All teams attempting to enhance their performance must deal with trust. There are lots of theories about what trust is, why it matters and how to develop it. There are also countless exercises and activities designed to build trust. Most of these theories and approaches assume that trust is the key to effective teamwork, a necessary precursor.
The key to this framework are the insights and theories that lie behind it. The name of the Imperatives and Practices are just labels; we encourage you to adapt this Framework to your organization and culture.
Great teams don't just conduct their business. willy-nilly. They align their collaborative processes, like meetings and decision making, to support the value they've agreed to deliver. For instance, they figure out what meetings are essential to getting their work done and then schedule only those meetings.
Once a team knows why its collaboration matters and what work will deliver on their purpose they can begin to cultivate the relationships and commitments needed to deliver.
Once a team understands the context it's operating in, it needs to figure out how its collaboration can create the greatest value for the organization. A team's purpose captures that value proposition and provides a "why" for their collaboration. Understanding "why" a team's collaboration matters is a good start but it isn't enough.
Strong teams begin with a clear sense of how they fit into the larger organization, they know what's expected of them to deliver value to external stakeholders.
The Imperatives describe 3 areas that teams must attend to. It's the six Practices associated with each of the Imperatives that deliver stronger collaboration.
Even with all the Clarity and Intentionality in the world, collaboration will sputter without sufficient and appropriate discipline.
Intentionality is the critical element in effective teamwork. It begins with Clarity and relies on specific efforts and practices to deepen and extend it.
To create intentional collaboration you begin with creating crystal clarity about why collaboration matters.
Getting teamwork right means paying attention to three key areas, what we call The Three Imperatives of High Performance Collaboration.
Consultants will tell you that there are teams, and there are groups and that the two are different. Don't worry about whether your group is a "real team" or not. Instead, focus on what requires collaboration and what doesn't.
Collaboration can be though of as having several levels or degrees. There are five in particular that are worth understanding to help your team understand how it wants to spend its time.
People who work with teams will often talk about dysfunction and how to help groups with it. The trust is that more team dysfucntion is actually based on individual behavior.
Stop your efforts at building so-called team spirit. What builds real team esprit de corps, what fosters team identity and releases collaborative energy is learning together.
Tuckman's Four Stages are based on research that is no longer relevant especially in the workplace. For instance, the assumption of linear development is useless. Nothing in business these days moves in straight lines.
Trust is one element of effective teamwork but building trust isn't where effective teamwork begins. Despite this, teams and team facilitators continue to treat trust as a necessary precursor to team effectiveness.
When you understand the need for differing degrees of collaboration, you'll also figure out that you need less collaboration than you think you do.
We tend to talk about collaboration as if it were one thing. It isn't. Different kinds of teams and groups collaborate to different degrees. Understanding this is essential to effective teamwork.
Shared goals are considered essential to teamwork. They matter but they don't drive collaboration. In fact they drive more individual effort. It's shared work that is the key to unlocking intentional collaboration
Organizations encourage teamwork at every turn. And yet, those same organizations will tell you that the teamwork they're getting isn't adequate. It's because they are missing the key insight from my work with teams: to get results-driven individuals to collaborate, you have to understand what really motivates them as individuals.
Most of what passes for teamwork in the workplace is helpfulness. Teamwork is seen as being willing to support your fellow employees when needed, to be supportive. That's great, but great teamwork is less reactive and more proactive. It is intentional.
We romanticize teamwork. "Team" and "teamwork" have become hollow jargon. Mention team building and people roll their eyes. That cynicism is a shame. We need a new language for building group effectiveness. That language begins with embracing a focus on collaboration.
