L&D Best Practices

Collective results are one key to create a winning team

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Collective results

To find out more about how teams can best collaborate together, take a look at our new collection with Patrick Lencioni, best-selling author and member of the CrossKnowledge Faculty. Getting teams to collaborate effectively is hard work; it requires a lot commitment and dedication from managers and leaders. It’s also a fragile balance; in fact, according to Pat Lencioni, best-selling author and expert, they are many dysfunctions that often plague a team’s success. One of them is inattention to collective results.

For a team to work well, everybody has to make collective results their number one priority. The problem is that, more often than not, people will focus on their individual goals rather than on team achievements, adopting a “my part of the boat is not sinking” approach. Even with the best intentions, there is a natural tendency for colleagues to put their department ahead of the whole organization, because they feel closer to that group and responsible for its members.

However, it’s important to understand that individual team members are expected to always do what’s best for the company, not to fight for their functional area of expertise. On an effective team, colleagues are willing to sacrifice the results or the well-being of their subgroup for the good of the whole.

The symptoms of an unfocused team

There are many ways to tell whether a team is focused enough on collective results. First, it’s important to look at how the team comes up with its objectives. If the group is asking “What do we want to accomplish this year?” they are on the wrong path. The question to answer is “What are the company’s goals, and how can we contribute to reaching them?”

The way leaders behave is also very telling. Leaders focused mostly on getting more resources for their own department might be losing sight of what’s best for the company as a whole. Another red flag is when they avoid getting involved in issues that do not concern them directly. On the other hand, when leaders take an interest in matters that go beyond their perimeter, they demonstrate their willingness to help the entire organization, and not just their team or department.

How can teams focus on what matters?

To avoid having colleagues focus on the wrong things, here is a list of best practices that can help.