07 Jan 2020

It’s that time of year when we take the time to re-assess where we are at. We may …
•    identify habits or behaviours we want to change or develop
•    look at our work-life balance and decide to change how we work or our job
•    start to de-clutter our home or our workspace or even our life
•    focus on putting together a bucket list or achieving something we have always wanted to do

The beginning of the year – whether that’s the calendar year or a new financial year – seems to bring out our need to make a clean sweep or start anew, so it is an ideal time to implement a change … and get the buy in of others to support that change too

If you do run your own business or manage a team, now is the time to tap into this general need that we all seem to have to re-assess and use this opportunity to establish (or re-establish) how you work together with your team

Over time you may have found that there are certain recurring behaviours that have developed within the team that frustrate some or all of you – lateness, not meeting deadlines, people using personal phones, people not following-up on things, and so on. You can continue to manage these issues as and when they occur, or you can take advantage of this time of year and do something as a team

One easy way to do this is to hold a ‘ground rules’ session with your team – all you need is a pack of post-it notes, a flipchart pad or two large pieces of paper, a pen each … and a cup of coffee (which is optional). This exercise will take 30 – 60 minutes depending on the size of your team

On the flipchart pad / paper, draw a line down the centre of the page and on one side write ‘we do well’ and on the other ‘could do better’

Give everyone some of the post-it notes – ask the team to think about two questions:
•    what you do well as a team?
•    what could you do better?

Ask them to individually write their feedback on the post-it notes – one comment per post-it; there should be no discussion at this stage – this is the time for each person to focus on their own thoughts

Once everyone has finished, ask each person to read out their post-its one at a time and stick them on the appropriate side of the flipchart / paper. Again, there is no discussion as they do this – this is just a data gathering exercise

Once everyone has read out their post-it comments, hold a group discussion about the feedback – take time to recognise and celebrate the things that you do well as a team. As for the things that the team could do better, are there any common themes or is there consensus around any of the comments? As the team leader, you need to involve everyone, keeping the discussion general and positive – avoid ‘finger-pointing’ or blame; the focus is on making things better for the team

To wrap up the session, head a second piece of paper ‘Ground Rules’ and, focusing on the feedback that you’ve just discussed, brainstorm guidelines that you can follow as a team that will help you work better together. Identify 6 – 12 actions or behaviours that everyone can commit to - these may include such points as:
•    respect each other’s time
•    do what you say you are going to do
•    only use personal phones at break times
•    be positive

Again, as the team leader, it is your role to steer the discussion towards appropriate bullet points – get the team to come up with the ideas; don’t hog the limelight … you will get more buy-in if their comments are recorded rather than your own; this is not the time to tell but it is the time to listen

Once you have finished, this brainstorming sheet can be put up on a wall in the workplace to act as a reminder to the team of what they have agreed to do and, if someone backslides at a future date, you or the team can refer the to their ground rules to help get that individual back on track

If you would like more information on this or similar topics, or to find out more about getting your team to buy into change, please get in touch
 

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