Keystone Thirteen: The Essentials of Team Performance (Part One)
UNITY OF PURPOSE
There are not many teams out there whose purpose for being is solely to exist. Every team has a purpose – winning a championship, hitting a quarterly sales target, rolling out a new product every six months, putting a man on the moon within a decade.
The most effective teams possess “unity of purpose,” where each member understands and supports a common goal, sees their role in achieving it and contributes to meeting the common objective.
The Team Performance Center (TPC) at City Beach has developed an innovative process (based on each of our “Keystone Thirteen”) that guides organizations down the path to building high-performance teams. Each of the 13 steps examines one of the essential characteristics demonstrated by the most successful organizations. This is the first in a series of posts that will explore each of these characteristics.
Our first step focuses on “unity of purpose,” the fundamental starting point. In order to function at the highest level, teams must eventually integrate all thirteen of the keystone essentials into their process. But without first achieving unity of purpose, it’s difficult to progress any further as a team.
So how do we help teams achieve unity of purpose?
First, we stress how vital it is that every organization goes through the process of crafting an understandable, inspiring and tangible mission/vision statement. Teams should do this to provide themselves with a clear sense of their identity and direction.
Some organizations come to us with these statements in place. For the others, the Team Performance Center will utilize interactive surveys and self-assessment tools to gain insight into how individuals on the team see their sense of group purpose. We follow this with cooperative brainstorming sessions to develop a set of guiding principals for the group. Then the team can begin drafting and refining a living mission statement.
The TPC also engages groups in exercises that illustrate the unity of purpose concept. One is a two-part experiential learning process that culminates in front of an apparatus resembling a large (14’ x 8’) spider's web. The initial stage of the exercise is intended to build trust and physical skills, which will then be applied to the second stage, the spider's web.
Without being given the big-picture information as to “why”, team members are encouraged during this initial stage to place their sense of trust and physical security in the hands of their peers/colleagues. As a result, some participants resist or even refuse to participate. When this happens, we respect their choice to opt out, while also encouraging them to look inside themselves for the real cause of their trepidation.
After this phase is complete, we move to the spider's web. Here, we present the team with the specific task of collectively moving everyone safely through the web. Defined parameters regarding safety, process, and communication are introduced - which the entire team must follow. In this phase, the same individuals who balked at trusting their fellow team mates just minutes earlier often jump right in and allow the group to lift them eight feet off the ground with little or no hesitation at all.
When asked to identify a possible cause of their sudden change in perspective (manifest in a significant spike in trust), most describe sensing a tangible and defined mission, common team goal or unifying vision that changed their view. This is the catalyst that moves the discussion back to the critical importance of "unity of purpose."
