Transcription

What Makes a Team Thrive?

Managing a team has never been more complex. As I mentioned, a leader's reflection is his team. So
how a leader interacts with the team, how does he drive them, what is the motivation? Can he
understand, communicate and most importantly get the best out of a team?

High performance teams are those teams who are willing to understand the best of their abilities and
strengths and come together to collaborate to achieve outcomes. It's interesting here, that a leader can
create high performance teams.

It's about having an eye for detail, having an eye to understand what are the personalities, who to use at
what junction, how to interact with them, how to get them to interact with each other and also eventually
bring them for common purpose.

Let's look at some of the traits of high performance teams. What does a leader have to look for?

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Number one, team roles. Roles need to be clearly articulated and crafted to bring out the best of
personalities and competencies. Can the leader identify strong and dominant personalities,
conscientious ones, even the ones which are timid or maybe not as extrovert?

How do you put together groups and ensure that they can surface and operate using the best parts
of their personalities.

Number two, team dynamics. How do people get along? Do they work with each other? Is there conflict
or is there unspoken tension amongst team members? How does a leader rationalise the team
dynamics and bring together the best of every team member working together collaboratively to
achieve outcomes.

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In our earlier segments, we spoke of the role of trust. With teams, for team dynamics to thrive, trust must
be relevant, in fact, trust is the single most important currency almost everywhere in every organisation.

Patrick Lencioni, in his Five Dysfunctions of a team, has propagated a five-stage pyramid model for
building high performance teams. He says: The foundation, the building block is trust.

What happens with the absence of trust? Well, nobody wants to believe the other person right.

In fact, there's too much of a protective attitude, towards what one knows and one has, there is no
sharing, as a result of the absence of trust, we'll start seeing conflict, because people don't want to
get along with each other and there's a constant sense of underpinning tension or underlying hidden
facts, that means a suspicion

When we have trust, team members are willing to take on positive conflict, they're willing to challenge
each other's thoughts, counter-argue and even surface dissenting opinions.

Conflict is important, because if we don't have conflict, we are encouraging a yes man attitude in the
organisation that can result in failures.

Remember the challenger disaster. When too many team members come together and agree
readily, there is an element of doubt for the leader to look at. Maybe we're not encouraging enough
of conflict in teams. Conflict is good.

In stage 3 of the pyramid, if there is healthy conflict, there will be commitment, because team members
believe that they have a bind in the results. If there is an absence of conflict, there's an absence of
commitment. When you believe that your opinions are not heard, your voice has not been heard, or even
what you think, or your knowledge has not been considered, your commitment to the final outcome is
going to diminish right.
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So when there's healthy conflict, there will be more commitment. With commitment comes
accountability. Accountability arises when you're committed to something, because somewhere
deep down, you truly believe in wanting to see the task succeed, the outcomes to be achieved.

Think about it, if you are not committed, would you want to be held accountable ? Once
accountability is raised, you will automatically have an attention to the result. What is the sense of
working so hard and demonstrating so much of accountability, if you don't take charge of the
outcomes and the results, attention to finer details arises when there's thorough accountability.

Think of it once again, lack of accountability would mean you probably don't care whether the results
go auric.

So Patrick Lencioni's model is truly profound. You have trust, you'll get your results. So trust becomes
a cornerstone, for high performing teams. High performing teams are those teams that give you the
results, that they're trying to achieve.

They focus on every energy, every resource, every skill and talent, put it together, collaborate, synchronise
their actions in such a way that the results are attained. It begins with trust.

When we talk of trust, we also talk of transparency. How are transparency and trust related? Well,
for people to trust you or a leader to become trustworthy, there has to be transparency. Saying what
you think and thinking about what you're saying and sharing both, with people who are going to be
impacted.

Transparency is about laying out the truth in a way that makes sense for people. It's about not
camouflaging or hiding facts, which would impact the decision-making skills or abilities of others. A
leader's role in building a transparent culture can go a long way in creating results. When there is
transparency, team members will not shy away from speaking the truth or speaking their mind.
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There is no fear of repercussions. There are no underhand conversations that happen. Rumors in fact
get minimised.

Primarily because it's a culture of being outspoken, open and also understanding that the
information is readily available.

Here's a personal example. I consulted with an international company that believed in a transparent
culture. What did they do? Here's a fun part: Every employee was encouraged to create a social
contract with the organisation. So rather than have KRAs, which are between the manager and the
team member, a social contract was a document that the employee created that was open for the
entire organisation to see, consider and reflect on.

Of course, roles and duties were crafted into the social contract, but it was more about the
individual's commitment and accountability to the growth and development of the company.

The social contracts were on the intranet, they were shared with everyone, the individual making the
social contract, invited feedback and comments from those who he believed would be key stakeholders
in his or her performance or completion of duties.

This was one end of the spectrum. The fun part here is the appraisal process also involved
transparency.

So, whilst there was a self-appraisal that the individual completed, the self-appraisal form was also
uploaded onto the intranet inviting feedback and comments from the rest of the organisation.

What fascinated me about this process, is whilst earlier on, a lot of managers looked at the bell curve to
rationalise appraisals and performance evaluations.

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This company actually automatically fell into the bell curve by self-appraisal. This is a power of transparency.

When you're sharing information, when you know that everything is open for everyone to read and interpret,
you tend to become a lot more conscious and committed to results.

Automatically, a lot of the employees who were doing their self-appraisal were very cautious about truly
mentioning facts and figures, documenting evidence and reducing the exaggeration.

Leaders can encourage transparency in a multiple ways. Number one, encourage sharing of information and
not hoarding of information. Number two, address concerns, feedback and queries in a timely manner. In
that way, assumptions can be minimised.

Number three, encourage the working of cross-functional teams, particularly because people and teams can
learn from each other. Number four, encourage open communication, open offices and the fact that
information, communication, meetings, teams can all get together informally along with the formal setup.

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 Leading several teams requires you to move up from a single team-specific perspective to adopting
a multiple-team perspective. While as a single team head you were mostly into directly managing
your team, as a head of several teams, each of which already has a team leader, you are managing
indirectly. However, for you, together, they form one team. So, how can you lead multiple teams
and ensure that all their visions put together are aligned with your own vision, as well as that of the
organization?

The following steps will be helpful when leading multiple teams:

. Moving from direct to indirect leading style:

You must know that you cannot know each of your team members or call meetings with them
everyday or take care of all their development responsibilities yourself. The sooner you realize this,
the better. Overall, it may feel very disorienting and you could feel out of control. But this shift is
important. Your task here is to set the strategy and the overall vision and leave the details of the goal
plan to be handled by the leaders reporting to you.

. Developing top class leaders:

And because you cannot do everything yourself you need to begin developing leaders under you, so
that they can be reliably empowered to take care of their work and be responsible for their team
members in turn.

Learning to constantly switch roles and contexts

Being a senior leader, you have a hectic schedule and you attend different meetings and discussions
the whole day. Letting go of the last work and focusing on the next task requires a lot of mental
juggling and mindset shifts as a leader. This is not just mentally exhausting but also drains your
physical energy. However, you must know that context switching is the key to your new role as a
senior leader, and mental preparation is the way to achieve it.

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d. Learning to prioritize:
In such roles, it’s important to know that things are not always going to be smooth. Delayed projects,
unfilled positions, budget realignment, and the list goes on and on. Just sitting and thinking will not
help here. Learning to lead consciously along mission-critical items is a skill that needs to be
acquired here. You have to prioritize. Avoiding this could overwhelm you and your teams, as they
are all looking up to you for directions.

e. Creating conditions of successful collaboration:

Since many teams will be depending on cross-functional collaborations, you also have to learn to
create conditions conducive for aligning different teams towards a common goal.

Aruna was thrilled when she finally became the head of marketing of her company. She had been
managing a team of 12 people for the past several years and was super pleased to move up as the
Head of Marketing. She was a good team leader so far, had a tightly knit team that was also well
performing.

The first few days in her new role was a great experience for Aruna, but towards the end of the first
month, she started feeling squeezed, with unexpected issues cropping up constantly. Aruna was
totally overwhelmed and close to regretting her career move. What happened here?

The mistakes that Aruna was making is the very reason we are discussing the concept of moving up
from group leadership to managing several teams. She was still caught up in leading directly and was
not working closely with the next-in-line leaders by switching roles and contexts between them or
prioritizing tasks. Hence she failed to create conducive conditions for different teams to work
together collaboratively.

She soon hired a coach to help her out and started firming up her relationships with the next-in-line
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 team members and started delegating effectively which soon helped her focus on mission critical
priorities and also allowed her more time to focus on successful collaboration. By the end of the
first six months, Aruna was already showcasing great performance.

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