COLLECTIVE EFFORT

By KATHIE

More than ever, the ability to build strong teams in business, communities and government is critical to global inclusion, as well as ethical and forwardthinking endeavors. In an era of individualism, we are forced to identify leaders who can create high-performing teams and know the dynamics of the performers.

Emotional and social intelligence play a critical role in developing these teams and individual players. Skill set alone is the last of the criteria we should be concentrating on to distinguish the best team players to recruit and retain, still it remains an important ingredient for final consideration.

Creating high-performance teams is one of the top 10 priorities among organizational leadership today.

The outcome of such leadership is not left to happenstance. It is a well-thought-out strategy and process of putting the “best of the best” individuals together to create success.

Our workforce craves meaning and ethical direction. Blindsided by multiple failures of leadership, team members want to be part of making a difference. Alignment of vision and demonstrating purpose-driven actions allow the team to synchronize.

The appetite for building high-performance teams is a key skill that C-level and management executives are addressing in their own career development. Research suggests that employees are five times more productive when working in high-performance teams, making this an essential skill set for future leaders.1

I have been fortunate enough to participate in both great teams as well as mediocre teams and know firsthand the powerful outcome of the high-performance team makeup, as well as the result of mediocrity.

CASE STUDY #1 High-Performance Team Wall Street Journal Brand Extension

As the director of brand extensions of The Wall Street Journal, I immediately knew I needed to create a high-performance team to market WSJwine — a premier brand.

I tapped WSJ department heads with face-to-face meetings, each time sharing the vision for brand growth. Understanding firsthand the skills needed for individuals to collaborate with key company players, I created criteria and a set of values for the team members.

The Playbook

This emphasized encompassing the vision, mission, operations and targeted partnership dynamics with a robust marketing and business development plan. With each week that passed, the team worked like a synchronized marching band, performing to a cadence that resonated with our neighboring departments.

A seasoned employee from another department pursued becoming part of this team. I sat with her during the interview and told her frankly that “this team works hard and is nonstop.”

“I want in” was her final comment.

With the right people, we increased our revenue in the WSJwine business within 15 months, from $32 million to over $53 million, all because of this team’s dynamics and follow-through.

I remain proud of what was accomplished and of each member’s contribution to success.

CASE STUDY #2 Underperforming Team Member of Community Home Owners Association (HOA) Board

Contrary to the success example above, I had the opposite experience occur recently. As part of my volunteer efforts, I became a board member of my community HOA and was quickly named president, overseeing the vision for community management.

The Playbook

This approach was developed knowing that this reference could be a pivotal tool for direction as we became challenged by daily decision-making.

There was little traction for this team. It was not adversarial. It was a group of individuals with many years of experience working toward the same goals, but just not coming together. Great ideas and operational needs were brought to the table often, but time lapses and conflicting priorities in the “queue” prevented us from achieving our desired results.

I was completely baffled, frustrated and disappointed that we were not living up to our potential.

I did a self-assessment of my own role in the mediocre performance, asking the following questions:

• Was this team inspired at all toward a common goal?

• Was the vision clearly communicated?

• Was I organized in sharing information, tools, and readily available resources for each team member I was working alongside?

• Did I invest the appropriate time for feedback and understanding of the dynamics?

After my self-assessment, I realized that this team’s personalities did not meet the criteria for high-performance outputs. The great part about this experience is I was still able to recruit volunteers to head committees that outperformed and consistently met deadlines and community satisfaction metrics, in contrast to those in the general management roles.

Here were some red flags:

• Very little was getting accomplished, and deadlines were not being met.

• Communication was sporadic and often nonexistent on promised deliverables.

• When sitting down at meetings, excuses were tossed out like pieces of paper being ripped up for the garbage pail.

• Pointing fingers at others and deflection was a matter of protocol.

• Individuals would say the right things but didn’t deliver on what “assumably” had been agreed to.

This last case study completely illustrates the symptoms of an underperforming team.

The truth is that no matter what I did in my own performance or leadership approach, the teams’ makeup would never be considered high performance. Two out of the four key players were not team players because of their personalities, making the environment cumbersome, chaotic and dysfunctional.

There are several key areas to concentrate on when pulling a high-caliber team together. The top three foundational principles are:

1. Attitude

A critical determinant of both a team’s success and the ability of individual team members is the attitude that each brings to the team and their everyday interactions.

• Are they self-motivated individuals?

• Are their conversations sprinkled with “Can do” or “I‘ve got this!”?

• What opportunity does the individual have to excel within the team?

• Are the individuals inspired by the vision and the goal given to the group?

2. Passion and Commitment

Commitment is one of the key components of high-performer success. Even during challenges/failures, they are consistently focused on the outcome.

• Are your team members truly committed to the end product/service/goals? Or are they in it for their own glory?

• Does their commitment to the vision fit with their vision of success for themselves?

• Are the members focused on the same goal?

3. Results Driven and Effective Outputs

High-performers are consistently driving for results and realize their own talents and gifts by being part of a team. They are constantly reviewing the result with metrics that achieve the end results.

Ask them how they got to the end game, and they may share with you some of the “failures or challenges” that went into the result. They are proud of overcoming the bumps in the road and creating a resolution, illustrating the value of perseverance.

High-performance players believe in not only doing things right but also “doing the right thing.” This exemplary attitude plays out in this high-octane group.

Time is an asset that these team members highly value — their own time as well as recognizing and respecting the time of others and their contributions to the team. Most team members come prepared to meetings, take personal time to work through a solution and agree to meet with others to define mutual impact.

They thrive on performance, end-game results, and the ability to make a difference in the world today.

The results of high-performance teams are captured in four key outcomes:

1. Better brainstorming and results due to larger perspectives with checks and balances on individual thinking.

2. Increased impact on solution-oriented results.

3. Ability to create momentum based on goals and timetables.

4. Sustained motivation from genuinely loving what you do and therefore being able to celebrate cohesive successes across all players.

High-performing teams using the above criteria develop a culture of success, and high-performers throughout an organization upgrade the standard of excellence. This culture is perpetuated by retaining and attracting key talent.

In today’s world of hybrid work environments and virtual workplaces, creating a team that supports, respects and creates a feeling of inclusion among teammates is one of the best motivators for recruiting and retaining great talent. With aligned team energy, decisions and complementary personalities in place, everyone wins.

Enjoy the ride when you are part of this type of team. There is nothing like it for those who thrive in this environment! And, if working on your own leadership skills, be aware of the power of building these teams into your education and learning curriculum. This is truly a well-known secret to organizational success by top leaders. L

The key to creating high-performing teams is bringing together a varied group of people with diverse perspectives

• BY SHERI L. FEINZIG, Ph.D.

In one particularly memorable moment in March 2020, millions of people shared in a moving Zoom-delivered musical experience as performances by symphony orchestras, such as the Colorado Symphony’s digital “Ode to Joy,” were recorded and posted online, with each musician remote from the others yet perfectly in sync and creating a much-needed sense of togetherness and connection. It was a spectacular illustration of creativity and innovation delivered under extremely challenging circumstances. And it was a demonstration of extraordinary teamwork.

One aspect that made this experience — and symphony orchestras in general — so magical is the variety of instruments and perspectives brought by musicians mastering vastly different sounds and techniques.

Imagine if only one type of instrument existed for creating music — perhaps only drums or only violins. Would the “Ode to Joy” performance have had the same impact? While the drum and the violin are each phenomenal instruments, the impact of that moment was created by different instruments being introduced and integrated into the whole. It’s the diversity that made it magical (See figure 1).

And so it is with teams in the workplace. While like-minded people, all with similar training and worldviews, can work together and produce great outcomes, a combination of different perspectives is required for ground-breaking innovations and next-level performance.

WHY DIVERSITY?

How does diversity contribute to team performance and innovation? As with the musical analogy, diversity brings unique experiences, and information to the table.

People who have lived significantly different experiences will see the world through different lenses, and they’ll raise issues and suggest solutions that others simply are unlikely to consider. Research shows that bringing together diverse perspectives increases creativity by causing people to search for new information when they are confronted with these perspectives, and determines better decisions and solutions.

In fact, the very exposure to people who we expect to hold different views from our own can change the way we think. It forces us out of our comfort zones. And thinking differently is often a path to better outcomes.

To illustrate this notion, consider something as simple as city sidewalks. Originally designed for people with full mobility, sidewalks were built as structures slightly elevated above ground level. But when injured World War II veterans returning home to Kalamazoo, Michigan, needed to navigate their city’s terrain to search for jobs, everyday sidewalks became an obstacle. That is, until the introduction of curb cuts — sections of sidewalk built at ground level, sloping upwardly at a gentle incline to meet the level of the main curb. This innovation was life-transforming for returning veterans, enabling them to become employable, and it took a different worldview for it to come to fruition.

And, as anyone who has had to navigate sidewalks while pushing a baby stroller, using crutches or pulling luggage can attest, this innovation, which was only imagined because of a wheelchair-bound veteran’s experience, has come to benefit many.

Other examples abound, such as closed-captioned television and video transcription. Originally designed to help the hearing-impaired, it also benefits those in locations not conducive to listening to audio, non-native speakers of the language, and fans watching their favorite sports teams battle it out in noisy locations. Such innovations that ultimately benefit many came into being only because people with unique life experiences saw a need and envisioned a solution.

The Benefits Of Diverse Teams

Many studies have examined the relationship between diverse teams and performance, and collectively, these studies provide evidence of a positive association.

For example, firms with women in decision-making leadership positions demonstrate stronger financial performance than firms with only men in leadership roles, and when ethnic diversity is added to the mix, the performance boost is even higher. Evidence from well-designed research studies,1 with random assignment to control and experimental groups, provides even more compelling evidence: Across a number of domains (such as solving a mystery or participating in a mock jury), diverse groups outperform their homogenous counterparts.

This line of research also helps explain why that’s the case. For example, in a study focused on small-group decisionmaking, team members were provided with different bits of information relevant to the task. Each member shared a common set of information, and each had unique information known only to them. In order to arrive at the best decision, team members had to share their unique information. Unlike the diverse (mixed race) groups, members of homogenous (allwhite) groups assumed that each team member had the same information, so they didn’t interact in a way that revealed their unique knowledge. Their sameness inhibited creative thinking and reaching the correct solution.

Similar findings have been observed across a range of individual differences and settings, including lab research with people of different political party affiliations, field studies comparing geographic diversity and real-life situations where skin color is the difference factor. Taken as a whole, it’s evident that being exposed to people with different life experiences and different points of view has a powerful effect on causing us to think more deeply and process information at a different level than we do when everyone around us thinks the same way we do.

I have experienced this dynamic first hand. Throughout the course of a writing project with two co-authors (both male, from a country other than mine), we encountered instances where two of the three were aligned on how to approach a topic, while the third saw things completely differently. In other instances, the same dynamic played out but with a different two-versus-one grouping. In all instances, the process of forcing ourselves to challenge our strongly held points of view led ultimately to an agreement and, importantly, to a better end product.

In another instance, I had the opportunity to question a project team about the technology solution they were delivering, where I saw risks that hadn’t occurred to the team. I viewed the technology through the lens of where things could potentially go awry and yield unexpected outcomes for different groups of people. By bringing that different perspective (based on my training as an industrial-organizational psychologist), we were able to demonstrate that the risk was real and to advise on mitigating actions. The result was a better experience and more accurate outcomes for all stakeholders involved.

BETTER OUTCOMES, CHALLENGING PROCESS

These scenarios further illustrate the value of bringing together teams with diverse perspectives based on different experiences. But the process is not always easy. Many times, in both of those scenarios, the inability to see eye-to-eye was frustrating, to say the least, and required perseverance to work through the differences. This is not atypical.

While diverse teams are more likely to deliver better outcomes, it is not necessarily the case that people will therefore prefer working with people who bring varying perspectives. The deeper processing of information that’s ignited by exposure to people who are different, while clearly beneficial, is also cognitively challenging. It’s hard work!

In contrast, when we’re in a group where everyone thinks the same way we do, collaborating is more likely to be easy and fun. It’s enjoyable to be with people who share our views. But while it’s easier, this type of collaboration does not evoke the deep thinking required to get to better outcomes.

Think Diversely About Diversity

While much of the diversity conversation rightly centers around demographic characteristics — age, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, and more — it’s useful to think even more broadly about the types of diversity that can be considered in the context of teams.

For example, teams spanning multiple nationalities bring valuable varying perspectives, particularly for organizations with global operations serving international constituents.

Investing the time to meaningfully understand and appreciate different cultural norms, expectations, ways of working and language nuances can pay huge dividends in better team performance, as well as overcoming the challenges often associated with working among people whose experiences differ from our own.

As another example, cross-disciplinary backgrounds (such as teaming psychologists with technologists) can fuel innovative breakthroughs by challenging the way we view problems and the ways to solve them.

The hybrid world of working that many organizations have adopted out of necessity emerging from the pandemic brings yet another diversity challenge to the forefront: how to work effectively when some team members are office-based and co-located, while others are remote and collaborating virtually. Combining the talents of both types of workers — remote and in-office — requires intention and commitment, but the hard work required for effectively managing diverse ways of working can pay similar dividends to the hard work required to realize the value of other types of diversity in teams.

Placing ourselves in both scenarios — joining in-person teams as a remote worker, and alternately, working in an office while team members are remote — can facilitate an understanding of each group’s unique challenges and how best to overcome them.

DOING THE WORK, REAPING THE BENEFITS

Innovation and superior results require hard work. “Easy” does not lead to innovation and greatness; it leads to stagnation, sameness and complacency. Rather, it’s doing the work of bringing together differing perspectives, and navigating through those differences, that leads to innovation and superior results. L