Creating Cohesive Teams: Five Steps to Increase Effectiveness

I can confidently say that 99% of the teams I have worked with, both in my corporate career and as a consultant, were never really held back by a lack of skills or knowledge. While there is always room for improvement in those areas, their main constraint—almost every single time—was the team’s inability to come together and utilize their collective strengths to deliver extraordinary results and unprecedented fulfillment.

As damaging as it is for frontline teams to fail to work together, the impact of leadership teams lacking in cohesiveness is far more devastating. Failing to develop cohesive leadership teams causes ripple effects that create a tsunami of dysfunction, negative outcomes, and loss of morale throughout the organization.

Sadly, many leadership teams are oblivious to the impact of negative team dynamics on the rest of the organization. And even those who do recognize the value of a cohesive team often essentially leave it to chance, just hoping for team members to develop effective partnerships out of the blue. Others, who may be intentional about creating cohesive teams, may not know exactly how to do so, and of those, only a few go beyond the one-size-fits-all, run-of-the-mill team-building exercises to truly make a lasting difference.

Ultimately, the most effective teams are not made up of perfect members. The most effective teams are those that have figured out how to make up for each other’s deficiencies and capitalize on their collective strengths.

However, the process of crafting such cohesive teams goes beyond Googling “team-building” and taking people through standard exercises. Like any technical problem, it requires a study of the symptoms, identification of the root causes, careful selection of potential solutions, effective implementation of those solutions, a review process to track progress, and following through to make the necessary adjustments along the way.

Here are the steps I follow when it comes to guiding teams in becoming more effective:

Understand the symptoms of lack of cohesiveness

A great place to start is to simply ask, “Why should we do anything different?” or, “What undesirable outcomes or experiences do we want to eliminate by creating a more effective team?” The answers I often hear are as follows, just to mention a few:

• “Our results are not on target”
• “People are working in silos”
• “Frontline people are not showing initiative”
• “We waste too much time on rework”
• “We deliver our results but everyone is stressed out and working too hard”
• “We have too much turnover”
• “People are hesitant to hold each other accountable”

Identify the potential root causes of symptoms

This is important because, unless we understand the root causes, we will at best get some short-term relief from the symptoms before the problem comes back in uglier ways. For instance, if the root cause of silo mentality is that there is no common vision, and people’s daily routines are pulling them in seemingly opposing directions, then just bringing people together and asking them to get along and work together is not going to solve the problem.

Masterfully facilitated sessions are a must if you want sustainable team cohesiveness, but it also has to be supported by and supplemented with additional activities that will systematically remove obstacles to progress.

Some of the common root causes I have found are as follows:

• The mission and/or vision of the team is not clearly established or understood.
• Individuals and/or teams are not clear on their role in achieving the broader organization’s vision.
• Team members lack basic skills in communication, conflict resolution, giving and receiving feedback, etc.
• People in leadership positions have been promoted based on their functional expertise and not sufficiently coached or developed to be leaders.
• Unresolved conflicts from the past.
• Personal conflicts affecting work relationships.
• Close personal relationships causing conflict avoidance and the ensuing complications.
• Team members only focusing on what sets them apart, personally or professionally, because they have not taken the time to get to know each other and establish common ground.

Strategic planning

Successful team-building initiatives are a multi-faceted approach involving activities that run in parallel to and in support of the ultimate goal. While I can attest to the incredible power that comes from making connections and shifting mindsets in well-planned and executed team-building sessions, it’s important to make sure that other activities such as the following are planned and carried out to maximize and sustain the gains:

• 1-1 follow-up coaching sessions for team members.
• Small group follow-up conversations to discuss and resolve the issues that are identified in the individuals’ sessions.
• Creation and communication of a common and clear vision.
• Further discussions about the interdependencies and how sub-teams or departments can support each other.
• The use of proven tools, such as DISC or Five Behaviors of Cohesive Teams assessments, to facilitate better understanding of team members and team dynamics and opportunities.
• Careful selection of the various tools and methodologies that best suit the particular objectives of the team, rather than employing the same old standard exercises for every team. While in some cases, getting to know each other personally may help, in other cases, the exercises may need to be geared more toward establishing a clear understanding of professional relationships.
• Priority setting and identification of goals at the department or team level.
• Addressing the long-standing unresolved issues that have eroded trust, or organizational artifacts that have been hindering progress.
• Identification of overt signs and signals that increase confidence within and beyond the team that they are committed to working together more effectively.
• Intentional leadership development for those in leadership roles.
• Training and development on foundational super skills, often referred to as “soft skills.”

Effective implementation

Even the best plan will fail unless implemented effectively. A set of instructions to take the team through certain exercises may help to go through the motions, but the devil is always in the details. Every one of the steps listed under strategic planning above requires the person leading or facilitating the activity to have certain knowledge, skills, experience, and expertise. Just as importantly, the facilitator of such activities must possess certain characteristics that enable them to read the audience and make the necessary adjustments to achieve the desired results.

I, personally, do a great deal of preparation and use a variety of skills that I have gained through experience as a professional facilitator, public speaker, certified business coach, and trainer. If you don’t have someone in your organization who possesses the right skills and characteristics, or if the external resources you engage are only trained in a few of these skills, it will be necessary to assemble a team that demonstrates these skills as a collective to effectively and sustainably implement the strategic planning.

Ongoing assessment and renewal

Team building is not a one-and-done undertaking. Sure, it’s important that participants walk out of the session with key takeaways and clear commitments and plans, but it is equally important for the outcome of the session to change their behavior and for those behavior changes to result in a shift in actual outcomes and experiences within and beyond the team.

To that end, it is important to establish qualitative and quantitative measures by which the team will gauge their progress. These measures could be leading indicators such as whether follow-up items identified and assigned in the session were completed or not. They could also be lagging indicators such as whether certain desired behaviors are being exhibited or whether the needle has moved on the specific results that were identified at the beginning of the process.

One of the tools that I have used for the past few years is a follow-up Five Behaviors assessment, which can be administered free of charge. The assessment produces a very detailed report on the progress—or lack thereof—in the eponymous five behaviors of cohesive teams, namely Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability, and Results.

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While creating cohesive teams is no simple task, it is something that can be done. And if you want any hope of fully unlocking your organization’s potential, it is something that must be done, even if you don’t know how to do it right now. I hope the above article has given you a few ideas about where to start, but if you’re still struggling to make it happen, feel free to reach out or leave a reply so we can discuss how to apply this approach to your unique situation. Until next time, as always, may you boldly declare, courageously pursue, and abundantly achieve the extraordinary!

If there are topics you find to be of special value to you, or if you’d just like to get in touch and chat about what’s going on with you, simply reply to this newsletter or send me an email at amir@theghannadgroup.com. If you’re experiencing challenges that you would like my perspective on, or you’d like to explore how we can partner with you to support you in your transformative journey, please click here to schedule a call with me. I’d love to hear from you.

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Clients and audience members at my talks frequently tell me:

• "I felt like you were talking specifically to me!"
• "Your perspective is so real and practical!"
• "Are you sure you don't work at my company? Because you were talking about exactly what we’re dealing with!"

I love hearing this feedback because my intent is always to make a real difference in your team's mindset and behaviors, which ultimately shape the culture, results, and fulfillment in your workplace.

The top problems we solve for clients with our coaching, speaking, and consulting services are:

1. People working in silos and lack of collaboration toward a shared vision.
2. Functional experts in leadership roles who aren’t equipped with the right skills and mindset to lead effectively
3. People in the middle or frontlines of an organization failing to take initiative and be accountable.

If you’re experiencing any of these issues—or other challenges you would like to get some expert guidance on—get in touch with me and let me know your situation. I’ll get back to you very shortly with my thoughts on what you can do to start making progress.

Alternatively, click here to schedule a free discovery call to discuss your situation in more detail and to explore if and how The Ghannad Group can partner with you to transform your culture and results. During our conversation, I’ll share practical ideas and insights relative to your situation and we can jointly determine whether we can support you going forward.

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