A520.6.5.RB: Team Roles

Team work is the topic this week and how I facilitate team membership and relationship building roles.
A few considerations will be how I relate as a team-member, how I engage with a team to accomplish its mission, and how I work to improve team cohesion and collaboration.


First, how I relate as a team member. I've been on good teams and poor teams. My last posting in the Air Force was a horrible team. Turf guarding, entrenched ways of thinking, and active sabotage permeated that team. It affected me in a negative fashion and I, in turn, let it affect how I interacted with subordinates. I was angry and upset and took some of that out on the people that I was leading. I learned from that experience and gained a bit of insight into myself that I now find valuable. Part of developing emotional intelligence is being aware of weaknesses, I found a few on that team.


Other teams I have been on have been good teams, and I learn a great deal there as well. Teams that run well often become more than the sum of their parts. However, even here I encounter flaws in my personality that I need to be aware of. I get easily frustrated if I feel teams are not producing at a level that I feel they should. This doesn't mean that I am right, just that I am frustrated. I have to remind myself to slow down and take a larger perspective. This ability to see the bigger picture is starting to serve me well in other parts of my life as well.

I do actively engage with my team; otherwise why be a part of one. My level of engagement depends on my role. Where I was the junior member I often did more listening and offered input only where I was confident I could contribute. As a senior member I often did more listening and offered input only to guide discussion or learning. On both ends of the spectrum I did more listening but I was still engaged with the team. On points in between it really just came down to understanding what was needed of me.

Lastly, working to achieve cohesion and collaboration is paramount to building a team. Even in the often tumultuous times at the onset of team formation if you keep in mind the need to collaborate to achieve synergy you will start to improve cohesion. Not every team will make it that far. It's a given that some teams will fail despite best intentions. However, from those failures it is important to learn what caused those failures and take those lessons forward.