Team Building | Building A High Performance Team – ASK THE EXPERT SERIES 1-5

Team Building

With the corporate environment becoming increasingly complex and industrial revolutions getting shorter, it is almost impossible for an individual to know it all.  Collaboration, engagement with others and ensuring the building of a proper foundation for a high performing team is essential for the survival and success of any organization.

In this Ask The Expert series of the CorporateTrainerConnect.com platform, we asked Mr. Andy Pan, the Principal Trainer and Consultant of Right Impact on his experience in building a high performing and diverse team.  Andy’s services are highly sought after with major regional clients from a myriad of industries in both government and private sectors.  He is involved in many team-based programmes including Our Singapore Conversation with luminaries such as the Singapore Prime Minister and members of the Singapore Government cabinet office.

The following are his answers to our team-building related questions:

Q1: What are your top 3 tips in building an engaged and high-performing team especially in this disruptive environment?

I will offer the following 3 Cs to answer this question.

1) BE COLLABORATIVE

Dictionary.com defines collaboration as the act of working with another or others on a joint project. Theoretically, this seems like a given. So why is this notion so difficult to implement at times in the real world?  Misunderstanding of intentions? Differences in working styles?

Most definitely, such grouses are commonplace at work. Using and promoting the use of psychometric instruments like Emergenetics® for developmental purposes can help to understand our colleagues better. Very often, workplace conflicts can be avoided with the knowledge that our unique thinking and behavioural preferences frequently manifest themselves in our working styles.

Team members can work better together when they realise the unique strengths and gifts that they bring to the table. Einstein once remarked that if we were to judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, then it would have lived its whole life believing it is stupid. Unity is strength but diversity is power.

2) BE COMMUNICATIVE

In the best-selling book, Crucial Conversations, authors, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler made us all aware of our failings in handling delicate, important discussions in various contexts. So what makes a crucial conversation? It is one where emotions run strong, opposing opinions are present and the stakes are high.

Using this as a platform, communication cannot come any more critical than at the workplace.

Often, we succumb to our emotions whenever opinions differ. An almost indescribable lump of frustration starts rising from within and suddenly, our choice of words change, tones become more hostile and accusations gradually follow.  Been there before?

Perhaps, a key to effective communication is to adopt conscious rationality in the face of any crucial conversation. By asking ourselves constantly, “What do we really want to achieve in this discussion?” can shape our individual thoughts and dialogue processes. Also, the ability to look at various perspectives through the eyes of different stakeholders can help achieve conversational success as well.

3) BE CHANGE-RECEPTIVE

The only constant is this world is change. Haven’t we heard that one before? In this highly disruptive environment, a team that remains dangerously contented may subject itself to complacency.   In relation to the previous two Cs, sometimes, a devil’s advocate in the team may be beneficial in the long run. Such a role would help promote continual improvement to work processes, key performance indicators, and even behaviours.

Dr. Spencer Johnson, of “Who Moved My Cheese?” fame, prescribes the concept of embracing change. Although written in the application of personal development, this iconic book can certainly be practiced in a corporate team setting, where change in all forms, should be anticipated, implemented and enjoyed.

LinkedIn’s latest Emerging Jobs Report has listed people skills like communication and collaboration to be ever more in demand, simply because these skills are virtually impossible to automate. Thus, having these skills makes a team and its members more valuable to an organisation in the coming future.

Q2: How do you build diversity and inclusion in a team culture in this competitive and complex business environment?  How can one build their skillset in handling diverse stakeholders with conflicting deliverables?

Diversity, in this day and age, can be defined in several forms. Organisations thrive because of gender diversity, cultural diversity or even generational diversity.  But what we may not have paid much attention to is cognitive diversity and the science behind this that organisations can tap on to improve productivity and even eliminate unhealthy, time-wasting, energy-sapping workplace conflicts.

One of these tools is a curiously robust psychometric instrument called the Emergenetics Profile that global organisations like Western Union and Novartis have used to help employees adopt a more holistic view of individual and team working styles so as to build more positive working cultures.

Developed by Dr. Geil Browning and Dr. Wendell Williams, the Emergenetics Profile is a result of research grounded in brain science theories and measures four thinking (Analytical, Structural, Social and Conceptual) and three behavioural (Expressiveness, Assertiveness, Flexibility) attributes.

Premised on the belief that our patterns of thinking and behaviour emerge from our genetic blue-print and life experiences, the Emergenetics Profile not only reports what an individual’s preferences are when it comes to thinking and behaving but also how his or her preferences compare to co-workers and the general population at large.

Browning’s and Williams’ research revealed that most of the time, people with Analytical Thinking may prefer to:
• Make decisions based on objectivity and facts
• Formulate systems
• Solve problems through careful observation and the use of data
• Learn through mental analysis
• Ask questions like “What is the return on investment?” or “Where is the evidence?”

People with Structural Thinking preference would mostly:
• Be cautious of new ideas
• Be driven by the clock and productivity
• Solve problems using sequential thinking with a methodical approach
• Learn from doing
• Ask questions like “What are the next steps?” or “How do we reach the goal?”

Those with Social Thinking as a preference may:
• Favour working as a team and be encouraging to teammates
• Be relational
• Solve problems by tapping on human resource
• Learn from others
• Ask questions like “Who would this policy impact?” or “How can we build better relationships at work?”

And those with a preference for Conceptual Thinking might prefer to:
• Connect with the big picture
• Solve problems by mentally exploring all options
• Learn through experimentation
• Ask questions like “What new ideas can we think of?” or “Why don’t we make a decision only after all alternatives are thought through?”

And then there are also the behaviours – how we prefer to interact (Expressiveness), how we prefer to assert and the pace we prefer to move things (Assertiveness), and how we respond to a change we didn’t generate (Flexibility). Together, the tool paints an accurate picture of how we may interact with our co-workers and the world around us.

For instance, a person with an Analytical preference may unintentionally come across as being critical, cold or too task-oriented while exchanging views with someone with a Social preference who may prefer to consider relationships as a higher priority.  Two co-workers standing on opposite ends of the Assertiveness spectrum – one preferring a peace-keeping approach while the other a more driving approach – may inadvertently frustrate each other all because each has a preferred style of advancing thoughts and opinions.
There is no right or wrong, just different.

Thus when exercised in the workplace, the concept of Emergenetics provides a rather accurate picture of the preferred working styles of employees. The framework makes it easier to identify how every individual at the workplace thinks, behaves, and communicates, as a manifestation of their preferences.

Moreover, since Emergenetics provides a useful framework to help co-workers understand each other’s natural strengths and blind spots, a team can build better working relationships by comprehensively understanding the motivations of everyone, thereby preventing miscommunication.

Additionally, when the management of an organisation understands how its employees behave and think, they can then develop a cohesive organisational culture built on the insights of Emergenetics, through an informed perspective based on personal preferences. When this happens, perceptions alter for the better.

Quality relationships begin to grow when we can engage each person based on his or her preferences. And that is where a sound understanding of each other’s preferences is useful. Where before, such an understanding comes after years of hits and misses working together (and we may still get it wrong), now there are instruments like Emergenetics to help a team recognise what everyone’s preferred approach is.

But while knowing is important, how you choose to act is crucial. Here’s where the old adage of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” comes in – a team is better off once everyone makes an effort to work with each other in a way they prefer to be approached.