Is Your Team Running on Empty?
We’ve all experienced it. The high of a great teambuilding event where you leave feeling energized and convinced that, finally, your team has the knowledge and motivation needed to address and let go of team issues and to take accountability for performing at a higher level. You are sure that from this point on things will be better (and will stay better). Hallelujah! You say to yourself as you walk out of the session, with great anticipation for the next day where you know you will all hit the ground running.
Unfortunately, we’ve also all experienced what often happens next… the teambuilding hangover of disappointment and frustration when we discover that just a few short weeks (or days or hours!) later, team members are reverting back to their unproductive behaviors, and nothing has really changed at all.
Teambuilding is like dieting – it often results in a yo-yo effect of highs and lows when team members don’t ‘stick’ with the diet prescribed to them at the teambuilding session. Like many failed diets, teams can often experience even lower morale and poorer performance following a teambuilding session when they discover that the ‘event’ did not produce the change they expected it to and end up disappointed in themselves, their fellow team members, and their leaders.
If your goal is to affect real behavior change and enable improved and sustained team performance and consistently better results, then teambuilding does not work. Say it with me. Teambuliding. Does. Not. Work!
So what does work? Making team development and ‘how’ we work together a daily priority by enabling ongoing dialogue, focus and accountability within the team to achieve improved team effectiveness. It requires moving away from the “event” of a teambuilding session and moving towards an ongoing process that ensures each and every team member has the same and clear understanding of, and takes accountability for, the behaviors and practices that are most critical to their team’s effectiveness, and most critical to creating a healthy and thriving culture. It requires every team member truly understanding the fact that the culture in which they work doesn’t just ‘happen’ it is created and reinforced daily by each and every person in the organization. It requires every team member truly recognizing that the results and environment that are produced, are produced by their behaviors, practices, beliefs and attitudes.
There no quick fix or single teambuilding event that will enable improved performance and a healthier culture, and it does require work. BUT with a clear process it doesn’t have to be complicated. It CAN BE SIMPLE.
I have outlined a 5 step process you can implement to tap into the very best of your teams in this complimentary on-demand webinar 5 Steps to High Performance Teams . Take the time to watch it and you’ll gain a proven process to enable improved team performance.
Until next time!
Nicole Bendaly
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