Why The Health Of Your Lead Team Matters (And A Tool To Help Improve It)
Why does the health of your leadership team matter?
Healthy teams build reliable systems. Period. I have never observed an unhealthy team that was not stealing the trust, time, and focus of those it was employed to serve.
We have all worked in unhealthy systems and have a few stories to tell, right?
Healthy systems build healthy culture. Healthy culture attracts (and keeps) your best talent.
This is a universal truth seen in our everyday off-campus engagements as well.
- At Zappos or Southwest: Healthy teams deliver better service
- At Costco or Trader Joe’s: Healthy teams yield strong customer loyalty
What is team health?
We often think of ‘healthy’ as being a human characteristic. We consider those healthy behaviors if we take care of ourselves, eat well, and exercise regularly. So how do we translate “healthy” to a team?
Like humans, teams are living organisms.
Teams carry emotions, encounter conflicts, and seek a sense of purpose. Since we spend so much effort on measuring our human health (e.g., weight, blood pressure, body fat, etc.), it makes sense that we should also invest time in measuring team health.
How to measure team health?
For decades, campus systems have conducted employee opinion surveys around organizational climate and culture. They are delivered to your inbox under many names: employee engagement, employee satisfaction, employee commitment, or employee attitudes.
It’s probably safe to say nearly zero people get excited when it comes time to take the annual employee satisfaction survey.
Am I right, or am I right?
Employee engagement is the byproduct of team health, and it matters—a lot. In fact, according to a recent Gallup report, organizations with the highest employee engagement outperformed their competitors by 2.5 times. That same Gallup report found that 70% of the U.S. workforce was disengaged, and 20% are actively working to sabotage your system’s strategic objectives.
What was the number one influencer of team health? The leader’s and the Lead Team’s performance.
Change is inevitable. Irrelevance isn’t.
But the reality is that far too many campuses aren’t shifting quickly enough.
That’s why I’m on tour with the RECLAIM MOMENTUM {LIVE} Keynote. It’s a value-packed event where we’ll dissect the 6 Lead Measures of Building Irresistible Campus Culture and get equipped with a framework to lead successful change with less resistance.
Here are three reactions that I regularly hear from average leaders:
“Team health doesn’t really matter. People will do the job I need because I pay them well.”
You could be correct, but only if they do simple and repetitive work. For teams who lead people or whose job requires creativity or judgment, the evidence is overwhelming that engagement makes a HUGE difference in their ability to contribute to the institution's goals.
“My team’s health seems ok. I don’t think it is a problem.”
You may be right, but considering the high disengagement rates, the odds are against you. How would you know for sure?
“My team is beyond hope. Improving their engagement is a lost cause, so I will put my energies elsewhere.”
That's also problematic. Giving up on your Lead Team is giving up on your culture and community. Where your top team goes, so goes the culture. Healthy leaders create healthy culture.
This is also true if you flip it around.
The thing that is so powerful about disengagement is that there are so many ways to improve it with such little investment.
The first (and most potent) step is to start measuring the health of your team and lovingly confront your reality.
Here is the best news of all. Measuring team health does not need to be a mystery. The narrative can actually pivot from:
“I think our team communicates well”
To - Our team COMMUNICATION score was 3.7 out of 5.
“I think our team connects well with each other”
To – Our team CONNECTION score was 3.1 out of 5.
“I think our team is aligned with our goals and strategies”
To – Our team ALIGNMENT score was 4.2 out of 5.
“I think our team is ready to take on a few more new initiatives”
To – Our team CAPACITY score was 2.9 out of 5.
“I think our team’s performance is out of this world”
To – Our team EXECUTION score was 3.8 out of 5.
“I think our team operates within a highly reliable system”
To – Our SYSTEMS score was 4.0 out of 5.
Like a fine gemstone, your team culture has facets that, when healthy, become vividly brilliant and attractive to your world.
These facets are the Lead Measures of your system’s culture:
- Communication: The quality of the exchange of internal and external information between leaders and teams.
- Connection: The quality of leader-to-leader relationships and team collaboration.
- Alignment: The aspiration to achieve the same vision through common values, strategies, and goals.
- Capacity: The quality of the conditions allowing for the team to produce at high levels of performance.
- Execution: The quality of the team’s ability to take action upon its highest priorities.
- System: The quality of reliable principles and procedures that work as an interconnected network to maximize mission delivery.
Remember: Measuring team health is just one step toward better employee engagement, but this alone is often enough to trigger surprising improvements in team performance.
Your “Game On” Switch
The Lead Team 360™ Survey is a highly reliable instrument used across hundreds of campus and district sites in the U.S.
As your organization faces increasing internal and external challenges, the effectiveness of teams in delivering on performance goals will become a key source of difference between those systems that are successful and those that fall behind their competition.
The Higher Performance Lead Team 360™ is a proven and effective tool to promote social awareness and create transparency in communication through trust, sharing, and increased clarity towards your organization’s expected goals and behaviors. The overall purpose of this feedback process is to optimize Higher team Performance in the Lead Measures of Culture (mentioned above).
If you are a campus or district leader struggling with average team performance, you will want to access this FREE assessment tool.
This semester, HPG is offering the Lead Team 360™ FREE to qualified leaders committed to administering the diagnostic across their executive and leadership team(s) of 10 or more.
Schedule your pre-qualifying call with us with two simple clicks.
Change is inevitable. Irrelevance Isn't.
What’s your strategy to RECLAIM YOUR MOMENTUM?
I’m hosting virtual coffee sessions with campus, district, and building leaders this fall to discuss the challenges of leading beyond crisis, where I will share the tips and tools to Reclaim Your Advantage.
It’s time to build (not rebuild) capacity to lead the uncharted territory ahead.
You get pushback, opposition, confusion, and anger without a proven strategy.
With better practice, you’ll be equipped to lead something more significant and more impactful than you might ask or imagine.
Claim your Virtual Coffee here.
Remember, average performance is a choice.
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