4 May 2022
Veterinary practices are often pressure cooker environments that make huge demands of those who work within them. So managing those people requires a highly considered and carefully tailored approach, as Alan Robinson explains…
Alan Robinson
Job Title
Image © kardd / Adobe Stock
High-performing teams are the cornerstone of successful practices.
With teams exhausted and disrupted by the pandemic, research reveals that managing high-performance teams can make or break your business, and that productivity increases when people work in such teams (Hunt et al, 2018).
The recent Merck Animal Health Veterinarian Wellbeing Study III (January 2022) reported that the most important things employers can do to foster a positive work climate are:
Considering the changes to employee expectations and the impact of teamwork on a business’ bottom line, building high-performing teams is crucial to post-pandemic recovery and ongoing growth.
Teamwork is the ultimate competitive advantage. Cohesive teams are 21% more profitable (Hickman, 2020) and 20% more productive (Atlassian, 2021). In addition, 97% of employees believe team alignment influences the success of a project. Practice success depends on solid teamwork.
A unity of purpose, effective communication, complementary skills and attitudes and high levels of collaboration are characteristics of a high-performing team. However, every team has the potential for disconnection and when management cannot resolve a disconnect swiftly, the damage can become irreparable.
Teamwork is transformative, but it is also hard to implement because of the required discipline and persistence. According to organisational psychologist Patrick Lencioni, the following are the five biggest blockers of high performance in teams and how your company can overcome them. They will help you build the high-performing teams your practice needs to succeed in the future.
The foundation of teamwork is trust. The alternative is fear, which can be incredibly destructive within an organisation. At best, it reduces its efficiency and at worst, precipitates failure. Troubleshooting requires psychological safety, allowing team members to speak up and address issues without fear of being ignored, criticised or punished. Google’s famous “Aristotle” research project on team efficacy (2016) placed psychological safety at the top of its prerequisites for high-performing teams.
The absence of trust stems from an unwillingness to be vulnerable within the group. Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change (Brown, 2012).
The best way of building trust in a team is by developing the self-awareness of its members. Organisational psychologist Tasha Eurich found that self-awareness improved team resilience and confidence. Furthermore, when comparing high self-aware teams (HSTs) with low self-aware teams (LSTs), self-awareness increases the probability of success in:
Positive conflict can lead to improved processes and open communication between employees, and highlight any inefficiencies within the team. Sometimes a difficult conversation needs to be had – especially if a team member shows signs of reduced productivity, increased absence or other sudden behavioural changes. Unfortunately, such scenarios often trigger “fight, flight or freeze” signals in the brain’s amygdala, which prevent us from managing conflict well.
Negative conflict often arises from a lack of understanding and lack of self-awareness. Gaining insight into group dynamics, pressure points and development areas provides an invaluable cheat sheet for focusing training to fast-track performance. Research shows that behaviour-based training significantly improves team coordination and performance (McEwan, 2017).
Team personality and behavioural assessments provide a common language to talk about team dynamics and an objective basis for understanding them. Building awareness and appreciation of the complementary skills and attitudes each team member brings to the table builds trust and facilitates constructive (positive) conflict.
You can improve a team’s self-awareness using personality profiling assessments such as Contribution Compass. (www.vetdynamics.co.uk/contribution-compass), which highlights team members’ traits, thinking styles, preferences and competencies. These insights are invaluable when used for recruiting or shared in a team-building session, facilitating mutual understanding and trust within the group.
Buy-in is essential for building a productive, well-oiled machine, but can be more challenging to achieve in a chaotic working environment. Team members who become complacent or unable to air their opinions openly will rarely commit to following through on team decisions.
You can make sense of your team’s DNA by assessing their emotional intelligence. Bringing emotional intelligence, personality styles and preferences to the group’s awareness can be game-changing. Benefits include increased innovation and commitment to delivery.
The number of team members is another critical consideration. Research suggests that individuals lose ownership of group decisions in teams of more than 10 people. Yet a lack of diversity and bandwidth can hamper teams of less than 6. Consider splitting larger teams into multiple focus groups.
Teams that fail to commit develop an avoidance of accountability, which impedes team performance. Non-committed members are unlikely to hold themselves – or their peers – accountable for delivery.
Teams need to be able to advance through adversity if they are to outperform. A strong tendency towards renewal is a core feature of high-functioning teams (Hunt et al, 2018).
This sense of renewal or “resilience” is the capacity for teams to take challenges in their stride and remain accountable for delivery. Resilience also involves being actively energised by the opportunity to innovate and achieve something that matters against the odds. The social isolation and economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic have made resilience critical for high-performing teams, both now and in the future.
Some team members will be more resilient than others, innately possessing a buffer of psychological resources that helps them to cope. Indicators of high resilience are perseverance and the capacity to manage stress and uncertainty. Team members with lower resilience levels may need targeted support to perform under duress.
Regular 360° feedback sessions create performance transparency, helping to engender a culture of striving. Personality and behavioural assessments enrich feedback sessions by providing objective data about the impact of behaviours on team performance.
High-performing teams deliver results. Individuals put the group’s goals ahead of their own (such as ego, career development or recognition). One of the biggest levers for improving a team’s performance is increasing diversity. Diverse groups typically yield 35% higher financial returns than industry medians (Hunt et al, 2018). Cognitive diversity also enhances decision-making, innovation and employee satisfaction (Dolan et al, 2020).
The 2017 McKinsey study (Hunt et al, 2018) also showed that an expert team performed less well than a diverse team, even when the task directly related to their area of expertise. Individual excellence correlates less strongly with success than the team’s cognitive diversity.
While team composition is critical, an essential part of the drive for results comes from the top down. Great leaders provide direction, inspire a shared belief in what the company strives for and empower the team to get there. Results-driven team leaders with high emotional intelligence are the most effective at delivering high performance, ranking in the 91st percentile of all leaders (Zenger and Folkman, 2017).
The ability to ignite passion through people is critical for leaders of high-performing teams. To create a competitive advantage, leaders must be behaviourally agile, setting stretch goals and building trust. Insights into team dynamics can help leaders identify opportunities for performance improvement and drive team-wide accountability for delivery.
High-performing teams require you to:
Rather than filling up diaries with lots of meetings, be creative. Test ways of relaying and sharing different types of information. Does an internal “chat” system support broad questions and team banter? What about a workflow management tool for the structured sharing of practice information? Let’s not forget “huddles”, email, or a good old-fashioned telephone conversation. Just be mindful that different personality profiles (and generations) may respond to some forms of communication more than others.
Teams should make time for team time. We’ve all felt the value of sharing a coffee in the staff room – so whether it’s virtual or in person, enable your teams to stay connected socially; give them the gift of belonging, cohesion and comfort in relying on one another.
Drive collaboration and motivation by choosing a platform that enables teams to share successes. Allow them to give kudos and visibly praise team members in the broader business.
Foster mental well-being. Make time to discuss successes and frustrations in a safe, appropriate space; a group discussion rather than a task-focused meeting. This allows team members to support each other and reflect on their workflow at a higher level.
Make sure individuals get to see each other regularly. That information is concise and clear, whether in person or virtual. Include virtual attendees in after-meeting discussions so they have access to this valuable information.
When people flourish, so do the organisations they work for, so an effective engagement strategy is essential.
Practice success depends on solid teamwork. Make communication a priority within the team to improve motivation, productivity and profitability. Immediately tackle any barriers to effective communication (such as assumptions or a lack of listening) to build a high-performing team successfully. Use profiling and assessments to help you understand your workforce’s behaviours, communication styles, potential, and engagement and motivation levels.
Start today and give your practice the foundation to thrive in the post-pandemic era.
