3 Recipes to Turn a Result-Drought Team Into Productive Power House
A tasty meal without fail has the right mixtures of the right ingredients. A tasty (sapid) team must without fail, incorporate the right mixture of ingredients.
Every team has a touch of dynamism and uniqueness to it, what they do differently, why they get results and how they stay productive. Yes, there are common grounds as well, a place where all productive teams meet, a union of characters, capacity and courage. I call them the ingredients. I believe in process, systems and structure.
Behind every successful team, you find these ingredients underlying their processes, systems and structures. If you were to implement a number of them in your team, you would certainly tell the difference.
For any of these ingredients to work, you have to ensure you have created the right atmosphere for your team.
Recipe 1: Coherent
A sapid team is drawn towards itself. Each active member exerts an amount of cohesive force that pulls everyone closer. Cohesion will greatly improve bonding even with newer members, elevate understanding and salve communication flow.
You need to build coherence into your team because coherence avails your team with understanding, agreement and oneness. It takes your team beyond their individual differences. With a platform that allows for more synergy, team performance improves immensely.
How to add coherence to the team
Adding coherence requires time and multiple trials. Some of the necessary steps are:
- Create more team time for brainstorming, sports, fun, dinner, hangouts, workouts, etc. The team should not only be together when working through official tasks, but you also engage them in extra-curricular activities.
- Openly and freely appreciate efforts by any team member whose extra efforts put the team ahead of the objective targets. Appreciate also the ones that did the least work, everyone has to know that their little contributions count and are well observed.
- Openly and constructively correct erring members. Be clear on your stand and ensure everyone understands it.
- Don’t try to prevent a heated conversation, if you are involved, try to wear a calm head and listen to the agitations, if you aren’t directly involved, listen carefully to both parties and gain an insight into what is the supposed root cause. On a later date, when the heat has abated and all parties involved are present, address the situation properly. A good fight/disagreement often creates a stronger bond.
Recipe 2: Uniqueness
Each team is unique. Structure, procedure, orientation and modus-operandi all differ across teams, this uniqueness is the beauty of our existence. Understanding your teams’ uniqueness rests on your understanding of the individual uniqueness of each team member. Members of your team have different strengths and weaknesses. There are different form-factors in which team members categorize:
- Think Tanks
- Analytical Thinkers
- Executioners
- Process Controllers
Think Tanks
They are the idea generators, they easily come up with exciting and innovative ideas, when you need to go out of the box, and think a process through, the Think Tanks are your best call. Dorian Simpson wrote on the signs to show you are a divergent thinker.
Think tanks have fast thought processes, they are wildly imaginative, curious and also likely to be uncertain.
They are likely to be uncertain because they are thinking through a lot of different things at the same time. Thus they don’t always come to a concrete conclusion about the definite success ratio of most ideas they generate.
Secondly, even if they had an impeccable plan that is worth the effort, they usually find it difficult to implement these ideas and work them through until they are fully implemented and executed. These are the reasons why you need the next group on your team.
Analytical Thinkers
Thinkers in this category will take long hours to process a single idea. They are convergent thinkers, the opposite of the divergent thinkers.
They will more likely come up with concrete fail-proof ideas and plans, they are more likely to critically and carefully select the most viable idea from the list of ideas generated by the Think Tanks.
Most often, you find that they also lack the execution factor, and control factor. This uniqueness is why you need the next group on your team.
Executioners
This category executes on the viable ideas generated by the thought-process team. They take the ideas and draw them up into measurable, time-constrained, specific goals, with a feasible timeline to each module.
The whole idea and plan are broken down into tiny pieces, which are easier to control, monitor and measure. The executioners are result driven and energetic.
Process Controllers
In this category you find quantifiers, they want to measure every resource mapped out for the successful achievement of the idea, goal or plan. They ensure that the funds designated for the project are properly and correctly disbursed and managed. They are more likely to be shrewd and contained.
These different unique individuals give your team a more productive and professional outlook. With uniqueness comes diversity. A unique team has a strong touch diversity, each member has something new, exciting and different to bring to the table. Diversity sparks more life and encourages exploration. It is good to note that diversity has to be controlled else it is easy to lose track and chase things beyond the scope of the project.
Recipe 3: Altruistic
A sound team has to be altruistic, giving and unselfish. Each team member has to be open-minded and free enough to express themselves. An altruistic team regards it’s members, understands their strengths and weaknesses, knows when they are on their lowest times and can offer a resting shoulder.
Think of your team as a family, not just colleagues, friends and corporate officers, see them as family members, brothers and sisters. It doesn’t reduce the level of respect and decorum in the team, it rather increases it. Your team members have to not only feel they are part of the family, but they also have to experience, know of certainty and believe truly that they belong to something more integral than a work-related association. This is how you build an amazingly loyal and unbreakable team.
Finally, let’s have a bit of summary now, we have talked about a lot of things, for a tasty team you need coherence, uniqueness and altruistic. These ingredients blend your team into a more productive and formidable awesome team.
What ingredient would you add to make your team better?
