Human Connection - The Based to Highly Effective Teams

Change is not only needed when major external factors are transforming. Some teams are doing good and are well established. Yet, there is an itch: can we do better? Is our team enabled to give their best? Could it be that we are becoming complacent?

Last week we facilitated a workshop with a regional leadership team that was a great bunch of people. And they went exactly through these kinds of thoughts. And within a highly interactive day we laid the foundation for a highly effective leadership team. Let's see how!

The lead of this regional corporate services team had exactly this itch and decided to bring his leadership team to Singapore for a three-day workshop - something which hasn't been done in a long time. Yes, most of the team members knew each other very well and have been working together for five years or even longer. Still, most of the collaboration was virtually.

We started the workshop with Miki Island, a gamified learning experience focusing on team effectiveness. Then we followed up with defining how we want to behave as a team, bringing the principles of highly effective teams into their daily work. And the last agenda item on the first day was a brainstorming of high we want to define our strategy based on a set of strategic questions. Here are a few observations which have been a great learning.

• The prolonged virtual collaboration allowed the team members to feel familiar with each other; still, the people expressed that meeting in person is an important step to make people feel comfortable to speak up and share their deeper opinions.
• The in-depth conversations and brainstorming around strategic topics lay the foundation of a shared experience and common objectives; this community feel was essential to subsequent discussions around specific challenges and opportunities.
• While the common objectives and principles have been collectively understood, the team felt it was great to actually write them down and discuss; this was a process of validation that they are aligned and adding more details to this alignment.
• Delivering value to the various customers is important, the purpose of the department; at the same time, the way we deliver this value is equally important; so, we need to establish two sets of goals which also include principles of the way of working together.
• We can't emphasise enough that teamwork means to work with people; empathy and compassion are vital for constructive collaboration, problem solving and innovation. We always should aspire to see the human in our teammates.

Another important conclusion is that we need to keep the momentum. Great outcomes have been achieved during the workshop and we need to nurture those like small seedlings. Only too often people look back after a few weeks and say "the retreat was great; and now, so what". What this team defined for their way forward are two good enhancements to their monthly virtual leadership meetings. First, ensure we discuss and review both sets of goals (business & teamwork); second, add a human connection element to the meetings.

How are you driving your teams and enable them to give their best?