Talk About it as a Team
As the team leader, you hopefully know what’s going on within your team. There are likely certain relationships that are stronger than others. There are certain personalities that may be harder to work with than others. You likely see ways the team’s dynamic holds it back from reaching its potential.
Working harder and working smarter to achieve business goals will not address team dynamics. Addressing it with individuals may help, but marginally. The best thing you can do is talk about it as a team.
If you’ve been tracking with me for a while, you know I am a huge fan of fostering the skill of dialogue on your team. If you choose to courageously open a forum about the team itself, at the team level, you will be in a rare class of leaders. Here are some things to keep in mind:
Your Framing Will Matter
The way you frame what you’re doing when you a team dynamic topic on the table will matter greatly. I can’t tell you exactly how to do it because it depends on the state of the team and their ability to receive your messaging. In general, showing hope and an eye toward betterment are key. It’s up to you to figure out how much time your team spends analyzing and understanding the problem, versus just mentioning the problem and then designing the solution. It may depend on the nature of the problem itself.
Make the Case
If your team norm is to only talk about business goals and hiccups in the workflow, it may be very awkward to add in a conversation about the team and you can be sure they will wonder why you are doing so now. Don’t leave that implicit, because when information is absent, people make up stories. Simply put, the reason is that you’re learning, and building a strong team is important to you. You might have to start with easy questions and let the trust in the process grow as the new cultural norm gets established. Adding a check-out might be an easy way to start.
But Really, Here’s Why
Building strong teams has to include team self-reflection in the ‘public’ forum. There’s something extremely powerful about being able to talk about issues as a team and not just in 1-1 side conversations. As Peter Senge describes in The Fifth Discipline, teams mostly only talk about what’s going out “out there,” and not “in here.” Team self-reflection is rare. That’s why I said earlier that, it gives you a huge advantage. You’re instilling a courageous culture of team learning. If a team can come together, talk openly about itself, and make changes based on what it learns in that group forum, it can do anything.
I hope this post has inspired you to bring the very team dynamic issues that are gnawing at you as a leader to the team forum. Put the team’s issues directly on the table. If they’re gnawing at your, then they matter. If they matter, then encourage the team to own the problems and build alignment with one another around how to be an even better team.
