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Most business owners understand that their business requires the collective power of their business teams for leadership and long-term success. Yet in my experience, few regularly put in the effort to create and manage the diverse professionals required to keep the business ahead of customers and competitors. I always recommend more focus and discipline on this key element.
For specific recommendations, I was impressed with the guidance provided in a new book, “The 5 Disciplines of Inclusive Teams,” by Andres Tapia and Michel Buffet, PhD. They bring from Korn Ferry decades of experience advising CEOs and senior executives on how to unlock their teams’ potential for high performance and transformation.
While this focus on teams is not new, we all should realize that the business world has changed dramatically in the last decade, due to the recent pandemic, globalization of commerce, and more and more demanding customers. Businesses teams today must quickly and effectively address more diverse challenges in ever shorter times to remain competitive.
Thus I am offering you my list of high-priority action items which I am paraphrasing here from the authors book on how to unlock the collective power of your teams to achieve the breakthroughs that we all in business desperately need:
- Connecting with team members to build affiliation. Connecting remains a challenge for the growing number of workers returning to the office in full or part-time capacities. Strong and resilient connections are the key to trust in one’s coworkers, greater organizational commitment, increased job satisfaction, and lower employee turnover.
- Team member caring to nurture psychological safety. Caring is the ability of team members to care for one another as well as for the team as an entity, both within and outside the workplace. Team members need to feel safe to voice their opinions, ask judgment-free questions, and admit mistakes without fear of punishment and humiliation.
- Synchronizing to harness collective team intelligence. Key to synchronizing team activities and results first requires setting and reinforcing clear team norms, providing regular structured team meetings and feedback sessions, with a priority on “we” versus “I”. Highlight the team’s common purpose, common struggles, and challenges overcome.
- Expand team diversity and integrate all perspectives. As a team, set time aside for an offsite session and use storytelling to share cross-cultural experiences, so everyone is sensitive to a broader view. If possible, employ a cultural buddy system to facilitate exploring each other’s world in the context of work as well as outside social situations.
- Define shared and individual team accountabilities. As a team, identify common goals and objectives and then outline which responsibilities are best tackled together and which are best suited to individual ownership. Foster open communication to ensure that everyone understands their role as topic leaders and collaborative contributors.
These recommendations also recognize that modern teams need to be more diverse and inclusive due to the fast-paced and multi-cultural world we now do business and live in. For example, there is convincing evidence that diverse teams generate more innovation and respond more effectively to today’s diverse market segments.
I also recommend a focus on modern skills in team members, such as utilizing social media, AI, and the Internet, to balance outdated academic qualifications and years of experience in traditional businesses as a means to creating more responsive and innovative teams.
In all cases, we all also recommend that you define key performance indicators (KPIs) for your teams that include both lagging indicators and leading indicators of performance, both financially and operationally, as well as measuring customer satisfaction. Staying agile and innovative is every business owner’s challenge in today’s volatile and opportunistic market.
Related: 6 Strategies for a Thriving and Positive Team Office Environment