High Performance Teams
Are you among the nearly 60% of employees who consistently work in teams? How's teamwork working for you? Are you winning championships in your field? Or have you stalled out trying to map a plan for your group?
Group work is not teamwork. We're often frustrated by trying to motivate others and aggravated when having to chase our squad to deliver on deliverables. Compounding the irritation of working in teams is what we think a great team looks like. We think that optimally functioning teams are the ones that just “click”. They move with speed toward the goals they've planned. Somehow, they work hard together and deliver results that the group can all be proud of. But for most of us, teamwork doesn’t look like this. There's a gap between our perception of those winning teams and our lived realities of uneven responsibilities, stumbling to the finish line.
Turning group work into teamwork is hard work.
At SCP, we work with teams in academic and business settings to empower them to collaborate effectively, deliver results and learn how to go farther together. We’ve found that teams and team projects provide a setting in which to practice and refine leadership behaviours. We support teams with developing an operating system that plugs into the power of their team’s diverse thinking and expertise. We aim to support teams with building an optimal team culture, improving their ability to find and define clarity as a group, increasing their capacity to communicate and collaborate effectively - including consensus building - so that they can learn to persevere as a team.
Performance coaching for teams demands that we focus on facilitating growth and movement together. We do this because we know that teams need to understand who they are, what they're committed to together and how they will resolve challenges to move toward their goals. Individual growth. Collective movement. Winning results.
Linking leadership and teamwork in our team performance coaching program, we view teams as a crucible for learning a wide range of skills that have positive impact beyond the team setting too. We focus on facilitating growth and movement together because we know that today’s challenges are complex. Solving the complex problems that organizations face today requires that we pull on interdisciplinary expertise, diverse knowledge and experiences. From research and our own professional experience, we believe that better decisions occur when multiple points of view are heard and considered.
Some concrete leadership skills developed through team performance coaching:
Coping with ambiguity
Collaborating cross-functionally and with different stakeholders
Knowing when to get outside help
Working effectively across dimensions of diversity
Delegating effectively
Practicing roles and responsibilities
Giving and receiving feedback
Get inspired by the experience of four researchers at Tecnológico de Monterrey. Every interaction with their SCP coach was valuable - not one of their meetings could've been an email. Lucia, Marisa, Gio and Memo met through a collaborative, student-run project that was investigating the structural inequalities affecting migrant indigenous people in the Metropolitan Area of Monterrey, Mexico as part of the Reach Alliance partnership. Although friendship brought them together on campus, it was team coaching that enabled them to define their roles on the team, lean on each others' strengths and see progress in their research work together. Every interaction with their SCP coach was valuable. The skills they practiced together guided their efforts as a team, and influenced their collaboration and communication beyond the classroom too.
“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”