Sweet Dreams Might Actually be Made of This

Team Tactics

Last week I looked at how a shift in mindset can help you as an individual be a more effective team member, and how that should affect how leaders build teams.

But being an effective team member isn’t just about mindset, it’s also about specific, practical skills you need to hone. There are three we focus on helping team members develop, particularly if they are working asynchronously often.

• Skill 1: Making your work activities visible – this is about letting your team members know how you are driving the team goals forward. It helps with overall team dynamics, raises trust, reduces overlapping work, and creates opportunities for spontaneous collaboration.
• Skill 2: Making your work PRODUCT visible. Building in public, even within an organization is something that many of us feel uncomfortable with. But getting comfortable at letting others see our work can save a huge amount of rework and allow collaboration to happen earlier when it’s typically cheaper to change course. Studies done on Wikipedia pages have shown that pages that begin life woefully incomplete end up being some of the most accurate and complete pages over time.
• Skill 3: Building on the work of others – ideally you aren’t the only one building in public. This gives you the opportunity to use other’s work as a starting point, saving time and creating better results. Scientists and creative people intrinsically understand that there is no such thing as truly original work – everything builds on something. Yet in business we frequently try to start from scratch, even if a colleague has great work we can build upon.

As individuals if we hone these skills, we will be massively more effective team members. Next week, I’ll look at what leaders can do to help make sure it happens.