- The Immediacy of Climate
How well do you understand how your team is working as a group? Do you have a person on your team that others don’t want to run into when making a cup of coffee? Is there someone on your team that when they start speaking in a meeting, people Skype a snarky remark to a colleague? Do people have nicknames for others on your team that they wouldn’t be happy to share? If you are aware of these types of issues and you are doing nothing about it, you are delaying inevitable conflict, while allowing the Climate to suffer. You are allowing the team to perform ineffectively. Most importantly, you are diminishing yourself, in the eyes of the team, as a leader and manager. You need to address these small issues of Climate as you become aware of them, making your actions visible and clear. This will prevent the issues from becoming bigger and becoming part of a systematic culture where such behaviors are assumed to be implicitly tolerated by management. If you are unaware of any such issues, you want to challenge yourself to question your understanding of how your team is working. Are you sufficiently engaged on a day to day basis with all members of the team? Do you connect with team members on a level where you are having open and honest communication with them? Are you are getting a clear picture of their contributions to the Climate of the team? Because if you are not, there may be issues developing, and you need to become aware of them on a timely basis. As a leader, you are usually concerned with how you can impact Climate from the top down. But you also must be prepared for the impacts on Climate from the bottom up. It is the responsibility of the effective leader to be on the lookout for possible negative vibrations coming from the team itself.
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