So I’ve been reading some articles lately, as I’m sure all of you have, it’s hard not to find these on a regular basis about this thing, termed the great resignation. It’s a result of this worldwide pandemic that we’ve all experienced over the past two plus years.
It makes sense, people take stock of their lives when a major event happens and wonder, “Am I Am I getting the greatest return on this investment of my time and energy?” For some people, it may cause them to leave. And it leaves behind organizations and people who wonder, where are these colleagues going. These these high performers often that have decided to go somewhere else. So what we find is; that a great antidote to the great resignation is a high performing team. Those don’t happen overnight and they don’t happen organically. Accompanied with that, there is some some data that stands out that really is striking.
Recent surveys that have been conducted show us that only 43% of employees report a positive climate within their team, less than half, and only 27% of employees say that their leader consistently encourages and recognizes suggestions for improvement.
Nearly seven out of 10 employees see no reason to speak up at work, either when they see something that isn’t happening quite right, or when they have an idea to help improve the performance of the team or the organization.
Coupled with that information, we’re also seeing higher level, higher reported levels of burnout, which is a result of stress, again, no surprise there, given what we’re all working through. As more and more people hand in their their notices, leaders are left scratching their heads, trying to reconfigure all of these puzzle pieces to make their their organizations and their teams work.
High performing teams, keep people in place, keep people thriving and working together.
Another key element of that is this notion of psychological safety. It’s a critical leadership component that enables and sustains those teams. Let’s talk about what I mean by high performing teams; some things that are present in a high well oiled machine, you know, teams that really thrive together. Those are led by leaders who leverage the diversity of thought and experience, that exists in their teams. That’s as teams come together, and they’re in that forming stage.
Leaders learn to appreciate and rely upon those different perspectives as they’re making their high impact decisions. Our team conversation model is designed to help leaders do just that, we refer to it as the beach ball model, because each person’s perspective is a different stripe on the ball and no single individual, in any organization has that the entire perspective. We tell leaders, if you stand here, you get a variety of different perspectives and enables you to make the best possible decision.
Another key component of a high performing team is the richness of feedback that occurs every single day, whether it’s peer to peer, individual to boss, and boss to direct report, all the way around, every single day. People stay current with each other, they provide insight. It’s hard for any one of us to have a true objective view of ourselves. We need feedback, we need our colleagues to help us stay on track, we need to help our colleagues stay on track as well. Our feedback model here Fierce, is designed to do that for colleagues and for teams in a highly efficient and very effective way.
Another component is of a high performing team is that they enrich relationships at every level as they work through conflict. Conflict is inevitable as people with with strong opinions come together to try to make the best possible decisions and to help an organization thrive. Those high performing teams are enabled by leaders who share perspectives without laying blame. And of course, the alternative that many of us have experienced, probably far too often in our careers, are leaders who avoid conflict at all costs, they prefer the nice to the kind, and they’re left again scratching their heads, wondering where all their high performance have gone as they’ve left because they’re the leaders aren’t taking care of those issues. High performers say, I’m not going to stay here, I’m gonna go someplace else where I’m truly appreciated, where I don’t have to pick up the slack of my lower performing colleagues.
Our conflict or confrontation conversation model is designed to help enrich the relationship and address the behavior of a colleague whose performance is off track. Embedded in all of that, is this notion of psychological safety, the cornerstone of any high performing team. It fuels people to take risks, and to not fear that they’ll be judged or punished, if they speak up, whether that’s to share something that they see that’s off track or to share an idea for successes, as I mentioned earlier. It also allows individuals to show some humility and to say, You know what, I don’t know everything, and I’m still learning as well.
It’s really about creating this culture of mutual respect among each other. It’s about building high levels of resilience at every level of the organization. As you look around and you’re checking your team, wondering what’s going on, noticing that that things aren’t functioning as smoothly as you’d like, and maybe you’re losing some key colleagues. Reach out, give us a call here at Fierce conversations. We’d love to have a conversation with you and see what we can do to help you to improve your conversations and your life, one conversation at a time.
