So, you bring 15 people together and call them a team. They’re a team, right? Probably not.
Katzenbach and Smith tell us that “a team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and an approach for which they are mutually accountable.” That doesn’t happen automatically. It requires some hard work.
Unfortunately, this is a question that gets asked way too often. It seems that many of us experience situations that break our standing trust with others.
Let’s make sure we understand where trust begins. Trust begins with making yourself vulnerable. That means that you accept the possibility of being hurt. But, because of the individual, or who they represent, we hope that good and desirable things will happen.
Trust is formed using four categories: Reputation, Intent, Credentials, and Experience. We build trust through each of these categories over time. Usually, it takes quite a bit of time to mature real trust.
A great foundation for team-formation training is the team charter. A team charter is “the rules of the game.” Everyone involved in the team needs to agree with and abide by the rules.
Here are the important sections of a team charter and a bit of explanation and rationale:
TEAM NAME: What will the team call itself? This is a great opportunity for some creativity and team identity (e.g. Bill and the Cover Girls – a team that puts the covers on production boxes).
TEAM MISSION (What / Why): Why was the team formed? What is the business rationale?
When my parents passed away, the family had to clear out their house to prepare it for sale. My brother and his wife came across a stack of report cards for my K-12 education. The stack included my kindergarten report card.
When I thought about the “Personal and Social Growth” items on my kindergarten report card, I recognized the kinds of behaviors that should be exhibited throughout our lives, not just in kindergarten.
Simply, a meeting is intended to bring the right people together to accomplish some important task at the right point in time. Many people find meetings to be distractions from getting work done. Perhaps some improvement might change that.
It’s been my experience that there are only a few reasons to have a meeting. There are many tools that can help in accomplishing the intended purpose:
Macomb-OU Incubator 