This week Aleen Bayard talks about Team Work.

Have you ever been on a team or leading a team and things just weren’t quite right?  You couldn’t really put your finger on what was missing, or what was wrong.

Author Patrick Lencioni has written a great book called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team that helps all managers better understand and diagnose what might be not quite right about their team.  Here are the five dysfunctions that often occur.

1.     Lack of trust  - Teams with an absence of trust don’t know each other well and they’re unwilling to ask for help or say I don’t know.  This is really important particularly with complex projects or engagements or if you have got new members coming on to a team.  The ability to say “I’m not sure” about something and ask for clarification is very important. So the first thing you want to see is what’s the level of trust among your team members.

2.     Lack of conflict  - We’re talking about the ability to talk about an issue or have an honest dialogue if you’re not agreeing with someone’s position or to ask for more information.

3.     Lack of commitment – Often we agree with each other in public, then we go after the meeting and start gossiping.  If you are unable to have conflict in a team, then you are obviously not going to get to a strong level of commitment and alignment.  One way to do this is to make sure that at the end of each meeting or conversation say “Do I have everybody’s buy-in”, and if not, let that person air their grievance or concern.

4.     Lack of accountability – Too often we rely on the leader to be accountable, and to hold us accountable.  We need to hold each other accountable.  That’s something you should be encouraging on your teams.  

5.     Lack of results – We don’t often have a sense of collective win.  We look at individual departments, individual agendas, or individual budgets.  Try and foster a sense of collective win in your team.

These are five elements or steps you can take to ensure a more productive working team that not only get along better and have a better rapport, but most importantly do a better job for the organisation.

If you haven’t taken the opportunity to sign up to the Every Tuesday Club with MBE (Management & Business Education), then do so today by going to www.buseducation.com.

Today I’d like to talk about the challenge that’s facing a lot of organisations in terms of continuing to have learning and development on a much smaller budget.

So we’ve got the same needs but a smaller bucket of money for training.  MBE’s area of expertise is learning and development, so let’s see what we can actually share with you that might be useful.

A lot of organisations are talking about consolidating at the moment, getting ready for when future opportunities present themselves. And your organisation is probably no different.

So we need to take the opportunity to up-skill and to get our team, our individuals, and our organisation ready for what the future holds.   There are four steps that I think are worth considering which might help.

1.     You need to identify and document what your learning and development needs are.  This starts at an organisation level, then look at it for teams and individuals.

2.     We need to prioritise those needs.  Which ones are we going to invest in now and which ones will need to wait until later.  In considering prioritising here are three criteria that might be useful.

1. Look for what things will have the biggest immediate impact on the business when things start improving.
2. Focus on talented performers and leaders – often investment here as an impact on others in the organisation and team.
3. Focus on the skills that are about coping with growth and change – because chances are what the future holds will not be the same as yesterday.

4.     Look at time and cost-effective options for learning and development.  This might be in-house small group training rather than sending one or two people to a conference, and that can sometimes involve getting the experts to come to you.  Self directed learning is also a good option, getting individuals to take responsibility for their learning.  Online there is a lot of information available.  Online learning such as webinars is becoming more popular and palatable.  See what options are cost-effective there.  Peer learning is also very good – getting those who have a high level of skills in the organisation to share those skills with others, so that it has better business impact.

5.     Make sure that any learning and development is leveraged.  This means making sure that what is learnt has an impact in the workplace.

Try it this week, and let me know how you and your team get on.

If you haven’t taken the opportunity to sign up to the Every Tuesday Club with MBE (Management & Business Education), then do so today by going to www.buseducation.com.

This week it’s all about you.  Let’s recognise that the most difficult part of our job is often the people element, trying to manage relationships and get good performance from our individuals and teams. 

Because this is the case, it’s worth saying “I’m trying different things and seeing what works and what doesn’t, and that is the best way to learn how to be a good leader”.

What works for you and your team is different to what works for another team or in another organisation.  So you can only learn by doing. 

To keep your energy levels up so you feel motivated to keep trying things as a people manager, remember these points.

·           Managing people is not easy, they are complex, they change every day, it is difficult to find the right mix and the right balance of leadership that will work for an individual in your team, let alone the collective of individuals in your team.  So make an effort and keep trying.  That’s what is the distinction between somebody who’s a successful leader and someone who isn’t so good.

·           We are aiming for progress, not perfection.  Try not to think that you need to be the best people manager there is, or the best leader that anyone’s ever seen.  The objective is to keep moving forward and keep improving.  Progress things and you’ll get the results you want.

·           Let yourself off the hook.  You’re human the same as other leaders.  You’ll do some things that on reflection you’ll say “hang on that wasn’t such a good thing to do”,  “that didn’t work so well”.  But be objective, step back and learn from that experience, and don’t give yourself a hard time and feel guilty about it.  That will prevent you from learning and moving forward and improving and becoming a better leader.

So try and keep your energy levels up this week, try different things, but do take time to stop and say “I’m doing a good job, well done”.

If you haven’t taken the opportunity to sign up to the Every Tuesday Club with MBE (Management & Business Education), then do so today by going to www.buseducation.com.

This week let’s talk about values.  Values are an important tool for leaders and managers to use.  They help you define the behaviour and your expectations as a boss.

Does your organisation have values?  Larger organisations have them displayed on the wall and use them in corporate documents.  But often when it gets down to a team level they don’t have as much meaning. 

You might work for an organisation that doesn’t have any written values.  I think it is a good idea as a leader to try at least within your team to define some values or expectations of behaviour.

Values fit into business strategy as describing how the work is done.  Why we do the work is often the mission or purpose.  The what we do is the objectives, but the how we do it is important to describe because often that is what determines quality.  The difference that separates you from the rest of your industry – your competitive advantage.  So defining it is of critical business importance.

Coming up with values for your team is easy.  Whether they already exist for your organisation or not.  If you don’t have anything to go by, there’s a simple process you can go through.

1.     Get a flip chart and sit your team down.  Draw a big square. 

2.     Inside the square ask your team members to write the dos of how they should work together and behave.  Being accountable might be one; another one might be sharing the work load. 

3.     Then on the outside of the square, ask them to write the don’ts.  Gossiping, putting people down at meetings, and so on.

4.     Once you have got this from them, you as the leader can go away and refine them and come up with some ground rules, phrases or words that describe the values and how your team will behave and work together. 

By going through that first step in the process of involving your team, gets buy-in, they’ll own the values as much as you will.  Once they’re established they’re good for you as a leader to use to reinforce what your expectations are from your team. 

Try it this week, and let me know how you and your team get on.

If you haven’t taken the opportunity to sign up to the Every Tuesday Club with MBE (Management & Business Education), then do so today by going to www.buseducation.com.