How to make teams of three work?

[TSandM]

The whole point of a team is to compensate for the individual's limits in ability or attention.

True, but a team is rarely much better than the worst of its members . . . You can't just throw people together, call them a "team", and expect outcomes to improve. Individual skills have to learned, and teamwork has to be learned, too -- how best to support and/or fill in for people. During the learning process, mistakes WILL be made and should be expected. The SEALS don't throw their green recruits into high-stress operations, because they know that.

Once again, this should be FUN. Practice should be fun . . . if it starts feeling onerous, go do something else (carve pumpkins ). Yes, there will be dives when people are discouraged with their performances. Those are the days when part of the teamwork is to buoy up the discouraged person. Cheerful, motivated people, put in a learning-conducive environment and offered opportunities for practice WILL learn. Discouraged, apprehensive, tense people will continue to make mistakes and become self-fulfilling prophecies.

 

[rlynch]

lobzilla, sounds like were all missing your point.

the point of team practice is just that, practice, screw-up, debreif, Fix and repeat.

liteheaded is giving you solid advice here about the debreif and fix part of the drill, not sure in this context what else is warrented other than each team member understand thier roles, and what they are suspose to do. you are talking about building fault tolerant teams but seem to miss what is being said to you about the import aspects of communication, and focus. Process in this enviornment should be limited to key aspects of the task at hand. That has already been well defined by GUE. Adding unnessecary processes is like solving a skills problem with a shiny new peice of gear.

my advice is to work this out with your team, person to person rather than here.

btw, i work in the software industry as a senior QA mgr, doing losts of $ transactional stuff. I bet i've seen most of the examples already, implimented most of them, and keep coming back to "execute on the basics, brilliantly, and your team will excell" & "know each team members strengths and weaknesses" theory of teams.

 

[LiteHedded]

lobzilla, sounds like were all missing your point.

the point of team practice is just that, practice, screw-up, debreif, Fix and repeat.

liteheaded is giving you solid advice here about the debreif and fix part of the drill, not sure in this context what else is warrented other than each team member understand thier roles, and what they are suspose to do. you are talking about building fault tolerant teams but seem to miss what is being said to you about the import aspects of communication, and focus. Process in this enviornment should be limited to key aspects of the task at hand. That has already been well defined by GUE. Adding unnessecary processes is like solving a skills problem with a shiny new peice of gear.

my advice is to work this out with your team, person to person rather than here.

btw, i work in the software industry as a senior QA mgr, doing losts of $ transactional stuff. I bet i've seen most of the examples already, implimented most of them, and keep coming back to "execute on the basics, brilliantly, and your team will excell" & "know each team members strengths and weaknesses" theory of teams.

that's the problem I keep running into.
communication between the team members and maybe removing the blinders will go a long way here. if it's true the third guy didn't move, he should be signalling the two of you that you're drifting...
what happens when the drill becomes a gas switch? it becomes a little more important

 

[Lobzilla]

I'm starting to feel like there is more going on here than meets the public forum eye.

Your feeling is wrong. But hey, this is scubaboard where it is easier to talk about people than to talk about events or - god forbid - even ponder ideas or ideals.

I do not have a personal "beef" with my teammates and I did not interpret Zoom5's comments as an attempt to get personal. We know and agree on what each person's contribution to our recent CF was. What we are trying to figure out is how to stop future and different CFs in their infancy. To have a robust and scalable solution rooted in better teamwork.

The scope of my post was also not limited to our piddly training dive and its novice participants. I am simply struggling with the fairy tale of the "team thingy" miraculously working (without understanding how exacty) when - in reality - it often aggravates the hell out of me, got other (!) folks on each other's throats, and recently killed a very experienced divers. I consider myself lucky to be just temporarily aggravated.

 

[LiteHedded]

it's not a fairly tale and it doesn't just miraculously work, as you saw here. your team didn't communicate effectively and the two divers performing the drill got tunnel vision and lost #3. and #3 let it happen

the team failed. that's about the only thing you have in common with Jim and his team...

 

[rlynch]

The scope of my post was also not limited to our piddly training dive and its novice participants. I am simply struggling with the fairy tale of the "team thingy" miraculously working (without understanding how exacty) when - in reality - it often aggravates the hell out of me, got other (!) folks on each other's throats, and recently killed a very experienced divers. I consider myself lucky to be just temporarily aggravated.

if you demand perfection out of a flawed system your going to get nowhere, i say this because as humans we cannot execute the same task the same way 100% of the time, we train, develope muscle memory, etc for this reason.

The point here is that while you are practicing the drills your focusing the team on "not screwing up" rather than building a system which is self sustaining. The reason for the team is to help each other, keep each other safe, and achieve whatever objective you have. To build a cohesive, self reliant team there must be trust in each individual's strengths and weaknesses as well as in the team itself.
We design simple processes to prevent beakdowns but because of human nature we can't design out all faults even with a perfect process.

i'd relax a bit focus on what went right and what each member thinks they can do better and go from there.
YMMV....

 

[Lobzilla]

that's about the only thing you have in common with Jim and his team...

While your comment was most likely meant as a put down let's just look at what you just acknowledged. Guys on top of their game trip over the same thing that novices struggle with. Huston, could it possibly be that we have a little problem?

I think it is time for a poll along the lines of: Do you feel that we understand and address team dynamics well enough in the DIR community?

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

The scope of my post was also not limited to our piddly training dive and its novice participants. I am simply struggling with the fairy tale of the "team thingy" miraculously working (without understanding how exacty) when - in reality - it often aggravates the hell out of me, got other (!) folks on each other's throats, and recently killed a very experienced divers. I consider myself lucky to be just temporarily aggravated.

Sounds to me like a bad case of unrealistic expectations. There are no miracles. Team diving is only as good as its participants ... and none of us are perfect, regardless of our skill or experience level. The whole point of team diving isn't to "miraculously work" ... it's to give you a set of standardized behavioral practices that can mitigate risks, provide backup when things don't go right, and shorten your improvement curve. You achieve those objectives through practice ... and sometimes it takes a LOT of practice.

Everybody screws up sometime. Why beat yourself up over it ... particularly given that you're pretty new at this. Take what constructive input you can from the situation and learn from it. You'll have a lot more fun that way ... and reduce the risk that in a couple years you'll burn yourself out trying to be perfect and quit diving.

I agree with those who are telling you to take this offline and talk to your team mates about it ... you can't solve this issue on ScubaBoard.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[LiteHedded]

While your comment was most likely meant as a put down let's just look at what you just acknowledged. Guys on top of their game trip over the same thing that novices struggle with. Huston, could it possibly be that we have a little problem?

I think it is time for a poll along the lines of: Do you feel that we understand and address team dynamics well enough in the DIR community?

no it wasn't. if you'd stop being so defensive and combative in this thread you might learn something from the more experienced divers you are asking for help.
if the way you communicate in this thread is indicative of how you communicate to your team in the water it's no wonder the team failed.

when you took fundies did you receive a tech pass? this should have all been covered in your class...

 

[Lobzilla]

no it wasn't. if you'd stop being so defensive and combative in this thread you might learn something from the more experienced divers you are asking for help.
if the way you communicate in this thread is indicative of how you communicate to your team in the water it's no wonder the team failed.

when you took fundies did you receive a tech pass? this should have all been covered in your class...

I am still not getting that warm and fuzzy feeling from you.

You may want to learn playing the ball (how to understand and improve team dynamics) rather than the person.