Unifying a team

Last week I was asked to facilitate a team session for a well known company that produces many products that you see on supermarket shelves the world over.

The team was made up of 8 people. Even though each member of the team had separate roles, each of these roles was under one brand and this meant that there were grey areas in terms of some of the responsibilities. Unsurprisingly these grey-areas or ‘cross-overs’, as they called them, caused duplications, mis-understandings and all round frustrations (they summed up the situations phrases as ‘stepping on toes’). Consequently I was tasked to build the teams understanding of the issue and help them find a solution.

I wasn’t quite sure what i was going to get in this session and I prepared myself for some heated debate and some possible mug-slinging. As it turned out the team were very honest and open. What became clear was that here were a group of talented, ambitious people working in their silos to deliver their own business objectives and further their careers. They were a team in name only.

After discussing the presented ‘stepping on toes’ issue and it’s repercussions I tasked the group to think about and come with an objective that they could work towards in solving the issue. What was was really interesting was that they didn’t just come up with a goal that aimed directly at solving the issue but instead opened up the aperture and went for a ‘big picture’ goal of being the ‘No1 Performing Team’ in the company by the middle of next year.

In that moment they were no longer a team,in name only but were a real team united behind a common goal. The energy in the room changed and I knew that the walls of the silos had come down and had been replace with trust.

As for the ‘stepping on toes’ issue – working objectives and actions were put in place to solve it. And these objectives and actions joined some others put in place as part of the action plan to reach their common goal.