JDA

Employee Engagement = Competitive Edge

by Joan Cook

Employee engagement seems to be a hot topic these days (along with talent management).  To our way of thinking, employee engagement is the key to having a competitive edge.  The Gallup Q12  survey and the Marcus Buckingham book based on it, First, Break All the Rules, distill what the best managers do to create an engaged organization.  It boils down to three simple needs on the part of all employees:

1.  The need for inclusion
2.  The need for significance
3.  The need for openness

Inclusion means:  Do I belong?  Am I in or out?  Am I known?  Significance means:  Do I matter?  Do I make a difference?  Am I important?  Openness means:  Is it ok to tell the truth?  Can I be honest in front of management/my boss?

When we work with organizations on employee engagement, we oftentimes approach getting answers to these questions by asking managers to list what they think they do that demotivates employees and causes them to feel NOT included, NOT significant, and NOT able to be open. Then we talk about what they need to do to rectify the situation. 

Inclusion means communicating information, including people in planning, involving them in decision making (particularly on those decisions that directly affect them) and as a manager, being available.  Significance means appreciating people, praising them, asking them for input, paying attention to what they say (no sending emails or shuffling papers while they're talking), and getting their buy-in.  Openness is created by showing appreciation, listening (without an agenda and without thinking about what you're going to say next while they're talking!), asking for feedback, being interested in people and not reacting negatively to mistakes or bad news, but using them as learning and/or coaching opportunities.  Creating an engaged team depends a great deal on these competencies; can you imagine an organization of engaged teams, all pulling in the same direction?

There's a lot of nuance to this work and we frame it differently, with different activities, depending on who we're working with.  But the essence is the same:  engagement = competitive edge.  Smart companies invest in engagement and reap the rewards.

Teams Need Skills as well as Process

by Joan Cook

Jeff and I are working with a number of different teams in organizations around the country.  After each teambuilding experience we debrief, usually on the plane home, and we've lately had one of those "duh" moments:  although we're working for the most part in sophisticated organizations (one of them a Fortune 50 company), their people lack some of the most basic Management 101 communication skills--which of course, holds back progress toward becoming a highly effective team.  If being able to give (and receive) feedback effectively, hold fellow team members accountable, handle difficult conversations and use effective listening skills are key, our experience is that most team members shy away from using these critical skills simply because they feel they aren't very good at them--or they've never learned them in the first place.  Understandable, since a.  they aren't taught in b-school and b. most people learn them--if they learn them at all--on the fly, by imitating what they see others do.  If they're lucky, they have good models.  If they're not, they perpetuate a culture that is likely weak in supporting the use of the very tools that enable effective working relationships, and effective teaming.

So in addition to team process skills and experiential team events, we're discovering that there's a third leg to this stool:  management communication skills that enable team members to engage in effective team processes in the first place.  We're now looking at how we structure the teambuilding experience and what we may need to include, in addition to team processes, in order to equip teams to be able to make good use of those processes.

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Teambuilding, Part 2

by Joan Cook

Returning to a favorite topic, here’s a key question from a previous post:  the work we do with teams takes place in the classroom, working on the fundamentals of becoming a highly effective team.  Having participated in numerous experiential teambuilding activities over the years myself (ropes courses, games, etc.), I appreciate the strong sense of camaraderie that develops over the course of the experience.  It would seem that a combination of the two:  classroom and experiential—would be ideal.  If all a group of people ever experiences in coming together as a team is a ropes course or a game, where/how do they learn the process skills for the long haul?  Similarly, I wonder if classroom team process training should be enhanced by or integrated with experiential exercises that drive home the learning and anchor the feeling of what it means to be a team, in order to produce optimal learning. My sense is the answer is probably yes.

Unfortunately, experiential teambuilding processes such as ropes courses, kayaking, riding horses, etc. are often seen as the "kumbaya" approach to fostering skillful teamwork.  Companies invest in them but then wonder why the effects don't last. Experience is indeed a great teacher, but it's got to be backed up by a solid commitment to team process and a deep understanding of what that means.  Everyone understands the tactical (getting the work done), but few understand team process (how it gets done).  It's relatively easy to work together when there's only two people involved, but when two become 6 or 7 or 8, suddenly the rules of the game change.  Teams need to know how to build trust, engage in productive conflict, create commitment, hold each other accountable, stay focused on results, create and sustain compelling meetings, and discipline themselves to apply these principles consistently, or teamwork ain't happening, ropes course or no.

Comments are welcome.

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On “Why Teams DON’T Work” from the May 2009 HBR

by Joan Cook

Interesting article in HBR—an interview by Diane Coutu with J. Richard Hackman, a professor of social and organizational psychology at Harvard and a “leading expert on teams.” The title is somewhat misleading; turns out teams DO work, as long as they adhere to a set of 5 conditions Dr. Hackman’s research revealed, most of which anyone who’s ever been on a team will recognize from experience:
1.  Teams must be real – people have to know who’s on the team and who isn’t.
2.  Teams need a compelling direction – members need to know, and agree on, what it is they’re doing together.
3.  Teams need enabling structures – the right tasks, members, norms.
4.  Teams need a supportive organization – they can’t be effective or successful if the organizational context (reward system, HR system, info systems) is organized around individuals rather than teams.
5.  Teams need expert coaching – as a group, in team processes.