In recent months, many organizations have been forced to evaluate their businesses. Many pivoted to deliver new services; many took the time to look inside the organization to “reboot” their teams and improve team performance.
As part of the foundation for building team performance, there are five key disciplines, highlighted in this article. Of the five, perhaps the most fundamental thing you want to evaluate is the team’s purpose or performance challenge. The team’s purpose should be challenging in a way that will require a new set of behaviors to achieve the goal. If the performance challenge is too simple or easily accomplished, teaming will not be required to make it happen. In other words, if the purpose can be accomplished by people in a work group acting as individuals, the purpose will not contribute to teaming. It has to be a shared, challenging purpose.
In The Wisdom of Teams (Amazon still refers to this book as “the definitive classic on higher-performance teams”), Jon Katzenbach and Douglas K Smith highlight team purpose in the Prologue by writing, “Common Sense…suggests that teams cannot survive without a shared purpose; yet many teams in most organizations remain unclear as a team about what they want to accomplish and why.” And here we are, 27 years later, and this shortcoming is still prevalent, and it rests on leadership.
Several years ago I was working at a client organization helping to build teams. In conducting the preliminary assessment, I can’t tell you how many times I heard a team member tell me that the team had received a purpose or objective such as “run the jobs” or do the jobs, tasks, and activities they had already been doing. In other words, the “performance challenge” or shared purpose communicated to the team did not require teaming.
As you evaluate your teams, have you communicated to each team clearly about its shared purpose? And is it challenging enough that it forces the members to work together? Does it also clarify performance standards and expectations?
When you define and communicate the team’s purpose, from which it develops mission, goals, ground rules, etc., provide background about where this performance challenge comes from – a customer demand, a business downturn, a quality issue, etc. If a group of employees understands a business challenge with clear performance standards, there may be little limit to what they can do for the organization.
Of course, achieving high team performance is much more than this. I believe there are four additional key components listed below:
1. A recent blog discussed how structure is a big part in making a team succeed or fail.
2. “Team contracting (Team Basics),” will be the next topic in this series.
3. Common sense team meeting structures and norms required for team performance.
4. Leadership support needed to make teams work at their high level.
For more information or discussion, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected]. You can contact Verna Lynch at [email protected] or https://www.linkedin.com/in/transformingorganizations/.
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