If you believe that leadership teams can make or break company success, what are you doing to ensure your team has a positive impact? We believe that high performing teams:
– Nurture relationships through trust and caring
– Engage candidly and directly on important issues
– Readily provide feedback and support for individual growth and team performance
– Promote psychological safety, inclusion and belonging
– Promote and manage team resilience
– Collaborate Intentionally
– Communicate with clarity
None of this happens without some effort. And it’s simple to say, not always easy to do. Teams are a collection of human relationships, which are dynamic by definition. If you wait until your team “needs work,” you’ve missed the point. If you’re not spending some time or energy – doesn’t have to be tons – working ON the team, you will see that team fray around the edges. If it’s not obvious during the good times, it will become obvious during the bad.
“Leaders must either invest a reasonable amount of time attending to fears and feelings, or squander an unreasonable amount of time trying to manage ineffective and unproductive behavior.” – Brene Brown
In sports, we understand that even the best teams need practice. The same is true for high performing teams in organizations. We don’t know that there is such a thing as a perfect team, but we have worked with some great teams who aren’t afraid of working on themselves.
Action: Personal Histories – asking the team to regularly share answers to a simple question like What is your superpower and your kryptonite or what were you doing the last time you belly laughed – gets right to the heart of trust building. Do this with your whole team, routinely. And you’ll start to see connections built and trust grow.
Link: Personal Histories exercise