Are You Sure This is Going to Work? The Counterintuitive Approach to Team Coaching

There are times when our approach to team coaching may seem counterintuitive; our prescription might seem contraindicative to your particular issue. The problem your team is encountering just might be a symptom of something deeper. Such was the case with a recent client whose productivity was stunted. But after doing some initial digging, we found that the problem lay elsewhere.

Productivity vs. Positivity

At the beginning of an engagement, we often get the team to complete a Team Diagnostic Instrument, a survey for each team member to assess themselves in 14 functional areas across two dimensions: their Productivity, or what we call efficiency, and their Positivity, or their effectiveness.

Productivity refers to your goals, all of the tasks you set for yourself and your team: decision-making, organizational ability, time management, and so on. Positivity refers to how you work together as a team. We look at your relationships, levels of trust, and other interpersonal factors. If your team is not working effectively, your efficiency will suffer, but that’s not always clear to everyone. Some team members might not see the real problem; all that they know is that things are not working as they should.

Quick Tip: In this case, relationship issues were preventing team members from working together effectively. So, while initially we focused on their productivity, we ended up pointing out improvements they needed to make in areas of positivity. We immediately went to work on two key areas:

1. The way they ran meetings.
2. How they made decisions.

We showed them that they needed to organize their discussions in ways that would make them more effective and efficient., This was accomplished by identifying for each agenda:

• Why the item was brought to the group for discussion,
• how much time they were going to spend on each item,
• who was accountable for the item,
• what outcome they wanted from each discussion.

Like Covey said, “Begin with the end in mind.”

The same kind of thinking went into decision-making. Sometimes a team leader with a decision to make might want to engage the team in making the decision. Sometimes it’s the leader’s final decision, but he or she still might want input, ideas, or suggestions that he or she can then take away and apply to the decision-making process. That has to be made clear to the team at the start.

In both cases, managing team discussions and decision making, we want to give the team some structure that would refocus the discussion to the items and away from the interpersonal friction..

We want people to start to hear each other, so we give structure to the discussion. By putting that structure in place we get them to work together more effectively, so that they can be more productive or efficient. That doesn’t mean we ignored the interpersonal issues, but allowing the team to make some positive progress we minimized the impact. Of course, we need to make sure that all team members are all focused on a common goal or set of goals, and have come to understand what they need to fix along the way so that they can work toward those goals including resolving the interpersonal issues.

In Counter-conclusion…

What does it mean to say that our approach is counterintuitive? If your team was wrestling with issues, and can’t seem to get a grip on them, we simply shift your focus to something else, away from personality issues, and help you to tackle the problem from the other end. Improved efficiency leads to improved effectiveness, and vice-versa. As you become more efficient you become aware of where you need to be more effective, and you can begin to adjust. If your team is struggling with effectiveness, then you focus them on efficiency. If they’re stuck in efficiency, then you focus them on effectiveness. At first it may seem as though you are not working on what you should be working, but in the end, the results will be exactly what you want, and what your team really needs.