How can you improve your group’s teamwork skills?
See the Download Link at the end for the full ebook on this topic. Even though the current focus is VIRTUAL teamwork skills, this content applies to hybrid, flexible, and in-person workforces as well. After all…People are People.
Three Things to Focus on to Build Teamwork Skills
Build individual self-awareness. We need to understand and be able to explain how we “work” before we can have an effective dialogue with team members.
Using an established, validated style assessment tool provides a framework and a language. That tool can be something you already use in selection, such as PXT Select™, or a personality-based tool such as Everything DiSC®.
Some of my clients start the process without using a formal assessment tool, whether for budgetary or organizational culture reasons. For example, reading a book and debriefing as a group can provide an excellent foundation and be a catalyst for great insights.
The Five Behaviors® assessment has solutions for both individual, personal development and group-focused team development. Download a sample assessment here. The assessment is based, of course, on content from Lencioni’s best-selling book, The Five Dysfunctions on a Team.
The assessment can be used alongside any style or behavior assessment tool, though parts of the assessment reports use DiSC language as the framework to explain different skills, styles and preferences.
Practice the skills by establishing a common language, making commitments AND giving each other permission to make mistakes.
There needs to be a willingness to be vulnerable and a feedback loop so people can work through awkward or imperfect attempts to connect with others.
For some, this practice is easy because the culture is already open and comfortable with occasional mishaps; the goal is to take the team and individuals to the next level.
For others, establishing a psychologically safe space where folks feel comfortable and unthreatened will take a bit more work.
Measure & take action to improve trust. Take baseline measurements specifically in trust - and other business & people-related metrics.
I like The Five Behaviors® assessment that was created with Patrick Lencioni by Wiley. It gives you baseline measurements for your current state, as well as comparison information. Progress Updates help the team and leader identify what progress to celebrate, as well as where to dig deeper or provide more support or resources.
You should also capture key people metrics when you start out so you can see the impact. You probably already measure things like retention, turnover or attrition, and employee relations incidents. As time passes, look at business results to see how those trends compare to people (human capital, HR, etc.) metrics and progress on trust.
Download the ebook, Closing the Virtual Teamwork Skills Gap, produced by Wiley.
Wilson Foxen, Inc. is an Authorized Partner with Wiley for Everything DiSC® and The Five Behaviors®.