Leading Your Team

Question 1

Subjects of leading your team

Answer 1

Setting up your team for success; model of team effectiveness; key challenges to teams

Question 2

How do you set up your team for success?

Answer 2

Understanding what characterizes well-functioning teams; understanding that the teams work best when they’re well suited for the situation; and understanding the common functions of teams

Question 3

What characterizes well working teams?

Answer 3

Commitment to an engaging, common purpose; active and fair participation from all members; healthy and productive debate; openness to share different ideas, perspectives, and to take risks without fear of judgment; set of shared norms that govern how the team operates, specifically about information sharing and decision making

Question 4

What are common team functions?

Answer 4

Exchanging ideas, perspectives, and best practices; ideating and innovating potential new approaches, applications, or options; implementing solutions or team recommendations; executing a multi-faceted plan

Question 5

What is the model of team effectiveness?

Answer 5

The dashboard of effectiveness, which consists of three indicators: performance or results, team strength and flexibility, and individual learning.

Question 6

What does team performance or results mean?

Answer 6

The team successfully delivers in a manner that satisfies appropriate audiences (boss, customer, etc…)

Question 7

What does it mean to have team strength and flexibility?

Answer 7

The team gets better at what it currently does (strength) and is able to build capacity to take on new work (flexibility) also known as adaptability.

Question 8

What does it mean for a team to excel at individual learning?

Answer 8

Individual team members learn and grow so that they can work in new ways.

Question 9

How do you create high performing teams?

Answer 9

You can create these teams through using five levers to design and runs teams that meet all three criteria on the dashboard: team design, process, launch, culture, and effectiveness.

Question 10

What are the five levers that make up the Model of Team Effectiveness?

Answer 10

Team culture, process, design, launch, and personal leadership style.

Question 11

What is team culture?

Answer 11

The definite dos and don’t of how the team works together that everyone on the team knows implicitly, and how the team solves problems and addresses challenges.

Question 12

What is team process?

Answer 12

These are the practices that you establish for how people interact to get their work done - for example, how you run meetings, how you share information, and how you lead people through plans and feedback. As you think about your own team or department’s process, you can map two dimensions of process: decision making and information flow.

Question 13

What is team decision making?

Answer 13

The way decisions are made by the leader of the team. With a consensus-based approach, all members of the team are comfortable with the decision and feel that they can adequately support it. In a top-down approach, the decision rests with the leader.

Question 14

What is team information flow?

Answer 14

There’s a spectrum for information flow from centrally orchestrated to distributed. In a centrally orchestrated system, the leader curates all information and pushes it out to the team; in a distributed system, it is open and free-flowing, each team members assessing who has or needs to have information they have access to.

Question 15

What is team design?

Answer 15

These are the systems, structures, and practices you establish that enable performing units to function well. The lever of design includes three things: purpose, composition, and systems. Purpose is a compelling explanation of what your team is doing. Composition looks at hiring for team and individual purposes. Systems and structures allow the team to foster collaboration and allow the team to deliver on its purpose.

Question 16

What is a team launch?

Answer 16

the beginning or starting point of a team, which a leader facilitates deliberately as an opportunity to discuss how the team will operate, including the team’s purpose, objectives, and norms. There are five aspects that make a successful launch: shared understanding of purpose, awareness and appreciation for the team’s resources, knowledge, and expertise, norms governing collaboration, strategy for performance, perspective on leadership

Question 17

When do teams work best?

Answer 17

When they’re well suited to the situation. Specifically, when the task is so complex that no one person has the expertise or tie to figure it all out and get it done; when diverse views, knowledge, and functional experience are necessary to complete the task, and when those inputs build on one another in reciprocal ways to deliver insight and application; when you need buy-in from multiple sections/constituencies.

Question 18

Explain leadership style as it applies to the five levers of model of team effectiveness.

Answer 18

Your patterns of behavior that are consistent across situations and your interactions with others.

Question 19

What are the strongest predictors of team performance?

Answer 19

Social sensitivity and turn taking.

Question 20

Social sensitivity

Answer 20

the ability to read the emotions of others

Question 21

Turn taking

Answer 21

The extent to which each team member speaks

Question 22

Key challenges facing teams

Answer 22

Conflict, diversity, dispersion, and psychological safety

Question 23

How do you manage conflict in the team?

Answer 23

You should manage the team in such a way that people reap the benefits of the disagreements through changing, adapting, and learning from the experience.

You need to monitor the type and amount of conflict. Too little conflict can be a sign that people don’t feel safe speaking their mind and authentic views or there is not a diverse enough perspective. Too much conflict can distract a team and suggest the team has lost track of its collective mission or people see more at stake than the issue at hand. The type of conflict refers to how people disagree and what they disagree about. You want people to focus on the tasks, issues, challenges, problems, opportunities questions and decisions facing the team, not other team members or personalities on the team.

Question 24

Why does diversity matter?

Answer 24

The team needs to be greater than the sum of its parts, which it can only do through diversity. To fill this diversity gap, ensure the four Es are filled: Enhancement, empathy, exploration, and esteem.

Question 25

What is enhancement in reference to the Four Es

Answer 25

The team gets more from their differences and sharing their ideas if they believe that differences within the team can help get the team to achieve their goals more effectively.

Question 26

What is empathy in reference to the Four Es?

Answer 26

You can get your team to understand others’ points of view and stances through getting them to put themselves in the other person’s shoes and see things from their perspective.

Question 27

What does exploration mean in reference to the Four Es?

Answer 27

This is the practice of enquiring into others’ perspectives and backgrounds and understanding them - the best way to do this is through taking the initiative and doing it prior to the person voicing it.

Question 28

What does esteem mean in reference to the four Es?

Answer 28

This is making sure that each person on the team feels valued and respected, that their views are not discounted, and that differing viewpoints, perspectives, and opinions are welcome and expected and that each person’s viewpoints are necessary for team success.

Question 29

What is a dispersed team?

Answer 29

These are teams that work remotely and require a greater role from the leader.

Question 30

What are two things to keep in mind with remote/dispersed teams?

Answer 30

One rule is that leaders always feel like they communicate enough with their teams, but the team members usually feel like the leader needs to communicate more. As a result, the leader needs to feel like they’re over-communicating.

You must ensure ongoing team communication, reinforce team norms, encourage collaboration, and actively solicit the input and perspectives of everyone on the team, especially those that are not co-located.

Question 31

What is psychological safety?

Answer 31

This is a climate on the team that ensures everyone feels safe for taking risk. There is a high level of trust and respect within the team and individuals feel comfortable speaking up and challenging opinions.

Question 32

How do you foster psychological safety?

Answer 32

You frame the team’s work as a learning process so that people realize their ideas and others’ ideas are worth sharing even if they are incomplete.

You foster a sense of humility within the team so that they understand their knowledge, experience, and expertise may be essential, but not exhaustive/comprehensive.

You need to model careful listening and be vulnerable about personal knowledge gaps and mistakes.