Thinking back to teams you were part of in school, or even now, do you usually step into a leadership role or do you take the time to understand how each of your group members wants to contribute and then decide how you can best contribute to the group’s work?

Both are equally valuable ways to contribute to teamwork, but it’s when each approach is misunderstood that problems occur. Sometimes the person who steps into the leadership role can automatically be viewed as bossy or controlling and the person who gets to know their team first before taking action can be viewed as lazy. Often, neither are true.

While my point last week about understanding the narrative of what is important to each team member is a way to lay the foundation of teamwork, the conversation about how each member wants to contribute starts the way forward of both taking action and what this looks like. Questions to help further this conversation include: What area of the work are you most interested in/drawn to? What areas would you struggle with? If each of your team members has taken CliftonStrengths, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or another personality inventory, how can their results/talents/type inform the areas of teamwork where they’ll excel?

The next area of discussion becomes how to navigate conflict when it arises. Interesting fact for you – conflict rates as one of the top three things that scare people most. So, let me ask how comfortable are you navigating a conflict conversation? Do you want to talk about and resolve it immediately, or do you tend to shy away from it, hope it will go away on its own or just not deal with it? In most of my workshops, the answers are almost always a 50/50 split. An important fact to remember here is that most young people have never been taught how to navigate conflict, and are used to their parents, teachers and other people in their lives facilitating conflict for them.

Now, you might be thinking if I’m in a group and half of my team want to deal with a conflict immediately and the other half want to avoid conflict, isn’t that a recipe for disaster?

Absolutely!

With this in mind, it’s important for teams to understand how each member deals with conflict, and how each member wants to be approached when a conflict arises. Do they need time to process first, or to prepare for the conversation? Are they comfortable having it there and then? In either case, what have been their previous experiences with conflict and how do these affect them today? I also recommend that teams look at a conflict inventory to help each member better understand conflict itself and their conflict style. The Thomas-Kilmann Instrument is a best-practice inventory I’d recommend.

Coming Up Next Week on the #WhatsYourSparkBlog
Join me next Tuesday for Changing the Narrative to Build Effective Teams: Part III, where I’ll write about the other points of the conversation – stress, feedback and appreciation, and communication – and what to do with all of the information at the end of the conversation.