When I am bought in or introduced to a team, there is one thing I insist on doing before I even get started in looking at improving performance within the team.
I interview each team member with only two questions:
• What are you good at in this team? I have to do some probing to get the true strengths of each member.
The 2nd question is:
• What is each team member good at? Again, I may have to probe as I don’t accept generalities.
(Note: No, I am not interested in weaknesses)
I then get all members together with all their answers on flipcharts posted on the wall of the room I am using. The walls are usually full.
Then the fun starts. Lots and lots of discussion among the team members about ‘what they are good at’. A lot of clarification takes place during this interchange. Good facilitation skills are a must in this kind of open discussion.
I realize there are pros and cons to how to build a high performance team. In fact, there are even different definitions on what a high performance team is suppose to look like. I also realize that what may make sense for one team might spell disaster for another. So there is no “one size fits all” answer.
‘Benchmarking’ and Team Building
I believe that benchmarking is operational in nature and can ignore the quality of the team building experience (not outcome based).
One of the fallacies of benchmarking is that you are comparing apples to apples. For example, competitors that really matter to your business work hard to protect their operational details. Even if you have access to their numbers, do you know with confidence that they measure their teams the same way you do? Do you understand the conditions under which those numbers were produced? The philosophy of benchmarking is good but the reality is elusive resulting in low to non-existent confidence in benchmark data for high performance teams.
The one benchmark I confidently use to compare the team I am working with is the team itself. They can always do better and today's results should always be compared to how they did yesterday. If they make that comparison on a regular basis and continually improve, I guarantee they will become world class. Of course, that assumes they are measuring the right things. That’s another article.
So, can you see the relationship between my initial questioning of the team members and what I call, ‘internal benchmarking’?
Of course there is a lot more to the process than I have written here, but it gives you some flavour to my approach.
Al Gates of Al Gates & Associates works with business people, professionals and managers who want to be at their best.
Al has been coaching full time since 1995 and has 40 years of
experience in the people-development field as a coach, corporate training director and consultant. See his coaching site at:
www.cybercoaching.ca
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