THE SYNERGIES OF TEAM ENGAGEMENT
If your team is not meeting goals and deliverables, it may mean that not all your members are conversant or synchronized on the teams’ intended overall goals. A team is made up of mutually respecting members, where each member is expected to participate in both their individual and overall collective activities to produce an overall team outcome. But in reality, many team members focus exclusively on accomplishing their activities and may never get to leverage the collective benefit of collaborative team sharing with other team members. This can result in a situation where a team may not accomplish its intended collective outcomes, it may lose respect, and team outcomes may not be successful.
All members have to be included to realize synergistic team value.
INCLUSION PROMOTES CONNECTEDNESS:
In working with engaged teams across many organizations, I have found that by including team members in the scope discussion and crystallizing the outcome of the collective overall team goals, helps to engage members better where they feel more connected and motivated to achieve more. They get to see the team purpose and feel more connected to the project process. Inclusion is when there is a representative sample of people involved in team activity who are passionate, motivated, excited and engaged in the output process that is associated with soft benefits. Soft benefits are the motivational drivers that get people to work together, inspire them to contribute and cooperate more effectively. When soft benefits are missing, there is no team cohesion. In a business team setting, it’s about the leader providing guidance (about 20% effort), and getting the team members to provide input (approximately 30% effort). Once the team collaborates and iterates on the remaining (50%) output, synergies are achieved that exponentially multiply the output and benefits (referred to as team synergy). The collective knowledge, experience, and diversity of team practice then become typical, and one can begin to expect synergistic output benefits of 2x, 3x or even multiples more than 10x synergies generated by high performing teams.
So why settle for anything less than synergistic teaming?
Embracing a teaming mindset is hard, especially when society and the corporate world in general today mostly reward individual performance. However, teams perform work. “You are only as strong as your weakest link.” In consideration of this, every “team link” member needs to be stronger individually and connect synergistically with other team (link)members. Teams that are diverse in skills, roles, and background stand a better chance of performing optimally and are better positioned for achieving synergistic success.
A FEW PRACTICES TO ENCOURAGE SYNERGISTIC TEAMING
Team Synergy is achieved through constant connecting; members bound by a social contract with extensive collaboration.
CONSTANT CONNECTIONS
Teams should meet frequently; whether its every day, or every other day or once a week. Constant contact encourages connection and helps to build trust and commitment in the team. Motivated team players tend to share information more freely. Team members tend to work better in open team environments as they experience personal growth from others. Establishing a discipline of frequent meetings and establishing a cadence allows for good, bad, or even fun information to be shared promptly.
SOCIAL CONTRACT
For teams to trust, interact and engage effectively, there has to be a social contract between the members. Each member is (aligned) on the common goals of the team and by definition an extension of the firm. A social contract gets team members to commit and establishes accountability at the individual and team level.
COLLABORATION
Each member is committed and encouraged by each other in a comfortable and non-threatening environment. Each person possesses and can share experiences, contribute collectively and feel empowered to contribute; 1+1=3, and collectively the overall team shares in the synergies of team engagement benefits.