Why do we measure employee engagement? Current thinking says we do it because increased engagement leads to better business performance. But this isn’t the only way to measure performance or assess gaps, Team Effectiveness is a new way of thinking about the engagement challenge.

Here’s why you may want to consider adding it to your reporting toolkit:

• Work is a team sport, not an individual one. Therefore, we should probably focus our questions on how employees are feeling about the teams they are in, versus their overall attachment to the organization.
• A high performing team is a blend of quantitative business results and qualitative culture attributes. Traditional measures of employee engagement don’t always capture both sides of this dynamic.
• The variables you measure should have a demonstrated history of driving performance.

While the most thorough research on this topic has been done by Google in the link above, many other thought leaders such as Daniel Coyle (Culture Code), Eric Schmidt/Jonathan Rosenberg/Alan Eagle (Bill Campbell: Trillion Dollar Coach), all speak to rising importance of ‘team dynamics’ in high performing organizations. Some of their key insights on what organizations can do to drive team effectiveness:

• What research has shown is that it is less about who is on the team, and more about how the team works together
• The moments that matter in team dynamics have a lot to do with how communication happens (i.e. does every team member speak an equal amount of time during meetings)
• It’s no secret that psychological trust is important to teams, but not enough attention is being paid to how organizations can create trust from the top down and bottom up.

At Blu Ivy we are interested in the leading edge of these team practices, and offer services to help establish team dynamics, or how to create energizing moments at work. It’s an exciting time to be working through these opportunities, especially as we consider the impact of remote work. Are you looking to improve the effectiveness of your teams?

Send us an email, we’d love to connect and talk about the strategies and tactical steps you can take to turn your employees into high performing all-stars!