In teams, and especially between teams, it is common to pass the buck, point the finger and in general pass on responsibility to someone else. When the pressure is on, mistakes happen, and no-one wants to be seen as the cause. Marketing blames sales, sales blames production and production blames operations or Tapi in Hebrew
Even when we are just throwing a ball around in a workshop people often move to their fallback position of passing on responsibility and ensuring they come out looking good.
In every organization there are mistakes and failures along the way. So whose fault is it? I often answer that it is 100% personal responsibility and 100% team responsibility.
On the one hand the individual is expected to be highly professional, full of energy, focused on results and coordinate with their team mates.
The team in turn must create an environment of goal achievement, where decisions taken are carried out, different views are allowed, members are supported, communication is seamless and learning revered.
This means that any team building development must focus on the team and on the individuals’ learning in parallel. In addition to team meetings or workshops, time and energy must be invested in personal and interpersonal feedback, identifying and celebrating personal strengths and moderating personal behaviours that negatively affect a team’s progress.
A management team was having a hard time listening to each other, developing ideas, making decisions and carrying out a task. After the workshop activity there was an atmosphere of mourning. Instead of talking about the team again, each person was required to describe one behavior that they displayed that obstructed the team’s progress. The result was that they finally started to take responsibility for what was happening in the team. Team members began moderating their behaviours and even the more reticent ones began to influence others to keep things on track.
The message to managers is that in order to upgrade your team, you need to act on both personal and team levels.
Richard Milecki
mileckiblog 