[Partnerwerks TeamWisdom Tips] The Main Thing
THE MAIN THING
10-Second TeamWisdom: The main thing great
team leaders do is keep the team's main thing
the main thing.
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Last issue I told you the second thing great
team leaders do (remember the first?) is get
everyone in the team feeling like they are in
the same boat together. This is strongly
supported by anecdotal evidence and empirical
research. For instance the Knowledge Team
Effectiveness Profile (KTEP) shows that
Clarity of Purpose is highly correlated with
Inspirational Leadership and Project
Management which are correlated with
effective communication processes, and
together they predict effective team dynamics
(http://www.Great-Teams.com).
Recently I asked members of a management team
with whom I was working to individually write
down the purpose of their team, then we
listed each statement on the board. Want to
know something interesting? Most of them
thought their statements were pretty similar,
and congratulated themselves. I thought the
statements were diverse and portended poorly
for the managers to truly act as a team.
That this group thought their statements were
similar was not unique as management "teams"
go. As long as they are in the same ballpark,
management staffs often feel relatively
aligned (I don't find this "relativism" as
much with project teams). However,
"relatively aligned" is not enough to predict
high performance as a team. Someone smart and
funny once said "the main thing is to make
the main thing the main thing." The problem
with being "relatively aligned" is that there
are as many "main things" as there are team
members. And that's not good.
Here is the recipe for making the main thing
the main thing:
Talk about and decide with your team what the
team must be in pursuit of (the main thing)
as a team in order to call itself a team
(that's right, a team isn't defined by the
membership but by what it is a team to do). I
don't care whether you call it a goal, task,
purpose, mission, or what. What I do care
about is that it meets these three criteria:
1. It requires contributions from each and
every member,
2. It's larger than any one member can
accomplish, and,
3. No member can claim individual victory
until the collective "main thing" is
successfully accomplished.
Get started with this issue's 5-Minute
Practice Tip.
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great messages on responsible leadership,
teamwork, or change at your next event.
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5-Minute Practice Tip: Check the alignment of
any team, collaboration, or partnership by
first writing down what you think the main
thing is for that partnership. Make sure it
fits the criteria I give above. Then contact
anyone else involved and ask them what the
main thing is. You are looking for complete
-- not relative -- alignment.
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Get "Teamwork Is an Individual Skill: Getting
Your Work Done When Sharing Responsibility"
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© Christopher Avery, 1999-2004. Permission
granted to forward in its entirety. All other
rights reserved. Contact for reprint
permission.
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Statistic: Clarity of Purpose correlates
above .60 with Knowledge Sharing, above .60
with Inspirational Leadership, and above .55
with Project Management for teams in the KTEP
database.
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