Some Teams Perform Better

Than Others: Here’s Why and

How Your Teams Can Be More
Like Them

Marsha Lewis
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May 13 · 5 min read

All aspects of the M&A lifecycle require employees to work in

teams. The efficiency of these teams greatly influences the value
extracted from the deal. There are two hundred and fifty
characteristics of work teams that correlate to higher
performance, but there are two primary ones that researchers
have discovered lead to considerably
higher, measurable performance.

1. Psychological Safety — Psychological Safety means team

members feel safe taking risks, asking for help, and trying
new roles. Ther is no fear of getting fired for trying
something new or admitting team members don’t know
something.
2. Team Emotional Intelligence (T.E.I.) — Team Emotional
Intelligence allows team members to articulate how they are
feelings and behave appropriately as they articulate these
feelings.
Interestingly, these teams also measure high on the social
capiutal scale (investing in others). Research finds that
ranking high in social capital creates a domino effect as these
teams tend to have high executive support, which is
 obviously helpful because executives have the power to give
teams which resources they need to be successful.

So how do you create psychological safety and team emotional

intelligence so that your teams can function at a more powerful
level? The answer is core protocols. 

Core protocols are a set of behaviors that are observed when

high performing teams are studied.

This is what Jim and Michele McCarthy did in the 1990s;

subsequently, every time they intervened and taught new teams
these protocols, they found success. This tells us that the
behaviors of core protocols lead to emergent states — if we
teach these behaviors, we get higher T.E.I. and efficiency.

Foundational Skills Teams Must

Possess in Order to Work Efficiently
1. Everything is“opt in” and it is okay to “opt out” —
Giving team members the freedom and liberty to work how
they want, with whom they want, and on what they want, is
incredibly powerful.
This approach generates very organic projects people are
passionate about and intrinsically invested in. In fact, Google
has found great success with this model. It is equally
important for people to know it is okay to “opt out” — this is
what makes them start to feel psychonologically safe.
In addition, if one team member is not totally “in”, he/she is
often a source of friction — whether intentionally or
unintentionally.
2. Asking for help is okay — Low performing teams have a
pattern of getting stuck and staying stuck because they are
afraid to ask for help. When people are encouraged to ask for
 help, they don’t remain stuck when they encounter a
problem. Since help cannot be forced, asking for help always
works because the person asking is open and receptive.
3. Feedback isn’t forced — Similar to the above points related
to help, feedback is not forced in high fucitoning teams.
Forcing feedback is an all too common pitfall in today’s
business world. The “perfection” game is a powerful way to
generate feedback.
This game involves one person sharing an idea with another,
then the listener gives the idea a score (one-ten) based on
how much better he/she thinks the product can be made.
Next, he/she shares a list of positive qualities, followed by
what he/she would add or change to make the idea a perfect
ten. Ultimately, the perfection game is a value creation
opportunity.

Agile’s Role in Creating Psychological

Safety and Team Emotional
Intelligence
The research on Agile tells us that it contributes to team
members’ and stakeholders’ happiness; therefore, Agile can not
only be a more efficient way of working, but also a happier,
more fulfilling way of working.
It is an avenue to our two primary characteristics of top
performing teams- psychological safety and team emotional
intelligence.
The Agile Manifesto speaks to this as it states individuals and
interactions should be valued over processes and tools, a
working product should be valued over a long term vision of a
product that does not exist, and skills should be valued — all of
which is the opposite of the old-fashioned way of doing things.
The end result is technical agility, business agility, and more
collaborative processes.

Simple Ways To Begin to Implement

Agile

1. Have team members talk to each other once a day — Here

is a simple, yet incredibly fruitful, starting point. Teams need
to be communicating once a day in order to become more
Agile and increase safety and emotional intelligence. Many
teams tend to work in silos and then come together when
something is wrong — yikes! Think of a marriage — if a
couple only communicated when there is, the marriage would
not be a healthy relationship. The same is true for work teams
— if people are communicating once a day, there is an
authentic foundation for new goals, ideas, and a healthy
working relationship.
2. Make it a safe experience — When starting the process of
becoming Agile and introducing Agile to your teams, the
language you can have an impact on how people will feel
about it.
 First, we suggest calling this slow dive into Agile an
“experiment” — something you are trying out and will
evaluate; if it does not work, you’ll stop. Also, let people
know that no one is going to lose his/her job over Agile,
which may seem silly or unnecessary, but it is critical to the
safety of employees.
3. Adopt an “opt in” mentality — As emphasized under
foundational skills, an “opt in” mentality is an Agile
mentality as it leads to efficieny and stronger work. You can
help cultivate this “opt in” mentality through the creation of
an Agile Change Team — people who are interested in Agile
should be the ones to help implement it in the company.
4. Create an Agile Change Team — Within the company, it is
wise to create an Agile group — people who are passionate
about Agile (here is that “opt in” idea again), aligned with the
company goals, and have influence in the company.
This group can outline weekly changes, meet to discuss
process, and, finally, do a retrospective (not a postmortem).

As the team presents a new idea each week, there will be

what we like to call the compound interest effect — on the
surface, one idea a week may seem like fifty-two new ideas a
year about how to make the company better, but in actually,
it is much more significant because after the first few ideas,
the company is already more efficient, so with each new idea,
your value is increasing at a higher rate.

Additionally, with an in-house Agile group, you eliminate the

need for consultants and the change appears more organic. The
idea here is that if one team begins doing Agile well and reaps
the benefits of it, then other teams will be attracted to that team’s
success and will want to learn its secrets so they can also be
successful.
Final Thoughts:

Just as learning cannot be forced, forcing key ideas, systems or

processes on a business community is never a positive way to
drive company success.

Becoming more mindful of employee psychological safety and

team emotional intelligence through Agile principles will help
your teams extract more value from their efforts than previously
imagined.

The emotional temperature of business teams is essential to their

success, and, ultimately, to your business’ success. As the saying
goes, “People don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad cultures.”

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