How we work in teams is changing and the challenges facing leaders are growing in complexity but we believe the way to success is found through two simple principles. Here’s how to align your perspective so that they continue to work for you and your teams as you grow, scale and adjust the ways that you work together. Here's how to set your team up for success this year.
Let’s face it… teams today are different than teams of the past. Teams traditionally involved a leader and a group of followers, often co-located to create frequent, face-to-face contact. The team leader would organize the work, distribute that work, and assess performance. Team members executed the plan.
Clearly one of the newer and greater challenges at hand is that organizations and their teams are now operating in a hybrid structure. But that’s not it… teams are increasingly becoming “global”: matrix-structures now require teams to work across departments, functions, and geographies.
Then load on top of that, the dynamic that the diversity of talent (backgrounds, generational differences, and both work and educational experience) on the team creates!
While teams today face new hurdles, we believe their success continues to hinge on two core and complementary components:
1. In the context of a changing external environment, what the leadership team must deliver for the organization.
Having an articulated value captured by the leadership team provides the essential focus that will enable growth, and clearly defines expectations at the next level of leadership.
2. The structures, processes, and most importantly, how team members must interplay to deliver the team mandate.
Very specifically, leadership must table where tensions should exist between the different functions on that team. Together learning how to manage those tensions constructively drives a healthy team dynamic and leads to better decisions.
Teamwork has never been easy – but taking a specific and systematic approach to setting up your team for success will make all the difference.
We need our teams to be “high-performing,” “more effective,” or just “better.”
Is 2023 the Year of the Team?
About the Dean Fulford
Dean brings more than 20 years of experience and a deep expertise in leadership development, organizational development and design, project management, process mapping, and best-practice benchmarking activities. With an extensive background in organization development and effectiveness, performance consulting and process improvement, Dean compliments his HR background with strong process management and competency-based project experience. With an Engineering degree he brings a high technical aptitude to his engagements that make him a credible voice with deeply technical clients.
He is a member of Stratford’s Leadership team, responsible for its Leadership Development practice area, bringing both product innovation and operational effectiveness to these services. Dean has held HR Executive roles in high technology and financial services firms, responsible for design, implementation, and oversight of organizational development, effectiveness and human resource programs at both the local and global levels. Dean’s particular areas of expertise include:
- Leadership development strategy and program development
- Instructional design and facilitation; talent management program design and implementation
- Process design and project management
- Driving pragmatic, metrics-driven solutions