The Quest to Build the Perfect Team
First off, let’s acknowledge that there is no such thing as ‘the perfect team’. It’s an illusion like most things in our world that we believe to be static because, in reality, everything is constantly moving, morphing, evolving, and changing. So, the next best thing we can have is an ‘effective team’ for a period of time, long enough to create stability and produce something worthwhile or achieve a goal.
Google was most interested in figuring out how to replicate its successful teams and has the perfect laboratory for testing. Most companies want to know this so that they can get maximum efficiency and improve their bottom line. That is what a business is always striving for – maximum efficiency for minimum costs and greatest profits. At least that has been the model since the beginning of capitalistic times. While we may be in the midst of shifting to a different model (commerce instead of capitalism), many businesses are still operating under these principles.
So, let’s address this quest first – how do we get the maximum efficiency with the least cost and greatest output from our teams of humans? First, recognizing that human beings are highly complex and sophisticated beings, and they are not AI or robots and can’t be treated as such. Yet, that is how most organizations think about and utilize their people – as human ‘resources’ they can move around to fill gaps and do the work that needs doing. I believe this is old systems thinking that has become accepted practice and we are quickly shifting to a much more 'human-centric' way of doing things.
With a long-awaited focus on inclusion, recognizing diversity, realizing that human resources are actually people and that being human is vital, we're watching live as awareness of individuality grows. As much as managers and leaders try, most really don’t know how to get the best out of people and typically get zero training on how to do anything but get the people to do the work and be accountable. Forward-thinking organizations and leaders are realizing this need and hiring coaches and counsellors to support workers to deal with the blocks that hold them back from being the best version of themselves and contributing their best to the organization. Leaders require this coaching too in order to know how best to guide their people.
But what can the organization do to ensure that people's mental health is considered in the shifting workplace? The No. 1 mental health issue that Canadian employees take time off for is workplace change.
“We have found that among the types of organizational changes, job re-design has the strongest correlation to sick leave for both physical and mental health,” said Alan Torrie, president and CEO at Morneau Shepell.
66% of Canadians polled experienced at least one organizational change with their current employer:
39% team restructuring
35% layoffs and downsizing
35% job re-design (35 per cent)
29% re-design of the physical office space
Employees who went through workplace change felt the repercussions across the board.
43% said it had a negative impact on the company,
40% said it affected their own health and well-being
30% said it hurt their job performance
Is it possible to recognize the true value of employees by knowing exactly what they bring to the table? If we knew that, would it change the way we organize people to get the work done? I’m hoping so, here goes…
Google Team Study
Google studied 180 teams and found that
Team members may behave in certain ways as individuals but when they gather, the group’s norms typically override individual behaviour and encourage conformity to the team. (So, you don’t necessarily get better results with a team of superstars)
Successful teams shared a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.
That’s it. The big secret. If you allow people to ‘be themselves’ in an environment of mutual respect and trust, they are more productive, creative – they contribute their unique skills and talents effortlessly leading to more successful team outcomes. Sounds too easy - why haven't we recognized this already?
So how do you allow people to feel comfortable ‘being themselves’? Do people know how to ‘be themselves’? Many people search for a lifetime trying to figure out who they are and what they are meant to be doing that will fulfill their purpose in this life. Even if people knew who they were, how do you know they’ll be able to build trust and mutual respect with any given number of other people?
A New and Improved Way Forward
Enter BG5 and Human Design. This emerging system based on ancient technologies and modern quantum physics, provides a very detailed blueprint for each absolutely unique person in your organization. When people start to understand themselves and how they may have been trying to be someone they are not – they start seeing who they really are and start acting from a place of authenticity rather than from the conditioning they’ve been receiving since they were born.
Most people live their lives based on what they’ve been told – by family, friends, marketing, advertising telling them what to wear, where to live, what to drive, how to look to be loved and accepted - to survive and maybe get a chance to thrive. Plan your life out and live by the plan. Graduate high school, go to post-secondary, and get a degree, certificate, or designation so you can buy the house, the car, and have the family of your dreams. Whose dreams are these anyway?
When people come to know themselves, they can more authentically contribute to the bottom line of the organization by “doing what they love and loving what they do”. When people can contribute from who they really are, being themselves, they feel energized at the end of the day, feeling deeply satisfied, successful, peaceful, and full of delight. We’ve all been misled to believe that work has to be hard and physically, mentally, and emotionally drain us or that we aren’t working hard enough. The opposite is what brings true efficiency and high levels of productivity. It also reduces a company’s health care and sick time costs.
BG5 Career Analysis and Team Engineering
Once an organization knows the makeup of people in the organization, then people can be allowed to contribute based on their strengths, skills, energy design, leadership, and creative abilities. They can develop their talents, and be supported or empowered in being themselves. We are missing out on developing people’s full potential for a few reasons:
People don’t know their own true strengths or take them for granted and spend their time trying to get better at who they are not.
Managers and leaders rarely have knowledge or training about how to develop their people from a personal perspective (they typically lack any people training, often don't even know their own strengths, and are generally promoted based on their own knowledge of the work that needs doing).
Work output is based on the concept of Planning and Control and this is fast shifting to focus on the Individual and what each of us brings to the table to work cooperatively together.
Uncovering everyone's unique design will show you your natural leaders and managers so they can be developed as the ones who best organize, guide and lead processes and people. Historically, we make our best guesses during interview processes based on resumes and how well people answer our questions in an interview. Some of us listen to our gut and feel out whether or not someone is a good fit but we often override our decisions by going with what looks logical on paper. There is a much better way that will show you what you can't get from a traditional interview process using BG5® Career Analysis and Coaching.
Team Dynamics
There are underlying energy dynamics that happen in every group that people are completely unaware of. Sometimes you can sense this when working with people and you feel like something is missing, feel the resistance, or just can’t seem to connect. Things don’t flow and you get nowhere with what you’re trying to accomplish, or you end up pushing too hard to get it done exhausting everyone and getting sub-par results.
We’ve all had experiences where we’ve been on or seen that ‘magic’ team of people for whom everything seems to just flow or fall into place. What if you could recreate that? Bottle it? Reapply again and again for continued success?
BG5® Team Dynamics Analysis allows you to see what’s happening behind the scenes and bring it to everyone’s awareness. This brings people closer together and makes them much less likely to take things personally realizing it’s just an energy dynamic at play. Some physics playing out in the quantum field. It also helps you engineer teams for maximum success – not perfection – but efficiency, camaraderie, satisfaction, peace, and delight at what you can accomplish together.
Want to know your organization's true potential? Get to know your human capital. Contact me to discuss options or book a Discovery Session today.
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