Team Commitment is essential for Team Performance

As an executive coach I’ve worked with many individuals, typically executives or other high-level professionals, to help them improve their leadership and management skills. What some people may not know about me, is that I also specialise in Team Coaching which has many benefits to an organisation. I love working with groups of people as I have seen how transformational team coaching can be. In this blog post I focus on one of the most important issues in developing cohesive teams, that of commitment.

To start off, let’s define team commitment. The obvious definition is simply that team members are dedicated to the cause, or in other words, don’t want to leave. This is something many organisations are concerned about, especially in the current recruitment market, where there is a risk that valued team members decide to go elsewhere. More importantly, I see Team Commitment as being about the ability to make collective decisions that every member will act upon. It's about securing the buy-in necessary for effective decision making and the alignment of all the team members to the direction of travel.

Building team commitment

So how do we focus on team commitment to ensure everyone is on board? Firstly, each member must have clarity concerning the priorities of their team and what they have signed up for. Secondly, there must be clarity about the decision-making process. How the team will collaborate and come to a joint decision that everyone can support, present this for approval as necessary and then execute the decision together.

This sounds quite simple, but it isn’t. There is a tendency within teams to get sucked into a 'groupthink' where consensus is reached without critical reasoning or evaluation of the consequences or alternatives. And that does not make for effective team performance. Diversity of thought and constructive challenge within a team is crucial but moreover, successful team commitment is all about buy in. It’s getting everybody committed to a decision once it has been made.

This starts by taking each team member’s views into account. Everyone sharing the same ideas is not helpful to the decision-making process. A good decision within a team will involve debate, different perspectives and people bouncing ideas off each other. Hopefully, consensus will follow, but even if not, it’s necessary for the team to move forward in a unified way.

Every member of the team needs to agree that once a decision has been made, they will get behind it. This commitment must be authentic to ensure you don’t have members voicing their disagreement after the fact - “Well I disagree with the decision but yes, I’ll go along with it” - that sort of thing. That kind of grudging commitment is counterproductive. True team commitment means people are happy to share the accountability of a collective decision. That they voluntarily endorse the plan of action because they wholeheartedly support their team and the direction that is being taken. Without that commitment, the foundations of a team start to look like they will crumble.

If a team does not present a united front, it certainly doesn’t communicate strength. Rather, other stakeholders start to wonder about your team and the relationships within it and this can be damaging. So how do we ensure this doesn’t happen? Team leaders need to create a space where everybody can speak openly and freely and be heard. This requires a high level of psychological safety where team members can be vulnerable with each other without fear of recrimination and a culture that supports leaning and risk-taking, without the fear of blame and recrimination.

If there is a fear culture in the organisation, people are not going to willingly put their name to something wholeheartedly because if something goes wrong, then they may have fingers pointed at them. A corporate blame culture doesn’t augur well for developing strong, committed teams. It’s better to give people permission to fail and to be prepared to collectively learn from our mistakes when they do.

A team leader needs to trust in their team's ability. Overruling a team decision is sure to undermine the level of trust and the team is unlikely to have the team commitment needed to move forward. Leaders need to commit to the team just as much as the members, rather than sitting on the fence.

In conclusion, it's important that everybody understands and has clarity about the path a team is taking and the priorities that it it has. Each member must be as fully informed as they can be. Various alternatives must be considered in the decision-making process and all team members should be prepared to have their minds changed. If a particular individual feels they haven’t had the opportunity to really share their views or be listened to, then the chances of them having a high level of team commitment are low.

Where conditions support strong team commitment, it can propel an organisation to achieve more than ever thought possible, with staff motivation and retention an additional bonus.

If you would like to discuss ways your organisation can build team commitment or how you can create an environment to develop ideal team players, please email me at sarah.parr@sirise.co.uk

Also see: Team Coaching for teams in organisations that want to be their best.

Sarah