Is my team turning into a silo?

When can you tell this is happening?

Is it purely people’s perception of a strong successful team, is it just politicking when people suggest this is happening? These are questions that I’m encountering working in a large organisation and worth having a think about.

Managers pride themselves on getting a team together and developing them, they become self-sufficient, autonomous, sometimes when all the pieces fit together they can run themselves, everyone sure and confident in their role, working well, synthesising ideas and coming up with the goods.

However, it’s a fine line between all for one and sod the rest and it’s important to recognise warning signs when there are signs of conflict or difficulties in communication or when there’s a little too much pride and opposition to other teams in the organisation. Here’s what might be happening.

1. You’re all getting too comfortable, you stop reaching out and just wait for people to come to you — don’t call us, we’ll call you.
2. You self-assess and peer assess but you don’t invite anyone from outside to take an interest — we deal with our own here.
3. You’re suspicious of outside intervention, you become too protective of one another, you cover each other’s backs, there’s group loyalty but there’s a collective blind spot.
4. You start to define people as within opposing teams or out on their own in the wilderness — you might even adopt some of those people.
5. It’s tough to get into your team, nobody’s going anywhere. Similarly, it’s tough to leave your team.

If this is all starting to sound less like a working team and more like the Cosa Nostra then it’s worth re-evaluating.

So, how can you pull yourself back from the brink? Perhaps there are some simple things you can do.

1. Approach projects in a collegiate way, look for collaboration across disciplines and think about gathering different perspectives.
2. Have a good team identity sure but make sure it’s imbued in the thinking and approaches of the whole company.
3. Managers across teams are a team in themselves, just as others with those colleagues with the same skills, roles and disciplines. Your team should be members of lots of teams, not just the one.

Creating a team that gels, fulfills it’s objectives and leads the way in terms of the company or organisation is a brilliant thing, it’s incredibly rewarding, you enjoy a supportive environment, you trust your colleagues to give you feedback that you can use.

It’s hard to strike a balance, especially when you’re a new manager looking to unite a group around a particular objective or aim. I’d be interested to hear other people’s views and what approaches they might take.