THE CHALLENGE
Teams are complex emergent systems, composed of complex people working in today’s complex times. These collectively impact on performance. There are so many conditions that teams need to get right to become highly successful that it can take years to develop great leadership skills.
So how do you build a team’s performance, fast? Wouldn’t it be better for any team leader to follow a simple, trusted, scientific path to build a successful team? We do, so we’ve developed one. It’s called the ‘Fast Team Playbook™’. Team leaders and team members appreciate the easy-to-understand Playbook and with that understanding a team culture emerges. An effective team understands its purpose and its role within the wider business needs. The team’s high performance is built from this strong sense of purpose and embraces both individual and shared goals.
Time and again studies show that over 90% of teams under-perform. They haven’t invested in setting out a clear purpose, teams don’t feel the psychological safety which is so evident in highly successful teams, and as a result team members don’t share knowledge, don’t show initiative nor experiment with new riskier ideas.
Outcomes
Plans
Commitment
Vulnerability
Empathy
Learning
Accountability
Constructive tension
Experimentation
Delivery
Adaptation
Trust
Get Safe
+ Vulnerability
+ Empathy
+ Learning
By building more interpersonal trust the team is better able to create higher levels of psychological safety. There are 9 behaviours that studies confirm enable team members to feel more supported, more able to express themselves, make more telling contributions and to speak up if they have concerns. Any team member’s skill gaps are supported, rather than ridiculed. As a result team members share more of their knowledge and learn more rapidly. The whole team is openly accountable. Studies confirm that the extra safety generated is necessary for the team to then excel in the next stage.
Get Set
+ Mission
+ Plans
+ Disciplines
To set ground rules the team generates ‘swift trust’ by agreeing 9 ‘task-based’ commitments. Studies tell us each of these predicts team performance, especially in the virtual team. The team quickly establishes proven foundations behind team success. Teams scoring well on the Get Set metric are clear on their mission, plans and responsibilities and feel confident, aligned and purposeful. They are ready to pivot and rapidly adapt to change and are in a great position to leverage their task-based trust to build deeper levels of interpersonal trust and higher levels of psychological safety in the next stage. All high performing teams excel here, the diversity of voices and the complementary skills that each team member brings is a consistent measure of whole team success.
Get Strong
+ Accountability
+ Constructive Tension
+ Experimentation
Here the team builds on the clarity achieved in the Get Set stage and the safety generated in the Get Safe stage to be able to achieve the necessary levels of constructive tension, accountability and experimentation that really drive results. Team members collaborate better, influence each other more assertively, and constructively challenge each other. A great team scores well here, they make and deliver on more commitments to each other, are prepared to experiment and think creatively, better able to work autonomously in sub-units and are interact better with other teams. Great teams take risks. They do all of this without unnecessary guidance or control.
Get Success – Delivers, Trusted, Adaptable
+ Delivers
+ Adapts
+ Trusted
The team’s progress, now excelling in the previous stages, shows a highly nimble, confident, cohesive and reliable team that works exceptionally well with other teams. Nine measures of performance in this stage demonstrate that the clarity, agreement and alignment of the Get Set phase, in conjunction with the psychological safety generated in the Get Safe phase and the constructive tension developed in the Get Strong phase has now created in a team that delivers consistently, is trusted by its stakeholders, and is seen to be highly adaptable in how it can pivot to changing business conditions. Congrats! You have one of the 10% high performance teams.
One of the Playbook Get Set conditions is for team members to have ‘sufficient skin in the game’ to motivate collaboration with others. It is easy for us to say what you and your leadership group should do, we feel it’s just as important for us to be vested in your team’s success. Further, we ask for no upside, no financial ‘bonuses’.
We are so confident in the science behind the Fast Team Playbook™ that we will forfeit 50% of our fee if our approach fails to deliver expected high performance value for any of our coached reports, modular, virtual team development solutions or our executive coaching programmes.
We have over 20 years of experience in improving team working by designing and facilitating on-line and face-to-face team development. Please contact us to discuss your needs whether that’s the creation of your own team development programme incorporating diagnostics, interviews, design, facilitation, coaching, evaluation mechanisms, or finding out how we can support you.
