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.

Crisis has a way of bringing teams together. The urgency of the moment defines roles and creates a common objective. The medical profession treats a crisis as a normal event by moving into triage mode. More than just setting priorities, triaging assumes the problem is bigger than the resources. Waste and politics are subtracted from the process. It doesn’t have to be an emergency to enter this mode. Consider these five ground rules.

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.

Ask three simple questions and then choose a course of action:

1. Where is our team in its lifecycle?
2. Why are we in this stage?
3. What should we do to move our team forward?

All teams travel through predictable cycles of investment, trust, innovation, and change. Knowing where you are validates the emotional reaction to current challenges. Understanding why the team is experiencing any obstacle is the key to getting unstuck. A diagnosis ignites an action plan. Consider this simple model: