- So just like individuals, teams need to have conditions
where they're continually encourages to stretch
and to grow.
To achieve more than they otherwise thought possible.
Now traditional performance management depends on
command and control processes, where a manager
is the core of the team's performance activities.
So in a traditional managements environment, the team
wants to achieve more either because the manager told them,
or because the team wants to please the manager.
But that won't cut it in a rapidly changing world.
If the manager is the core of the team's activities,
the team will be continually dependent on the manager
to tell them what to do.
And there's no way that a team can move quickly enough
if it needs a single person to determine what
they're doing on a daily basis.
The key to adaptive high performance for teams is trust.
Here we can learn a lot for manager-less organizations
such as Vall Software and Gore Industries,
which encourage workers to self-organize around solving
the problems that are most important to the organization.
The more that leaders can articulate the challenges
that need to be met, rather than the specifics of how
to meet them, the more adaptive the organization's
workers and teams can be.
Managers can help teams to set higher goals
than they might on their own.
And then the managers can get out of the way
while the team works to reach those goals.
Now I'm not suggesting that adaptive organizations
can completely do away with managers, but if managers want
their teams to become high performing, they need
to build a greater environment for trust.
So here are three ways to increase the trust level in a team
in the context of urging towards greater performance.
First, once a team has collaborated to determine its goals
and deliverables, encourage them to aim higher.
How can the team together set an even higher level of
achievement for themselves?
And what incentives can they be offering themselves
to achieve that higher goal?
Second, encourage team members to have the kind of dialogue
that identifies when each team member is executing on
their individual plans, and when they're not.
As a manager you need to encourage the team not to create
an environment of blame, but to work together to show up
each team members weaknesses and
accentuate their strengths.
That may mean that the team has to continually redistribute
tasks to ensure that the most important work gets done.
Then third, help the team to continually recalibrate
and adapt its near term goals and deliverables in
the context of tight deadlines and limited resources.
The more the team can see the path towards reaching
their stretch goals, the more encouraged
they're going to be that it's a reachable target.
I hope it's clear that I'm not suggesting to do
completely away with managers, although I do want
to encourage every manager to determine just
how much direction any team really needs.
But if you really want to have a high performing team,
you'll need to help them to establish
a set of aggressive goals.
And then you'll need to get out of the way,
while they collaborate to accomplish them.