Functional teams

Five keys to a successful team

"The value of a whole group is higher than the sum of the individual values" - Aristotle The most important part is the psychological Safety, where team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other

The key dysfunctions are:

Absence of trust with colleagues

They have to feel comfortable being vulnerable in front of each other with no filters.
Make an afterwork small session where each of the members of the team share a personal vulnerable story in front of each other. As a manager you need to lead with example breaking the ice. Knowing each personality is a good previous starting point. Team buildings are okay but are more superficial.

Fear to conflicts

There are no constructive dialogs about problems for reaching success. We might think that conflict is disrespectful.

• We have to know where is everyone placed in a range of 0 to 10 how comfortable they feel with discussions.
• Leads need to be prone to arise conflicts when needed, and move to the other extreme to see how the team members position.
• On uncomfortable and tense situations we can interrupt to reinforce that what we are doing is positive because we will improve as a team.
• Conflicts can be taken to the personal level. Do not incur into destructive personal level.

Lack of commitment with decision making

When a decision has been made, you must commit to it and agree. You can not commit if:

• you don't understand it
• you have not been able to express your opinion At the end of the decision, write it to make it explicit. We can also question about the decision to see if it has been understood.
  

Final decision must be reported to the rest of the whole team.

Not holding one another responsibilities

We must both demand ourselves to work hard and help colleagues to accomplish the requirements established.
Everyone needs to make public what is working on in order to be challenged if it's the best way to do it.

Focus on personal goals

Team priorities are most important. Distractions such ego, salary and position need to be left aside in order to focus on collective outcomes.