How to improve your team’s effectiveness and potential

If you’ve ever been tasked with the challenge of improving your team's effectiveness and potential, it's no small feat.

Let me share a client story to illustrate this.

Sandi runs a team of software engineers in a med device start-up.  The company is poised to launch an interesting diagnostic product, with a cloud-based platform, an app, and cool analytics features.  Sandi is a friend of a friend, and the first time we met I instantly related to her.  She’s brilliant technically but struggling to align a rapidly growing team.  She said “Everyone gets along OK, but we recently had two critical project misses and my employees are pointing fingers rather than coming together.  I’m concerned about business impact and morale if I can’t sort out this team stuff.” 

That’s how our conversation started.  I mentioned some proven team effectiveness strategies and provided her with the following insights:

Understand and Assess where you are. Utilize a measurable, repeatable discovery process to evaluate your team's current state. Identify team strengths and opportunities, and uncover any blind spots that may impede success.

Solicit both qualitative and quantitative insights. Be sure to explore team success feedback from both perspectives. It’s OK to use gut instinct, so long as you back it up with data to better inform you.

Uncover the Right Areas for Improvement. Make sure the discovery process focuses on specific areas that will have the greatest team impact. For instance, can all team members articulate the key performance indicators (KPI) for which they are jointly responsible? Do they understand how these KPIs link to each team member’s role?

In a followup email, I sent Sandi my survey tool. She self-administered it, and a few weeks later mentioned having a better understanding of the team’s strengths and a roadmap for some of their challenges. She was amazed by its simplicity and effectiveness, and planned to use it bi-annually.

Team Effectiveness Survey

I'm sharing a favorite tool – a free, user-friendly Excel-based resource we call a Team Effectiveness Survey. With two decades of experience in intact team effectiveness consulting, I regularly use this survey with great success.

Click here to access this free tool, complete with step-by-step video instructions for self-administration.