Paul Plotczyk, WSA
In the first of our series of articles about teams, Got Team?, we discussed:
- What makes a team, a team?;
- How to know if you have a team or just a bunch of people working together who call themselves a team; and
- Why you should care if you've got it right?
We offered our congratulations to those who have established effective, high performing teams and promised help in this issue for those of you still struggling.
If you have managed to create a group of individuals who support the common goals of the team over their individual goals and have established interdependence, then – well done - you have yourself a team.
If you are struggling to establish one or both of the core team criteria, or are dissatisfied with the performance of your team read on to learn the 3 steps to building a High Performance Team.
It is widely accepted that all teams go through the well-known phases of Forming, Storming, Norming before they start Performing. Our approach to building High Performance Teams helps accelerate the Forming, Storming and Norming phases. Teams start Performing sooner and the level of performance is typically much higher than that of teams who do not have a formalized system for team development.
3 Steps to Creating High Performance Teams
While many teams are happy just make it to the Performing phase, the steps described below are designed to raise the bar from performing to excelling.
We have created High Performance Team technology (HPT) designed to produce highly functional and effective teams. There are three steps in the process:
- Step 1: Chartering the Team
- Step 2: Developing the Team
- Step 3: Sustaining the Team
Step 1: Chartering the Team
High performance teams cannot be summoned forth. Superior performance arises from individual and collective choices, where excitement is generated, and curiosity and creativity are engaged.
Just as an “ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” the investment in team chartering lays the foundation for superior team performance. The ground can be prepared, elements put in place and conditions created that shape the possibility for high performance.
The chartering process is not a “feel good” exercise. It is the time when the team establishes its:
- Definition
- Purpose and expectations
- Roles and responsibilities
- Conflict and risk mitigation methodology.
The lack of a defined purpose and clear expectations are the top reasons groups do not become high performance teams. From our 25 years experience working with teams, we know that a team does not develop without a significant performance challenge that is meaningful to all those involved.
Additional problems in team performance can also be traced back to initial issues such as unresolved conflict, role confusion, inadequate time for team communication and other factors that could be discussed and resolved in the chartering process.
Step 2: Developing the Team
Once the team has been properly chartered, you need to turn your attention to the quality of the implementation of the team's work. This is the time to work on developing skills in:
- Decision-making
- Problem-solving
- Process improvement processes and tools
- Interpersonal behaviors, especially those which relate to building and nurturing trust.
Given the global nature of many companies, the complexity of organizations and the teams within them has increased. We have discovered that as complexity increases in an enterprise or a team, cooperation and trust have a tendency to decrease. A decrease in trust and cooperation are followed by a significant decrease in productivity.
The skills and competencies required of team members to work cooperatively are at the core of a High Performance Team.
At the end of this stage a team can:
- Make decisions fairly and in alignment with the team charter
- Identify and resolve problems that might arise from the deliverables required of the team or from the team itself
- Eliminate inconsistencies, redundancies and other flaws that are likely to surface as a process gets translated to real-work activities
- Establish a process improvement methodology as part of the on-going work of the team
- Address any team member behavior that does not add to the synergy of the team (including customers).
Stage 3: Sustaining the Team
The difference between teams that perform adequately and those that ultimately achieve high performance status is based on the team's ability to:
- Recognize when it is not performing well
- Analyze the situation without blame (we also found this to be a characteristic of companies that thrive in the face of organizational upset, as reported in our “Executive Level Upset Survey.”)
- Take corrective action.
High Performance Teams are skilled at self-diagnosis, can evaluate causes, give feedback in a non-judgmental way and take appropriate corrective action even when it is painful. They know that this will ultimately create a better result for the team, its customers and the organization as a whole.
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