RULE 2 - Know what a team is and how it works
'Getting’ good players is easy. Getting’ ‘em to play together is the hard part.”Casey Stengel, former manager, New York Yankees
So what a team and how does it operates? If we are going to be successful managers we have to know the answers to these questions.
A team isn’t a collection of people. It is an organization with its own dynamics, qualities, and conventions. Without knowing these things you will flounder. Knowing them, you can work your team to achieve greatness.
In every team there are a variety of people all pushing and shoving in different directions and with unequal force. Some shove louder, if you know what I mean. Others are happy to push from the back. Others don’t appear to be doing anything, but you’ll need them for ideas.
If you haven’t looked at team dynamics before, I urge you to read Meredith Belbin’s Management Teams: Why they succeed or fail.* (If you have, pass right on the next Rule.) This is designed for managers concerned with achieving results by getting the best from their key people. I’ll paraphrase what he says, but I do urge you to practice what he preaches.
*R. Meredith Belbin, Management Teams: Why they succeed or fail, Butterworth – Heinemann, 2nd edition 2003.
Belbin says that there are nine team roles – and we all carry out one or more functions of these team roles. Yes, it is fun to identify our own, but it is much more useful to identify your team’s and then work with that information.
The nine team roles are:
- The Plant – they are original thinkers; they generate new ideas; they offer solutions to problems; they think in radically different ways, laterally, imaginatively.
- The Resource Investigator – they are creative; they like to take ideas and run with them; they are extrovert and popular.
The Coordinator – they are highly disciplined and controlled; they can focus on objectives; they unify a team.
- The Shaper – they are very achievement orientated; they like to be challenged and to get results.
The Monitor Evaluator – they analyze and balance and weigh; they are calm and detached; they are objectives thinkers.
- The Team Worker – they are supportive and cooperative; they make good diplomats because they only want what is best for the team.
The Implementer – they have good organizational skills; they display common sense; they like to get the job done.
- The Completer – they check details; they tidy up after themselves; they are painstakingly conscientious.
- The Specialist – they are dedicated to acquiring a specialized skill; they are extremely professional; they have drive and dedication.
Now you know who you might have in your team. So what exactly is a team and how are you going to make yours more effective? Again, read Belbin and also come to understand a team is a group where all the members focus on a collective target. A team doesn’t pull together well when each individual member focuses on their own target – be that just getting to the end of the day, their own personal progress, how to stitch up the boss (that’s you, by the way), use work as a social club, etc.
“A team doesn’t pull together well when each individual member focuses on their own target.”
You’ll know you have a team when you hear ‘we’ and ‘us’ more often than ‘I’ and ‘me’.
You’ll know you have a team when difficult decisions become easy – because someone says, ‘it’s OK, we’re all in this together’.
You’ll know you have a team when the team tells you it is a team.
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