The Changing Nature of Teams

Change is inevitable, but not always welcome. Change is a sign of life. A team that is changing is a living breathing entity, vibrant and alive. A team that is not experiencing change is often dead and stuck.

Of course change can also bring with it fear and resistance, as well as excitement and creativity.

One team that we have been working with recently is a senior team within a large public company that is itself in the midst of transition. Many of the team members are new and grappling with some really challenging business issues alongside finding their places in the team. They chose to work with team coaches from Diamond Edge to strengthen the positivity of the team to support the hard outputs that were being demanded by the business.

As we have worked with the team over a period of months, there have been new team members, some have left and some have been unable to get to the team coaching sessions.

What has helped this team move forward significantly is the acceptance of change, and finding ways to work together where the sum of the parts is greater than the individuals. In other words they have significantly enhanced their positivity.

What are some of the ways that teams can accept change and enhance their positivity?
One of the key ways this can happen is through TRUST.

Nearly every team we work with discovers that Trust within a team has the ability to transform their relationships with a knock-on effect on productivity.

Here are 3 top tips for generating trust:

1.Be willing to give trust to others. Rather than hold the belief that trust has to be earned through actions and behaviours, just trust someone that they can and will deliver. Most people will over-deliver when they are trusted to perform.

2. Be able to create an atmosphere of trust. We all know what it feels like to work in an environment of suspicion and mistrust. We also all have the ability to shift that mood to one of total trust.

3. Instigate conversations about trust within the team. Everyone has their own perception of what trust is and having open and direct conversations about what is needed to enhance trust in the eyes of team members is in itself a trust building activity.

There are many simple and practical ways to generate trust, all of which we teach and model at Diamond Edge.

One example is the Secret Self exercise, where team members are asked to think of a self that lives in them who doesn’t get to come to work, and to explore what might be available to them and the team if they brought that self to work. Examples might be the fly fisherman, the Dad, the chef, the tennis player.

When we did this exercise with one team, a team member who is an extrovert at work recalled how she likes to do jigsaws at home and values the quiet reflective space that gives her. She was able to see how that could be useful within the team sometimes.

Being willing to reveal something personal is a great way to build trust.

To discover what to pay attention to when things are going wrong in your team, read the article in our next issue about the four team toxins.