All the Feels: It Takes a Village
Do you ever feel like your team could function with greater satisfaction and effectiveness? You know the feeling of being so in step with one another that teamwork feels easy, like water gently flowing in a stream? The reality is that many groups with potential leave conference rooms and virtual calls every day wanting to be a team with unique strengths and assignments, but they are not allowed, nor equipped, to be effective teams.
Let’s explore how to help your team experience All the Feels through behaviors and characteristics of strong teamwork!
Collective Input
Effective teams amplify personal strengths and overcome individual weaknesses. No one is the star. Everyone plays to his or her strengths. Through honest conversation, the team steps in to assist when one is struggling. Katzenbach and Smith write, “Teams outperform an individual’s action alone. This is especially true in larger organizational groupings, especially when performance requires multiple skills, judgments, and experiences. A team inevitably gets better results than a collection of individuals operating within confined job roles and responsibilities.”
Although many American managers receive powerful rewards for making decisions on their own, the results of extensive research indicate that collective decision-making is a more productive process. The overall quality of decision-making and the general success rate of an organization increase substantially when decisions are reached through collective input or consensus processes.
The improved quality of decision-making through teamwork happens because of cooperation and collaboration. The members of a team combine their best abilities with each other to create an output that exceeds their individual potential. “Healthy teamwork accomplishes more than merely getting people to work together. It produces synergy. Accomplishment beyond the sum of individual team member contributions. Teamwork enables participants to achieve the extraordinary through cooperation,” says Van Auken.
Synergy cultivates a rich soil where innovative thoughts sprout freely and frequently as team members till and water the garden of ideas. Most creative ideas are hatched in a group environment as the result of spontaneous brainstorming and freedom from bureaucratic constraints (chain of command, rules, paperwork, etc.). Isolation and routine are poor incubators of creativity.
The collaborative process is a beautiful thing to behold. A team member lays out a proposal before the rest of the team. Each member begins to examine it, reflecting on it from different life experiences and perspectives. Interaction follows. Questions are raised. Observations are made. Clarifications are given. Challenges are presented. Affirmations are offered. Suddenly a transformation occurs. A good proposal becomes a great proposal. Through the collaborative efforts of the team, a superior result has been produced.
Drucker states, “The purpose of a team is to make the strengths of each person effective, and his or her weaknesses irrelevant.” Liberated teams create an environment for members to perform. Teams minimize weaknesses. Team members willingly and gladly make up for the deficits of others. They do it with grace because they know it is a two-way street.