If you’ve ever played on a winning team you’ll know the feeling you get when everything just runs smoothly. There’s an energy and elegance that comes to the fore and very little can go wrong. Psychologists refer to this as a state of flow. To get into a state of flow a person’s intrinsic motivators are all operating on full cylinder and the perceived difficulty of a task and the available resources are in balance. When a person or a group of people are in a state of flow engagement levels are very high!
“Dream on”, you may be saying to yourself at this point! You can’t even begin to imagine being on a team like this.
How do team dynamics actually work?
Getting back to our winning team. Let’s take the example of a football team that starts conceding more goals than it scores and losing matches. Is it really the fault of the goalkeeper? Or is it the defenders? Perhaps, the midfielders keep giving the ball away in the middle of the field. Or, is it that the forwards are not scoring enough goals?
As a team is fundamentally a system, it’s probably a combination of all these factors because systems depend on the relationships between the parts to function properly. They also depend on having appropriate feedback loops in place. If, however, the only form of feedback is criticism and pointing the finger this becomes a recipe for disaster and teams quickly degenerate into bickering and the blame game.
The net effect is that it costs organisations millions!
How do you identify your blindspots?
You may be surprised to learn that there is an easy and highly effective way to discover your team’s blind spots or potential de-railers. Harrison Assessments Talent Solutions (HATS) provides a full range of team diagnostics so you can easily spot your blindspots as a team. What’s more HATS provides a range of team development solutions, all at the click of a mouse!
How do you achieve better balance?
HATS also gives you valuable insights into how you have balance in your teams. Not everyone has the same strengths and a high performing team is made up of a range of complementary skill sets. Not everyone needs to be a goal keeper! For example, there may be someone who is very good at assessing risks at the beginning of a project and others who are good at dealing with and adapting to change during the project.
Wouldn’t it be good to know who these people are rather than guessing?
Before you invest in team building
The common approach to dysfunctional teams is to go offsite for a team building day or weekend. However, in my experience, a lot of this is hit and miss and a wasted opportunity. Yes, people usually have a good time but rarely do they address the root causes of their problems or name the elephants in the room. The result: within one week it’s back to the usual bickering and in-fighting… Deadlines slip by and costs escalate!
A better way forward…
A better way is to run the HATS diagnostic beforehand and build your team day around how to get better balance and performance as a team. The whole team building experience will be a more meaningful one and you’ll notice generative results in the weeks to follow.
You can test HATS for FREE by clicking on this link.
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