The dynamics involved with a team of municipal water and sewer employees can be as complex as the labyrinth of pipes and pumps they maintain. As such, getting this collection of egos, agendas, needs, skills and personalities to work together effectively is enough to make even the most able manager seek shelter in the nearest manhole.
On the other hand, making all your employees feel involved and empowered is essential to your organization’s success — not to mention one of the more rewarding achievements you’ll experience as a manager.
“If there’s no group involvement in making a decision, you’ll get little buy-in from those who have to implement it,” notes Patty Hilderbrand, acting program management and development director for the public works department in Kansas City, Mo. “That results in low morale because employees’ input wasn’t requested.”
Many teams
Establishing a team atmosphere — not only among her employees but also with citizens and local and regional agencies — is essential to Hilderbrand’s job, which includes everything from flood mitigation planning to capital planning to agency coordination. She also serves as a director at-large for engineering and technology on the American Public Works Association’s board of directors.
“As a middle manager, building a sense of teamwork is the cornerstone of my job,” she says. Ensuring that employees work well together is particularly important in a municipality, where political leadership is prone to turnover. For instance, Hilderbrand points out that Kansas City has a fairly new city manager, a new mayor, and about 75 percent new membership on its city council.
With new leadership comes new goals and priorities, and employees who feel they’re part of a team and communicate with each other provide better continuity and consistency during disruptions, and weather change more easily. “I know it sounds real philosophical, but it’s true,” Hilderbrand says.
Keeping citizens on board
It’s also important for municipal officials to develop a sense of teamwork with citizens. “Whether you’re deciding where to put a road or how to keep a water system functioning, citizens want input,” Hilderbrand observes. “Many times, I’ve seen poor public involvement in a project. A city scopes it, decides how to fund it, designs it, and then, because it’s required, shows the plan to the public at a hearing. Then the city ends up paying to redesign it.
“Had officials bothered to ask for public input in the first place, they wouldn’t have needed to spend more money on re-designing and re-engineering the project. You’ll find in many cases that only the people who live in an area know things like where an old mine is located. Talking to people matters.”
Hilderbrand speaks from experience. In Kansas City, in the late 1990s, a simple local project — cutting a new roadway through some farmland — incurred delays and additional expenses when construction workers discovered an old family cemetery.
“The headstones were in such disrepair that they looked like just rocks in the ground,” she recalls. “We had to stop the project, get an archaeological expert in there, and then remove the caskets before we could proceed. Some input from local residents could have helped us avoid the situation.”
Know the goal
So where do you start to develop teamwork? Job one is defining a goal. “If you know the goal, it affects who you need on the team,” Hilderbrand notes. An ad hoc committee that focuses on solving one issue before it disbands — picking a route for a new bike path, for instance — will require entirely different players than a team devoted to an ongoing concern, such as street preservation, which requires representation from all levels of a public works organization, from superintendents to equipment operators.
Second, you must establish a clear identity for the team. “People should know their function — why they are there,” Hilderbrand advises.
Next, team members must recognize that everyone brings different personal and professional histories to the table, and that sharing those experiences will develop strong bonds between members. That often means leaving stereotypes at the meeting room door.
As an example, Hilderbrand notes that people who don’t know her well might assume she’s just a middle manager who dresses in a suit, sits in a comfortable corner office and couldn’t possibly know anything about the needs of workers out on the street pouring asphalt.
“What they don’t know is that I spent four years at the Kansas Department of Transportation, doing construction inspections in Western Kansas,” she says with a laugh. “I wore a hardhat and steel-toed boots and helped pave streets and patch potholes. Yet no one would know that if they looked at me today. Each member of a team brings a unique history to the table, and everyone has something to contribute, regardless of title, position and education. No one is ‘only’ a worker.”
Consider individual needs
Another important consideration is to address the needs and aspirations of team members. “Some people are on a team only because they have to be,” Hilderbrand observes. “Some people aspire to do presentations, and some don’t. Some people are there because they really want to be the organizer and get face time with decision makers within the organization, and others really need to not be that leader.
“I try to recognize whether someone wants to lead the team, and if no one does, then I will,” she adds. “More often than not, everyone’s needs can be accommodated.” That’s not to say that it isn’t important for people to step outside their comfort zone.
“Sometimes that’s definitely beneficial,” Hilderbrand concurs. “There are times when you need to tame the limelight seekers and encourage shy people. The bottom line is to use peoples’ needs and aspirations to the team’s benefit.”
Last but not least, employees must recognize that team building is everyone’s responsibility, not just the manager’s job. “Whenever I hear someone say, ‘It’s not my job,’ I know I’m in a different work environment,” Hilderbrand says. “Our collective goal is to provide services, so that’s everyone’s responsibility.
“You might have a team leader, but it’s everyone’s responsibility to develop goals, and ultimately, it’s everyone’s responsibility to achieve that goal, and do whatever it takes to accomplish it.”
As an example, Hilderbrand points out that when a snowstorm hits Kansas City, everyone immediately becomes a part of the snow removal effort, even if they’re not actually out on the street operating a plow.
“No matter what department you’re in, everyone is responsible,” she says. “A manager may not be outside shoveling snow, but can still help by understanding that today is not the day to insist on having more potholes patched. You recognize that you have to be patient — that someone else has more important duties to attend to today.”
It just goes to show there truly is no “I” in “team.”
