How Effective is Your Team?

Surveying members to gauge effectiveness in working together

You can usually tell if your team is not working together as effectively as they could be. You see the signs. Team members are….

• not committed to supporting each other, work is being thrown “over the wall” with no thought of quality or timeliness
• not attending meetings regularly, or, if they are, don’t participate or are distracted
• not sharing ideas and strategies; rather everyone has their own ideas and are not interested in anyone else’s ideas
• frequently complaining about each other

When you find your team is not working together effectively, start first with a survey of the team members to understand how they feel and get their perspectives. You may want to keep the survey anonymous so that team members feel they can be forthcoming in their responses.  (I’m usually not a fan of anonymous surveys but in some circumstances they are valuable in getting you necessary data.) Ask questions such as:

• Do you believe that there is a high commitment to this initiative we are working on?
• Are you personally committed to this initiative?
• Do you believe that team members are concerned about each other and supportive of each other?
• Do you feel a close bond with your fellow team members?
• Do you believe that ideas, suggestions, issues, concerns are welcome to be shared?
• Do you believe that all team members’ voices are heard?
• Do team members respect each other’s various strengths and skills?
• Are team members overly competitive with each other, pushing aside others’ ideas and dominating conversations?
• Do team members appreciate diversity on the team – in skills, experiences, cultural background?
• Do you feel that your team members recognize your efforts and provide positive feedback to you?
• Do you recognize the efforts of your team members and provide positive feedback to them?

Once you have the results of the survey, share with your team – highlighting strengths and areas for improvement in how the team members work together. It sometimes helps to delineate behaviors that make for effective teamwork and those behaviors that discourage teamwork, such as:

While there is no need to point out who on the team may be displaying negative behaviors, I would certainly recommend highlighting those negative behaviors that are occurring and ask the team to determine how they will change those negative behaviors to effective team behaviors. As for the effective team behaviors, I would recommend highlighting those individuals who excel at a particular behavior and thank them for their efforts and work on the team.

Even if my team seems to be working together well, I like to survey them at some point during the project to be sure I’m not missing anything as the team leader and that everyone feels supported and welcomed on the team.

Related articles:

• 5 Things to Do Today to Build a Better Relationship with Your Team
• Factors that Create Effective and Successful Project Teams