Building Synergy and Collaboration in a team

Perspective drawn from my experience to create an adaptive team.

Welcome

In an increasingly competitive workplace, Key to success is recognizing the team and what matters to the team so as to build a collaborative team which can adapt and respond quickly to the demands of the business. I would like to draw the experience from my first assignment as a manager and explain how a leader can systematically build a team with synergy and collaboration by exploring the three dimensions - Team, Organization and Yourself.

The Team

Knowing there is proven link between effective teams and successful organizations and Teams can produce sustainable growth given the balanced dose of autonomy and alignment, I needed to gauge how my team measure against the capabilities of an effective team. First thing I did was to bucketize them into the following three categories a. Process-oriented - sets standards, very good team player, avoids conflicts, sticks to policies b. Outcome-oriented - Initiator, likes to elaborate on tasks, co-ordinates tasks, loves green-field projects, seeks knowledge and power. c. Mix Additionally, I tried to study the behavior by implicitly and explicitly soliciting answers to the following questions

Does everyone know the team’s vision and mission
Does everyone understand how one’s performance relates to the team’s vision and mission
Do they proactively talk through problems?
Do they actively engage in understanding other team member’s problem and offer help?
Do they take ownership of their work and admit problems?
Does their meeting have specific goals and achieve the goal most times?
Does everyone feel respected in meeting and leave the meeting with the common understanding?
Are they comfortable asking questions and challenging other’s ideas?
Do they acknowledge individual and team success equally and openly?
Does the team collectively own decisions and commit to it even if they do not agree?

The Organization

Now, I know what matters to my team; I acknowledge and recognize them. The next step is to draw the path ahead for them. Wait… I know the characteristic of self-organized, highly functional team and I know what matters to my team and how to take them ahead. Am I all set for it? There comes the organization and the culture and red tape that goes with what is allowed and what is not allowed. It was important for me to understand what is possible and what can be tried and what is absolutely not possible - to set the boundary to operate within. The one’s I could try, I needed to set myself a timeframe to go back to the team to update the progress. Knowing the organization boundaries, I am down to

identify tools, processes that helps my team and implement them
an action plan to nurture the outcome and process oriented qualities on individuals equally where needed
Roadmap

Myself

As I stepped on to implementing the roadmap, It was very critical for me to analyze my role in propelling the team in the right direction.

Am I strategy focussed?
Am I operationally focussed?
Am I taking the decisions?
When Am I letting them take decisions? As I zoom in and zoom out in my leadership role, I am really looking toward the time where I am more an enabler than controller.

Finally

As we all might have realized during our experience, a team can have highly talented bunch of individuals, access to all resources, and clearly defined goals, They might still fail because they don’t have synergy and collaboration thus causing impact on the dynamic capability of the team. As a leader and manager, It is not enough to harness their skills and provide tools and process to achieve the business goal. It is more important to

create a sense of belonging
provide the right mix of autonomy and alignment
instill trust
create habitual behavior of engagement All of the above will help build heritage relationship, bring synergy and collaboration to the team - which can shift gears quickly to delight customers