– The Hay Group:
The 2008 Best Companies for Leaders survey
Aligning Your Teams for Peak Performance
In these unprecedented times our organisations – and the people in them – are looking for leadership more than ever.
As managers we need to be operating at our best. Offering clarity and certainty, maintaining morale, engagement, productivity and service levels, sometimes with a reduced headcount. All at a time when our people admit to understandable fears and concerns. And in an era when the old models of power no longer work.
What Works Now
Research shows that the organisations most successful now are creating the right working climate for everyone to perform at their best by:
- Enabling agility and responsiveness
- Leveraging a mix of leadership styles
- Concentrating on what they can control
- Uniting teams behind a common strategic purpose
- Building collaboration among leaders in different parts of the organisation.
Team Working is Key
We see that organisations increasingly require an agile, responsive workforce, and rely upon the effectiveness of cross-functional teams.
The Team Goal Alignment Workshop is designed specifically to meet this need. We use the Extended DISC® Team Alignment survey methodology, conceived to generate:
- An analysis of your team against 12 dimensions such as Initiative, Commitment and Responsibility, identifying critical areas that need attention right now
- A deeper understanding of your team players’ roles and behavioural styles, revealing mismatches in perception and expectation
- A map of your team’s true feelings, enabling you to craft verbal and non-verbal communications to have most benefit and impact
- A profile of the leadership behaviours that are the best fit for your organisation’s needs, ensuring change is embedded and sustainable
- A picture of key staff development needs, allowing you to prioritise, plan and maximise ROI on any development initiative
- A comparison of your team’s current effectiveness against its potential, an action plan to follow, and a means of tracking progress, so you can maintain high-potential performance consistently over time.
Findings elicited by this methodology are summarised in a comprehensive report and form the basis of a collaborative workshop. The format of the workshops is devised to equip you with the tools you need for today’s workplace; and to build and develop high-performing teams in the most time-efficient way.
Case Study I
Team Without Authority
In this software design company, product development time was longer than the industry average.
Whilst the company had invested heavily in equipment and in the wellbeing of staff, any individuals recruited were consistently perceived as less effective than their peers in competitor organisations.
The Team Alignment tool was employed to identify the source of the issue, and the Goal Ladder Questionnaire completed by company management plus the manger of the system design team.
Analysis of the questionnaires demonstrated that the teams had not actually been granted sufficient authority to make key decisions the management had assumed they’d make. Thus time had been spent in several project meetings during which the design teams were waiting on decisions from the management team about issues the management team had assumed the design teams were resolving themselves.
The solution was to redefine areas of authority, this time in greater detail than had been done previously. Consequently, there was substantially less need for meetings, and the effectiveness of the design teams increased to the industry average, resulting in operational improvements and better profitability.
How it Works
First, team members will each complete the confidential Team Alignment questionnaire survey.
After completion of the questionnaire, we produce a comprehensive report summarising its results that we then discuss with you prior to facilitation of the workshop.
The interpreted results will be presented and discussed during the workshop, which will also include a session on action planning.
Additionally, if required, we can train and accredit your people to interpret the results and run future feedback sessions in-house.
The workshop can be held at your place of business, often over half a day, which minimises cost and time away from work.
Once the report has been produced, a typical process involves:
- An initial conversation about intended results with the appropriate business leader, identifying the gaps between the present and the ideal situation
- Following this discussion, selection of the team’s most important development needs
- Scheduling the team facilitation session
- Running the feedback session for the entire team at the same time
- Facilitation of a team discussion to drill down into the conclusions and creating a plan for future actions.
The workshop is designed as a stand-alone session but individual reviews or later follow-up sessions can be booked if required.
Case Study II
Culture Change in Electronics Wholesaler
Though the business had more than doubled in recent consecutive years, the general business recession prompted a greater focus on organisational strategy.
Managers had previously been focused on introducing new product lines, solving individual product-related problems, and general management of operations, administration and finance. They realised that some intervention was needed if they were to meet their future business goals.
Extended DISC® Team Alignment was employed to measure the team’s current effectiveness compared to how they felt it should be working. Team members undertook the survey and results showed that the team was currently operating at the level of Functional Group compared to the goal of Self-managing Team. Major gaps were identified to be in the areas of:
In this case, the team managed the facilitation of the process itself. It was clear the management team would need to change in order to achieve its objectives.
During a two-day workshop, the management team used the Team Alignment survey results to prioritise development needs, given the gap between the present and the ideal situations. Collectively, the group devised a set of measures to adopt, including a new management team operational policy, that would close the gap.
A year later, progress was reviewed. Results were found to be better than expected. When comparing the team’s starting position to how they functioned a year later, the following was found:
Next Steps
If you’d like to know more simply enter your details below to request further information, and we’ll be in touch very shortly.