Agile Teams

3 Ways You Can Help Increase Collective Team Performance

As a leader or an Agile leader, you are part of a fast-paced and dynamic work environment. As the leader, is team performance a critical measurement of your overall success? We think so!

In addition to your success as a leader, stakeholders want to see a continued increase in team performance, because… let’s be honest, who wouldn’t want to? If you are the leader of an agile team, may I assume that collaboration, flexibility, and continuous feedback are already fostered on a daily basis? How then can you influence and contribute to an increase in collective team performance?

In this article, we will explore three key strategies that you can implement that will increase collective team performance, including clear communication, team collaboration, and continuous improvement.

These approaches help leaders like you build high-performing teams that are capable of delivering exceptional results in a rapidly changing world. We know this to be true because we train people like you in our workshops and cohorts to be better team facilitators, better communicators, and better leaders.

Improve Collective Team Performance with Clear Communication

Clear communication is essential for improving collective team performance in any team environment. Agile principles emphasize the importance of collaboration and open communication between team members, as well as between the team and stakeholders. As a leader, you can promote clear communication by establishing a company culture of transparency, encouraging active listening, and promoting open and honest feedback.

By using tools such as:

daily stand-up meetings
team retrospectives
regular check-ins

leaders can help ensure that everyone is on the same page and working towards a common goal.

By not only promoting but modeling clear communication yourself, you build trust and alignment within your team. To start, have ‘thinking together’ conversations.

Improve Collective Team Performance with Collaboration

Collaboration and team building activities are two ways to improve team performance and go hand in hand. As the leader of any team, it’s of the utmost importance to organize team-building activities, consistently encourage collaboration within the team, and create a space for planned idea-sharing times. In other words, create a positive, safe, supportive work environment, aka an inclusive work culture.

In addition, fostering regular and clear communication between teams and stakeholders can help to build trust and alignment all around, leading to more effective and efficient decision-making.

By prioritizing collaboration along with clear communication, leaders can help to drive innovation and creativity, and increase overall team performance.

Improve Collective Team Performance with Continuous Improvement

After clear communication and collaboration, continuous improvement is the third key aspect of leadership and a key factor in improving collective team performance. By embracing a growth mindset and continuously seeking ways to optimize processes and workflows, teams can stay ahead of the curve and continuously improve their performance.

As the team leader, you promote continuous improvement by encouraging the following within your team.

Experimentation
Providing opportunities for skill development
Fostering a culture of learning

Leaders who help their teams stay adaptable, innovative, and always striving for excellence have some of the best-performing teams and a high rate of employee retention and satisfaction, too!

Are You Unintentionally Hindering Team Performance?

You *might* be the culprit and hindering your own team’s performance. Do you want to find out if your team is underperforming partly because of your leadership?

Read this article about team collaboration at its best and worst. TeamCatapult helps leaders like you (and teams like yours) increase their performance. Curious about what that looks like?

Start here.

Are You Limiting Your Team’s Ability to Make Important Decisions?

Making important decisions is a crucial part of running a successful business. However, many managers unknowingly limit their team’s ability to make these decisions, which can have a significant impact on the overall success of the company.

Whether it’s through micromanaging, lack of communication, or a lack of trust, there are several ways managers can unintentionally stifle their team’s decision-making abilities.

The Leadership Team That Couldn’t Make Decisions

In this case study, the hired consultant realized that her focus on process-oriented conversations was limiting the team’s ability to make important decisions.

She realized that people need space to talk about how changes will impact them personally, and that ignoring these personal factors can create roadblocks to success. She has since devoted her career to helping teams create space for these types of conversations and addressing the personal impact of change.

Setting the Stage: My Experience and Point of View

At the time, I was an experienced consultant and leader, with two degrees in software engineering and ten years of experience working with companies to help bridge the gap between end users and developers. I was about 3 years into a slightly new career of working with teams in large-scale transformations. Being the seasoned techie and ‘process chick’ that I am, I was prepared to come in and help this organization reach their desired change – and I knew just how to do it: with re-engineered processes and new tools!

I’m sure no one else has ever entered a team with all the answers but here I was… convinced that I could help them do this “the right way” and it was too focused on process.

An Executive Team and Difficult Decisions

Then one day, I was sitting in a room with the executive team I’d been working with for about nine months. We were in the deep end of the pool. They were making one of the most difficult decisions of their careers – to fundamentally re-organize – not just positions but departments and workflow. It included major geographical relocations for virtually everyone in the company and collectively rethinking everything. It was big.

So far, my approach had been to give people space to talk about the process of the transformation: the business decisions, the data analysis, cost analysis, and defining the scope of the transformation.

But at the crux of this particular conversation — the conversation that changed everything for me — the leaders were being asked to weigh-in on a decision that would impact them both professionally and personally.

They were torn between making a decision that could result in them either losing their job or having to uproot their families and employees. There was arguing, tears, anguish, strife and ultimately a stale-mate.

They simply could not reach a consensus on the future.

The Aha Moment That Changed Everything

This is when I had one of the biggest aha’s! of my entire career. We had spent so much of our time focusing on the process that we had not created space for people to talk about how this massive transformation would actually impact them.

We were re-engineering processes, identifying desired outcomes, and collecting data, but nowhere had anyone done the “dangerous” thing – of asking how people felt – either as individuals or as a group. They were being asked to “check their personal baggage at the door” and yet have a conversation that had a radical impact on them and their teams personally.

They were being asked to transform everything about their professional landscape, including their job functions, their rank in the organization AND where they would be living – and we’d never asked the question about how it would impact them personally!

Probably not too unlike being a project manager and one day being told you’re now an agile coach, moving from managing tasks to leading change.

And oh by the way, you’re in charge of figuring out what that really means.

Or executives that are told to be agile but also meet the quarterly financial returns. And they get lost in what feels like a dichotomy of figuring out how exactly to be agile and meet unrealistic goals.

It can be a complete identity change.

My Career Changed By Talking About the Scary Things!

This experience with this executive team haunted me. It has become my origin story — the basis for everything I have devoted my career to for the last 25 years. I had seen in no uncertain terms the limits of relying on process-focused conversations. And time after time since then, I’ve seen that it’s the things people feel like they can’t talk about that become the roadblocks.

In this team, it was a strictly business and numbers conversation that was not giving space for the personal impact conversation that held them back from making a final decision.

How to Overcome the Roadblocks

I have also worked with a team where the leader would pull people aside after meetings to give them feedback about needing to have better-informed answers in the next meeting. And he was not the least bit curious about what might be the reason the person did not have a solid answer in the first place.

And then there was the department that continues to re-org in an effort to improve performance but does not talk about what’s really impacting performance in the first place.

Just think for a moment, where might you be experiencing a scenario where there is something in the conversation that is not okay for you to talk about. You might even make a note as we go through today about where familiarity comes up for you. These are places I would invite you to come back to and think about — these are the places where there are roadblocks, and this is where to start overcoming the roadblocks.

These kinds of roadblocks come up when there is a tendency to defend our assumptions and perspectives. To assume we’re right. And to either not ask questions of what other people think, or to not share our perspective when we think the other person doesn’t want to hear it.

This I Know To Be True About Making Important Decisions as a Team

For me, I vowed at that moment that anytime I led change in the future it would be from the perspective of helping people talk about the things they didn’t think they could talk about or were scared to bring into the room.

And these two things I know now to be true:

Change cannot happen until people feel seen and heard
What you resist persists.

How hard is it for you to talk about the things that scare you? Are you allowing your team to bring scary things into the room?

All along, it might have been you who is limiting your team’s ability to make important decisions!

Are you ready to make a change?

~ Marsha

3 Ways You Are Unintentionally Stalling Collaboration In Your Company

Team Collaboration at Its Best, and Worst

Are you unintentionally stalling collaboration, in your team or your company?

Collaboration is a word that leaders use often. They know that when their team collaborates, everyone wins. As leaders they look good, their team members are happy and content, and their C-suite, well, they are thrilled with any and all tangible results!

The definition of collaboration as found in the Oxford dictionary defines it as ‘working with someone to produce or create something’. Reason follows that teams who produce results are winning teams.

What happens though, when leaders unintentionally stall or ruin the collaboration in their own team? What happens when they create a mess of their own doing? Often, nothing! Nothing happens. Sometimes the blame isn’t easily found and even when it is, it’s not easily attached to any one thing or person.

If your team is struggling to collaborate, may we suggest you look inward first. Look to see if you might be the cause of stalled or even ruined team collaboration.

3 Ways You Are Unintentionally Stalling Collaboration In Your Company

When your team fails, do you also? Many believe this is the case.

Here are 3 ways you might be (unintentionally) ruining team collaboration.

1 Undermining the team

If you are not present in a meeting, why should your team be?

If you micromanage, why should your team come forward with ideas?

If you don’t communicate clearly and often, why should your team know how to communicate with you?

Team collaboration starts with you. The leader:

sets the tone and behavior for meetings
reads the room and creates space for ideas and input
communicates with the team and encourages two-way communication

Are you guilty of undermining the team?

Now that you know, can you ask yourself to do better?

2 Not listening with intent

Listening is a skill. As a leader, you need to listen with intent.

The intent of listening does not lie in the response, but the understanding of what is being said.

When anyone chooses to listen with intent, the result is hugely beneficial. Team collaboration, team morale, and team cohesiveness start to solidify and ultimately these become standard practice.

To quote Ernest Hemingway (Across the River and Into the Trees)

“When people talk, listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say.

Most people never listen. Nor do they observe.

You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling.”

Try that for practice.

3 Not remaining neutral

Conflict arises whether you expect it or not. It is human nature. Conflict arises when there are multiple people in a shared setting for an extended period, aka in a team setting.

Yes. Teams experience conflict. As a team lead, you are wise to expect (and welcome) conflict.

Conflict can come from:

Unclear team roles
Internal power struggles
Insufficient training
Differing ideals
Challenges with communication
Poor work environment
Harassment and bullying

and many other contributing factors.

In How To Navigate Team Conflict and Stand Steadfast in the Storm we learn that standing in the storm is about staying with conflict and difference instead of avoiding it. Because conflict is inevitable the leader in you needs to recognize that different points of view generates conflict. But did you know conflict can provide clarity, discernment, deeper understanding, and energy? For those reasons, we encourage the gift of opposition.

Three tips to help you stand in the storm include:

Cultivate self-awareness and management to stay in the situation
Learn to press “Pause”
Deepen your understanding of Group Dynamics

Exploring Tip #3, we find that models and frameworks are helpful for understanding group dynamics and for making sense of what we’re experiencing in the room.

Structural dynamics is a theory of face-to-face communications developed by David Kantor.

It provides a way to name the structure of communication as it’s taking place in the moment.

These are called

Move
Follow
Oppose
Bystand

Learn more about structural dynamics here.

The Agile Team Facilitation Stance

If you think you’re unintentionally stalling collaboration in your company, in your teams, this is a great time to learn more about the Agile Team Facilitation Stance.

I recommend you start here.

Then read my book ‘Art and Science of Facilitation’ and learn how to lead effective collaboration with Agile teams!

3 Things Needed to Lead Successful Virtual Meetings for a Hybrid Team

It’s Nearly 2023. Is Your Team Hybrid?

At the start of the pandemic in March 2020, most in-person teams went remote, forced to go this route due to worldwide quarantine orders. In the USA that meant that nearly all of our workforce stayed home, and learned to navigate working remotely.

It’s safe to say that by 2021, most of us figured out how to lead virtual meetings for fully remote teams. Now that we are headed into 2023, what does your team look like?

There are companies who are requiring employees to return to the office.
Others have fully embraced all things remote and don’t want anyone back in the office.
Then there are those who have found a balance; creating a hybrid workspace that allows employees to divide their time between working in the office and working from home.

Team Meetings for Hybrid Teams

What do team meetings for hybrid teams look like.

It can be messy!

While virtual meetings for hybrid teams by design take place… well, virtually, it doesn’t mean that everyone likes these types of meetings or gets the most out of them.

Those in the office might be resentful of having to sit in front of a computer and join a Zoom video call. At the same time, those working remotely can suffer from FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) of what’s going on in the office – and even feel excluded or isolated.

The 3 Things Needed to Lead Successful Virtual Meetings for a Hybrid Team

If you are the facilitator and in charge of a hybrid team, here are 3 ways to move forward! Remember, that we’ve all had to figure this out and it might take some time to get it right. The more you practice and the sooner you get familiar with these types of meetings, the smoother these meetings will run.

1 Determine the purpose of the meeting.

Ask yourself these questions AND take the time to answer them honestly.

Why are you meeting?
What’s the desired outcome?
What will be accomplished at the end?

2 Decide if it’s a meeting or an email.

Many of the meetings that occur today are one way monologues where people show up to receive a download of information. If your purpose is to ‘understand’ or ‘be aware of’ then write an email, or record a video that people can watch . There is no need to gather everyone to listen to one or two people in a one-way conversation.

If your meeting is about buy-in, new ideas, decision-making, collaboration, co-creation, and gathering input on a decision then have a meeting, and have a facilitator.

3 Design the meeting to match the desired outcomes.

People will support what they help to create. If you truly want participation then create a meeting design that supports hearing all voices.

This is what that looks like:

Create a question based agenda
Send it out ahead of time

These 3 ways help you get your team to a meeting. Now, to get them engaged and active, read these next 7 tips to increase engagement.

7 Ways to Increase Engagement During a Virtual Meeting for a Hybrid Team

The following tips can be shared with your team and become standard practice for every Zoom video team call.

Expectation should be set that from no matter where you join, from the office or remote, these standards are firm.

Ensure high-quality video resolution
Hide your self-view
Ask people to refrain from using gifs or really detailed graphics in their background
Look at the camera
Check-In with everyone who joins the call
Invite people to a virtual collaboration tool like Mural or Miro and ask them to participate
Agree to unmute

Virtual Meeting Resources for Facilitators

If you need help, here are additional resources!

5 great resources to get started as a facilitator

Virtual meetings

Team meetings

Virtual training

Last but not least, we offer a variety of virtual workshops for those on their journey to facilitation mastery.

They are offered throughout the year, please take a look at the workshop calendar to find your preferred workshop and dates.

Facilitation workshops offered include:

Agile Team Facilitation

Advanced Facilitation

Virtual Facilitation Masterclass

7 Keys to Successful Delivery Culture Change

This is a case study, a story, of how one organization changed their delivery culture and used Agile training as a cultural intervention to level up their delivery leads and their teams.

The Delivery Culture That Wasn’t

The Client:

A mid-sized tech development company who was growing fast and experiencing the consequence of growth pains. They were what they called ‘practicing agile’, and yet they were struggling with team cohesion, decision making and delivery.

The Struggles:

Teams did not feel heard.

Teams felt like they were getting stepped on.

Ideas from younger team members weren’t taken seriously by older team members.

The attitude around meetings was ‘Why would I bother coming to a meeting where you’re going to ask me my opinion, but you’ve already got a solution figured out? Why don’t you just tell me what to do, and I’ll go do it? Don’t waste my time.’

Team leaders were frustrated by on-going team resistance. They struggled to get their teams on board with new ideas or changes in the direction that the leaders knew needed to happen.

Teams would revisit topics that had already been discussed and decided, because, in fact, they hadn’t really been decided.

This lack of team cohesion and the constant resistance to ideas and change impacted product development and delivery. The process impeded creativity and efficiency. It caused frustration for everyone involved.

None of this is good for a growing tech company looking to break through the market and survive long-term.

This company was growing quickly and knew they needed to be more adaptable in their execution. They had laid down the core principles of agile. They thought they knew agile well.

But why were they still not seeing the results they needed? They had spent thousands of dollars in agile training, but they were not seeing the improvement results they expected or needed from this effort.

What was going on? How could this be fixed?

The Pitfalls Before Delivery Culture Change

The world of work is becoming more adaptive. No longer do we create five-year strategic plans or twelve-month project plans and expect them to be relevant past the end of the week. Markets and needs change quickly.

1 We need businesses who understand agility and adaptability at a core DNA level. Training is just one component.

2 We need leaders who can guide the process internally. Agility does not happen in big movements; it happens in small decisions that get made at a moment in time. The point where a leader says: I’m going to choose emergence over knowing all the answers upfront. Or I’m going to trust that the team will produce value, even if I don’t quite understand exactly how it will happen at a level that would make me comfortable.

3 The problem is viewed as a knowledge gap rather than a systemic issue. Sometimes in the case of facilitation, yes, it is a knowledge gap, but it’s also so much more. Just acquiring the new knowledge will not solve the systemic challenge in an organization that has a culture of leaders showing up late to meetings, refusing to hold themselves accountable to working agreements like ‘no technology’ during the meeting

4 No internal champion or sponsor. Training is procured by a vendor or even developed in house. Intervention and culture change at this level requires someone with seniority and gravitas inside the organization to be an ongoing champion

5 Training staff in the practices of agile without skills in how to help teams implement them – beyond the “what”, ensures that your teams spend their whole day in meetings without the skills to make them effective. It also makes everyone hate meetings.

6 Helping teams, scrum masters and agile coaches make some of the key mindset-shifts needed for agile, but failing to engage middle management and executive leaders or provide them a path for their own leadership growth.

7 Keys To Success of Delivery Culture Change

Today, this company is thriving!

Teams are high-performing, and the delivery leads are equipped to handle challenges as they come. Newer team members have more senior delivery leads they can lean on to help mentor them through tough team dynamics.

These are the reasons of how they got there:

Laid down the foundations of agile – mindset, practices, key principles. They know why agile is important. They understand why you’re doing it.
Effective collaboration and facilitation skills are table stakes for agile transformation. Facilitation is not optional. Everyone in an organization needs to understand what makes meetings effective. We need to wage a war on ineffective meetings that waste time and just repeat the same conversation over and over again.
Used a competency model for agile coaching – scrum masters and agile coaches are being asked to lead teams in different ways. We are leaving behind the days of telling people what to do, putting everything in a project schedule and managing to the schedule. Effective meetings and collaboration are at the heart of agility.
Developed the skills of facilitation and coaching throughout the organization – at all levels. Patrick Lencioni in his book “The Advantage” said “there is no greater way to change the culture of an organization than by starting with how they meet.”
Leaders went first. Leadership must model and support this – not contradict it. Leaders hold power and privilege over those learning. The fastest way to frustrate someone who has just learned a set of skills that light them up is to not support it. Mid and senior level leaders in the organization need to develop their own leadership.
Setup systems that support and reinforce what people are learning. When the skills of facilitation and coaching are not supported by the organizational structures they will not stick. Training in large organizations we often hear, “When will my boss go through this training?”
Built the competence of facilitation and coaching. Facilitation and coaching are professional bodies of knowledge. To become certified in either one requires hours of learning and practice, which helped to embed these skills through competency development programs.
1. Competency cohort with certification
2. Learning circles
3. Coaching circles
4. Work with a professional coach
5. Get mentoring and supervision from a professional facilitator

You Can Facilitate Delivery Culture Change Too!

Training programs CAN be one component of a successful intervention. If you want to change the culture, start by changing the way you meet. Management must get on board. Agile as a culture starts at the top. The leadership team must lead by example to create real cultural change. Companies who are willing to invest in this change can have real, lasting impact on employee morale, creativity, efficiency, future change and pivots.

An agile culture leads to greater productivity in less time, tapping fully into the creative and intellectual capabilities of the entire team; making employees feel valued, heard and a part of something bigger than themselves.

We Are The Team To Help Your Company!

We at TeamCatapult are a team of passionate, caring agile coaches who want to help your team transform, find your path and flourish. We want to help you get unstuck. We want to help you find true collaboration, creative process and team efficiency.

We believe deeply in the principles of Agile.

We are:

Adaptable
Able to bring clarity to complex situations
Experienced
Results-oriented
Growing in Capacity and Capability
Committed

We believe:

Conversations are fundamental
Performance is directly tied to leadership effectiveness
Organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they get
Challenges are addressed from a whole new system view

In research and real-world application.