High Performance over ‘Competition or Companionship’?
I want to build high performing teams!!! — Anonymous Leader
We hear such statements quite often be it an IT or non-IT organization. People talk about different methodologies, team building activities and training’s to eliminate the differences in the teams and bring people together on personal and professional levels, so that the team can function effectively -Together.
But, can these methods or activities be successful without looking at the Emotional Intelligence in the team- Right? Do we really look at the problems behind a non performing teams or a team where people don’t feel motivated? Do we always consider Behaviour & Cultural aspects while building up new teams?
There could be many reasons behind having a non-performing team but in this article I would focus on Human Factor, Emotional Intelligence and try to remind my readers what we already know but often we tend to forget.
The Big Problem comes from our society and schooling systems:
Somehow, we learn a unique behaviour at schools — To compete with others. This competition has been injected into our DNAs since the school days and we have been taught to compete with each other. Who comes first and who doesn’t, matters to the students, their teachers and of course to dear parents.
Thankfully, I live in an era where the whole grading system is being questioned across countries and societies, because every individual is different and — Every individual is unique and special!!
These days you would find many great schools & colleges are promoting no grading systems and they are trying to promote different ways to evaluate students performance, some of those institutions have chosen not to even disclose the results publicly. I mean just like your medical report is kept private why not the grades? The grades after all reflects the result — how your brain functioned under such a great pressure of examination or series of exams.
Such distinguished results disclosed publicly can bring physiological effect on many people and can bring their moral down which then would block their brain from staying positive or facing the people who received better grades.
Some studies found that during exams, the anxiety level of students often remains high, which in turns, reduces the ability to think critically, study, integrate, and of course, recall the information when needed under pressure.
The Corporate is full of such well trained people by those schools…
Well, bringing the same principle of grades, into your professional teams, if one of the colleagues or the immediate manager acts very insensitive to others in the team and always tries to look at things meticulously and detect faults in others work, in a negative way then the same grading principle applies here.
“Remember, not everyone is same, some would fearlessly oppose such poking behaviour from their supervisors, but some may not. So, shall we stop giving feedback?? No!! But, a great leader / team member would always think before sharing feedback with his/her colleagues in a way that it sounds constructive and not to show himself / herself superior than others.
Competition vs. Companionship
People who do not have sense of their own competence would always try to compare and compete with others. If being better than someone else is pleasure for you then you enjoy other people’s failure; its sickness not success. This is the fundamental right and nature of every living creature in this world to be at its fullest and enjoy their lives but why as a human being you would like to see some one behind you and enjoy that moment?
— A thoughtful leader
Statement:
If you encourage such competitive environment where people enjoy each other’s failure then how can you expect to develop the most important aspect of the Team upon which it stands — TRUST ? Trust engenders Openness and provides an environment where people can share ideas & opinions without any hesitation.
So how to build a High Performing Team??
The starting point for building a high performing team begins with the Right composition of people.
1- Identifying the right Size of the team is the very first step, but you should keep your options open to either increase or decrease the number of members.
Size of the team:
a. Too Small? If you have a very small team e.g.: less than 4, then you would lack diversity in the team which directly affects your
team’s decision making power or distribution of roles
b. Too Big?? If you have a fairly large team e.g.: 12 or more then people would start grouping up and start looking for comfort zones.
Ideally, Scrum suggests 6–9 people in an agile team as optimum size, which allows people to share roles and distribute work efficiently.
2- Look at the skill sets required for the Product or Objective for which team is being formed. Grouping of different skill-sets or similar skill-sets is totally a pragmatic choice and it is directly related to the objective of the team
3- Behaviour: To my understanding and based on my experience, I believe, this is the most important ingredient in building the High Performing team.
a. Does a team member appreciate Change?
b. Does the team member recognize the opportunity to improve & adapt?
c. Does the team member shares product vision and understand the value of their work or product that they produce?
d. Does the team member collaborate effectively across the program (not staying in their nut shell)
e. There are individual players or team players?
4- The team’s Dynamics evolve slowly gradually over time: The high performing team doesn’t come out of putting highly skilled people together, or the individuals who are extremely good at their behaviour.
The High performing team evolves over time and of course it goes through various phases as we know: Storming, Norming, Forming and then Performing. For some teams, it might take few weeks to complete this journey and for some it could take years. Therefore, the right leadership is very important around the teams to encourage, coach and nourish the team time to time.
5- Common Goal: This is important for leaders to bring people together who believe in the same goal and could be able to relate their success or themselves with organization’s success.
One of my previous organizations #Ørsted made a bold statement as the goal of the organization:
“Let’s create a world that runs on green energy” - Believe me, this statement touched hundreds of employees immediately.
When people are motivated towards a goal that they become an integral part of the organization, their minds get aligned with the organization's goal automatically. They would stop worrying about individual goals but start believing into a much bigger and shared one.
6- Freedom: The teams must be given some freedom within a defined scope. Where they should feel empowered to make their own rules and decisions to deliver value. While working in Agile Scrum teams, I have always seen the benefits of defining the Definition of Done. This reduces the conflict and difference of opinions in the teams and acts as a rule book, that also keep on evolving with the team’s maturity.
Some examples could be:
-We always review each other’s work before considering it Done
-We only design a software that can deliver an outcome in simple 3 clicks
7- Retrospect & Adapt: The most important aspect for teams to achieve High Performance is to be able to openly share among each other but with emotional intelligence. I will go by Scrum guidelines and best practices, you either succeed as a team or fail as a team there is no individual to be blamed.
Often the process or approach taken by someone or the team doesn’t give the desired outcome and it needs to be challenged and improved. So the Retrospective sessions, allow teams to come closer and look at these issues and rectify it.
Conclusion
To conclude, you would find many leaders focusing on building performance driven culture but it’s important to remember we all are Human Beings, and just like in your family or friends you care for each other by keeping your Emotional Intelligence high. So, apply the same in the teams as well. In general, people spend most of their time working with other people everyday — Right? So, if they are demotivated at work they would never be happy in their personal lives, the result could be catastrophic; either they would leave or your whole team would suffer along with them.
Look at the team like a big harmonized clock which depends upon hundreds of smaller machines to function and if one of the smallest part is missing or broken down, the clock can not function properly.
