Best Practices in Team Effectiveness

Our twice-monthly posts are designed to spark dialogue. The voice of the reader caps the blog posts for 2023. Based on these subjective analytics, here are the insights that prompted our readers to elevate conversations.

With over 300 posts since 2010, the Team Clock Institute ends 2022 with a curated “Greatest Hits” collection. Below are the most circulated blogs by category. Feel free to browse our archives at https://teamclock.com/articles/ for the articles that resonate with your team.

For the past few years, our consulting team has been employing music composition as a tool for personal, family, group, and organizational wellness support. It works for a simple reason. The trajectory of a song’s development parallels the path of a team’s growth. So, whether it’s a coaching client expressing their career challenge with song lyrics or a corporate leadership team broadcasting their mission with a marketing jingle, building teams is like composing music.

Do you prefer a cruise ship to a family vacation? Both options take you to beautiful places. The difference lies in the mode of transportation, the population of passengers, and the choice of who steers. Some trips begin with a collection of strangers while others carefully select the participants. A common destination might be enough to create a connection, but coalescing a team requires more than agreeing on the final port. The quality of the journey begins way before the ending.

As we have seen with sports teams and rock bands, assembling the best talent doesn’t guarantee success. In fact, blending two alpha-type egos can be a recipe for disaster. Dream teams are complementary. They are balanced. They rely on the power of difference.

How do you define “team?” Your workplace colleagues? Your romantic partnership? Your book club? Your neighborhood? Your recreational sports buddies? Your family? Perhaps all of the above? Defining teams is both simple and complex. The complex view is an interdependent ecosystem of complementary roles advancing a common mission through shared values toward a clear vision. The simple view is two or more people collaborating on a goal. Let’s break down the simple definition into its key parts.

Zero-error is the goal in many industries. Transportation companies have mastered the skills of full disclosure, root cause analysis, and proactive risk reduction to keep people safe in the air on the rails. Healthcare attempts to apply the same principles yet continues to hurt people at surprising frequency in clinics and hospitals. In businesses where the stakes aren’t quite as high, it becomes a matter of efficiency and productivity.

You have to know where the source of waste or error is before you can make the world a better place. Often, the greatest misallocation of resources is the energy spent on managing team politics. Team dysfunction takes many forms and depletes the system. Assess and solve every disruption. Below are the symptoms of broken culture and suggestions for corrective actions.

The rookies bring energy and the veterans bring wisdom. Those in the middle provide the network of connections. These are among the stereotypes of teammates in early, mid, and late stages of their careers. Let’s look at a lifespan model of professional development.

What’s the secret sauce? On paper, it’s easy to assemble the right mix of talent to predict team success. Just stock the team with leadership, deep skills in the specialization area of the project, a diligent group of worker bees, and reliable administrative support. The rest will take care of itself, right? Unfortunately, not. Once you blend in the human element, most teams find ways to struggle as conflict, mistrust, fear, and resistance to change impact the group’s direction. So, where does positive team “chemistry” come from?

It’s easier than ever to conduct business without ever coming face-to-face with another human being. Smartphones, video conferences, texts, emails, and any number of social media platforms have made it possible to communicate from afar. There’s safety in not having to worry about pace, tone, mood, posture, body language, and eye contact.

What competency do you wish to master? Life is short. It takes a significant commitment to specialize. Beyond baseline talent and the gift of opportunity, mastery requires repetition. By most standards, practicing a skill 10,000 times elevates it to a new level. Martial artists know this as they deliver dozens of kicks, punches, and self-defense maneuvers to their daily workout routines. Musicians know this as they pound out scales in every key signature. Writers only get better by writing. So what about mastering relationships? Perhaps every organization should have a team expert. How might this happen?

These days, you don’t have to travel very far to run into someone playing Pokémon Go. They have a unique appearance. They’re wandering outdoor spaces holding their smartphones at arm’s length with simultaneous telephoto and wide-angle vision. Their posture is slightly more upright than the stereotypical smartphone addict since they are searching the universe. The creative team responsible for this phenomenon achieved their augmented-reality goal: the gamification of daily life. How did they do it?

Many organizations are stratified in ways that makes teamwork difficult. Whether a silo or a hierarchy, collaboration has a secret set of rules when boundaries are in play. Whatever the structure, second-class citizens have a lesser voice at the team table. How might this play out in your workplace?

As complex as the dynamics of most teams may seem, the basics of effective collaboration are not mysterious. Investment builds the team. Trust ties it together. Innovation grows the team. Distancing evolves it. Wherever your team many be in the cycle, there is action to take.  If nothing else, do this:

Recently, the founders of the Team Clock Institute met to discuss the resources that brought the greatest value to our clients. Some communicate an appreciation for the online assessment application while others like the benefits derived from the training. The majority of the feedback that comes from business partners, however, points to the worth of the action planning. Learning how to elevate the team is more important than understanding why it is stuck. This was the impetus for the development of The Team Manual.  A proven solution to any team challenge is now only a click away.

1. Learn
2. Assess
3. Evolve

Whether you are managing a championship caliber sports team, a global law firm, or a local school district, the recipe for healthy growth is the same. First, do your homework. Next, identify your strengths and vulnerabilities. Then, push or pull your team to the next level. First learn, next assess, and then evolve. Here’s how:

This year’s discoveries were unexpected. The common theme was courage. Each of the teams highlighted in this retrospective were elevated by the bravery to abandon comfort and ignite change. They didn’t wait for the business landscape to demand a reaction. They listened to their clients, anticipated the future, and created solutions. Please enjoy a sampling of excellence.

Congratulations to Laura Gettinger, a Chicago-based professional wellness consultant, for winning the 2013 Team Clock Institute Holiday Matching Game. Laura correctly matched all five team challenges with the outcomes resulting from their struggles. Below are brief summaries of each resolution.

Let’s kick off the holiday season with a game. Below are five team challenges observed in 2013. Following the challenges are five outcomes. Can you match the challenge with the outcome?

Gallup’s recent employee engagement data paints a pessimistic picture of the modern workplace with more than seven out of ten workers either disengaged (“sleepwalking”) or actively disengaged (“toxic”). That leaves a courageous minority of passionate talent who would run through a wall for your organization. Lost in the metrics are the rare organizations that have devoted themselves to a culture of 100% engagement – no sleepwalkers or poison.

Four families. Four cities. Seventy-seven gatherings. Nobody imagined the depth of bond that would unfold when the original commitment to meet three times per year was made over twenty-five years ago.Yet, year after year, without exception, participants rotated from Chicago to Detroit to Cincinnati to Indianapolis to enjoy each new chapter of the group’s evolution. What began as an assembly of eight young adults grew to three generations of thirty-four people spanning nearly sixty years in age.

Although they impact thousands of lives, you’re unlikely to meet them face to face. Most of their waking hours are spent developing others who become your most trusted partners. Like your physician, minister, and attorney, your financial adviser is selected with care. The relationship is anchored in trust, accountability, talent, and character. Recently, thirty-six of the nation’s top financial advisers gathered in Milwaukee to strengthen their teams. Each leader represented a team of about twenty specialists whose group owns stewardship over the financial stability of thousands of lives.

A widely respected Fortune 500 company has decided to sponsor a race. It’s a race to high performance. Although the winners will be judged by achieving common business goals, the route each team takes to get there is up to them. Each of the forty teams in the race will have a different starting point.

Slowing down to savor the year’s highlights brings a blend of satisfaction and anticipation. From team to team, the stories of courage, innovation, and transformation have a unifying theme: harnessing adversity to fuel growth and change. Consider a few examples.

In the morning, the organization’s Chief Innovation Officer laughed as she detailed the creative tasks that filled her typical day. At lunch, another company’s Controller described how good it felt when the books balance. In the afternoon, a school teacher lit up as he told the story of one of his students’ “aha!” moments. At dinner, the real estate agent described the perfect fit between the family and the home they had located together.

In today’s economy, there’s no longer any tolerance for error. The airline industry figured this out a long time ago since the consequences of a glitch are grave. The health care industry isn’t far behind. For some teams, absolute interdependence is non-negotiable.