I would be lying if I say that there is only one secret in getting a team put forward its best efforts. But I think, one of the most important factor, especially when a team is formed, is to ‘get to know each other, quite well’.
I realized this when one of my colleague at my previous work-place told me her story. She was made the team lead of a global team of 7 members, mid way in a project. She was shocked to see that the project was in shambles. The team members were not co-operating with each other, they were not producing deliverables timely and of suitable quality. She realized that their was an air of animosity between the team members, they were not trusting each other.
She was puzzled. What she then did was very surprising to me. She announced on her second team call that from now on, they would have team calls every 3 days(instead of bi-weekly) and everybody in the team will get to host/lead the meeting on a rotation basis. Also, he/she would have to arrange a ‘fun’ session for 10 minutes for that call. Team members were really surprised and confused as to why they should do it and how.
Anyways, the meetings started and the effects started becoming visible in 3-4 meetings. The hosts tried a variety of creative ‘fun’ things such as, identifying each other’s babies from their photos, short hobby discussion, identifying types of pumpkins from their photos, describing each other in a short tweet with hash tags etc. The result of all these activities were that the members started developing a sense of ownership as they were now leading the things, when asked to. And they were getting more involved in the project and with each other. They started knowing each other more closely, their interests, their strengths, their likes and dislikes and realized that they are working on a shared goal. Collaboration started happening naturally due to this mutual trust and a sense of responsibility.
As you would guess, the project got back on line and the team was able to finish off the project in time and the client was very appreciative of the work effort.
She confessed to me that she herself had no clue as to what would happen next, after announcing this initiative. And she was amazed to see the power of such simple things. Indeed, a simple step to facilitate the initial introduction and develop that level of trust had produced great co-operation and high team productivity.
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