BUILDING HIGH-PERFORMANCE TEAMS

Teams are more than just the sum of their individual capacities. When teams work together effectively, everyone performs above his or her individual best. As Stephen Covey puts it: you need to go from dependence to independence to interdependence. Interdependence is a conscience form of dependence - appreciated as the highest form of work relationship, because it leverages the combined capacities and allows to individual to strive within a team. A good example are crews on a sailing ship. Everyone has a specific task, yet all tasks are connected to the tasks of others. There is no individual outcome, but one outcome for all.

Winning teams have one thing in common: the same objective or goal. Team members know that they can only achieve this objective by working together. Everyone´s individual skills are required to complete the job and overcome any challenge that presents itself. The appreciated interdependency fosters a great sense of support, commitment and work ethic. Only team members who desire to win as a team will show the respect, trust and communication that is needed to work together with such high level of performance.

Winning teams don´t leave anyone behind, they fight challenges to together and they watch out for each other.

This is first and foremost a matter of attitude. Attitude in return is a function of belief systems and experience. Many examples of our daily life show people who outperform or stand out because of their attitude to achievement.

Every human is unique!

However, there are certain basic characters / personality styles that represent different psychological models to better understand and assess human behavior and needs. The knowledge of these psychological insights is an excellent complement to the relevant intuitive knowledge of human nature.

People unite in themselves shares from the various basic profiles; in various roles (boss, husband, father, etc.) various styles can be preferred.

There are, however, preferred patterns of behavior that are lived without much energy and under stress. People have natural behavioral preferences and basic needs. The dynamics in teams is heavily influenced by the individual behavioural preferences, stiles and motivations.

Without consciously recognizing this, everyone plays a role that he/she has be trained to perform while at the same time viewing other peoples behaviours through their own filters. Misunderstandings, communication problems and escalation are often a consequence, followed by frustration, loss of energy and mental defeat. This doesn´t have to be the case.

Insights MDI Team-Analysis offer meaningful improvements to team performance:

  • increases mutual appreciation
  • facilitates team leadership and delegation
  • encourages team communication
  • improves mutual understanding
  • indicates possible conflict potentials

Team-Members are Key

Any company that wishes to have strong teams needs to develop its members. Some teams need a high number of analysts, other teams may need people with the ambition to lead, other teams might need more people-people, i.e. people who either like to be amoungs many other people (communicators) or who like to care for others a lot. Developing people can be costly and it bares the risk of investing in someone who might afterwards decide to leave. It is therefore essential to know more about each team-member than just their name, pay-grade and performance history.

Psychometric Profiles help you and the individual learn about preferences, motivations, strength and weaknesses.

We use INSIGHTS MDI as the central questionaire to create such profiles. Each indivdiual team-member will receive +40 pages telling him or her about her abilities, communication patterns, leadership potential, driving forces and more. As the manager you will get a better overview about who is best suited for what objective. Thus, it will be much easier to compose a team or develop teams to better meet their objectives.

Building High-Performance Teams

Creating winning teams is like juggling. You must not drop one ball, yet defeat any disturbing influence, while focusing on each ball´s position at any time. Winning teams don´t leave anyone behind, they fight challenges to together and they watch out for each other. This is first and foremost a matter of attitude. Attitude in return is a function of belief systems and experience. Many examples of our daily life show people who outperform or stand out because of their attitude to achievement.

As your consultant and coach, I will work with your staff to develop a high-performance team with a winning attitude that is very hard to beat.