Brainware Vault

Research on traditional, co-located teams has shown the positive impact that personality can have on team performance. However, it is not just the “power of personality” that determines team success, but the "mix of personalities" that foster (or hinder) an effective team.

The nature of team work has rapidly evolved over the last 25 years. The decline of organizational hierarchy, and the rise of global, cross-cultural work, have multiplied the challenges of building and leading teams. Conventional wisdom often prescribed hard work and long hours as the answer to improving team productivity and performance. Many of today’s team leaders who follow that formula quickly discover that long hours and tremendous effort isn’t the answer.

At the start of the new year, people who acknowledge the reality of their waistlines often start their list of New Year’s resolutions with a goal to exercise more. Similarly, many organizational leaders who acknowledge that the people in their organization are not as engaged as they would like, place increasing employee engagement at the top of their resolution list. Most of those disengaged people are not the worst performers, they simply lack energy, purpose, or passion. They put in their time, but not their best effort nor their best ideas. The challenge for organizational leaders is that, while they recognize the benefits of their resolution, they don’t always know how to foster the behaviors that change intentions to change into consistent habits that lead to increased energy and engagement.

The reshaping of organizations that began at the turn of the century continued this year at an accelerated pace. Digital technologies, the emergence of new global competition, and the expectations of the next generation of workers are but a few of the driving forces. How organizations respond and reshape themselves will determine whether they are on a trajectory to achieve greatness, or are relegated to mediocrity. For many companies, it is their teams and team leaders that sit at the epicenter of this dynamic landscape. They will, to a large extent, determine where their organizations land in the distribution from mediocre to great. A key challenge leaders face is understanding where to focus their change efforts.

I recently conducted a workshop on building highly-effective teams with a group of service leaders and their team members. During a coffee break, one of the leaders and I were chatting about the challenges of team building, and he asked me a great question, "How do I make sure that I'm hiring the right people for my team?"

It seems like that question should have a straightforward answer. In reality, most recruiting, interviewing, and hiring processes are focused on the individual, and are not designed for today's flatter organizations that are highly dependent upon teams for their success. So how do you get the right people to fill the seats on your team bus?

Building healthy relationships requires understanding expectations, striving to meet them, and developing the habit of consistently closing the inevitable gaps. Contrary to the attitude that “it's just work”, decades of research (and common sense) show us that developing strong, trusting relationships leads to greater happiness at work. Moreover, that happiness matters not only in terms of team effectiveness and individual well-being, but it also impacts people’s families, friends, and broader communities.

Lean teams are the benchmark for best practice in manufacturing and field service organizations. With their emphasis on autonomy, continuous process improvement, and value creation, the appeal of lean-teams has broadened to include most every function in today's flatter, leaner organizations. Yet, despite the popularity and well-documented benefits of lean teams, many fail to keep improving their work practices and value creation. Why do some lean teams meet or exceed expectations, while others fail to do so?

If you lead teams for a long enough time, you are likely to recruit or inherit a 'lone wolf' - a talented, capable individual who has a tough time fitting into your team. Smart, capable, and willing to challenge the status-quo, you see their value; yet, often they are high-maintenance and disruptive to the rest of the team. Moreover, you typically don’t have the luxury of spending substantial amounts of ‘handling time’ with one team member given the typical time and performance pressures placed on most teams. So how do you quickly decide the value of the lone wolf to the team, versus the cost of him or her remaining?

One of the challenges organizations face as they have come to rely more and more on teams is that most employee-related functions such as recruiting, training, evaluations, and rewards, continue to be biased towards the individual. This is particularly true with respect to evaluating individual performance in the context of team effectiveness. That leaves the question of how to best evaluate individual performance in the context of teams.

How often have you heard observations like “my people don’t seem to be fully engaged” or, “my team needs more energy”? While the symptoms of a team lacking engagement and energy may be easy to identify, practical solutions that are easily implemented are hard to find. I did a Google search on “motivating teams” and the top results included: “25 Ways to Motivate Your Team to Greatness”, “15 Effective Ways to Motivate Your Team”, and “10 Unique Ways to Motivate Your Team”. My experience leading many dozens of teams over the past 25-plus years, and talking with hundreds of team leaders, is that we are regularly asked to do the equivalent of changing tires on a car while driving at high speed. I don’t know about you, but doing 25, 15, or 10 different things to improve motivation just isn’t going to happen.