360 Feedback Blog

In this article, the writer thinks teams could give fun feedback to each other as a way of starting conversations and improving relationships.

Whilst we think it’s a fun idea, we think it would be even better if the team were able to give some written thoughts, in a structured way, about what it’s like to work in that team - not specifying any individuals, but how it feels, if it’s generally a positive experience, how the team deals with problems, conflicts and team members who don’t pull their weight.

An added dimension would be to include external feedback from the team’s colleagues and clients - it would be very useful for the team to understand how it’s viewed from the outside.

 Team Works from Track Surveys is a pre-designed 360 Degree Feedback that can be delivered online and customised for each team or organisation’s profile.

In this article the writer talks about recent research into team working, and suggests that teams need to be more emotionally intelligent if they want to improve their performance.

Whilst I agree with this, I would also add that helping the team to understand its own strengths and weaknesses, getting those out into the open, and regularly reviewing team interactions, is critical.

The team leader needs to facilitate the analysis (we provide online team assessment and 360 Degree Feedback tools to do this), the discussions and the follow up.

As with individual performance, improving team performance has to start with an understanding and awareness of where we are right now.

In this blog the author ponders on Why Desperate Dan Got Fired, concluding that it was “the astonishing lack of self awareness of his hectoring, bullying style of management which done for desperate Dan”.

Like John I watched the first episode of this year’s The Apprentice with the usual mixture of shock, horror and deja-vu.
Dan was the losing project manager. It’s  fascinating to see, over and over again, how lack of self-awareness +
apparently limitless self-confidence + pressure = disasterous leadership. Having said
that, self-confidence and decisiveness are equally characteristics of great leaders.

It seems that many people (if the Apprentice candidates are in any way representative) have never been given any feedback about their styles of working and how they engage their co-workers and employees.

I pondered on whether consistent 360 Degree Feedback to Dan, given early in his career (”You don’t listen, you don’t respect your colleagues, you do not win your colleagues’ trust) might have made a big difference to his Apprentice performance, built on his strengths in the right way, and even made him a potential winner…?!

Jo

This article in today’s Guardian appears to show evidence that people work better in teams.

However, in an article in Harvard Business Review called ‘Why Teams Don’t Work, the authors debunk the myth that teams are the answer to every performance issue, and that teams always perform better than individuals working on their own.  They question the whole idea of ‘team dynamic’ as an absolute, consistently positive force.

Common misconceptions about teams include:

Teams that work harmoniously together are better and more productive than teams that don’t: there is more evidence that teams who are more productive, and are recognised as a team for it,  get on better together because of their good performance, not the other way around.

Teams work better because the work is shared out, and the bigger the team, the more effective: unfortunately this is cancelled out by the difficulty of keeping the right people informed as the team gets bigger, so big teams are not necessarily a good idea.

Teams should be renewed constantly to encourage creativity: again, this is not proven by evidence. In fact the more productive teams were those who had been together for a number of years and understood each other deeply.  Many teams are never given enough time to settle in and learn to work together.

In a research paper called ‘The Romance of Teams’, (Allen and Hecht, 2004), the authors conclude that the reasons people like working in teams are mainly because of the social interaction, because

1. team members feel good being part of a successful team
2. people also feel somewhat ’sheltered’ in a team, and
3. they can blame someone else on the team if something goes wrong!

To ask a question or share ideas about team performance and how you can measure it, go to
http://tracksurveys.co.uk/AskTrack.aspx

 For more information, articles and resources on teams and team performance measurement, contact me on jo.ayoubi@tracksurveys.co.uk
or go to:
http://www.tracksurveys.co.uk/TeamWorks.aspx