2 | Tips to Keep Your Team Energized
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• As team members gain clarity and begin to
work together, they may start to experience
storming. This is when struggles emerge
over tasks, personalities or competing
expectations. At this point the team needs
strong and impartial guidance to help
it address and resolve conflict. This is a
critical stage to get the team to build trust
by creating a safe place to speak up, a
willingness to accept diverse viewpoints and
recognize what's best for the larger purpose.
• As trust builds, the team can focus in earnest
on the tasks at hand, and as it defines what
progress looks like, its leader needs to focus
more on removing roadblocks that impact
the team's performance as a whole. This is
the norming stage when the focus shifts to
delivering on the larger purpose.
• A performing team is one that has shifted into
high gear by adopting a clarity of purpose, a
high regard for all contributions, a willingness
to enable, and a way to deal with conflict that
ends up producing better results. At this
point, team motivation is achieved by being
as self-sufficient as possible. Team leads are
most effective by helping to maintain visibility
of the team's success.
Teams can certainly energize the overall
workforce, but so can individual contributors, and
highly motivated individual contributors are great
teammates. Teaching your top management
talent how to bring out the best in people they
hire is largely dependent on knowing how to
develop individual talent through coaching
and performance goals. And one of the things
coaches do is motivate people to stretch beyond
their comfort zones. In his book, "Courage Goes
to Work", Bill Treasurer talks about developing
your staff by helping to fill their three buckets of
courage:
• The try bucket — the courage of first attempts
(having initiative)
• The trust bucket — the courage of relying on
the actions of others (being receptive and
open)
• The tell bucket — the courage of conviction
(truth telling with confidence)
Managers/coaches know how to jump first and be
an example, create safety nets for first attempts,
make room for stretch goals and adjust the
degree of comfort or discomfort to nudge people
in the right directions.
High-performing teams plus motivated individuals
makes a great recipe for an energized workforce!