Teamwork

As a (Project) Manager you can't always pick the team members or the topics you have to work on. Nevertheless you're still expected to build, or to be a part of, an effective team quickly.This is a challenging task because it usually takes time to get to know each other while you work toward a common goal. A good team requires a certain degree of trust and respect in each other. Everyone in the team needs to have a desire to contribute to the teams objectives and to help each other out. Only when you achieve mutual trust within the team you can expect real teamwork. This means that indiviuals place their own interests beneath the best interest of the team. In order to have this success you also have to be willing to pay the price for it. Every Team member has to be willing to sacrifice time and energy and to be accountable. In the end it will come down to the desire, dedication and enthusiasm of every individual on the team.
In a successful team people look out for each other. When team members care only about themselves the whole team suffers. Based on my experience I think that the best way to build relationships is to get people together outside of a work context. What are you doing to build a successful team?

Increase your fun at work

Today I want to look at one option that might increase your motivation at work considerably. Have you heard of Google's 20% projects projects? (look for "As a motivation technique, Google uses a policy often called Innovation Time Off?"). Isn't it interesting that Google's Management confirms that 50% of their innovation comes from these 20% projects. Some examples are Google Mail or Google News. Think about this, people invented these very successful services as side projects! That shows very clearly that when you care about something deeply you are doing more, much more, than expected. This should normally ensure that companies listen because you do more with the same number of people. Is your company listening?
This general approach is also true for Agile Software Development, as soon as you give more responsibility and accountability to teams, the performance goes up. That shows that people deliver amazing things if they have the environment that allows them to perform. Give your teams a chance to get together and work on improvements they are really interested in.
In many cases you don't need to get different people to get different results, you need to give your existing people the necessary room to perform. This approach is obviously not for everyone but if your company supports it I'm sure you get amazing results.

Grow your Team

As Peter Drucker said "No executive has ever suffered because his subordinates were strong and effective."
If you want to have a strong team you have to have strong team members. That applies to Project Teams as well as to functional teams. One way to grow your team is to ask for advice from your team before a decision is made. This gives the team a possibility to contribute and to help you form an opinion before a decision is made. This is very different from going back to the team after a decision has been made and then explain why you did what you did. For most Leaders there are so many tasks to be done that you can't do them all by yourself. You need help, sooner or later. If you try to do it all by yourself you get burnt out quickly. Therefore I consider it the responsibility of a leader to develop other leaders. What do you do in your team to develop leaders? Here are some benefits of developing leaders in your organization: They can help you to

• see things you might not want to see,
• get things done
• make better decisions 
• provide security and direction to others