Assessment and Intervention - Building High Performing Teams using IFS

Building High Performing Teams using IFS - Assessment and Intervention

Summary from previous articles

In previous articles, I described the four dimensions (balance, harmony, leadership, development) that IFS uses to assess team dynamics and performance (Internal Family System and high performing teams). Further articles (Building High Performing Team using Internal Family System - The Problem with a Team’s Identity), explained that the key to performing highly on those dimensions is a strong team identity and discussed the missing ingredient to achieve strong Team Identity (Building High Performing Team with Internal Family System – The Ingredients Required for Building a Strong Team Identify). This article describes assessment and intervention for building high-performing teams using IFS.

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IFS Approach for Evaluation of Team Performance

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a therapeutic approach that views individuals as having multiple "parts" within themselves, each with its characteristics, beliefs, and emotions. These parts can sometimes conflict, leading to inner turmoil and dysfunction. Applying IFS principles to improve team performance involves recognizing and understanding the various "parts" within the team and fostering harmony and collaboration (Schwartz & Sweezy, 2019).

Just as individuals have different parts within themselves, teams are comprised of individuals with unique perspectives, strengths, and motivations. By recognizing and acknowledging the team's diverse parts (team members), leaders can gain insights into the dynamics at play. Each team member may embody different roles or functions within the team. Some may take on leadership roles, while others may prefer to contribute in other ways. Understanding and valuing the contributions of each team member's "parts" can lead to more effective collaboration and utilization of talents. Just as individuals may experience inner conflicts between their parts, teams may face conflicts arising from divergent goals, communication styles, or personalities.

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Three Principles of System Theory

The following principles provide an adequate working knowledge of a system and are used as the basis of the team health assessment.

• The first principle is transcendence or wholeness. This principle states that the system is more than the sum of its parts (Miranda, 2014). In the case of a team, this means that the team is more than the sum of its members. Members react differently when they interact within the team than when they are outside of it. The team as a system seems to have its own essence, independent of its members.
• The second principle is the principle of equifinality. Regardless of the input into the system, the outcome is the same (Miranda, 2014). For example, a team that is characterised by fear of conflicts and avoidance of accountability and face could encounter a variety of failures. If we ask each of the members for the reasons for the failures, they might come up with various reasons, or they might agree on the reasons for a specific failure. However, the team's systematic failure is the members' fear of conflicts and avoidance of accountability. Any input into the team will be processed with this dysfunction, and some failures may occur.
• The third principle is homeostasis: a system seeks to maintain itself in a steady state. This principle is especially important with respect to stress (Miranda, 2014). The system generally has well-defined limits on how much stress will be tolerated. If a change in the system raises the level of stress beyond tolerable limits, a homeostatic mechanism will be employed to lower the stress. In the language of team development, too many changes will result in the team rejecting them and returning to a less effective but less stressful way of working.

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The Healthy Team

Few IFS variables associated with team health provide the goals around which to structure interventions. Barnhill (1975), in a review of family system therapy literature, isolated eight basic dimensions of healthy functioning, still relevant today, which measure the team member’s dynamic and enables the assessor to understand the depth and health of the connection and relationships between the team members. These dimensions could be organized under four basic factors.

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The four basic factors are outlined below:

1.???? Identity formation

a.???? Individuation vs. enmeshment

b.???? Mutuality vs. isolation

2.???? Coping with change

a.???? Flexibility vs. rigidity

b.???? Stability vs. disorganization

3.???? Information processing

a.???? Clear perception vs. unclear

b.???? Clear communication vs. unclear

4.???? Role structuring

a.???? Role reciprocity vs. unclear roles or conflict

b.???? Clear generational boundaries vs. breached boundaries

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Identity formation

With respect to identity formation, it is essential that a person have both a sense of belonging (mutuality) and a sense of being separate (individuation). If each team member has a sense of being separate, the effort should be focused on creating a sense of belonging and emotional closeness. If the team acts as one unit (e.g. lack of individualisation) the focus should be in understanding and provoking individualisation.

Coping with Change

In coping with change, it is important that the team is both flexible enough to adapt to changing situations and stable enough to allow for the security that arises from some degree of predictability. A team characterized by rigidity will tend to maintain the same stereotyped problem-solving techniques even when ineffective. A team characterized by disorganization will tend to function randomly and will not learn from experience.

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Information Processing

Clear perception implies that all team members have a realistic picture of the team dynamic and functioning, including each other's strengths and weaknesses as well as areas of conflict. Unclear perception generally leads to an idealized picture of the relationship and denial of conflict. Clear communication means that all team members can express both good and bad feelings as well as a variety of content messages and that both partners can accurately receive the messages sent by the other.

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Role reciprocity

Role reciprocity means that the team members have worked out the question of “Who has the right to do what and when” (Day, 2003). Clear generational boundaries are relevant, especially to newly created teams. However, in highly cross-functional teams, other team members can perform each other roles and support each other, when necessary, without threatening their team members' position in the team.

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Health Team Assessment

The following proposed assessment can help to drive the newly created team to perform well under the dimensions mentioned above or assess an existing team's performance. It is important to mention that the dimensions of this assessment only relate to the aspects of creating deep connections and deepening relationships between the team members. Other elements of team performance, such as levels of work ownership, value alignment, ways of working, etc., are not the focus of this article.

Each assessment statement can be answered using the 5 Likert scale and be scored accordingly (Strongly disagree – 1, Disagree – 2, Neither/Nor agree – 3, Agree – 4, Strongly agree – 5), where higher scores for each factor indicate better team performance.?

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Assessment Statements

Identity formation

• Each team member's voice is heard in team meetings and interactions
• Team members can recognise differences in opinions and views of other team members
• Team member's connection is strong; they feel they belong to the team
• Team members are safe to express their opinions

Coping with change

• When changes occur, the level of stress expressed by the team is small to minimal
• The team can easily incorporate and adapt to changes in requirements/surrounding environment (management, project, etc.)
• The team dynamic is stable and predictable across situations
• It is easy to predict the team's output

Information processing

• The team members can articulate the team dynamic and communication
• Each team member can articulate other team members' strengths and weaknesses
• Team members feel safe to express both positive/negative feelings
• Team members demonstrate that they hear and understand what other team members are saying

Role structuring

• Each team member can clearly articulate their role
• Each team member can articulate how their role contributes to the team outcome
• Team members can articulate the role of other team members
• Each team member can perform other team member roles if asked

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Systematic Interventions

It is found that teams that are not functioning effectively have problems in at least one of the eight relevant dimensions of healthy functioning.

The basic knowledge of systems principles and dimensions of healthy functioning outlined above can now be used to formulate a systems intervention. To prevent equifinality from rendering the intervention useless, it must challenge the normal information processing channels of the system (team) and block homeostatic mechanisms from occurring. In addition, the intervention should aim towards one of the dimensions of healthy functioning.

The following steps could be used as guidelines for interventions to improve unhealthy team dynamics and/or ensure team function effectively. Briefly, the stages are:

• Observation and assessment
• Interruption of the system
• Deviation and amplification
• Responding to individuation

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Observation and assessment

Observation and assessment mean considering the team in light of the seven healthy dimensions and determining which dimensions are low and should thus be the focus of the intervention. It is generally best to observe how the team performs their day-to-day tasks and operates as a team. The assessment goal is mainly to find the best place to get started working with the team.

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Interrupting the system

Interrupting the system is perhaps the most difficult of the four phases. The interruption is made by assigning the team tasks, or intervening with execution of already assigned tasks and the facilitator needs to be creative in interrupting. The interruptions listed below are merely the ones that have been used in IFS most commonly.

Enacting transactional patterns: This is perhaps the most basic intervention and can be aimed at virtually any of the seven goals. Anything the team describes should be discussed between them rather than described. Focused discussions between the team members should be facilitated to encounter the real system rather than just hear about it. The team members should be encouraged to talk to each other about issues rather than just describe them to a third party.

Escalating stress: Teams low on the dimensions of individuation, flexibility, and mutuality often maintain an unrealistic expectation that stress will damage their relationship. Thus, they defuse and deny stress while never really dealing with basic differences of opinion. The facilitator can help by escalating stress by engaging in appropriate problem-solving techniques and by pointing out that "No one disintegrated during the process." Stress can be escalated in a number of ways. One is to note differences, e.g., "You seem to have different opinions on that issue; is that right?" Once a stressful issue has been enjoined, it can be escalated by physically asking the team members to talk to each other rather than talk to the facilitator.

Communication checks and role reversal: Problems of clarity of communication and perception can often be approached quite directly through communication checks and role reversals. Of the two, communication checks are most easily employed at the beginning of the intervention. The team is assigned a topic to discuss (usually during reflection/retrospective sessions) and is stopped at various points by the facilitator, who asks one of the team members to paraphrase what the other member just said. If distortions have occurred, they are corrected, and the importance of "taking time to listen to each other" is emphasized.

Negotiation: Where the essential problem is a lack of role reciprocity, negotiation can be directly employed. It is important, however, that clarity of communication be achieved before negotiation is attempted; otherwise, it is doomed to failure.

Rule setting: Rule setting is most useful with teams who are low on individuation or stability. The basic rules to set are "no interrupting," "no talking for the other person," and "talk to the other team member, not about them." These helps establish each partner as an individual and help to provide some stability to the couple.

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Deviation Amplification

The third stage in the system intervention is deviation amplification or change maintenance. The main task here is to prevent homeostatic mechanisms from offsetting changes that have taken place at stage 2. The very same techniques as used in stage 2 may be appropriate. In addition, it is desirable to note specific changes that have occurred and explore how the team members feel about change. This is especially necessary with respect to stress or conflict.

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Responding to individuation

The fourth, and typically the last, stage is responding to individuation. Because enmeshment is a pervasive problem (Bourbeau & Ryan, 2019), this problem is attacked directly as part of every system intervention. Responding to individuation simply means making individual contact with each other when they have shown the ability to tolerate some individuation. It is usually reserved for the last stage of the intervention because team members may interpret early individual contact as "unfair alliances" with the facilitator. Techniques used to respond to individuation are familiar to those trained in coaching/counselling. Most simply, each member of the team can be asked how he or she feels about a given change and then respond empathically.

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Summary

In previous articles, I mentioned that IFS uses four dimensions to assess team dynamics and performance. These are balance, harmony, leadership and development. I explained that the key to performing highly on those dimensions is a strong team identity. Then, I explained the missing ingredients to achieve a strong team identity. In this article, I explain how to measure and intervene to achieve a strong team identity. Although not mentioned directly in this article, three of the four dimensions (balance, harmony, and development) strongly influence the assessment and intervention for building a strong team identity. The fourth dimension, leadership, and the skills required to build a strong team identity are not the focus of this article and will be explained in future articles.

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Resources

• Bourbeau, P., & Ryan, C. (2019). Resilience, resistance, Infrapolitics and Enmeshment. Resilience in Social, Cultural and Political Spheres, 167-189. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-15329-8_9
• Buckley, W. (2017). Systems research for behavioral science: A sourcebook. Routledge.
• Day, R. D. (2003). Introduction to family processes. Taylor & Francis.
• Miranda, F. (2014). Systems theory: Perspectives, applications and developments. Nova Science
• Schwartz, R. C., & Sweezy, M. (2019). Internal family systems therapy (2nd ed.). Guilford Publications.
• Woodburn, L. T., & Barnhill, L. N. (1977). Applying family systems therapy principles to couples counseling. The Personnel and Guidance Journal, 55(9), 510–514. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2164-4918.1977.tb05233.x