You Won't Know if You Don't Ask

This is a bit embarrassing, but it took me over ten years of leading schools before I asked my leadership team how we were doing as a team. I met with the team weekly, we wrestled with tactical and strategic issues, and we ultimately made decisions that affected the school in critical ways. And yet, we never analyzed if we worked together in an efficient and effective way. 

When I compared the leadership team to all the school’s athletic teams, I was more embarrassed. After every game, the team’s coach would review the team’s performance. She would highlight what the team did well and identify where the team could improve. The next day the team would build on its strengths and shore up its weak areas.

The school’s athletic teams--and let’s be honest, those teams’ results were fairly trivial in the scheme of things--was being more intentional in improving its performance than the team that ran the school. Truly shocking!

Upon coming to that realization, I started focusing on how the leadership team functioned. The research posits that a strong team accomplishes three things:

• It serves its constituents well (in our case, students, staff and parents)

• It improves as a team

• It helps each team member become a better leader.

The way it accomplishes those goals are a bit more complicated. In part the team must know and be committed to its purpose, it must set ambitious goals and measure its progress against those goals, it must be clear on the expectations for all team members, and it must spend time analyzing its own performance. 

Our team spent weeks devising structures to allow us to meet the above requirements. And when we settled on the structures, team functioning improved immensely. Indeed, team members who are in different organizations still comment about how well our leadership team functioned.  

When was the last time you and your team analyzed how well it was doing as a team? If not recently, do so now. (As they say, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second-best time is now.) 

Some questions you may want to ask your team to consider include

• Do you look forward to team meetings?

• Do all team members act in the interest of the entire organization, and not their department?

• Can you count on your team members to do what they say they will do?

• Do you do what you say you will do?

• Can the team disagree during discussion and then support any decision the team reaches?

• Are you a better leader because you sit on this team?

Use these answers to help improve team performance. And like your athletic teams, if your team needs a coach, feel free to hire a good one.