Teamwork: The Influence of an Individual on a Whole Team's Performance

-->I am continuing the practice of my first two posts of relating rowing experiences to the workplace. This time, I am describing how one person can benefit or hobble the performance of an entire team.

The boat I am on has a problem with balance. Boat balance is critical in rowing because without the boats either leans to one side or flops back and forth – both situations make it harder to row in time or with consistent power because the oars hit the water at wrong times and the rowers hands get pushed against the gunwales of the boat. With proper boat balance all of these things correct themselves and rowing because enjoyable.

I helped balance the boat in my latest practice by making an adjustment to my hand height right before I drop my oar into the water. I made this adjustment based on two occurrences the practice before. The first was the boat captain demonstrating the effect of hand height from one person on the entire boat's balance. Holding his oar, he lowered his hands about four inches which caused the entire boat to lean dramatically. The second occurrence was the post practice discussion where we discussed all of the things each of us can do to improve the boat balance: one of them being not to lower one's hands just before dropping the oar in the water (which is something I have been doing for months, but hadn't realized it caused a problem).

I concentrated on holding up my hands instead of dipping them down before I dropped the oar into the water. It appeared to make all of the difference in the world: the boat had a better balance and rowing was much easier. As a group, we made other adjustments, but I know that my own small adjustment improved the situation.

This experience gave me perspective on the impacts each member of a team can have on the performance of a group. It is important, therefore, for a leader to help each team member understand the difference his or her contribution makes to the whole team's performance. Are you not sure yourself what is the impact? Find whatever data you have on your team's performance and work to divide up and identify individual contributions. The easiest impact to find is absence. If someone is not there, your team's production capacity diminishes. If you are meeting some deadline or responding to some emergency, that individual's absence will reveal itself in poor team performance.

Many workplaces, such as help desks and other IT services, benefit from having many measurement tools to identify individual contributions. Learn what tools you have, find your team members' individual contributions, and help them see their importance to the performance of the team. By helping them understand their contributions, you can help them make a greater contribution to the success of your team.