The Secret to Successful Teamwork

I’d like to talk about team performance with you as well. How do you foster collaboration on your team, especially with teams that are very diverse in their opinions, their communication styles, you name it?

I know there are a couple of different models to the way that teams operate. I’ve been on some teams where it’s a little bit more of a hub and spoke, so you have the leader, and that leader works very closely with each of their directs, but there isn’t a lot of that integration.
And I think that you get the most out of teams if we all work together and own all of the decisions. So even if you have one person who is the subject matter expert on a particular project or issue, and ultimately will own it, making sure that we’re creating that environment in those forums such that everybody has the opportunity to hear about it, debate it, weigh in, and then ultimately, making sure that we commit as a team, I think, is the way that you can capture the most out of the diverse perspectives that a diverse team brings.

It sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time not only thinking about what works well, but what does not work well. So what do you think is the biggest roadblock to effective work team?

Well, it’s not helpful if you have a lot of egos, for sure, and it’s not helpful if you have people who aren’t good listeners. But I actually think it all boils down to trust. A lack of trust, I think is what will prevent a team from operating well. And sometimes it’s not a matter of active distrust but maybe just not really knowing each other.
And that’s usually a challenge that I’ve seen during the pandemic. I think I candidly underestimated the challenge of starting in a new organization during the pandemic.

That must have been tough. I would imagine you didn’t get to meet really anybody in person and build those bonds.

Yeah, that’s right. I mean, my natural inclination would have been to immediately go on a tour and visit everybody in person, but given Covid, that wasn’t possible. And so it was just a lot of time on Zoom and a lot of communication by Slack and by phone, and it took a little bit longer, but certainly doable.
But even now, there are a lot of people, you know, I have a long list of people at the company that I’d like to get to know better. I’m just anxious to meet more people in person, too.