There most certainly IS an I in Team!

In my previous posting I stated,

We buy-in to that show of team generosity that “There’s no ‘I’ in team.” Well, I disagree ... but that is a subject for another day (soon!)

Today is that day!

Let’s expand on this excerpt from Managing with Aloha within our current chapter study on Lōkahi. From page 107, The role of the individual;

Lōkahi: The role of the individual ~ ~ ~ Most of the Hawaiian values really speak to personal endeavors, and the concept that all starts from within you. We are responsible for our own attitudes, our own choices, our own happiness and our own success. While Lōkahi speaks to the behavior of people within a group, its core assumption is that the group’s effectiveness comes from the choices made by the individuals within it. Lōkahi asks these questions: Are you a bystander or are you truly engaged? Does your reach include the entire team, and are you being cooperative? Do you seek to understand everyone’s opinion while sharing your own? Are you looking for mutually beneficial agreement or are you settling for negotiation or compromise? Do you understand the role of every person, and are you respectful of their participation and involvement? Are you fulfilling your own role and responsibility, so that you make the contribution that is expected of you? Are you supportive and positive? In a subtle way, Lōkahi helps managers immensely when incorporated in the language of their ‘Ohana, for it is a value driving cooperative behavior while assuming that individual members of the ‘Ohana fully assume their responsibility. Lōkahi helps the manager foster accountability in employees at the same time those employees expect the manager to take responsibility for the harmonious working climate that exists between them and their peers.

Out of all those questions asked in the second paragraph of the excerpt, I think the first one is the most important: Are you a bystander or are you truly engaged? The questions which follow help you evaluate if your definition of ‘truly engaged’ matches up with everyone else’s. They give your manager guidelines on helping you be both objective and subjective about it — hard to do on your own sometimes, when the subject is your own behavior, and the better your relationship with your manager, the better he or she can mentor and coach you to BE a great team player.

In my experience, teamwork gets rocky (with a result of being less productive) when there are differing degrees of individual engagement, and focus shifts away from the team’s goals to the team’s behaviors. That word ‘fairness’ starts to get muttered where it didn’t before: When every team member is fully engaged in the pursuit of a team’s goals, fairness actually becomes irrelevant.

How do we get full engagement? That is where strengths management comes in, coupled with what I refer to as the Lōkahi challenge for managers. First, a few words about what strengths management should be from both perspectives, team player and manager; 

Strengths Self-Management: ~ Capitalize on the talent and gifts you have within you; celebrate them by harnessing the energy they give you. ~ Be strong for others; You can minimize your non-strengths and make them irrelevant. The Role of the Manager: ~ Discover what strengths each of the people you manage possess. ~ Place people where they are called on to employ those strengths and capitalize on them. ~ Give people authority to completely own their responsibilities.

We will look at the Lōkahi challenge this month too, but first, and for the rest of this week, assess your team from how you now view their level of engagement. When you consider each person on your team,

• Who has checked out and is UnEngaged?
• Who is Partially Engaged, and when are they on, when are they off?
• Who is Fully Engaged, and what do they have going for them, that the others may not?

After you assess them individually, assess each segment: When you look for the commonalities of each group, the why of their level of engagement may become clearer to you, and you can be more effective in working with them. Take some action to engage them with you.

For example, the first group, the UnEngaged: See if you can figure out why those who are not fully engaged have checked out, and whether you are manager or team member, if you believe they play a critical role on your team, see if you can be that key someone who welcomes them back in.

In other words, BE the ‘I’ in team who stands for Inspiring. Work within a desire to BE the great team player who day-by-day looks for another way to be more skilled in working in tandem with others to create new synergies, and more productivity.

Once we ourselves are better team players, we find we nurture better team players within our associations. It is similar to something I am quite fond of saying about leadership: Great leaders do not create more followers, they inspire more leaders.

Comments

[Herman Najoli]

My community back in Africa emphasized group endeavors that are driven by the contributions of all within them. Personal endeavor was shunned but personal commitment to the group was celebrated. In that sense, my people's paradigm was that there is no I in team but there are two I's in winning. If we are going to win, every single 'I' in the community had to bring his or her very best to the 'we'.

[Rosa Say]

Two I's in winning! I like that Herman!
We do agree that every single 'I' in the community had to bring his or her very best to the 'we'... what word would your community have used for the harmony and unity of Lōkahi?