Great Teams Don't Happen By Accident

I was working with a senior team who were doing pretty well, they were generally on the right side of winning but they knew there were some opportunities to be better.? The key challenge for them was they didn’t really know where to start.? They certainly didn’t want to lose any of the good stuff that was going on, but they had a sense that they could ‘sure up’ the way the team performed together.

So, we embarked on a short but insightful journey of gaining clarity around the team’s current performance against the components of a winning team.?

Each team member and the leader completed an online questionnaire that assessed the team and then we came together to unpack the results.

The results were really interesting.? Some of the challenges the team thought that they had were diagnosed and when we discussed this more fully, the team gained clarity around which components of a high-performing team they scored lower in.?

This started to give them a bit of a roadmap to follow, and they were then ready to embark on the process of incorporating and leveraging some new practices within the team.

What’s the value of focusing on a Winning Team

It's important to recognise that not all teams are broken, the team I talked about above wasn’t. However, some teams can be disengaged or disconnected. ?Or perhaps it’s a newly formed team and they are going through those early stages of identifying and becoming a team. When this is the state of play, individual and team performance and effectiveness are not at their best and sometimes the team and those that they support, suffer.

Generally, teams are cooperative, but individuals can be working in their silos which inhibits enterprise and strategic thinking.? The team achieves some gains some of the time and there is room to do this more often.

Some teams are more connected, so they not only cooperate but collaborate more effectively.? They identify a way forward and make better decisions. Accountability of self and each other is also a strong characteristic within the team. These teams achieve results more quickly and it can appear to be more effortless in the way they do what they do.? This is a winning team, a team of champions.? Their impact, productivity, and engagement are 10X.? They truly are a well-oiled machine.

If you were to think of your team in relation to the above diagram, where would you place them?

Becoming a winning team doesn’t happen by accident.? It’s a very deliberate and intentional plan that starts with measuring where the team is currently.

It was Dr H James Harrington, a pioneer in performance management who said, "measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can't measure something, you can't understand it. If you can't understand it, you can't control it. If you can't control it, you can't improve it."

So, how well does your team understand their collective current performance?

Do you want to increase the team’s awareness around how they can move from good to great and do this as a cohesive unit?

Need some help

If you would like some help to measure how your team is performing against the components of a high-performance team, then let’s chat.

Something to think about ….

Lead with impact!

Best, Deb.

When you're ready and if you would like to, here are some simple ways to work with me:

• Contact me to explore if a Decoding Team Performance Discovery Workshop would be the right starting point for you and your team. You can reach me at +64 9 283 0054 or email [email protected] - I'd love to connect with you.
• Grab a copy of my book Inside Out: Why Leadership Starts With You ?

A Bit About Deb

Deb Bailey is an Executive and Leadership Coach, Facilitator, Speaker, and Author with her Practice which was established in 2018. Deb?works with executives, senior leaders, and business owners who value their people, who want to achieve more, and who are passionate about developing and maintaining high-performance, results-focused, inclusive cultures within their organisation. Before establishing her Practice, Deb ‘walked the miles’ and had an executive leadership career of 20+ years in one of New Zealand’s leading iconic companies, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, which allowed her to work with, and coach senior leaders all over the world.