Team development
Is your team already harnessing its full potential? Or is there still a lot of room for improvement?
You probably see – like most of your team members – potential for optimization. Most people are more enthusiastic about their own ideas than those of others. This makes communication difficult and often, people don’t just talk at cross purposes, they only discuss standpoints instead of exploring each other’s viewpoints in a constructive way. Over time, rifts develop.
This leads to latent, smoldering conflicts which end up decreasing people’s motivation and the team’s performance overall.
What leads to this chain reaction?
Experiences shape us and thus also the viewpoints through which we perceive our surroundings or judge our team’s performance.
In other words, all the ideas of those around us have to pass through our personal viewpoints filter and the connected emotions that are built on our wealth of experiences.
Subconscious emotional triggers
Based on this, it is not surprising that new ideas and their related changes often trigger emotions at the subconscious level that then lead to resistance and conflicts. This development can be reversed.
How do we realize the team’s full potential?
As humans, we generally possess a “cooperative intelligence” that has made it possible over the course of evolution to accomplish greater feats as part of a modestly-sized group than as individuals.
The art lies in broadening viewpoints through exploratory dialog with the team.
The first step is to identify diverging viewpoints. The underlying implicit assumptions and belief systems are then explored. This leads to uncovering limiting viewpoints, which are resolved together, within the team. When viewpoints are broadened, this is followed by the newly acquired self-conviction along with the newly linked positive emotions. This is fertile ground on which a shared vision grows, one that is driven by the entire team.