Preface

IN MID-1998, I found myself at a curious place in my career as an observer of organizational behavior. Over the previous decade, my work inside some of the most successful companies in the emerging global economy had provided me a front row seat at a very interesting spectacle. As Partnerwerks associates and I worked to support the implementation and maintenance of high-performance teams in client firms, we began to witness again and again just how powerfully certain individuals’ behavioral strategies impacted the effectiveness of entire teams.

Even though we were witnessing these strategies on a daily basis, we could find little written advice about how individual behavioral choices impact team effectiveness. So I began writing down some of the behaviors we were observing and every week emailing one complete principle governing the impact of behavioral choices to whomever showed interest. Soon enough, there were hundreds of subscribers to Partnerwerks’ weekly tip sheet, “TeamWisdom TipsTM,” and more than enough essays and exercises to begin thinking about a book.

Teamwork Is an Individual Skill comes out of the first year’s TeamWisdom Tips. After viewing this material I asked my associates and myself the following question: “What themes are represented here?” Five themes were identified: (1) taking personal responsibility for productive relationships, (2) creating powerful partnerships, (3) aligning individuals around a shared purpose, (4) trusting just right, and (5) developing the collaborative mindset. Each of the five main chapters of this book develops one of these themes. The chapters are ordered to provide a logical developmental path toward acquiring TeamWisdom.

These five themes make up the foundation of the text, and I see them related to each other, cognitively speaking, as a series of concentric circles. As depicted in Figure 1, “Personal Responsibility” is at the core of the skillset, with the other themes emanating outward to “Collaborative Mindset.”

Figure 1. TeamWisdom Model

The term “TeamWisdom” contains the notion that teamwork is an individual skill, not a group skill. Becoming skilled at doing more with others may be the single most important thing you can do to ensure that you remain employed in the emerging knowledge economy. This book equips you with a set of individual skills and behaviors that can and will help you create highly responsible and productive relationships at work. No longer will you find yourself complaining, “I got assigned to a bad team.” Instead, you will know what to do to make teamwork work for you. This book aims to remove the ambiguity and magical thinking that exists around achieving success with teams. Most importantly, it will show you how you can build collaborations with one or more people, simply and powerfully, in any situation.

Since Teamwork Is an Individual Skill is designed to help you get more done with others, you can work through it by yourself, or with a group or workteam. Each of the five main chapters consists of several brief sections. Following each section is a what I call a “Personal Challenge” for individuals and a “Team Challenge” for groups. These “challenges” are questions and tasks designed to help you put into practice the ideas of the section.

For individuals, this book provides a path to upgrading your approach to work relationships. Use it to prepare for new collaborations, to take responsibility for success, to search for answers following upsets, and to read, reflect, and write about effective approaches to work relationships in general. The idea is to take a series of small and meaningful steps that will add up to noticeable improvements in relationship effectiveness making you, as an individual, more valuable to more people. The skills you learn will also make others more valuable to you. As you reflect on the Personal Challenge at the end of each section, and record your responses, your TeamWisdom will grow rapidly.

If you are using Teamwork Is an Individual Skill with a group, a free leaders’ guide can be downloaded from www.partnerwerks.com (look for “TeamWisdom Leader’s Guide”). The guide is offered to help you get the most out of these concepts in a training environment. For groups, the book provides short, specific lessons that generate a common vocabulary and a shared exploration process that will open the door to deeper team cohesion, more authentic communication, improved group creativity, more effective meetings, and far more effective group decision making. Discussing the Team Challenge at the end of each section will rapidly build clarity, motivation, common practices, overall alignment of direction and outputs, and generate potential for synergy in your team.

The Introduction further develops the main ideas of the text and describes what is at stake in the changing workplace. Chapter One examines the notion that personal responsibility is the first ingredient for producing productive relationships at work. The central position of “Personal Responsibility” in Figure 1 illustrates how your choices and actions, or inaction, can always be found as the cause of your team results.

Chapter Two, “Creating Powerful Partnerships,” can help you make every relationship into a collaboration as you learn and apply key interpersonal principles used by powerful partners.

Chapter Three, “Collaborating ‘on’ Purpose,” illustrates the mighty power of shared purpose. It provides fundamental principles and skills for aligning people to a common purpose.

In Chapter Four, “Trusting Just Right,” you will explore how to trust neither too little nor too much, but “just right” at anytime with anybody. By the time you finish Chapter Four you will have learned how to tether your ability to trust others to your own behaviors, not to anyone else’s.

Finally, Chapter Five, “The Collaborative Mindset,” will take you well past any previous team training by pushing the boundaries of collaborative principles and actions. The purpose of Chapter Five is to stretch your mind and invite you to step up to the highest level of teamwork responsibility.

As an additional benefit to individuals and groups using this book, you are invited to accept a free subscription to TeamWisdom Tips which is delivered to you every week by email. Just send a blank email to teamwisdom-on@partnerwerks.com or use the subscription form atwww.partnerwerks.com

I wish you a world of productive relationships!