Are you tapping into your teams’ superpowers?

What if your team could tap into extra energy and insight whenever? – To be able to have more good days, those almost magical times, more often, more of those times when you are absolutely at your best, on fire, in your flow.

However, tales of teamwork sound more like Russian roulette. As though it’s in “a flip of the coin” as to whether teams work well or not. People are helpless to the undertow that drags them into a sub-performing team and all the wasted energy that costs them in tolerating this drama.  Good days appear magical rather than purposeful and, if something is magical, by its very nature it’s control lies elsewhere.

We are suggesting, it is possible to purposefully be in a great team more often. It isn’t magical – we can all be in high performing teams – and part of this is about knowing when to ask for help. After all you wouldn’t cut your own hair, so why do teams struggle on alone?

We find, there are common de-railers to high performance and that these are in fact a signal to the team they are stuck at the door to high performance and don’t have the skills collectively to make the leap to the next phase of team performance.   These are some of the common de-railers we see:

And, some of the beliefs that stop us asking for help:

Believing we have learnt all we can about relating

Our challenge back – high performance all about the ongoing process of relating.

Believing feedback is difficult to hear.

Our challenge back – We can all learn to cope with and value of direct feedback in the interests of team – speaking out and welcoming feedback. As Edmondson says, in her article “Do I Dare Say Something?”, working with direct feedback is not an easy place to be but at the same time, direct feedback, can deliver great joy.

A belief that looking at what isn’t working is the only way.

Our challenge back – If we continue to look in the same place, things stay much the same. If put our appreciative lenses on to see more widely what might be possible together– we can look towards an audacious future and shift our energy.

Our clients tell us the best way to do this work is in an off-site where a team spend team time together, rather like Olympic athletes, to raise their game. On return from off-sites something amazing seems to happen: –

• There is a shift in seeing what matters, and blind spots are gone
• Individual ability to act takes on a new sense of impact.
• Emotions are more in control and are generally more positive.
• Energy levels are higher for the team and there is a buzz about the future.
  It seems very possible to tame the elephants and purposefully tap into your latent superpower.

How much dormant superpower do you have in your team?