The Concepts

High-Energy Teams occur when eight fundamental strategic issues are addressed:

• Who are we?
• Where are we now?
• Where are we going?
• How will we get there?
• What is expected of us?
• What support do we need?
• How effective are we?
• What recognition do we get?

To create a High-Energy Team, team members need to establish ways of addressing the issues associated with these questions. Each question must be subject to continuous discussion and review through regular team learning processes. In Team Management Systems we have developed the High-Energy Teams Model as the basis for these processes.

High-Energy Teams Model

Who are we?

Each person brings different strengths to a team and will approach problems and opportunities in a different way. Team members need to know 'what makes each person tick' so that individual differences can be harnessed to achieve maximum performance levels. The workplace behavior of team members can be understood by examining their Work Values, Risk-Orientation and Preferences.

Where are we now?

Before planning where you are heading as a team, it is useful to look at team balance, whether team members are likely to be risk averse or risk accepting, and whether conflicting values are likely to arise. A Situational Analysis will allow you to look at the teams' key Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and to determine whether the necessary resources are available to achieve the team's vision.

Where are we going?

To work with energy, commitment and enthusiasm, a team needs to know where it is going. It has to have a vision that is aligned with the organization's mission and goals. It needs to understand its purpose - what makes it different from other teams, what its outputs are and what outcomes they lead to. A Team Purpose Statement can be used as a structure for the team to determine its specific purpose and how that aligns with the organizational vision.

How will we get there?

To turn a vision into reality, it is necessary to systematically set objectives, action-plans and measures of performance. It is important to plan the route from where you are now to where you want to be through looking at the critical Types of Work.

What is expected of us?

People find it difficult to perform if they don't know what they are meant to be doing. In a High-Energy Team, all team members will fully understand their job description, their role in the team, what they are responsible for and, most importantly, what they are accountable for. The development of behavioral ground rules aligned with agreed shared team values is also important to ensure team survival.

What support do we need?

Once the team finds answers to the first five questions, it can then focus on what support is required to deliver results. This means doing a training and development needs assessment and establishing ongoing systems of team learning so that all team members can continuously develop their skills.

How effective are we?

A High-Energy Team is one that regularly reviews its effectiveness and continually improves its performance. Benchmarks for success can be established and procedures for learning from mistakes implemented. A regular process of 'Questioning' helps prevent complacency from developing.

What recognition do we get?

In general, most teams will not attain high-energy levels unless there is adequate recognition for the accomplishments of all team members. This can be achieved through feedback, remuneration, fringe benefits and promotion.

Linking Skills

The processes that ensure all eight questions are integrated and coordinated are known as 'linking'. Team members and particularly the team leader need to be effective at a whole range of Linking Skills.

When all these strategic issues have been addressed to the satisfaction of the team, the team will be in a 'high energy' state ready to work optimally to deliver excellent performance.

The Strategic Team Development Profile Questionnaire allows team members to record the importance of these issues to the team and how satisfied they are with the extent that these issues have been addressed.

Types of Work

Whether designing a new job or restructuring an existing one, the critical activities that the job holder will have to perform must be identified. This concept of criticality is fundamental to the Team Management Systems approach to job analysis.

Margerison-McCann Types of Work Wheel

Research has shown that while many of these critical job activities can be carried out by a wide variety of people, certain key activities need to be carried out by people with particular abilities, preferences, and skills. In most jobs there are likely to be two or three activities that are critical to successful performance. If these activities are carried out effectively, it can make the difference between high and low performance in a job.

• Advising - Gathering and reporting information
• Innovating - Creating and experimenting with ideas
• Promoting - Exploring and presenting opportunities
• Developing - Assessing and testing the applicability of new approaches
• Organizing - Establishing and implementing ways of making things work
• Producing - Concluding and delivering outputs
• Inspecting - Controlling and auditing the working of systems
• Maintaining - Upholding and safeguarding standards and processes
• Linking - Coordinating and integrating the work of others

The Types of Work Profile Questionnaire, a 64-item individual or multi-rater assessment, has been designed to determine those areas of activity (defined by the Types of Work Wheel) that are critical to success in a particular job.

The Types of Work Profile Questionnaire and Profile are versatile, allowing any of the following uses and approaches:

• Analysis of existing jobs
• Job design and redesign
• Individual rating of a job
• Multiple views of the same job

For high performance in teams, ongoing assessment is a requirement. The Team Performance Profile Questionnaire and resulting Profile are tools developed to support this process. The Team Performance Profile Questionnaire is a 54-item multi-rater instrument that focuses on assessing a team's performance in nine team performance factors associated with high-performing teams.

The Team Performance Profile Questionnaire

• Provides an ideal entry point to an assessment of team performance by offering a common language and shared understanding of critical factors for high performance.
• Acts as a catalyst for team development and improved effectiveness by enabling team members to focus on areas requiring action.
• Is an ideal tool in any ongoing team development process - initial profiling of the team can be repeated at a later point to assess how team performance has improved.

Window on Work Values

Values are concepts or beliefs that determine how we live our life. At work they are major influences on how individuals approach work. Values drive our decisions and cause us to summon up energy to preserve what we believe in or what we want to defend. As such they can be principal determinants of behavior and will impact our views about people, situations or events. When team members share the same values the team will have the energy to deliver outstanding performance. Where individual values clash, conflict will occur and teams are unlikely to reach their full potential.

The Window on Work Values is a model built over five years from gathering individuals' responses to many questions defining work activities or situations at work that they value. The focus is on values where the primary content aspect is the type of goal or motivational concern that the value expresses. The model has good structural validity, meaning that value types close to one another in the Window are related whereas those on opposite sides of the Window are unrelated. The model can be applied to both individual and organizational values.

The Window on Work Values

The Window consists of eight core work value types depicted as window panes, rather like those in the rose windows of many European cathedrals. It is divided into quadrants, each containing a core value type as follows:

• Self Focus: Value types that put personal goals ahead of group goals. Individualism is the core value type in this quadrant.
• Group Focus: Value types that put group wishes ahead of individual need. Collectivism is the core value type.
• Organizational Constraint: Value types that require strictly-adhered-to guidelines to ensure the smooth running of an organization. Compliance is the core value type.
• Organizational Freedom: Value types where individual behavior is unrestricted and people are free to choose their pathways, unfettered by organizational constraints. Empowerment is the core value type.

Values focusing on the self, within an environment of Organizational Freedom are defined by the Independence value type. Those focusing on the self within an environment of Organizational Constraint are defined by the Authority value type.

Values focusing on the group, within an environment of Organizational Freedom are defined by the Equality value type. Those focusing on the group within an environment of Organizational Constraint are defined by the Conformity value type.

Individual values are determined from answers to the 64-item Window on Work Values Profile Questionnaire. The feedback is a hierarchy of value types and valuable information on how a person's values will impact their behavior.

Organizational values are determined from answers to the 32-item Organizational Values Profile Questionnaire. This multi-rater instrument gives feedback on the organizational values perceived by any number of respondents. Comparisons between organizational groups are given in terms of the value types. A comparison can also be made between an individual's view of the organization's values and their own values.

Team Management Systems has a process which uses the Window on Work Values to develop a Team Charter which lists core values that the team would like as the foundation of how the team works together. Action-based ground rules then relate to these shared values.