Calibrate Your Team: from vision to performance

6 Jun 2012    8 comments
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Calibration

Calibration is the phase teams enter whereupon certain realities begin to make themselves apparent to the members. Issues will present themselves which call for some fine tuning to be made to steady the ship and smooth out performance.

Action, decisiveness, effective dialogue, the development of team frameworks and agreed processes are key factors for teams moving through the Calibration phase.

In the following video I explore all of the themes mentioned above, as well as respond to some of the very relevant insights made in the comments section from the blog post - "Your Input Is Requested".

Please enjoy the video, and as always, feel free to share any thoughts or insights of your own below in the comments section. I do love hearing your opinions and responding to them!

Regards,

Trevor.

Calibration

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© 2013 Team Alchemy. Click here to read about the Team Alchemy writers.

Jun 06 2012
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8 Comments · Make a comment

  • Nic Thielsen - Aravis Academy
    Calibration is setting the stage for performance

    I like the analogy with the race car team - because the interdependency is evident, and roles are so clearly defined. Blessed with a very concrete team measure - time to change the tires - the teams constantly strive for greatness, knowing exactly where they are compared to competition. The performance criteria, the dialogue around roles and handoffs are set at the calibration phase - Nic Thielsen

  • Trevor Laurence - ETC
    Trevor @Nic

    Turning the intangible nature of teamwork in to more concrete or tangible measures really helps focus team performance. One way of doing this for work teams is to develop a dashboard that is aligned to key goals and KPIs, both financial and non financial. Another way to make teamwork more tangible is to use the Team Alchemy Survey to benchmark team performance and diagnose areas to consolidate and improve to ensure progress is steadily maintained through the phases of the Team Alchemy Lifecycle. These measures help generate the straight talking and active listening characteristic of teams that progress quickly through Calibration and onto the next phase of Momentum. By introducing dashboards and surveys work teams are moving closer to the motor-racing team analogy with their very tangible forms of team performance.

    - Trevor Laurence

  • Warren Nel
    3rd Party Calibration

    Trevor, any pointers on how to Calibrate with an offshore third party (different time zone) that has a significant influence on perceptions of the onshore team's performance?

    - Warren Nel

  • Youthline

    Really good video Trevor. This stuff is really relevant to my work with a governance committee at youthline- I notice the older members of the committee, who are very experienced in group/ committee work, do this calibration stuff really well- they define their own and other's roles and what is expected. I appreciate this more than the other (young) volunteers because of the knowledge I have from listening to you over the years, so I'm learning to do this too, but the other volunteers don't understand the importance of clearly defined roles and goals, and so sometimes the conversation goes off on tangents, which is frustrating as we invariably have a lot to get through and often don't have enough time to discuss important things on the agenda.

    - Floyd

  • trevor laurence - ETC
    Trevor @Warren

    Hi Warren. I have 3 points as suggestions for starters...

    1 “Seek first to understand and then be understood” is Stephen Covey’s first principle of highly effective people and I think it is the starting point. Understand the third party’s needs and also understand any cultural differences that may affect the working relationship

    2 Get clear on the shared vision that defines success for both parties. Document this and agree the key milestones dates and activities along the way that define success and how you will work together to achieve them.

    3 Monitor and review progress at the agreed key milestone dates. Reflect and learn from these reviews and continuously improve not just what you do together but also how you work together to do it. These three elements should ensure that both parties are calibrating in the same way, to a similar time-frame with agreed outcomes in mind. Two way straight talking feedback at milestone dates should ensure the relationship is constantly calibrating. How do you feel about these suggestions?

    - Trevor

  • Trevor Laurence - ETC
    Trevor @Floyd

    Hi Floyd. It’s great that you are involved with Youthline (which does great work for young people) and that you are a member of your Governance committee. You will be learning lots about what encourages and hampers productive teamwork through this experience. At the Calibration stage effective team dialogue benefits from clear meeting processes, defined roles (which you mention), agreed team groundrules and good facilitation or chairing of the meeting - which includes keeping people on track with the agenda. Even experienced work teams often struggle to apply these disciplines consistently and as a result remain stuck at the Calibration phase of team performance under achieving as a team. It takes a mix of personal courage, tact, and applied emotional intelligence to get the team to confront the issues that other team members may be aware of, but choose not to address for various reasons. Enjoy the Youthline experience and keep at it - these are great lessons to learn early on life's journey.

    - Trevor

  • jacqui craig - clear connection uk Ltd
    virtual teams

    HI Trevor, Really useful overview of calibration. I am also working with team Leaders of Global, Virtual teams. What are the core conditions required for ensuring great dialogue, especially the active listening, straight talking element and what can a virtual Team Leader do to encourage these conditions? What might be the risks? many thanks Jacqui Craig

  • Trevor Laurence - ETC
    Trevor @jacqui

    Hi Jacqui. Virtual team effectiveness is a BIG topic, and effective dialogue a key component for success. Firstly let’s challenge the assumption that virtual teams (ie teams with geographically dispersed team members) are less effective than colocated teams. A study by Siebdrat, Hoegl and Ernst published in the July 2009 MIT Sloan Management Review found that under certain conditions virtual teams can out-perform collocated teams. A key to achieving higher levels of team performance is the use of task related team processes that help ensure that every member is contributing fully to the team purpose. Processes that provide work coordination, a balance of team member contributions, and task related communications are some examples and all fit our definition of dialogue that I refer to in this week’s video-blog. We have numerous other task related processes that fit under the six different elements of team alchemy that we use with client teams. What are the risks involved? There are risks or trade-offs especially the time involved, levels of dispersion, and the quality of the processes to be utilised. The 2009 study mentioned above showed that teams with “poor task related processes suffered heavily with increased dispersion”. However, as John F Kennedy said “There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.” So I agree with the research view that well executed task related processes are a key element to successful virtual team dialogue and overall team performance. Hope this helps Jacqui and interested to hear if you agree based on your experience.

    - Trevor

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