Working Effectively in a Team

SUMMARY

Are you a bit of a loner who likes to just work by yourself, or have you learned the power and value of working in a well-oiled team?

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, emotional intelligence speaker, and trainer of the year, and master coach trainer. Today, I want to start a conversation—which we will unpack over the next few weeks—about working effectively in a team.

Let me unpack with you today five key ideas so that as you go through the weeks to come, you can go deeper and wrap some skills around them as well.

Number one is that we are one body.
Number two is that we are continually evolving.
Number three is to establish a charter.
Number four is to develop cohesion.
Number five is to bring your own A-game. 

There you have the five key ideas that you and I are going to unpack over the next few weeks to enable you to have teamwork and collaboration that will help you get more done with less.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week, as we continue this conversation around teamwork by taking a look at the evolution of a team.
I'll see you then.

TRANSCRIPT

Are you a bit of a loner who likes to just work by yourself, or have you learned the power and value of working in a well-oiled team?

Well, stick with me because today and over the next few weeks, I'm going to unpack for you one of the most important competencies that I had to develop and that I work with people everywhere I go in the relationship management quadrant, and that is teamwork and collaboration. 

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, emotional intelligence speaker, and trainer of the year, and master coach trainer. Today, I want to start a conversation—which we will unpack over the next few weeks—about working effectively in a team.

Teams that collaborate well together produce way more profitable outcomes for everybody involved. But unfortunately, some roadblocks get in the way of effective teamwork.

People are individuals, and you're trying to take those individuals with their uncertainties, fears, and challenges (all the things that we've talked about before) and combine them with the strengths that they have, and then bring that all together to make one body.

Doing so can raise a lot of challenges. 

This is why you work on the competencies of relationship management at this end of the scale—not first. Building self-awareness and self-management, understanding and practicing social awareness, including (most importantly) empathy, being able to communicate, and all those things that you’ve done previously, you can now bring together to create effective teams. 

Unfortunately, there are a lot of lone rangers, and I was one of them. In my corporate and military careers, or whenever I was working in a team, I just put my head down, tail up, and worked on my own thing. 

I relied solely on my performance—and it was not because I could not logically understand the value of working with others, but I could not do so effectively. And it creates tunnel vision where people work in silos, where their only concern is getting their work done instead of looking for opportunities to work collectively together. And there's a "them and us" syndrome; you've been involved, you've seen it all.

In my case, I was involved as a perpetrator of these thoughts and then those behaviours. 

Being "me" focused where that focus on what you care about in the workplace is something that also drives unhealthy behaviour in teams. 

Taking the spotlight, needing significance, finding certainty and validation can detract from your ability to work well with others. This was certainly something that I had to grow through, and it took many years for me to get the message. 

So, my whole aim today and this month is to give you some practical strategies that I didn't learn from a book alone. But I've also learned these strategies through practical application and gone through the pain of not having these skills to have a much more mutually beneficial relationship with the people that I work with.

All these roadblocks create conflict and dysfunction. Therefore, not only does the team not produce the results that it wants, but the individuals are all affected as well. 

So, as you and I go through this month, I want you to have a look at it as I did and ask: "What do I need to do differently so that I am a more effective member of my team?”

Your team may be small, or it may be quite large. However, no matter, the principles still apply. So, instead of working as lone rangers, you and your team can work as one. It's like the Three Musketeers — all for one and one for all — where you've got each other's backs and cultivated a supportive culture.

Instead of being "me" focused, it's "we" focused.

One of the greatest examples I see of this is the way ants work together. They can move things that are way beyond their body weight and they can bridge gaps so that they can walk over them all because they work collectively. Seeing them do this fascinates me. While I'm not saying that we are ants, you can learn a lot from the things that they demonstrate when you watch them. Because each ant is important, and what's more important is how they work collectively to achieve what it is that they want to achieve. And in some cases, it's survival.

So, you get to remove the dysfunction and have a function that comes from collaboration, great communication, handling conflict well, and all these things that you've been working on over the previous episodes. By the way, if you've missed any of those episodes, you can go back and go through them so you can catch up and get those skills before you come and apply the skills you will learn in this episode and the upcoming ones.

That's the beauty of this journey of social and emotional intelligence—it’s continual. I’m continually working on my self-awareness—it’s not something that I've fully mastered yet. Relationship Management, Self-Awareness, Self-Management, and Social-Awareness all work together in every area of our lives. 

Effective teamwork is working together towards a collective goal: going on a journey where you’re all getting to the same destination, where there's synergy, and you look at each other's strengths and areas for development in a way that allows you to have exactly the whole that you need to get things done. 

It's a journey that you go on together — whether that be in your home, in your workplace, in your community, in your practice, or with the team that you have there, it's about coming together and witnessing the power of people helping people.

Let me unpack with you today five key ideas so that as you go through the weeks to come, you can go deeper and wrap some skills around them as well.

Number one is that we are one body. 

I’ve talked a little bit about this. 

Your body has many parts, and they work independently. Yet, for you to thrive and survive as a human being, your body parts need to work together. So, whether it’s your heart, lungs, brain, or any other part of your body, they all have a purpose. If any part of your whole self is a little bit off and not working well, it will affect the workings of every part of your body. It means that the biochemical reactions that go on have to counter the lack in one area and allow you to perform as a human. 

The same principle applies to a team. 

Yes, we are individuals, but we come together as one body. You have all heard of the saying, "There is no 'I' in a team." Well, I'm going to disrupt your thinking on that. I believe that there are many I's in a team. That is the challenge you have there: You have to recognise that there are individuals. If you write the word "team" in capital letters and you pull those letters apart, you can see that there are 13 I’s in the word "team." That’s just a bit of fun, and it's got no science behind it whatsoever. 

I want you to understand that individuals make up teams. So, the first thing you need to do is make sure that you understand each individual and that you look at it from that perspective first. So, you realise that everyone is an individual. The team, although it has the function of being collective, needs to start by focusing on the individual needs of everybody that is in it. 

Number two is that we are continually evolving. 

Teams come and go. They start, stop, stall, grow, learn, and then make changes. 

Just like any skill you have, you start, you repeat, and you grow. You change the neural pathways in your brain and your habits.

A team is never fully evolved. 

I've been in many teams where it started with a particular purpose and with particular individuals. Along the way, people left and people were added.

All these elements of change can affect the team.

The effect that it has depends on how you look at that. So, you want to understand that it's going to happen — it's inevitable. People will leave, and people will come. Teams will change their purpose. Teams will grow. Teams will shrink. 

The way that you look at that and what you anticipate will help you and your team be able to work more effectively. You work with individuals, and those individuals form relationships, and the relationships need to be bigger than the team. If someone leaves the team, the relationship changes—not in the "who," but in the “how.”

So, these are the things that can make a team dysfunctional. When you look at it and go, “Well, people are leaving and things are changing, and it's not what we set out to do.” They can bring it down. They can unravel everything. So, thinking is really important around that. Therefore, you need to remember that a team is constantly evolving. 

Number three is to establish a charter. 

One of the greatest opportunities that I've had in working with organisations all around the world is this idea of coming up with a set of team norms—coming up with behavioural norms that are acceptable in that team. 

So, having a charter—a document that is separate from the people in the team—is very powerful. If you can remember when you worked through conflict resolution, I talked to you about focusing on the issue and not on the person; having a charter, a set of values, or a statement that says, "This is how we're going to work with each other," can be just as powerful when used in the same way.

So, it’s looking at what's important for the individuals in this team, and then collectively coming up with 6, 8, or 10 different statements that indicate how u can work together in this team. 

It could be the way that your team handles conflict.

It could be the way your team asks each other questions.

It could be the way your team gives feedback to one another. 

So, it’s listing down whatever’s important to you and your team and making it something that you can go back to and go: “Hey Grant, do you think that we are working as we agreed in point 5?” 

Doing so makes you separate the conversation from the person, and you’re not saying, “Hey, you're not doing this as we agreed.” This is because your team has a charter. You have something that you are all working together towards.

Another intrinsic benefit of establishing a charter is that, in the process of putting that charter together, you develop a bond with your team. Doing so also says that you, as their leader, care for every individual in the team and would want to make sure that the team has a set of guidelines so each member knows that the team is demonstrating or doing those guidelines as you navigate through deadlines, stress, and all the things that happen in this ever-changing world. It somehow shows your team that each of them matters. And you care about each other, and that is how you are going to work together. So, that itself will help form a bond within the team. 

Number four is to develop cohesion. 

You’ve probably all heard the term “sticky teams," and I'm not sure who coined that term, but that's what all of us want. 

You want to make sure that the glue that holds your team together is not easily watered down and that people do have each other's backs. People believe they are valued and, as a result, they belong on the team.

There are many things that you can do and be so that people (including yourself) feel that way. Therefore, you need to make sure that you leave space to develop that stickiness — where people stay in the team because they realise that they are a part of that team. So if they leave, the team itself changes.

So ask yourself: 

"What can I and my team do to develop that cohesion?"

Cohesion says: "We're stuck together." We agree. We look for things that we agree on and value together. And those are the things that will bring a team together and keep it there in tough times. 

Conflict, tough times, and change are inevitable. Therefore, that cohesion is what will bring your team together. 

I like to look at the cohesion of a military team in a war environment when under fire. They've got a big reason to stay stuck together, and they've got each other's backs to the point of being willing to give up their lives to protect their team and any member of their team. That's really where, metaphorically speaking, you and your team members can get to any area of your life underpinned by values that value people, not just things.

Number five is to bring your own A-game. 

Earlier, I mentioned that a team is made up of individuals. And, while you work together to ensure that your team grows, expands, and accomplishes its goals, what you do as individuals is show up every day and give your best.

I'm not saying to turn up perfect and I don't ever say that anything could ever be that way.

There were days in my corporate career when I didn't bring my own A-game. I was worried about what everyone else wasn't doing and was always complaining instead of what I could bring. 

When everyone on the team brings their own A-game, their personal best, and puts them together, then that team is unstoppable. 

On the days when there are individuals who don't feel like they can bring that A-game, that charter, that communication, that bond that we've built, says, “I'm going to put my hand up and ask for support.

So, instead of working in silos, you are all working as “all for one and one for all.” There you have the five key ideas that you and I are going to unpack over the next few weeks to enable you to have teamwork and collaboration that will help you get more done with less.

Well, that's it from me for another week. Join me again next week, as we continue this conversation around teamwork by taking a look at the evolution of a team.

I'll see you then.