Helping Teams Face the Future - Part 1: Why are we here?

A couple of weeks ago I posted the introduction to our Teams series of posts and podcasts. This post and related podcast starts the journey by looking into Purpose. In the coming weeks we will be adding webinars and seminars to the series where we can dive rather deeper into the topics.

On paper, teams look like a positive response to complex/complicated challenges. In practice, teams just don’t seem to be delivering the way we hoped. And so we often find ourselves stuck in a team wondering why. A quick net search on ‘why teams fail’ will give you enough reading material to keep you busy for any rainy day or so. The ‘Top 10’ reasons are fairly consistent. In almost every one of those lists, lack of clear, compelling purpose features prominently.

Put another way, one of the most common threats to team effectiveness is not knowing what the team is there for.

There may be several reasons for this:

• In the rush for action, we tend to worry more about getting a team in place than being clear about its purpose and powers.
• All teams have a tendency towards ‘bubblethink’, focussing in on the team and disconnecting from their context and stakeholders. So they can disconnect from their intended purpose.
• New team members aren’t properly onboarded. So over time, the team forgets its purpose.
• The game changes, but the team doesn’t. So the team becomes cut off from the rest of the organisation.
• If a team doesn’t know its purpose, the chances of success immediately diminish. And the road to failure can harm team members, the broader organisation - and its performance and brand.

Of course, it needn’t be that way. If you want to know more about how teams can (re)discover and affirm their purpose, listen to our podcast: https://lateralcoaching.co.uk/podcasts/team-coaching/