All articles written by John Howard, Ph.D., except where noted.

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Getting Our Teams in Gear
From Jim Sirbasku’s Desk

One of the ways to understand how teams operate is to imagine gears meshing. In gear theory, we have drivers, followers and idlers. We “gear up” and “gear down.” Following this theory, we know that when gears are not properly meshed, friction results.

Work teams operate the same way. Team players are like the followers; they do the useful work. Team leaders are like the driver, the gear with applied force. And, just as the meshing of followers and drivers can speed up the gear train and increase torque, team players that mesh well can accomplish great things.

But what happens when a driver or a follower needs to be replaced and the new player just doesn’t match? It’s like pushing a screwdriver between the gears. The jolt can throw everything out of whack, and we learn just how fragile a team can be.

The growing emphasis on formalizing work teams to cope with changing workplaces is healthy, but keeping together a successful team requires an understanding of the importance of team mix. The most important ingredients of a team are its people, and each time we add a new or different person, we run the risk of creating friction and derailing an operation unless we ensure that each new member is a team player, gets along well with others, and understands the culture and style of the team.

Although the structure, purpose and makeup may vary, each well-built team needs these important features:

• Players who mesh. Although determining whether a person has the skills to play on a team is not so difficult, the team dynamics – how thinking and working styles match -- are not as easy to discern. Team members do not all have to think alike or move in lockstep, but thinkingworking styles need to blend so that team members can work reasonably easily with each other. A team’s leader needs to be able to assess a team’s strengths and weaknesses and add the pieces that fit, with one person’s strengths making up for another’s shortcomings, and vice versa.

• A vision. The simplest way to see the vision is to ask the question, “Why does this team exist?” If you cannot clearly articulate the reason for the team to be, it will founder. Gatherings of team members will be pointless unless the leader knows what he or she wants and spells it out.

• Examples to follow. In a culture that reveres individuality, work leaders must set the tone for the kind of work environment they expect. Are your executives team players, or do they think and act alone? Employees throughout the company will quickly take note of what’s expected at work by watching those at the top.

• Agreement on how to attain the goal. If individuals disagree on how to get to their destination (think tug-of-war), the journey will be long and hard and the result will be iffy. Consensus building is a necessary team skill. Make sure your team includes people who can help individual members with strong ideas reach consensus.

• Support from the organization. Workers must see that their employers value teamwork as much as individual achievement, and the best way employers can show that is with rewards. These can be anything of value: public praise, days off, bonuses, dinners for the team, or tickets to a sporting event. Think of how coaches of sports teams celebrate their successes, and take your cue from them. Successful coaches are excellent at team building and recognition.

If your workforce consists of individual players performing their own tasks well but big problems grow, it’s a sign that your team needs help. Examine your own actions and those of your top managers first, as highly effective teams depend on good coaching and full participation. If you cannot find the problem, seek feedback from others on your top team. Also, studying the assessments of individuals can help predict team dynamics. A good assessment will show who will be likely to lead and who is most inclined to follow. A sound team needs both.

Once your workforce is playing for a team that accomplishes its goals, everyone will quickly feel the torque that smoothly meshing gears provide.

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BOOK REVIEW: A Father-Son Formula for Team Building

If you want to construct successful work teams, go to the team of experts. In the fourth-edition classic, TEAM BUILDING: Proven Strategies for Improving Team Performance, change management guru William G. Dyer and his sons Gibb and Jeffrey continue to apply their branded balm to troubles on the job. Fans who read the previous three editions of this team-builder’s “bible” should consider that this one, published in March, offers six new chapters of material designed to keep apace with today’s challenges.

The book opens with a compelling description of one executive’s crisis after he failed at teams. Although the predicament might sound far-fetched to believers, the beginning paragraphs are a lesson for anyone who thinks top-down management still rules. In today’s rapidly changing and increasingly complex business environment, the opening of TEAM BUILDING shows that the top-down mantra is about as useful as a top hat.

But the authors designed the book more for believers than skeptics, and quickly moves on to practical advice for putting teams together and ensuring their smooth operation. It offers a formula for building high-performing teams, which it describes as “those with members whose skills, attitudes and competencies enable them to achieve team goals…members set goals, make decisions, communicate, manage conflict and solve problems in a supportive, trusting atmosphere…”

The four sections of this book include:

• Part One: The Four Cs of Team Development: Contest, Composition, Competencies and Change Management Skills

• Part Two: Solving Specific Problems Through Team Building

• Part Three: Team Building in Different Kinds of Teams

• Part Four: The Challenge of Team Building for the Future

Decades of experience support the authors’ influence in the business world. Patriarch William G. Dyer, who died in 1997, is past dean of the Marriott School of Management and founder of the Department of Organizational Behavior at Brigham Young University. His work there continues in many ways, including through the Dyer Institute for Leading Organizational Change.

Son Gibb, or W. Gibb Dyer Jr., is the O. Leslie Stone Professor of Entrepreneurship and academic director of the Center of Economic Self-Reliance in the Marriott School. His brother, Jeffrey, is the Horace Beasley Professor of Strategy at the Marriott School, where he also chairs the business strategy group.

In the book’s foreword, Edgar H. Schein, a professor emeritus at MIT, notes his pleasure at the continuation of the elder Dyer’s “pioneering work… at a time when the world needs 'team building' more than ever." Teams everywhere, successful or struggling, are likely chorusing their amens.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
TEAM BUILDING: Proven Strategies for Improving Team Performance (fourth edition)
Authors: William G. Dyer, W. Gibb Dyer Jr., and Jeffrey H. Dyer
272 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0-7879-8893-7
Publisher: Jossey-Bass (imprint of Wiley Books)

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PRODUCT FOCUS: Producing Art with Profiles Team Analysis™

A team that works well together can produce a work of art. Think of the Vienna Boys Choir, a group of individuals with perfectly tuned, trained voices. Or envision a team of Clydesdale horses harnessed together, each raising the correct hoof at precisely the right time, as if following the lead of an imaginary conductor. Marching bands and football players, surgeons and teachers – all are capable of good things individually and potentially great accomplishments when working together.

No matter how easy they make teamwork appear, great teams do not just happen. Mayhem could result if the team’s goals are not clear. What if the Boys Choir decided to play baseball instead of sing, or the giant Clydesdales ran amok during a parade? Individual team members must be carefully chosen and coached. Each person’s performance needs analysis. Effective teams need players who want to participate and who bring different strengths to the group. The team leader must be able to elicit and orchestrate individual strengths to help the team reach its goals.

Profiles Team Analysis™ not only helps to analyze the teams that your organization relies on, but it also helps your leaders determine how to coach their teams to obtain the best performance from each participant.

The PTA™ analyzes each team member in 12 key areas. These include control and composure, emotions and ambitions, as well as social and analytical aspects. It examines patience, whether or not the team member is results-oriented, his or her precision, and whether he or she is a team player. Finally, the PTA looks at the team member’s positive expectancy and quality orientation.

A PTA report card shows how the team is performing in these key areas:

• Team Balance Table. This chart shows how each team member scored on each of the 12 factors.

• Overall Team Balance. Are key characteristics missing from your team? This report will show you what’s present and what’s absent.

• Behavioral Factors. This reveals how each team member scored on each factor.

• Team Leader Action. If you are leading your team, you need to know how to supervise your members. This report guides you.

An underperforming team might miss important goals while individual members squabble over real or imagined conflicts. Individual members may not be motivated to perform, and perhaps no one is anticipating problems. Teams that excel can determine how to get a project done at the best price, increase productivity, make sure quality standards remain high and solve annoying problems.

“Many hands make light work,” wrote British dramatist John Heywood. That’s especially true if all of the hands are working with the same goal in mind. Profiles’ assessments will help get your team members on the same page. Call us at (254) 751- 1644.

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CASE STUDY: ProfileXT™ Helps Fine-Tune Team at a Financial Services Firm

Employee teamwork is important in all industries, but the stakes are among the highest in the competitive financial services sector, where employees must be detail-oriented and mesh like a finely tuned machine. The intricate mix of federal and state regulations that employees must follow also heightens the importance of teamwork.

When a national financial services firm wanted to increase the revenue production of its loan originators, they used the ProfileXT™ to identify candidates with the greatest probability of good productivity. ProfileXT™ looks at workers’ traits, interests, and cognitive abilities as benchmarked by other successful individuals in the position.

Participants
The study included 116 loan originators to examine the relationship between employee productivity and the dimensions measured by ProfileXT™. Loan originators are front-line mortgage sales employees who must comply with a web of federal and, usually, state laws. They are licensed professionals and need excellent communication and interpersonal skills to be successful.

Each loan originator completed the ProfileXT. For a year, a supervisor at the mortgage lending form evaluated performance. An analysis identified 11 top performing and 11 bottom performing employees. The sample of current top performing loan originators formed the basis for the Job Match Pattern. Further refinement of the pattern helped distinguish top and bottom scores.

Performance grouping
Based on the information from the employer, Profiles built a pattern that described the qualities of the existing top performers and matched all 116 loan originators against this pattern. An overall Job Match of 80 percent or greater identified top performers, so a percentage of 80 or above represented a strong fit to the Job Match Pattern.

This pattern match revealed:

• 10 of 11 top performers were correctly identified as such

• 1 of the 11 top performers was incorrectly identified as a bottom performer

• Seven of 11 bottom performers were correctly identified as bottom performers

• Four of 11 bottom performers were incorrectly identified as top performers

Details
Of the 116 participants, 62 obtained a Job Match of 80 percent or greater. Ten of the 11 top performers, or 91 percent, displayed a strong fit to the Job Match Pattern. Thirty-six percent, or four of 11 bottom performers, achieved the same mark.

Summary
The financial services firm now uses the PXT™ Job Match Pattern as the benchmark, allowing it to successfully screen candidates and increase the odds of selecting top performing loan originators.

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STRATEGIES FOR WINNING: Fire ‘Em Up!*

21 Days to a Winning, Motivated Team

Will you give 10 minutes each day for the next 21 days to fire up your team like never before?

Will you give 10 minutes each day for the next 21 days to fire up your team like never before? The sooner you can get a new employee into productivity, the better off you will be. At Profiles, our managers have learned the following techniques for managing and motivating people. These take the usual new-employee orientation to a higher level. This program has been successful in integrating our new team members into the Profiles culture in just 21 days, or about one calendar month. Not only has using this system accelerated the productivity of new team members, but it has proved excellent in making them feel wanted, appreciated and accepted. Based upon the excellent results we have experienced, we heartily recommend you implement a similar program in your company.

Here’s a distillation of all you need to know to motivate people – it’s drawn from all of the great writers on the subject – along with a simple, 21-day plan.

Employees Want Management They Can Look Up to – Not Management that Looks Down on Them
An honest respect for all, a genuine recognition that everyone has something good to offer – this is at the heart of the successful motivator. Without respect, so-called motivation becomes manipulation, and manipulation is never successful in the long term. If you or your managers cannot show respect for your people, then, before you invest time and energy in motivational efforts, get someone who can – and have that person read on from here!

Take an Interest in the Career and Personal Goals, Aspirations, Interests, Lives and Families of Those Who Work with You
Do you know anyone who complains about getting too much recognition or praise for a job well done? Research consistently shows that people will go to extraordinary lengths for a leader who takes the time to catch them doing something right and, when they do, provides them with sincere praise and recognition in front of their colleagues. Praise and recognition are more motivating than money or any other single thing we can give to the people we lead.

Don’t Criticize, Condemn or Complain
Dale Carnegie nailed it with this gem. When you must draw attention to poor performance, don’t criticize. Coach. Don’t pick at what is being done wrong, but focus all of your attention on the new behavior or action that will put things right; always finish with a positive comment to let the employee see that the reason you’ve raised the matter is that you have seen that he or she is capable of so much more. Correct the errant action, provide some positive feedback, and then forget it. Act like you expect better performance next time – and you’ll get it.

Request – Don’t Order
Real leaders lead from the front – they don’t need to push from the back. Everyone rebels to some extent against being bossed around. No one minds being asked to help.

Discuss – Don’t Argue
Maturity is being able to disagree agreeably.

Be Careful with Humor
Avoid any kind of demeaning humor. If there’s the slightest chance of being misunderstood, keep it to yourself. “If in doubt, leave it out.”

Listening is the Greatest Compliment You Can Pay Anyone
Our opinions are all sacred to us. Listen – and hear the concerns of your people.

Most Importantly of All
Model the behaviors and attitudes you expect others to display. Show them it works.

21-Day Action Plan
Why 21 days? Research shows that it takes 21 days to establish a habit. Take the topics discussed above and apply them for 21 days. You will discover that by the end of this period, you will be doing all of these things naturally. And the level of motivation in your team in general, even in your toughest cases, will be at an all-time high.

To implement your plan:
Create a table with each employee’s name down the left-hand side, and each of the motivators listed above across the top. Rule your table so that each person has a box against each motivator. Target improvements. Copy this strategy and put it in a place where you can review it daily. Each day, make a determination to apply each motivator as often as possible with as many members of your team as you can. Plan to speak to each of your team members often enough to get to know what turns them on and off; determine to catch them doing something right; praise them in front of their colleagues; listen to their opinions, and so on. At the end of each day, put a tick mark in your table for each motivator you effectively applied with each team member. Make sure your table is filling evenly with marks; make sure all motivators are being applied across the whole team. Be careful not to fall into the trap of simply working with those you already get along with, those you like, those who least need real motivational lift, or with the motivators that come most naturally to you.

Review and repeat. At the end of your first 21-day period, stand back and admire the difference you have made. Pat yourself on the back, and start all over again. Select the next person you need to target specifically, and start a new table for the team at large.

Motivation is easy – if you care enough to put in a little extra effort. Anyone can motivate, and anyone can be motivated. All it takes is the right person in the right place, managed by someone who cares. Invest a little of your time over the next 21 days and fire ’em up like never before.

*From the book 40 STRATEGIES FOR WINNING IN BUSINESS by Bud Haney and Jim Sirbasku. © S&H Publishing Co., 5205 Lake Shore Drive, Waco, Texas 76710-1732. All rights reserved. Contact S&H Publishing Co., (254) 751-1644, for reprint permission.

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