Since completing her PhD in Psychology’s I/O program in 1999, Liane Davey has become widely recognized for her expertise in rehabilitating ineffective or even ‘toxic’ teams. Combining knowledge of business process and group dynamics, her insights and tactics are in high demand throughout North America by top executives from financial, consumer, technology, and healthcare sectors. Currently Vice President of Knightsbridge Leadership Solutions, Liane is also the best-selling author of You First: Inspire Your Team to Grow Up, Get Along, and Get Stuff Done. Forbes magazine online recently featured an interview with her in which she shares key observations and solutions for making teamwork actually work. Here is an excerpt of what Liane says:
“Every time I see one of those trite teamwork posters with the rowers hanging on the wall, I want to rip it down. Teamwork is hard work, and it takes a lot more than nice posters on the wall.
The first thing that’s usually missing is a clear mandate for each team. Each and every team should be able to articulate why they are a team and to describe the unique value they add together. This mandate should focus on the things they can only do together. It should strip away individual work and accountabilities and focus solely on team outputs.
Just creating clarity around why the individuals need to work together and what they need to accomplish goes a long way. Once the mandate of the team is spelled out, most teams have a rude awakening about how much time they’ve been wasting just going around the table giving updates. So then there’s work to do to remove individual work from the team table to make room for the added value discussions, debates, and decisions that haven’t been happening…”