Teams & team performance; good practices outside academia
By Anita Klaver, Mostafa Ben Amar and Philippe de Bock (moderator)
Anita Klaver talked about Holocracy as a way of working within Enreach. Enreach is rolebased (instead of functions) and people work in a variety of different circles (teams). It’s about purpose, distributed leadership/accountability. Tensions are fuel for growth and learning, so people are stimulated to speak up and also come up with solutions. In decision-making the default is Yes. Enreach doesn’t reward performance, but growth in the role and has a system of peer-review (in dialogues) and value based behavioural descriptions.
Mostafa Ben Amar spoke about teams as the focus point for cultural chance within Boeing. Community of practices are a vehicle for the chance process. The programme started with the teams that are motivated. There are tools and methods to support the teams, but the teams are self-supporting and learn by doing and experiencing (no training and teaching), making a shift from fixed to a growth mindset. The team has to discuss their purpose and what binds the members.
- The challenges are with leaders who can’t change their behaviour or teams that have a highly competitive culture.
- Constantly peer-reviewing helps with getting a culture of ‘open conversations’ and ‘speak, seek and listening’.
- The leaders are assessed on their behaviour as people leaders to create a safe environment. When creating a psychological safe environment, support and awareness on being a role model in the management is important.
- A community of practice and mentors that help colleagues in the learning process on the new culture.
Speaking about tensions is a way to learn, for example to address the internal competition within a team, look for the common goal and have the dialogue on the experienced behaviour.