The Five Behaviors to be an Effective Team Member

We are all aware that teams are the building blocks of any organization and our working lives are becoming more team oriented than ever before.

Here are some statistics from a white paper on the state of teams.

Nearly four in five people report that their team members are typically not willing to acknowledge their weaknesses to one another, which highlights the pervasive lack of vulnerability- based trust throughout the workplace.

Slightly over half of teams leave meetings without collective commitment to agreed upon decisions. Two-thirds of people say their team members don't take personal responsibility to improve team performance moving forward. And over 60% of workers feel their job satisfaction would improve if their coworkers were better teammates.

Surveys of managers, directors and executives show that 98% believe skill development is absolutely worth their team's time. Close to 90% say effective teamwork is more important to their organization's success now than it was five years ago.

Fortunately, there is a model for effective teamwork. In his best- selling book, the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni, introduces a powerful and approachable model for effective teamwork and collaboration. According to Lencione, there are five key behaviors that a team must practice in order to work effectively with one another: Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability, and the Focus on Results. Each behavior is important independently, but also in laying the foundation upon which the rest the next behavior is built. Conversely, the absence of any of these five critical behaviors can cripple teams and organizations. With persistence and hard work people have been using Lencioni model to improve their teams for nearly two decades.

As a facilitator of the five behaviors of a cohesive team, I had the opportunity to complete the Five Behaviors Personal Development Profile Assessment and received a 23-page customized development report that outlined my strengths and opportunities to be a more effective member of my teams.

The report includes pearls of wisdom for how to build trust, mastering conflict, how to achieve commitment, embracing accountability and using your motivators to focus on results.

I appreciated the depiction of my approach to conflict and accountability on a graphic scale. There is the Scale of the Spirited Debater on one end and the Calm Debater on the other. The Calm debater who tends to use measured dialogue and remain largely unruffled and the Spirited debater who tends to be expressive and who conviction during the debate. Being aware of my inclinations (toward the calm debater end of the scale), can help me to understand how I am likely to approach conflict and where I can stretch.

The scale of Receptive to Steadfast. The Receptive team member stays open to the ideas of others while the Steadfast individual holds firm to their own opinions. I lean toward the Receptive side with a strong inclination to listen first before speaking.

On the Accountability scale, from Keep the Peace to Addresses Problems,

I am inclined to Keep the Peace, being less welling to call out problems compared to the other end of the spectrum, Addresses problems by being more willing to call out problems of members of the team.

The report gives specific ideas on how to master the 5 behaviors and put them into practice. At the end of the report, you can put together a summary and action plan with specific actions to implement of the next month starting tomorrow, next two weeks and next month.

I found the report to be highly accurate, capturing my strengths and areas of opportunity for growth and development. I am looking forward to implementing the action plans over this next month.

Attached is the White paper of teams that outlines many of the statistics I have just referenced and more information on the Five Behaviors. Please reach out to me if you want to learn more about the Five Behaviors and are interested in taking the Personal Development Assessment.