The Achieving Team

Source: joiseyshowaa, Creative Commons

“I would perform better if…” This is a good opening statement to ask members of your team to complete in order to find out how well everyone is focusing.

Thomas Gilbert, author of Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance, found that

• Thirty-five percent of people would answer, “[I would perform better if] I knew what the exact expectations of the job were and had more specific job feedback and better access to information.”
• Twenty-six percent of workers would respond, “[I would perform better if] I had better tools and resources to work with.”
• Fourteen percent said, “[I would perform better if] I had better financial and non-financial incentives for doing my work.”

What it Takes

Expectations, feedback, and incentives are key requirements for building an achievement-oriented team. Organizations expend a great amount of time and money on training people to help them become better achievers. They should also channel resources into teaching leaders how to form realistic expectations, provide proper support, and set achievable goals with appropriate incentives. Organizations and their leaders continually try to fix the individual, but if they would just change the environment (information, resources, and incentives), they would see drastic changes and results.

The good news is that these factors are easily developed and integrated into the life of a team. Let’s take a look at how to get this done.

Energizing the Team with Vision

As we have indicated earlier, people are hungry to be led and will gravitate toward leaders who have a clear vision. Knowing “why we do these things around here” helps put management’s expectations for individuals and teams into a meaningful context.

Authors James Kouzes and Barry Posner (The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations) found that “when leaders effectively communicate a vision—whether it’s to one person, a small group, or a large organization—that vision has very potent effects. We’ve found that when leaders clearly articulate their vision for the organization, constituents report significantly higher levels of the following:

• Job satisfaction
• Motivation
• Commitment
• Loyalty
• Esprit de corps
• Clarity about the organization’s values
• Pride in the organization
• Organizational productivity

Clearly, teaching others about the vision produces powerful results.”

People want the best in themselves called out. They will rally around a communicated vision and work hard to support it. The vision also establishes a foundation of shared commitment and focus if and when times get rough.