how to build a team:Using Vision, Commitment & Trust

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MANAGEMENT how to build a team

Using

Vision,Commitment & Trust From High Performance Teamwork training

course The

moment you start doing anything at all with another person, you've established

a team. Begin a conversation, pick up the phone, brainstorm an idea and you're

in teamwork. Start with Your Ability to Relate

Every possibility, from landing the

contract to the romantic evening hinges on your ability to relate. But neither

profit nor pleasure are the primary motivation for teamwork. Productive

teamwork moves you toward challenge, through change, with more confidence.

Working well on any team generates energy and enthusiasm for life.

Some are More Skilled than

Others This

ability is learned. You do not need complex interaction formulas. You don't

have to be easy-going, well-educated, hard-nosed, or even especially

intelligent to build a team. You don't have to be anything other than yourself.

You can be effective with people using common sense and a few fundamental

principles. 1. Vision Vision

means being able to excite the team with large, desired outcomes.

Large outcomes mean devising goals

that attract missionaries. The first step in vision is to project such a goal.

This goal must be bigger than a pay check. It must contain challenge, appeal to

personal pride, and provide an opportunity to make a difference and know it.

Then the goal can become a powerful vision.

Next, team leaders position the goal by

picturing success. Initial questions might be, "What will it look like when we

get there?", "What will success be like, feel like?," "How will others know?"

When a large, missionary-friendly goal has been pictured and clearly

communicated, the vision is complete.

2. Commitment

Commitment can be a dangerous concept

because of its attendant assumptions. Some may assume, for example, that

commitment means long hours, while to others it may mean productivity. When

expectations are defined, success rates soar. When leaders assume that everyone

"should" be committed, as a matter of course, we overlook the difficulties many

have with certain commitments.

If people cannot initially commit, it

doesn't mean they don't care. More often, it means they do care, and they are

caught up in a process of doubt. This process precedes every meaningful

commitment. Effective leaders catalyze this process, so that the critical mass

of people can pass through this stage efficiently on their way to genuine

commitment and innovative strategies.

This pre-commitment process is the same

for team leaders and members. When we ponder a new commitment, we climb up to a

kind of mental diving board. Commitments contain unknowns, and some warn of

possible failure. It is common for people to neither jump nor climb back down

the "ladder," but rather to stay stuck at the end of the board, immobilized in

pros, cons, obstacles, and worries. In this state of mind, the obstacles begin

to rule, obscuring the vision, blunting motivation.

When leaders do not understand the

commitment process they tend to seek accountability without providing support.

Without a means to process doubts and fears, people often feel pressured to

commit, but can't. One option, often unconscious, is to pretend to commit, to

say "yes" and mean "maybe" at best. The pretended commitment is a form of

wholly unnecessary corporate madness.

The solution to this set of problems is

two fold: establish an atmosphere of trust, and within that atmosphere

encourage inclusion. 3. Trust Trust is

the antidote to the fears and risks attendant to meaningful commitment. Trust

means confidence in team leadership and vision. When trust prevails, team

members are more willing to go through a difficult process, supported through

ups, downs, risk and potential loss.

Trust is most efficiently established

when leadership commits to vision first, and everyone knows those commitments

are genuine. The process for leaders to commit is the same as for everyone

else: assess pre-commitment doubts, questions, unknowns and fears. This

involves three simple steps:

• List the unknowns.

• Assess worst case scenarios and their survivability.

• Research the unknowns.

The list of unknowns reveals some

answers and further questions. Some of these questions lend themselves to

research (others' experience, a small pilot plan), and some have no apparent

answers from our pre-commitment position. These latter comprise the bottom line

or irreducible risk. We learn the outcome only after commitment. Every major

commitment contains some irreducible risk, some lingering unknowns. We

therefore make every major commitment in at least partial ignorance.

Leadership now understands the

potential loss and gain involved in the new vision. At this point, leadership

can commit itself, and prepare to include other team members. That preparation

must include a plan for leadership to share visibly both risk and reward with

the other team members who will be coming on board.

With leadership's commitment to a clear

vision, and a genuine plan to share risks and rewards, the atmosphere for trust

is in place. We are now ready to include others in our team effort.

4. Inclusion Inclusion means getting others to commit to the team effort, helping

others through their "diving board doubts" to genuine commitment. Since leaders

now understand this process first hand, we need only communicate with the

potential team members to complete inclusion.

The best setting to obtain buy-in and

build trust is in small groups that facilitate thorough give and take. The

basic tasks are to communicate the vision, make sure it is understood,

communicate leadership's commitment (including sharing risk and reward, and

how), and elicit and address peoples' doubts.

Leaders will need three communication

skills to achieve inclusion. These are the non-assumptive question, good

listening, and directed response.

1. Non-assumptive questions ("What do you

think?", "Can you tell me what is happening with this report?") invite real

answers because they are inclusive, not intrusive. Questions containing

assumptions ("Why are you skeptical?" , "Why is this report so incomplete?")

invite defensiveness. When converting an atmosphere of change and possibly

skepticism to trust, added defensiveness is counter-productive.

2. Listening means separating the process of

taking in information from the process of judging it. Kept separate, both

processes are valuable. Mixed, especially when the receiver is a designated

leader, the sender is invited to stop communicating or to change the message

midstream. 3. Directed response. Effective team leaders

demonstrate responsiveness. Since leaders have already processed their own

pre-commitment doubts, many questions can be answered on the spot. Some require

research and a time line for response. And some, which relate to the bottom

line, irreducible risk, require a truthful "I don't know. I'm in the same soup

as you." 5. Help

Exchange The final step

in creating the team is to establish a corroborative, balanced strategy for

reaching the committed vision. This plan will consist of all of the tasks and

help exchange necessary to realize the overall vision. Your teammates

themselves are in the best position to supply this information. Since by this

time you have laid the groundwork for trust, and established good buy-in, your

teammates are likely to be enthusiastically cooperative.

At this point, the leadership role is to

catalyze consensus, not to issue orders. Consensus means that team members

agree to, whether they necessarily agree with, a particular approach. Consensus

occurs easily when most feel their ideas were heard and considered, whether or

not the team ultimately chooses those ideas. Obtaining consensus again requires

use of leadership communication skills: non-assumptive questions, good

listening, and directed response.

Effective teams often produce lively

discussions of divergent viewpoints before reaching consensus. Diverse views

can mean unresolved argument, or they can mean increased team intelligence and

ultimate consensus.

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