58. Analyze What You Can Do to Improve

When you reach the cohesion stage of team building, it is easy to become complacent. Perhaps you feel you deserve a break. Your team is coming to you with problems less often. The members are making their own decisions. They are setting personal team goals that surpass company goals. You see your role now as their cheerleader and coach. When they succeed, you praise them. When they start getting off track, you guide them back. It is nice having extra time to do your own work without interruption. How long are things going to stay this way? Now that you have extra time, make time for regular review and analysis. Unless you review and analyze, you will not know what you can improve.

Performance Prompts

• Ask for ideas and suggestions from each team member.

• Be open to their ideas and suggestions, and act on practical ones.

• Stay actively involved in conflict-resolution and problem-solving meetings.

• In meetings, encourage everyone to participate and listen closely to what people say.

• Foster an environment of independent thinking, and listen receptively when coworkers bring you their input.

• Respect everyone’s right to differing opinions. Good ideas are often borne out of a difference of opinion.

• Monitor your mission and plan. Update them when you need to make changes.

• Monitor your team goals. When you reach them, set new goals.

• Look at all areas to see what can be improved.

• When new employees join your team, spend time integrating them into your team. Work with the new and existing coworkers on each step of team building, and monitor their progress.

• When implementing new procedures, work through the change process, but understand that with change may come a breakdown in team cohesiveness. Work to bring the team back to a high level of cooperation.

When This Happens ...

Things were running smoothly until you implemented a change in work assignments. You trained coworkers in the new procedures, but production has slipped and your team seems out of focus.

Try This

The four stages of team building are communication, cooperation, creativity, and cohesion. There is, however, one additional stage—continuance. It is up to you to keep your team cohesive. The only way to achieve this is to keep assessing the team’s performance. As necessary, go back to an earlier stage of team building and move forward again. Try to find out why team members seem out of focus. Then, help them become a cohesive team again.

Never become complacent. Always be on the lookout for ways to improve.