Congratulations! You have been a star performer and now they have given you a team to manage.
There is a good chance the performance of everybody involved, including you, may now drop unless things are put in place to construct team success. Teams do not spontaneously form and start transitioning themselves to high performance. Its an informed, deliberate, facilitated, professional process with a good smattering of science (organisational psychology) thrown in.
Teams come in all shapes and sizes but they are all a human soup of hopes, beliefs, motives, skills, capabilities, fears, and expectations. Like all organic things they only have 2 states - growth or decay. And now you have to decide what to do.The obvious answer - is get help!
Like humans, teams have a life-cycle: Forming, growing, plateau, and decline and renewal. If you have one or more new members you are at the forming stage but you can get stuck there if the right things are not done. I still think its incredible that people don't do a more regular and professional team health check. It should be in the calendar now.
GOALS and ROLES: The first thing to do is to check if the team has a goal and if it is really shared. Everyone on the team should see everyone else's goals and be able to see how the team goal is reflected. All team members should be able to have a say in any areas of perceived conflict and those areas where people cannot achieve their goals without cooperation from others, especially others on the team. This is best done as a facilitated exercise. What you are going for is goal alignment and checking for goal conflict or worse, role conflict.
WHAT TEAMS DO: Teams are there to do 2 things:-
1. They meet and communicate
2. They make decisions
The obvious question is how effective are the meetings and more importantly how constructive are they. By talking to teams about what goes on we can figure out what behaviour is tolerated and rewarded and encouraged. This is the personality of the team - as evidenced by its team norms. Some norms can be great and some can be toxic and even terminal. A norm that permeates most teams in a Company is its culture. It is vital to understand the norms, or rules, of a team and the more explicit the better - such as in a team charter.
Teams should be observed: Who speaks, who listens, is there respect, are some withdrawn, is there energy. A good team leader takes these cues very seriously because you may have noticed it but the team members are feeling it and talking about it in and out of work.
The best way to figure out if a meeting was good is if it ended with more energy than it started. If it didn't someone or something is sucking the oxygen out.
Decisions are about process and also about power. It is important to know that both things will be present in some capacity and either it will be in the service of the team or it will be derailing them. I like 2 simple process checks - did the leader speak last, and was there equanimity in the air time. Teams are not democratic but democratic principles can help. It is important that all team members know how decisions get taken in a team.
Something few people think about is that when you get to be a team leader the way you contribute to the Company changes. Prior to that you were noticed for your individual awesomeness - ability to drive toward goals and ability to learn most likely. You probably adopted those qualities because somewhere along the line you likely had a good mentor.
Now you need your new team members to be as awesome as you were so that instead of the team having only one you - there are now 8. But how do you cause goal attainment and learning in others? That would be your new role. The new keys become ability to coach, and the ability to foster great teamwork. Both are learned but neither is usually taught and often new team leaders are left to figure it out themselves.
If you are a new leader, because teamwork doesn't just fall from the sky, there are 2 things you need to ask your Company for:-
1. A coach to help you transition
2. A facilitator who can help you set up your new team for success.
Needless to say .. that's what our Company does.
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