Tips For Teamwork
To gain the benefits and rewards of effective teamwork each member must do their part. The Team is as strong as its strongest link.
The Team has a role, the Team Leader has a role, the Team Member has a role. Each Member must choose independently to work interdependently.
Want effective Teamwork? Try these actions.
Team Members Actions
- Strengthen your team through your own behaviors of commitment, cooperation, communication, and contribution.
- Thank people (in person, in writing, and in public) when they perform behaviors which support the team, team members, or the team’s goals.
- Communicate face-to-face (on any issue involving emotional content).
- Develop a “Personal Mission” which supports the Team's Mission.
- Set a goal for personal levels of innovative ideas (one per month or more).
- Learn how achieving your goals helps your team achieve its goals.
- Give listening opportunities a chance, assume good motive, and allow time for practice and development on the part of the listener.
Team Actions
- Develop a “Team Mission” which supports and builds on your organization's Mission.
- Develop opportunities for the team to listen to each of its members.
- Measure all goals against the “SMART” criteria. Are goals: Specific, Measurable, Ambitious, Realistic, Time-dated?
- Be certain that each individual’s activities contribute to the Team’s goals.
- Set objective, external standards against which to measure Team progress.
Team Leader Actions
- Strengthen your team through your own behaviors of commitment, cooperation, communication, and contribution.
- Thank people (in person, in writing, and in public) when they perform behaviors which support the you, the team, team members, or the team’s goals.
- Create an “office hour” once a week or month when Team Members can come to your office just to talk, just to be listened to, on any topic whatever.
- Eliminate any system in which team members compete formally against each other or any team competes formally against any other internal team.
- Create ways to link team and individual success, so that the individual only wins if the team wins.
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