The 7 R’s to Team Motivation

Motivation is your team’s commitment to mobilize its three primary resources: time, energy and intelligence. We guide you through understanding how to motivate your team in Chapter Four of The Emotionally Intelligent Team. There’s no cookie cutter approach for creating motivation – the right strategies need to connect with your team. There are tools for success! As a team, focus on the values supporting your work, the relationships and the rewards available.

Our last article on Motivating Hospital Teams pointed out the research by Daniel Pink that three critical elements support individual motivation: autonomy, mastery and purpose. These are all essential for team as well and you’ll see these principles included in the 7 R’s below. Autonomy includes the chance to operate with independence and to influence your work. Mastery gives the team as a whole as well as individual team members the opportunity to be great at their work. Purpose is unquestionably the driving force for why we do what we do. It’s the source of pride in our work, the core of authentic motivation.

Leaders use their influence and behaviors to motivate teams through the 7 R’s.

Reason – match team members’ WIIFM – help them answer the questions of “What’s in it for me?” and “What’s in it for our team?” Create a reason to engage. Tie the reason for the team’s existence to their purpose and help them develop mastery in their skills.

Respect – take time to get to know the members of the team and demonstrate that you value each and every member. Deliberately share respect between team members. Autonomy is a key component of respect and can unfold in multiple ways by giving the full team some creative time as well as providing the time to individual team members or to sub-groups. Google is one of the best known companies that have gained great results by giving teams autonomy, yet the teams are also expected to collaborate intensely. This requires integrity and real engagement – and leads to powerful productivity. Respect for the team and team members is an integral component of an overarching purpose that everyone is excited about.

Relationships – you can’t bend on this one – compromises are costly. Lead your team to connect with one another and to consistently demonstrate regard. When teams are focused on accomplishing a powerful purpose, there is a natural inclination to build strong relationships to accomplish the common good.

Resilience – let the team know you are committed to engaging with them and that you’ll help gain the resources needed to the best extent possible. Resilience is supported by optimism, which is best experienced as a contagious sense of hopefulness around the team. Resilience is a big concept and casts a powerful web to support success. When all three components of autonomy, mastery and purpose are actively present team resilience expands.

Responsibility – hold people consistently accountable. Let them know their responsibilities are tied to the team accomplishing its mission and providing value. Thus when autonomy is provided, ask the team to then come back and report on what they learned. It’s fine if the creative project wasn’t a huge success, what’s important is that they learned and that the learning is shared in a collaborative spirit.

Rewards & Reinforcement – notice daily positive accomplishments and say something positive right away. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking money is the way to motivate your team. Surprisingly money can demotivate a team. What team members need in addition to respectful pay is to be treated with respect, included in the discussions on why the mission/purpose is valuable, and acknowledged for work done well – promptly. Supporting their ability to develop mastery so they can do their job well is one of the strongest rewards available.

Role Model – like it or not “monkey see, monkey do” holds a lot of truth for human behavior. Researchers have found that our mirror neurons are one of our most powerful sources for learning. Develop your mastery and hold yourself accountable to act the way you would like your team members to behave.

This is the stuff of motivation and results in team productivity accomplished by a team that is experiencing emotional and social well-being.

Motivating Hospital Teams

What happens when it’s the end of the 3rd quarter and it becomes obvious to the team that they can’t reach the year end goal? For example, in a hospital critical care team, what happens if their patient satisfaction goals are just off enough so they know they can’t meet the year end goals? The results aren’t bad, but they can’t reach their year-end goal. So what does leadership do? What does the team do?

If there is a motivational financial reward that only occurs if they meet their year-end goal, a team in this bind is likely to reduce their striving to improve months before year-end. Not a good thing! Team members are at some level of “no” or discouragement and that leads to diminished creativity and engagement. The demons of de-motivation are likely to set in.

So what does a leader do? Follow the wisdom of intrinsic motivation, especially if you are working with smart, creative thinkers. Intrinsic motivation occurs when people are internally motivated to do something – perhaps because they feel it’s important, it matches their values or it gives them pleasure. Financial rewards are a form of extrinsic or external motivation. Daniel Pink’s books, A Whole New Mind and Drive, powerfully demonstrates the “what” and “how” of engaging knowledge workers with intrinsic motivation. He has a great youtube summary at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc. Pink emphasizes that motivational success requires that knowledge workers be given:

1. Autonomy

2. Mastery

3. Purpose

Depending on your workplace you are likely to be able to emphasize more of one or two of these components than all three, but remember that all three matter.

Pink shows that the traditional approach of extrinsic motivation, which is based in if – then scenarios, can result in motivational harm. The “if- then” framework is presented as “if you meet this result then you will get a reward such as money or time off.” The harm that can occur could be:

Diminished intrinsic motivation
Lower performance
Less creativity
Crowding out of good behavior
Unethical behavior
Short-term, narrowed, thinking (tunnel vision).

These are serious negative consequences but many organizations and leaders are deeply embedded in a system of extrinsic rewards. To change this leadership habitual approach requires: 1) knowledge that the habit doesn’t work, 2) commitment to learn a new way and 3) practice and experimentation to make it a fully owned new skill.

So to bring about change first the hospital management must be convinced that a different way is better and then the three steps of expanding intrinsic motivation need to be intentionally followed. The hospital in the beginning example needs the critical care team’s work to result in higher patient satisfaction as customer (patient) future care choices are increasingly based on patient evaluations and financial reimbursement by insurance companies and the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare are tied to patient satisfaction. Thus we have the certainty and knowledge that patient satisfaction is very important. Recognizing at the third quarter mark that success won’t happen, together with reviewing work such as Pink’s, should help support leadership change. The next organizational step is to offer and reinforce the three steps for building employee motivation. In the sample hospital team motivation can be built by guiding the team to recognize and build skills thus:

Purpose is so strongly available in healthcare that a good leader can hit a home run when the goal is presented well. The team can feel alignment with their core purpose and values in meeting the goal of expanding patient satisfaction, first of all because satisfied patients are likely to have better health outcomes and that’s a value match.

Mastery is readily supported by education, mentoring and encouragement.

Autonomy can be harder to provide as many procedures have very specific and highly measured steps that must be taken where variation isn’t available, yet autonomy means the staff has independence or freedom. Increased requirements for documentation and use of electronic health records reduce time available to serve patients as well as autonomy. The challenge is to find aspects of autonomy that are available and these can be a combination of special projects, such as a research study, as well as tapping into emotional intelligence. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl brilliantly demonstrated that one’s attitude is a foundational personal resource and strength. Teams schooled to be individually and collectively responsible for their attitudes and well as to cultivate relationship building and other emotional intelligence skills such as empathy, optimism and impulse control find numerous opportunities for exercising autonomy. In fact EI is a primary source of autonomy in a highly structured environment, such as staff in hospital units, experience.

Training and intentional leadership to build intrinsic motivation and emotional intelligence can make significant difference in meeting the positive outcomes required to support the massive reform underway in healthcare.

Leading Emotionally Intelligent Teams

The world has changed. Once we thought that an MBA and wireless technology would secure the future. It won’t. Reams of data and our work at Collaborative Growth all point to the need to work together in teams and that the strategy for sustained team success is emotional and social intelligence, or ESI, at the team level.  The most influential individual in this dynamic is the team leader – and it can be a daunting job at times. That challenge is enhanced by good data, such as from the Team Emotional Social Intelligence^® Survey (TESI^®) for a 360 report by team members on the team functioning, an individual report on emotional intelligence skills from the EQ-I 2.0^® or EQ 360^® and on leadership performance from the LPI^®.  These 3 assessments bring a powerful level of data together to support strategic leadership by the team leader.  Pre – post measurement of success also will support good data and focused leadership.

Leaders need to learn strategies for building their effectiveness in expanding the emotional and social intelligence of their teams. Discovering how to measure and strategically develop a team’s skills enhances success and sustainability.  A leader’s greatest challenges in building ESI are to:

1. Develop him or herself personally and as a leader – be honest, hold oneself accountable
2. Learn to coach team members individually
3. Vision the team as a whole unit and lead / coach the whole team

Let’s consider each of these.

First, individual coaching supported by EQ 360 and LPI reports will give the leader and his or her coach the opportunity to be sure strengths are recognized and used and that weaknesses are addressed.  Emotional and social intelligence is built on recognition of core skills that lead to success in meeting the environmental challenges that face a leader in every part of life.  The key term is skills as these can be developed.  If an area is important and the leader isn’t good at the skill, he or she can enhance that skill if they truly want to.  Making sustainable behavioral change takes time, attention and commitment.  The pay-off is rich and a coach and good assessment data will be valuable support along the way.

Second, coaching individual team members can be a real stretch. By taking on the responsibility to be a team leader, the leader’s challenge grew significantly from just working personally to coaching members of the team individually to support their best engagement and development opportunities.  Many leaders come from fields such as engineering or sales that haven’t included training in human development.  If a leader is challenged with self-regard or optimism or empathy, for example, how can he or she effectively coach the team members in developing their own skills?  The answer is that the leader must engage in building his or her own capacities and also seek training and coaching or mentoring on how to support staff development.  Their well-being and the organization’s productivity are directly linked to the leader’s guidance.  The leader should keep focusing on learning to pass on skills he or she develops.  Expanding communication skills will help the leader listen effectively and notice what is truly being requested.  Consciously building his or her own skills will help the leader understand specific strategies to pass on.  This is a continuous learning opportunity.  If treated as a central way to enrich life for the leader and the staff, it can be fun and one of the best motivational strategies possible.

Third, have your team gain from solid date on their performance.  Have the team take the TESI then work with them beginning with visioning the team as a whole unit and leading / coaching the whole team to a unified sense of purposeful engagement.  This means the leader needs to view the team in two ways – paying attention to the individual and to the team as a whole.  By working with TESI^® information, everyone gains a sense of what’s working and what needs to be strengthened.  When the team as a whole experiences that the leader is seeing the team as a discrete operating system – and one that he or she can be proud of – the team will rise to the occasion.  This visioning is a powerful invitation to develop a cohesive unit that operates with what we call Collaborative Intelligence™.

Building Skills with the TESI, EQ-i or EQ 360 and LPI

The scales of the three instruments we’ve discussed, the TESI, EQi and LPI, all complement one another.  We see them fitting together as demonstrated by this table.

TESI®	EQ-i® or EQ 360®	LPI®
Identity	Self-regardIndependence Interpersonal relationships	Model the way
Motivation	OptimismAssertiveness Self-actualization	Inspire a shared vision
Emotional Awareness	Emotional self-awarenessEmpathy Assertiveness	Enable others to act
Communication	EmpathySelf-regard Emotional self-awareness	Model the way
Stress Tolerance	Stress toleranceImpulse control Self-actualization	Challenge the process
Conflict Resolution	EmpathyImpulse control Self-actualization	Challenge the process
Positive Mood	HappinessOptimism	Encourage the heart

HOW TO LEAD TEAMS: The Relationship Between Team Skills and Human Development

The Emotionally Intelligent Team model proceeds from the archetypal process of human work itself. The seven scales measured by the TESI® (Team Emotional and Social Intelligence® Survey) are core skills for teams as they reflect specific needs that have arisen over the course of human evolution.

1.  Stress Happens — we arrived as infants desperately needing a breath of fresh air, then warmth, then food, and the whole range of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Everything that interrupts the satisfaction of these needs is experienced as some degree of stress, and yet a certain amount of stress is necessary to keep us from sinking into complacency. Developing the awareness and focus necessary to successfully meeting these needs gives us our concrete task orientation skills. Successful teams need the resilience that comes from Stress Tolerance skills.

2.  Life is hard, but we are naturally motivated to relieve instinctual drive states in order to improve our life conditions. Successful team leaders help their staff connect with and utilize this natural motivation rather than employing the command and control strategies that disrespect the individuality that gives rise to motivation. A major component of successfully modeling this understanding lies in the leader being able to distinguish between what the team members move towards, what they move away from, and what we move against. Building Motivation, for example, calls for the leader to move the team towards the reward of being acknowledged for a job well done. The leader realizes they will move away from embracing a new task if the necessary resources aren’t provided and that the team will become oppositional if they see team members being treated disrespectfully by the team leader.

3.  Because it is too hard to hunt effectively alone, we learn to Communicate in order to coordinate and maximize group efforts. We learn to develop our trust and relationship skills from the model communicators we encounter in our early world. the key lies in how well we send and receive meaningful signals from one another.

4.  Communicating effectively is a difficult process in itself, and there are many opportunities for misunderstanding which give rise to conflict. Then our challenge becomes a matter of how we get people to change: from no to yes; from “I” matter to “we” matter, from “I want to be right” to “I want to be happy.” These are core skills for Conflict Resolution.

5.  In order to resolve conflicts we need to be sensitive to what others desire and value and expect for their efforts as well as how they actually achieve those goals. This is where the team tunes in with Emotional Awareness.  To really be able to hear and appreciate their various positions requires the empathy, respect, and active listening that enable others to perceive us as trustworthy. Only then can we be open enough to achieve the atmosphere of spontaneous mutual influence that yields maximum benefits.

6.  Communicating effectively in the avenues of both task and relationship builds a powerful sense of Team Identity  in which teams feel free to risk and experiment, repeat what works and celebrate the results and build traditions and innovative new solutions. The value of belonging to such a team is the source of the leader’s ability to hold members accountable.

7.  Positive  Mood is the evidence of our collective success in satisfying individual and group life conditions. This is an important time and space of reaffirmation, rest, and recharging, because new stressors are no doubt just around the corner.

Acting with Collaborative Intelligence: Your 10 Step Guide

Collaboration is a result of people working together to reach a mutual answer to a challenge or opportunity.  As our world becomes more integrated and boundaries become more blurred the need and desire to collaborate is heightened.  We see this on the internet, such as with Wikipedia, in organizations of all sizes and shapes, such as the better efforts at the United Nations and in performance goals for individuals and leaders, such as the Executive Core Qualifications (ECQ’s) that leaders in the federal senior executive service are to meet.

Organizations frequently list collaboration as part of their mission or vision statement or as one of their values.  With all of these forms of embracing collaboration, we know it’s something good, the key question is how do we collaborate and when is it useful? We’ll answer this question for individuals by exploring 10 steps for individuals to follow in order to act collaboratively and briefly review how teams build collaboration.

Collaborative Intelligence™ is a key outcome teams can reach as they build their skills.  Collaborative intelligence is a result teams profit from when using the seven skills measured by the TESI^® (Team Emotional and Social Intelligence Survey.  When teams build their skills in forming a strong team identity, engaging with motivation, building emotional awareness, enhancing communications, supporting one another in work life balance to manage stress, growing their conflict resolution skills so they can benefit when conflict occurs and act with positive mood they will be engaging multiple strengths and acting collaboratively.  Developing these seven skills helps team members learn how to be collaborative and to use this outcome wisely.

Collaboration is a communication and problem solving process that is based on a structured engagement style and process.  Those who collaborate well pay attention to personality styles, behavioral engagement strategies, and timing of the decision making as well as who is invited into the discussion, often referred to a stakeholders.  Individuals and organizations can act in a collaboratively style informally and accomplish a great deal.  More formal collaborative process can be deliberately engaged in more challenging situations and may benefit from engaging a facilitator.  Because the process can be slow and deliberative it may be the wrong formal process to use in an emergency, when a quick decision is needed or when the stakes are low, such as choosing where to have lunch.  Even in these circumstances when individuals act with a demonstration of inclusivity and intentionally listen to others and incorporate their suggestions as appropriate, they can build buy-in and loyalty that expands their base of support. The following 10 steps will help individuals and leaders be successful in their collaborations.  These skills can be integrated into one’s natural behaviors so the benefits of collaboration abound with minimal effort.

10 Steps to Act with Collaborative Intelligence

1.     Be aware.  Notice what is happening so you can choose how you are involved.  Breathe deeply to benefit from adding oxygen to your brain, to your heart and to feel calm and resilient.

2.     Apply Intention and Attention.  Form your intention so you know specifically what you want to accomplish and how.  Then decide what steps in the process you will pay attention to in order to keep yourself on track.  Intend to collaborate, which means intend to work together, to listen and to respond in order to accomplish your goal together.  Clarify your own purpose and goals; this is not a process you can accomplish on auto-pilot.

3.     Commit to the process.  Collaboration takes time, energy and patience. If you’re hesitant about using the process you’ll hold back, be protective of “your” information or rush through the process.  One way or another without commitment you are most likely to minimize the potential for success.  You may end up feeling annoyed or antagonizing others or both.

4.     Attend to others.  Create a foundation for engagement by creating a personal connection.  It’s out of little personal discussions where you find you have things in common that form the basis for trusting one another.  You might find you both have daughters who sell Girl Scout cookies or you might both climb 14,000 foot mountains. Continue paying attention to other participants throughout the process.  Often there is a valuable message behind the specific words someone is using; paying attention will help you discern the real message.

5.     Mutually establish goals and other criteria. Be sure you are headed in the same direction!

6.     Express your opinions and share your knowledge.  If you keep what you know close to your vest you undermine the ability of everyone to make a good decision, you role model that the process isn’t fully trustworthy and neither are the people involved.  Remember your actions speak louder than your words.

7.     List commonalities and differences.  It’s amazing how often people struggle over principles they already all agree on because they didn’t take time to recognize the agreement. If you clarify where there are differences and where you agree then you can begin gathering information to move towards a mutual solution.

8.     Apply divergent thinking.  Be willing to listen to other people’s perspectives even though they may be very different from yours.  At attitude of curiosity will be helpful.

9.     Be appreciative.  Keep noticing what works and through this positive process explore what seems to be off-center, to just not work.  Explore these inconsistencies with curiosity to find points of agreement.

10.  Make decision(s).  At this point everyone comes to a convergent answer and agrees to support the one answer.  Before you sign off though, apply some hearty reality testing.  Future pace by imaging it’s sometime in the future and you’re observing how well the decision works.  Is anything askew?  Did you take on too much at once?  Does anything else need adjusting?  If so make the changes now.

The result of collaborative decisions is that you have tapped into everyone’s smarts, built trust and have gained mutual commitment to success.  What’s not to like about that scenario!

Authentic Success for 2013

How was your 2012? What are you seeking for your personal success indicators in 2013? To gain a viable answer hold an internal conversation between your ideal self (how you would most like to live) and your real self (how you really live) and develop an authentic structure to your goals. Authentic success integrates these two parts into a happier and more successful you. Our article was so well received in earlier years as a way to frame moving into the New Year, that it’s back by popular demand.

Authentic success begets peace of mind because you are living and working in accordance with your values, strengths, and your sense of purpose instead of living in conflict. Reaching this highly desired state requires personal awareness. Without it you will be missing the joy from your current wealth by only focusing on what hasn’t happened. Happiness and optimism, both components of emotional intelligence, are vital to experiencing authentic success. The following 10 Actions are based on years of research in the fields of emotional intelligence and positive psychology and set forth choices you can make to change the quality of your life in 2013.

10 Actions to Make Your

2013 a Year of Authentic Success

1. Define happiness. Know what you are looking for when you are seeking happiness. True happiness isn’t the quick food fix; even Belgian chocolates bring a temporary response. As an article by Carlin Flora, “The Pursuit of Happiness” in Psychology Today states, “The most useful definition – and it’s one agreed upon by neuroscientists, psychiatrists, behavioral economists, positive psychologists, and Buddhist monks – is more like satisfied or content than ‘happy’ in its strict bursting-with-glee sense. It has depth and deliberation to it. It encompasses living a meaningful life, utilizing your gifts and your time, living with thought and purpose. It’s maximized when you also feel part of a community. And when you confront annoyances and crises with grace. It involves a willingness to learn and stretch and grow, which sometimes involves discomfort. It requires acting on life, not merely taking it in. It’s not joy, a temporary exhilaration, or even pleasure, that sensual rush – though a steady supply of those feelings course through those who seize each day.”

Action: Happiness is closely tied to being aware of what success truly means for you. Write your own definition of what Authentic Success means to you and intend to live in synch with your truth about Authentic Success in 2013.

2. Practice mindfulness. While defined in a variety of ways, mindfulness simply means paying attention. Notice how you are feeling and why and then make a choice to stick with your current path or take a breath and intentionally shift.

Action: Set a time each day when you will review your day with intention to notice and expand your mindfulness. Even a short review will make a difference.

3. Be you. Embrace yourself. Know your good points and that which you don’t consider so favorably. Know your styles and preferences and trust you are a good and resilient person. We received the following quote awhile ago and we give profound credit to whoever first said it though we don’t know the original source.

Action: Print this out and tape it around your environment:

There is nothing wrong with me that what is right with me can’t fix!

4. Practice your 2% Solution. As Marcia describes in Life’s 2% Solution, the 2% Solution requires just half an hour a day (3 ½ hours a week if it works better to cluster your time). Spend that time doing something that’s deeply nurturing, meaningful, fulfilling to you. It may be what you’ve vowed to do later when you are free to explore long-delayed purposeful pursuits. This seemingly small expenditure of time is even more critical in today’s harried world, where work deadlines loom, the carpool to soccer awaits, the dry cleaning is piling up, and a dinner party fills up whatever free time is left. We get it all done, yet feel incomplete. This stress-filled existence leaches away our creativity, passion and sense of fulfillment. We sacrifice the long-view of our lives for short-term results, to check something off a list. No doubt, that scenario leads to burnout.

Action: Integrate your enhanced awareness from taking some of the above steps with your own 2% project. Investing 2% of your time in an unusual way on yourself will make a world of difference. It’s an achievable way of creating more work/life balance without having to turn your life upside down by radical change. You can learn more and follow the 10 step process found in my book Life’s 2% Solution.

 

5. Relationships matter. Take time for friends and choose friends who support the values you wish to live with.

Action: Notice who your friends are. Ask yourself if you are giving the time it takes to cultivate valuable relationships. If not make a change. Keep your expectations of time with friends manageable.

6. Carpe diem! Seize the day.

Action: Today is the only version of this day you’ll ever have. Take advantage of it!

7. Know your values. It’s easy to get caught up in the multitude of options that expand daily from numbers of cereals to forms of entertainment to interesting books. We all have twenty-four hours in a day. Take advantage of your day by knowing what is truly important so you don’t get distracted with the job of making too many unimportant choices.

Action: Make a list of your top values – somewhere between five and ten items at the most. Then practice connecting your values with your choices.

8. Create. It feels good! Humans are amazingly creative beings. You probably create much more than you realize and miss giving yourself credit for your gifts.

Action: Intentionally make a soup, draw a picture, write a letter. Whatever feels simply good to you and then stop and acknowledge the act of creating and give yourself time to enjoy.

9. Express gratitude. This is a big one. Anytime you want to build happiness, be grateful for what you do have and go find a way to give. So much of authentic happiness is based in giving your gifts and in being a good and compassionate human being. Don’t make it hard; find easy and natural ways to give with no strings attached. Pay it forward is a great strategy.

Action: Take time to stop and say thank you. Notice how you feel and how the recipient feels. Keep a gratitude journal. Notice five to ten events that occur each day for which you are grateful. Be specific. Feel the gratitude in your heart as you write your list and as you read it over.

10. Smile. It’s impossible to be grumpy and smile at the same time.

Action: If you are willing to change your emotional state, you will. Breathe, notice what is going on, notice any tension you are holding in your body, and be willing to let it go. Be quiet and smile for a full minute.

 

Authentic success combines your inner and outer strengths, though integrating these two is not always so easy. Good luck on your journey. We’re always interested in learning from you about how this works. Comment on our blog.

Teams Getting Beyond Doing More with Less

Teams are encountering the request or demand to do more with less all too frequently. How do they respectfully re-direct expectations to gain more success in meeting productivity expectations while building their own team emotional and social intelligence? We’re the first to acknowledge that it isn’t easy. However there are strategies to support success. We discussed many in our recent webinar and will review many here.

First, as Dick Thompson, the publisher of the TESI® noted, teams under stress start focusing more individually and less on the team as a whole, which negatively affects the team’s ability to process information. Interpersonal issues between team members are often heightened, conflict is more likely to arise and can be harder to resolve and the sense of well-being is reduced. Working with the seven team skills measured by the TESI (Team Emotional and Social Intelligence Survey®) provides teams and their leaders with a powerful model to support their success. Each skill is identified together with a tip or tips for building team strength in addressing the stress of being asked to do more with less.

Team Identity is a skill that supports a sense of connection instead of the isolation stress can bring and that in turn helps teams better respond to management pressure effectively. Teams can build their skills by taking charge of some of their time together and have fun. When they get to know each other better, they can work on the same wave length, resolve challenges quicker and be more relaxed. So go to lunch together, go for a walk, or have a regular celebration for birthdays of the month. If your team ever is challenged by management for taking the time, respond that neuroscience shows that taking some breaks supports much more productivity.

Team Motivation gets the team geared up to meet the challenge they face. However, challenges must be reasonably designed so the team has a chance to be successful. If too much is asked the team becomes demotivated because they’re set up to fail. Part of the answer comes from the team finding their bigger “yes”. When they find what is more important they gain strategic perspective, it’s easier to communicate to one another and to management.

Team Emotional Awareness helps team members recognize what’s happening so they can respond to one another and to the situation. When they learn to name the stress and pressures out loud, team members can then discuss their feelings, hopes and worries. They become aware of how to support one another and do so more effectively with the opportunity to release at least some of the tension.
Team Communication is essential in so many ways, for example in applying their reality testing skills. When team members communicate they can discuss how many expectations are on their plate, lay out a strategic plan and propose direction to management to guide their mutual work. This can mean realizing there just aren’t enough resources to tackle all the tasks on their plate. They can show why and suggest the best course of action. Teams often lump everything they need to do under the concept of communications. This clouds the clarity that comes from recognizing communication touches all their skills, but can be separated from the other six TESI skills.
Team Stress Tolerance skills are central to addressing the challenge of being asked to do more with less. One core set of strategies comes with managing their physiology. For example, they can practice exhaling as long as they can, which shifts their conscious attention away from their overheated cognitive circuits. This easy strategy “refreshes their mental screens”. They can practice stair therapy – go climb one or more sets of stairs if possible before making a key decision or confronting someone. They can take a walk together, which is a great way to get to know one another and supports quicker team work when back at the office.
Team Conflict Resolution calls for teams to develop more collaborative solutions that strengthen their productivity and persuasive ability with management. Teams might perform a SWOT analysis on key activities, brainstorm how to make one or two meaningful changes, implement and then check back in in a few weeks. Incremental change is more sustainable and empowering than extreme makeovers!
Team Positive Mood gives the team energy, enhances happiness and better decision making. It’s at the center of developing real team agility. This brings us full circle by connecting with the idea under team identity of taking time to play. It can feel highly counterintuitive when the team is under pressure. Nevertheless, taking time out provides perspective and supports well-being at all levels.
How are your teams managing their challenges of being asked to do more with less? Let us know!