What does it mean to be a high performing team in today’s business climate? It’s very different than what it used to be. Sure, the ability to get along with others is still paramount but it goes beyond that. The disruption that technology has caused in so many industries has created a business mandate to build teams that create and adapt to the changes needed to keep the company relevant and competitive in the marketplace.
Teams have to move from being siloed structures that rely on clear roles and responsibilities and hierarchy to collaborative and autonomously operating organisms, flexing, moving and resizing based on the needs of the business. To do that, leaders have to cultivate a very different culture than what may currently exist for their teams.
Key things to focus on include:
Build positive intelligence. Positive intelligence is a term coined by best-selling author, speaker and coach, Shirzad Chamine. In his book, “Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours,” he discusses the evolution of mindset from focusing solely on functional intelligence, to including emotional intelligence to now adding positive intelligence. This is the ability to spot opportunities in the face challenges. You can see how critical that might be when the things change so rapidly and often, the changes are seen as dangerous vs. advantageous.
Leverage positive language for development. Speaking with former Navy Seal, bestselling author and entrepreneur, Brandon Webb, he shared how one of the toughest schools, sniper training, used positive language to decrease their failure rates from 30% to only one percent. He shared that pointing out mistakes when someone is in the middle of learning something new doesn’t help them do it better. Instead, they focused on showing the trainees how to do it right. When asked by trainees what would be a good score, they stopped sharing the average score of graduates which was in the 90’s and simply stated it was a 100. This raised the trainees expectations of themselves, in turn, raising their score.
Prioritize decision making over fear. In a culture where being right is paramount, you eliminate the space to experiment and innovate. This can be death to a company. You have to value decision making over fear of being blamed for being wrong. In a fast-paced environment with a lot of unknown variables, focusing on the perfect answer is a recipe for failure.
In his most recent book, “Mastering Fear: A Navy Seal’s Guide,” Webb lays out a structured approach to using fear as a fuel to go beyond what we may have thought was possible. “Fear can be a set of manacles, holding you prisoner”, writes Webb. “Or it can be a slingshot, catapulting you on to greatness.”
What does it mean to be a high performing team in today’s business climate? It’s very different than what it used to be. Sure, the ability to get along with others is still paramount but it goes beyond that. The disruption that technology has caused in so many industries has created a business mandate to build teams that create and adapt to the changes needed to keep the company relevant and competitive in the marketplace.
Teams have to move from being siloed structures that rely on clear roles and responsibilities and hierarchy to collaborative and autonomously operating organisms, flexing, moving and resizing based on the needs of the business. To do that, leaders have to cultivate a very different culture than what may currently exist for their teams.
Key things to focus on include:
Build positive intelligence. Positive intelligence is a term coined by best-selling author, speaker and coach, Shirzad Chamine. In his book, “Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours,” he discusses the evolution of mindset from focusing solely on functional intelligence, to including emotional intelligence to now adding positive intelligence. This is the ability to spot opportunities in the face challenges. You can see how critical that might be when the things change so rapidly and often, the changes are seen as dangerous vs. advantageous.
Leverage positive language for development. Speaking with former Navy Seal, bestselling author and entrepreneur, Brandon Webb, he shared how one of the toughest schools, sniper training, used positive language to decrease their failure rates from 30% to only one percent. He shared that pointing out mistakes when someone is in the middle of learning something new doesn’t help them do it better. Instead, they focused on showing the trainees how to do it right. When asked by trainees what would be a good score, they stopped sharing the average score of graduates which was in the 90’s and simply stated it was a 100. This raised the trainees expectations of themselves, in turn, raising their score.
Prioritize decision making over fear. In a culture where being right is paramount, you eliminate the space to experiment and innovate. This can be death to a company. You have to value decision making over fear of being blamed for being wrong. In a fast-paced environment with a lot of unknown variables, focusing on the perfect answer is a recipe for failure.
In his most recent book, “Mastering Fear: A Navy Seal’s Guide,” Webb lays out a structured approach to using fear as a fuel to go beyond what we may have thought was possible. “Fear can be a set of manacles, holding you prisoner”, writes Webb. “Or it can be a slingshot, catapulting you on to greatness.”
Read the rest of this article at Forbes.
Article written by H.V. MacArthur
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