Jean on Problem Solving

Transmissions, pistons, and filters rarely get top billing on car commercials but everyone knows that a failure in one of these can quickly require a tow truck. Service departments organize their maintenance of your complicated vehicle by inspecting each of the important systems regularly. Just like your car’s systems work together, your work group harnesses individual skills, motivation and effort to a create results that are greater than the sum of its parts. Here are ten things to check to evaluate your group’s collaboration competence:

1. Proximity: Members of your team must have ready access to one another live, via phone and via email. While synchronous (real-time) team communication is best, even asynchronous can work as long as team members check and respond to messages promptly.
2. Temperament: While your team may be composed of both introverts and extroverts, all members will need to adjust their natural styles to reflect “team temperament.” This means checking selfish behaviors at the door in favor of more collaborative way of thinking and acting. As members slip back into self-serving habits, you’ll need to nudge them back toward a team mindset.
3. Feedback Flow: Everyone in the group should be giving and receiving performance feedback effectively. The camaraderie that drives teams can only grow by telling the truth about how a member’s behavior affects the team. Withholding the truth or telling it poorly keeps lasting collaboration from developing.
4. Transparency in Information: All task-related information should be equally and readily available if collaboration is the goal. Few things quell motivation as much as discovering that someone has been working from incorrect information. Key information like business definitions, deadlines and responsibilities should be refreshed, reviewed and revealed regularly.
5. Fluency: How well do your work team members communicate with one another? Do they speak the same language when discussing work-related problems or do some people seem to be reading from a different book? As groups become more successful in collaborating, they often develop short-hand for communicating and begin sharing inside jokes. These are signs that a team has formed, but it can cause challenges when new members join.
6. Values Alignment: While all work groups have at least a vaguely defined mission to drive their work, some may believe in the mission more strongly than others do. In successful collaborations, none are reluctant to give their hearts to the cause. If there is something about the work at hand that conflicts with a member’s closely held personal beliefs, this could be a collaborative deal-breaker.
7. Physical Health: Few people can pull their weight in a collaborative endeavor if they have pressing concerns at a more basic level. Give your team members incentives to get well, stay well and actively take care of themselves. Neglecting physical health for the sake of business goal attainment seems like a short-term win but it’s actually a long-term loss. Set the example for your team by demonstrating your own healthy behavior.
8. Helping Instinct: Some people sense who needs help when, while others lack this awareness. The best collaborators are those who execute their own tasks successfully while still sensing how well the entire team is functioning. Managers, especially, must hone this skill and be willing to offer assistance instantly. If there are those in your group who have great instincts in this area, have them explain what they are doing so that others can learn.
9. Clean Slate Attitude: If groups are to work together for long, they must work through their differences without leaving wreckage. No one should keep a mental list of wrongs or allow grudges to build. A team that respects each of its members allows, even encourages, dissension and emerges from work-related confrontations without lasting injuries.
10. Focus Levelheadedness: As groups collaborate they move back and forth between tactical-level (task) work and strategic-level (planning/negotiation) work. If members of your work group fail to recognize what level of thinking daily situations require they will not only waste time and effort, they will also de-motivate each other. While certain team members may gravitate toward detailed thinking and others are pulled toward the “big picture,” both kinds of processing are needed for success. Great groups identify what thinking is needed then coach one another as they focus to perform the right level of work.

Before you notice strange sounds coming from under the hood of your department, perform this ten point inspection of your group’s collaboration competence. By regularly servicing each key area and making repairs early, you will build a work team that cruises along smoothly. Then all of you can enjoy the ride.