“You’re mad if you think I’m standing on a raft pretending to be nice to my colleagues.”
There’s a very good reason why people can be suspicious of business team development. Many people have experienced activities, under the heading of team development, that have no context, buy-in or clear business benefit, and often fail to address some of the real team issues that might have made standing on the raft worth while.
Firstly consider a sports team that had millions invested in players and resources choosing only to train once at the start of the season or when their performance was falling. What would you be saying? News flash: “In response to a poor start to the season Fantasic united have decided to save money by reducing training and rely on individual playing ability”
Most of us would be screaming at the TV.
Then consider the combined salaries of a business team combined with the resources employed, the profit requirement and the value of future reputation. Then ask yourself if you should be leaving team development to chance for strategic, project or department teams.
It’s a no brainer really. Sports teams have clearly defined rules, a clear period of time to play, a referee and an opportunity to play again and better next week if they loose, and still they train for 80% of their time and perform for 20%.
Business teams often have vague and changing rules, a continuous period of play, a moving and complex set of relationships, as well as coaches/managers that also play in the game, and what percentage of time do business teams in general invest in their development?
It’s OK, I know the answer. When I pose those questions to various business people they look at the floor, like a naughty school child, and mumble a commitment to do more. But will they? Unless we get passed the old images of raft building, out of context, team development, or a social trip down the pub, they will continue to agree with the logic of investing more but not actually do so. When they do, it will often be in response to major conflict or a drop in performance.
We/business has to see team development as a strategic investment. If we only took one key lesson from sport it should be the proactive and continuous investment in how teams function. The lesson that team development is strategic not a costly “nice to have”.
With a strategic viewpoint, companies are more likely to define a budget for team development at the start of the year, project, bid/tender, service contract etc. Scraping around for budget during a crisis in performance is not intelligent thinking. In our recent support of a joint venture bid team the scraping around for budget became a “cap in hand” activity to ask each partner business to “cough up” . . . . sorry! contribute to a development budget.
When managers and staff experience effective, value increasing team development they will say “we should do more of this”. To which we agree (we’re bound to!) but point out that they don’t have the budget.
The reality is that business teams, unlike sports teams, will never have dedicated coaches watching and guiding the team on a full time basis. Some would argue that the team leaders should do some or all of this. I’d agree but only if you invest in their ability to do this and as most team leaders are player managers they might need at least some planned support prior to and during the team they manage coming under full performance pressure.
It’s time to change mindsets and consider planned investment in the teams that business plans and values often describe as critical to success.
Berrison design and deliver training, engagement and change programmes for leaders and business teams. Training that supports change, growth, innovation and efficiency. If you would like to find out more about our employee training please get in touch.
Author: Colin Dulson
