Boots on the ground
- team performance foundations -

Boots on the ground - team performance foundations

by Dirk Depré - November 22, 2022

One of the first things you do when you start working with a team, is creating working agreements. And so you define "what are the rules", and thus non-negotiables, and "what have we agreed", where agreements gives you some room for interpretation and negotiation . Well, seems like that second thing, those “agreements”, need some extra attention. They need conversations to unlock mutual understanding and alignment.

Here's a story about the morning meeting, daily scrum or whatever name you want to give it. The rule in the process is that the team has a morning meeting to align around the tasks at hand for the upcoming working day, and the agreement is that the get-together starts at 9:00. The thing is that Michael is always late, always joining at 9:03 because he works to the latest possible moment and thus loses track of time. But you know what, Michael thinks that it doesn't matter that he's later because all he sees is people zipping their coffees and talking about the weather and about football, which is a dumb sport after-all says Michael : "Who runs after the ball in order to kick it away again?" He has no interest in that kinda pointless conversations: “Djeezes, I’m so busy, I do such important work and I don’t have time for that, so lets get this morning meeting over with”. Now, it seems that Mary, Sophie and Thomas are zipping their warm beverages because they are waiting for Michael and in the mean time have some important small talk. They often talk about what is going on in the team and their work, and occasionally talk about other stuff as well, like the weather, politics or sports. Yet, nobody ever addresses the fact that Michael drops in later because that Michael -guy is always "so hard working" and does "such important stuff", right?

Well, it seems like the team is not really a team. They should address this and talk about it and both parties should be able to speak from their heart. Because what is really going on is that Michael really would like to start at 9 with the morning meeting because he feels pressured in delivering and don't want to lose time. So maybe it’s a fair thing to discuss that and so maybe the team could come together at 8:55 to have some important time together and tune in with each other before they talk at 9:00 about the upcoming tasks at hand. Most likely that conversation wil lead to the point where the team is offering Michael some help for the things he's doing, so he can also become less stressed and find more time to connect with the team, in which he basically likes every individual.

So… discussing expectations about agreements is key. It helps to see each others viewpoint and it is important to understand them as well. And maybe it triggers other conversations so people can actually better work together in teams rather than thinking that it's best to do it all by them selves and be the hero of the hour.

Research has shown that the ability to perform well as a team has 6 characteristics. Seems that "turn taking in speaking" (equal voice) and "social sensitivity" are crucial. This underlines obviously the efforts we have to put in when aligning around agreements and figuring out each other’s expectations. It shows that in performing teams all individual team members are attuned to the subtle non-verbal gestures and emotional reactions of others in the team. Those kind of things don't happen overnight. It's through conversations that we understand each other a whole lot better and even then, it still is going to be hard. In regards to working together, it seems easy to get on the same page and describe some rules and the agreements, fact of the matter is that staying on that same page requires efforts and doing some hard work through dialogue and conversations. Do the hard work, it pays off in the end. You'll end up having a kick-ass team!