“If you could get all people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time”
This is how Patrick Lencioni defined the power of teamwork: a truly powerful tool for organisations, and one that is definitely worth seeking out!
As an Agile coach, I absolutely love creating cohesive and well-functioning teams! I’ve seen people, even the more sceptical ones, absolutely thrive and enjoy working in an effective and human team.
I’m really excited to share with you the amazing insights from a study done by Dr. Ruth Wageman at Harvard University about coaching effective and performing teams!
🤔The results of the study have shown that there are 6 conditions that define a truly outstanding team: We’re going to dive right in and look at three essential conditions related to forming the team. Then, we’ll explore three larger and enabler conditions related to the team’s environment.
The 3 Essential Conditions
1. A Real Team 👥
A real team is based on a bounded group of people that are:
➡️ Stable: members should be kept together for a minimum of time
➡️ Interdependent:members should exchange information and/or resources in order to accomplish some goal together
2. A ‘Compelling Purpose’ that is :
➡️ Clear: we would know exactly what it looks like to accomplish it
➡️ Challenging: requires some of their best capabilities to accomplish it
➡️ Consequential: the purpose of the team has a real impact on others’ work or lives
3. The Right People :
➡️ Giving that compelling purpose, people that have the necessary perspectives, experiences, and capabilities to contribute to accomplish that purpose
➡️ People that have demonstrated team working skills to be able to work together effectively.
👉Let’s explore, now, the three amazing enabling conditions that make teams effective!
The 3 Enabler Conditions
1. Sound Structure :
The team should have few elements of structure:
📍 Keeping the team small: a group small enough that can accomplish work together in a single digit (pizza size team).
📍 Meaningful team tasks: team tasks should reflect the compelling purpose of the team.
📍 Norms of conduct: Explicit ground rules of what we can do, and we cannot do in the way we work together.
2. Larger Organizational Supporting Context:
the organization’s structures and systems should be designed in a way that enable and promote teamwork :
📍 Reward system: Rather than pitting people against each other for rewards, it should reward great team performance, not just individual performance.
📍 Information system: it should be designed to synthetize and provide data to the teams to know how well they are doing in order to help them monitor and manage their own work.
3. Available Expert Team Coaching:
📍 A person who can intervene in the real-time process of the team members and help them to really make the best use of their collective resources and accomplish the work.
📍 A team that does not have the essentials conditions and all the last enablers met cannot unfortunately take advantage of coach interventions.
💡As you can see, these fantastic conditions work hand-in-hand to help build an incredible team that can achieve amazing things!
The basics are the foundation for building this amazing team! And the enablers? They’re the ones that’ll help the team reach new heights and become even more effective!
If you want to get deeper, you can watch the webinar with Dr. Ruth Wageman Here▶️
✋If you don’t know me yet, you’re in for a treat! I’m passionate about the power of the agile mindset and have been an agile coach and trainer for over a decade 😀
I regularly share my thoughts and experiences on LinkedIn📝 Follow me so that you don’t miss out on any agile insights🌟
