Have you made a New Year’s Resolution to work differently? If you lead a team, would it help if your team changed up a gear? Read Will Sudworth’s article here on cultivating the conditions for team effectiveness.
Consider Joanne whose name we’ve changed and whose permission we have for this article. Joanne is someone who managed a group of eight people. The group knew their individual accountabilities but the only person who truly knew how everything fitted together was Joanne. Joanne encouraged them all to “get on with each other”, but they were wellaware that the only relationship that really mattered was the one they each had with Joanne.
They enjoyed their meetings together, but they knew that Joanne would take 80% of the airspace. But they were fine with this – it was the most efficient way for Joanne to coordinate their individual efforts – and if they were honest – it made their lives a lot easier! Joanne managed them this way for some time and with considerable success – until their world changed.
With success came growth – in staff numbers, in product offerings, and in complexity. Acquisitions followed and stakeholder numbers grew. Markets shifted and competitors changed. No matter how Joanne’s team tried to divide up their work in their new world, the challenges they now faced demanded a level of ‘joined up’ working. Whenever they tried to simplify, their environment changed again and a fine-tuned version of what they’d done in the past was not enough. Joanne realised that their performance was increasingly directly related to how many hours in the day she could work. Her availability was becoming a ‘bottle-neck’ for team members – who were now beginning to talk about a ‘leadership void’ that they had never noticed before.
It was at this point that Joanne called us to talk through how we could help her move her people from ‘efficient group’ to ‘effective team’. Through research and experience red10 has developed the 9-Dimensions of Team Effectiveness that are both necessary and sufficient for teams to outpace the performance of groups by 30% or more.
Despite being busy, Joanne’s team decided to invest two days, offsite, to meet with a red10 coach. The results were transformational. There are still moments when Joanne needs to take control of events and be at the centre of the decision-making but the majority of her time is now spent cultivating the conditions that allow her team to thrive. There are still moments when the team re-runs old patterns of behaviour – some are still needed – but most of the time, the team operates in ways that faster, more fluid and much more fun.
Are you moving into a new world? Would you like help cultivating the conditions for your team?
We will be sharing more about each of these dimensions in the coming months. This month, you can read about an aspect of the Dimension of Vision in Caroline Allen’s article, ‘Seeing is Believing’. You can also start to change your world now by downloading the 9-dimensions of team effectiveness here or reading a case study here.
You can enquire about red10 Team Effectiveness Coaching by contacting Kerry on info@red10dev.com