One of the biggest problems team leaders face is maintaining the continuity of the team. Once the right people are in place on your staff, how do you keep them there in the face of their ambitions and solicitations from other companies?

article by Diane Shawe M.Ed   Accredited Clarity4d Business Partner

Clarity within the team can go a long way toward solving the first problem, and embedded processes that recognise peoples’ contributions can help with the second problem but this can often be a slow and costly procedure.

Well, I went on the most incredible 3-day accreditation course on this very matter, and I just had to blog about it before sending out some information to various organisations who might find it useful. In a nutshell Clarity4d help each member of staff become better at making the team more efficient through feedback and coaching, in days rather than weeks, it’s a game changer!

Research on why people leave companies or underperform found two key reasons: 1) they don’t like their boss,

2) they don’t feel appreciated.

Teaching managers to be “coaches” rather than “bosses”—asking questions rather than just telling someone what to do—would help to create UNITY WITHOUT UNIFORMITY. But where do you begin?  The Old fashion words such as Molding a Team of Leaders does not go down well in today’s working environment. Educating and bringing people along with you instead of dragging them is far healthier and cost effective in many ways.

GETTING YOUR TEAM TOGETHER

So you’ve taken the time and made the effort to spot, recruit, develop, and get in place a group of smart and talented people who are your direct reports. That’s crucial. But the bigger challenge is educating these high-energy, high -powered, high-ego people into a working team of leaders who synchronise their efforts and propel the business forward. Individual team members naturally focus on their own functional specialties and have their own personal ambitions, but those differences often cause them to pull in different directions especially considering the inherent tensions that exist between various silos of the business.

As the leader, you have to get your direct reports to submerge their egos, aggression, and personal agendas so they’re pulling together. You can’t mediate every dispute, ensure that every trade-off is properly made, or that information is flowing as it should on a daily basis. Clarity4d can provide the tools to help all team members learn how to develop team communication strategies, so the business will perform better as they focus and commit to the total business.

Clarity4d will help them create a common granular picture of the company in its external context as you see it or even more critical the way the market it moving. That way, they’ll know how their respective areas fit together, and they’ll have both the motivation and information they need to keep their efforts aligned. You have to mold people’s behavior as well. Too often, talented and ambitious people have a single-minded focus, little aware of what their colleagues in other silos are doing, at worst deeply suspicious of them.

Resources and information are hoarded, and communication is sporadic and formalistic. You’re the one who tolerates or challenges narrow self-interest, big egos, and dominant personalities. Most of the work of educating a team happens in group settings, which may require that you change the way you lead. You can’t just work with your direct reports one to one, setting their budgets and goals in private and coaching them individually as you shift your attention from one part of the business to another. You have to help the group create a picture of the total business and correct any disruptive behaviors in the presence of the team, so you need the emotional strength to direct and stand up to powerful individuals on whom you depend on.

Many leaders think molding a team isn’t worth the effort, but they’re missing a tremendous opportunity to differentiate themselves and build the business. The more people can see the entire anatomy of the company, the team, each and the intersections of its moving parts, along with the broader context in which it operates, the better job they do. When they all see the same facts, discuss their observations and thoughts, and come to understand the interconnectedness of their functions and skills, they’re able to raise the bar, setting higher goals and achieving them faster

So how do you map out your teams strength and weakness and put them all to a positive use in a matter of days?  Clarity4d Profile and Team Profiling solution is designed to give strategies for communicating with people with different personality preferences.

SHAPING A COMMON VIEW OF THE TOTAL BUSINESS

A team of leaders starts being molded when everyone is on the same page. To be on the same page, you first need to understand more about yourself and know more about how others see you.  Once you have identified how personal influence can be enhanced by meeting the needs of others, the team can then move towards getting on the same page.  The key is to develop an internal team dialogue in which each member contributes to the discussion that shapes the team’s collective view of the business— its challenges and opportunities and the resources available. Getting on the same page tests the cognitive bandwidth of not only each member of the team but the team as a whole. Once drawn, however, the conventional picture channels the team’s energy and, more important, provides a reference point for future dialogue as the team members influence and are influenced by their colleagues. The stage is set for collaboration.

FEEDBACK BREEDS BETTER COLLABORATION

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Keep a mental inventory of the skills and methods for getting things done for each member of your team. One team member may be too blunt in arguing a point with others, another may be too shy to participate in debate, and yet another may have a habit of holding back information essential to reaching a good decision. All these impediments to effective teamwork must be clearly identified to the individual, and he or she must be counseled in overcoming them.

Feedback is most effective when given in written form and given frequently, but human beings typically can change only one or two behaviors at a time.

Most people don’t like to give feedback, but they have to look at it from the proper perspective.

Feedback says you’re committed to someone’s development.

Higher performers want to know how to get better, and the only way to achieve this is share numbers, reasoning, and results to share a single view of the business and its context. Having the intellectual courage to confront behaviors that harm the team’s effectiveness. Anticipate, surface, and resolve conflicts. Pick the right people. Provide prompt feedback and coaching. Recognise and avoid derailers.

Having all the right people and great processes isn’t enough. You also have to have the right behaviours and to get the right behaviour people need to understand more about team member’s preferences.

Everything we’ve covered so far needs to be translated into results. The first and most critical step in execution is choosing the right goals. This is where the buck starts. Many leaders are conceptual, high-level intuitive thinkers, this matters because understanding the other variable such as Sensing v Intuition,  Thinking v Feeling thinkers and Introversion thinking v Extroversion thinking can misalign people’s energy within a team.

• Positioning and Repositioning: Finding a central idea for the business that meets customer demands and that makes money.
• Pinpointing External Change: Detecting patterns in a complex world to put the company on the offensive.
• Leading the Social System: Getting the right people together with the right behaviors and the right information to make better, faster decisions and achieve business results.
• Judging People: Calibrating people based on their actions, decisions, and behaviors and matching them to the non-negotiables of the job.
• Molding a Team: Getting highly competent, high-ego leaders to coordinate seamlessly.
• Setting Goals: Determining the set of goals that balances what the business can become with what it can realistically achieve.
• Setting Laser-Sharp Priorities: Defining the path and aligning resources, actions, and energy to accomplish the goals.
• Dealing with Forces Beyond the Market: Anticipating and responding to societal pressures you don’t control but that can affect your business.

DO YOU KNOW WHO’S PERSONAL TRAITS THAT CAN HELP OR INTERFERE WITH THE KNOW-HOWS IN YOUR TEAM?

• Ambition—to accomplish something noteworthy BUT NOT win at all costs.
• Drive and Tenacity—to search, persist, and follow through BUT NOT hold on too long.
• Self-confidence—to overcome the fear of failure, fear of response, or the need to be liked and use power judiciously BUT NOT become arrogant and narcissistic.
• Psychological Openness—to be receptive to new and different ideas AND NOT shut other people down.
• Realism—to see what can actually be accomplished AND NOT gloss over problems or assume the worst.
• Appetite for Learning—to continue to grow and improve the know-hows AND NOT repeat the same mistakes.

DO YOU KNOW WHO’S HAS THE COGNITIVE TRAITS IN YOUR TEAM THAT COULD IMPROVE THE KNOW-HOWS?

• A Wide Range of Altitudes—to transition from the conceptual to the specific.
• A Broad Cognitive Bandwidth—to take in a broad range of input and see the big picture. Ability to Reframe—to see things from different perspectives.

It can get really complicated, but with Clarity4D’s Profiling tools and range of workshops you will find your team members around the world, at home, school or socially easier to communicate with as you become clearer on how you can tend to their preference whilst appreciated your.

Try this simple questionnaire and we will send back your profile report.  We will then explore how it can be used in a team environment. Click here to start the journey to better team building.

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