As part of the human condition, we create and migrate towards groups, fraternities and other social assemblages. In the workplace, this pattern is replicated and relied upon to gain maximum impact for the organisation, whilst efficiently using the resource of the individuals within those groupings.
Not the emotionally intelligent team
Many groups created in organisations are packed with ability, brilliance and specialist skills, and many of these teams perform at a high level. Whilst we observe these successes, we often witness and accept a level of strife, challenge and dysfunction within those same teams. Many organisations are prepared to accept this and let their exceptionally talented teams continue performing to perceived high productivity levels whilst recognising the teams' own challenging internal dynamics.
As organisations observe the performance of their own teams in this context, they may note the performance of their competitors' teams - outperforming theirs. Whilst recognising this scenario, how often do we hear people refer to negative team dynamics as, "It's always been like this," and saying, "that's the way it is in our field"? This may be described as "tolerated intolerance". Why should we accept poor team dynamics and what would we get if we didn't?
What is the emotionally intelligent team?
Emotional intelligence in a team is not about being nice. It is about the individuals in a team understanding the role of their feelings and others' feelings and how they play out in the way we work. It is the ability to recognise and interpret the complex system of beliefs, values and approaches to thinking that governs human behaviour. It is also the ability to manage and influence the behaviour of oneself and others.
Shifting from standing out to outstanding
For the unconscious mind to accept a new set of behaviours and beliefs, we need to be convinced of their practical value. Moving your target team from tolerated intolerance to an emotionally intelligent state requires training to be delivered in conjunction with a planned business offsite. There are three phases:
Phase 1: Learning and training phase
Phase 2: The team works together on core business issues
Phase 3: Delivered, in presentation format, the business issue outcomes
Phase 1: The learning phase - the motivation to change
For individuals who have functioned within the dynamic of tolerated intolerance, engaging in the process of change can be perceived as daunting and lacking value.
Firstly, the team needs to arrive at a point where they recognise the tolerated intolerance of each other and agree as individuals and as a team that the current situation is counter productive and positive change is possible. Secondly, participants should be clear what the benefits, individually and as a team will be, once they have moved to the higher level of communication found within emotional intelligence. The motivation to change gives the team a common mission.
Phase 2: Learning tools
1) The human communications model
It is common within groups for individuals to experience stress and frustration because others don't see the issues and challenges the way they do. It is rarely explained to us, in practical terms, how we acquire and make sense of the events around us and yet, fundamentally each of us absorb, delete, distort and generalise different experiences in our own unique way. Once considered, the full implications of this creates an atmosphere in which new levels of tolerance and understanding as to how other people have a very different view of the world are established.
For instance, ask a group of people what the word beauty means and you will get a series of very different descriptions, people will talk of sights, events, places, people, and items. This one word is very intimately and personally interpreted, and this is only one word!
2) Thinking styles
If you ask a taxi driver, racing driver and car designer to drive a particular car, they will all make very differing observations of their experience. This module will encourage participants to understand that people gather information in different ways. Talking to the taxi driver about the spring and damper rates on the car won't get you very far, but talking to him about turning circle, seating capacity and luggage space will get you all the attention you need.
By recognising this difference in thinking styles, the concept is developed further such that the team starts to recognise the different thinking styles and develops the skills and techniques to communicate in the way most appropriate for the receiver and not most appropriate for themselves.
3) Success lessons
If you travel through life looking for problems, you will probably come across many of them. Explore the attitudes of outstanding success and practise them. By adopting this process, people can choose how they wish to react and respond to the world around them, hence, finding greater levels of understanding, flexibility and resourcefulness.
4) Feedback
There are times when things go wrong, don't work out or could be done better. By recognising that there are only results from any experience, and that the concept of failure hinders the learning process, the ability to motivate staff and colleagues whilst delivering feedback concerning challenges is a very powerful leadership tool. The feedback process empowers workers to manage relationships in all directions allowing organisations to benefit from the ‘courageous conversation'.
5) Perceptual positioning
Perceive what others experience. Imagine how powerful it could be to climb inside a colleagues mind, see the world the way they do and experience events the way they do. Great military leaders throughout history have imagined what it would be like to be their adversary, what the ground looks like from the enemies viewpoint and then acted accordingly.
This technique is very powerful in business, breaking open challenging relationships and growing great ones. By being the other person in a relationship and offering feedback, to oneself, it is possible to take on a greater responsibility for the dynamic in the relationship and then cause it to change.
6) The team's "way of being"
Taking a closer look at the culture of the team and its default behaviours, then, imagine an individual that has a fundamental belief - I am a survivor! When the belief is strong enough, it becomes behaviour and is thus a "way of being".
Living out "I am a survivor!" can deliver strong resilience to the individual, independence of thought, initiative and creativity. However, there may be some downsides such as to cavalier with risk, a lack of due diligence and even recklessness. Teams also develop these "ways of being", and by comparing and contrasting these and creating a shared vision of a more appropriate way of being, team dynamics are attached to a chosen team belief and behaviour.
Phase 3: Practicing the new skills
By this stage we have established that there is the motivation to change. We understand the gap from the current situation, and we have a clear frame around the future state. The issue now is to satisfy the individual convincers for each participant in the team.
This is achieved when the team, fresh with the new skills, starts work on the offsite working projects. It is here that we see the team come back out through the tunnel and on to the pitch for the second half. Managed well, the offsite work will be of a calibre never achieved before. Highlighting this, one creates a compelling metaphor for successful, unconscious adoption of the new emotionally intelligent team.
Adam Turner, senior consultant
Performance Unlimited
www.Performance-Unlimited.biz
