Case Study: Building Team Effectiveness

A few months ago my colleague Ana Ivanov and myself published a blog text on Saville Assessment approach on building team effectiveness. That blog text might be a good intro to the one you are reading right now :) so if you didn't already read it, click the link above and read it before you continue with this one.

The Wave Work Roles model

Saville Assessment work role model focuses on individual team members and their purpose (function) within a team. It identifies which individual contribution of each team member is likely to influence effectiveness of the team.

Key Characteristics of Each Role

Improving Effectiveness of a Sales Team

In this specific example the goal was to improve effectiveness of the sales team. Ultimately we talk about better sales results. However better sales results can be consequence of the things that are not under sales manager's control, like changes on the market, position of the company, characteristics of the product or good marketing. Ideally sales manager would actively work on maximizing team's strengths and minimizing its weaknesses.

After assessing all team members and generating team Work Role report we got following team distribution of preferred and less preferred work roles.

If you read the role descriptions above you can easily conclude what are the strengths and weaknesses of this team. Since the report is about potential of the individuals / team some of the key questions you need to raise / answer:

• What you can do to maximize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses?
• Since the performance / results are must is it better to go for it through maximizing the strengths or improving the weaknesses?
• How to design the team so that each team member can give valuable contribution and work in the zone of optimal tension?
• How you might move forward with improving results with just 2 Strivers with team?
• In what way you can minimize the effect of not present Finisher (plus 3 team members who have it as less preferred role)?
• How you might insure good reporting system when 6 (out of 8) team members don't like Analyst role?
• Who is in charge for keeping high positive attitude when half of the team show natural tendencies for pessimism?

Good directions we can get directly from team Work Roles report:

As report is about individual and team potential an ideal follow up would be individual coaching for sales manager and team coaching for sales team.

Good directions and ideas how to proceed you can find in the article on maximizing sales performance I wrote few months ago and if you are interested in using Saville Assessment Personality Test so that you can work with Work Roles reports check our next Personality Tests training.