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Encouraging Your People to Be Team Players

Mel Silberman

In the '80's, we were the "me generation." Beginning in the '90's, we started to become the "we" generation. In the first decade of the new millennium, with teams and teamwork nearly everywhere, we are building on the momentum of the '90s. Hopefully, we no longer look out for #1; we look out for the team.

Each of us comes to a team with our own talents. Team players come with something else: the ability to blend their talents with the skills of others around them. We also come with our own ideas and preferences. Team players balance interest in what they are advocating with interests in what others are saying. Team players see themselves and others as team resources rather than individual egos. They act as if they are part of the team's pool of knowledge, skills, and ideas and are successful in getting others to act that way themselves.

How can you encourage your people to be team players? Here are three suggestions you can pass along.

Observe What's Going On in the Team

Many people in team situations are oblivious to what happening around them. They are focused on themselves and fail to pick up cues about the situation of others. Perhaps, someone has been excluded. Perhaps, someone has a good idea but it's not expressed well. Perhaps the team is on a tangent or caught up in debate when it should be brainstorming.
Here are a list of things any person might watch for in his or her team:

• Does everyone have the same understanding of the team's goals? Does everyone support them?
• Do people seem free to express themselves?
• Do people listen to each other?
• Is there equal opportunity for participation?
• Is the team floundering and without energy?
• Are members in the team building on each other's ideas?
• Is conflict accepted and handled?
• Do team members know about each other's needs?

Based on these observations, anyone is in a position to be helpful to the team.

Make Contributions Where Needed

Imagine a basketball team in which each player looked exclusively for an opportunity to shoot instead of passing the ball to an open player, setting screens for teammates, or getting into position for the rebound. Many people who are not attuned to the team concept focus on their own needs and ignore the needs of others. If they have made some accurate observations of the team situation, however, they have uncovered many opportunities to contribute to the total team effort. In basketball terms, they have good "court awareness" and can sense what they need to do to help the team be successful.

Here is a list of things any team member might contribute:

• Assist someone else when appropriate.
• Offer to take minutes at a meeting.
• Ask quiet members for their opinion.
• Objectively describe the different viewpoints in the team.
• Bring together members who are in conflict with each other but are using others to air their grievances.
• Express appreciation for the efforts of others.
• Offer to facilitate discussion.
• Share credit you receive for a job well done.
• Summarize the team discussion.
• Suggest problem-solving techniques you may know.
• Relieve tension by telling a joke.
• Check decisions you about to make yourself to see if they might affect others.
• Include everybody in the information loop.
• Seek information and expertise of others.
• Communicate your own activity so that it is public knowledge.
• Tell others what they can do to support your efforts and ask them to do so in kind.
  
  Build a Climate of Dialogue
  
  We use the expression "everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion" when we want to support freedom of speech. However, there are social limits to this right in team situations. Too often, team discussion becomes a debate of my idea vs. your idea. People advocate for the causes dear to their hearts, hoping to gain support from others. The climate becomes very politicized. By contrast, when a climate of dialogue exists, team members listen to each other, react to and build upon each other's idea, and look for and acknowledge real differences of opinion.
  
  Dialogue means "two minds together." The purpose of dialogue is to enlarge ideas, not diminish them. Here are ways any person can help to build a climate of dialogue:
  Ask questions to clarify what others are saying. Invite others to seek clarification of your ideas.
  
  
• Share what's behind your ideas. Reveal your assumptions and goals. Invite others to do so in kind.
• Ask for others to give you feedback about your ideas.
• Give constructive feedback about the ideas of others.
• Make suggestions that build on the ideas of others.
• Incorporate the ideas of others into your proposals.
• Find common ground among the ideas expressed in the team.
• Encourage others to give additional ideas than those already expressed.
  
  As your people attempt to become a team player, they should expect that the road ahead is full of personal land mines. Here are the major barriers most of us have to overcome to be team players. Hopefully, these prescriptions will help them to more forward.
  
  
  I don't think anything can be done to save the team I work with. It's too late.
  
  Rx: Established teams develop habits that are as difficult to break as individual habits. However, take the attitude that it's never too late but there is no better time to start than right away. Don't complain that the team is not productive. Your message will either be resisted by some or accepted with an air of resignation by others. Instead, ask the team to evaluate itself. Use questions like:
  
  
• How well is our team meeting your expectations?
• What are you taking away from this team?
• How have we worked together? What has been helpful? not helpful?
• If we were to have start all over again, what, in hindsight, should we do?

I don't have the power to change things.

Rx: You can make just one recommendation that might turn things around. Look for these opportunities. You also can speak to others with more power and authority than yourself and give them suggestions they would act on.

We are a team but we hardly ever see each other. People travel a lot or have other reasons to be away from the office.

Rx: This phenomenon is becoming more prevalent than ever. The best idea is to explore how to increase email communication or use meeting shareware to keep your team in communication with each other.

I'd like to partner with some of my colleagues but they seem busy doing their own things.

Rx: Develop a small project you would like to do with someone else. Make it so the other person can't reject your invitation to collaborate. Maybe, greater collegiality will grow from there.

I wind up doing all the work.

Rx: The team has gotten used to your rescuing it from disaster. Select the very next opportunity in which you think it's worth the risk to insist that others have to contribute. Stay positive by saying something like: "I would help your help here. When I do the gut work myself, I start to feel resentful. I want to feel good about our working relationship."

This article is adapted from PeopleSmart: Developing Your Interpersonal Intelligence (Berrett-Koehler, 2000) by Mel Silberman. Mel Silberman is Professor of Adult and Organizational Development at Temple University and President of Active Training, 609-924-8157 (www.activetraining.com). Silberman is also the author of 101 Ways to Make Training Active (Jossey-Bass, 1995), Active Training (Jossey-Bass, 1998), and 101 Ways to Make Meetings Active (Jossey-Bass, 1999).

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