Team Voice: Power to Build a Positive Teamwork Culture | #PeopleSkills
by Kate Nasser | 2 Comments »
When interpersonal trouble emerges, does your team use its team voice to address it? Or do the team members think they should only speak up if they are directly involved? Think again! The team voice has the power to build and maintain a positive workplace culture.
Team Voice: Its Power to Build & Maintain Positive Culture. Image by Vivian Evans via Flickr.
Team Voice: The Power to Build & Maintain Positive Workplace
Picture a teammate that seeks power over others. They can be verbally aggressive or passive aggressive. In either case, this power player targets one person to start. Other teammates witness this bad behavior yet they think they should say nothing. They don’t use their team voice to maintain a healthy teamwork culture. The target set limits with the power playing teammate. Leader and teammates think that’s good!
Yet there is ONE problem. The power player feels emboldened and empowered to do it again because s/he saw the leader and/or teammates say nothing. The power playing teammate could also see they affected — “got to” — the target.
The team voice has the power to …
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Voice the team values & reinforce agreed upon teamwork behaviors
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Build & maintain a positive workplace culture
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Prevent bullying and revenge
When it comes to building and maintaining a positive workplace culture, the team voice includes the leaders. Leaders often like team members to have their back. Team members need to know that the leaders have their back too! Don’t abandon team members with the –work it out for yourselves — brush off. The team voice of team values and acceptable teamwork behaviors creates a great workplace culture and feeds high performance.
From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™
Related Posts:
7 Ego Actions That Stifle Leadership & Teamwork
5 Extremes That Harm Teamwork
21 Reasons Team Members Can’t Automatically Get Along
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Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.
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What strikes me is how many leaders do default to “work it out yourselves.” When values are being stomped on and inappropriate behaviors are tolerated (especially from high performers) it’s everyone’s problem. Staying quiet or telling people to work it out as if it’s a personality conflict on the smallest scale doesn’t help. My favorite leaders were the ones who recognized that they were on the team and not apart from the team. Also, they created forums to talk about the way we worked together, not only how the work was progressing. They understood that a healthy team culture is critical and cannot be taken for granted.
By the way, I appreciate that you called this “team voice.” I had not heard it referred to quite like that before and it makes a lot of sense.
Alli
Well said Alli “Great leaders know they are a part OF the team not apart from the team.” And yes, I have witnessed many leaders who push aside their role in team/workplace culture especially when it comes to values being crushed and bad behaviors tolerated. In truth, when they step aside they are abandoning their employees and it can destroy trust and morale if not corrected. I reflected as we started this New Year just how many times over 25+ years I have had to coach leaders to be a part of the team and not abandon the staff. The good news is, leaders can change their behavior and become true leaders who build and maintain positive workplace culture with the teams!
Many thanks for your insights,
Kate