Executive Coaching High-Performing Teams

We have been using the Harvard Business Review classic “Can you say what your strategy is?” lately when facilitating strategy retreats with leadership teams. The article’s authors challenge leaders to describe their strategy in 35 words or less. Try for yourself: You will rarely see a very aligned set of responses with this simple and yet powerful exercise.

Inspired by seeing tremendously clarifying and poignant discussions emerge, we applied the same idea to team culture. High-performance teams make all the difference for organizations to stay ahead of their competition. But what defines the culture of high-performing teams? How do you get there?

Well, start with clarity. (more…)

A few months ago I wrote about some interesting findings from MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence. Looking into what supports group intelligence, the researchers found that individual intelligence of group members did not impact group intelligence as much as having more women on the team. (Want to increase the collective intelligence on your team? Invite more women!)

Anita Wooley and Thomas Malone were cautious to point out that this correlation has less to do with gender as such as with some kind of social sensitivity that is more likely to be found among women. That’s where another study published by the British Royal Society comes in: Its finding, in blunt terms, shows that testosterone makes women more egoistical. (more…)

Welcome to thinking against the grain: Both the New York Times (The Rise of the New Group Think) and the New Yorker Magazine (Group Think: Brainstoming Doesn’t Really Work) presented within a week articles challenging an understanding of collaboration as non-criticizing group work. Perhaps our beliefs about what constitutes great collaboration are off the mark?

More accurately, but surely less provocatively, these articles challenge not collaboration itself but how we approach it. The overlapping criticism of both articles revolves around the beliefs that avoiding criticism and relying on group-based interactions such as brainstorming will lead to better outcomes. (more…)

Unfailingly, the beginning of each year starts with many resolutions – most of which will barely be around mid February. Our struggle to pursue what’s good for us serves as a powerful reminder of what behavioral or attitudinal change really takes to become real and sustained. But perhaps we can manipulate ourselves more effectively?

Social scientists and marketing researcher have been studying forms of manipulation for quite some time now. There are some interesting findings you can use to “manipulate” yourself in sticking to your resolution. One is based on the concept of the shaken self. While the “think positive” paradigm has its place, looking at our shortcomings and unfulfilled goals can be more effective in helping us reach our goals. (more…)

What makes team members team players?

Collaborative Coaching and Resonance Strategies combine their experience in organizational/team effectiveness and in employee research to explore this question.

While team-based work has become the predominant form of collaboration, few teams truly know how to collaborate. Many just go through the motions.

The “problem” is that collaboration cannot be mandated. It’s a decision people make and this decision is as much emotional as it is rational. And that’s why we ask for both – rational and emotional drivers for team collaboration. Resonance® provides a unique and powerful survey methodology that helps us explore behaviors and motivations of team players. (more…)

Say – in your particular work context – you need to work with people who bring the spirit of collaboration to your project. Good news. Reasons to collaborate are manifold – and you may find Yochai Benkler’s new book “How cooperation triumphs over self-interest” a valuable read to see such causes in action.

But what if one individual does not play nice? Should you still collaborate?

Two interesting facts:

1. Few people actually consciously choose their collaboration strategy.
   In fact, in a variety of experiments roughly “50% or participants systematically and predictably behave cooperatively… A good number of these participants cooperated unconditionally – even when it came at a personal cost.” [The unselfish gene” by Yochai Benkler, Harvard Business Review August 2011].

(more…)

What makes work more meaningful? “Help your co-workers and staff see progress.” In their research on ways to increase team productivity, Teresa Ambile and Steven Cramer found that small wins matter. (Harvard Business Review, May 2011, “The power of small wins”)

Making – even small – progress proved to be the overwhelming factor for how satisfied people felt at the end of the day. (So plan accordingly.) But it’s not just about progress. It’s about progress within a context of meaningful work.

In short: If you as a leader – formal or informal – consider it your job to increase individual and team effectiveness, then you are also a chief meaning officer.

How connected are you and the people around you to the mission of your team, division, or organization? While most places have a statement of purpose in place, too few can relate their activities to it. (more…)

With all the hopes and promises of open innovation, team-based creativity, and peer-driven collaboration, effective ways to increase collective intelligence are hotly debated. One repeatedly replicated finding is that IQs of individual members don’t correlate with a group’s collective intelligence – measured by its ability to solve complex problems and to make effective decisions.

In other words, teams are more than just a collection of top talent.

This month’s recent Harvard Business Review adds a stunning piece of data to the debate about what makes a team smarter. More women! (more…)

What supports teams to make good decisions – and to make them efficiently? What kind of leadership is required to support the quality of collective decision-making? And will that quality be compromised in the absence of a “central guiding authority”?

Tapping the promises of diversity of thought, crowd-sourcing, and of co-created, open innovation hinges on answers to these questions which have been at the center of much fascinating research. One different perspective is presented in “The Smart Swarm” by Peter Miller, a highly fascinating exploration of how animal swarms communicate and “negotiate” to make collective decisions.

What Miller and others find is that swarms do a really fine job at mastering the complex challenges they face. In fact, their strategies are so effective, that approaches to solve highly complex problems such as the optimization of airline networks are modeled on swarm tactics.

To put it provocatively: Bees tend to better than most teams in many ways. One area where bees excel is the friendly competition of ideas. (more…)

As recently reported by the New York Times, Google unleashed its analytical power in-house as a part of Google’s management effectiveness project. Applying its data mining genius, Google dug through thousands of performance reviews and other forms of data evaluating managers’ effectiveness in its “quest to build a better boss”. (NY Times, Mar-12-2011)

What qualities would a company identify, you may wonder, that has for many years been named one of the most innovative organizations? That relies heavily on technology and innovation? That brings together a broad range of creative, interdisciplinary experts? That thrives within ever faster innovation cycles? That embraces work style diversity, decentralized collaboration, and virtual team work?

Before reading on, take your guess: What was their number one finding? (more…)