How to Harness the Power of Your Team from Any Seat!

• "What’s that guy even doing here?"
• "Worse yet…What am I doing here?"
• "Are we still working on this? I thought we were going to be done by the 14th!"
• "Aren’t we all supposed to be here for the Tuesday meetings?"
• "Wait, what? That’s what you were expecting? I had no idea! That never even crossed my mind!"
• "Why on earth would you do it that way?"

Have you ever uttered any thoughts like these? Out loud to someone else, or maybe just in your head?

Chances are pretty high that you have. And the more of us on one team who have more of these thoughts, the less productive and healthy we are as a team.

Stuff like this gets in the way of great performance. It gets in the way of good relationships. It gets in the way of psychological safety. It gets in the way of productivity.

It gets in the way of great workdays.

But you already know all that.

Maybe what you don’t know is that you have the power to prevent it and to fix it when it happens – and you don’t have to wait any longer. Ready?

Putting a group of people together in a room or on a project or working group doesn’t make them a team; unless we’re intentional about it, they’re still just a group of individuals. Building team dynamics demands some attention to the forming and storming and norming of teams before we get to performing – but we don’t always have the luxury of time to go through these stages. Sometimes, as individuals, we’re accountable for leading the team, while other times, we can influence from our non-leadership seats.

It turns out that each of us has the ability to be a helpful team member and help influence those around us to adopt the characteristics of a high-performing, psychologically safe, effective team, regardless of which seat in the team we occupy.

When we understand that, and when we’re all operating as high performing team members, we can become a self-organizing, self-governing team that moves effectively through deliverables, routines, changes, obstacles, and even temporary absences of team members.

So how do we do this?

If you’re working with a newly forming team:

Putting a group of people together in a room doesn’t make them a team; unless we’re intentional about it, they’re still just a group of individuals. So let’s be intentional. Building team dynamics demands some attention to the forming, storming, and norming of teams before we get to performing. 

1. Forming the team requires a little bit of understanding of who each person is. It’s important to take some time for the team to come together, virtually or in person, to build relationships and form bonds together. One of the surest ways to unite people and to move them from “I” to “we” is through a shared purpose, a common mission, or vision of where we’re headed.
2. They don’t call it “storming” for nothing. Be patient while there are potential personality clashes, collisions of communication styles, differences of opinion, and stylistic differences. This is a great time to not “major in the minors.” As a group, decide what’s most important and focus on that; let the small stuff be the small stuff.
3. Creating “norms” is a great way to codify what you’ve talked about. The tool we introduce in the Harnessing the Power of Your Team session with the accompanying tool, introduces norms specifically related to communication as well as norms related to all the other ways we interact with each other. We like to use the word “norms” instead of “rules” which feels more collaborative, as in “this is what we’ve chosen as the norm for us” rather than “these are the rules we have to abide by.”
4. Sometimes, while we “perform” we revert back to our old behaviors if we aren’t diligent. This is a great reason to keep tools like the one we introduced, in front of us, so we have a constant reminder of what we’ve agreed to. We get what we measure, and what gets talked about gets done, so we want to keep this at the forefront if it’s important to us!

The fun part about a tool like this, though, is you can use it just as effectively for a team that’s already in flight, even if you’re not the leader! It’s such a great way for any member of the team to offer to help the team achieve greatness! 

If you’re working with an in-tact team:

A key element of a healthy, safe, and productive team is a healthy level of self-awareness. This means that you’ve got a sense of what’s working and what’s not. What’s going well and what could use some work.

Take a moment to watch the recording of the session and then give this a try…

1. Ask around to see if you’ve got a group quote that helps rally the group around something fun, funny, lighthearted, or motivating. Maybe it’s something that makes you all laugh!
2. Take a moment to clarify and publish roles and responsibilities. One fun way to kick start this conversation is with the “informal” roles. For example, perhaps it’s clear that your team has a PM, a BA, and a QA Lead, but you might take a moment to have a little fun at your next team meeting to offer up “trivia expert” or “tech whisperer” or “strongest advocate for bring your pet to work day”.
3. Genuinely pause the next time you send an email or an instant message to ask your teammates if this is the communication mode they prefer, and then raise it as an agenda item at your next team meeting to see what other communication norms would be best. 

Whether you’re a new group or an existing group; whether you’re leading or a member of the team, harnessing the power of that team with this tool is super simple! Make sure to check out the recording to follow the instructions for this tool!

Regardless of how much or how little time you have with your team, and how much or how little authority you have over the team itself, this approach will help you positively influence your team to greatness, setting the stage both for holding each other accountable for effective behaviors and for offering grace and forgiveness when we misstep.