Exploring Our Value of Team

Exploring Our Team Values

Over the next five weeks, we’re exploring our team values which are generosity, courage, wisdom, team, and fun. In each episode, we’re diving into where our values come from, what they mean, and how we are applying them to our team, our relationships, and ourselves.

In this episode, we explore our value of team. We discuss the meaning of team, why it’s such a core value to us, what makes strong teams, and how the value of team shows up in our Strengths and in experiences with our clients, peers, and loved ones. We also share key takeaways to help you start exploring the importance of teams in your life.

Defining the Value of Team

In it’s simplest definition, a team is a group of people who are connected for a common purpose. But more than a group of connected people, a team is an authentic connection with others that brings a true sense of belonging, meaning, and purpose to all involved. At Leadership Vision, we believe team is membership with one another and a partnership towards that common purpose. It is ultimately within a team where people gain insights into others while shaping their own Strengths, potential, capacity, and influence.

Why the Value of Team?

We believe that values anchor us into our present reality and guide us in how it is that we’re navigating the reality, the people, and the context around us. The value of team that we hold at Leadership Vision isn’t just a way that we identify ourselves or how we relate to each other internally, it’s core and fundamental to how we practice our relationship with our clients. Team is a practice. We’re not afraid to give others the opportunity to lead when it’s their area of expertise and we’re willing to support when it’s our time to support because we know that we’re on the same team. We need to be team members to each other first, healthy growing, and curious team members.

A second reason why we focus on teams so strongly is that it creates what we call in the psychological field, an in-group. An in-group is a place where people find meaning, where they find belonging, where they find their sense of purpose. Whenever you have an in-group, you have a group that’s been set aside for a specific purpose. An in-group happens when people realize they have something to offer to a group and they have something they can receive from other members of the group. It creates a stronger bond and a stronger sense of belonging which are some of the unique characteristics of an in-group. Strong, well-functioning teams frequently display three signs.

3 Signs of a Strong Team

1. Team members have a sense of psychological safety.
2. Team members have a sense of emotional security and can express their feelings, ask for help, and have a relational, social, and personal connection with each other.
3. Team members gain a sense of personal significance and purpose within the team.

Takeaways for Building Stronger Teams

How do you become a good teammate on your family team, your work team, and other teams in your life? Here are our key takeaways to become a better teammate and build stronger teams with your family, friends, and co-workers.

• Stay curious. Be open to other team members. Listen with curiosity. Be willing to discuss and solve problems on your areas of expertise.

• Remember, you’re not alone. We’ve worked with hundreds of teams, healthy, unhealthy, dysfunctional, and functional, strong, and struggling. And over 21 years and hundreds of teams, we have noticed a variety of things about them. We’ve noticed how they collaborate and communicate, how they navigate conflict and change. You’re never alone in the function or dysfunction of your team.

• Allow your teams to change. Teams are fluid, dynamic, changing, and always in flux. Pay attention to how you show up as a team member, as well as which teams feed you, which teams excite you, and which teams bring out the best in you. People are always growing and changing.

• Practice patience. It takes time to develop healthy team members that contribute to being a healthy team and it takes repetition. Oftentimes, we meet with teams every single month for a period of four to six months to cultivate best team practices. Time and repetition is very important to understand.

• Take time to share. Share time and moments with others. Take turns of who’s talking, take turns of who’s doing the ideating, take turns of who’s doing the acting. Find moments to not only share but also give opportunities away for others to take a turn, to lead someone else, to share their opinion.

The Value of Team in Your Strengths

How does the value of team show up in your Strengths or the Strengths of your team? Connect with us at connect@leadershipvisionconsulting.com, on social media, or comment on this blog.