How genuine conversations impact high performing teams
A high-performing team is one that exceeds all reasonable expectations and produces extraordinary results. The challenge is that it can be difficult to identify what it takes to change a team that is not performing, into one that is.
Simply put, high-performing teams are those that:
- Are led by high-performing leaders
- Connect to their why (their overall purpose)
- Invest in their agreed behaviours (how they do things)
- Conduct genuine conversations
Genuine Conversations
A genuine conversation is a conversation where feedback about performance is provided to someone in a team to help them improve—regardless of what their role or level of responsibility is within the business. Feedback is essential in high-performing teams to foster the growth of individuals.
The impact of a genuine conversation is directly linked to the strength of the relationship you have with the other person. Therefore, developing strong professional relationships is an important step in the process. Strong professional relationships require mutual respect and trust; therefore, investing time and attention in workplace relationships is key. This means genuinely getting to know someone for who they are as a whole person, not just for the role they play in your team.
Asking basic questions like ‘what’s your proudest moment,’ ‘what has been the most significant turning point in your life,’ or ‘what’s currently weighing you down at the moment’ can accelerate the strength of professional relationships.
Agree on Purpose and Behaviours
Genuine conversations in the workplace require clarity around a team’s purpose – for example, why does the team exist? When a clear purpose is set for your business, the team can leverage that purpose in dispute resolution and guide genuine conversations by asking the question, ‘does that align with our purpose?’
If the team then goes on to build out a behavioural framework that lists out the key behaviours that contribute to high performance, a set of criteria becomes available to hold people accountable and facilitate genuine conversations. Behavioural frameworks document the behaviours your team will or won’t accept. In high-performance organisations, these desired behaviours drive all business interactions. Why does your team accept those behaviours? Which behaviours are rewarded? Who are you rewarding in your team? If the people getting rewarded are exhibiting poor behaviours, what does that tell the other team members?
An agreed behavioural framework is the start of creating an empowered team where everyone knows how to behave and has a sense of connection and ownership over the team and how it performs.
When you have an environment of trust and respect and agree on purpose and the way you do things, you can start to have genuine conversations about performance.
Delivering Feedback
In preparing to have a genuine conversation and deliver feedback to a team member, you must determine the key message that you want them to hear and consider the best environment to deliver the feedback. It is critical that feedback is genuine, and that your intent is to help someone else improve. Therefore, no waffling, sarcasm, or humour should be used in the delivery of feedback.
Feedback is a way of providing others with information that they might not know about themselves. Feedback is a means for someone to increase self-awareness.
How to Respond to Feedback
All genuine conversations are two-way, and the way you react to feedback is important. Here are two ways you can react to feedback:
- Receive, reflect, respond – The individual takes the time they need to reflect on what they heard and respond accordingly.
- Resist, react, reject – This response has the ability to erode trust and devalue feedback and, in turn, sets the expectations around what the team can and can’t discuss.
To help ensure that the messages given have been understood clearly, when receiving feedback, ask the individual to consider:
- What did you hear?
- What are you willing to commit to doing?
- What support do you need from the team to do it?
Genuine conversations that help teams to become high performing are the culmination of great leadership, an empowered team, a clear purpose, strong professional relationships, and agreement on behaviours.
If you would like help creating the right environment for genuine conversations in your team, visit www.leadingteams.net.au and reach out to us for a confidential conversation.