Do you have a team — perhaps one of your top-performing teams — that is faltering?
Even the best teams can face challenges to productivity. Examples include lack of resources, poor communication, or difficult external clients.
Few things are worse than watching a team struggle and not knowing how to get them back to their best.
I once worked for an organisation with a team of gifted engineers and customer service staff — yet things kept going wrong. Client expectations were not met. Collaboration with a key stakeholder faltered, and we faced constant issues with hardware. Worse still, team morale started to collapse. Some members became disengaged and stopped striving for excellence. Our team leader was uncertain about how to address the issues, and senior management was not communicating with us. We started losing staff, and eventually, the company withdrew from a profitable sector at a significant loss.
What’s The Problem?
Often, even functional teams are hiding three fundamental flaws.
These flaws stem from our model of thinking and are deeply ingrained in business, science, and culture. They may not seem problematic until challenges arise — at which point this flawed thinking can tear the team apart. You’re left wondering what happened to your ‘A’ team, and staff begin to leave.
The Three Flawed Ideas:
- Solutions come from understanding what went wrong (A misunderstanding of how creativity occurs).
- The problems the team faces are the same as the problems the team is trying to solve (Team collaboration and deliverables are not the same).
- All problems are management problems (Believing issues with teamwork can be solved solely by adjusting management style is a category mistake).
What’s Really Happening?
We often conflate the team’s collaborative advantage with its output. Since the two seem inseparable, we never address the ‘how’ of teamwork. We assume that functional teams emerge simply from “good people working together.”
Our culture is also addicted to “problem talk.” In everyday conversations, this manifests as water-cooler chat. In teams, it takes the form of extended analysis of what’s going wrong.
How Can You Get Your Team Back on Top?
We need a reset. Typically, businesses assume teams will work until they don’t. You’ve invested in good people, and they have a track record of working well in teams. At most, you might send them on a couple of team-building exercises a year — perhaps throw the odd staff party or share some morale-boosting posts on social media or your intranet.
- But what if team development was built into the very language the team uses to communicate?
In the 1960s, a new idea emerged from Systemic Therapy. It narrowed down interventions by discarding everything that didn’t yield rapid, positive outcomes. Over 60 years, this approach evolved into what we now call Solution Focus. Initially applied in family therapy, it has since moved into coaching and organisational contexts, with a proven track record of securing positive outcomes in even the toughest conditions, from complex therapy to failing institutions.
What is a Solution-Focused Team?
- In Solutions Focus, we assume the team already has the knowledge, resources, and expertise to solve its problems. Therefore, the focus is on encouraging the conditions that allow creative ideas to flow.
- A key issue is determining where the team wants to go. Typically, intelligent professionals are well aware of the current issues, but the preferred future is often clouded by doubts, misgivings, and a fixation on past or present problems.
- Frustrated team members are heard, and the focus is shifted to desired outcomes. For instance, if a team member suggests that nothing can change and their efforts are futile, a response might be: “I’m really sorry you feel that way. What could we do, given the circumstances, that would make this worthwhile for you?”
How Can You Improve Team Performance?
One framework for improving team performance is to hold Solution-Focused meetings. For the struggling team I was a part of, it might have looked like this:
Project Kickoff Meeting:
- What projects have we worked on previously that are similar and went well?
- What are our common goals for this project?
- What specifically went well, and what were the signs that things were working?
- When our team is performing at its best, what do we notice?
- When this project is complete, what would our client say if we had performed at our best?
Mid-Project Meeting:
- What would we like to see more of in the context of this project?
- What client feedback or team dynamic would indicate we are on track?
- On a scale of 1-10, how confident are we that we will deliver the project on time, within scope, and to the client’s delight?
- What would we be doing if that number were one higher?
End-of-Project Reflection Meeting:
- If we were to do this project again, what would we do differently?
- Volunteering information about outstanding colleague performance: What did we notice about [team member] that demonstrated they were working at their best?
- What is a sign that we are improving as a team during this project?
When a team is struggling, some aspects of the challenges are often outside its control. Solution-Focused teamwork addresses the situation as it is, focusing on group outcomes with a goal-oriented mindset.
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Author: Joel Marks
Also posted on LinkedIn.
This article draws on Solution Focused Team Coaching, Dierolf, Muhl, Perfetto and Szaniawski (2024) and 57 SF Activities, Rohrig and Clarke (2008). Image credit, Unspash.