Straight-talking summary
This book is all about the simple things that make a team work well or even great, if you implement all the solutions. But it’s like everything else, it only works if you do. So whatever ideas and solutions you have picked up as you have gone through this book – implement them. To help you, here are the headlines for each of the ‘how to’ solutions:
Challenge 1: How do you build trust?
Encourage your team members to talk.
Disclosure breeds disclosure, leading to greater openness.
If openness is lacking where you work, you can decide what you are willing and prepared to share.
You must spend time getting to know each other.
Explain why it’s so important to know each other in order to work well together.
Keep promises.
Stop sticking your head in the sand (if you are)!
Challenge 2: How do you overcome conflicts or tensions?
Communicate, communicate, communicate.
Get together and ask constructive questions.
Assume positive intent.
Step into someone else’s shoes.
Connect up team members’ goals.
Let go of the need to be right.
Voice disagreement in a good way.
Challenge 3: How do you encourage everyone to share relevant information with each other?
It starts with you!
Make people aware of the effect.
Create and run ‘sharing PODS’ (Power Of Dynamic Sharing).
Link to the big picture.
Celebrate successes of when it’s worked and delivered results.
Dare to share.
Challenge 4: How do you create engagement?
Role-model personal response-ability.
Clearly communicate the team’s purpose and everyone’s role in it.
Tell people how they are doing.
Get members working on innovative new ways of doing the job.
Be genuinely interested in your team members.
Have ongoing development discussions.
Celebrate success. Make it contagious.
Build team self-esteem.
Challenge 5: How do you create transparency and respect?
Tell the truth.
Reward transparency.
Leaders = role models.
Actively reach out to stakeholders.
Answer questions transparently.
Have a value of transparency.
Make transparency mandatory.
Challenge 6: How do you encourage long-term thinking?
Balance short- and long-term reporting.
Develop people’s ability to think long-term.
Study the competition and the marketplace.
Be a ‘time owl’.
Set team goals and decide rewards.
Communicate the overall purpose.
Invest in team time.
Take a long-term view on your team members.
Make the big picture understandable.
Challenge 7: How do you create a team that delivers and is well perceived?
Performance management.
Create a success habit.
Take responsibility.
Reframe learnings into better solutions.
Ask for feedback to understand perception.
Manage your reputation.
Build your team’s brand.
Challenge 8: How do you get a team to manage change effectively?
Create a strategy and communication plan.
Slow down.
Positively reinforce strengths.
Communicate the change curve.
Recognise that you are not at the same stage of the change curve as others.
Demonstrate emotional intelligence.
Communicate, communicate, communicate.
Know that people are convinced in different ways.
Team decision-making.
Challenge 9: How do you get people working together ‘all for one and one for all’?
Stop gossiping and making assumptions.
Highlight reasons and benefits.
Virtual teams: create closeness as in onsite teams.
Get to ‘we’ talk.
Create transferable team skills set.
Talk respectfully to each other.
The answers are in the team.
Learn about and use the cultures in the team.
Rally together to overcome a shared challenge.
Challenge 10: How do you get everyone going in the same direction?
Create a vision.
Identify the common purpose together.
Make the purpose grounded.
Shared team responsibility.
Create a link.
Use a crisis to show you the way.
Give strengths-based feedback.
Create a team charter.
Regardless of what team challenges you face, keep this in mind: if you want to achieve real, lasting change, pay particular attention to behaviours (how you implement these solutions).
How we behave and conduct ourselves has an impact on others, creating a ripple effect.
It’s when we change our day-to-day behaviours that we can achieve transformational change.