How do you create a high-performance team?

How would you link the conscious business principles with high-performance teams?

I believe the conscious business principles are the human operating platform of high performing teams. They are the human principles and skills on which all high performing teams processes and structures are built upon. They are like the iOS for Mac or Windows for Microsoft. They are the basic structure that underpins all the human interactions in the teams. It’s the philosophy, the guiding philosophy, and the guiding principles that the team members embody, individually and collectively, hopefully inside and outside of work. When team members learn these, of high performing team, team members learn these principles, they will use them. We have many examples of that, where they used this conscious business platform at work, but also they become part of the way they choose to live their lives.

How could Axialent help a team to become a high-performance team?

Axialent has a recommended process of methodology, and we would invite the team to embark on that journey. The first thing we would do is run sort of a diagnostic, where the team currently is in its practices. We would review the processes, we would review roles and responsibilities, we would review purpose, relationships between the team members, and based on what we find out, we would make some recommendations of some developmental practices, individual and collective, to help the team move from being, let’s say, a good team to a high-performing team. We consider the process to be very, very on-the-job practice. So it’s not a lot of teaching or a lot of concept presentation. It’s some principal skills, tools, presentation. Very brief, but mostly, it’s on-the-job practice. So we would support the teams as they run their business, inventing these new principles and practices into the way they do business. So through their practice, they start to build new standards as to how they want to behave collectively and individually.

How long is the process?

If you are really committed to the journey as a team, we can help you have noticeable results in, I would say, in between two and three months. So in 90 days, you will see changes in the right direction, in the way you’re making decisions, in the way you’re talking, you’re discussing your challenges, your issues. In the way people are supporting each other. In the consciousness of the purpose you are trying to serve as a team. And hopefully, you will see enough results in those two to three months to want to take the journey to the next level, which may be making deeper the work with the team, or expanding the work to other teams. So, I would say it’s a series of 90 days prints that we would invite you to embark in, and we will work with you like that. And, as I said before, with a very precise methodology.

What are some of the stumbling blocks?

This team did a lot of work. First, they did a lot of personal work. They made a personal commitment to the transformation of themselves, and then of themselves at the service of the team. And that was noticeable from the very beginning: the intention to have better conversations. How they could take themselves lightly when they realized the were screwing up, so to speak. They would just laugh about themselves and they would say, “Okay, we’re doing it again. Let’s try something different.”

They would give themselves feedback. They would self-correct. They would try something different. That was very quick, and it happened from almost the first time we came together. People starting to look at themselves with different eyes, and to each other with different eyes. What were the stumbling blocks? There were moments when things got really, really tough. There was a major crisis in the business and throughout the region it was like everybody was running for cover, it was like everyone for himself. And they stopped thinking collectively I mean, in the region overall.

In this team, what happened was people started to move away from owning the problem and making themselves part of the problem. We call it being a player or taking unconditional responsibility for co-creating the problem and being part of the solution to start pointing fingers at each other and at others. They reworked it to a kind of victim mentality which, in a way, was true, because they had not created the problem. They had not created the problem. It was somebody else’s fault so to speak. Now, at the same time they were suffering because of the problem.

I remember us having a session. After all the bitching and moaning, I stopped the conversation and asked them, “It’s true. You did not create the problem. Now who is suffering because of the problem?” And then they would look at me with sheepish eye and they would say, “Well, we are.” So then I would tell them, “So who has the biggest incentive to stop the suffering?” And again, they say, “Well, we do.”

Okay, so what do you want to do in the face of that? Nobody’s gonna solve the problem for you. The ones that are suffering are you. What do you want to do? So that would bring us back on track and on to discussing what things could they do to take care of itself.