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Maintaining Team Performance in Tough Times:

 

In the performance review work that we do with intact teams we are picking up a shift in focus in many teams – from ‘building’ to ‘maintaining’ performance. This may not be the priority that any of us want but it is a real life consequence of the economic recession we are working through.

 

With this in mind, we thought you might appreciate an outline of two strategies that we have found are effective where maintenance is the team performance priority –

 

1. Building a common team performance language
2. Dealing with strained relations within the team

 

Both are built on a Belbin team Roles base – where teams are familiar with Team Roles concepts and individual team members know their own and colleagues’ Team Roles styles.

 

The Common Language:

 

When the team has an understanding of the nine Team Roles – both strengths and allowable weaknesses – difficult situations and behaviours can be addressed in performance rather than personal terms, focusing on the issue and minimising the risk of ‘attacking’ the team or individuals – ‘okay, we need to put down our Completer Finisher and wrap the job’. The process of problem solving can be managed by consciously bringing in different Team Role contributions at different stages – ‘we need some more Shaper action here’. A wider range of ideas and solutions can be surfaced by allowing each Team Role space to contribute – ‘Plants, we need some ideas on the table’. When used with confidence the Team Roles terminology creates an effective language for maintaining team performance.

 

Managing Strained Relations:

 

Any change situation will generate mis-matches in assumptions and behaviours. The Belbin Associates team has carried out research in this area and, in Team Roles at Work, has come up with interesting strategies for rectifying situations where strained relations are the consequence.

 

1. Determine difficult peoples’ strengths by identifying their allowable/ unallowable weaknesses and then actively draw on those strengths. The negative behaviour is surprisingly often a call for recognition and using the associated strengths a productive way of satisfying this need. 
2. Build awareness within the team of the positive Team Roles behaviours a disenchanted person brings to the job and encourage the use of these – again a recognition factor.
3. Accept and use (rather than ignoring) the differences always apparent in a group of people – to give all the chance to make meaningful contributions and to build better solutions through challenging and robust debate.
4. Work to first identify and then reduce Team Role double-ups within the team as these are not sustainable long term and will impact on performance and relationships.
5. Where two people fall out involve a third person to review the Team Roles styles of each. Draw on their individual profile reports (Personal Work Styles, Counselling) to build awareness of difference. The third person can ease the tension between strained parties.

 

Reference – Team Roles at Work, Meredith Belbin

Butterworth Heinmann, 1993

 

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