“It’s very important to be able to express vulnerability, to be able to share where you are right now in the moment, to be really present to yourself in terms of your thoughts, feelings, and what’s going on for you.”

Today on Getting Unstuck

In this conversation, we are joined by Tara Nolan. Tara is a leadership coach, a team coach, a facilitator of leadership training programs, a keynote speaker and host of the “Game of Teams” podcast. If that weren’t fascinating enough to dig into, Tara shares her backstory in detail. There, we learn about her seemingly easy ability to “reinvent” herself, but also her need to better understand and manage what she was moving away from and the reasons why.

Her ability to self-reflect becomes a key ingredient of her ability to self-manage as a coach. And indeed, her recognition of the importance of self-reflection becomes a light she shines into teams to help improve their performance.

“I am very conscious of the stories and the narratives people tell themselves, or the stories that they begin to make up about the team without actually wondering about what's the truth here? And what's the interpretation I'm making? And is there something I might need to listen to more closely? And what's my contribution? All too often we're very quick to point the finger or assuage our own sense of self rather than looking very closely at what it is that I'm doing in this team? How am I contributing to it?”

Listen for

Along the way, we’ll explore some of our favorite themes. As Tara notes

• “How important it is for a leader to give responsibility, to stop hoarding, as I would call it, and shoring up responsibility and sucking up the system to himself or herself.”

• “Gratitude seems to be something that's popping up again and again and again and the hunger that exists out there for appreciation by team members and how leaders sometimes forget the very nature of what it means to give real appreciation, recognition and appreciation for their colleagues and their team members.”

• “A team's work is not just all about task; a team's work is about relationship and purpose, and it's and the self as well. So, you know, you really need to be tending to all three simultaneously.”

• “And so there's a lot of confusion a lot of the times on teams as to why why we exist? And what are the few things that will make the critical difference to our stakeholders, rather than the everything we must do just because we got an email and dictate from here or whatever. You need to be clear on

- why the team exists,

- do you have the right support systems and processes, and

- who is on the team and why.”

• “How the attitudes and performance of members of virtual teams can suffer simply through poor meeting management.”

The big lesson here for anyone who is a member of a team is to periodically take yourself off autopilot; pause and answer a few select questions about who you are as a member of the team, what you trying to deliver for your stakeholders, and what processes and behaviors are getting in your way.