Five Key Dynamics That Set Successful Teams Apart
The five key dynamics that set successful teams apart are:
- Psychological safety: Can we take risks on this team without feeling insecure or embarrassed?
- Dependability: Can we count on each other to do high quality work on time?
- Structure & clarity: Are goals, roles, and execution plans on our team clear?
- Meaning of work: Are we working on something that is personally important for each of us?
- Impact of work: Do we fundamentally believe that the work we’re doing matters?
Source: ReWork
Focus on safety first:
The most important factor in team success, by far, is psychological safety.
Safety means risk taking is OK.
Remarkable success requires risk taking.
Skillful leaders build learning environments where risk taking is allowed, encouraged, and honored.
10 ways to make risk taking safe:
- Ask yourself, “How can I make it safe around here?”
- Listening like an elephant.
- Ask questions that begin with “what” or “how”.
- Nod and say, “I hear you.”
- Provide short encouraging responses.
- Don’t interrupt.
- Talk about personal mistakes.
- Begin with openness:
- I could be wrong.
- What do you think?
- Here’s an option.
- How can I help?
- Practice humility.
- Ask questions about people, not just projects.
- Say, “I could be wrong,” and mean it.
- Talk about things outside work like sports, restaurants, or movies.
- Go nuts with gratitude.
- Daniel Coyle writes that a small thank-you increases generosity by two times.
- Express public gratitude to the least powerful people in the room.
- Address tough issues publicly when appropriate. If everyone already knows, have public conversations. Focus on the future, not the past.
- Schedule one-on-ones at least once a month.
- Do menial work. Clean the kitchen and make the coffee. Ray Kroc, founder of McDonalds, cleaned the mop bucket.
Bonus: If you want to build safe environments, do serious work with gravitas and joy. Laugh more.
How might leaders build safe environments without nurturing weakness?
Many items on the list are adapted from Daniel Coyles book, The Culture Code.
Enjoyed your “Say, “I could be wrong,” and mean it.” so many times we use “I could be wrong” as a pre-statement for “I bet I’m right” 🙂 we cover our cockyness with understatement.. shame on us!
Thanks Ken. Sincerity goes a long way to creating safety and causes people to make allowances for weaknesses. Cheers
Thanks both for this – I have just recently seen the effect it has for people in an organization going from a safe to a chaotic and insecure environment. It’s massive…
What I find striking in its clarity is, that the employees are seeing that management does not provide leadership.
The company is in for a rough ride.
Dan –
I am playing with ideas for simple reframing of my Dutchman game around Servant Leadership and talking with two consultants who are working with Trust and with Accountability as part of their near-term organizational improvement initiatives. Keeping it simple is always the goal, if we are looking for actionable change and choice.
I do not think they are aware of your blog, so I am forwarding the url to them. This, as usual, is good solid stuff. Thanks for the ideas!
When needing explanations, rather that saying “Explain this to me”, try “Help me understand”. Couple that with “How can I help?”
Ask more questions than you give answers. Establish metrics and KPIs to monitor the presence of psychological safety in the team and the results it is creating. See doing as learning. On that point, reinforce with the team that not only will they deliver some kind of work product but they will also learn something in the process – and that’s a key outcome of the initiative they are on and will be an indicator of success. Learn Conversational Intelligence by Judith Glaser. And get a trusted, external view (hire Dan!) to provide you with the impartial voice and lens you need into your leadership.
Great stuff as always!
Another great post, Dan. What strikes me about these five “key dynamics” is not that they are or can be imposed by leadership, or that they seem to spontaneously arise or self-develop within a team, but that they are or should be practiced fundamental abilities based on values already possessed by people who comprise the team. That is, if they are practiced abilities in the team it means they are highly likely to also be practiced outside of the team, in other relationships including marriage and parenting. If we highly desire these “key dynamics” (attributes) in our workforce, then everyone should also understand and appreciate their importance to be practiced in the environment in which the people we eventually hire to join the team are raised up. This post is something that everyone should realize, “I can take home with me.”
Embrace mistakes and learn from them, because you will not learn otherwise.
Creativity begins when people are relaxed. Encouraging others to giving silly answers at the start of a brainstorm session can bring laughter, relaxation and rapport.
I liked, Jim Edmonds comment, ” it has to be practiced”…if the leader is not practiced but the subordinate members are, what are some thoughts regarding the bridging of this mindfulness gap? Especially when the team is comprised of individuals who have led as servant leaders?