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Team Building Activity: The Team Biosphere
By harveyrobbins | August 14, 2007
How do you create a great high performing team atmosphere?
First ask, whose job is it to do this?
It is everyone’s responsibility to create a high performance teaming atmosphere, by fulfilling their roles within the team. I use the phrase “organizational karma” to describe this shared responsibility for climate control – karma being the wheel of consequences, with good deeds and bad deeds alike coming back to us continually.
The life of a high performance team is full of negatives and positives. The negatives are differences in perception and behavioral styles (personalities) between team members. The positives are an understanding of the characteristics differentiating good team members from bad. All high performance team members need to incorporate positive teaming behaviors into their daily work life.
Characteristics of an Effective Team Member:
Professes a commitment to goals. It is difficult to work enthusiastically toward some outcome if you don’t know what that outcome is. So the first thing a high performance team member does is clarify what they’re after.
Displays a genuine interest in other team members. People don’t have to like each other to work together. But high performance team members develop a genuine interest in the well-being of other team members – not as a team survival mechanism, but as a human bond.
Confronts conflict. High performance team members intercede when other team members are in conflict, to help resolve the disagreement proactively. Bad team members turn their backs or ignore it hoping that it’ll just go away.
Listens empathetically. Empathetic listening means being sensitive to not just the content of the message the other person is sending, but to the emotion behind the message. It also means checking for readiness before you just burst into their office and start talking. When was the last time you called someone up and before you started talking asked, “do you have a moment to talk?”
Practices inclusive decision making. High performance team members run their “first draft” decisions by other team members before they pull the trigger so that there are no surprises with the final decision.
Values individual differences. High performance team members look at differences as positives. They respect the opinions of others and view others’ perspectives as pluses, not minuses.
Contributes ideas freely. High performance team members don’t hold back their ideas. When they have an opinion about something, they express it – even if it’s just to support someone else’s opinion.
Provides feedback on team performance. High performance team members develop an informal method for providing continuous feedback on how the team is working, what’s going right, what’s going wrong, and what to do about it.
Celebrates accomplishments. High performance teams find excuses to celebrate – not just for the heck of it, but to acknowledge successful outcomes. Even the little one’s along the way toward the accomplishment of a bigger goal.
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