Engaged Teams
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The age of the hierarchical organization is quickly coming to an end. Businesses are reinventing themselves to compete in this complex and unpredictable world of change and opportunity, and this change applies to any and all industries, both small and large organizations. Organizations are decentralizing decision making, moving toward product and customer-centric performance models, and forming an agile network of highly engaged teams that communicate and deliver results in powerful ways.
This “network of teams” performance model which promotes high employee engagement, strong, real-time communication, and rapid information flow is transforming organizations and providing for a very powerful organizational competitive advantage. These teams are purpose-focused, consistently exhibit the right team behaviors, are committed and supported at the very highest level of the organization.
Let’s focus on purpose first. The foundation for any engaged team is establishing a clear purpose that every team member is aligned to. Sounds easy, but it isn’t. Every team struggles with this, and often, most teams skip over this important step and go right to resources and activities.
This step is NOT just creating a purpose statement, this is a defining action in the formation of the team that provides:
An anchor point for the team.
The “what” for the team.
A definition of both success for the team and the desired impact of the team.
The answer to “why” this team and its work are important.
A team can have all the right behaviors with all team members committed and tremendous organizational support but without a clearly defined and aligned purpose, the team will have little to no direction and rarely achieve its full potential and desired outcomes.
Next up is behaviors. After clarifying the team purpose, we want to turn our attention to establishing the right team environment by identifying and exemplifying the right team behaviors.
The team can have a clear team purpose, each team member can be committed, and the team can have all the organizational support it can garner, but if the team doesn’t define and consistently show the behaviors that will enable success, as well as identify and acknowledge behaviors that, if shown, will derail the teams efforts, the team stands a chance of not reaching the its full potential and not delivering on its stated purpose and team charter.
A critical team best practice is in the initial phase of team formation: Openly brainstorming and documenting team behaviors that will enable success and those that could potential derail the team.
Once the enabling and dis-enabling lists are agreed upon by all team members, it is a team best practice to review the lists periodically at the start of team meetings just to reinforce how important the focus on exhibiting the right team behaviors are to achieving team success.
The results an engaged team delivers are important, but how those results are achieved along the way are equally as important. Don’t assume good team behavior, cultivate it!
This brings us to commitment. Plainly put, your team needs you! A team can define its purpose, exhibit all the right team behaviors and have complete organizational support, but if any one or more of the team members are not fully committed to contributing to the team’s efforts it is this lack of commitment that is a major contributing factor for teams not achieving team the goals and success they have defined.
In working with leaders and their teams over the last 10+ years we have found a number of key areas where individual and team commitment enables and accelerates team success.
Each team member must be committed to:
Consistently attending scheduled meetings and events.
Preparing for each team meeting.
Commit to and deliver on all agreed upon next step actions.
Providing thoughts and ideas and challenging the status quo.
Learning and developing both as an individual and as a team.
Encouraging peers and those in their sphere of influence to actively engage.
Coach and mentor other newly formed teams.
Staying committed to a team's success is difficult. Each year we work with dozens of teams from their initiation to completion and with each one of them team and individual commitment is tested in some way. Day to day functional job pressures and the pace of change in business adds pressure and challenges that commitment. But, stay the course and, if necessary, reach out to the team supervisor or sponsor to assist in prioritizing both the importance to the organization and the time commitment required of you and your team to deliver on your team purpose.
Stay committed, your team and organization need you.
And lastly, a successful team needs support. An engaged team’s level of success and the ultimate impact of that success is often determined by the level of organizational support it receives throughout the team engagement.
Does the overall organization embrace and enable employee performance and engagement by sponsoring and supporting individual and team training? Are senior organizational leaders actively participating by allocating time for these activities, and by showing interest in and implementing many of the various team and individual recommendations? Lastly, do our front-line leaders encourage greater engagement by inspiring and enabling people and teams, not directing or controlling their activities?
A team can have a clearly defined and communicated purpose, exhibit all the positive team behaviors during the teaming process and all members be completely committed, but if they do not have organizational support to listen and act then it marginalizes, if not destroys, all future team activities.
Our experience enabling employee performance and engagement points to a simple, but effective success model for team and individual engagement and success. Purpose, behavior, commitment and support.