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TEAM PARTICIPATION

Discussion:

           Most team players aren’t.

           Not everyone who talks “team” knows what they’re talking about. After all, there are all kinds of teams. Ever hear of a “20 mule team?” This is a team of 20 mules lined up in a double column to pull the frontier equivalent of a semi trailer. Some people seem to feel that they are the drivers of such a team. However most enlightened leaders feel otherwise. What kind of team are you part of? How does your team operate? Are you a football team? A soccer team? A basketball team? A volleyball team?

           In the work world, sports analogies for team play are limited. In sports, communication is limited compared to the communication opportunities and requirements in business. Sure work behaviors must be coordinated so that one person’s outputs arrive to the next person who needs them at a time when he or she can best use them (like a hand- off). However most such coordination depends upon how we speak with those we work with. Team participation is primarily about communicating with your teammates and then executing what you have communicated.

           However, there is another level of team play. Many people never get to experience this level, and that’s a shame. This level relates to what star athletes call “the Zone.” The Zone refers to the synergy that emerges when all of the team members function as one. This synergy is a “dynamic”— like horsepower, you can’t find it in the engine. Horsepower is an emergent dynamic that results from the effective, coordinated, precisely timed interaction of the component parts. In fact, you don’t even measure it in the engine... you measure it outside the engine at the flywheel or drive shaft.

           In the same way, synergy is like the “horsepower” of the team. Synergy is what results when all members of the team operate in an effective, coordinated, precisely timed manner. This flows from communication. In order for synergy to appear, each member must make the team a greater priority than himself. Teamwork involves doing what you do with an eye out for what other teammates are doing. Selfish points of view such as “you’re making it difficult for me to do my job” must yield to team centered points of view such as “how can I help you make our job easier?”

           There is still another level of teamwork available. This is the level of “team intelligence.” It may seem spooky, but when the members of a team are talking regularly and constructively about things that count, a “group mind” emerges. This level of teamness is rarely attained, but can and should be reached more often. That it is rare is because people don’t know it happens, or don’t know how to make it happen. It is beyond the scope of this paper to explain it in detail, but it is enough to alert you to the possibilities. “What’s faster than e-mail? Already knowing!”

           If you’ve received this sheet in your 360º then you have been rated as needing to work on your Team Participation. Whatever the reasons you have received this rating, please understand. Whether you are aware of it or not, the rest of the team feels held back from its available possibilities, synergies and rewards due to how you operate. It is not just a matter of “perceptions.” Even if it were just a matter of perceptions, they are the shared perceptions of your team. Learn how to operate constructively, positively, communicatively with your teammates, and you will all be amazed at what can be accomplished with less effort than you are probably expending right now.

Prescriptions:

1. Team relationships start with individual relationships. The team will not get beyond the on-to-one relationships between pairs of teammates. Take some time and evaluate, on paper, the strengths and weaknesses of your relationships with each of your team members individually. Be sure to check them through carefully to identify places where you can take the initiative to improve the relationship. Then act on what you see emerging from your analysis.

           2.        Having been through a 360° process provides you the ideal opportunity to talk about this subject of Team Participation with the other members of your team. Begin meeting with them one at a time. Bring the results of your analysis from #1 above. Frame your meeting as your following up on the information the 360° raters gave you. Make suggestions and ask for their concrete suggestions about what you can do differently to improve your Team Participation. Any embarrassment you might have felt doing this on your own can be eliminated by calling it a 360° follow up.