In my previous article I shared our experience with our programme INTELLIGENT THINKING INTELLIGENT ACTION in Private Banking. The purpose of the programme was to bring Energy, Innovation and Action to the team in order to increase financial results. The goal was achieved with an increase in results of up to 25% in transactions.

In this article I want to share our experience with creating teamwork and trust. In a recent meeting with the managers of the Division we received amazing feedback about the change in teamwork:

• how the people are better bonded,

• work better together,

• are more efficient

• and have more trust and support.

Groups and Teams

People working together usually call themselves a team. In fact they are just a group of people that work fulltime or part on the same project and occasionally collaborate.

The idea of Teamwork is very significant for most organisations although it is not the reality of work. Most people simply form groups because they have to deliver on a specific project. Each person works individually and delivers their part of work without connecting or supporting the next person to deliver a common outcome. They miss the essence of the “team”: trust and shared goals.

From my experience with the people it is a big challenge to create, and sustain, real teams out of groups. Looking back at history and where we are today, we are in our individualistic era where people are used to work for themselves, pursuing their personal dreams, goals and targets. In our current civilization’s doctrine work is either what I must do to survive or the space where I can thrive. There is no such idea as common goals for the community or achieving something for the common good without individual recognition. Such ideas belong to the past of the human civilisation and although people talk about them, the world is perceived through individual achievements and success.

So our task was to create a culture of Teamwork within each “team”.

Identifying strengths and points to work on

Our first task was to run a simple poll across all teams to measure their sense of “teamwork”, “energy” and “freedom” in their environment. We then asked everybody the same question in an open conversation and recorded their answers. Everybody had to give an answer and they could also discuss between themselves their opinion. We facilitated and maintained that safe space to let everybody say what they believed, and then rudimentary calculated the average as a baseline to work from.

We received interesting answers to most of our questions and took them all into account as we developed the programme. However, there were two questions when used in combination which we believed that indicated to us that there was a potentially willingness and a sense of readiness to work on the essence of being a team:

1. “How would rate your relatedness?” Most people rated their relatedness very high about 8,5/10 because they had been at the same company for ten years or more.

2. “How would you rate your feeling of autonomy?” the average was low about 5,5/10.

Their answers were a strong indication that the people had a lot of potential to build real teamwork because they were feeling related (familiar, connected) but not so autonomous (free to act, responsible).

Our strategy was to (1) build on the existing relatedness and (2) work on developing a sense of responsibility and the right to make choices in that environment which would lead to a higher sense of autonomy.

Discussing together working together

Preparing a conducive space was critical, especially as it was the first time that the people in the company were asked openly how autonomous they felt there. The question initially looked a bit awkward but when we started a discussion in the group and they started opening up and talking about it, ideas and feelings were shared as well as examples from their experiences.

The next step in our process was to suggest a number of simple ways to incorporate some basic habits in their everyday work, like:

• Having coffee for 5 minutes with a different person every day talking about anything but work

• Visit 1-2 colleagues per day at their office to solve an issue instead of making a phone call.

• At every session they were asked to bring cases from their everyday work. We asked them to share the issue and then we facilitated the process of getting ideas.

• The managers of each team were asked to organize a “Superlinear Meeting” once a month for 30-60 minutes to ask for new ideas from all the members and discuss completely new ideas for improvement.

• We trained them in “asking for feedback” on how to improve on specific tasks.

After a couple of months the results were fantastic: all the people understood the importance of getting to know each other personally and connect with their colleagues as human beings.

They have started asking for advice, ideas and feedback from their peers in the teams and sharing their knowledge and ideas between them. In this way everybody knew that they could ask for help from the others when they faced a difficulty and that they could count on each other.

The more extroverts started sharing information they had picked up from other Business Units with all the others in order to be better prepared for new projects.

In fact everybody increased communication with others in the Unit; the morning coffee with a different colleague every day became a habit and resulted in an efficient way of preempting problems because everybody knew which project was in progress and was prepared.

People felt much more supported between them and would trust each other more; the habit of sharing their issue and asking for ideas expanded and became a common practice.

The realization that EVERYBODY worked to achieve ONE result as ONE TEAM was now clear in their perception.  

Final thoughts

My key learnings:

• Building sustainable Teamwork in our era of Individualism is an ambitious and very complex goal. Most “team building” exercises offer a lot of fun for a weekend but zero results when the fun weekend is over not to mention medium to long term.

• Teamwork requires Trust and Connectedness among other qualities and the culture of individual achievement is by itself against the very essence of Team.

• Highly competitive cultures may achieve great results but not Teamwork and Trust because it is always about individual achievement and reward.

• Purpose might be a good ground for building Teamwork but how often can people we see real purpose in their organisations except for charities and a few non- profit maybe?

• My experience as a Coach and Consultant is that there must be some specific traits in a culture (like relatedness for example) that create a basis for Trust and Connectedness which may lead to successful and sustainable Teamwork.

In our case, we used our diagnostic tools to find out about the Culture and develop a specialized programme. We applied our Code 15 methodology to build new habits that ended up in a successful bonding of the people and their true intention to be and work as a Team!

I will be happy to share tips and ideas with any colleagues who undertake similar projects.

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