By Duncan Brodie FCMA, managing director of Goals and Achievements.
We have all experienced situations where the effective contribution of a team of individuals has delivered exceptional results. But team working can be extremely challenging in practice.
This can be because:
- most of our education is about individual achievement
- in a busy and demanding workplace, it’s easy to get stuck in a silo mentality
- being mutually accountable depends on high levels of trust and belief that others will deliver their piece of the project, process or task.
International research suggests that high level team success comes down to two main considerations: how productive the team is, and how positive it is.
Productivity is primarily about structure and process. Positivity is about attitudes and behaviours.
Productivity factors
Clear goals
Productive teams need to know where they are heading and what they are going to deliver. They need absolute clarity on their goals and the results that are expected.
Common mission, vision or purpose
Teams need to aim in the same direction and work together towards a common vision or mission. Without this, they are merely a collection of individuals who will pursue what is right for them personally.
Accountability
When a team needs to account for what it has and has not achieved, there is a greater likelihood of success.
Accountability is a means of staying on track. The challenge with teams is getting everyone on the team to buy into mutual accountability.
Resources
Resources (manpower, money and materials) are another ingredient in productive teams. Once secured, resources need to be used effectively. While lack of resources is often given as a reason for not delivering, asking a team to deliver without core resources is setting it up for failure. If the team is not worth investing in, the need for the team should be challenged.
Decision making
Highly productive teams take decisions, avoid procrastinating and get things done. Effective decision making does not happen by chance. A decision making process is essential. In a team, the challenge is to get all team contributions without drawing the process out.
Be proactive
Being proactive is about looking out for opportunities to change, develop and improve - and then acting swiftly to exploit those opportunities. Being proactive is also about anticipating and thinking outside of the boundaries. It requires a change of mindset from senior people - they need to be willing to empower people and let them get on with delivering results.
Effective leadership
Effective leadership is essential to any team that gets results - whether in business, communities or sports. In team situations, the role of the leader may well rotate, so that the person leading different aspects is the best person to do that. Effective leadership is not about rigid hierarchies but about facilitating contributions.
Positivity factors
Optimism
People generally fall into the glass half full or glass half empty categories. People in the ‘glass half full’ category are the optimists and the ones in the ‘glass half empty’ are the pessimists. The optimists achieve more.
Trust
Trust is about creating an environment where people can speak openly and objectively without fear. Trust comes from knowing that others can be counted on, even when the going gets tough.
Respect
Respecting each other is not about agreeing with everyone or liking every one. It is about being willing to listen, understand different points of view and respecting those differing views.
Communication
The best teams communicate clearly, avoid ambiguity and see listening as just as important as speaking.
Conflict
No matter how well a team orks together, conflict will arise from time to time. Dealing with it properly matters. Used effectively, it can unleash creativity, open new possibilities and contribute to development and growth.
Camaraderie
Camaraderie is extremely powerful, especially when the going gets tough. The best teams work on creating and maintaining that camaraderie.
Value diversity
We are all different. We all have different personalities, backgrounds, experiences, ways of looking at things and approaching things. Valuing that diversity gives teams much greater range and helps to get better results.
Every organisation is striving to develop teams that are both highly productive and highly positive.
Achieving this starts with being clear about where, as a team you are right now, so that you can start to develop and implement actions to continually improve team performance and results.
Duncan Brodie is an authorised facilitator for Team Coaching International’s Team Diagnostic Assessment. For more information, visit the Goals and Achievements website.
May 2009