I love working in teams. I value building relationships, learning from my teammates, and working together on a shared goal. And historically, I’m pretty good at bringing teams together intuitively, so I’ve had positive team experiences.
But intuition isn’t enough to rely on to create an effective team environment. I’m learning in my “Leadership in Organizations” class that there is skill, technique, and strategy in creating the right team environment. By “right” I mean a positive environment that fosters enough trust to create a culture of collaborative feedback.
Creating a positive environment means capitalizing on key moments early, ensuring frequent interactions, and designing meaningful rituals that distinguish the group (Source: Prof. L. Nordgren).
Creating a culture of collaborative feedback means we’ve established trust as colleagues, there is an expectation of constructive feedback that is set at the beginning, and the team agrees to “rules of engagement” for feedback (Source: Prof. L. Nordgren).
This is just a small snippet of the techniques to create an effective team, but it represents the larger idea that we cannot afford to leave our team dynamics to chance. Be intentional and be rewarded with teammates that become friends.
Daily Learnings 