Team Development, Cohesion and all that stuff

Your most expensive problem (I mean asset)

Your most expensive asset is also your most expensive problem – that’s your people. I appreciate this may seem provocative and you may like to use different words, but it’s true.

I once read ‘people make things happen, not plans’. Whilst plans (strategy and structure) help and are needed, it’s people that make things happen (and it’s also people that STOP or SLOW things from happening).

I’m not talking about those people who deliberately get in the way (which there often are some), I’m talking about the more subtle nature of people ‘not getting the right stuff done’ (on time or at the right time).

We need help with our team!

I’m often approached by those that lead teams (or teams of/within teams), asking… we need help. When I dig deeper and ask what they mean, its often one of those ‘hard to describe things’. You hear things like…

• It’s not quite right?
• The team are just not there yet?
• Things are not gelling?

These global statements are hard to quantify and use then as a guide for what we would collaborate on to make things better. On the flip side you can get a much more detailed description of ‘single’ incidents or individual challenges. Which to me is a different item to that of ‘team development’ (collective working and cohesion).

At this point it may be quite brash of me, but I often suggest dealing with those involved in the single incident or the individual who has proven a challenge more directly. Rather than running some bonding event or listening exercise, which yes brings people together on a superficial level for a moment in time (or draws out views on what we can do to be better). But this doesn’t deal with situations where there is an individual issue.

Sometimes known as ‘management by workshop’, assuming the ‘group’ workshop will solve the ‘individual’ problem – It doesn’t work.

It’s like sending a blanket e mail about accountability and handing in your expenses on time to all those in your team (department, or organisation), when there is just one or two culprits.

I hated receiving these e mails. I would always ask – ‘is it me’, to find out it wasn’t. Then I would e mail back asking… “so why send it to me”?… this didn’t go down so well with the bosses, as they then had to admit ‘some people aren’t doing x’. We knew who they were but those above feared the conversation (confrontation, challenge).

Stop taking the easy, blanket approach – GO DIRECT! Go have the conversation that needs to be had with the people in question – do not assume a workshop will fix this (it won’t)! It will cost you time and money, you may have fun, even a good lunch. But you will lose favour with the wider team when the problem isn’t fixed!

What truth are you living with?

In every organisation you will have a mix of employees and associated motivations for being there. I’ve taken the ‘bold’ liberty of describing 5 broad characters we have all at some point met (and if we are being honest – have been). Please note, this is not an exhaustive list and is based on personal research (oh and they are not fixed).

Employee types:

1. The Passionate: ‘I live and breathe this place’ – goes over and above (this might be you)
2. The Learner: ‘I’m here to learn, soak it up’ – takes in all they can (the flight risk)
3. The Jobsworth: ‘I’m here to do my job (a good job)’ – gives what’s needed, no more (stable but static)
4. The Insecure: ‘I’m just trying to get by without being told off’ – lacks confidence, skill and opportunity to do their best (hides from being found out)
5. The Loafer: ‘what can I get away with not doing and keep my job’ – the clock watcher, task evader, delegates by disappearing

Knowing and more so accepting this can be a hard truth to swallow, especially if you are number 1. The passionate.

I learnt this first hand, early in my career. I was the Learner, sitting in a middle leadership role. Passionate about being the best I could be. Working everyday to get better, learn more and develop.

However, a large proportion of the team I managed were ‘loafers’, they were by no means bad people, they just did the smallest amount of work to stay employed and get through each shift.

As you can imagine, this frustrated the life out of me. I would battle with my internal voice, thinking – ‘why don’t they want to be/get better’, ‘why don’t they want to learn more’, ‘why aren’t our clients the most important thing to them’….

I was too young to appreciate their motivations were different to mine. They had other priorities, they had lives beyond their jobs that I wasn’t understanding of. They were on a different journey to me…

A view on a solution

Firstly, accept you have a mix of employees with a mix of motivations. Accept not everyone is on this ‘life journey’, it’s your life journey not theirs. Accept that people turn up to work for different reasons – some because of the love of the work, some just to get paid, some because this is the only job they could get, some because this is a stepping stone.

Secondly, figure out who you have and what character they are (remember these are not fixed). Figure out how to make the most of them while they are with you, figure out how to help some of them leave and others stay.

Armed with this insight, you will be in a much better place to manage your emotions when they are not giving everything, and you are. But also you will be able to maximise the gap between what they give/invest of themselves now and what they have the capacity to invest in the future.

And if you have done your work well, you may even get those who were stuck as ‘loafers’ (as they had no emotional connection to the work) to become ‘learners’ egger to develop and get better…

Using appreciative inquiry to what people give

Developed in the 1980s by Professor David Cooperrider* and colleagues, appreciative inquiry (or AI) is a strengths-based approach to change. Rather than identify a problem and look at how to solve it, AI involves exploring what is already working and considers how to build on that. It gives way to imagination instead of criticism. It involves the following 4 stages:

1. Discovery – Grounded exploration of the ‘best of what is happening now’
2. Dream – Visioning, debating, articulating ‘what might be (the future)’
3. Design – Working together to develop this ‘what might be’
4. Destiny – Collectively experimenting with ‘what can be’

*David L. Cooperrider and Diana Whitney, Appreciative Inquiry – A Positive Revolution in Change; Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc (2005)

In Closing

The upshot of this is…. If you have individual challenges with individual staff. Go direct, have the conversation with them. Be specific, be clear about what you want from them and how you will support them. This will save you time with needless workshops, develop your relationship with the individuals in question and build you a good reputation with other staff. The fact you have seen an issue and delt with it.

Where you have wider team challenges around cohesion, collaborative working, autonomy, confidence (or lack of), sharing the responsibility for organisational outcomes (not just taking responsibility for individual outcomes) then a workshop (or better still an ongoing development programme) is the way to go. And whilst you may perceive you know the ‘problem’ that needs to be solved, I’d ask – ‘how do you know this’?. This is where appreciative inquiry comes in.

Get in touch should you wish to explore this stuff more or just fancy a chat – click the link or e mail kurt@bemorelnd.co.uk.