Episode 48 – Using Proven Teamwork Strategies to Ensure Success

Welcome to the TRSA podcast. Providing interviews and insights from the linen, uniform, and facility services industry. Most Americans might not realize it, but they benefit at least once per week from the cleanliness and safety of laundered, reusable linens, uniforms, towels, mats, and other products provided by various businesses and organizations. TRSA represents the companies that supply, launder, and maintain linens and uniforms. And in this podcast, we will bring the thought leaders of the industry to you.

 

Welcome to another episode of the Linen Uniform and Facility Services podcast, interviews and insights by TRSA, sponsored by 6 Disciplines Consulting Services. I’m your host, Jason Risley, the senior editor of digital and new media at TRSA. On today’s episode, our guest is Dan Gonder, the chief operating officer and co owner of 6 Disciplines. Dan has been consulting for the past 17 years and specializes in strategic advisory services, team and executive training programs, process improvement, and executive coaching. Additionally, Dan is an inaugural member of a new professional network of Patrick Lencioni and the Table Group, CapaPro, which stands for the Consultant and Practitioner Alliance.

 

As a member, Dan receives ongoing exclusive professional development tools and training directly from Lencioni and his team at The Table Group about how to best help clients utilize their proven approach to achieve organizational health. Before joining 6 Disciplines, Dan was the North American training leader for Microsoft Business Solutions. He was responsible for 60 plus training centers and 300 plus certified instructors throughout the United States and Canada. Welcome, Dan. In last month’s podcast, I had the privilege of speaking with your longtime business partner, Eric Kurgan, about the importance of ensuring organizations are heading in the right direction through effective strategic planning.

 

In particular, Eric shared many practices to build a road map for current and future success with organizations. You’re here for part 2 of that message focused on ensuring organizations have an effective teamwork strategy. What do you mean when you say teamwork strategy? Well, thanks, Jason. Glad to be, speaking with you today.

 

You know, for years at 6 d, we have guided our clients on an effective strategic plan to find short term and long term goals through a balanced scorecard approach. Specifically, financial success is only achieved if you do the right things for your customers. To do the right things for your customers, you need to continuously invest in your processes to meet the changing needs of your customers. And most importantly, to effectively implement those processes, you need to ensure that you have the right people in the right roles, and I like to say who most days enjoy coming to work to make those processes happen to serve your customers. So when I say a teamwork strategy, it’s specifically focused on ensuring the people part of your strategic plan has the right components.

 

The bio I shared at the start of our podcast mentions that you’re part of a consulting network of Patrick Lancione and the Table Group. I know that Patrick has written multiple books on teamwork. Can you tell me more about that? Yes. Indeed.

 

That network, called Capa Pro, which stands for the Consultant and Practitioner Alliance, has been an essential addition to our toolkit at 6d. We’re talking about the people side of things today, and that people side has always been a meaningful obstacle to effective strategy implementation, and for a long time, we have looked to Patrick and his books and videos and other resources to aid our clients to overcome these obstacles. At the beginning of the pandemic, Patrick launched this network and we were quick to join. And not only do we have direct access to the best selling programs that Patrick and team have developed such as the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, the Ideal Team Player, a new program called the 6 Types of Working Genius, We also get direct training from Patrick and his team. In fact, just a quick aside, a few weeks ago I was coaching a client on a particularly challenging people question.

 

And in addition to bringing my thoughts and experiences into play for the client, I was actually able to run the client’s question directly by Patrick as part of the regular office hours he provides to those within the network. And so it’s really been great combining the power of Lencioni’s proven models with our direct experiences coaching and guiding strategic planning for organizations in the in the linen uniform and facility services industry. It’s proving to be just a very valuable combination for clients. That does sound valuable, especially considering the labor shortages, retention issues, and competitive recruiting so many operators are navigating right now. It would seem that this is a very timely discussion.

 

Yeah. I I certainly agree. You know, a teamwork strategy, a a people strategy, making sure that you’re doing the right things for your employees is always important. However, as I think about the past 2 years, it’s very vital right now. Many organizations have delayed important growth and development activities due to the stresses and strains of the pandemic, And I think it’s essential to have an ongoing cadence, as Eric talked about last month, to review and update your strategic plan.

 

And as we’re talking about today, you need an ongoing cadence to focus on your teamwork strategy. You know, the other great thing about a teamwork strategy is it’s something you can start implementing today and you can start having a large impact within the organizations and the teams that you lead. Certainly a lot of the things that we’ll discuss today are pretty simple models. You’ve probably heard many of them before. Some might even say that they’re obvious concepts, but in our experience, there’s it’s uncommon to apply these concepts, and the best organizations that can consistently put these practices into place will have better results.

 

Tell me more about a teamwork strategy. What does it involve? Yeah, so I’ll start by describing the strategy by referencing Jim Collins’ classic book Good to Great. I imagine many of our listeners are familiar with that book and have read it over time. And in that book, Collins identified that those who build truly great organizations that stand the test of time ensure that they have the right people on the bus and the right people in the key seats before figuring out where to drive the bus.

 

Lencioni has added on to that bus analogy by defining 3 crucial processes to regenerate really any team or organization through a teamwork strategy. You know, this approach to teamwork is based on a compilation of his popular books, The Ideal Team Player, The 5 Dysfunctions of the Team, as I mentioned earlier, a newer forthcoming book called The Working Genius, and basically it provides a really simple yet very effective framework to evaluate the health of any team or organization by asking, do you have the right people on your bus? That starts with identifying clear expectations for teamwork for all employees. You ask the hard questions such as are you tolerating lackluster or even terrible teamwork from employees due to the tight labor market? Then are they sitting in the right seats?

 

How do we ensure that the skills and talents of of our employees are best utilized? Certainly many research studies have shown that engagement increases when individuals are able to do what they do best each day. So how do we make sure they’re in the right seats and they have plenty of opportunity to do what they do best? And then lastly, that third step is the bus going in the right direction. Is the organization performance being held back by mistrust, negativity, fear of conflict, lack of commitment amongst leadership or employees.

 

And it really starts that if the answers to any of those above questions are unclear or rely on processes that used to be effective, but they’ve become less effective during the pandemic, then it’s time to formally implement a teamwork strategy or to go back and reimplement some of those practices that you used to be very good at. You mentioned the impact of organizations tolerating bad teamwork. With how difficult it is to hire today, could an employer afford to set the bar this high? Hey. You know, Jason, I believe they have to raise the bar and they have to set it high.

 

The right people on the bus requires team players. You know, over the past year or so, I’ve made it a habit to ask teams which they were would prefer. I asked them, would you prefer a full staff with average to below average team players or a short staff team with exceptional teamwork? And certainly with some hesitation due to our labor pinch times, most acknowledge that the true destroyer of healthy cultures or healthy teams isn’t lack of skill or even capacity. It is rooted in the lack of teamwork.

 

More specifically, organizations that fail to define and regularly reinforce the expectations for teamwork we’ll have little chance of consistently having the right people on the bus. Many times the concerns and even complaints I hear are around lack of teamwork and to create that culture, organizations need to begin by deploying the ideal team player principles within their organizations. And it’s pretty simple as you see. It’s just three principles. It starts off with humble.

 

Ideal team players are humble. They lack excessive ego or concerns about status. They’re quick to point out the contributions of others and slow to seek attention for their own. You know, I think about one organization that we’ve had a chance to work with over the years. They have a senior leader that regularly demonstrates humility and they know whenever they have a big change initiative, a challenging project to implement, they usually call on this individual because they have high levels of humility along with high levels of confidence and they’re just able to be very focused on easily admitting their mistakes in the processes, complimenting or praising their team, building them up, and it’s important to have those individuals to really do whatever it takes for the good of the team or the change initiative that you’re going on.

 

So the first part of defining clear expectations for teamwork is what does it mean to be humble? You know, the second one, and again these will be simple but very important concepts, is to be hungry. Ideal team players are hungry. These are the individuals that are always looking for more more things to do, more to learn, more to take on. Hungry people almost never have to be pushed by a manager.

 

They’re self motivated and diligent. And right now, my opinion is hunger is the hardest to positively impact. Organizations are always looking for ways to ignite passion and hunger and ways to start doing that. You have to start with your mission or the work that people do or the work they do with other people to help develop hunger levels if it doesn’t exist. And the challenge with this being the hardest impact is at the same time, it’s what we hear most from leaders and managers that low levels of hunger within their teams is one of their largest concerns.

 

So this makes the ability to not only determine hunger levels as you’re interviewing and selecting new employees important, but the ability to coach and develop higher levels of hunger within teams that makes it vitally important. And then I’ll end with the 3rd virtue and it’s labeled SMART, but this isn’t IQ smart. Ideal team players are people smart. It’s having a common sense about people. You tend to know what’s happening in a group situation and how to deal with others in the most effective way.

 

And I think all throughout our careers, it’s always important to be enhancing these things and building skills. But specifically focusing on people smarts, I think, is key in allowing leaders and managers to relate to all generations of the workforce seeking to know and understand each other in the workplace is so important. You know, I have one CEO that I’m working with right now and he’s just done an excellent job focusing on enhancing his People smart. And he’s really just just trying to listen more, being a more attentive listener instead of, you know, being driven by always making statements, he’s trying to ask more questions. He’s asking for more feedback on how his words and actions impact others on the team, and it’s really working and you’re seeing the positive impact it has on his team.

 

So humble, hungry, and smart, setting those clear expectations for teamwork, that’s step 1 in working towards having the right people on your bus. You’re prescribing not only ensuring organizations have the right players, but they also need to be playing the right role. Is that correct? It is. And having the right people in the right seat requires knowledge of what each employee does best and what will naturally give them higher energy in their work and joy within their work.

 

You know, what I find is when it comes to work, everyone has areas where they are naturally gifted. Fulfillment, joy and energy for the employees and ultimately greater productivity and effectiveness for the organization. Conversely, when employees spend too much time in areas they dread or it’s a natural frustration, I know it’s simple, but it results in the opposite impact and that’s where performance issues become consistently a challenge or burnout comes into the equation. So step 2, having the right players in the right seats, goes to the program called the 6 Types of Working Genius and it’s particularly designed to help organizations and teams identify natural giftedness and frustration to ensure that people occupy the right seat on the bus. And I know what some might be thinking, okay, it’s another assessment, Dan.

 

And I was actually thinking the same thing when I was first introduced to it and I asked the question, why does the world need another assessment tool? And the answer is that this is not a personality test. There’s many highly effective tools out there that can help with this, and and we believe in so many of them. This focuses on how teams work together, and it’s 80% focused on productivity and morale of a team and only 20% personality. And so the assessment, again as we think about the right people in the right seats, begins with how does work get done.

 

And there’s really 6 categories. It starts off, if you think about going left or right with something called wonder. Every organization needs individuals that can’t help but question whether things could be better in the world around them, in their industry, with their customers, in the markets they serve. They’re troubled when they see unmet potential and they get they’re constantly curious and on the lookout for the need to change something. So when we call something a genius, that constant curiosity and that lookout for the need of change, that’s gonna bring them energy, and they’ll need to have an outlet for that.

 

You know, particularly if an organization is lacking wonder, they maybe don’t have enough with that in their working genius, they’re gonna be maybe be too busy to notice changes early. They’re going to be slow to identify big opportunities and problems within their marketplace, so their industry, etcetera. So the first one is wonder. Every organization’s needs individuals asking those big questions. And then that’s a handoff to the next genius, number 2, of invention.

 

And this type of genius is those that have that creativity, those that love to generate new ideas and solutions to problems and are comfortable coming up with something out of nothing. They’re always thinking, hey, I can solve that. What if we did this? Why don’t we do this? And so the first part of working genius is do you have those with the genius of wonder and invention as part of your team?

 

And teams that don’t have enough invention are going to be unable to innovate and they’re going to keep recycling old ideas and products and not come up with potential new solutions. So we start off with wonder and invention. That’s really the ideation part of any organization’s work. And then you need to activate that work. And that requires the genius of discernment.

 

And people with this genius have a natural ability when it comes to evaluating or assessing a given idea. They’re always the people that you go to and say, Hey, can I have a little bit of time to run something past you? What do you think of this? They have an innate ability to say, Have you thought about this? They have instincts and judgment about the subtleties of making decisions And ultimately, they have a track record for making good decisions.

 

So teams that don’t have enough genius of discernment, they’re going to be surprised by their failures. They’re going to probably inadequately evaluate and refine their ideas of initiative. So everybody needs discernment. But even if you’re picking the right things, and this is the 4th genius, it’s called galvanizing. And this is the type of genius that every organization needs to bring that energy, that movement, that momentum to an idea or a decision.

 

People like to initiate activity by inspiring people to get involved and rallying them to act and take action. They’re going to bring the team together and say, here’s where we’re going. Who’s with me? And teams that fail to inspire or have trouble getting their change initiatives off the ground or have low excitement and momentum, that probably means that you might have a gap in the genius of galvanizing. So we’re 2 thirds of the way through here.

 

We have ideation, which is wonder and invention. We have activating the ideas, which is discernment and galvanizing. But it’s so important to implement those ideas and it takes 2 geniuses. The first is enablement and these are those individuals that are quick to respond to the needs of others. Hey, what gaps can I fill?

 

They maybe even fill the gaps before you know that there’s gaps and they naturally provide the assistance that’s required with any endeavor. And teams that might not have enough enablement are going to lack that help and support. And it’ll be another reason why initiatives, maybe even if you get them off the ground, they stall very early on because you have a lack of engagement. And at the end of this workflow is tenacity. And every team needs those that can take a given project or effort and make sure it gets completed and it achieves the desired result.

 

People with this genius push for standards of excellence and what they live for each day is to see the impact of that work. So if you’re an organization that steps back and says, hey, many times we don’t finish things, We start projects or initiatives and they only get 75% of the way along, you might be lacking the genius of tenacity. So that’s a quick overview, Jason, of the working genius. I know there’s a lot there, and we’ll look forward to our next podcast to going, deeper into the working genius. I see the vital role that the teamwork strategy plays across an organization.

 

Dan, what role should a teamwork strategy play within the leadership teams? Yeah. It’s the most critical role, Jason, that’s for sure. We set a teamwork expectation, so that’s the the the right people on your bus. We work hard to get them in the right seats on the bus.

 

And it’s the leadership team that has to ensure that the bus is going in the right direction. And it really requires leadership teams to overcome the dysfunctions that, are identified in the 5 dysfunctions of a team program. Throughout my career, I’ve believed and witnessed many times that organizational performance rises and falls with leadership. And unfortunately, that team of the right people fails to reach its intended destination due to dysfunctional leadership teams and structures. And remember, this isn’t that only some teams have the capability of experiencing these dysfunctions.

 

I believe all teams have the potential for dysfunction, and it’s the best teams that face this reality and intentionally overcome these dysfunctions to improve their overall results. And so I’m going to give you just a quick overview like we did with the work geniuses, but what these five dysfunctions are and the value of overcoming them. So it all starts if you think about the bottom, the base of a pyramid, it all starts with trust. Organizations that have the absence of trust, they have this fear of being vulnerable with each other. And it really prevents some important things within the team.

 

And vulnerability means that as a team you’re okay saying, Hey, you’re better at that than me. Can I learn from you? Hey, I missed this. I made a mistake. All with the goal that we’re open about our challenges so that we can work to get to the best answers.

 

So when teams that have lower level of trust want to improve trust, they’re really going to have to spend the time getting to know each other better, doing an exercise called personal histories exercise that maybe deal with the basic things to get to know each other, but also, allows teams to go deeper by sharing things like what’s their greatest success in their careers, what’s their biggest, what I call failure stories, and allows people to be open and know each other better so that when they need to engage in things like effective, positive, healthy conflict, which we’ll talk about next, they’ll trust each other enough to be able to do that. A quick example I’ll share is a team I worked with a few years ago and I was nervous about doing this exercise called Personal Histories, which talks about, you know, some of the basic things like where you’re from, siblings, etcetera. And I thought that this team wouldn’t jump in, they wouldn’t engage. And on day 1 of our workshop, not only did they engage, but we went over a time in the agenda because they wanted to do more. And the CEO called me later that night and said, hey, can we do it more on the next day?

 

And so they really saw it as a very effective way to get to know each other better and to build trust. And why do we need to trust each other? Well, that’s dysfunction number 2, fear of conflict. Many teams, they desire to preserve what we call artificial harmony, which stifles productive true meaningful healthy conflict, which allows the organizations to make better decisions. And, you know, too many times in meetings the goal is not to create waves, not to question, and people are holding back because of it.

 

And the best organizations are going to not hold back. They’re going to keep it professional and productive, but they’re going to know that conflict is just the required steps to find the best truth in a decision. And so as teams seek to eliminate the fear of conflict, they’ll need to learn about how do they keep conflict about the issue. And, you know, a great tool for that is setting ground rules for conflict, like never making it personal, from that standpoint, how they’ll feel about the timeliness of conflict, So many different things that will be in that place. They’ll ask people not to hold back through those ground rules And that’s an exercise many teams go through to make sure they’re not feeling conflict.

 

A team that I worked with as another example, conflict was such an uncommon thing in their culture. When we first started working together, they didn’t even like me using the term conflict. Also recently in working with the team, I was so proud of this member of the leadership team. He was able to verbalize, some of the behaviors within the group that that cause him to hold back his opinion at time. And, again, when you can trust each other enough to be vulnerable and say, here’s what causes me to hold back, You’re not gonna hold back or at least not hold back as much, and teams are are gonna fear conflict less.

 

And when they fear conflict less, they’re gonna be able to overcome the 3rd dysfunction which is lack of commitment within organizations, which simply means that there’s lack of clarity or buy in that prevents team members from making decisions that they will stick to long term. And you’ll know there’s lack of commitment when you see in your organizations the meeting after the meeting where you think you’ve made a decision but smaller groups to get together after the meeting and they talk about it or the next meeting you have as a leadership team, you’re talking about the decision you made in the previous meeting. Those are all things that indicate there’s lack of commitment within a leadership team. And when there’s lack of commitment, it’s going to mean that you’re always going to be challenged with the 4th dysfunction, which is the, avoidance of accountability. In fact, when I hear an organization say that they need better accountability, I usually take them back to commitment because if there isn’t that commitment, that clarity or buy into a decision, not only what we’re going to do but when we’re going to do a buy and who’s gonna do what, then that’s what creates gray areas and accountability.

 

And you can’t hold someone accountable when there’s lack of commitment. So teams will need to work hard to overcome the issue with avoiding interpersonal discomfort when you’re asking for accountability with the team. And in fact for organizations that go through a full program like this, you create enough vulnerability that you’re able to share with each other. What do you do individually that adds to the team’s performance? And what do you do that’s detracting from the team performance?

 

And think about it, if you care enough about each other as a leadership team and respect each other enough to be able to share that type of feedback with each other, you’re for sure going to outperform the teams that can’t do that. And that’s going to get you to the last dysfunction, inattention to results, which means that the pursuit of individual goals will never override the focus on collective success for the organization. And every member of the leadership team, when they come in, they’re wearing their leadership team hats and they’re solely focused on what is best for the organization. And again, that’s a really quick overview of the 5 dysfunctions, and we’ll look forward to going deeper in in next month’s podcast. Dan, I was intrigued by the simple, obvious, uncommon statement you made at the beginning of this podcast.

 

What final words would you have for listeners to make the uncommon common within their organizations? Yeah. And there’s really some good news around this, Jason. As I mentioned earlier, the path to improved teamwork can start immediately. And consistent small steps many times lead to significant gains over time.

 

When I talk about, Hey, for good teamwork you need humility. You need hunger. You need people smart. There’s probably nothing too controversial there. It’s just how do we ensure that we make it happen.

 

And that’s where I would start. How do you ensure that you have the right people on the bus? You’re setting clear expectations for teamwork? I suggest that as the first step to make the uncommon common. I would start by watching Patrick Lencioni’s TED Talk around ideal team player And then, start having a discussion as a leadership team or the teams you might lead on the importance of humble, hungry, and smart.

 

In fact, the the video is around 15 minutes. You can easily add that to an agenda for an upcoming team meeting, and then you can just have an open discussion. Hey, where would we benefit from greater humility or greater people smarts or greater hunger? And how can we work on that as individuals to become better team players. You could then take a next step, you know, working with an experienced coach and facilitator for any or all the programs that we’ve discussed today.

 

And the end result, whatever path you take, is to ensure that you have a systematic process to have the right people on the bus, ideal team player, in the right seats, working genius, and that your bus is going in the right direction and that means your leadership team is working hard to overcome the dysfunctions that all teams experience. If you’d like more information about the topics Dan discussed on today’s podcast, watch Patrick Lencioni’s TEDx talk on the ideal team player. The link to the YouTube video is available in the podcast description and notes for this episode. Make sure you check it out. If you have any questions, you can contact Dan at dgondor@6dconsulting.com.

 

That’s d g o n der@6dconsulting.com. Thanks again to our sponsor, 6 Disciplines Consulting Services, and please subscribe, rate, and review our podcast on Apple Itunes, Google Podcasts, and Stitcher. For the latest news and information from the linen uniform and facility services industry, subscribe to our newsletter, Text Style Services Weekly, and monthly publication, Textile Services Magazine. Additionally, don’t forget to follow TRSA on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.