Checklist for Your Team
Are you using your team to the best of your ability? Do you havethe right team in place? What about the skills – do you have the people on your team that have the necessary skills to make the team a success?
The following checklist should help you to answer these questions. It can be used with an existing team or if you are getting ready to set up a team.
1. Small enough in numbers:
- Can you convene easily and frequently?
- Can you communicate with all members easily and frequently?
- Are your discussions open and interactive for all members?
- Does each member understand the other’s roles and skills?
- Do you need more people to achieve your ends?
- Are sub-teams possible or necessary?
2. Adequate levels of complementary skills:
- Are all three categories of skills either actually or potentially represented across the membership (function/technical, problem-solving/decision-making, and interpersonal).
- Does each member have the potential in all three categories to advance his or her skills to the level required by the team’s purpose and goals?
- Are any skill areas that are critical to team performance missing or underrepresented?
- Are the members, individually and collectively, willing to spend the time to help themselves and others learn and develop skills?
- Can you introduce new or supplemental skills as needed?
3. Truly meaningful purpose:
- Does it constitute a broader, deeper aspiration than just near-term goals?
- Is it a team purpose as opposed to a broader organizational purpose or just one individual’s purpose (e.g., the leader’s)?
- Do all members understand and articulate it the same way? And do they do so without relying on ambiguous abstractions?
- Do members define it vigorously in discussions with outsiders?
- Do members frequently refer to it and explore its implications?
- Does it contain themes that are particularly meaningful and memorable?
- Do members feel it is important, if not exciting?
4. Specific goal or goals:
- Are they team goals versus broader organizational goals or just one individual’s goals (e.g., the leader’s)?
- Are they clear, simple, and easurable? If not measurable, can their achievement be determined?
- Are they realistic as well as ambitious? Do they allow small wins along the way?
- Do they call for a concrete set of team work-products?
- Is their relative importance and priority clear to all members?
- Do all members agree with the goals, their relative importance, and the way in which their achievement will be measured?
- Do all members articulate the goals in the same way?
5. Clear working approach:
- Is the approach concrete, clear, and really understood and agreed to by everybody? Will it result in achievement of the objectives?
- Will it capitalize on and enhance the skills of all members? Is it consistent with other demands on the members?
- Does it require all members to contribute equivalent amounts of real work?
- Does it provide for open interaction, fact-based problem solving, and results-based evaluation?
- Do all members articulate the approach the same way?
- Does it provide for modification and improvement over time?
- Are fresh input and perspectives systematically sought and added, for example, through information and analysis, new members, and senior sponsors?
6. Sense of mutual accountability:
- Are you individually and jointly accountable for the team’s purpose, goals, approach, and work-products?
- Can you and do you measure progress against specific goals?
- Can you and do you measure progress against specific goals?
- Are the members clear on what they are individually responsible for and what they are jointly responsible for?
- Is there a sense that “only the team can fail?”
Answering the preceding questions can establish the degree to which your group functions as a real team, as well as help pinpoint how you can strengthen your efforts to increase performance. They set tough standards, and answering them candidly may reveal a harder challenge than you may have expected. At the same time, facing up to the answers can accelerate your progress in achieving the full potential of your team.
