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Building a High Performing Team

Building a High Performing Team

Many of my Vice President’s and Practice Area Leads tell me, “Your team is a high performing team.” Then they ask, “What do you do to make it happen?” They comment, “Your team members are smiling all the time with happy faces,” or “Your Key Performance Metrics are all green with an excellent CPI (Customer Performance Index). 9 on the scale of 1 to 10 with continuous extension of the customer contracts.” “How do you make this happen?”

Having a busy schedule never gave me the chance to articulate my strategies in words, however now that I’ve been given an opportunity to write this blog post, I’ve thought of a few things which I was doing subconsciously.

One of the challenges in managing people is that some team members are not adaptable and acceptable to change and there are others who don’t want to accept any changes. I found that understanding personality styles helps me to better manage my team.

Understanding my team members’ personality styles along with brainer technique is key to understand how the person thinks and executes. Are they a left brainer or right brainer or a well-balanced person using their whole brain for thinking and execution? (See below for more details on brain types.) Having a sense of how the person uses their brain helps me to manage more effectively. Knowing a person’s personality style, I can identify the right fit for teams for different projects. For example, people who are right brain type of people are the perfect fit for innovative projects. Whole brain type of people are often the right fit for team lead positions and so on.

Another example about working with a right brainer. One of my team members came up to me with loads of enthusiasm around an idea for building a new framework for automation even though we had an existing framework to support. His idea was creative and made sense for what we wanted to achieve in the long term – and had a bigger ROI (Return On Investment) than our existing solution. I gave him the opportunity to work on his idea which turned out to be a very successful project.

Left brainers are great for systematic approaches to projects. Based on the nature of responses to questions and the kind of artifacts delivered by one of my team members, I was able to identify her as a left brainer. I found her to be an analytical person with a logical approach to solving issues. I assigned her to our knowledge share SharePoint updates project which she was able to complete with very minimal support. This became a very useful knowledge harvesting platform at an organisational level.

What do I mean by right and whole brain types of people? Personality assessments (see related article) help to identify people who are left, right or whole brains types of thinkers. Knowing the strengths of my team members helps me to motivate, encourage and provide opportunities for them.

What I’ve learned about Left, Right, and Whole Brain Types

It would be amazing to be surrounded with whole brainers all the time. A whole-brained approach connects the right and left brain. Interestingly, these days, some educational systems try to foster a more whole-brained scholastic approach with teaching techniques that connect with both sides of brain.

Left brain and right brain dominated people can be classified with regard to their thinking style.

Left brainers have a more systematic approach and tend to follow the rules. Analysis and logical thinking are their strengths. These folks are often good on projects involving algorithms. For example, software design using data structures and algorithms however complicated it is.

Right brainers are more creative and think intuitively. They are a very good fit for innovative projects. These types of people are new ideas generators. Often, they come up with the right answer but are not sure how they got it. These types of people often do lots of reverse engineering.

The four quadrant model of behavioural types that is often used to understand how people think has these four types: Driver, Analytical, Amiable and Expressive. Here is a map of left and right brainers to this model:

  • Drivers are right brainers who know what they want and how to get there with high energy.
  • Analyticals are left brainers who are highly detailed people with a methodical approach.
  • Amiables are left brainers who try to get along with all personality types blending to all types of situations.
  • Expressives combine right brainers excellent communication skills and great speaking ability but are not very concerned about facts.

 

Picture: http://www.runrunlive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Personality-types.jpg

Knowing what kinds of thinkers my team members are allows me to provide them with opportunities that challenge and motivate them. It is my secret weapon in building high performance teams.

About Rashi Gaur

Rashi’s leadership and mentorship experience along with people management and high customer satisfaction has resulted in successful project deliveries globally for organizations including Honeywell, IBM, Boeing, General Motors, Shell and ABB Inc.

Rashi has 15 plus years of experience in IT projects and hardcore test management in various domains including automobiles, aerospace, oil & gas in industrial sectors at various management levels.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rashi-gaur-pmp-b6b3b844/

Don’t Ask if You Really Don’t Want to Know

Don’t Ask if You Really Don’t Want to Know

“I really want feedback on my performance. I especially like to hear where I can improve,” a new direct report told me eagerly. Steve looked sincere. He acted sincere. So I thought he was sincere. I then proceeded to tell him that he needed to be more careful about the type of information he was sharing with people as it was causing people to think that features were changing in the product. His opinion was affecting the progress of the project as people didn’t want to work on features if they were going to change. Steve then became really upset with me asking who said that about him and stating loudly that people shouldn’t be so sensitive. He ranted. He raved. I was taken aback and surprised.

Was it my delivery? Or did he really not want to know of any areas of improvement?

I try to be very careful how I discuss areas of improvements with employees. It can be a constructive conversation but also has the potential to blow up in your face. To make it a constructive conversation, I use something recent to demonstrate where I think someone can improve. I put it in writing, if needed.

For example, say I have an employee that is having difficulty with communicating with those that don’t agree with him. Let’s call him Bob. It is a constant issue, not a one-time occurrence. In a meeting with a group of Bob’s peers, I watched while he became frustrated with trying to explain his viewpoint to someone. He ended the conversation with, “I just don’t know what more to say to you,” sighed, threw his hands up in the air and sullenly looked down at the table. The person on the receiving end visibly bristled and said, “Well then, I guess we are done here,” and left the room.

I took that situation and asked him, “Was that the outcome you wanted?” Of course it wasn’t and he said so. Then I asked, “How could it have ended differently?” This opened up a conversation between the two of us to explore how he could have handled things better. I made sure to say that this is an area of improvement for him and asked him to suggest how we monitor it to see how he improved.

But sometimes, even with using specific situations as examples such as the ones with Bob, it doesn’t matter because the person really doesn’t want to get the feedback. They really, really don’t. Like Steve. I did try to work with him and provide him with specific situations in which his behavior affected people but he always became upset and wanted to confront the person or persons, as he knew they were wrong. I realized that he really didn’t want to hear anything but positive feedback.

If you don’t want feedback, don’t ask for it. Everyone likes positive feedback, and I’m happy to give them that but I believe in balanced feedback. None of us are perfect. We are all works in process. I always benefit when my manager reminds me I am impatient and she points it out to me after a meeting. I know I lose support from people with my impatience. I work on it, but every now then, it seeps through. Reminding me helps me to remember this is something that didn’t magically go away. It takes constant mindfulness on my part to avoid expressing impatience.

If you really want constructive feedback, ask for it. But if you really just want to hear how great you are, don’t ask.

Staff Meetings

Staff Meetings

There is nothing more frustrating than going to a weekly staff meeting that is content free. Or worse, ends up as a weekly status meeting. Please! If it is a project status meeting, call it that. If it is a staff meeting, please, please, please, make it about something other than project status updates.

Maybe for some managers, staff meetings are equivalent to project status meetings. It’s their chance to get an update on the current project. So call it that and come up with an agenda so everyone comes prepared with the information you want.

For me, a staff meeting is more than project updates. It’s my opportunity to review what’s going on in other areas of the company, get updates from HR, talk about upcoming events such as conferences, meetups, or company parties. And if I don’t have enough content for a weekly staff meeting, I don’t have one. I don’t have a meeting just to have a meeting.

Create an agenda for your staff meetings and make them productive. Be clear about what you want the people in the meeting to contribute. And when you don’t have agenda items, give yourself permission to just cancel the meeting. It shows you are respectful of your staff’s time and that you aren’t meeting just to meet.

Here’s a sample staff meeting agenda that I have used:

  1. Update from HR on Hiring
  2. Passdown (from what I have learned from my manager)
  3. Guest speaker on xyz topic
  4. Roundtable: what each person would like the rest of the team to know about his/her team. Limit to 3 minutes or less per person. Focus on interesting tidbits/problems/successes rather then status updates. For example, if I am managing the user experience team and they are working on a new style guide, I would share: The user experience team completed the color selection for icons used in all apps. If people are interested, I can set up a meeting to go over this in more detail.
Communicating Clearly with Culturally Diverse Teams

Communicating Clearly with Culturally Diverse Teams

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Clearly communicating is challenging. It’s challenging with everyone in the same room. Adding people who grew up in different geographical areas – each bringing a different cultural worldview, different ways of communicating that they take for granted, and you have a much higher potential for confusion and misunderstandings. Then add in geographically remote team members who may only be included via audio and not video and consequently seem even more distant. Opportunities for miscommunication double and triple.

How can such a team effectively communicate to avoid misunderstandings?

Never assume that they will correctly interpret colloquialisms. Once, after talking with someone from Russia, I said, “Great talking with you. Talk to you later.” He looked confused and said, “Are we talking later too?” I was lucky he asked for clarification. How many other colloquialisms have I used and no one asked for clarification? Avoid colloquialisms.

Talk slowly. If the person is not a native English speaker, they might be translating from English to their native language as you are talking to them. If you speak rapidly, they might miss something. And they might feel uncomfortable with asking you to repeat what you said. So speak slowly. Pause where appropriate. Ask if they need clarification.

Remember YOU have an accent. You may notice others have an accent and how it can make it harder for you to understand them at times. The reality is that you have one too. When we get excited, our accents are magnified. Talking slowly and clearly enunciating your words helps. If someone looks confused about the words you are using, try explaining with different words instead of simply repeating yourself.

Write it down. After a meeting, write up the important points. Especially what you expect from that person. This gives them a chance to review things at their own pace instead of while you are talking. Ask for feedback on your write up. Ask if you missed anything or if they have anything to add.

When possible, have remote team members on video as well as audio. Nothing can replace face-to-face conversations but video can help people connect better. Instead of just a disembodied voice on the other end, you see a living person with facial expressions. It’s more personal and making it personal allows communication to work better.

Have a quarterly or yearly face-to-face meeting with everyone. I had a team of managers from four countries. We had a yearly offsite meeting to review our mission, goals, and progress. Instead of having the meeting in the US where I am located, I had it in India. There were several benefits. One was that for once, the US based managers had to travel for the offsite. They were the ones that didn’t go home at night. This might seem trivial, but it’s not. Another benefit was the local team had a chance to meet the managers that they’d heard about but never seen. It also demonstrated that I didn’t think the US was the only important site.

What tips do you have for ensuring clear communication among people from different countries?

The Buy-In Leadership Challenge and the 20-70-10 Rule

The Buy-In Leadership Challenge and the 20-70-10 Rule

As leaders, we are on a never-ending journey of continuous improvement in all areas of our business. Some of us, including myself, derive a great deal of satisfaction from transitioning teams and businesses into a new and improved future state. This journey towards a better future state can become arduous if we do not have genuine support from some of the stakeholders.

One way of managing your stakeholders is what I call the 20-70-10 rule of buy-in. The numbers represent the size of three stakeholder groups:

  • 20% group – Fully Supportive change agents
  • 70% group – Indifferent majority
  • 10% group – Detractors

tarang-stakeholder-revised

In my experience, for any change to be effective, you need at least 20% of the stakeholders to be fully supportive and optimistic about getting to the end state. The second group of individuals, the 70% group, may not be enthusiastic about the change, but won’t be detractors either. The third group is the dangerous detractors; those who may go out of their way to maintain status quo.

Carefully managing all stakeholder groups is vital, as momentum in the wrong direction can be disastrous.

My top five tips for leaders on this topic are to:

  1. Create a stakeholder map to identify the 20-70-10 groups. In the past, I have built this map after having one on one conversations with team members to understand what motivates them and listen to their feedback. By putting yourself in their shoes, asking open-ended questions related to the change, and carefully listening to what they have to say, you will be able to determine if they are a fully supportive change agent or a detractor. If they seem indifferent, then they would be part of the majority i.e. the 70% group.
  2. Build momentum with the agents (20% group). Back in 2013 when I was leading a team that was working on a new product, I found that a handful of developers were highly motivated to transform the industry that we were operating in and would come up with innovative ideas on an almost daily basis. We then set up a think tank group with those change agents and had a weekly brainstorming session to build momentum.
  3. Accept the fact that there will always be detractors (10% group), so acknowledge their concerns and try your best to address them. I inherited a team back in 2007, and during the stakeholder mapping exercise, I realised that a senior team member did not support our new initiative. In that case, it was the development of a new automated testing framework. After carefully listening to this individual’s concerns, I realised that he would see the success of this framework as a personal failure because he was part of the team that had earlier failed to develop a similar framework. During the one on one conversation, I acknowledged his concerns and requested him to play the devil’s advocate role during the technical review sessions. Everyone in the team knew that he would play this role, and he felt that he made a valuable contribution by using his experience in identifying potential issues with the framework design before it got developed.
  4. Ensure that the majority of the stakeholders are heading in the right direction by explicitly setting behavioural expectations, SMART goals, frequently measuring progress using KPIs, and course correcting when necessary. Developing SMART i.e. Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound goals are an essential building block for results oriented execution. I have seen numerous initiatives fail as the leaders did not design and assign SMART goals. In those cases, individuals thought that they were making progress, but in the absence of clearly defined goals, they were heading in different directions ultimately leading to wasted effort.
  5. Over-communicate, because there is no such thing as too much communication. Don’t stop after an initial announcement. Reiterate your message on every opportunity you get. Use different modes of communication: record videos, organise webinars, send regular newsletters, set up all hands meetings, and have skip level one on one conversations to ensure that you receive feedback and individuals are adequately informed.

What are your top tips? Please share them in the comments below.

Tarang Waghela is a Senior Director of Software Development at ABB, Inc. He has extensive experience in leading global software teams and has successfully led and delivered numerous software products in the areas of mining long–term scheduling, short–term scheduling, geological data management, mining economics, ERP, and simulation.