Ten steps to make your team a performing team

1. Ensure clarity in the objectives:

Even if you are traveling together in a journey you want to know where you are
headed and how you are going to cover the distance. Similarly, your team members
would like to clearly understand about the direction in which they are working.
I am sure you may be speaking to them often but you need to reinforce the verbal
communication with pictures and tables.
Display a board in your meeting place which tells every one the purpose for which
the team has been formed and the objectives.
Secure an identity for the team. It should be a common identity. Give a name for your
team. You may give a name which reflects the spirit of the aspirations of the people.
Or you may give one which is just fun and a comic character which every one loves.
A sample display board and its contents are given below.

Exhibit 1:

Team Identity Team members Photos

Deccan Tigers V K Pal
S B Samraj
D K Gujar
V M Niyati
T Suman

Theme chosen for

Goal
work:
To reduce the Solid waste by 50% in packing area (baseline
Solid waste reduction in Packing area Aug 2008 and end date March 2009)

Meeting Place and time Roles and Responsibilities

Area of
Name Role Commitment
competence
Fridays 3.45 to 4.45 Packing area
meeting hall V K Pal Leader Process expert 8 hrs/week
Dy
S B Samraj Logistics expert 8 hrs/week
Leader
D K Gujar Member Coordination 4 hrs/week
V M Niyati Member Packing design 4 hrs/week
T Suman Member Legal requirements 3 hrs/week
2. Build the confidence of all the members in your leadership:

Leadership is a role not a position or a status. You have become a leader to

discharge a responsibility and not to look down on others. Many leaders whom I
have met have made mistakes in understanding this very important aspect. It is not
their mistake, they have seen their role models in the organization who behaved in a
similar way and who probably got away with it. Members lack confidence in a leader
who is not supportive of their efforts. Leaders need to share all the developments
good or bad with the members and build an air of confidence in the team.

I as a consultant and a facilitator attend some review meetings where only leader
attends the meeting because he does not want the members to hear certain adverse
remarks we may be making on the progress. Certain other leaders do not want to
give credits to the work done by the members and would like to project themselves
for all the achievements. This causes rifts in the team.

Honestly, question yourself every time you get an opportunity on the following:

1. Do I support the efforts of the members of the team?

2. Am I able to carry on with a “no bossing” attitude?
3. Do I give credits to my colleagues?

It is quite possible that you may not have been able to say “yes” now for every
question, but then you can always try. This is the true leadership quality. Many
members feel put off when leader displays “ego”.

Look upon your role as that of some one who will first address the expectations of
your people and the confidence starts showing up in their faces.

3. Add value to those working as a member in the team:

This is a common problem when the members have become arms and feet for the
team leader i.e. only doing what they are told. Every member wants some learning to
come out of the association and if that does not happen, he /she may not exert
himself/herself.

It is your duty as a team leader to work on two platforms simultaneously. One is to

run the team with the agenda you have in mind and the second one is to try and
build competences of the members.

There has to be constant effort to assign such jobs to members through which they
get motivated to learn new things and become more valuable employees.

I remember a team leader who used to get books and articles for his members and
sit with them to read portions relevant to the work. The members got very excited
because this is what they wanted. No doubt the team did fairly well in their chosen
areas of work...
 Display in the board a place wherein every member needs to write his/her area of
competence. It is quite possible to use one of the members to educate the others in
that area and the team as a whole becomes stronger.

4. Recognize contribution and reward people immediately and generously :

There is an Arab proverb “Do not reward a person with a promise that you will give
him a camel next year” Delayed recognition and sometimes no recognition kills the
teams. As a leader, you need to be proactive in praising your people. I know many
teams where the team leader is asked to make a presentation of his ideas and he
goes on and on about all the new things he wants to do but makes no mention of any
one in the hall who helped him out. People wait with eagerness and get disappointed
when the presentation ends with a big applause to the leader. If such a thing
happens, it not only affects that particular team but it affects the culture of team
building itself.

Many team leaders confessed to me that they intended to reward or recognize the
people who helped but they were waiting for an appropriate time. I want to tell them
that the appropriate time is “now”. Do it immediately and make every one happy. A
Project Manager in an automobile company used to be very good at it. I was working
behind the scene in compiling a supplier manual but when the date for the release
came closer, other prominent people took over and I was almost forgotten. On the
day of the function, the project manager recalled my contribution and mentioned my
name while releasing the manual. It was a great feeling because I felt that my work
had not gone in vain. Still, I would have been doubly happy if the Project manager
had mentioned a few words when the hard work was being put in.

5. Value the time of your people:

Being a leader does not entitle you to encroach into everyone’s time. When I was a
part of the team involving procurement engineers of a major auto manufacturer,
sometimes we had to wait in the car for the team leader to turn up and after he
emerged the whole team used to heave a sigh of relief murmuring about the delay. I
found that he either was not sensitive or had a perverted sense of importance. He
sometimes explained about the “inevitable” phone call or the “surprising” meeting
with the CEO in the lift but after some time no one believed him. Every one realized
that he was just taking it easy and had no respect for any one’s time. This had a
marked impact on the relations and people never took anything he said seriously.
You may not be like him but in many ways all of us can improve in this aspect. We do
expect others to turn up in time but we waste their time in many ways. Even a small
improvement here would push the team’s performance a few notches closer to the
world class.

6. Allow for that little individuality:

Team members like to deal with the tasks and activities with some individuality. Why
not? After all we are not robots. We may read about a format in a book but that does
not mean it is perfect. Let the team members change it if they want. Some team
leaders insist on forms, sheets, templates up to the details of fonts to be used. It
looks great when every format is similar but that is not the only thing in the world. Do
not become obsessed with the myth of orderliness and lose the goal. A team needs
fresh air. Do not be the person who suffocates the team in the name of uniformity. I
had a team leader way back when the MS Office was the craze and he had acquired
a tremendous knack of discovering the slightest change in font size, spacing and the
border. Every report circulated and every table for actions was squarely criticized for
non-conformity to the defined standard. I was the person who had to “clean up”
frequently as my knowledge of the formatting was inversely proportional to my desire
to make each report unique. In two months, I got so frustrated with increasing “clean
ups” and I lost the will to do anything new. The team leader and I parted ways and I
wish him well but I still recall those days with a shudder.

7. Say “Sorry” when you are wrong:

This is tough. Not all leaders can brace up when they make mistakes and say “sorry”
to the team. It is easy to pass on the blame and find faults but the courageous team
leaders own up the mistakes when pointed out. I recall an incident when we worked
hard on a problem and when we were almost ready with the presentation to the
management about how to approach the problem; our team leader developed cold
feet and postponed the meeting. This was taken by the client as a weakness and he
expressed it in no uncertain terms. We were livid and could hardly resist telling our
leader that this was his making. To our surprise, he not only accepted it but said that
he was sorry it turned out that way. He had actually expected the client to
understand our intention to be thorough before we go on the air. I dare say that at
that moment, he became our hero because here was a man who was not afraid to
say “sorry” and move on. Loyalty is won when you say sorry and the team gets
closer to you.

8. Be transparent with decisions taken:

One thing all followers expect from a leader is transparency. Deceit and cunning
ness may serve political leaders but in teams working in organizations, they do not fit
in. In one of the cases I know of, the team leader virtually prodded the team to take a
stand against continuing with a particular project but when he met up with the top
bosses he changed his mind. This was never known to the team members who
continued to behave as if they are going to close the project. They were all in for a
surprise when in the meeting the team leader actually led the charge and argued for
continuation. The team was more hurt by the inexplicable switch of the leader rather
than the decision to continue the project. One never can demand that the team
leader should not change his mind or reverse his decision but it is expected that he
should explain the team the reasons behind the change and try to convince the team
about the need for the change.

9. Deliver criticisms after moderation:

It is said that when you point one finger at some one try to see that three fingers are
pointing at you. But, many of the leaders blame and criticize others when things go
wrong. It is leader’s responsibility to correct the people and no one can take away
this aspect of leadership from a team leader but we can look at the way the criticism
is delivered. If it hurts a person then it is going to be counter productive for the team.
The best way to do it is to invite comments from the member how he is going to
correct the situation and involve him in the process of restoring the performance
affected. There is an inspiring story about Abraham Lincoln. After he heard of a
setback in the war, Lincoln wrote a very nasty letter to the General telling him what
he thought of the whole defeat. But, in the last minute he changed his mind and
never sent it because he felt that the letter was too harsh and was written probably
without realizing the realities in the war. The letter was discovered after Lincoln
passed away. Moderation in criticism is truly the winning step in building world class
team.

10. Bat for your team every day:

The Naval ship was ready for inspection. The Naval Chief went round and at the end
of his half hour inspection made remarks about the poor display and the readiness of
the ship’s crew. The men were disappointed and were standing with empty looks.
While the Admiral moved out, the captain’s voice rang out “Great show, my boys, the
ship is in great shape and I know each one of you deserves a pat on your back”.
Captain stood by his men and had the guts to say these words virtually within the
earshot of the admiral. Important lesson is never let your team down. Keep the
people in high spirits and in due course you will find that you have won their
confidence.

Try the above ten steps and you will find that your team is on its way to become a
world class team in processes but in results too.