Team Cycles

Strategic plans age quickly. Conditions often shift within months of consensus and clarity. There are many drivers of changing priorities: talent, technology, financial pressure, acquisition, and loss to name a few. Any change opens a window of opportunity to rethink direction. Consider these 5 key places to invest energy following a disruption on the team.

Most of our waking hours are spent with professional colleagues. Family and friends own the biggest portion of our hearts but work teammates win the quantity contest. While the setting and the stakes might be different, the recipe for building strong connections is the same whether at home or at the office. Let’s look at the ingredients.

Adversity teaches us how to cope. Occasionally, we come up from an underground subway platform to street level and momentarily lose our bearings. Where am I? Which way is north? In that fleeting moment where nothing looks familiar, we are lost. The fear center of our brain gets activated as we fend off panic and search for direction. Of course, no one stays lost forever. Eventually, learning occurs. Consider what might happen if we got lost on purpose. A good crisis provides many lessons. Let’s look at how growth unfolds.

If you take a snapshot of a team, you get a glimpse of the traditional forming/storming/norming/performing moment in time. If you film a movie of the same team, you get a series of cycles filled with obstacles, problem-solving, innovation, change, and adaptation. Teams rarely follow straight-line trajectories. Most often, they evolve through multiple iterations of talent, turnover, leadership style, and culture. As the story unfolds, team wellness and productivity rises and falls. How might this impact your team?

Leadership transitions stir anxiety in the workforce. Often, it’s not disagreement with strategic philosophy that makes teams uneasy, but the simple fear of change. Even when the organization isn’t healthy, it’s easier to normalize the pain than it is to brace for transformation. A typical coping maneuver is to create factions within the team. Choose your side by the way you expend energy – adapting to new circumstances or trumpeting how horrible it is that we’re not who we used to be.

After 15-20 years of schooling, an academic cycle is built into the rhythm of most of our lives. There is a beginning, middle, and an end followed by a period of regrouping. Activities ramp up, achieve a cadence, and eventually prepare for the next transition. The hands on the clock keep spinning as teams navigate the challenges of their circumstances. The ebbs and flows of these seasons are barely discernible but the transactions that define each cycle drive the team’s evolution. What propels your team’s growth in each stage?

What is the most basic recipe for creating and sustaining a healthy organization? Not surprisingly, it’s not much different than the path to a strong relationship: 1) Make an investment. 2) Build trust. 3) Sponsor growth. 4) Adapt to change. Here’s a quick primer on these four simple steps.

Teams travel through cycles. Year after year, season after season, teams are recalibrated, repopulated, redirected, and redeployed. New talent, new leadership, and new goals drive the change. Amidst these constant transformations, some things stay the same. Consider the analogy of the trailer park. Families in trailers come and go inside this community ecosystem. Yet, the entrance, roadways, concrete pads and utility hookups remain in place. The infrastructure is steady and reliable. So, what comprises your team’s infrastructure?

Somthing is wrong. Diagnosing pain is the easy part. Figuring out what to do about it is harder. Following through with those actions is the hardest. For many businesses, the impending completion of a calendar quarter signals the call to check accountability. Did we do what we promised to do? Sure, the easy part (assessment and planning) was done. Now what? What exactly is my responsibility to this team?

Professional sports teams kick off each season with a fan fest where loyal supporters mob a local hotel for a chance to shake hands or get an autograph from a hero. Optimism always reigns. Each new season is filled with hope and dreams of a playoff appearance. Behind the scenes, executives collaborate to put the best product on the field.

These days, everyone sees themselves as being a part of many teams. Beyond your work colleagues, families, neighborhood groups, garage bands, and recreational athletes, to name a few, all claim ownership to team dynamics. But really, do all of these “teams” actually qualify as a team?

In the new economy, the Team Clock Institute is one of many organizations seeking to model the qualities of an “employer of choice.”  With so many metrics for best places to work, how do we make it simple?  Why would the industry’s best talent wish to engage with my team?