The teamwork checklist

As you work to build a team, keep these points in mind:

• Make teamwork an active practice and a reality in your department. Don’t pay lip service to it.

• Use teams to create action and to share the authority—not to spread the blame.

• Create working committees geared to results, but be careful to avoid the common problem of the committee: the inability to act.

• Always give authority with responsibility. Let your employees take ownership in their jobs.

• Remain available as a guide and a trainer, while allowing employees the room to apply their own creativity to getting the job done. Don’t allow “upward delegation” to destroy your efforts to create a true team.