Are you wasting your time on team planning?

We’ve all likely been on, or heard about those team planning days that are often labelled as just “a nice day out of the office”, or a bit of “team building”. In the past I’ve been a participant in some of those team days that have been “rather nice”, but have frustratingly lacked a whole lot of punch, real outcomes and return on investment.

By this time of the year, you may already have developed your departmental or unit business plan and are now wondering how to make sure the team understands it and feels responsible and accountable for it; or you may be in the process of exploring how to get your team on board with developing the plan together.

Either way, there are many catches to the planning process that I see trip up even the most experienced leader or manager when it comes to engaging their team with planning. I’ve seen a lot of brilliant plans that look fantastic on paper, they make sense, are well thought out and will stretch the business or department but the essence and inspiration behind the plan gets lost in translation. As a result, for many leaders and managers it becomes a repeated pattern of another year where they spend their time stressing, trying to keep a plan and the work alive in their teams’ minds and often it’s yet another year where the team doesn’t achieve its full potential.

In my team transformation framework the first key element of forming a functional team that will work together to achieve your plan is to create a foundation of team connection. That is, connection between your team members and connection to the work that they need to do. It’s about both the ‘fluffy stuff’ of supporting each team member to feel good about working with their team mates and it’s about tapping into the neuroscience of our innate human behaviour to ensure your team are fully functioning.

Most of us are aware that we humans have an instinctive fight / flight response. When we are uncomfortable, our fight/ flight response can be triggered. Our body sends warning signals to our brain and all focus goes to minimising the threat, real or perceived, and most times as part of this response, the result is not being able to think logically about the topic at hand. This can often be recognised by a blank stare or the “did they really just say that, that doesn’t make sense” look on our face.

As leaders and managers, we can sometimes think that this sort of behaviour is not rational and that there is no reason for our team members to feel like this, however fight / flight response is not rational. Sometimes it can be the slightest thing that can trigger a person’s fight/ flight response. For example, the fact that you are ‘the boss’, that they are not certain about what is expected of them, or they’ve had a small disagreement with a team member that they are now having a meeting with.

The key to starting to minimising the fight / flight reaction in your team members is to build stronger connections between yourself and the people in your team. When we see commonality between ourselves and our team mates, our fight/ flight response reduces and once this happens we can begin to effectively have conversations about the future, get creative, discuss opportunities and get into the details of who will do what. Team connection is the crucial first step in making your team plan stick. See one of my suggestions at the end of this article on how to begin creating better connections in your team.

Bearing this in mind, it’s no wonder when we miss the connection part of the team planning process, that we find it difficult to get our team members to think outside their comfort zone, problem solve effectively or visualise the possibilities of a future that doesn’t yet exist. 

Here’s my five-step team transformation framework applied to the planning process. Use this to help you understand where you should focus your efforts to elevate your team’s capability and connectedness.

TEAM CONNECTION

·        Do your team members have trust, connection and effective communication with each other so they can be fully productive?

·        Are each of the team members connected to the future your business plan will bring? Can they visualise it, explain it and communicate that vision effectively?

TEAM CLARITY

·        Do each of your team members have crystal clarity on what future success looks like, the details of the plan, who will do what, how and when?

·        Is this written down and shared across the team? Do you talk about the plan and update on progress regularly?

TEAM COMMUNICATION

·        Do you have clear communication structures and reporting processes that will keep the plan alive and create responsibility for each team member?

TEAM CULTURE

·        Do you have an agreed team culture and set of team principles to keep team behaviours aligned to achieving the plan?

·        Does your team culture create personal accountability for achieving the plan?

TEAM COMMITMENT

·        Is each team member committed to the plan and willing to go outside of their comfort zones if needed, to achieve it?

·        Does each team member have the capability to deliver the results?

·        Are team members able to manage their personal ups and downs while still delivering exceptional performance?

To ensure your team business plan sticks, consider what gaps need to be filled in this five-step framework, and always begin with connection.

If you want to have a go at creating more connection in your team try this activity. At your next team meeting ask your team if it’s OK to try something new and kick off the meeting by asking them some connecting questions like where they grew up and what it was like, what the craziest thing is that they've ever done or what their favourite Christmas or holiday memory is and make sure you share yours too.

Observe how over time your team members will begin to lower their guard and drop the pretense that can often come when they wear their ‘work face’. Role model this and encourage them to really show up and connect with each other.

Once they get more comfortable, you’ll notice the conversations about the work you do become more creative, inspired and robust. A good first step in making your team more productive and your plan more likely to stick. 

If you and your team need help bringing your team plan to life and making it stick, if you want to chat about how to get a productive return on investment for your team planning sessions or you simply don’t want to endure another less-than-productive planning day…. let’s talk.

About Jo - Team Transformational Specialist

Jo Shortland is a Transformation Specialist and MOJO Unearther - A team and personal coach who specialises in creating and delivering team transformation programmes for ‘kicking it’ in work and life.

She is a certified Neuroleadership coach, a qualified personal trainer, and has over 15 years’ experience in people development and leading people and organisations through ‘crunchy’ change and transformation.

Having led large teams in complex and challenging environments she has ‘in the trenches’ knowledge of how to make change really stick. And with an innate ability to create deep and organic connections she will help you and your team shrug off distractions, feel totally at ease and come back to centre.

Her work is founded on transforming with the brain in mind and a belief that the best ideas and actions are those that are driven from your own intuitive knowledge. This coupled with her uncanny ability for ‘just knowing’ what each team needs to do to make their changes stick, means anyone working with Jo will lock in results that last. 

However you invest your time with Jo, you are guaranteed to be left feeling intuitively grounded, deeply revived, seriously productive and uniquely transformed.

Let’s talk…

E: [email protected]

M: +64 21 88 66 43

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