Teamership: Effectiveness vs. Performance vs. Experience
Ideally, our teams will be highly effective; high performance environments and provide a highly desirable subjective experience for team members. Photo by Accuray on Unsplash
Getting teams right is increasingly important at every level of organisations:
As individuals - 95% of us are working across multiple teams so we need to be able to contribute positively to all of our teams.
As leaders - 75% of teams don’t exist on an organisational chart so we can’t rely on formally appointed
leaders and managers to provide all of the necessary leadership.
As organisations - 74% of organisations that are at least partially operating as a team-based network are seeing improvements in performance so getting teams right is a competitive advantage.
To utilise the potential of teams, we need to have ways of understanding how modern teams work. Teams are complex, dynamic human systems. They are infinitely fascinating. They are inherently impermanent and imperfect. That means that there are many ways to look at any team at any given time.
Below are three ways to consider any team’s way of working and functioning. They are not the only ways, but they are three very useful lenses to consider teams through.
Team Effectiveness
Team effectiveness is an assessment of how well a team is able to meet its objectives. Every team will exist for a reason or set of reasons. It makes complete sense that teams can and do benefit from having explicit conversations about how well they are meeting those objectives.
Paying attention to effectiveness allows teams to remain relevant and continue to be supported by internal stakeholders, customers and suppliers.
Key question: Is your team able to meet its objectives?
Team Performance
Most of the time in conversations, performance and effectiveness are interchangeable and used to mean the same thing. In organisational and industrial psychology, a distinction is made between results and performance. Results are outcomes that are achieved while performance is related to the behaviours - what was or wasn’t done by individuals and teams.
Too often, we conflate these two concepts. Decoupling performance and effectiveness can often unlock high levels of both performance and effectiveness.
Key question: What are the behavioural patterns in your team?
Team Experience
A team needs to consider the subjective experience of its members. In a multiple team environment, the ability to be a team that people enjoy working as a part of is an advantage that allows teams to attract, retain and develop the best team members.
Key question: What is it like to be in this team?
These three perspectives on a team (effectiveness, performance and experience) are distinct and complementary. You can consider each independently and there is great power in appreciating all three in the context of each other.
Ideally, our teams will be highly effective; high performance environments and provide a highly desirable subjective experience for team members.
Here are some questions for you to consider this week. In the weeks ahead, I’ll dive deeper into each of these elements:
Team Effectiveness - is your team able to meet its objectives?
Team Performance - what are the behavioural patterns in your team?
Team Experience - what is it like to be in this team?