I recently facilitated a workshop for a group of middle managers on the subject of developing people performance. We looked at the options they had for developing people e.g. instructional training, coaching, mentoring or delegating responsibilities. They all agreed it was important to have these sorts of tools in your armoury as a manager.

We then explored team development and during a break out session a number of the managers fed back that the biggest issues for them were that talented individuals who work fine on their own often find it difficult to work in conjunction with others.

Secondly the managers were amazed how individuals within teams find it difficult to communicate with each other. They are great when asked to brief their boss but ask them to gather information from a colleague and it often results in misunderstanding and conflict, often causing the manager to have to intervene to resolve the issue.

Why is this? Why do talented individuals find it so difficult to work as a team and to communicate within the team?

There are a number of potential answers to this question but in my experience a lot of it boils down to the fact that what makes them so strong as individuals can often work against them in a team environment and their personality and behavioural preferences impact on the ability to communicate with others.

So what is the solution? An approach is to spend time helping the team understand themselves first as individuals and then as a collective team. Personality Profiling can be very helpful in doing this. An individual takes a online psychometric assessment and then participates in a workshop where their profile is explored in terms of ‘what helps- what is a strength?’ and then ‘what might get in the way- something to be aware of’.

We often position it ‘on a good day I am…’ and ‘on a bad day I am…’

Participating in a workshop environment can often help as it encourages the participants to understand that some people are similar in profile to them- they are more likely to enjoy working with these people and communication will be easier and there will be people with different profiles with whom they may find it more difficult to work with and with whom communication is often a challenge.

An outcome of these workshops is for the team to agree how to manage these differences, how do they need to adapt to get the best of team working and communication.

An overview of an example workshop we facilitate can be found here www.mrjconsulting.co.uk/seminars.htm

If you would like some further information on improving team working and communication within your team I would be delighted to hear from you ray@mrjconsulting.co.uk.