As leaders I’m sure you’ve read about and/or possibly experienced the break through impact of leading fully engaged teams. Engaged teams know that timing + capability = opportunity and that opportunity can be lost without an urgent, timely response, i.e., the fierce urgency of now. To that end engaged teams are energized by opportunities to make break through impacts rather than incremental improvements.

While engaged teams see the need to align short term and long term goals and actions, they view short term goals as milestone steps to achieving and sustaining long term strategic objectives. They’re motivated to make their mark by helping to move the organization forward in a significant way to achieve its vision and to sustain organization success.

Engaged teams are self-energized and staffed with members having diverse yet complementary knowledge and capabilities. When armed with a compelling vision, clear expectations, mutual trust and supportive leaders there’s nothing they can’t accomplish. A compelling vision fires up team members and provides the strategic direction for their actions; clear expectations set the objectives to be achieved; mutual trust fuels commitment; diverse yet complementary knowledge and capabilities provides synergies enabling members to constructively debate, multitask, and successfully complete individual and group tasks in a collaborative fashion; and a supportive leader provides access and guidance and runs interference for the team by, for example, navigating and/or removing barriers to the team’s success.

Engaged team members are driven by:

• A compelling vision and mutual agreement on what needs to be done.

• A trust based individual and collective commitment to one another’s success.

• A passion to successfully complete important work and make a significant contribution.

• A desire to create sustainable, successful outcomes.

• The need to sustain a productive team environment for success.

• The opportunity to role model effective team behaviors for the organization.

With team member synergies, an engaging work environment, and a supportive leader the outcomes achieved by engaged teams are consistent and predictable in terms of the quality of their process and results.

Alternatively the success of unengaged teams is a bit of a crap shoot. This is in part because team members may not have diverse, complimentary knowledge and capabilities; may have silo mentalities driven by personal interests; may not have mutual agreement on what needs to be done and how; may not be passionate about the team’s mission; and may not be committed to one another’s success. These factors make unengaged team success more likely to be a matter of luck or coincidence and therefore inconsistent and unpredictable.

Among the key reasons for leaders to field engaged teams are their potential for breakthrough outcomes resulting from:

• Alignment: Team members are on the same page in terms of goals and actions.

• Creative Tension: Team members debate and reach consensus on the best ideas and actions.

• New Insights: Team members identify new links between key influencing factors.

• Innovation: Team members identify opportunities to improve cycle times, capabilities, etc.

• Team Energy and Passion: Team members enjoy working together and are fired up about team goals and actions.

• Ownership and Commitment: Team members individually and collectively own the team’s goals and actions and are committed to one another’s success.

• Strategic Orientation: Team members keep sight of the big picture to achieve the organization’s vision.

Among the key reasons to be a member of an engaged team are the opportunity:

• To contribute doing organizationally significant work

• To work with highly capable colleagues

• For high visibility and recognition

• To share, learn and grow from interacting with fellow team members

• To increase his/her market value within the organization

Leaders can monitor the effectiveness of engaged teams and members by monitoring the:

• Team Results versus agreed upon Metrics.

• Level of Enthusiasm about team progress.

• Continued Growth in Knowledge: Maintain knowledge of the costs and impacts of team recommendations and the degree of difficulty in implementing them.

• Level of Trust & Collaboration: Net change positively/negatively in team member trust and collaboration.

• Continued Growth in Insight(s): Continued new perspectives, e.g., cause and effect, impacting team recommendations and planned actions.

• Growth in Courage of Convictions: The willingness to hold and constructively defend an unpopular opinion and make a compelling case for its adoption.

To sustain the passion, focus, commitment and effectiveness of engaged team members, leaders should be accessible and seriously consider team requests to revise and realign existing organization processes impacted by the implementation of team recommendations.

So leaders engage your teams; you’ve got everything to gain and little to lose. Engaged teams are invaluable because they consistently achieve desired results, create a supportive team culture, and are infectious role models for other teams in the organization.

The Corbett Group is a certified leadership/executive coaching and organization consulting firm that works with leaders and teams to expand their capabilities , improve performance, improve alignment and achieve their vision and goals.

Bob Corbett

What is failure? It’s the inability to perform or the lack of success. What is success? It’s generally defined as the attainment of a desired outcome. For some success might be achieving a goal, e.g., receiving a desired promotion, or achieving a mastery of a technology or subject matter, or developing a successful high performing team, or developing more effective working relationships with peers, or achieving more work/life balance. It’s in our collective DNA to want to be seen as applying our talents successfully. Consequently, to intentionally pursue failure is a disconnect.

Why is success important to us? Psychologically and physically success feels a lot better than failure including, favorable visibility, a sense of accomplishment, acknowledgment by others, and tangible rewards, i.e., increased responsibility and/or increased compensation. In contrast failure doesn’t feel as good as exemplified by, unfavorable visibility, the failure to achieve, negative recognition and lower self esteem. In the former case you feel on top of the world; in the latter you’re at the bottom of the barrel. So it’s more likely that when leaders are unsuccessful it’s because they’re unprepared, i.e., lacked the necessary skills and confidence, rather than consciously pursued failure.

What does it take for a leader to be successful? Success requires leaders to:

• acknowledge the things they know and do well versus the things that they don’t.

• ask for help without feeling embarrassed.

• continually develop by addressing growth opportunities for themselves and their teams.

• be intimately knowledgeable of their organization’s goals and the environment in which it operates.

• continually manage the ambiguity associated with plans, actions and decision making.

• be proficient in the competencies and behaviors the organization values.

• plan and execute the right actions by effectively engaging their teams.

• be knowledgeable of the critical levers to pull to enhance the likelihood of success.

• be confident in themselves and their teams.

• monitor progress and make the necessary course corrections in goals and actions required for success.

Another key to leadership success is to effectively manage the variables affecting it. These variables can enhance or decrease the likelihood of success. They can be internal and controllable by you or external and uncontrollable. Examples of internal variables include your personal behavior, thoughts, preparedness and commitment. External variables include things like the weather, the economy, the competitive environment, and the behavior, thoughts and actions of others. Success requires a leader to understand the dynamics of the environment in which he/she and the team operate; to understand the challenges facing him/her and the team; and finally, to execute a plan that anticipates and effectively navigates key variables to enhance the likelihood of success today and tomorrow.

While it’s a given that leaders are expected to control internal/controllable variables; they can also exert influence over external/uncontrollable variables. For example, a leader can create a collaborative, productive team environment and influence team member thoughts, behaviors and actions by:

• being accessible.

• setting clear goals and expectations.

• requiring team alignment (i.e., commitment and ownership of the team’s vision and goals).

• valuing constructive debate and collaboration over internal competition.

• supporting team member learning and development.

• holding team members accountable for team results.

Unfortunately, during challenging economic times organizations typically cut spending for leadership development. The irony here is that challenging times require continuous learning and development to achieve and sustain success. When you learn to lead successfully during difficult times you can apply that learning to lead successfully all of the time. A formalized leadership development process will help minimize leader failure and increase the frequency of success by providing a range of support for leaders, e.g., knowledge and skills development, focused job rotations, special project assignments to address important organizational issues, focused external subject matter courses, and coaching and mentoring.

At the end of the day Leadership Success is the intersection of competence, planning, confidence and execution. Alternatively Leadership Failure is the intersection of lack of preparedness, inadequate planning, lack of conviction and poor follow through - the lack of skills and confidence, limited access to a leadership development process and a reluctance to ask for help are key contributors to failure.

Failure is not a desired state; clearly Success feels better, adds value and is much more personally fulfilling and rewarding.

The Corbett Group is a certified leadership/executive coaching and organization consulting firm that works with leaders and teams to expand their capabilities, improve and sustain team alignment and achieve their vision and goals.

Bob Corbett