Diagnosis and Assessment

There’s no universal elixir for life’s challenges – because your life isn’t like anyone else’s. What shapes your growth isn’t just what happens to you, but how you manage these circumstances and engage with the environment around you. The goal is personal wellness as defined by an evolving mastery of your…

Sixteen years ago, we published a methodology for measuring the wellness of teams, relationships, and personal growth. In 2011, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted us a trademark. A decade later, our assessment tool achieved research validation in a collaborative study partnering the Data Science programs from Elmhurst University and Carthage College. In addition to validating the tool, their summary cited a 98% predictability outcome between pre- and post-metrics when clients implement recommended actions.

How are you? Really – not the ‘How ya doin’ that isn’t really a question but more of a greeting – but a genuine curiosity about how you’re actually coping these days. Have you been able to live day-to-day according to your values? Are your interactions with your family, friends, and colleagues meaningful? Are you growing? Are you navigating change – both the expected and unexpected kinds – with resilience?

Let’s play “Would you Rather.” Would you rather sit in a retreat workshop and listen to the speaker drone on about the day’s curriculum…or…would you rather get up, move around the room, and see the day’s lesson in action? Hearing that a colleague is hesitant to share innovative ideas for fear of criticism is a much different experience than seeing your teammate place themselves in a location in the circle that lacks trust. There you stand – waiting to launch into innovation – while your counterpart declines the invitation to join you in the area where creativity happens. Awkward and silent eye contact usually happens next. Now what?

The aroma is clear, but the source is a mystery. The frantic search begins the moment you smell something burning. Until the smoldering whatever is located, disaster looms. Imagine treating workplace culture with the same urgency. Some percentage, albeit small, of employees are actively disengaged. Often there is a lead toxin with a few lemmings doing that person’s dirty work. Everyone can smell the fire, but the odor has lingered so long that it has become normalized. What to do?

The fastest way to eliminate possible explanations is to reach an obvious conclusion. Clinicians in the behavioral health field are taught to stay curious. If a likely cause presents itself, therapists hold it as a diagnostic ‘maybe’ until further evidence either cancels or corroborates the possibility. The urge is to rush to judgement when things don’t make sense. An answer – any answer – closes the uncomfortable gap of not knowing. Wisdom lies in enduring the discomfort and asking the question, “What would need to be true to make this data make sense?” Now let’s apply this to your team.

When you are stuck, the choice to move forward doesn’t happen until the cause is addressed. Often, teams push ahead without a diagnosis and inadvertently send the roots of the problem deeper. You can make it go away temporarily with some quick action but, unless the root cause is managed, it is sure to come back. Most likely, it will return in a form that is harder to solve. We live in a time when making symptoms disappear as quickly as possible drives decision making. What would happen if we didn’t?

As is true in nature, creative teams have seasons. There are times when things are quiet and dormant. Then the energy rises and feeds the team. Creativity spreads only to become something different. The team refuels and prepares for the next cycle. Winter then spring, summer then autumn. You could easily map the evolution of a creative team on a calendar. Let’s do that.

When teams struggle, the camera zooms in on the problem and forces an up-close perspective. Like anything you place under a microscope, you sacrifice the big picture in favor of the tiny details. Teams under duress tend to look at the dynamics playing out between teammates, often ignoring the overall wellness of the larger group. We pay attention to the symptoms rather than the causes. Let’s widen the lens.

Every challenge has two elements – naming the source of the pain (crisis) and deciding how you’re going to deal with it (opportunity). The second stage requires the first. Teams must acknowledge what hurts before they can embrace new circumstances. As quickly as you can finish trumpeting how awful a change is, commit to the task of figuring out what to do about it. Here’s a simple roadmap to get you started.

How do you know if your team is operating in a healthy workplace culture? Measurement seems subjective, at best. The task of capturing reliable metrics on team effectiveness involves knowing what to measure and how to measure it. Consider the ways teammates interact and evaluate those exchanges on a scale from function to dysfunction. Now, take a snapshot of the pervasiveness of the wellness or the sickness. Does everyone on the team feel this way or just a few outliers? Is the team unified or split into factions? How do we acquire this data?

As complex as human behavior can be, the problems that get teams stuck are surprisingly simple. Because living things grow in cycles, any team is always at some stage of challenge. Peak performance is one of these stages, but it is usually not considered a problem. Often, performing well is the natural consequence of addressing issues in these other three areas.