Last blog I looked at the four main types of team – driven, dysfunctional, complacent and resilient. No surprises that the resilient team stands out as the highest performing team and the one which we are likely to want to be a member of. If that’s the kind of team you’re in already, then that’s great news! If there is room for improvement, try these five ways to improve your team working skills:
- Understand yourself, what are your personality traits and your own values and skills? What can you offer the team, where might you need to develop yourself further?
- In what ways are you part of setting the culture of the team? What do you want to stand for as a team member, and how do you communicate this to other team members? If you are a team leader, your influence in setting the culture is vitally important.
- Make a commitment to yourself (and to others if appropriate) about the standards of behaviour that you wish to keep to, so that others know where they stand with you- this helps people to feel safe. Develop and use your own ‘personal behaviour code’, review and refine it every few months.
- If you make a mistake, own it, apologise and make it up to the other person. And learn from it to help you next time.
- Develop your listening skills – remember that we only ever have half the information in a conversation, learn to talk less and listen more.
You can’t control everything in the team, but you can take responsibility for how you use your mouth, hands, feet, and ears. My next blog will be on how to develop your own ‘personal behaviour code’.
Dr Fiona Day is the world’s only Leadership Coach with advanced coaching psychology, medical and public health qualifications (MBChB, FFPH, BPS Chartered Psychologist in Coaching Psychology, EMCC Master Practitioner Coach & Mentor) and is in a unique position to help you and your teams to flourish. Fiona specialises in coaching medical and public health leaders, is a coach Supervisor, and an EQA Foundation Award Holder. Get 3 hours of FREE CPD with Fiona’s Health Career Success Programme here. Book a free confidential 30 minute Consultation with Fiona here.
