"You don't climb mountains without a team, you don't climb mountains without being fit, you don't climb mountains without being prepared and you don't climb mountains without balancing the risks and rewards. And you never climb a mountain by accident - it has to be intentional." - Mark Udall
Have you operated as part of a team? Most of us have and I think we could all talk about good and bad experiences along the way.
What has been the best and worst experiences you've had as part of a team and how did they effect the team positively and negatively?
Feel free to let me know in the comments below.
Design and create your ideal life, tomorrow isn't promised - galenkp
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Best team experience should come as no surprise. It was from my time in the military. What made it great was the leadership team, the closeness of the team, and their dedication to mission accomplishment. This resulted in success each and every time.
My worst team experience was after the military. I and another manager were put in a position whis resulted in a great deal of conflict and low morale for the team. I place the blame for this squarely at my feet. I should have refused to coninue working with the structure like it was. Should have collected some data and addressed it with our supervisor more thoroughly. Instead I apprached him with feelings instead.
I'm not at all surprised as you say.
All good leaders take the responsibility for failure onto their own shoulders, and leaders who have had military backgrounds especially so.
Feelings happen to all of us but not always are they appropriate in the workplace where leaders are concerned (part of the difficulties of being in leadership) so again, no surprises that didn't work out. I'm sure you navigated it as best you can using all the tools at your disposal.
Thanks for opening up with candour.
No, I had the data available. Could have taken time to parse it and present it to him. I did not. I let my emotions rule the day.
A learning experience for sure then, and one that probably won't be repeated.
Yes it was. Although I had made arguments in the past with data backing up. For some reason I let my emotions get the better of me. Went into the discussion with my feelings to back up my argument versus the data. Yep, never let it happen again.
No one is perfect, or even close, and people who indicate they are tend to be the farthest from it than others. People are fallible and make mistakes; smart people learn from them.
Before covid at work we always were given team projects, like me and one other working (from the same office), so we used to split tasks, share opinions, "you do this, I do this" etc... After covid it has became all solo projects, so everyone does its own without collabs... It was nice before though
Bad experiences only with other offices, where it was a challenge on how they could blame you for problems and whine
Complaints and whining in office teams or inter-ofdice teams is one of the most unproductive things a team can do. Alas, teams are made up of p oppe and if people aren't managed by good leaders then fuckassery ensues.
Definitely not pleasant to work with toxic environment
Not sure how, but I managed to built the absolute best team. Sure, there are individual failures, but as a whole we're functioning at an incredibly high level.
The worst thing is always when one of us is in some kind of crisis, but doesn't tell, doesn't talk, just keeps getting more frustrated and hence less patience and lashing out and nobody knows why. But that has become rare, as I try to speak with each of them even about personal matters frequently, and they do the same among themselves. Our team meetings are 30% work related organization and 70% coaching/ group therapy.
We know very quickly when a new person doesn't fit. The last guy that entered had his interview right before a meeting, so we made him stay as we (the admin and I) were quite confident. And as a result, he's one of the most dedicated workers we all have ever seen. Sure, making mistakes, that's normal as we're very well structured and most people in this culture aren't, so they have to get used to it. But he's integrated super well, making the same rough jokes as we all do, and is feeling great and showing it, which makes us feel great.
Functioning teams are awesome. Like mini-communities.
Communication is really important when it comes to teams. I wonder though, you say it was a great team but sometokes people don't open up/communicate? I think it's important people are made to feel like they have the chance to open up and are in an environment that accepts it.
It's a cultural thing. Men are still not supposed to talk about that, and it took me a long time to gain their trust in a way that they noticed that I wouldn't judge, but help them. But as always, there sometimes is some falling back into old habits. But I know them well enough by now that I usually notice it anyway, and can encourage them enough to talk to me. And once they talked to me, they usually talk with the rest again, too, as they notice it's not that bad.
It's good that you know and can see the signs.
Best experience is the one I have now, work team is pretty good, and while we have the usual minor niggles with the other teams that share the premises even the site-wide team is pretty good, and boss is the type where any team-wide problems are hers to deal with (addressed with the whole team altogether and/or inidividuals individually as required) and any team-wide victories/praise is everyone's.
Also equally up there was my business with sibling dearest, we work really well together.
The "worst" experience (because I wasn't affected by it as much as I apparently should have been as in rather than being really upset about it I was slightly confused and was like oh well more time to work on the smaller projects that had kind of been on maintenance mode as the big company had been a big project that had taken up a lot of time) was probably the one working for the big company in the city that seemed to have undergone a coup.
What's been your best and worst? :)
I've had many "best" team situations, far too many to count and even remember.
The worst was at a place that talked a big "team game" but allowed cliques to form (even encouraged it) and that meant it was, I'm fact, completely fractured, toxic and untenable as far as a place to work for me. I left.
That sounds like the correct ratio to have XD
My brain is struggling to comprehend a place that encourages cliques, like why would you do that.
I know, it was terrible and the issues started at the very top with no regard to dealing with th obvious and damaging cliques. At the first work event, my wife was pulled aside by two of the other wives and warned about it. When she told me I talked it away not believing it but sure enough, there it was. I wasn't there long, just under 12 months.
Yay for the forewarning and being able to escape quickly! O_O
Hello, from my own experience we always encounter two realities: people who do not have a clear purpose and people who do but do not know how.landing it. And that's when the wear and tear begins for the ideas that are not executed, objectives that only sustain and plans that only remain in good intentions.
And finally the result is the same of lost time and accumulated frustration. It is always better to move from intention to action.
Quite interesting.
What was your best and worst experiences as part of a team?
Really in my experience, assertive communication (language) is what feeds and imparts managerial action, and leadership, and how, every word limits and builds results, and this applies to the organizational and personal environment, to transform crises into opportunities.
Nice day 🎼
"Man is born alone and dies alone, and in the meantime he tries to escape from that fundamental loneliness through love and work."
Erich Fromm
For every moment of life, except for birth and death, we need someone to build a team with.
Good or bad, it depends on the situation, fate and people.
My worst team experience was when I had to let go of a teammate, a non-worker, who invited me to his team and then expected me to do his work. I wasn't comfortable when I tried to explain to him that he needed to change, but when he didn't accept it, I easily solved him.
Leaders manage people and the good ones know how to do difficult things. It doesn't mean they have to enjoy it though.
I have worked in teams both as a member and as a leader, and in both cases I loved the experience. As a leader, the best thing was the organization and consistency I applied and the fact that the team responded, generating good results. The worst thing was the conditions provided by management, which were not very good.
As part of the team, the best part was sharing day-to-day experiences and supporting each other in achieving our goals. The worst part was a colleague who wanted to take advantage of the work of others.
Have you been a part of big teams or were they small?
The largest one I've been to had more than 20 people, the smallest no more than 5.
When I was a salary slave, I fucking hated team work, why should I put in the effort to carry along a few fucking dead heads and journey men.
Much more productive delegating tasks to individuals, I knew then who to kick in the nuts if my standards were not met
So you didn't like a cohesive team environment?
My best experience:
crisis management on quality of life on 12 healthcare locations. I was the projectmanager and had an amazing counterpart that was a location manager of a very intense group (that was known as an example how to deal with this audience). Together we had amazing synergy and that spread over to the project team and to the target locations.
Worse experience - last year same employer. BOD tried to frame a top down efficiency project as a bottom up movement. Due to the complexity they assigned 4 senior project managers to this project - but gave the lead to an unexperienced junior process facilitator from within our team. Both to provide her the learning opportunity aswell as a way to overcome critical feedback that a senior change manager would had provided.
We as seniors where stuck between our loyalty towards our collegue and seeing that this approach would not work. Our intentions to help her, resulted in giving her the feeling that we would wanted to overrule her with our experience rather than supporting her. Her ambition prevented her from demanding the decisions required to improve the assignment or voice any of the concerns to BOD. Eventually it was such an energy drain , where I was not able to see any room to contribute I decided to give back my assignment.
Quite interesting. What would you say was the reason for the "amazing synergy" you experienced in the first case?
Mostly because we found each other in our core values, we were willing to go the extra mile because we felt the starting point was unacceptable with regards to the quality of care for the clients. Commitment ment 24/7 available.
Furthermore respecting each others and each others qualities work very well. As he had his experiment in the primary field, we got trust from the locations where we came to help. I was well known with the upper management so we got the trust from them aswell to address what was actually needed for sustainable change.
Lastly, supporting each other regardless. We both had moments where our emotions got the best of us for example when we found some really bad stuff that happened on these locations and BOD tried to play it down rather than addressing it. It needed to change and I was not always that tactical in my communication to the CEO. He supported me in public and provided honest feedback in private and we dealt with it together. Same when he made an error. We could just completely trust eachother.