DIAGNOSE YOUR TEAM DYNAMIC
Is your team interacting in ways that enables the group to leverage collective capacity and achieve team synergy?
Working on the dynamic of a leadership team (or board, or committee or functional team) is as important as doing the work of the team.
High performing teams are teams in synergy – where together, they’re better. Teams in synergy are innovators – they produce new creative ways to address problems and maximise opportunities. They are also the most professionally challenging and rewarding teams to be involved in.
You can lead a team to synergy, but paying attention to the interaction dynamics that are occurring during team discussions.
Use this team synergy diagnostic, developed by Stephanie Bown, to diagnose your team and get a conversation going about how you can find team synergy.
Instructions:
- Make a copy for each team member and ask them to first individually fill it out
- Start the conversation by sharing your intent – that you are keen to help the team become a more healthy, high functioning team
- Make it safe by inviting honest viewpoints, recognising that not everyone’s experience of the group will be the same.
- Facilitate a conversation surfacing each individual’s experience of the team. This will reveal any hidden tensions that exist in the way the group are working together and is a necessary step towards being able to address it.
- Do not be surprised if there are very different experiences of the same team. Each person’s experience is valid – to lead is to create a space open enough to hold all the different experiences. This is an exercise in being vulnerable, which is a necessary part of building trust.
- Agree on one key area to improve in. List this new habit and make a commitment to practicing it. Like “listen more actively – demonstrate we understand by paraphrasing and checking-in, before we share another view”.
- Remember to bring that new habit into each team interaction for at least the next 30 days.
- Once you’ve mastered a new team dynamic, redo the exercise, and find another habit to focus on. Rinse and repeat!
I’d love to hear your questions or feedback – please reach out to me!