They Make Everyone More Stupid
Some key questions to ask yourself and your team.
Basic, really important ones:
Do we know what we’re supposed to be doing?
Do we care about what we’re supposed to be doing? Why do we care?
Do we know how to approach this issue or challenge?
Who should we ask for help if we need it?
Interesting Ones:
Are you performing at your potential on this team?
If you have interpersonal challenges are you sure they’re not really work issues in disguise?
How can the team tell if it is reaching its potential?
Does it really matter if the team isn’t reaching its potential?
Key points of this reason to hate work teams:
Volunteers almost always make the most effective team members, but work early and honestly on what is to be focused on to find out if those volunteers really do care about that focus.
It is critical to have some kind of performance imperative regarding involvement on a team. It’s surprising how rarely this actually happens.
Fix the work stuff first, then see if you need to work on interpersonal stuff.
Discussion and comment points for this post:
Given that working with others on a team both enables and constrains the individuals do you think it is the enabling or constraining that has the most impact? Why?
Have you seen other things that make a team stupid?
What have found in helping a team not get stupid and actually move toward their potential?
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