3 Questions Every Teammate Must ask to Improve Teamwork
In my work with teams over the years, I have used a lot of questions to provoke discussion. But nothing is more powerful than having members of teams look inward and question their true contribution to the team, their potential contribution and their level of commitment.
We spend a lot of time looking to the leader to improve teamwork and not enough focusing on the members of the team (see Why Is It Always The Leader’s Fault? Who’s Responsible For Teamwork).
When teammates answer honestly the three questions below, they discover some important things around their role, their effort and their contribution as a team player. As a result teamwork has a greater chance of improving.
1. What’s your personal contribution to the team? Not what you can bring or have the potential to bring, but what you are actually bringing today.
2. What’s your contribution potential to the team? What do you have the potential to bring to the team that is unique and takes the team to the next level?
3. How committed are you to the team? What have you done to demonstrate your commitment?
I have found that most members of teams I have worked with struggle answering the first question if they are truly honest. Most teammates can talk about what they bring to a leader, or an organization, but struggle to define what they bring to the team that makes it better.
In order for teamwork to succeed, each member of the team must understand his or her role, be able to define what he or she brings that is unique to the overall team, understand what he or she can potentially bring and commit to bringing it every day.
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