Teams are the fundamental building blocks of a modern organisation. 

Finding a way of aligning everyone in a team to work effectively can be tough. Team leaders need everyone to be accountable for their roles and relationships and deal with issues in an honest, authentic way.

Building effective teams is not a set-and-forget exercise. It is ongoing work that requires commitment and focus.

The adapt team model identifies the six attributes of an effective team. These are essential for building a cohesive and productive work environment. 

Trust and Psychological Safety

Psychological safety is a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking; people can admit their mistakes, acknowledge their weaknesses, and ask for help when it’s needed. Building trust and psychological safety in the team is an essential first step for any team to be effective.

Where there is trust and team members feel safe:

• Innovation improves
• Team members learn quickly from their own and each other’s mistakes
• Problems are overcome quickly
• People are more engaged

In a team where there is a low level of trust and psychological safety, we see innovation and learning stalls while gossip and politics can breed. Building trust between people and an environment of psychological safety takes time and the preparedness of all parties to be vulnerable. It requires the team leader to actively build a culture that allows people to feel safe and bring their whole self to work.

Amy Edmondson, professor at Harvard Business School, first identified the concept of psychological safety in work teams in 1999. Since then, she has observed how companies with a trusting workplace perform better. Psychological safety isn’t about being nice, she says. It’s about giving candid feedback, openly admitting mistakes, and learning from each other. And she argues that kind of organisational culture is increasingly important in the modern economy.

Alignment of Purpose and Values

The emotional glue that binds the team’s culture is its sense of identity and purpose. Why do they exist as a team? How do they agree to behave?

Ensuring all team members share a purpose and values is vital for working together to achieve common goals. Every team member has their personal values and ideas on how a team should behave. Being explicit on the team’s values ensures everyone is on the same page.

If all team members agree on the non-negotiable truths for team behaviour, their team will communicate more effectively, improve collaboration and be in a better position to navigate through conflict.

Effective Stewardship

One of the most powerful capabilities you can instil in your team is effective stewardship - how you run your meetings and manage your work. Effective stewardship can take a lot of pain and noise out of the system, removing hours and energy wasted in unproductive meetings, poor decision-making and confusion around who is doing what.

If you want your team to be effective, you need to define meeting behaviours and agree on how to use them. Having agreed behaviours you consistently enforce can significantly improve how your team solves problems and makes decisions. They ensure preparation, focus and dealing with bad habits that may have crept into the team.

Some example behaviours include:

• Turn your phone off
• Be present
• Come prepared – complete any pre-work
• Complete work you committed to finishing
• Contribute
• Arrive on time
• Don’t talk over people. Listen when others are talking.

You can read more about running great meetings here.

Clarity of Roles

Members of high-performing teams know what they have to do to contribute to team purpose. Clear roles and tasks in a team help everyone to understand their responsibilities and how to be successful. Who does what, who is accountable for what?

Meaningful Progress

Measuring team progress and celebrating achievements helps maintain motivation and engagement. The knowledge they are achieving results and contributing to the purpose of the team and organisation. No one wants to work for no reward! It isn’t sustainable.

The adapt team assessment allows the team leader to capture meaningful metrics to show their team’s progress. Objectives are another example of measuring team progress. Team leaders work with their team to set quarterly and annual team objectives to support the organisation’s objectives. These are captured in the platform and allows the team to measure progress using the key results. Some metrics will be specific to the type of team. A sales and marketing team might have metrics around time to convert or number of leads generated from a marketing initiative. A software team might have utilisation of a revamped feature.

High Levels of Accountability

Team members must hold themselves and each other accountable for their actions and commitments, building a culture of responsibility. Accountability is the cornerstone of effective teamwork and the final success factor of a high-performing team. When team members take ownership of their actions and responsibilities, it leads to better collaboration, improved performance and a healthier work environment.

All the elements of the adapt team model need to be in place to build accountability.

• Establishing trust & psychological safety to allow for honest feedback and candid conversations
• Agreeing the values of the team and encouraging behaviour aligned with them
• Establishing role clarity and who is responsible for what
• Using the adapt platform for task management
• Tracking action items and providing status updates to allow clear communication and prioritise focus and visibility
• Holding peer catch ups to have collaborative conversations, build trust and give and receive feedback to one another
• Charting & updating work processes that sit under your role accountabilities
• Conducting team meetings using the adapt platform provides opportunity to have focused team conversations that is central to the work of the team

Team Assessment

We use the team assessment to evaluate a team's performance. This assessment helps identify strengths and areas for improvement, guiding teams on where to focus their development efforts. The assessment is confidential, ensuring individual responses are not identifiable, to encourage honest feedback.

The adapt platform supports the team to build the discipline and habits to be a cohesive, high-performing team.
Building effective teams is an ongoing process that requires commitment and continuous effort.