by Joan Cook
Jeff and I are working with a number of different teams in organizations around the country. After each teambuilding experience we debrief, usually on the plane home, and we've lately had one of those "duh" moments: although we're working for the most part in sophisticated organizations (one of them a Fortune 50 company), their people lack some of the most basic Management 101 communication skills--which of course, holds back progress toward becoming a highly effective team. If being able to give (and receive) feedback effectively, hold fellow team members accountable, handle difficult conversations and use effective listening skills are key, our experience is that most team members shy away from using these critical skills simply because they feel they aren't very good at them--or they've never learned them in the first place. Understandable, since a. they aren't taught in b-school and b. most people learn them--if they learn them at all--on the fly, by imitating what they see others do. If they're lucky, they have good models. If they're not, they perpetuate a culture that is likely weak in supporting the use of the very tools that enable effective working relationships, and effective teaming.
So in addition to team process skills and experiential team events, we're discovering that there's a third leg to this stool: management communication skills that enable team members to engage in effective team processes in the first place. We're now looking at how we structure the teambuilding experience and what we may need to include, in addition to team processes, in order to equip teams to be able to make good use of those processes.
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