Episode #242: Effective Team Building Is Not A Snap

You are sitting there at your desk beavering away as usual when you get the phone call. Suddenly you are called upstairs by your boss to their office. You are informed there is a new project needed and that “we want you to head up a new team to get it done. There is a lot counting on this and time is of the upmost urgency”. This is good and bad. You are already very busy with a bunch of other work not yet completed and this project sounds very high risk. If the project doesn’t get done well and on time, you know your head is on the block. On the other hand it is a chance to shine and show the big bosses you are more than ready to join their elite company.

The only problem is you cannot do the whole project by yourself. Fortunately, you have been given permission to pull together the team you need to get the job done. In a perfect world, like you see in the movies, you would be selecting the all star team of high achievers and the most motivated dudes and dudesses on the planet. Not going to happen.

You will have trouble getting anyone initially because no one is available and the talented few are totally locked in to other projects. You will get the team you can get, not necessarily the team you want.

This will be a new team and therein resides a raft of complexities right away. You are highly motivated because it is a make or break chance for you. For the team members it is an additional burden in their work lives they feel they don’t really need. We have to disengage them from their existing work to make space for the new project. No one is happy about doing that by the way because they know their current tasks aren’t going to be magically completed by someone else, while they are working on this project for you.

You might have been given the authority to create the team but the members hearts and minds are not something that can be won over by fiat. How can you get them enthused and motivated about the project? It sounds like a cliché but you need to establish the WHY we are doing this project through the Vision for the team.

This cannot be an email you send out alerting everyone to the new team Vision. We need buy in. “People own the world they help to create” tells us they need to be the ones who create the Vision. We need to use our communication skills to explain the veracity and urgency of the WHY of the project. Having done that we need the team members to create the Vision. This will be the guiding light for going forward.

The team collectively completes the project. That means each person has to be motivated to work hard on the project. They have to defend milestones, to adhere to quality standards, to be accountable and to get on with each other and with you.

The getting on with you is not a given. You have to earn their respect, commitment and effort. You can threaten them with diabolical outcomes if they don’t toe the line and try and put the fear of God into them, so that they get with the programme. Stupid idea – don’t do that. You will only ever get partial buy in at best. At worst, they may even sabotage the project to see you ejected out of the organization once it fails. Instead use human relations skills to create the environment where they will motivate themselves to do an excellent job.

Here are some basics in human relations skills that will help you to create a team of believers, rather than resisters.

Become genuinely interested in other people

The key word here is genuine. People can spot fake interest from far away. By talking with them about themselves we can understand what motivates them. Everyone is different so no “one size fits all” type of approach will work. You need to understand what excites them individually , what is important to them and find a way that this project will deliver that for them.

Smile

Sound so simple. Except that busy people, time pressed types, stressed individuals forget to smile. This could easily be you or become you. When you engage with your team you have to remember to start every interaction with a smile. People will gravitate to people they like and there is nothing more powerful than a smile to build a strong bond between people. Forget that fake smile business, this has to be genuine. You will be surprised how little you actually smile at work. We are all so serious at the office, we just train our facial muscles to scowl and show worry, more than we train them to radiate goodness and light.

Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.

We are usually poor listeners, especially bosses. We are in the habit of making announcements, firing out orders, issuing directives, scolding poor performance, and telling others what to do. We are always perpetually super busy, so time is money and short form communication using headlines becomes the norm.

‘The trigger to our engagement of staff is creating the strong feeling of being valued. There is nothing more powerful that listening to your team members for creating motivation. When we really listen to them, they feel they are valued, that what they do is appreciated, that they make a difference around here. Telling them what to do just doesn’t stimulate that level of emotional commitment to any great extent. We listen to learn what motivates them, to hear what concerns them, to build empathy with them. This is powerful.

Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.

Our team members have one constant thought - what is in it for me? If we keep their perspective at the forefront of our minds when we are talking to our team members, our communication skills and persuasion skills will be excellent. Forget about what you want. What do they want and how can this project bring it to them? If we talk about the wonderfulness of the project in its own right that might make us the boss feel good. The team members are much more interested in how this project is going to be wonderful in helping them get their goals met.

Leading isn’t about being the most gifted technician, the one best with numbers, the grey beard with the most experience, the hardest of the hard skillers. It is about getting the team to function well together because their commitment is sky high. The reason it is sky high is because you are an outstanding team leader who knows how to use these human relations principles and use them in a genuine not manipulative way. People are not stupid. They can tell if you are genuinely interested in helping them meet their goals or not.

Be genuinely interested in your team and your projects will be successful. You will be given more and more responsibility. The leader who can have people willingly follow is the leader that every company wants. Become that leader.