Ep187: WGTDG Issue #5 A new team struggling to get up to speed

Corey talks about our 5th issue in the What Great Teams Do Great issue series - how to help a new team that is struggling to get up to speed

Transcript

So in this series, each issue is presented with suggestion at suggested actions to help get your team back on the path to greatness, or on the path to greatness. And so here's the issue, a newly formed team is struggling to quickly get up to speed. Some team members barely know each other's names, let alone any of each other's roles and how they intersect. All right? So what do you do? So some of us can probably relate to this, right with some of the rapid changes in our organizations. We have these pop up teams sometimes, and we need to get to work, and we also need to have some connectivity with one another. And so this goes back to our model with what great teams do great and we need to make sure we're set up really well, and we need to answer the question, Who are we? Who are we? How are we connected to each other? And so one thing that's more kind of work related, more specific to roles and responsibilities, is we could actually start in a room, help each other, help each other map out the roles of the group, whether it's post it notes, or whether it's kind of whiteboarding and so on, or in a Zoom Room, and kind of using a board, we can ask each other, what do they think each other's roles are, and we can get people to start to brainstorm and think about the various roles and responsibilities that we all carry. What do you think other people's roles are? What do you and so on. And then we can kind of use that kind of process to kind of get a bunch of things out there in the world and help people then start to realize what each team member is doing uniquely in their roles, and what responsibilities they carry. Going forward, to get away a little bit from some of that roles and responsibility stuff, we highly recommend investing in some degree of visibility into who we are as people. Okay, one of the ways we can do that is we can actually ask people and invite them to think about, what are the people, places or passions in their life. What are the people, places or passions in their life that really bring them energy? And sometimes people might in some groups feel safe enough to actually share with their with their phones, with their smartphones, some of the pictures that represent the people, the places or the passions, and that's a way to start to get a glimpse as to who this teammate is across from me, to better understand where they're coming from, to better understand what makes them tick, what energizes them. And it's also important to establish some common ground, because we might find that in some of the ways they talk about their people, or some of the ways they talk about their places or their passions, we actually have some intersection, some common ground that helps to form a more bonded relationship, a more bonded teamwork, our team, team member going forward, and so that can be a really cool thing. And in some cases, we do recommend, if this is kind of a urgent piece to get the team really moving and accelerating off the ground, we should plan on investing a significant chunk kind of off site or in our days, to help the team get to know each other. So this might be a half day. This might be a couple days, but we should truly try to jump start this process so that we very quickly turn these strangers into people who we know each other and are connected to each other in some way, can start working more effectively together, and that activity becomes really important to create that connectivity. Another thing that's common in workplaces certainly is to bring to life, kind of our profiles through MBTI or disc and so on. These can be very useful in helping each other understand, kind of our natural, inborn preferences, and how those preferences shape our experience as teammates. It's a great way to start sharing and connecting across the group again, to see where we have some commonalities, where we have some differences, and all those are really critical again, going back to the Setup box and really starting to establish who are we on this team, what are we bringing to this team, not only in terms of roles and responsibilities, but also some of the people, the passions, the places in our lives that are important to us, some of the natural, inborn preferences that we're ultimately going to be able to express to the team and add value down the road. So again, we hope these are helpful. We hope this series is a quick hitting approach to helping you get on your way, or perhaps get unstuck with some of the ways that you're kind of working within your team today, so keep up the great work again. Thanks for tuning in. We look forward to seeing you for some more episodes. Take care. You.