Robin Elledge is the founder & CEO of Janus Coaching + Consulting, leadership & team coach, HR/OD Consultant, 3 x prior CXO, USC Professor.
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Today’s workplace is dynamic and hyper-collaborative. If these last two years have taught us anything, we know work to be a place of constant change. The importance of ensuring your teams communicate, collaborate and drive one another toward success has increased in the era of agile approaches and fast-paced pivots. The more team members must interact and the greater they depend on one another to perform their jobs, the more leaders must focus on the team and how to optimize its performance.
Here are the five things every team needs to be successful and thrive.
1. Shared vision, purpose and goals. Instilling a shared vision and purpose is an essential team leadership step. Goals must be set and revisited regularly to ensure continued progress. Here are some action steps to follow:
• Instill a shared purpose within your team to give them something larger than themselves to focus on. Today’s employees want their work to matter. Why does your team exist? What work is your team called upon to do? In what way does your work matter?
• Distill your vision into concrete goals that align with the broader organization’s objectives. Ensure the goals are clear and challenging. Ideally, there should be a balance between short-term and long-term objectives.
• Enlist team members to support the objectives by giving them a voice. Involve them in thinking through possible roadblocks, implementation methods and timeframes.
2. Coordinated structure. This sounds simple, but teams often suffer from a lack of clarity around who does what and by when. When roles and responsibilities aren’t clear, things fall through the cracks or overlapping responsibilities exist. This is often a source of confusion and conflict. Some action steps you can take include:
• Bring the right mix of people to the team so that the workload is balanced and reasonable, all needed skills are covered and there are diverse perspectives.
• Outline the day-to-day tasks and deliverables required of the team and create a matrix regarding who is doing what to support each deliverable.
• Add a RACI analysis to this matrix to identify who is Responsible (doing the work), Accountable (ultimately responsible for the outcome), who needs to be Consulted (provides input) and who should be Informed (kept in the loop).
3. Supportive framework. We need systems and processes that enable our team members to do their best work. This goes beyond technology and should clarify the protocols, expectations and resources available to help the team do its work. Try the following action steps:
• Develop a team charter that includes the team’s mission, communication protocols, meeting cadence and agreed-upon ground rules that establish expectations about behaviors the team wants to encourage and those that aren’t welcome in the group.
• Regularly check in with the team. What’s working well and what could be improved? These meetings aren’t about the work itself. The focus is on the team’s process—how the work is getting done. For teams that regularly work in person, quarterly check-ins are sufficient. Remote or hybrid teams should check in every six to eight weeks.
• Create a culture of continual feedback where the team can talk openly about how they can improve—both individually and as an entity.
4. Collective trust and transparency. Effective teams foster relationships characterized by transparency and trust. Lead by example. Model and encourage empathy and respectful disagreements. The following action steps could help:
• Focus on identifying or clarifying common values. Lead the team in discussing how they want these values to inform their individual and collective work. Look for teachable moments to highlight these values in conversations, disagreements or when making a tough decision.
• Conduct regular team-building activities. Search online for in-person or remote team building activities and you should find many to choose from. The goal is to continuously support team members by having people-centered versus only project- or task-centered dialogue.
• Encourage productive disagreements to ensure the team considers multiple viewpoints. Guide them to seek at least two to three options when tackling problems or decisions. When consensus seems too easily reached, ask someone to intentionally take an opposing point of view so alternative perspectives are surfaced and considered.
5. Psychological safety. Psychological safety is the glue that holds the other elements together—all four should contribute to it. When in a psychologically safe environment, you can be yourself with your team. You can share thoughts, ideas, questions and mistakes without concern over ridicule, punishment or losing status. Google’s research identified this quality as the key differentiator between teams with average and exceptional results. To create this kind of safety, try these action steps:
• When facilitating a team meeting, get in the practice of leading with questions. Whenever possible, ask three questions before providing information, answers and advice. The quality of your conversations, decisions and teamwork can improve by leading with questions.
• Treat mistakes as a part of learning. Share mistakes you’ve made in your career and how they helped you become a better professional and leader. Treat failure as an occasion to learn and grow.
• Show vulnerability. Admit when you don’t know something. Share when you make a mistake. Share some of the challenges you face to encourage your team to do the same.
These five elements, when evaluated individually and as a whole, can help your team build resiliency and agility to face both current and future challenges.
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