Steering Your Team

Identify what each member's individual contribution to the team's work should be...

Team members should all share in the glory when their team succeeds, and they should share in the blame when it fails. However, members need to know what they cannot ride on the backs of others. Identify what each member's individual contribution to the team's work should be and make it a part of his or her overall performance appraisal.

To help monitor performance, select members of the team to act as participant-observers. While a team is working, the role of the participant-observer is to focus on the processes being used: the sequence of actions that takes place between team members to achieve the team's goal. Periodically, the participant-observer should stop the team from working on its task and discuss the process members are engaged in. The objectives of the participant-observer are to continuously improve the team's functioning by discussing the processed being used and creating strategies for improving them.

Create a performance agreement to record the details of what the team is aiming to achieve, what is required and expected of every team member, and what support will be available to them. Setting out the framework for team success clearly helps to ensure that there is a mutual understanding an common vision of the desired results and emphasizes the standards that you expect from every team member.

ACTION POINT: Create a mindset of shared responsibility for success or failure with your team.