensive team facilitation experience in a wide range of different work settings. I can work onsite with your teams, customising learning with our extensive suite of Working Better Together Sessions that we, together, mix n’ match. So, why not call me for a chat?

• See our Working Better Together Process for an outline of elements and options or our Building Better Teams brochure for leaders keen to start working on their teamwork
• Contact us online or by phone to enquire about in-house programs, individual coaching or our range of consulting services.