Think of a Team, what comes to your mind?
Have you ever thought of a working group as a system that transmits or transports energy, that transfers information (of material or immaterial “value”) from one place to another, or from a present time to a future time ? So we can represent a team through a physical model, such as an electrical circuit, which in any real model always produces a certain resistance and therefore dissipates energy.
I don’t want to bore you with physical concepts and formulas, such as P = V x I (Power = Voltage for Current), as it would not make sense, but if you put your hand close to an old tungsten filament bulb, or just try to unscrew it off, what happens? You feel the heat or burn yourself. What is the reason? For the simple reason that the light bulb is an excellent tool, an incredible invention, but which to do its job dissipates / loses part of its energy in heat, therefore it is inefficient and low-performance.
Let’s go back to the working group, a team is made up of people… What happens when one or more team members don’t focus on what’s important? The team wastes energy, meaning that these people behave like a low-efficiency light bulb.
In principle, each bulb continues to do its job, but for the same energy the system will light less or to produce the same amount of light it needs more bulbs and therefore I will have to pay a more expensive bill for the same or a worse job, not to mention the fact that this type of bulbs has a shorter lifespan than low energy bulbs or LEDs. We could develop the metaphor even further by saying that individuals who waste energy are more prone to possible burnout.
As coaches and team coaches, our intervention consists in optimizing the lighting system or the efficiency and performance of the working group. And how can we achieve this goal?
- By working with individuals on their potential (awareness);
- By reducing the internal friction of the person (self-esteem);
- By reducing friction between people (conflict);
- By creating a system capable of working harmoniously (communication).
Working with Individuals on Their Potential (Awareness)
In my experience as a team coach, I found that very often team members spend more time paying attention to what other members do or to what opportunities are offered to others than they focus on opportunities that are offered to them.
Some useful questions which can be asked to foster teamwork and ensure that everyone contributes to the project are:
- What could be your contribution to this project?
- What opportunities do you see?
- If it were up to you what choice would you make?
- In which role are you most comfortable?
Reducing internal friction in the person (self-esteem)
How many times do one or more team members feel unsuitable or develop the impostor syndrome when faced with a new role or activity? How can we help them get rid of their fear and perform well? Some questions that we can ask to increase the psychological confidence within the group are:
- What are you good at?
- How can your skills be used in this situation?
- Who could help you among the other members of the group?
- How are you unique?
- What makes you proud to be part of the team?
Reducing the friction between people (conflict)
Friction between people is one of the factors that produce the Joule effect on which the team coach should work the most. In fact, it is among the most expensive ones in terms of energy expenditure and dispersion and it may result in an increase in frustration. Some questions that can be asked to get members to act in a more collaborative and inclusive way that I feel to suggest are:
- What do you like about teamwork?
- How do you put it into practice?
- When a colleague offers you an idea, what do you do?
- When you ask for feedback how do you use it?
Creating a system able to work harmoniously (communication)
In order for a team to work harmoniously, each member must know how to perform their job, trust each other, be ready to support the other teammates and provide feedback useful for improvement carefully avoiding sterile criticism. To achieve this, we can ask the following questions:
- What kind of feedback do you offer to your colleagues?
- How do you help and support other group members?
- When you have relevant information, how do you share it?
- How do you feel when you promote harmony within the group? How do you do it?
Each of us wants to be part of an efficient system that works in harmony. If we take up the metaphor of the lighting apparatus, we realize that we do not need to replace the bulbs to make the system more aware of its abilities, its strengths, and therefore induce it to trust its members, but simply to adjust them thus promoting active listening and the sharing of constructive suggestions and ideas by each member.
In other words we can summarize this in this way:
- All that the team could produce in results or achieve in goals, can be represented as the Power produced (in physical Power In) Pin;
- The results or objectives can be represented as the useful Power (or Power Our) Pout;
- What is dissipated and lost, can be represented as Power lost Plost..
Hence the efficiency η, is defined as follows:
This means that in the ideal world, all the effort and commitment produced are fully translated into useful work for the group and the organization, but in the real world the efficiency is always less than 1 because some energy is lost in the process. By the way, the good news is that by working on the team members their performance and efficiency can be effectively increased.
About the author
Fabio Garganego is a Faculty Member at Kingstown College and a Team Coach and Business Coach with a particular interest in Team coaching and Corporate Wellbeing. He has over 10 years experience in coaching and mentoring teams in different organisations. Fabio is a native of Italy, fluent in French, English. He has been working and living in Ireland for the last 7 years. He has a Master degree in Electronic Engineering and a Master in Organisation, Management and Innovation. He is the co-founder of Pentago, a team coaching company that operates in Ireland, UK and Italy.
