My last post was about high performing teams, however I wanted to talk about teams that aren’t at that stage or are having challenges.
Patrick Lencioni’s Book the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team is an extremely useful reference, however, one slight issue is with its termanology when used with in a session. As soon as the word ‘dysfunctional’ is used with a team you can almost see the barriers coming up.
So flip it around and talk about the Positive Functions of a team
- Building trust— how to be vulnerable and offer support within the group
- The impact of constructive conflict—seeking constructive passionate debate
- Personal commitment— Exhibiting true buy-in for group decisions with action and advocacy
- Transparent accountability— Agreeing team behavioral values and robust roles and responsibilities
- Celebrating / Enhancing results—focusing on personal success and team success / As a group indentifying what needs to be better and how to take action as a team
Some businesses will build in Key Performance Indicators etc to try and remedy this and some success can be gained from this, however, it can be seen as a tick box exercise at reviews or traded against other performance results e.g. I am the top salesperson…
In order to see a profound effect actions and agreements need to come from the team also:
- Any discussions / exercises need to be explicit that this is not about blame it is about taking the team to the next level
- A skilled impartial facilitator will help discussions; where possible it shouldn’t be the boss facilitating
- Confidentiality within the team must be explicit
- Make it interactive with short sessions
- Give yourself more time than you need and ensure that each area gets the time it needs, however ensure that discussion doesn’t go round in circles
- Agree rules of feedback and format e.g. has to Balanced, objective and specific, (hotseat feedback on the day or confidential questionaires before event)
- Ensure clear and measurable actions are captured
- Review impact regularly
Tips – Just a few free ideas to get you started on addressing the different elements.Full explanations of how to run these would take a few pages!
Building trust— how to be vulnerable and offer support within the group
Get team to do personal SWOT analysis (anomously, number each one) and ask the team to match up their perceived weakness and threats with strengths and opportunites on other SWOT sheets
The impact of constructive conflict—seeking constructive passionate debate
I really like Thomas Klinman Conflict styles as it raises awareness of personal conflict styles
Personal commitment— Exhibiting true buy-in for group decisions with action and advocacy
Ask team to write suggestions on post its of how remove ambiguity and make better decisions that gain commitment
Transparent accountability— Agreeing team behavioral values and robust roles and responsibilities
Get the team to write down their top 5 personal values at work e.g. honesty, trust etc
Then get them ‘grafitti’ style to write them on a flipchart then task them to List the group top 7 or 10 values in the team. Then discuss how they can bring this to life in the team
Celebrating / Enhancing results—focusing on personal success and team success / As a group indentifying what needs to be better and how to take action as a team
Ask the team to come up with 5 commitments that will help them focus on personal and team results
Always happy to hear comments around your own experiences or thoughts on the post.
Hope you have a great weekend
Some helpful links for 5 Dysfunctions of a Team
The Leadership Express 