2 essential ingredients that maximise Team Commitment

Team commitment is all about having clarity

Team commitment is one of the Five qualities of a successful team. Without it your team cannot excel, so what is it and why is it so important? When we talk about driving team commitment, there’s one thing that can make a huge difference and that’s CLARITY. It’s clarity that drives commitment and motivation within a team and this shows up in two main ways:

1.     Clarity of purpose

2.     Clarity of individuals, roles and responsibilities

Clarity of purpose

Firstly, a team needs to understand exactly where it sits within a wider organisation or system, and how it contributes to the overall success of the organisation. This clarity of purpose fosters team commitment. All of the team need to understand what the objectives of the organisation are and how these translate into the objectives of the team and, ideally, their own individual objectives.

If any member of the team doesn’t understand why they are there and what is expected of them, this can have a negative impact on their ability to commit. Much has been written about this, especially by Simon Sinek, who is well known for his book Start With Why. Millions of viewers have watched his TED Talk (below) which shows how great leaders inspire action.

As a team leader, part of your role is to be a link between your team and the wider organisation, ensuring that your team understands why they are there and why their involvement is important. You need to present the bigger picture to them. This is vital to developing team commitment. As we can see from this video it is also more about instilling a dream than working on a plan!

It’s natural that sometimes as leaders, we have our own doubts about the direction of travel. It’s worth remembering that, in order to truly present strong leadership to those you are working with, you must have dealt with any doubts or fears you may have. The last thing you want to do, is spread negativity amongst a team. Of course, you also need to be authentic in all you do, so if you have doubts yourself, you need to work through them, so they don’t demotivate your team.  Or alternatively, and depending on the type of team and strength of relationship, you might choose to involve some senior colleagues in working through these together.

Consistency of communication is also crucial to instilling a sense of purpose and team commitment. You need to regularly keep people informed about the direction of travel, about performance of the organisation and, insofar as appropriate, about changes on the horizon. It’s also vitally important to keep your word – stay true to commitments that you make to your team or be open about the reasons why, when you need to change your plans.

Essentially, members of your team and the team itself need to know that they matter within the organisation. They must understand their importance to the other stakeholders and be assured that what they are doing is worthwhile and making a significant contribution.

Clarity of individuals, roles and responsibilities

Research indicates that when a person understands what’s expected of them, then performance can improve by 25%, which is a massive step forward.  See HR analytics: role clarity impacts performance. When individuals understand their role, responsibilities and their performance measures, then they are typically more motivated, more focussed on results, and often happier in their job.

I think we all know ourselves, if we don't have clarity about what we're doing, and understand what others expect of us, it can be really stressful, demotivating and damaging to your wellbeing. This tends to lead to a lack of team commitment, and can obviously also lead to inefficiency. People can be doing the wrong things; tasks can be duplicated; team members can be working towards their own self defined set of objectives, which aren't aligned to the organisation and where the team needs to be heading.

So, when we talk about team commitment, clarity around individual’s roles and responsibilities is crucial. In order to create a strong foundation for team commitment, team members need to care about organisational goals and also need to be aligned to a shared set of values.

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about producing teams that comprise of clones! The individual people can all be very different but they have shared values and purpose – both so important in building a solid team which people care about and are committed to.

David Clutterbuck and Peter Hawkins are two pioneers in team coaching and I had the pleasure of studying with them through the Global Team Coaching Institute. One of the things that David Clutterbuck says, that I find really interesting, is that successful teams put team priorities above their own individual tasks. This is how you know you've got a high performing team – when you can see how focused each member is on the team's priorities above their own. This is the level of team commitment that delivers success.

Peter Hawkins believes teams needs to create value for all stakeholders, which I think is completely aligned to purpose. A team needs to be defined by its purpose and not by its members. Purpose is so important because that is actually what defines a team. That's what a team should be built around.

A good team is much more outward looking and client focused. The purpose of a great team is all about others. It's not about the team's own success. It's about the value that they generate for other people. Once you have that, that's very motivating and drives team commitment.

Team commitment in coaching

Finally, I think it's helpful to look at how I as a Team Coach can foster team commitment. How coaching can help define their purpose?

Firstly, I often ask Team Members to think about their own purpose and what matters to them in their role. Often this sits alongside an exercise to consider the needs of the team’s various stakeholders. We then look at their purpose statements and refine them in a collaborative manner. By working on these together, we return to the importance of transparency and openness and how this helps build trust within a team.

I would also get the team to consider their ‘WHY?’ We would consider questions like ‘Why do they exist? What impact do they wish to create? Talking about impact is really helpful as ultimately it’s all about what a team delivers. Again, it's not about what they do. It's about what they deliver as a result of their team commitment. I love to explore what each member considers that they as a team can achieve collectively? What can they do that nobody else can? What makes them special and unique?  When they see the power of this, when each member of team has the same level of clarity, that’s when you see the power of the dream deliver more than any plan.

If you would like to discuss how you can build team commitment or the process of working with a team coach, please email me at sarah.parr@sirise.co.uk to discuss your particular coaching needs.