How Do YOU Inspire Employee Performance and Engagement?
To paraphrase the late, great George Carlin:
Think of how ineffective the average team is. Now realize that half of all teams are even MORE ineffective than that!
The ability for teams to get things done has become increasingly important for all organizations, large and small. Yet research shows that fewer than 10% of teams rate themselves as “High Performing.”
According to a recent Gallup study, managers have the greatest impact on employee engagement, which makes this finding very worrisome:
- 35% of U.S. managers consider themselves fully engaged
- 51% consider themselves not engaged
- 14% consider themselves actively disengaged.
“The “not engaged” group,” according to Gallup, “costs the U.S. $77 billion to $96 billion annually through their impact on those they manage. And when we factor in the impact of the “actively disengaged” group, those figures jump to $319 billion to $398 billion annually.”
This must definitely change.
Assessing and Addressing Team Effectiveness
The standard methods leaders use to improve team performance (e.g. increasing pressure on team members to work harder, longer, and ‘smarter’, etc.) tend not to work. All-too-often they only end up making matters even worse (e.g. employee burn-out, disengagement, turnover, etc.).
What’s important to keep in mind is that teams are not just collections of individuals – teams are living, breathing business entities, each with its own identity, reputation, written and unwritten rules, roles, responsibilities and measures of success.
Teams are far more complex than just the sum of its parts – and must be managed, accordingly.
That’s why LeadershipTraction uses the Team Diagnostic™ suite of assessments, which takes a systems approach to teamwork – focusing on what individuals know would help their TEAM be more effective, as an entity in and of itself, as opposed to what might benefit individuals, personally.
Coupled with a coach-like debriefing results debriefing of your assessment, and the option of ongoing coaching to help improvements take hold, this creates a solid package for improving team effectiveness.
This approach helps create the kind of improvements that have helped organizations, large and small, achieve an average 20% improvement in their teams’ effectiveness – and, by extension, the productivity and engagement of its team members, as well.
The Team Diagnostic Suite of Assessments
There are four stand-alone, but related, assessments in the Team Diagnostic suite:
The Team Leader View™ (TLV) –
The TLV measures how you, the team’s leader, rates your team’s effectiveness
- A simple way for team leaders to assess their view of their teams, and their own leadership
- An excellent team leadership development tool
The Team Diagnostic™ Assessment –
The TDA measures how the team rates its own effectiveness
- A self-portrait of the team, drawn by the team
- Proven model of team effectiveness
- Unique view of the team and a map for team development
The Team360° View™ (T360°) –
The T360° measures how your team’s stakeholders rate your team’s effectiveness
- Unfiltered feedback to the target team
- A candid picture of the team by those impacted the most
- Answers the question, “What do stakeholders think about our performance?“
The Organizational View™ (OrgView) –
The OrgView measures how the broader organization views your team’s effectiveness
- Broad view of a whole organization or representative sample
- Measures both the culture and productivity strengths that deliver results
- Gives the leadership team invaluable information about the health and performance of the organization, and their leadership of it
It’s stunning to me what kind of an impact even one person can have if they have the right passion, perspective, and are able to align the interest of a great team.
To learn more about these assessments and how LeadershipTraction approaches team coaching, contact Barry Zweibel.
The Team Leader View,Team Diagnostic, Team 360° View, and Organization View assessments are all trademarks of Team Coaching International.
If you think a brief conversation about your leadership development needs – or those of others in your organization – could be useful, call or connect to coordinate calendars.