Bud Bilanich | The Common Sense Guy

More on Teamwork

I’d like to stay with the topic of teams today.  One of my clients has asked his entire leadership team to read Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.  This week, I have been interviewing members of the team to get their opinions on how well the team is doing when compared to the dysfunctions identified by Mr. Lencioni.

If you haven’t read the book, Mr. Lencioni suggests that there are five items common to all high performing teams.

1. Team members trust one another.
2. Team members deal with conflict constructively.
3. Team members are committed to the success of the team.
4. Team members feel personally accountable for team success.
5. Team members focus on achieving results as a team.

Here is a brief survey I developed to prime the pump for my interviews.  The items are based on Mr. Lencioni’s ideas about effective teams.  I asked team members to respond in one of three ways for each item: usually, sometimes, rarely.

You might want to use this to get a quick look at teams you lead or of which you are a member.

Trust

1. Team members quickly and genuinely apologize to one another when they say or do something inappropriate or possibly damaging to the team.
2. Team members openly admit their weaknesses.
3. Team members openly admit their mistakes.
4. Team members know about one another’s personal lives, and are comfortable discussing them.

Conflict

1. Team members are passionate and unguarded in their discussion of issues.
2. Team meetings are lively and interesting.
3. Team members encourage one another to raise unpopular points of view and/or dissenting opinions.
4. During team meetings, the most important and difficult issues are put on the table and resolved.

Commitment

1. Team members know what other team members are working on.
2. Team members know how other team members contribute to the collective good of the team and business.
3. Team members leave meetings confident that other team members are completely committed to decisions agreed on in the meeting, even if there was initial disagreement.
4. Team discussions end with clear and specific decisions.

Accountability

1. Team members point out one another’s unproductive behaviors.
2. Team members help one another improve unproductive behaviors.
3. Team members will do whatever it takes to not let the team down.
4. Team members challenge one another’s plans and approaches to their work.

Team Results

1. Team members willingly make sacrifices (such as budget, head count, turf) in their departments for the good of the team and business.
2. Team morale improves and/or drops with team successes and/or failures.
3. Team members willingly share the credit for team accomplishments.
4. Team members willingly accept their share of the blame for team failures and problems.

If you answered “usually” to most of these items, and “sometimes” to a few – you have a well functioning team. 

If you answered “rarely” to most of these items, and “sometimes” to a few – your team needs some remedial work.

If you answered “sometimes” to most of these items – your team is probably doing OK, but could improve with a little focused attention.

If you have a team in need of assistance, feel free to get in touch with me.  I am an expert at creating high performing teams.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for reading.  Log on to my website www.BudBilanich.com for more common sense.  Check out my other blog: www.SuccessCommonSense.com for common sense advice on becoming the career and life success you are meant to be.

I’ll see you around the web, and at Alex’s Lemonade Stand.

Bud

PS: Speaking of Alex’s Lemonade Stand – my fundraising page is still open.  Please go to www.FirstGiving.com/TheCommonSenseGuy to read Alex’s inspiring story and to donate if you can.

Teamwork -- 20 Questions

Successful teams are great -- fun for the participants, valuable to their organizations.  However, successful teams don't happen by accident.  They are the result of conscious effort on the part of the team leader and team members. 

I've developed a list of 20 common sense questions that I use to assist my teambuilding clients in assessing their team effectiveness.

I suggest asking yourself and your teammates these same questions.  Any question which you cannot answer with a resounding "yes" points to a potential problem for your team.

Use these questions to evaluate your team's effectiveness.  Feel free to let me know what you learned.

For more common sense advice about teams and teamwork, go to my website www.BudBilanich.com

I'll see you around the web.

Bud

PS: I have a few extra copies of my book 4 Secrets of High Performing Organizations.  I'll give one to the first 10 people who e mail me with their mailing address.  Send your e mails to [email protected]

Team Diagnostic

20 Common Sense Questions

To Ask Yourself and Your Teammates

1.      Has our team established a purpose – a reason for the team’s existence?

2.      How well is our team doing in living its purpose?

3.      Does our team have the right members?  Are the correct people and roles represented on the team?

4.      Has our team adopted a set of procedural groundrules (meeting frequency, face to face meetings, teleconferences etc.)?

5.      Has our team adopted a set of behavioral groundrules (how you will relate to and treat one another)?

6.      Is there a clear contract on what team members expect from the leader and what the leader expects from the team?

7.      Do members of our team trust one another?

8.      Are members of our team flexible – are they willing to change their point of view for the good of the team?

9.      Do members of our team recognize one another’s contributions to the team?

10.  Do we have a sense of team spirit and esprit de corps?

11.  Do team members act in a manner that indicates that they feel mutually accountable to one another for the success of the team?

12.  How effective is our team in handling problems and setbacks?

13.  Do all members participate equally in team decisions?

14.  Do team members feel comfortable suggesting a controversial or dissenting opinion in team meetings?

15.  How well does our team do in addressing and resolving conflicts among members?

16.  Are team meetings are well planned?  Do we stick to the agenda?

17.  Does our team meet with enough frequency?

18.  Has our team actively worked on getting to know one another and on building strong relationships?

19.  Are people proud to be part of our team?

20.  Does our team do a good job of managing relationships with our stakeholders?

Common Sense Ideas About Teamwork Learned on a Rivet Gang

Recently, I read a very engaging novel: Empire Rising. Thomas Kelly is the author.  Empire Rising is a story about New York City in 1930 – just after the stock market crash of 1929.  It is a love story, a story about political corruption, an immigrant experience story, and a story about organized crime.  But most of all, it is a story about building the Empire State Building.

Michael Briody, an Irish immigrant, is the central character.  He has the good fortune to be working on a rivet gang on the Empire State Building construction site.  One of the passages was particularly poignant for me, as I spent the summer of 1970 working on a rivet gang.  Riveting is a lost art today.  Welding is cheaper and faster.  However, as Kelly describes so well, riveting was a team job – all rivet gangs have four members and all four members have a specific and important job to do. 

“The steel had been rigged before lunch with temporary bolts; now it was time to rivet it in place…Skinny used the bellows to fire his hot coals, which were soon red, molten.  Briody, the gunman, took hold of the rivet gun and set himself on the opposite side of the column from Armstrong and Delpezzo.  Armstrong nodded to Skinny, who grabbed a burning rivet out of the forge with a pair of yard-long tongs and tossed it end over end in a glowing arc to Armstrong, who caught it in an old paint can, plucked it out with his own short pair of tongs, tapped it on the edge of the beam, and stuck it in the hole.  Delpezzo used a short metal tube that grabbed the rivet, bucking it up from the other side.  Briody swung the rivet gun onto the head, wielding it like a weapon at hip level, and with a yank of the trigger and a pneumatic blast that shot a rain of sparks, fused it in place.

“The other crews were at it now, creating an infernal racket, a howl that drowned out all talk, all thought except — the work.  Armstrong’s gang moved along at a nifty clip, rivet after rivet, fast but deft, practiced in their endeavor.  On a good day, they might pound in five hundred of the inch-and-an-eighth-long rivets, more than one a minute.” 

Thomas Kelly is an excellent writer.  When I read the two paragraphs above, I was taken back in time and space to 1970 and the American Bridge plant in Ambridge, PA.  I’ve had many jobs over the years, but I don’t think I enjoyed any of them as much as I enjoyed my summer on a rivet gang there.

I was a “sticker” – the guy who caught the hot rivet, and stuck it into the hole.  It was just like Kelly described.  The rivets are white hot when the “heater” pulls them out of the furnace.  They begin to cool immediately.  By the time I caught a rivet, it had a layer of “scale” on it.  I caught the rivet in a specially designed bucket that looked like a funnel with a flat bottom and had a handle.  After I pulled it out of the bucket with my short tongs, I whacked it on the steel to rid it of the scale, and stuck it in the hole where it would be bucked and driven. 

Sometimes a piece of scale would bounce up and down into the inside my glove.  35 years later, I still have a few scars from the molten scale that found its way into my glove.  I didn’t stop when this happened, because by the time I had one rivet in the hole, another was on its way from the heater.

A rivet gang that is working well is wonderful to watch.  Four guys working almost as one – each with his own responsibilities.  If one guy doesn’t perform, the entire team doesn’t perform.  When we were clicking – and we were most days – I felt as if I were part of a well oiled machine.

Thinking back on those days reminds me of the importance of teamwork in organizations.  I realize now that our rivet gang worked well as a team because:

• We had a goal.  We knew our daily standard, and our bonus target.
• We had clearly defined roles – everyone had a specific responsibility.  The team didn’t perform well if one of the parts – the heater, sticker, bucker and driver – didn’t do his job and do it well.  Every role was equally important -- if not equally compensated.
• We were all good at our jobs.  Admittedly, learning how to be a good sticker is not as difficult as learning how to be a good bucker or driver.  Still, if I wasn’t proficient at catching the hot rivets and getting them into the hole, the team wasn’t going to perform well.  I had a personal goal of catching every rivet that was thrown to me.  On the other hand, the heater worked hard at making it easy for me to catch the rivets.
• We trusted one another.  Occasionally, a rivet would get away from the heater – usually because he waited a split second too long to open the tongs as he swung them.  Once I caught a red hot rivet no more than an inch from my face.  If I had missed, and it bounced off the side of my catching bucket, I would have had a scar for life on my face from the burn.  Fortunately, I caught it.  We didn’t stop when this happened, we kept on working.  I trusted that he was trying to get the hot rivets to me in an easy place to catch them.  He trusted that I was good enough at my job to catch the ones he threw that were a little off course.  We all assumed that the other three guys were doing their best. 
• We had an effective leader.  The driver is the leader of a rivet gang.  He sets the pace.  He lets the other members know when it’s time for a break.  He brings them back to work.  We followed him not because of his position, but because of the knowledge and skill it took to achieve that position.
• We had groundrules – they were unspoken but very powerful.  When we worked, we worked.  Horesplay was not tolerated.  Someone could get hurt and worse yet, we might not make our bonus.  We all abided by these unspoken but powerful groundrules.
• We had a sense of spirit.  We were good at what we did, and were proud of what we accomplished.  At the end of the day, individually and collectively, we knew we had done good work.  This sense of spirit and pride made the hot, loud, dirty and dangerous work fun and enjoyable.

The common sense point here is that the characteristics that made our rivet gang successful – clear goals, defined roles and responsibilities, skill and proficiency in our individual jobs, trust of one another's skills and motivations, effective leadership, clear groundrules and a sense of spirit – are the same characteristics that will make any team successful. 

If you work hard to put them into play on the teams of which you are a member, you’ll find that not only will the team succeed, but that you’ll be much more happy and satisfied in your work.

Check out my website, www.BudBilanich.com for more common sense advice about teams and teamwork. 

Please feel free to comment on these posts.  I’m always interested in hearing what you have to say.

I’ll see you around the web,

Bud