Part 11 - How to incrementally improve your Team

This post is a lesson excerpt from the How to incrementally improve your Team course

Teams

The use of teams has become commonplace driven by the need to be more competitive and driven by changes in business technology. Current team organisational structures have limitations, they tend to be silo-based, hierarchical, facilitate only existing skill sets, are almost exclusively project-driven and suffer from a lack of poorly integrated processes. They are unable to rapidly respond to changing business technologies and the need to be more competitive. They do not employ modern management styles, behaviours or techniques. They are largely incapable of genuine innovation due to their inability to constructively harness conflict and advanced communication techniques. They have a poor creativity capacity and their contribution to corporate growth is difficult to measure. One solution to these issues is to migrate your team to a more advanced level.

Team Maturity Scale

The Management and Teams model defines a Team Maturity Scale consisting of ten maturity attributes spread across three stages of development., namely - a Good Team, a Great Team and a High-Performance Team.

The Scale is the results of 40 years of team building activities across the Finance, Banking, Insurance, Superannuation, Retail, Manufacturing and Technology sectors.

Team Maturity Scale

An online training course is the vehicle for moving a team through the three stages. The team first reads through the entire course, completing each lesson individually before coming together in a workshop setting to complete each lesson as a team. The course lessons teach one maturity attribute at a time which is new learning as new ways of working. The team leader or indeed the whole team decide on how many of the attributes to add. Moving through the three stages allows for an assessment of the training outcomes to be undertaken before deciding to move on to another stage. This approach facilitates a steady, incremental process of change and improvement in the team’s performance.

Teams and their Maturity Attributes

Good Team

1. Management Style

A personal Management Style is developed that focuses on professionalism, people development and business performance, it is a description of the way a manager acts and how others can expect them to react in a given situation. The style acknowledges the central finding of EI (Emotional Intelligence) research that emotions are contagious, attitude and energy ‘infects’ a workplace for better or for worse. The Management Style combines Traditional management qualities and Transformational leadership qualities which are complementary and inexorably linked to each other.

2. Professionalism

A definition of professionalism is created consisting of things like having specialised knowledge, a theoretical foundation, intellectual and professional development, use of techniques and knowledge, competence, honesty, integrity and respect.

3. Common Goal and Performance Goals

Ordinary teams respond to a mandate from outside their team, however, to be successful, a team needs to develop its own common goal. The team defines a meaningful, measurable team common goal that acts as a target and it gives direction to all team activities. The team common goal needs to consider likely changes in the organisation’s business environment, competitors’ movements and the future behaviours of consumers, combined with the team’s aspirations. It answers the question of why the team exists.

Individual performance goals that support and contribute to the achievement of the common goal are created for each team member. More challenging and ambitious performance goals are set for team members as compared to the other teams. All the team members are supported and motivated to deliver excellence and are expected to be more passionate about the achievement of their goals. Team members are empowered and motivated to take risks and pursue individual initiatives.

Great Team

4. Team Meetings

A weekly Management Team meeting is required to support the team during the training process. It is also an essential general management practice as it focuses on team members on matters such as performance and productivity, customer and staff satisfaction. Team members adopt the same meeting format and rules for their own team meetings. This approach guarantees the dissemination of the same information to their staff.

5. Mentoring

Is used as a positive method to support and encourage team members, allowing them to develop to their fullest potential. Mentoring sessions change and evolve as the needs of the person being mentored changes. There is a general aim to understand each other’s situation and out of work stresses and obligations. The person being mentored is given guidance, motivation, emotional support and assistance with problems.

6. Roles and Responsibilities

When team members know what their roles and responsibilities are, how they support the team, and how they contribute to the success and results of the team, this produces greater job satisfaction, productivity and commitment. Clearly defined roles and responsibilities remove overlaps and conflicts, identify and fill in gaps and make it clear as to who is responsible for what.

7. Motivation

Team members who actively support and motivate feel closer to those whom they are helping. By showing a sincere interest in each other and their staff, the team members build trust and inspire others to achieve higher levels of performance. An advanced team is not just a healthy team, but it is a team where people are supported, motivated and recognised for their achievements. Everyone needs to receive positive feedback so that they understand that they are important, are a contributor, a team player and believe they are receiving an honest assessment of their performance.

High-Performance Team

8. Mutual Accountability and Selfless Collaboration.

Team members must accept that they are accountable to each other, which guarantees better performance and excellence in teamwork. Being accountable to each other means team members accept that the team’s successes or failures fall on all their shoulders. (one for all, all for one). Each team members work activities belong to the whole team; everyone owns them. Accordingly, all team members need to take a constructive interest and participate in all the team’s activities as and when required.

Selfless Collaboration is perhaps the most excellent quality of an advanced team with people working together to achieve any task whilst keeping each other’s goals and the common goal in mind. In advanced teams, there is a very high level of initiative, sharing of ideas and cohesiveness amongst the team members. Team members act as business partners and they enjoy a higher degree of flexibility to achieve work goals. Planning and coordination are done by the team members collectively instead of being undertaken by a team leader exclusively. After the completion of their own work, a team member is then willing to help other team members with the completion of their work.

9. Interpersonal Skills

Team members learn ten interpersonal skills: -: trust, open communication, shared leadership, conflict management, decision-making process, respect, body language, persuasion, charisma and emotional intelligence.

10. Team Rules

The establishment of clear ground rules gives the team its cultural baseline. It is a fundamental step in advanced team development. In the case of a new team, rules also help to remove the inevitable confusion and anxiety that usually exists as new team members get to know each other.

Training outcomes

· Achieve high levels of collaboration and innovation.

· Overachievement compared to other teams.

· Team executes more quickly.

· Makes better decisions and solves more complex problems.

· Team members actively work to ensure everyone’s success.

· High team member job satisfaction levels.

Management problems addressed

· Lack of preparation to successfully lead.

· Team member engagement.

· Determining your management approach.

· Communicating objectives to your team.

· Establishing the team’s purpose.

· Managing team talent and team conflict.

· Poor communication.

· How to let someone go.

· Staying Motivated.

· Being respected and being liked.

· How to empower your team members.

· Fostering collaboration.

· Work performance and productivity, being under pressure.

· Fostering an environment of trust through recognition and feedback.

How to do the training

Lessons and Worksheets

The course is made up of lessons that each teach one attribute. Each lesson is supported by a worksheet that explains how to run a lesson workshop. The best training approach is to have the team members read through all of the lessons then come together for a one-hour, lesson based workshop.

Team Leader Instructions

Use the Enroll Now button to directly access the course which is free.
Read through the course lessons to familiarize yourself with how it works. Use the Training Guide lesson at the beginning of the course to help you determine the course benefits and how to introduce the course to your team.
Make a list of the lessons you want to use in the order they are presented.
Introduce the course to your team, have them Enroll for free and read through the course lessons.
Arrange Workshops to complete each lesson.
If doing face to face, print off the lesson Worksheet for each workshop.