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It’s 8.20 am Monday, you stroll into the office, place your brief case on your desk and go grab a water, discussing the weekend with your team mates around the water cooler. You return to your desk and set about planning your week, grateful for the environment in which you work. Everyone - well almost everyone - seems to get along well, and the team is functioning pretty well.
Or is it? The truth is, many of us in business think we’re working well in teams but the reality is something quite different. Measuring team effectiveness is an unknown and black science to many business owners and managers and so it is something left untouched by many, blindly costing businesses huge sums of money every year.
So what is a team? A team is simply
‘a group of people working towards a common goal’.
It recognises that ‘no one of us is as smart as all of us’. Sounds simple enough, but the reality is that this very simple definition trips up many so-called work teams because no common goal actually exists. Given that a large number of businesses in the market are operating without a vision, simple strategic plan and business plan, then this should come as no surprise. No common goal, no team. Period.
Team performance is only one part of the equation of course, but is arguably just as important as having a clear strategic direction, getting the right people into the right roles to start with and individual performance. Given that individual performance is not measured or managed in many businesses, then it comes as no surprise that team performance is largely neither measured nor managed.
Of course, what gets measured, gets improved! The good news is that measuring team performance need not be complicated. There are many common characteristics of a high performing team that you may wish to measure your team’s performance against. Some of these will relate to content (the what) and others will relate to process (the how). Some of the most common characteristics include:
- Having a clear objective;
- Having clear roles & responsibilities;
- A positive and constructive team climate;
- Active participation by all team members;
- People listen to one another;
- Conflict is managed constructively;
- Decision making is timely and well considered;
- Communication flows from top to bottom;
- Leadership is shared;
- Productivity is high; and
- Individual and team performance is assessed.
Sound simple? It is. If you would like a complimentary Team Diagnostic Report which gives your team an opportunity to measure their performance against these 11 common characteristics of a high performing team, simply contact us. By getting each of your team members to spend 10 minutes going through a simple questionnaire, we can provide you with a diagnostic of how your team is performing. This can then be the benchmark for future team performance.
Like a tree, a team needs nurturing and has a basic need to grow. Without this attention, the tree may grow in the wrong direction or perhaps even die. With the right intention and attention, the tree will grow to great heights, producing fruit for all to enjoy!
Ant Carter, Business Navigator, Cardinal Solutions ant@cardinalsolutions.co.nz
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