How To Build Effective Team Work

Does your Work Team have Posted Rules of Team Behavior?  If you don’t, it could explain why your work team acts more like the crew from animal house, than your dream team pulling together and crossing the finish line to the music from Chariots of Fire.

Do you shake your head and wonder “Why can’t everyone just get along and work together?”   “Why do I feel like I’m mediating and babysitting verses facilitating a self- directed group of business professionals?”

Management is often quick to document small procedural and operational infractions of rules in their business units, while the “workplace bully” is free to roam and terrorize at large with inappropriate communication to both managers and fellow employees. The cost: much higher than any operational infraction with loss of productivity and good employees to the cancer that is “Negativity in the Workplace”

The answer may be in the Rule Book or the absence thereof.

What is critical is following what I call the CSI formula:  No, don’t bring your rotten employee in for an autopsy, though some I assure you are sucking the life out of your organization, but do follow and document the evidence of “Unacceptable Team Behavior.”  The problem encountered in business organizations however is that there is often an absence of Posted Rules of the Road for team behavior and communication.  Every work team needs those rules, even family teams.  Just imagine if for every couple, and in ever family, there were printed rules for how we manage eventual family conflict and WE FOLLOWED THEM .

I was amazed at reading the statistical percentage (in the high 90’s) of psychologists who can predict with uncanny accuracy who will be divorced and not  - based on a 15 minute observations of the couple in common dialogue.  In essence how they follow the rules of respectful communication, regardless of the issue was the determinant factor.

The following is a small excerpt of rules from various self-directed work teams--- Don’t copy them, but do use them as a springboard for the design of your own Team Rule Book. Remember, without rules; expect flagrant violations, zero enforcement and lack of team synergy.

Sample of Team Rules:

1. We are Solution Oriented, Not Problem Focused.  When identifying any problem, we always provide at least 1 solution.

2. We seek to have all of our customers and team members feel “Trusted, Important, Special and Pleased” through respectful verbal and non-verbal communication.

3.  We address any workplace conflict within 24 hours or it did not happen.

4. We look for the good in other people, recognizing if we don’t we’ll never know any good people.

5. We refrain from destructive inner-office gossip recognizing the negative impact on our team.

6. We have fun working together and celebrate our accomplishments.

7. We begin each work-day with a positive greeting, recognizing the first 15 minutes of the day often sets the team environment.