There’s a big difference between a group of people working together and a “team.” You don’t have a team if you’re experiencing any of the following:

• Goals are not accomplished
• People are pulling in opposite directions
• Meetings are long and unproductive
• Agreements are made but not kept
• Constructive conflict is absent
• People talk behind one another’s backs
• Members do not ask for help when they need it
• Blame is assigned and mistakes are not forgiven
• Creativity is lacking

You can’t count on team issues to just “work themselves out.” Left unattended, they will inevitably get bigger. Energy is drained from the team and productivity suffers. As a leader, it’s easy to get drawn into the interpersonal issues of your team. That’s when a fresh perspective from redkey partners is needed most.

Both results and relationships are in high gear. Team members are actively engaged and giving their full discretionary effort and the team is contributing to the overall success of the business by meeting or exceeding its objectives.

We start from the premise that members of your team are doing what makes sense to them at the moment – even when their actions don’t make sense to others and may be counterproductive. The key to dissolving barriers to team performance lies in first understanding how and why members are currently making sense of things as they do from their point of view. Sustainable change can take hold only when behaving in a new way makes more sense than behaving in the old way. Our search for barriers to team performance and member commitment leads us in two directions simultaneously:

Commitment is diminished when team members’ thinking is clouded by worry, stress, self-doubt, defensiveness, or other distractions. We help team members understand how to return to the Clear State of Mind from which they can productively focus on the tasks at hand and maintain healthy relationships with others. This enables them to contribute their full range of talents and knowledge. In other words, we give them the equivalent of an “Owner’s Manual for the Mind” that allows them to apply both their intellectual and emotional intelligence.

High-Performance/High-Contribution Teams require a foundation of well-defined goals, roles, processes and systems. When these are unclear or when team members lack alignment around them, barriers to performance arise. Often these structure and system barriers appear as “people problems.” Examples:

People not pulling together as a “team” because they lack, or fail to recognize, the interdependence of their roles A matrix structure with unclear accountabilities that leaves people with conflicting priorities or unclear rewards Ineffective communication processes that deprive members of information needed to fulfill their responsibilities Lack of clarity about which decisions may be made independently and which require consultation with team members

Our consultants have a deep reservoir of business experience that allows us to identify root causes and take the “blame” off the people.

Once we have identified the barriers to performance in your team, we work with you and your team members to craft solutions with lasting impact. We will act as your sounding board and mirror. We will coach you in how to draw the best out of your team…and yourself.