Team Efficiency - gETTING yOUR tEAM TO PERFORM

Checking through the statistics for my website recently, I noticed that many people are now searching for information on how to improve their team efficiency and performance. In today’s tight economy, making teams work to their full potential is a key factor in survival and success.

The difficulty is that many so-called teams are not really teams at all, just a group of people who happen to be working together. We all know that teams outperform individuals, but what are the key elements that help to draw out the full performance of a team?  I was asked to research this during my career in BT and came up with the following 3 points:

1.           The need for challenging performance targets along with high support from management. Most people thrive on shared purpose and meaningful challenge – collaboration helps to develop trust, recognise gifts and strengths and build relationships quickly. Without these challenges teams die.

2.           Team rather than individual accountability - in my experience individual performance is often recognised by financial reward or promotion which means there is competition rather than collaboration and people end up fighting for resources. There is often no true team target, just an amalgamation of individual targets.

3.           Focus on team basics - spending time on shared outcomes, shared values and beliefs, sharing knowledge, recognising and harnessing skills and making the team accountable. It is far harder to do this than to manipulate or motivate an individual.

Team efficiency starts with leadership that is both highly challenging and highly supportive. Most leaders have a preference for one over the other. Learning to be more flexible and embrace the style we are less comfortable with is the first step to helping teams to develop and grow.