Tools for Team Leadership: Delivering the X-Factor in Team eXcellence - page 38

Summary

This chapter has emphasized the supreme importance of making sure your teams have a clear sense of direction. Team charters spell out the reasons for the existence of the team and what is expected of its members. Leaders provide the X-factor by communicating upward with management to ensure that the mission and vision for the team are clear. Leaders must also communicate with the team members themselves to establish SMART goal statements that enable them to know whether they are in flow. You know what is needed (a clear sense of direction) and you will need great negotiation and communication skills to get there.

After-Chapter Review

Now that you have completed reading this chapter, it is time for you to challenge yourself to see what you remember, establish what it is you learned, and decide where and how you are going to apply what you learned. The outline provided below can help you get started. The relevancy of this chapter may necessitate that you expand on your thoughts elsewhere. Make sure you benefit from your reading by capturing your thoughts and turning them into actions.

Describe at least five things you remember from the material in this chapter.
Identify the insights you gained from reading the material in this chapter. These insights may have come directly from the points raised or by stimulating recollections of your own experiences.
Identify at least one situational opportunity for applying what you learned and describe the steps to be taken (including who will do what with whom, where, and when).

Situational opportunity:

Steps to be taken:

Chapter 5: Communicate, Communicate, Communicate ”Sharing, Listening, Providing Feedback

Overview

Do you have friends or relatives who talk a lot but say very little? Relate detail after detail but some-how never seem to get to the point? Tell the same stories at every family get-together? Or do you know people who repeatedly complain about every little way they have been slighted or wronged but never seem to bring up how they may have contributed to the situation? How about people who gossip about everyone else ”into everyone else's business but unable to take care of their own? Or do you have a friend or relative who announces a schedule to the group like an activity director on a cruise line? Or do you know someone who talks and socializes and never helps with whatever needs to get done or cleaned up? Or someone who sits at the table and doesn't speak unless spoken to and then only gives one-word answers?

Most families and circles of friends include one or more of these characters . We usually put up with them; in fact, we actually love them (most days]. We have grown to accept their idiosyncrasies because we know these people are likely to be a part of our life for years to come.

Things are often much the same on teams. However, our teams are members of our work organization and we need to get things done. We need to develop levels of acceptance similar to those we have with our eccentric family members and friends while somehow making our communications more productive. This chapter focuses on helping you to gain more specific insight about the communication problems on your team and to help members past the obstacles, without expecting perfection .

Importance of Communication

Virtually every team I have worked with has complained about a communication problem. I never doubt that their complaints are valid, but when they say, "We have a communication problem," that doesn't tell me enough. In fact, this has become a fashionable way for organizations to express concern in a way that doesn't point the blame at any one individual. Nevertheless, the ability to communicate is a crucial skill for leaders and members alike to create the synergy of which teams are capable. Your ability as leader to communicate will determine to a large extent your potential for helping a team help itself.