High Performance Teams: Part II

Previously we discussed the four stages of team development; forming, storming, norming and performing. As I thought about the last stage, I wondered how do teams become high performing? How do they run like a well-oiled machine?

One of my favorite business books is the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. It answers the question as to how a team becomes high performing. Patrick Lencioni examines what causes dysfunctional teams. He lists five as follows:

Absence of trust

Fear of conflict

Lack of commitment

Avoidance of accountability

Inattention to results

Trust is the foundation of a high performing team. If trust can be developed, it will pave the way for greater conflict resolution, team commitment, accountability and results. Trust is the foundation of all successful relationships. Trust involves vulnerability.

How do we develop trust? Hyley Bracey in his book, Building Trust; How to Get It! How to Keep it! provides insight. His five step model utilizes the acronym TRUST:

T means be transparent

R means be responsive

U means use caring

S means be sincere

T means be trustworthy

Although this is one model, what has worked for you in building trust to create high performing teams?

High Performance Teams

Facilitating team process is one of my favorite consulting assignments. Each team has its own "culture" and way of operating. Michael Jordan once said, "Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships". The next several blogs will be devoted to discussing high performance teams.

Understanding the stages of team development is critical when building a high performance team. In my opinion, the best model comes from research done by Bruce Tuckman. He currently directs the Academic Learning Lab at Ohio State University.

With a PhD in Psychology, Bruce wrote an article in 1965 entitled, Developmental Sequence in Small Groups. He describes the four stages of team development as forming, storming, norming and performing. In 1977 he added a stage called adjourning.

Understanding the four stages offers great insights to both the team members and its leader. Our starting point begins with examining each stage in greater detail;

• Forming: Excitement is high. It is new and fun and no one is really clear what they are doing. In fact, team members may be on their best behavior. It is a time of orientation.


• Storming: This is a normal part of the team development process. Roles are assigned, and personalities and egos begin to show. Team members may not feel safe to be open and honest. There is conflict and polarization around interpersonal issues. Individuals may confront and challenge one another.


• Norming: At this stage, there is greater role clarity and cohesiveness beginning to develop. New standards begin to evolve. The team is beginning to jell as a unit. Confidence improves, relationships strengthen and differences of opinion are respected.


• Performing: The team has become a well-oiled machine. They are able to share leadership, delegate assignments and work autonomously. Goals and targets are reached regularly and effectively. Structural issues have been resolved.


• Adjourning: There are times when a team has been assembled for a particular task or initiative. When the assignment is completed the team is most often disbanded. This can be very difficult for team members, particularly if individuals have worked well together.

When a new member joins the team, the stages of development may begin again. In addition, teams may move in and out of the stages. With the norming and performing stages, the need for formal leadership diminishes.

Recently I worked with an organization that merged two cultures. Team members self-identified as operating between the forming and storming stages. This information provided them the opportunity to strategize ways to more effectively navigate through the storming phase and move closer to becoming a high performance team.

Armed with this information, your team can identify ways to become more effective. The end result is a higher functioning team!!!

When you think about your team, what stage of development fits?

Listening: The Heart of the Matter

Recently while sitting in a meeting I observed cross talk, side conversations, and individuals reading email. I wondered if we really listen to one another any more. My hypothesis is that if leaders would ask great questions and REALLY listen to the answer, we could dramatically improve organizational effectiveness. Today we will address the area of listening.

There are three listening levels as follows(Madelyn Burley-Allen):

Level I: The listener attempts to see things from the speaker's point of view. It is listening for content and context. As Stephen Covey said, "Seek ye first to understand and then be understood". This is called empathetic listening.

Level II: The listener is hearing words and unable to hear the deeper meaning of what is being said. She/he is more concerned about content than feeling.

Level III: The listener is tuning in and out. She/he is more interested in talking than listening.

So, how do we become a better listener?

1. Make a commitment to become a better listener.

2. Stay present! It is easy to let the mind wander and think about multiple tasks at hand. Level I listening is being present in the here and now.

3. Keep an open mind. Avoid listening from judgement, biases, and preconceived notions.

4. Resist external distractions. Stay focused on the conversation.

5. When appropriate take notes. It is particularly important when talking with clients.

6. Ask open-ended questions for clarification. These include what, how, when and where questions. Avoid using "why" as it puts the speaker on the defensive.

7. Use the communication skills of paraphrasing, summarizing and reflecting (repeat what was said using the listener's words.

It takes practice to become a Level I listener. However, the benefits well outweigh the effort. What can you do to improve your listening skills?

Do You Know Where You Are Going???

The story of Alice-in-Wonderland encountering the Cheshire Cat is so poignant to individuals and organizations today. The conversation goes as follows:

Alice:"Which road do I take?"
Cheshire Cat: "Where do you want to go?"
"I don't know Alice answered."
"Then said the Cat, it doesn't matter. If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there." (Alice In Wonderland)

There are times when organizations are unclear about their direction and what they really, really want. Much like Alice-in-Wonderland, they may take multiple, unrelated roads that end up in a circular motion. It can impact their decision making, the customers and employees when confusion exists around company direction.

To insure you have a roadmap that will get you the result you want, here are some questions to ask:

-Do you have a clearly articulated, documented and communicated vision and mission?
-What are your three to five core values that guide the decision-making in the organization?
-What specifically do you want to accomplish over the next one, three or five years?
-How will you ensure that happens?
-How will you be accountable?

Once you have answered those questions successfully, how will you then communicate to the entire organization the direction of the company?

This doesn't have to be a complicated process and it should have some degree of fluidity. I worked with an organization that developed a "roadmap" for the business. After the first year, the company experienced an increase in both revenue and profit margin. It really does work!

As you think about your organization, what is its roadmap?

Trust

Trust must exist at all levels and is critical for a successful organization. Recently I had the opportunity to hear Dave Horsager who has written a book entitled, The Trust Edge. He states, "everything of value is built on trust, from financial systems to relationships".

Dave offers the following eight pillars of trust:
1. Clarity
2. Compassion
3. Character
4. Competency
5. Commitment
6. Connection
7. Contribution
8. Consistency

If we continue to sharpen our trust edge, organizations, institutions, and homes will be transformed.

As you think about this topic, where can you sharpen your trust edge?

LinkedIn as a Garden

This week our Guest Blogger is Dan Olson of Star Collaborative. He is a master at working with LinkedIn and his business has experienced much success as a result of it.

Linked In as a Garden
The old adage ‘You can’t fake a crop’ is the main thought here. The most successful networkers I have encountered view LinkedIn as a garden that requires frequent care and feeding. Just like a gardener that constantly waters or weeds their plants, LinkedIn has a multitude of activities that require your attention before you can harvest something from it.

To increase adoption, and to make it more palatable, I suggest the following approach to tending to your LinkedIn garden: Plan on spending three sessions a week with your LinkedIn profile, for no more than ten minutes each time. A Monday - Wednesday – Friday rhythm has proven to be most effective, and helps keep you top of mind with your connected network.

Mondays: Write a recommendation for someone you know that has done exemplary work and is deserving of praise. Be genuine in your writing, specific in your comments, and choose people who have made a significant difference. Write the recommendation in Word so that you benefit from its grammar and spell check features, then cut and paste it into LinkedIn. Shoot for a 5 to 7 sentence write up.

I recommend that you write at least ten recommendations for others before asking someone to write one for you (pay it forward). In fact, I have seen many people who make a ten week commitment to this approach get spontaneous recommendations written for them by week four or five. People take notice of such activities and feel motivated to respond in kind. Posting recommendations is a great way to help people in your network get credit for the things that they have done, and helps them build their online brand.

Wednesdays: Post a book recommendation to your profile using the Amazon Reads module. You do not need to add any commentary, simply chose one business book that you think your network will be interested in or gain some special insight from. Since this takes only a minute, also post an interesting article to your status. Pick something that relates to your career brand or area of specialty (project management, logistics, marketing, etc.). Make sure you are posting something that has value and is interesting or provocative.

Fridays: Since you are undoubtedly always working on your resume, chose one interesting factoid or sentence from your resume and add it to your LinkedIn profile. Don’t fall into the trap that you need to spend eight hours perfecting your profile in one fell swoop. Most people who attempt this get burnt out by the activity, get frustrated with LinkedIn’s poor user interface, or loose enthusiasm for the work. Again, if you are viewing this as a long-term project, give yourself ten or more weeks before you see significant improvements or changes to your profile.
Since this cut and paste will take you mere moments, use Fridays as a day to find a group or forum on LinkedIn that relates to your career interests. Once you find an interesting group, join it so it is listed on your profile, and start interacting with the people there. Within your budgeted ten minutes of activity, you should be able to read the postings of others, answer a few questions, and ask a few of your own. This is a great way for you to help others, learn new ideas, and to further substantiate your online presence.

LinkedIn is a journey
So, what’s the net effect of this LinkedIn interaction regime?

1) It’s a great way to pay it forward and help others: Writing recommendations, posting interesting articles and books, as well as helping others in groups all contributes to good karma. Have an abundance mentality first when it comes to networking. It is the right thing to do.

2) It keeps you top of mind: Each time you do something to your LinkedIn profile, it sends a notice out to everyone in your network and shows up in their newsfeed and daily summary e-mails. I have found that people who show up three times a week are more likely to get attention and responses from people in their network. Those who show up more often get ignored as spammers, those who post less frequently are easily forgotten.

3) It keeps you engaged: As you work on these activities, with this frequency, it is easily absorbed into your daily routine, and will soon become a habit. It will also help you in your face-to-face networking since you will have more knowledge of the person in question through your LinkedIn interactions. Like Facebook, LinkedIn will allow you to monitor your colleagues’ work lives and interact with them constantly.

4) It builds your online brand: Linked In is the virtual storefront of your brand. Make sure that you are creating a compelling an accurate value prop for people to see and respond to. These activities will help build out a robust picture of who you are, making you a more valuable resource to the people in your network.

To me, LinkedIn is a journey, not a destination. You will never complete editing your profile or finding something new and interesting to add to it. There will always be another connection to make, recommendation to write, or question to post. If you use a pay-it-forward mentality, you can significantly help your colleagues in their career endeavors while making deposits on a karma bank account. If you help others via this tool, you will get back as much as you give.

Are you LinkedIn?

DoesYour Organization Have an Abundance Mentality?

"You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want."
-Zig Ziglar

Zig Ziglar was one of the best known motivational speakers of the 20th Century. He truly believed in helping others become successful. He practiced what I call an abundance mentality. It was not surprising he experienced a high level of success throughout his life.

In my almost 20 years as a coach and consultant, I have worked in a myriad of organizations. Sadly, seldom few subscribe to this abundance mentality or really practice this principle in their day to day culture. However, recently I was introduced to Dan Olson and Katie Frank. Dan is a Founding Partner and Co-Owner of STAR Collaborative (http://www.starcollaborative.com/), along with Ed Lefkow. Katie Frank is the Director of Collaboration.

STAR Collaborative provides staff augmentation services to help clients flex their project resources as needed. They supply organizations with experienced consultants that possess the right skills and abilities. Their focus includes variable resource management, project management, transformational change management and leadership development.

Within minutes of meeting Dan, he talked about having an abundance mentality. At STAR Collaborative they not only want to help their clients grow and succeed, but also help their cadre of consultants become more successful. Dan believes there is enough for everyone.

Dan shared several example that illustrate the company's abundance mentality. Recently he helped place an individual in a full time position. He intuitively knew it was a great match, and was not looking for any type of compensation. Their non compete agreement when a consultant leaves the organization is one day. Furthermore, I experienced Dan's abundance mentality when he sat down with me last week and shared a process for successfully utilizing social media as a marketing tool.

As I have thought about STAR Collaborative over the last week and their abundance mentality it raised the following questions:

• Do I believe there is enough for everyone?
• Is my business about competition and profit first, or doing what is in the best interest of the stakeholders (internal and external)?
• Is my organization truly client-focused?
• Do I engage, empower, and encourage employees to greater levels of success?
• Are information and other resources freely shared among team members?

As I answer these questions for myself, I encourage you to do the same for your organization. As is the case with STAR Collaborative, those organizations that listen, heed and practice Zig Ziglar's words will continue to experience high levels of success!

What is your commitment to practicing and living an abundance mentality?