Promoting high-performance teamwork

Everyone talks about teamwork, but not everyone gets the best from their teams. Teamwork just does not come naturally. This chapter explains why and what we can do about it. Principles and practical procedures are offered for initiating and sustaining productive teamwork. The Junctions cf seven different safety teams are described. Each cf these teams contributes to improving the human dynamics of occupational safety, as taught in this Handbook. Each team depends on the output cf other teams to optimize the system and cultivate a Total Safety Culture. 

Imagine a workplace where everyone coaches each other about the safest way to perform a job. A workplace in which actively caring for other people s safety is a natural part of the everyday routine. When people depend on each other in this way to improve safety, they understand teamwork. They have an interdependent mindset and realize the true meaning of S3mergy. For these individuals TEAM means Togetiier Everyone Achieves More. 

Reaching this level of teamwork does not come easy. After all, look at how we have been raised. Be independent, we are told. We compete with other individuals to get ahead, whether at work or at play. Remember, Nice guys finish last. A win-lose, me-first mindset is promoted by almost everything in our culture, from the grades we get in school to salary promotions at work. 

This chapter is about win-win teamwork. It builds on the principles of behavior-based safety presented in Section 3, tire intervention tools from behavior-based safety detailed in Section 4, and the concepts of group belonging and interdependence discussed in Section 5. 

---

Chapter seventeen Promoting high-performance teamwork... 

This Handbook represents an extensive revision of my 1996 book. The Psychology of Safety. Every chapter in the earlier edition has been updated and expanded, and three new chapters have been added—one on behavioral safety analysis, another on intervening with supportive conversation, and a third on promoting high-performance teamwork. As a result, this edition is substantially longer than the first. 

We come into this world dependent on others to take care of us. As children we depended on our family for all of our basic life needs. As adolescents, however, we looked for opportunities to be on our own. It seems, in fact, a primary mission of most teenagers is to resist dependency and assert independence. This reliance on self rather than others is promoted and reinforced throughout our culture, from high-school and college classrooms to the corporate boardroom. High-performance teamwork requires a dependency perspective, however. 

---