How good is your team? How would you rate its effectiveness? Its efficiency?

The secret to improving teams is to occasionally assess where they are at and then take action based on what you discover. In the perfect world you could monitor them, and instantly notice when things aren’t right. It would be like glancing at the gauges to see if all is well.

Unfortunately, most team leaders don’t have the gauges in place to do this sort of monitoring. Rather, they occasionally check in to determine levels of teamwork. It’s a judgment call that compares the current situation to an ideal situation. The ideal is defined as the following characteristics of team effectiveness. Look over the list and see how well these statements apply to your team.

1. We have a clear sense of purpose.
2. We have measurable objectives.
3. Our purpose supports the larger organization’s purpose.
4. We know how the team will be evaluated.
5. We understand our customers’ expectations.
6. Groups and individuals that support us understand our expectations.
7. We agree on the process for completing our work.
8. We each do our “fair share” of the work.
9. We have access to the resources we need.
10. We effectively make decisions.
11. We communicate openly on the team.
12. We communicate openly with interested parties outside of the team.
13. We effectively resolve conflicts.
14. We quickly address problems that are hurting the team.
15. We each understand what is expected of us.
16. We support one another.
17. We continuously monitor our performance.
18. We work at continuously improving our performance.
19. Our team achieves (will achieve) its goals and objectives.
20. We each feel good about being a part of this team.

If it seems that few of these characteristics describe your team, it’s time to take action. With the right help and the willingness to make a change, your team can do amazing things.

Image credit: jerebu

Using workplace teams to solve problems and manage processes has become common. Although some teams deliver amazing results, many bog down in a quagmire of unresolved issues.

If team-based problem-solving strategies are going to be successful in your organization, you need to focus some of your energy on team building. When I work with groups on team building, I often focus a good part of my work on helping the group answer the following six questions.

1. What is the team’s purpose? It should be easy to see and important to the organization. Measurable performance objectives help determine whether the team’s purpose justifies the resources it will consume. As a quick test, do an informal query with you staff. Ask each person what the purpose of your group is and see what they have to say. If you are lucky, most will be thinking the same thing that you are.
2. What is the team’s plan for accomplishing its work? A successful team has a plan for reaching its objectives. It also has the discipline required for sticking to the plan and the wisdom to know when the team needs to flex with a changing situation. If you’ve been doing the same work for a long time, chances are good that your team is running on autopilot. It might be time to take a fresh look at the way the work gets done and see if it needs to change.
3. What resources does the team need to complete its work? Teams without the resources to do the job, die slow and painful deaths. Great teams know what resources they need and make sure they have access to them when they are needed. These days I hear story after story of teams that have way too much to do and not enough people to get it done. Morale tanks, and this leads to an even larger gap between demand and capability.
4. What is expected from each team member? The organization has expectations for the team. Team members have expectations of one another. Effective teams talk about these expectations to make sure everyone clearly understands what is expected and agrees to accept responsibility for delivering on those expectations. Most infighting in a team results when one member doesn’t meet the expectations of another. The problem is that often the people doing the disappointing had no clue about the expectations in the first place.
5. How does the team make decisions? Teams are faced with hundreds of decisions. A successful team has figured out how to best make decisions and is consistent in making them. Throughout the decision-making process, the team skillfully manages the conflicts that inevitably arise. While deciding how to decide might seem like a waste of time, it is critical to a team’s ability to succeed.
6. How do team members feel about being a part of this team? It is exciting to be part of a successful team. If the team lacks this energy and excitement, it is wise to go back and reexamine the answers to the first five questions.

Although there are more questions that could help predict a team’s probability for success, these six will start the team off in the right direction. If team members seriously consider the answers to these questions, they will find many improvement opportunities that have the potential of helping the team reach performance levels beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

It’s easy to feel over-confident about a group you are leading or of which you are a member.  The danger in this is that the group becomes apathetic about its own effectiveness and slowly begins to decay. One day, the group finds itself to be a wreck, and nobody seems able to figure out how things became as bad as they did.

Your team doesn’t have to be perfect, but it ought to be continually working on improving performance.  This process always starts with an honest assessment of the current state of affairs.

The team’s results can serve as one effectiveness indicator. On the other hand, using results can be misleading. Not achieving goals does suggest major problems with the team; however, the converse is not necessarily true. A team might hit its goals, but may have used up far more resources than necessary to achieve that result. Not only can this show up as an immediate productivity problem, but it may show up later in the form of serious morale problems on the team, resulting in the team’s inability to achieve some future goal.

To better understand some of the process concerns that a team has, you need to ask the team members. The problem is that they probably won’t tell the leader what they really think.  No matter how strong the leader’s relationship is with each team member, people still hedge when talking with the boss about problems they are experiencing.

This is when an outside assessor can help find the issues that might be keeping a team from reaching its potential and suggest ways to turn things around. This first step need not be expensive nor time consuming. A simple online survey, compiled by a neutral party will provide the information you need to start building a team that’s great.

Want to give it a try?  Click to learn more about The TeamCheck Assessment.

I’m a big believer in measuring things that you think are important. So how do you measure teamwork? One way is to identify the goal of teamwork and measure that. This could be more output, better customer satisfaction, higher quality, increased productivity, or higher profits. It could also mean completing a project on time and under budget.

Another approach that should be used in conjunction with the first is to measure the degree to which the team is demonstrating key teamwork skills. You can measure them through observation or surveying of the team members themselves. Here are three biggies:

Communication. Successful teams master communication processes within the group. They make sure team members have information when and how they need it. They learn to be assertive with each other. They have honest conversations.

Decision-making. Groups are often faced with decisions. To be effective they must be able to sort through the viable options, consider the implications of each, and ultimately select an option that best serves the interests of the organization. Not only is it important to make the right decision, teams are often under a tight time-frame. Making a decision quickly is also critical.

Problem-solving. The true mark of an effective team is what it does when a problem exists. Great teams quickly recognize a problem, dig deep to understand the causes, develop creative approaches to dealing with it, and ultimately put their ideas into play. Not only do they deal with problems that arise, they continually monitor and assess their own performance to uncover problems before someone else might notice them.

To effectively rate teamwork measure the expected outcomes, the outputs, and the effectiveness of key teamwork processes.

Photo by woodleywonderworks

What do you measure in your organization?  When it comes to measurement, there are a few simple rules that will help make them more useful.

1.  Measure the stuff that matters.  You went through all the work of setting goals and priorities.  You had a big production about announcing what the organization was going to accomplish this year.  Show people you are serious.  Track progress.  This reinforces that which is most important.  It also helps people know how they are doing.

2.  Respond to the measures.  There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing charts on a wall that show trend lines that nobody looks at or does anything about.  If you’ve made the effort to do the measurement, there’s got to be a clear understanding about how you will use the data.  If you have no intention of doing anything in response to the measures, than don’t waste your time collecting data and producing charts.

3.  Don’t measure stuff that you don’t care about.  This takes time and energy.  It sends a confusing message about what is and isn’t important.  It creates clutter that can cause a team or organization to lose its focus.

Measurements are an important part of any management system.  Make sure yours are working for you and not against you.