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Dear friends,
It’s February already! Many of us feel discouraged at this time of year. By now our new year’s resolutions have lost their novelty but not their challenge, and it can be difficult to keep up the momentum. Winter weather doesn’t help either! If you’re having difficulty keeping your resolution, check out this interview with my friend and colleague, Dawna Ballard, PhD, a communication scientist at UT Austin. I appreciated her point that our bodies are not in an energized, new-beginning kind of mode in winter, at the time of the Western new year. She notes that most traditional cultures celebrate the new year either in fall or spring, and that these times may better harness our natural rhythms to support change. So, if you’re having a hard time with you latest goal or habit, don’t feel bad. Admit it, re-examine it, and either adjust or recommit from a place of self-compassion.
Now on to this month’s topic—the frequently-requested topic: teams. Those of you who know my team know that they are the absolute best ever, though I don’t feel I can take credit for their awesomeness. From observing, here’s my short take: the 5 I’s- and one T- of a fantastic team.
Inspiration: Every single person who works with me is passionate about advancing science for health equity. I am very explicit about our mission when I hire people, and it is my one absolute litmus test.
Introspection: As the team leader, I try to know myself. Unless you know where your own challenges are, you cannot lead effectively. For myself, I often think out loud, in ways that are declarative, and that can lead others to think I have very strong feelings or have made a decision, when in fact, I am still processing. I try to be transparent about that, and to structure the meeting to get others’ input as much as possible.
Individual: I value everyone on my team as a person, and I care deeply about their well-being. I have learned that it is incumbent on the leader to share this feeling of regard and affection. I know that many of you balance team-building and socializing against the many other pressing demands of work and life. It doesn’t take as long as you think, and I promise it’s worth the time and energy. These relationships make work more meaningful and the team more effective.
Interaction: People need different ways to engage with each other. Structure your team to accommodate differing communication styles. We have a weekly group meeting where we run down all the big things, the team has a slack channel (that I am not on) where they do a lot of real-time sharing (and joke telling and occasional social planning, I am given to understand!) As my team has gotten bigger, I don’t often have one-on-one meetings with everyone. However, I still reserve specific time slots on my calendar for my team to have individual check-in meetings with me as needed. When I realized that there was one person who never seems to sign up for those, I found a new way to engage periodically with that person.
Interdependence: I try not to assign any responsibility to just one person. We always have a second person who is the right-hand person or backup. This would not be for something really concrete, like working on references for a paper, but for a larger task like checking through the supporting documents for a grant, two people would be assigned. This makes people feel like they’re not alone, and it helps the work move seamlessly. I also encourage and acknowledge when teammates volunteer to help each other out. Not only does it facilitate completion of specific tasks, but it also creates an ethos of shared purpose.
Transparency: Trust – or “psychological safety” is the most important factor in a team’s success, per Google’s research. If your team feels like they always have to bring their most polished, professional facade when they come together, you can only get so far. I’m pretty open about my own life whether it’s a childcare fail or the profound challenge of aging parents’ declining health. This encourages team members to be real with each other and with me, within their own comfort zones. Similarly, transparency about work issues allows teams to be more effective. We recently had a communication fail that led an important stakeholder to feel out of the loop, and I regretted it. I shared it with the team, even though it didn’t reflect at all well on me, because I knew they’d come up with ways to keep those mistakes from happening in the future.
If you need more discussion about this important topic, Charles Duhigg’s New York Times article is a good, if dense, read about Google’s years of research on successful teams. Amy Edmondson’s book Teaming draws a lot from health care and has been on my to-be-read list since I heard her speak some time ago.
As always, send me your accomplishments so I can amplify them, and be patient with yourself during these winter months.
Warmly,
Urmimala