BKE Connect

What’s Your Working Genius?

“The 6 Types of Working Genius”, the latest insights to team dynamics by Patrick Lencioni pulls back the curtain to why team members’ work styles either complement each other, enabling them to move at a quick pace or why teams struggle to find traction even with simple tasks. The 6 working geniuses include wonder, invention, discernment, galvanizing, enablement, and tenacity. By first understanding your own working genius types, you recognize the strengths of your team members and where there may be gaps of competencies.. The ease of a high functioning team isn’t luck or chance, but choreographed by each member's ability to work more fully in their zone of genius. A top take away - my working frustration is someone else’s genius; ask for help and appreciate the diversity they bring to the team.

3 Warning Signs Your Team is Disengaging cont’d …

In the last post, we looked at the Warning Sign when a team member shows heightened energy around an issue. In this post, we’ll look at the flip side:

Warning Sign: Going Silent

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say likely all seasoned project managers and supervisors have experienced this warning sign. This is also one of the easiest signals to pick up, but not the easiest to address. When a team member who is normally engaged and contributing goes uncharacteristically silent, it is time to dig deeper.

You may decide to see if the silence is across all discussion or if the silence persists into the next meeting. If the answer is yes, this calls for a private and confidential conversation with the team member. Although it may be awkward to approach the topic, I’ll make the case that getting to the root of the silence sooner rather than later is in everyone’s best interest. It is also the fastest route to re-engaging the silent member.

Start the conversation with curiosity and empathy. Share what you’ve noticed and reaffirm the positive contribution of the team member. Ask what the team member needs to feel heard. If you have a relationship built on trust, the team member’s insights can be a gift in helping you understand the team dynamics. Ask what ideas they have for improving the team dynamics and commit to implementing their ideas where feasible.

Strategize how to deal with this situation before your next team meeting. If you noticed the silence, most likely others did as well. By broadly addressing the silence without disclosing confidentiality, the team will see you proactively dealing with the tension. Using facilitation techniques that invite everyone’s input will help get the dialog going again.

In the next post, we’ll look at the third Warning Sign - body language and word choice.

3 Warning Signs Your Team is Disengaging

Before a team member steps back, or steps out completely, there are signs.

I’ve seen it, and I bet you’ve experienced it too. And yet, we tend to ignore the obvious or hope the situation sorts itself out.

Sometimes it does. But usually the disconnection accelerates until you are forced to face the disintegration.

How can you tune in to what’s happening? How do you proactively invite the conversation hiding in plain sight?

Let’s look at the first Warning Sign: heightened energy around a topic or decision.

The team member’s energy can be in strong support or strong opposition to an idea or proposal. Why is this an early warning sign? The team member is signaling that their idea or opinion is really important to them. As the project manager, it is your role to recognize the change in intensity and respond that you hear the member’s concerns.

The catch is, when a team member shows high energy around a topic, and then is not acknowledged for their expertise and experience, they feel ignored and shut out. It doesn’t take many repeats for the team member to shut down completely.

When you see this changed intensity, it is your responsibility as the project manager to show you recognize the shift in energy.

Here are a couple of open ended questions to try:

“I can see you have a lot of energy around this idea, and sharing background and experience the team needs to hear and process. What is the best way to capture this information and what do we need to do with it?

Or you may ask:
“What is the most important takeaway you want us to understand?”

Next step is to facilitate a team discussion to unpack the topic and get input from others. By recognizing a team member’s intensity around a topic and being willing to explore it with the team demonstrates you have tuned in to what is important to them by recognizing their experience and expertise. The team members will feel heard and continue to show up with their best ideas. You will also build trust and connection with your team, two ingredients in combating disengagement.

In the next post, we’ll look at the flip side of this warning sign.