To Improve Your Team, First Work on Yourself

If a team is not working well together, it’s highly likely that each person is contributing to the difficulty in some way. The odds of improving the team dynamic in a meaningful and sustainable will be higher if everyone — including the leader — learns to master three foundational capabilities: internal self-awareness, external self-awareness, and personal accountability. Internal self-awareness involves understanding your feelings, beliefs, and values, and how they impact your reactions. If you find yourself in an emotionally-charged situation, ask: What are my core values, and how might they be impacting my reactions? What are the facts vs. my interpretations? Next, consider the impact you may be having on your teammates. This is external self-awareness. One way to start is to observe others during discussions. Did someone raise their voice? Stop talking? Smile? You can collect some valuable information this way — but it also leaves room for misinterpretation. A more direct approach is to ask teammates for specific, straightforward feedback: What am I doing in meetings that is helpful? What am I doing that is not helpful? Lastly, to be personally accountable, practice assessing how you are contributing to the problem and make a conscious choice about how to react to improve the team’s outcomes. Changing how we process information and respond requires not just learning these new skills, but also demonstrating them long enough to form new habits