There is a lot of good stuff written about teams.
At a conceptual level most get that a team working well is going to deliver more than any one individual.
The collective resource creates more time, brings more experience, skills and qualities to the table.
So far so good.
Yet often teams get de-railed or go off track when trying to deliver results.
There are two variables that can hinder the success of your team.
- A lack of alignment.
- A lack of trust.
Let’s look at each of these in turn.
Alignment
A team is aligned when everyone is pulling in the same direction and working towards a common goal or outcome.
When a team is aligned there’s a huge amount or camaraderie and a willingness to do what it takes to achieve the result you are working towards.
It’s one of those areas that might seem blindingly obvious.
But blindingly obvious doesn’t necessarily mean easy.
Getting people to put their own agenda aside and focusing on the team success is incredibly difficult.
If you think about it most of our education is all about what we do personally so it doesn’t necessarily come easily to us.
Trust
They say that trust takes a long time to build and can be destroyed in minutes.
From my own experiences, this is so true.
Building trust does take time. Equally it’s never task and finish. You have to continually make deposits into the trust bank.
Some of the things that help build trust include:
- Getting to know people both personally and professionally.
- Doing what you promise you will do.
- Being decisive.
- Sticking to your course of action
- Putting the interest of others before your own.
Equally some things that destroys trust includes:
- Not delivering on promises
- Breaching confidentiality
- Indecisiveness or dithering when it comes to decisions.
- Unprofessionalism when under pressure.
In truth get teams aligned and trusting is much harder in practice than it is conceptually.