Teamership needs Team Awareness
Without team awareness, it is not possible to bring our best to the teams that we are a part of or enable others to do the same. Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
In a multiple team environment, team awareness is a crucial skillset.
Individuals need to able to recognise the teams that they were a part of, the purpose of each team, their role in the team and the role of others in their team. This is often more challenging than it seems. If you ask a relatively simple question of “how many teams are you on at work?”, you may be surprised with the number of people who struggled to answer that off the top of their head.
I asked that question as part of a research project I did a few years back and one participant said that it was “quite tricky, actually, within a matrix”. This shows that people can be a part of a team without them and/or others being explicitly aware of this. The ability to recognise that one is a part of any given team allows for individual practices to be engaged in. As another research participant observed:
“I actually think that many people do think that they're just part of one team and they don't actually think about the other teams that they work in and what their role is in those teams.”
The fact is that your org chart, job description, email signature are all deceiving you. No one title gives a clear sense of the range of teams that you are a part of and your roles in them. That’s why team awareness is so crucial.
Team awareness are a set of capabilities that allow individuals to:
Identify the teams that they are a part of
Articulate the purpose of those teams
Contribute to the needs of the team
Without team awareness, it is not possible to bring our best to the teams that we are a part of or enable others to do the same.
Some questions for you to consider this week:
How many teams are you a part of?
Can you articulate the purpose of each of those teams?
In which ways do you best contribute to the purpose of each of your teams?