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www.newera-controls.co.uk

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www.i10.org.uk

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Mentoring Teams to work together

Pressure is always put on the leader – the figurehead – the Managing Director for the business to succeed. If things do not work he or she is to blame – the buck stops there. But successful businesses are invariably made up of successful teams of motivated individuals all focused to achieve a common objective.

In Mentoring having worked with the MD to address the overall vision and shareholder objectives it is important to get the team on-side to these and align their personal and business objectives to them. Just telling people to get on with it (tempting though that may be sometimes!) is just not good enough.

So how do you do that? Well involvement and getting agreement to strategies and ideas to achieve the objectives set but before you do that you must ensure that there are no underlying personal issues that will be barriers to achieving them. As a Mentor I tend to facilitate a group session using the Johari Window as the base for discussion. Johari (named after the originators Jo and Harry) is a model/process for achieving open relationships and making for more powerful teams.

The concept is based on the fact that each team member knows things about themselves and about others and similarly don’t know things. The quadrant is split into 4 – an open area where the team has mutual knowledge, An area of blindness where others know things about you that you are not aware of. An area of hidden, where others are not disclosing things about themselves and finally an unknown area. The ideal is to get the Open area as large as possible by encouraging feedback and disclosure. This helps because the more we can TRUST each other and ACCEPT each other the more likely we are to try new things (Unknown Area) and take the business to another plane.

To facilitate this (and it does need facilitating – do not try this at home without assistance!!) each team member initially is asked to set out on their own (using Post It notes for example) things they value in each of the other team members. They then similarly put down things that they don’t value or find difficult. These are then put up on a board and discussed.

Managed properly this process enables team members to really appreciate how they are valued and what they need to do to improve. Managed properly is the key phrase here for it needs to be understood that Truths will be stated that may not necessarily be welcomed but need to be said to ensure that the overall objectives are met. We live in a rather closed society where openness is not encouraged but I have seen great steps and businesses transformed by carrying out this process.