Recognizing Collaboration and Successful Team Building When You See It
by Dianne Crampton
Copyright ©2009 TIGERS Success Series, Bend, OR
On a tour of Zappos recently, our tour guide – fondly referred to as Peanut by her coworkers -- was asked if team members compete against one another for rewards. Peanut pondered the question for a minute and said, “I’m not sure if I understand your question. We have a competition for the best attendance, is that what you mean?”
This type of response is typical from an employee in a true Team Culture. The thought of pitting one team member against another for rewards that would advance one career over another, is not within the team’s development plan for two reasons. The first, it splinters team loyalty, frays relationships and lays the foundation for mistrust. Secondly, it erodes trust, thereby blocking the upward growth and improvement of overall team intelligence.
For example, smart teams will always excel against companies whose corporate process rewards the individual or when team building is morphed from an internally competitive framework. In the example of Zappos, a team of six project managers achieves more goals than the industry average of 30 project managers for a comparably sized organization.
With regards to Peanut’s response, if competition exists it is in the realm of becoming a better person – healthier, more fit, more generous as a mentor, or a better team citizen. In these areas rewards are sometime given not only to the employee, but to the employee’s family as well.
Zappos, for example recognizes out-of-the-ordinary excellence for supporting other team members with a weekly Random Acts of Kindness award. And team cultures like Toyota will recognize the family for an employee’s outstanding attendance.
The practice of not pitting one team member against another, or one internal team against another evolves from the universal team value, interdependence. Interdependence is based on principles of collaboration and the notion, if we win, I win. Watch a short movie (1 minute 35 seconds) that you are welcome to forward to others, and that gets to the heart of collaboration and other team skills.
Interdependence requires a higher level of individual maturity, personal accountability and self reflection than what’s expected of employees in a non-team culture.
For this reason, true team cultures are difficult to get into. Careful screening and evaluation goes into bringing an employee candidate on board. And the on-boarding process itself is geared to the employee’s optimum success. This means that much of the awkward stress and confusion that goes with learning a new job and becoming comfortable with team personalities is minimized to maximize the collective win.
Here is a team interdependence tip. Today, I suggest you find one action you can take by 12:00 midnight that helps another person achieve something or improves the life of another. Make it a selfless act of kindness. It can be as simple as letting someone into your traffic lane with a smile and thumbs up. Make a notation in your personal leadership journal and follow up with introspective observations such as noting resistance, more ease, greater cooperation from others, etc. And, by all means, do not tell anyone you are doing this. Make this a personal and private study with a daily action for the next 30 days.
Get a free white paper that discusses behaviors that build team interdependence and behaviors that will predictably tear interdependence down.
|
