Posts Tagged ‘Team Engagement’
High-Performance Teams
Just ended up watching the India v Australia World T20 cricket match – India bear Australia. What a game of cricket! What an innings!
It also gave me a brilliant lesson in building high-performance teams:
Post match, Virat Kohli praised Yuvraj Singh’s skills, who was batting with a strain in his ankle and yet scored well.
Shortly after this, during the post match press conference, MS Dhoni accepted that Kohli has far superior and diverse stroke-play than him.
That’s how great teams are built – they praise each other authentically and take everyone ahead. Something we all can learn from.
Do you agree?
Do You Allow Mistakes To Your Team?
My first boss taught me a lot many things, which benefitted my personal and professional life. He was a true leader and from him, I learnt some invaluable lessons in people leadership.
As a budding and raring HR professional back then, one of his sentences that gave me tremendous confidence and encouragement was:
“You cannot make any such mistake that I cannot correct…”
This one sentence acted as a big motivator for a youngster like me. It helped me take well-intentioned risks, encouraged me to push the envelope, be courageous in my actions and at the same time, instilled a sense of ownership and responsibility in me, that I shouldn’t let him down. The authenticity of his leadership made me believe that his support is there for me; that he has my back.
Over the period of last 8 years, as I graduated to become a people leader myself, this learning had an indelible mark on my way of working. I could see myself quite naturally extending the similar support to my teammates. And this one sentence helped me build an open, sincere, courageous and high-performance teams, year after year.
As these teams became bigger, and my lieutenants moved ahead from being individual contributors to people leaders, this culture of allowing mistakes only strengthened; supporting bold but well-meaning actions, without the fear of boss’s backlash in event of a failure – it all added to the overall performance of the team.
We all became better together; thanks to my learning from that one simple, authentic and powerful sentence. I am sure, wherever the team-members would go, as their careers take them, as and when they form new teams, they would foster the genuine culture of ‘allowing mistakes’. And that is what I call the magic of authentic leadership.
This is what I found to be a fundamental tenet of leadership; it works for me. Now, it is your turn. Do share your experiences. Do you allow your teams their genuine share of mistakes? Are you allowed to fail at times? Have you encountered managers who lose it when their subordinates make mistakes?
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Photo-credit: mactoons.com
PS: You may like reading this old post I wrote on leadership and failure: Leadership and Failure
Do You Believe in Power of Team Meetings?
How often one comes across a team that is disconnected, with each other and with the team-leader? Quite often, you’d say. And among several other reasons that may exist behind this disconnect, one of the biggest reason to my mind is that the team doesn’t meet often, doesn’t get together as a unit – in person. This issue is ever increasing in today’s virtually-operating corporate world. Blame it on oft-quoted ‘cost-saving’ and ‘bringing-people-together-using-technology’ mindset; leaders aren’t really meeting their teams, in person, as regularly as they should. I find this applicable to the teams where individuals are based at different locations as well as to the teams based at one location.
Please don’t take me wrong; I am not against virtual meetings and use of technology in this regard. Technology has been quite useful in bridging distances. Plus, I am also not merely advocating off-sites and/or wasting time & money by meeting more often than merited; we are all well aware of the old joke that circles the floors that ‘meetings are practical alternative to work’. That’s not really what I mean here; meeting must stay productive and yield results, whether conducted in person or online.
But what about teammates and leaders just not meeting face-to-face? Or meeting sporadically? And I can say from experience that geographical distances aren’t the only reason behind such teams not getting together; I would know teams that are based out of one location and yet, either don’t meet as a group or meet quite irregularly. I am quite tempted to ask – isn’t the cost of disconnected teammates far higher than the cost of conducting well-intentioned, structured and periodic meetings, face-to-face? I am referring to team-meetings that foster useful interactions; where not only leaders share their views & thoughts and review the progress of the work & team, but also where the team gets to meet the leader and other teammates in person. Where they express opinions, learn about what is really going on with others and share about self. Such meetings help faster decision-making as well as build lasting & productive relationships at work. Moreover, by offering a personal touch, meeting face-to-face helps the individuals resolve conflict much better than doing it virtually.
My experience of managing large teams has taught me a valuable lesson – a team that connects together, works best together.
And let me say, the onus of getting everyone together is on the leader. It really is.
In his bestseller, ‘Death By Meeting’, Patrick Lencioni stressed on deriving real value behind meetings. However, on the contrary, I have often seen and heard people thinking, quite erroneously though, that Lencioni was talking only about how ‘more meetings’ are bad. Not really! A careful reading of the book would tell you that he rather deliberated on HOW to make meetings more useful and productive.
Speaking about the role of leaders in ensuring productive team-meetings, he says,
The greatest myth that exists about meetings is that they are inherently bad…But the fact is, bad meetings are a reflection of bad leaders.
I am a firm believer in this. Well-planned and structured meetings have helped me and the teams that I led stay focused and productive, energizing us for the times and work ahead. You can read about it here…
In my view, not meeting your team, not connecting with them and more importantly, not connecting them with each other as individuals will cost you dearly, it will… far more than the monetary cost of getting everyone together.
Are you meeting your teammates as much as you should, in person? Have such meetings helped you and your teams? Or you think meetings are really a waste of time? Do share…
______________________________________________________
Photo-credit: blog.teamtrainingunlimited.com
