Team performance – permission to excel?

We often run a very simple exercise with teams that we work with which encourages individuals members to trade strengths with each other and talk about the things that they see each other being great at for the team. The exercise is always well received, with loads of energy and enjoyment coming through and people feeling a lot more valued and positive as a result of the discussions. This usually takes about 30-45 minutes for us to run the exercise and everyone always concludes that it’s a great idea to focus on this kind of sharing as it really helps to get people feeling supported and very confident they make a difference to their team mates.

It always seems a little strange to us that these teams need to be given permission by someone from outside of their business to spend some time carrying out an activity that helps promote team performance and working conditions. Have a look at how you’re spending your time and does it look like you’ve extended permission to yourself to excel at what you do, or is there very little evidence that you’re explicitly taking the time to stack the odds of fulfilling potential in your favour?

We’ll happily come and work with you to support your desire to excel, but we’d much rather you made it a lot harder for us to make an impact because you’ve already invested a huge amount of time in maximising team performance. So, get going with carrying out some obvious activities that will build confidence and connectedness in your teams and then we’re really going to have to use our expertise to add value to your quest for success if you decide we might be able to help further!