We use teams at nearly every point in our life…the work place, our social organizations, community affiliations…it’s all about interacting with others, and in many ways you can center on the importance of teams.
Every team is different of course and the dynamics of teams determine if goals will be met in an efficient manner. In the workplace, identifying team dynamics and understanding positive and negative outcomes that can occur is a stepping stone to knowing how to predict and build team performance.
Many factors influence team dynamics, such as personalities of team members. Are you Red? Blue? Yellow? Green? [1] Where do the team’s behaviors lie?
How any team operates, and how the team views itself and its organization, are too important to leave to chance—that’s why looking at a few critical factors can bring big dividends to team performance.
- Task-Relationship Balance It is important to learn the importance of task-relationship balance in order to sustain team performance. Teams need a healthy mix of getting things done (tasks) and knowing who can and how to best accomplish them (relationships).
- Team Potential Diagnosing your team’s challenges, strengths, and performance opportunities can both provide a starting point and a benchmark for achievement. How a team can utilize different thinking/behavioral tendencies strengthens their potential.
- Cognitive Integration Integrating a team’s cognitive and behavioral approaches (learned via Emergenetics [2]) into daily work will outline both individual strengths and potential team capabilities. What does the team have natural proclivities toward? What are the strengths and how do we work toward them?
- The Power of WE [3] Understanding the WEteam™ and WEapproach™ are new developments at Emergenetics—WEteams™ capitalize on cognitively diverse teams (thinking and behavior) while a WEapproach™ creates a strategy to mirror these effects in daily work situations.
- Creating Applicable Team Methods for Working Collaboratively This is about putting the full spectrum of approaches into action.
Those factors are the foundation, but the following steps help teams begin to truly start working together.
- Collectively select the action steps your team will take to unlock its potential.
- Identify team goals before anyone starts doing the work.
- Avoid conflict and conserve resources by developing a plan and communicating as a team.
Constructive team dynamics enhance productivity and accomplish goals, but everyone on the team needs to both talk and listen. Energy comes from face-to-face communication. And, although team leaders are important, people should connect with one another directly.
Team performance is reaching the potential of individuals and the collective.