Available Downloads:
Available Media Formats:
Creating and Sustaining a High Performing Team
Harvey Robbins’ presentation focuses on two key areas:
- the characteristics of effective teams and
- the mechanics of creating high-performance teams.
To set the stage, he shared his philosophy on teams: An effective team needs to have a balance between the technical and the interpersonal. For instance, a technically-oriented team may notice an inter-personal conflict between two of its members and either hope or assume that the conflict would work itself out. In reality, the team will “fall apart” if other team members don’t intervene and try to resolve such conflicts. On the other hand, if a team is so socially-oriented that it lacks technical discipline, it too will be unsuccessful.
“People like to get something done. People will follow you in droves if you do three things: Be outcome-driven, process-oriented, and feedback-rich.” – Harvey Robbins
If you have:
30 Minutes: According to the quote above: How effective is your team using Robbins’ three components to “get something done?”
60 Minutes: Which of the three components does your team use the most? Why? How can you incorporate the other components of team-effectiveness? Are there other ‘things’ that are important to your team, that Robbin’s does not have? What are they? How do you use them?
90 Minutes: Read the program summary starting from page 6. In your team, work together to identify each type of person in your team. Use the chart to see how each team member interacts with each other. Host a discussion about team interaction for effective outcomes.
4 hours: Robbins uses the following questions to walk through team effectiveness. Ask them with your team and host a discussion.
- How can you improve your team on any of these 9 dimensions? Choose 1-2 to apply at each upcoming meeting.
- Commitment to goals
- Expressing interest in others
- Conflict confrontation
- Empathetic listening
- Inclusive decision making
- Valuing individual differences
- Contributing ideas freely
- Providing feedback
- Celebrating accomplishments
- Think of a miscommunication you were involved in or witnessed recently. Knowing what you do now about how people perceive, organize, and interpret information, how would you approach that situation differently?
- Consider a team you are a member of right now. Can you identify a toxic relationship on that team? What will you do to intervene and set the team on a more congenial course?
- Consider a relationship you are in that has conflict. What can you identify about your own personality type and the other person’s that might help clarify the issues between you? What will you say to that person to improve your relationship?
- Identify someone you want to influence. What do you know about his/her orientation that can help you appeal to him/her? What is his/her personality type? How can you frame your interactions differently to increase your potential for influence?
- Below are Robbins’s 9 rules for building trust. Which ones do you violate most often? Choose one of these behaviors to change in the coming weeks.
- Have clear, consistent goals.
- Be open, fair, and willing to listen.
- Be decisive.
- Support all other team members.
- Take responsibility for team actions.
- Give credit to team members.
- Be sensitive to the needs of team members.
- Respect the opinions of others
- Empower team members to act.