The three most important things you can do for your team

If you’re a manager in an organization of any size, it’s almost certain that you interact with, manage, or are on a team of some nature. Teams are a fundamental, foundational element of how work is distributed in organizations today. A few months ago we published a blog that focused on how to build an effective team (you can read that article here: How to Build Effective Teams • Core International | Management Consulting.

For many leaders, the rationale behind building an effective team appears self-evident. Here are a few of the reasons you might want to consider putting some effort into helping your team become more effective:

• effective teams are more productive—they spend more time and energy on the key work of the team rather than trying to figure out who does what
• associates who report that their team is effective also generally report higher levels of job satisfaction and engagement; they are less of a retention risk
• effective teams can usually work more autonomously, resulting in fewer decision escalations and increased velocity in the work system

And if that’s not enough, a recent report from the CIPD entitled High-performing Teams: An evidence review stated in part “team performance is key to the success and sustainability of organisations”…

One of the universal themes that has emerged from the hundreds of workshops we have facilitated over the years to help leaders and team members become more effective at working together is that, simply put, effective teams are just more fun and easier.

The need for highly effective teams is especially acute today, according to CIPD:  “Focusing on team dynamics is especially important for people that work virtually, have little history of working together or have high interdependency. The aspects of working life that can affect employee performance are nuanced, but our research shows that well-planned interventions can help to increase team effectiveness.

The most common issues we’ve seen over the years fall into just a few categories:

1. Varying perspectives on team purpose: some teams tell us that they can’t answer the most basic questions, such as “What are we trying to accomplish?” or “Why are we here?”
2. Ineffective Communication: Communications styles vary. Effective communicators take the needs of all team members into account as they convey information and seek to engage the team
3. Fuzzy decision-making rules: Often teams report that they are not clear whether they are making a decision about a course of action to address an issue, or creating a recommendation for someone else to approve
4. Lack of clarity about accountability for work: Team members sometimes lack sufficient clarity about their own accountabilities, which makes team-level accountability difficult to accomplish
5. Difficult interpersonal dynamics; failure to set the appropriate context for differences in opinion and low-level conflict can make differences in perspective a team productivity killer

Our Approach to Building Effective Teams

Our approach to helping leaders and team members become a highly effective team has two main areas of focus: 1) what’s the work of the team? Who does what? Who decides what? How often do we meet? And what are those meetings about?, and; 2) how do our individual approaches to gathering information, structuring problems for resolution, making decisions and then acting inform our activities at the team level?

Building highly effective teams doesn’t need to be overly complicated or time consuming. In fact, we regard building a team sufficiently robust to support the delivery of your accountabilities one of the primary functions of any leader. If you are in a position of leadership here are the three most important things you can do for your team:

1. Be intentional. Building an effective team is part of your managerial leadership work. It’s not someone else’s job. In particular it is not “HR’s job” and it will not happen spontaneously. Make developing your team one of your top priorities. Focus your efforts on those aspects of the team that have the highest levels of impact on team effectiveness.
2. According to the CIPD data, the biggest influencers on team effectiveness overall are Personality, Psychological Safety, and Cognitive consensus. These three have the highest levels of impact on how effectively your team will function. Understanding the personality types that make up your team, creating a safe and constructive space for collaboration, and fostering collective approaches to structuring complex issues and making decisions will go a long way to making your team more effective.
3. Don’t settle for “team building”. These types of activities (which are often social) are simply not sufficient to build a highly effective team. As much as we all love bowling, dinner out, or escape rooms, it’s critical that you go the extra mile and engage in an intentional approach to developing collective behavioral norms, creating a safe environment for difficult discussions, and creating shared perspectives on the team’s most significant issues.