How do you change team habits step by step (so small actions create better collaboration and results)?

Why do capable teams still struggle at work (and which “team habits” fix planning, communication, and meetings fast)?

Team Habits by Charlie Gilkey explains how teamwork improves when groups change shared habits—not personalities—covering practical fixes for communication channels, planning, decision-making, and meetings so teams waste less time and hit clearer goals.

Continue reading to choose one “broken-printer” issue to fix this week, set a single communication rule your team will follow, and run the next meeting with an agenda and clear next steps to lock in the new habit.

Recommendation

Teams often struggle due to poor planning, confusing communication, a negative culture, and a lack of clear goals. Sometimes, capable individual team members just can’t seem to work together smoothly. You can blame that kind of dysfunction on bad “team habits,” according to leadership expert Charles Gilkey. Those habits may include an inability to prioritize, a lack of cohesion, and weak decision-making. Gilkey teaches you how to repair bad team habits – start with one and keep going since they’re all connected – and inculcate better practices. A former US Army officer, he presents his guidance with admirable straightforwardness.

Take-Aways

• When teams have bad habits, seemingly minor problems can become major disruptions.
• Work teams are groups of four to eight people who share a strong sense of belonging.
• Pay attention to your “workways” – culture, compliance, policies, technology, and organizational structure.
• Cultivate core habits that support your team’s goals.
• Good meetings reinforce good team habits; bad meetings exacerbate bad habits.
• Bad team habits are hard to break.
• Project managers and change champions must guide their teams and inspire them to change their habits.

Summary

When teams have bad habits, seemingly minor problems can become major disruptions.

Every office seems to have a broken printer that no one fixes even though it drives everyone nuts. Workers waste time tinkering with it, and it still leaves streaks on copies and eats sheets of paper. In the overall scheme of things, a busted printer may not be a big deal, but it turns out to be a constant irritant.

“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” (Ryunosuke Satoro)

In a work setting, minor problems can generate major negative consequences. Of course, the larger problem with a broken printer isn’t a printer problem. The broken printer is only a symbol of all the small, fixable impediments your team faces. When you add up all the little problems of this nature, you find wasted materials, wasted time, and demoralized workers.

Resolve to fix little problems, instead of letting them fester. For example, avoid “cc” emails. Office workers spend hundreds of wasted hours reading reply-to-all emails to see if they’re relevant. They seldom are.

Seek consistency in the channels your team uses to communicate. For instance, some supervisors use multiple communication functions – Slack, Teams, text, email – to assign new jobs or discuss ongoing work. Their team members have to check every information source all day long just to keep up. This wastes time and energy and slows all communication. Select the conduits your team will use for specific purposes and stick with them.

Work teams are groups of four to eight people who share a strong sense of belonging.

On a practical basis, a team is made up of four to eight people who work together. However, many more people may make up a single team if they share a strong sense of belonging.

“Team habit change is simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Especially not when you go looking for more complicated solutions.”

Teams with good habits enable their members to develop rapport quickly. Teams that are organized correctly, work efficiently, and follow the right practices foster consistent effort, transparent communication, straightforward processes, and productive working conditions.

Pay attention to your “workways” – culture, compliance, policies, technology, and organizational structure.

Workways are the parameters that define how team members work together, including team practices, organizational approaches, corporate culture, regulations, office politics, and other forces. Efficient workways can eliminate pressure; inefficient ones increase pressure.

“It’s not about the people per se. It’s about their habits.”

Team habits, a significant component of your workways, determine how your team operates. Positive habits keep a team moving ahead, while negative habits deter its progress. First identify your team’s good and bad habits, so you can eliminate harmful practices and make the good ones routine.

Good team habits fall into eight categories:

1. Belonging – Team members support one another.
2. “Decision-making” – Team members clearly understand which decisions are in their purview and which ones they can’t make.
3. Prioritizing and defining goals – Team members know their goals and can outline the steps they will take to achieve them.
4. Planning – Team members plan their weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual tasks and goals in alignment with the company’s goals.
5. Communication – Team members and their leaders communicate clearly and cogently to avoid any misunderstanding.
6. Collaboration – Each team member understands his or her role and responsibilities, as well as the roles and responsibilities of their team colleagues.
7. Meetings – Supportive, focused meetings clarify and support the team’s activities.
8. Goal-oriented planning – The team establishes a series of planned collective and individual tasks that lead to accomplishing its goals. Team members know what they need to do.

Cultivate core habits that support your team’s goals.

Many people assume they can improve their team’s practices by helping individual members get better at their work and interpersonal skills. That’s not the case; most employees are already “goal-oriented, relationship-minded, and completion-motivated.” Seeking to make members and the team better in those terms may waste time, energy and resources. In most cases, team members don’t need such help. Instead, pursue a more efficient, productive approach by helping your team members improve their collaboration.

“We’ve all heard the quip that people don’t leave bad companies, they leave bad managers. There’s some truth to it, but…it misses the mark because it places the emphasis on the manager rather than on the team habits that allow bad managers to remain in power.”

If your team has good habits, its members probably already work together smoothly. If the team has bad habits, the members probably don’t collaborate effectively. Try to instill these core collaborative habits as routine practices for your team:

• “Show your work” – Read this as “share your work.” Team members should explain, A to Z, how they arrive at their conclusions, recommendations, and decisions.
• “Show early drafts” – Sharing work while it’s still in progress enables team members to offer feedback, observations, comments, and critiques – all framed in a positive way.
• “Show something for your time” – Team members love to discuss matters among themselves. While it’s helpful for them to share ideas and talk about their work, make sure they also get it done.
• Talk every day – As a sign of respect, team leaders should engage in daily five to fifteen-minute discussions with their teams.
• Plan your communications – Save long phone calls and video chats for urgent business; use texts for immediate, time-sensitive matters; and rely on emails or quick in-person or phone chats otherwise. Teams members can develop an internal shorthand for efficient communications. For example, #U might stand for urgent, EOD asks for attention by the end of the day, and UYBJ means “use your best judgment.” Label each message with a clear, understandable subject line, so recipients can assess its relevance and urgency instantly.

When you create positive team habits that encourage members “to bring their whole selves to work,” you establish an environment in which they can flourish and thrive. This inspires rich, deep, productive connections among team members.

Good meetings reinforce good team habits; bad meetings exacerbate bad habits.

Team meetings can be potent “force multipliers” if you handle them correctly and inculcate good habits. A bad meeting is always a “force diminisher.” Plan each element of a meeting carefully. Almost always, meetings need an agenda and a facilitator to proceed smoothly.

The agenda for a team meeting can include setting plans, brainstorming, considering pending decisions, addressing new challenges, and holding post-mortems, as well as conducting routine reviews of ongoing projects.

“Don’t create global solutions for local problems.”

Each meeting has hidden costs, including each participant’s time, so leaders must weigh the value of a meeting against its potential costs. A one-hour meeting often involves pre-meeting planning and post-meeting analysis, so it consumes more than an hour of each participant’s time.

If five team members take part in a 90-minute meeting, plus prep and post-mortem, the collective time cost could be 7.5 hours or more. That work time is a valuable asset. Leaders must make sure every meeting is the most effective, efficient, and productive use of each employee’s time.

Bad team habits are hard to break.

Habits are just that – habitual, ingrained behavior. They are an essential aspect of how individuals and teams function. Eliminating bad team habits takes time, effort and focus. For your team to operate effectively, the team leader must proactively help team members shed their bad collective and individual habits.

“You can fix some bad team habits but not all of them.”

Bad team habits can create disasters, so leaders must address them as soon as they manifest. It may sound elementary, but start small: First the pebbles, then the stones, then the boulders and, only afterward, the mountains. Make sure your team can achieve small, early and encouraging wins. You may set out initially to alter some simple task, but always be aware that habits interconnect. If you change one habit, other team habits will change in turn.

Identify the team habits you want to change, starting with a small one. Ask two essential questions: Which broken-printer problem is causing you and your team the most trouble? Which repair will provide the maximum benefit? Once you answer these questions, address the problems that most need fixing and that will produce the greatest reward when fixed.

“Being the person who’s closest to your work and how your team works gives you a major responsibility. You’re either participating in broken team habits or you’re working to change them.”

Don’t expect to change your team habits dramatically overnight. You will need a month or maybe even a quarter to make a significant team habit change or an interlocking series of changes. As you progress, routinely update your team members on where things stand. Keep them informed continually, so they recognize themselves as full participants in the success of the team’s change initiative.

Eliminating bad team habits or creating good team habits may call for significant alterations in how the team operates. Be aware that such efforts can generate “unintended consequences: setbacks, downstream effects, and positive [or negative] surprises.”

If you hit a temporary setback, work up some “go-to scripts or mantras” such as, “OK, this is taking a little bit longer than we hoped, but we are still in the process of making this a habit.” Since changing bad team habits or creating good team habits is often a complex, continuing process, never regard a setback as any kind of final failure.

If you get stuck attempting to eliminate a bad habit, try moving in an entirely new direction and attacking a different bad habit. Don’t give up. Changing a team’s bad habits and creating good habits is the best path to efficiency and effectiveness.

Project managers and change champions must guide their teams and inspire them to change their habits.

Changing a team’s habits requires having a change champion who inspires the team in the right direction. If you are the team leader, that’s probably you – the project manager of any habit-change initiative. The change champion must enthusiastically encourage disengaged or recalcitrant team members and help them understand how they will benefit from any significant improvement in the team’s habits.

“We can spend time grimacing and complaining about things that we can’t change or are not well positioned to change while overlooking the stuff we can change right in front of us.”

As a change champion, you must find and fuel your inspiration because changing your team’s habits pits you against a giant foe: “the Goliath of Inertia.” This intimidating enemy hates change and will do everything possible to stand in its way, so be prepared for a challenge. Focus on alignment, not power, as you muster the ingenuity, skill, and determination to help your team inculcate better habits.

About the Author

Independent Publisher Book Award winner Charlie Gilkey also wrote Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done.