Are you working in an organization where leaders are good at building powerful teams? Do the leaders in your organization create high performance teams?
One of the most powerful questions one can ask oneself is “How do I create teams that promote individual and collective performance?” Emotionally intelligent leaders create high performing committed teams.
Are you good at developing teams? Do you inspire your team by making work social and enjoyable? Are you adept at creating teams that produce intended results?
Defining Common Purpose
The best teams spend a significant amount of time and effort exploring, shaping and agreeing on a mutually defined purpose. This activity continues throughout the life of the team. Research on failed teams, shows that they rarely develop a common purpose.
The best teams also take their common purpose and translate it into specific performance goals. These goals relate to the common purpose and build on each another, moving the team forward towards achievement and creating powerfully motivating and energizing steps to success. The achievement of goals along the way builds momentum, fosters trust among members and helps build continued commitment
Specific performance goals may be such things as bringing a product to market in record time, a 50% decrease in customer complaints, or achieving a zero-defect rate while cutting costs by 40%. Transforming broad directives into specific goals provide first steps for forming the identity and purpose of the team. As the team progresses with small wins, they reaffirm their shared commitment.
Specific Goals Provide Clarity and Focus
The combination of purpose and specific goals is essential to performance. Each depends on the other. Clarity of goals helps keep a team on track, focused and accountable. The broader, overlying aspirations of a team’s purpose can provide meaning and emotional energy.
When people are working together toward a common objective, trust and commitment follow. Members hold themselves responsible both as individuals and as a team for the team’s performance. This sense of mutual accountability produces alignment towards achieving a common goal. All members share in the rewards. People who participate in effective teams find the experience energizing and motivating in ways that their usual jobs could never match.
On the other hand, groups that are established as a “team” but that do not have a clear common purpose rarely become effective teams. Only when appropriate performance goals are set does the process of discussing the goals and the approaches to them give team members a clear choice: they can disagree with a goal and opt out, or they can pitch in and become accountable with and to their teammates.
Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a transformational leader who builds powerful teams with a common purpose. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence, and who inspires people to become happily engaged with the strategy and vision of the company.
Comments