How can managers strengthen their teams during times of disruption?
When predicting the success of faculty or staff groups during times of crisis, a team’s awareness of their strengths is more important than the specific composition of those strengths.
In other words – just knowing your strengths, as well as the strengths of your partners, leads to higher engagement and performance.
When team members value each other’s strengths, they more effectively relate to one another, avoid potential conflicts, boost group cohesion and create a positive dialogue.
One of the most difficult tasks for an individual is easily explaining what they’re good at. You can say you’re “organized,” but that could mean different things for different people.
Consider these items that great teams have in common:
• Team members can name and understand the individual talents of everyone on the team.
• Team members can see a clear connection between each other’s strengths and behavior. They can see the link between strengths and success.
• Everyone on the team has partnerships that encourage the development of their strengths.
• Team members use their knowledge of each other’s strengths to plan, strategize, analyze and direct their actions.
When you have people in roles that fit their strengths and talents, their energy and passion can fuel their own great performance and inspire the same from their partners.
Embrace times of disruption as an opportunity to show your organization’s agility.
Traditional change management focuses on processes and tools — the logistics of “what is changing” and “how it will change.”
Change management is typically about minimizing disruption, and it often underemphasizes the behavioral side of change.
When leaders understand human emotional dynamics — including mindsets, behaviors and cultural norms — they can create a work environment that energizes people to get ahead of change and push the organization forward.
For more information about supervisory resources, please contact your Campus HR Team at HSC.HR@untsystem.edu.
For additional virtual professional development opportunities, please visit the Organizational Development & Engagement page at: https://hr.untsystem.edu/organizational-development-engagement-ode.