Ever Experience the Meeting After the Meeting?
It’s the meeting after the meeting. You know the one: the team meeting just ended, and everyone hops on their phones to text and chat about what went down during the team meeting. It’s where you complain about your team leader, that one guy who is always interrupting, and the people who are not pulling their weight. It’s where you talk about what you would do differently if you were in charge, offer suggestions for how things might work better, and share your real feelings and thoughts. The meeting after the meeting is the real meeting --- where all the truth is. But why?
Who's Accountable?
What do you do when you want to challenge the way things are being done on your team? How do you get your teammates to contribute their thoughts and ideas? How do you hold the people on your team accountable? It used to be that the effectiveness of a team hinged on the team leader. The thought was that effective team leaders ran effective teams. That’s changed. In a complex or high speed environment, accountability for team performance must be everyone’s concern. Each member of the team is equally responsible for the outcomes of that team.
Do Perfect Team Members Make Perfect Teams?
The truth is, we may not be the perfect team member that we think we are. A 2022 study on the State of Teams by Wiley Workplace Learning Solutions revealed that 71% of individuals surveyed felt they worked in a toxic work environment even though100% of the people surveyed said that they were good team members. Ninety percent believe their company’s culture would improve if people were better teammates and the report showed that people spent an average of 7 hours a week dealing with dysfunctional team behaviors. Clearly, to get to better working teams, we need better “teaming” workers. And there’s a right way to team. Everyone thinks they’re a good team member but, when asked about team performance, most people say that they’re teams lack trust, commitment and accountability.
The cost of ineffective teamwork is high. That 7 hours a week dealing with dysfunctional team members adds up to two months and $1 trillion of time and money wasted each year! Teaming skills at the individual level have not been prioritized and it shows.
