Getting to a more productive team

Black Enterprise, June, 2008

ON TOP OF THE FILING SHELF ABOVE HIS DESK, DARYL WAYNE WILKERSON, vice president of Support Services at New York's Mount Sinai Medical Center, has a stack of four Lego building blocks that read "Together Everyone Achieves More"--a popular interpretation of the word team. "I don't joke about that," Wilkerson says. "In a job where things easily go wrong, you need everyone on the same team"

Wilkerson, who oversees the management of approximately 1,000 nonclinical staff, says The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni (Jossey-Bass; $24.95) helped him understand the importance of employee development, bolstering team efforts, and reducing conflict in the workplace. Consider the following:

Managers don't know it all. Supervisors lose the trust of their employees by failing to listen to them. Managers must develop an environment where employees feel engaged. Employees are most productive in environments that support their ideas.

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Communication is key. A noncommunicative relationship with a supervisor is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to advancing an employee's career because the supervisor evaluates promotion potential. Wilkerson suggests maintaining an open line of dialogue with managers, even scheduling a private meeting to discuss specific concerns. Focus on the facts and never degenerate into personal attacks. Managers and employees prefer to avoid conflict, but open and honest discussions about where communication may have broken down can lead to productive insight and improved team relations for future projects.