Teamwork: How Does Your Team Measure Up?

In his book, The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team, Patrick Lencioni describes the huge benefits, both commercial and personal, that can be gained from getting your team working effectively.  He even goes as far as to say that "Teamwork is the one sustainable competitive advantage that remains largely untapped" in today's workplaces.

How so?  Well, he claims that:

• It is powerful – when people come together and set aside their individual needs for the good of the whole, they can accomplish what might have looked impossible on paper
• It gets more done in less time with less cost
• It helps people find fulfilment in their work – a sense of connection and belonging

One of the difficulties with all this, however, is that teamwork is so difficult to measure.  Partly because it impacts an organisation in such comprehensive and invasive ways, it is impossible to isolate as a single variable.

At The Colour Works, following considerable research, we have developed what has fast become a highly-regarded tool to enable teamwork to be measured and, critically, used as a benchmark for continued performance improvement.

The Team Performance Indicator consists of 48 statements that relate to 16 key elements that are vital to a team's effectiveness - from the "hard" processes and planning to the "soft" elements of trust and atmosphere.  All team members complete the 10-minute questionnaire and responses are aggregated to produce a Team Performance Indicator Report.  The report highlights the perceived strengths of the team and shines a light on areas in possible need of attention.  With this clarity, with each individual's perspective being heard and with expert, independent facilitation, the team can unpick the issues and agree collective strategies to get better team results.  The exercise can evidently be re-run at regular agreed intervals to measure the continued performance improvement of the team and unblock any barriers.

The Team Performance Indicator works well for any team, regardless of level or stage of evolution.

What our clients say:

"The Team Performance Indicator Report has been an excellent tool to enable our operational team to identify quickly and effectively the culture of our team and celebrate those things we are doing well at however have good discussions on what we need to put right.  Running it again every 3 months enabled us to measure the growth we had achieved and focus our efforts on new challenges." - Operations Manager, Energy Sector.

"Working with different workstream teams on a major project, the Team Performance Report enabled each team to identify the strengths and challenges of their individual workstream team and we were also able to look across the 4 teams and identify some common trends and work on this at a programme level." - Programme Director, Manufacturing Sector.

If you would like to see a sample Team Performance Indicator report and/or find out more about how this may help you and your team, please contact us on office@thecolourworks.com