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In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing expanding world, teamwork is becoming a more and more essential soft skill for everyone from the CEO to the night guard. Sadly, it is in the area of soft skills that men often find themselves lacking. So what follows is the process that I have used through my Naval and professional career that any man can take to ensure the effectiveness of the team whether you are a team member or a team leader.
First, I read the group I’m working with and be what they need me to be. Obviously, this requires some self-awareness of your strengths and capabilities but that’s not what we are talking about today. Some examples of this can be really easy to figure out really early in the process. Has your team been assigned to do a task and everyone is sitting around twiddling their thumbs? This team needs a leader. So you can step up and organize and lead or if you know that a member of the group is a better leader for this particular task but isn’t stepping forward for whatever reason, facilitate their leadership.
Other times, the needs of the group can be more difficult to identify. For instance, you have a team where all the roles have been identified beforehand and the leader doles out assignments to each individual based on their corresponding responsibility. You do your part turn in your work, rinse and repeat, an all too common story. But corporate is complaining that the team needs to increase efficiency. If the leader doesn’t come up with anything more creative than everyone needs to hurry up, nothing will change. So you need to figure out a way to shake things up.I would s
I would suggest to the leadership that one day a week be dedicated to learning the role of someone else on your team. This will allow everyone to do their work with a collaborative mindset, as well as allow everyone to identify bottlenecks or repetition in the team’s process, all while increasing interpersonal relationships. In my opinion, a long established team should already have this done, sadly it has been my experience that this kind of synergized team is rare.
Which is why my second step is to learn every job that my team executes. As soon as I have a handle on my own responsibilities I begin to learn the responsibilities of those I work closest to or have their work affected by my own. This allows me to do my work in a way that will make theirs easier. Once I have a handle on every member of my team’s work I start learning everything about what my supervisor does. Odds are through the process of learning every facet of the team your supervisor has already noticed and come to depend on you. With this knowledge, you can start driving for change and process improvement in a meaningful way. As well as improve your odds of becoming the leader of the team when the spot opens up.
My third step is basically constant and common sense. Open and constant communication with your team members and a helpful disposition. Never answer a call for help with “that’s not my job” or “I’m too busy” or any derivative of or similar reply. You will never get help or cooperation out of that individual again, and you have just slowed down the overall production of the team. Instead, help your teammates out, you will learn something about what they do, build stronger interpersonal relationships, raise the morale of the team, and raise the overall productivity of the team as well your own worth therein.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images
Great article and applicable to women in the work force too! (And now your secret is out!)