This week I had team coaching sessions with students of the master program Finance and Investments Advanced (FIA), the flagship master of Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University.
I love to coach these young, very intelligent and high performing students. I love to help them increasing their awareness about the qualities of a constructive team. We had a team exercise using Patrick Lencioni’s model of effective teamwork. We talked about the importance of trust and realized that trust is the basic foundation of a successful team. In fact, without trust no real teamwork is possible. Sometimes the lack of trust in the performance of others can lead to individualistic behavior. These people have high achievement standards. They are committed to high grades in this master. They don’t want their rating to be influenced by lower standards of others. This leads to difficult dilemmas:
“Do I focus on the final result of the team assignment or do I settle for an optimal teamwork?”
“Do I address responsibilities with my team members, or is it my choice to work harder and make a bigger contribution to the final result”.
“Do I acknowledge that confrontations are part of teamwork and if handled well are quite productive, or do I avoid conflict and focus on the outcome”.
We had really interesting discussions that made me aware of the challenges of these people in their lives. I went home with fulfillment.
Thank you Hetty Brand-Boswijk, Janneke van de Loo, Marijke Reiring and Valerie Overmeer for our amazing teamwork full of trust ?