Synergy: The Elusive Goal
There are innumerable reasons to assemble a group of people, assign them a task, and call them a team. But are teams the most effective way to achieve results that create real value? That depends.
Some teams are nothing more than a collection of individuals engaging in what child psychologists call "parallel play." These teams generate results that are no better than the best team members could have achieved on their own. What's worse, some teams are so ineffective (due to poor communication, unclear objectives, lack of collaboration skills, political infighting, etc.) that they produce results that are significantly less desirable than what some of the team members could have created on their own. How many times have you been part of a team and come away thinking that you could have done better by yourself?
Are team development or team conflict issues holding you back? Catalyst has spent years working with clients to improve the effectiveness of their team activities. We are committed to Teams that Work™, our label for the belief that teams should strive for synergy — or cease to be a "team." Organizations cannot afford to invest in groups of people getting together to ostensibly advance important organizational objectives if the results are less than optimal. Contact us today to see how we can bring a new level of performance — synergy — to the teams in your organization. Or take a look at the many workshops and seminars that we offer that can jumpstart your team performance.
Synergy Defined
A team reaches synergy when the outcomes of the group's efforts (e.g., their decisions or recommendations) are superior to those that could have been achieved by
any single member of the team working alone. Note that synergy is not achieved when the team's outcomes are superior to the averages of the outcomes from all of the team members. This would mean that one or more of the individual team members could have done better by themselves. A team reaches synergy only when its results are better than any one member could produce on his or her own. Catalyst offers a number of assessments, simulations and workshops designed to illustrate synergy, to evaluate your team's current performance, and to train your team to achieve synergy.
Call us today for a free telephone consultation, and remember — your satisfaction is
guaranteed.
Eight Characteristics of Effective Teams
- A Clear, Elevating Goal. High performance teams have both a clear understanding of the goal to be achieved and a belief that the goal embodies a worthwhile or important result. Team's without explicitly understood goals are doomed to failure.
- A Results-Driven Structure. Team structure should first be framed in terms of its broadest objective — problem-solving, creativity , or tactical execution. It should then be designed to support the following:
- Clear Roles and Accountabilities
- An Effective Communication System
- Monitoring Individual Performance and Providing Feedback
- Fact-Based Judgments
- Competent Members. Selecting the "right" people is highly correlated with team success. Research has shown that the following three variables are common to the selection of team members for any successful team.
- The essential skills and abilities relevant to the team's objective.
- A strong desire to contribute actively to the team.
- The capability of collaborating effectively with other. This factor is so important, people not capable of collaborating effectively should be summarily removed from their team assignments.
- Unified Commitment. An important, but often elusive, factor in the success of teams is the degree to which team members are united in their commitments to the team's goals. Call it "team spirit" or "esprit de corp" or anything else that resonates within your organization, the concept is the same.
- A Collaborative Climate. The essence of teams is teamwork. If a team is a group of people pursuing a specific performance objective, the achievement of which requires coordinated action, then teamwork must be a significant factor in determining a team's success. "Working well together" is a necessary ingredient in team success, as is an atmosphere of trust. A climate of trust fosters teamwork because:
- Trust allows team members to stay problem-focused.
- Trust promotes more efficient communication and coordination.
- Trust improves the quality of collaborative outcomes.
- Standards of Excellence. Standards are not achieved simply be setting them; meeting standards is hard work. The extent to which standards are de-intellectualized and made concrete and behavioral will usually determine the extent to which the standard can be performed.
- External Support and Recognition. Typical markers signaling the presence of external support and recognition include:
- The team is given the resources it needs to ge the job done.
- The team is supported by those individuals and groups outside the team who are capable of contributing to the team's success.
- The team is sufficiently recognized for its accomplishments.
- The reward and incentive structure is clear, viewed as appropriate by the team members, and tied to performance.
- Principled Leadership. The final ingredient in effective team performance — and one of the most critical — is team leadership. Research strongly indicates that the right person in a leadership role can add tremendous value to the collective effort, even to the point of sparking the outcome with an intangible kind of "magic."
From Teamwork by Carl E. Larson and Frank M. J. LaFasto (Newbury Park. Sage Publications, 1989)
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Strategy Validation, Action Planning and Team Development (SAT) Workshop. And the key to making these intensive sessions successful is our expert facilitators, each of whom has the education, experience and executive-level credibility to help you and your senior team:
- objectively analyze your current situation
- assess the degree of alignment and focus among the leadership team
- identify and prioritize key action plans and new value-creation initiatives
- improve your team’s on-going performance
