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Team Dynamics

 

image: pixabay.com

Teams are tricky. Just when you think you've got your team figured out, configured properly, fully set and ready to go, it changes on you. 

Every time someone enters or leaves your team, you've got a different team. That's what makes recruiting, hiring, orienting, training, and development so important. If you don't develop your team the way you'd like them to develop, they'll change in ways that you might not care for.

Team dynamics require us to build a team as a group, and also as a one-team-member-at-a-time proposition. 

It's a project just juggling all of the pieces. It's a big responsibility and as a team leader there is no ducking that responsibility. I've tried -- you can't do it. Teams need their team leader's attention every single day.

One on one conversations.

Highly productive meetings.

Occasional fun (and frequent sense of humor).

Coaching to motivate when someone gets stuck.

Prodding to get productive when someone gets lazy.

Inspiring when the work is hard, the days are long, and the problems many.

All of this (and more) while keeping current in your field and working on your own development. 

Team dynamics will wear you out if you let them -- or, you can draw energy from the value being created right in front of you, and largely -- because of you.

-- doug smith


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