Here's how a traditional teambuilding program usually works (see if this sounds familiar): Send all your individual contributors to a series of full-day training classes on topics like communication, problem solving, and conflict resolution. Throw in some personality testing for good measure. Then change some labels: start referring to departments as "teams", and supervisors as "coaches." You're done! Now you just sit back and wait for the results. Nice theory.Unfortunately, it never works. Why? You've told your individual contributors that you want them to start taking responsibility for solving problems and making decisions. They're fired up - ready to change the world. However, your traditional supervisors got promoted or hired because they had proven their ability to solve problems and make decisions. They've been doing it (just like their managers told them to) for years, even decades. What do you think is going to happen the first time a decision of any significance has to be made? Or the first time any real problem is discovered? You know the answer - the traditional supervisor is going to take over. He's never trusted his people with anything important, and he's not going to start now. How do the individual contributors on the "team" react to this? You're right again - they think this whole "teaming" thing is a bunch of bologna, another worthless, time-wasting "program of the month." Morale sinks again, and "teaming" is over. The most pathetic part is that management doesn't even realize it. They keep bumbling along talking about teams and teamwork, but the organization hasn't changed a bit, except perhaps that everyone has even less faith in management than they did before this latest misadventure.
The biggest barrier to real teams is traditional supervisors, because their job is to solve problems and make decisions. Until they learn to stop doing that, and start coaching their individual contributors to solve problems and make decisions, you are dead in the water. What you need are professional coaches. We'll talk more later about how to transform your traditional supervisors into professional coaches. It isn't easy. The second biggest barrier to real teams is faulty structure. We'll talk about that in another TEAM ANSWERS newsletter.
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