Test Your Team Skills With These 14 Questions

Successful teamwork is 10 percent knowledge and 90 percent practice.

Do you have the right stuff when it comes to creating successful teams and partnerships?

Put yourself to the test and know for sure.

People who consistently create powerful relationships at work are people who know and practice great team skills.

Are you one of them?

Read these 14 statements about team skills, check off the ones that are true for you, then read on to see where you stand:

___ I build effective partnerships with people on whom I depend to get my work done.

___ I have a proven system for creating productive partnerships.

___ I stay on top of others when they don’t deliver so I can continue to depend on them.

___ I ask myself if I intend to keep an agreement as I make it.

___ I own up to a broken agreement immediately and make amends at the first possible opportunity.

___ I know how to renegotiate an agreement without breaking trust.

___ I confront co-workers when they have broken an agreement with me rather than ignore or stew over it.

___ I confront co-workers when they behave unethically, immorally, or illegally.

___ I negotiate with co-workers about how we’ll work together and treat one another, as well as how we’ll address problems.

___ I know how I want to be treated in a work relationship and understand how to ask for that kind of treatment.

___ I view my judgment of other people’s inappropriate behaviors as an opportunity to ask for what I want to see happen in the future.

___ I work to ensure I’m aligned with others and pursue shared goals when our results depend on their performance.

___ I learn and act upon what winning means to others when my work depends on their performance.

___ I pledge to never defect on other people when my work depends on their performance.

Scoring
Give yourself one point for each statement you checked as being true. Then look below to see where you stand when it comes to your team skills.

0-3 Your results at work suffer from a lack of working successfully with others. Investing in individual team-skill development would be a good idea.

4-7 You miss out on the optimal benefits of working responsibly and productively with others. Learn more about team skills and practice them.

8-11 You maximize your technical skills through your relationships with others and are considered a good partner and teammate. Focus on sustaining and building upon these strengths.

12-14 You are poised for collaborative greatness. Put yourself in a position to leverage your own and other people’s talents.

Get Started With This 5-Minute Stretch

Pick one of the statements you didn’t check as true for you now, and work on that skill during the next week.

Leaders and coaches: Get Christopher’s best team building and leadership strategies collected over two-plus decades of solving teamwork problems for smart people. Attend the acclaimed Creating Results-Based Teams workshop, or get this FREE Special Report while it lasts: The Five Flawless Steps to Building a Strong Executive Leadership Team.

Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide.

Posted in Collaboration, Leadership, Teamwork on 10/07/2013 01:15 am
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