Unleashing Team Success: Exploring Vital Contribution of Team Health and Emotional Needs

What if I told you that the key to a team's success resides not just in skills and knowledge, but significantly, in team health? We're here to unravel the importance of team dynamics, participation patterns, and the essential needs of team members that play a pivotal role in an efficient team. Drawing from our collective experience, we're sharing five crucial lessons we've gleaned over the years, designed to boost the overall health and effectiveness of your team. 

Ever felt like an outsider during a meeting, despite being part of the team? We've been there too. This episode takes a deep look at the emotional needs within a team setting and the profound impact they can have on performance. We shed light on the three main emotional needs – social connection, contribution, and emotional safety, and the importance of one-on-one relationships within a team. Plus, we're excited to introduce our new online membership platform tailored to nurture positive culture and leadership skills. From recognizing patterns of team health to seizing opportunities for personal and professional growth, we hope to inspire you to reflect and act on improving your team's behavior and values. For all of you looking to enhance personal growth and uplift your team's health, this episode is your roadmap to success!

You are invited to join Leadership Vision Online, free to the next 150 members! This new community allows you to connect with like-valued individuals, network, and learn from others while elevating your leadership skills through exclusive resources, live events, Q&As, workshops, and member-led discussions.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey there, listeners. Today's episode is actually from our archives way back in season one, which is like six years ago seven years ago now. I should have looked this up before I started recording, but it's about team health, something that never goes out of style, and if you've heard it before, it's a great refresh, and if you haven't heard it yet, you are really gonna benefit. Enjoy.

Speaker 2: 0:24

It's the health of a team and the well-being of the person. Those two things go together. You can't separate those two, and so we spend so much time focusing on teams because we know that a team is comprised of people and that a person's health is going to contribute to the health of the team. It's like when I was doing my graduate work. One of the things that we're focusing on is doing clinicals around marital counseling, and my advisor said you're not actually doing marriage counseling, you're counseling individuals, because a healthy individual will contribute to the health of the couple. It takes two healthy people to create a healthy partnership. It's that very concept that I'm bringing to this approach to teams. We want to spend so much time focusing on teams because we believe that is a coming together of people that can help the health of the individual, and healthy people will contribute to a healthy team.

Speaker 2: 1:21

One of the takeaways I would hope for at the end of this conversation is that we would each have an increased awareness of what our responsibility is to contribute to the health of a team. I really don't believe that there's any passive participant on a team, that everyone has an active role to play in the health of a team and if we begin to look at that as maybe a challenge to each one of us is how healthy am I and in what way am I showing up to a team and how is that impacting those that are around me? I really think that some of the biggest challenges a team faces is relying on one person to lead or direct the team. I believe that every person has a leading role In a team's interaction. I believe that every person on a team has a role of influence in that team and the more healthy we are, the more aware we are of that responsibility, the greater potential we have for team health.

Speaker 1: 2:31

You're listening to the Leadership Vision podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Our consulting firm has spent 25 years investing in teams so that people are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. Hello everyone, my name is Nathan Freeberg, and today in the podcast, we are going to be talking about teams more more specifically, five reasons why we at Leadership Vision spend so much time focused on them.

Speaker 1: 2:57

On the show today, our founder, brian Schuber, and I are going to be unpacking five things that are incredibly, incredibly, incredibly important to team health, and this is our why. This is why we exist, why we do this work, and whenever we work with teams, we want to help them move through some of the normal dynamics and functions that every single team experiences. We also want them to put into practice some lessons that we've been learning along the way about how teams function and function well together. So today on the show, we're going to be doing just that. We're going to be talking about the five lessons that we try to teach teams to help them invest in their overall team health. Enjoy. The first idea here is that of taking an observational approach.

Speaker 2: 3:48

Pan back and watch yourself function on the team. Watch yourself like have an out of body experience. You could say like just watch yourself from above.

Speaker 1: 3:57

The second is identifying patterns of active and reactive participation. Are you?

Speaker 2: 4:04

actively engaging your team, and is that your preference? Or is your preference to react to what's going on with the team and that each one of us, as individuals have preferred patterns?

Speaker 1: 4:17

of how we interact. The third and this might sound obvious, but you'd be surprised how often it's overlooked is just reminding teams that they're a collection of people with real actual needs.

Speaker 2: 4:29

Everybody has a social, emotional and relational need that they're seeking to have met on a team. The fourth is all about patterns of team health. Whether we consider our team healthy or unhealthy, I believe that every member of a team is able to say here are some patterns of health that we have or here are some patterns of health that we should aspire to.

Speaker 1: 4:54

Finally, the fifth lesson that we try to impart on all teams that we work with is that there's a tremendous opportunity for ongoing personal and professional development.

Speaker 2: 5:04

Whenever a team comes together, there is an unrecognized element of personal and professional development that could be happening.

Speaker 1: 5:12

See, we think teams are critical for not just moving the mission of the organization forward, but because it's within the team context that we really have a good understanding of who we all are.

Speaker 1: 5:23

When a team is given the chance to focus inwardly on who each person is well, they begin to mine all of the different layers of those individuals and, in turn, what makes that team function. And that work can also identify the key elements as to why the team might be struggling or why the team breaks down sometimes when certain topics or tasks come up. So I asked Brian to give us just a snapshot of these five elements and share some of the reasons why we've chosen to focus on these things. There's something here that you might be able to take back to your team and implement right away, but, as always, if you'd like help or have follow-up questions, something's not clear well, just drop us a line there's a link to our contact form in the show notes or simply email us at connect at leadershipvisionconsultingcom. So the first thing we're going to talk about here today is this concept of taking an observational approach. Here's Brian explaining this in context.

Speaker 2: 6:20

So whenever we start a team engagement session with someone, we're going to ask them to take an observational approach and what that means is just to take a different level of understanding of your role in a team. Most of the time, we're working on a team, we're working on a project, we're talking with someone about something and we're really like in the midst of all that. Watch yourself like have an out-of-body experience. You could say like just watch yourself from above. You know when do you engage, when do you lean forward, when do you cross your legs and get frustrated? Listen to what you sound like. I think that can be a frightening exercise. When you take an observational approach. It's like how do I sound when I say these things and just watch your timing and tempo of when you become involved in a team's dynamic. That observational approach really changes a person's understanding of how they're being perceived.

Speaker 1: 7:14

So you're talking about observing what you're doing outside of your job function, just how you're interacting, not like observe how good of a job you are doing the tasks of your job Right, it's actually in the process.

Speaker 2: 7:27

So if we have a topic of, let's say, dealing with conflict, we'll try to contextualize the team, like asking them when they've gone through a recent conflict, and then we'll apply this principle. Now take an observational approach. When did you find yourself participating? What was your body language doing at the beginning? Where your arms crossed, were you leaning back? And one of the things that I give is I'll always give an example of I'm someone who's more comfortable reacting to something, so I'll kind of lean back. I may ask a couple of questions, get things going, but then I will sit back, I'll lean back. I tend to cross my arms a lot, which I think can be offensive to people because it makes it look like I'm not engaged. That's kind of just how my body lands and what does that look like? How could that be perceived? That's an observational approach.

Speaker 1: 8:13

So how do you then take an observational approach of others that maybe doesn't look like it's just being?

Speaker 2: 8:17

judgmental Right, because that's also really important, because when you pan back and you watch your functioning team work, you're not just observing yourself. You're observing what other people are doing as well. There may be people there that may seem like they're distracted. There could be people there that are they are a verbal processor. They're talking all the time and you're reacting to that. I think it's just as important to understand how you're interacting with other peoples. That observational approach affects or your observational approach includes what you're seeing in the room around you. There could be someone who's taking vigorous notes. There could be someone who's taking that thinker posture where they have their hand on their chin, there's kind of looking and they're tilting their head. And you can have another person who's focused eye to eye with someone who maybe feels someone comfortable because they're creating an emotional connection. You're responding to that and we want the observational approach to not just be your interaction with your team but your team's actions around you.

Speaker 1: 9:16

So I think it's hard to objectively zoom out and see how our actions and behaviors are impacting others, but we never said this was going to be easy, so don't let that discourage you if this seems difficult. This is going to take some practice, as well as everything we're going to talk about here today. But you know, anything worth accomplishing well it does take some hard, intentional, focused effort. So the second thing that we are introducing to teams that can be a bit of an aha moment is this concept of active and reactive patterns. It's really helpful if team members understand whether or not they are actively engaging, if that's their preference or if their preference is to react to what's going on with the team. Each one of us as individuals do have a preference as to how we engage. Here's Brian again to explain this.

Speaker 2: 10:05

One of the things that we inevitably ask a team is to put themselves in the context of when a team was functioning well, and then we'll ask them this what was your preferred pattern of interaction with the team? Were you actively interacting with the team? For example, were you leading the discussion? Did you have an action plan that you were explaining to someone? Were you delivering some type of report to the team? That's an active role, and is that your preference? Would you rather lead something in an active way? Would you rather verbally, process, share what you're thinking and then watch people respond to you? So that's what we're saying by active pattern. That could be someone that's dealing with some of the relational needs of the team, some of the directional needs of the team. You just prefer to have an active role.

Speaker 2: 10:52

The second pattern that we bring up is a reactive pattern, and that may be someone who is really comfortable responding to what the emotional needs are, responding to the plan that's being delivered. They may want to see the quarterly report and they want to hear the executive say something back about that report and then they react to it, because they know that when you think about someone's strengths profile, they may need to have data in front of them. They may need to see an action plan in front of them. They may need to see some deadlines and resources. A person may need to see a timeline for delivery and it's through that information or a connection with somebody else that they react and their preferences to react to something in the room. Then they feel like they're contributing in a healthy way.

Speaker 2: 11:36

It may seem like just the simplest thing that we're bringing up is active or reactive pattern, but it gives people such permission to say you know what? I love reacting, and myself included, I just love to be able to respond to a bunch of ideas that are being presented, to respond to a solution, to hear what someone's feeling or what they're picking up from somebody else. I want to know that. Then I know what I can respond to. I love playing that role. Maybe I don't respond well right away because I'm surprised by something, but that is my much, my much preferred pattern of playing in a meeting is to have a reactive role.

Speaker 1: 12:17

Since I've been working on this episode, I've been thinking a lot about what I prefer to do here, and I think my ideation likes the process of being active, to throw out a bunch of ideas and then see how others react to them. I'm also happy to sit back and react to the ideas of others, but if I had my preference again we're talking about preferences here it would be that way, that active way. Preferences here aren't good or bad, they're just well, preferences, alright. So the third element here and why we love working with teams is because it gives us the opportunity to remind them, to remind the team, that they are a composition of people with needs. You can't discount that or say, yeah, that's just a touchy-feely, kumbaya stuff that well, we frankly don't have time to deal with in the midst of everything else. Now, this might sound obvious and maybe you're rolling your eyes hearing that, but you'd be surprised by how much more productive and honestly just happy that your team members will be once this is acknowledged.

Speaker 2: 13:18

All people have needs, and we bring these things up. We say that everybody has a social, emotional and relational need that they're seeking to have met on a team. Now, that concept in and of itself is always an eye-opener to the people that we're working with, because they think to themselves like, well, why would you come to this team meeting with an emotional, social or relational need? And our response is you're not coming to the table with that need. As a human being, you have that need, and the teams that we're on are going to in some way add that level of meaning to our lives, whether we realize it or not. So think about this.

Speaker 2: 14:02

We had a conversation just the other day with our leadership vision team. We were planning for something, and the conversation was going in a direction where I felt like I wasn't tracking, I felt like I wasn't contributing, I didn't understand the direction that we were going and, just to put it mildly, I was just confused. And so, to apply this I know it's funny, I think I know what means, because you were there, I was there. And so here's what I was feeling. I wasn't feeling relationally left out.

Speaker 2: 14:32

What I was feeling was socially left out, because I felt like socially, that the team was moving in a direction and I wasn't with them. So I felt socially left out. I felt like I was no longer contributing to the betterment of the good of the moment and so in that moment my relational need to be long wasn't being met. Now I know that may sound a little obtuse, but we're dealing with people and when you think about this even further, someone's emotional disconnect from a team can just cause that person to not interact at all Because they feel like they're emotionally not safe. They may feel emotionally threatened and that's just simply a person's display that I have emotional needs to think of. The last time that you were in a team meeting when you felt like you're misunderstood, where you didn't feel like you could actually share what you were thinking, that would also be that same meeting, that same meeting.

Speaker 2: 15:31

That's interesting. You bring that up. I wasn't going to go there but where were we?

Speaker 1: 15:35

Yeah Well, I think this is fascinating and not to interrupt your train of thought, but we're sort of processing this thing that we both felt that we didn't talk about. But both of us had perhaps the same need, but regardless, needs were not getting met. And I wonder, had we approached that differently, we could have easily met those needs.

Speaker 2: 15:55

Yep. So when we bring these things up with a team, like what just happened here, there is this awareness, that same level of surprise when I bring up the concept that these needs are there. The same level of surprise happens when someone realizes how they too have experienced that recently, and when we feel like we're not safe, we feel too vulnerable. That's an emotional reaction to something that's happening in the room. Someone could have said something that was totally innocent, but it was a word choice or a tempo or style of delivery that caused an emotional reaction within us that will then distance us from being a participant or an active member of that team.

Speaker 1: 16:38

Yeah, we start to shut down and we're not our best. We're not our best. We're not leveraging the things that make us strong.

Speaker 2: 16:44

Yep, and one of the things that I think is perhaps the most important of these three needs is that relational need Is that we as human beings have a need to be relationally connected and some of the professional teams that we serve on may or may not have relationships on them that we feel connected to. And I just want to just raise that question is who on your professional team do you feel a relational connection to? That's all I'm asking. It's just a simple, like small question. And we see that the individual connection is one to one can make the biggest difference. If you have one person on that team that doesn't feel like they even have one connection with someone, that person is going to have a real difficult time finding their place and finding their meaningful role on that team.

Speaker 1: 18:17

At Leadership Vision Consulting, we have spent 23 years helping individuals explore the depth and dimension of their personal strengths and have helped hundreds of teams build positive culture. We're excited to now announce our new online membership platform that brings together the resources, community and motivation that you need to grow your influence and build a positive team culture. Through our courses, workshops, live Q&A sessions and more, you'll gain the skills and confidence you need to lead effectively and, with our supportive community of like-valued leaders, you'll never feel like you're doing it alone. Visit LeadershipVisionConsultingcom slash community to learn more. Everyone wants to find meaning and purpose. The more intentional you're doing this with your team, the more effective and engaged your team members will be.

Speaker 1: 19:05

Team Health is the next topic here, and if this sounds familiar, well, it kind of is. We did another podcast about this a while back. I'll link to it in the show notes, but here we're talking more about the patterns or norms that all teams establish. Some are healthy and some are not so much. In any team, the patterns that are established are influenced by our past and present, and whether we consider our team healthy or unhealthy, well, every team member should be able to see those patterns of health that are present and good on the team, as well as those aspirational patterns of team health that should really be sought after. Here's Brian again explaining how we help teams identify what these are.

Speaker 2: 19:49

One of the exercises that we introduce to identify what these are is, again, we use this idea of context. We ask individual team members to remember a time when they were on a professional team not the team that we are working with, but a time when they were on a team where they had healthy patterns of interaction, healthy team patterns. And what we have found is to a person everyone that we've worked with will be able to identify a time and a place when they were on a healthy team and they're able to then identify the patterns that made that team healthy. That exercise in and of itself says so much Because, first of all, it'll be able to say is this team reflecting that? So you can check that box off, yes or no? Second, it will tell you what that person is looking for for them to feel like the team is healthy.

Speaker 2: 20:43

And I'm just going to say get ready for any type of response, because what you're going to hear is someone saying you know what? When I was on that team, I thought they was healthy and here's why. And what they're actually saying is that their social, emotional and relational needs are being met in some unique and specific way. That guess what? They didn't forget it. These are all tied together. Yes, they are. So they're going to then in their mind, in their conscious mind, they're going to be actually looking for that as well in this current team.

Speaker 2: 21:15

That's one application, one person reflection of when were you on a team that you felt was healthy? The second application of this is what patterns of health does this team have? And we have also found that, regardless of how functional or challenged this team is, they're going to be able to identify times when things did go well. So we want to put those marks on there as well, because you always want to create that perspective that there is Hope here that things are going well, because sometimes a team can focus on what's not going well and overinflate what that really is. But team health, patterns of team health are extremely important for us to identify.

Speaker 1: 21:56

Can you share examples of some patterns of good team health, or is it so unique and different for each team that there aren't maybe universal patterns that should be present in a good, healthy, functioning team?

Speaker 2: 22:11

There are many ways to illustrate patterns of healthy behavior on a team. We've had so many teams that we've worked with that have identified a variety of patterns. Some of those patterns could be how a manager or supervisor was having one-to-one conversations with their team members every single week. Another pattern of healthy behavior could be that all of their conference calls are done through video and so that there's never a conference or a distance meeting that happens without a person's ability to see somebody else. There could be patterns of problem solving, where they have a way that they go through a series of like a decision making tree to get to a decision, and also introductions of new material. There could be like an annual sales meeting. There could be a communication meeting that happens every single month. These are patterns of health that are reflective of what the culture values. Every healthy team is in some way a display or or an extension of the values of that culture.

Speaker 1: 23:09

So some of these patterns are about identifying how those connect to the values, to the things that you've said. This is important to us. Do our patterns of behavior actually reflect that?

Speaker 2: 23:20

Yes, and no, ah, we've also. So yes to what you just said, that healthy teams tend to be the byproduct of a healthy culture and the team is reflecting what the values of the culture are. But the converse is also true. We have worked with several teams that are existing within a culture that has a series of challenges and there's something in the culture that's not working. And in the midst of that culture, the team has in some way created patterns and Expectations of how they're going to work together to create a sense of health in the midst of a bunch of swirl that they would consider unhealthy.

Speaker 1: 23:59

My big takeaway from this section is recognizing that everything we do in a team Says something about what we value and how those values connect to the level of importance that we've placed on the health of our team. Spend some time brainstorming these things the next time your team is together. Finally, one of the reasons why we work in teams is to introduce this idea that there's an opportunity for personal and Professional development each and every time a team is together. Now we're not talking about retreats and seminars, or self-help books and motivational speakers. It's potentially far simpler than that and can happen on a weekly or even a daily basis. This is also really where we leverage the language of strengths. Here's Brian explaining this concept and really tying all of these things together.

Speaker 2: 24:50

There's an opportunity for personal and professional development that originates within a team meeting, oh, every week. So think about that. Okay, and here's what I mean. When we are working with a professional team, we are introducing concepts that can be applied to team health, but then, when you think about that, we are talking about human beings that are existing within like a closed loop. There are relational expectations there. Well, guess what? That's the same thing you can apply to your family, to your friends, to your social networks, and that is one way that we introduce this idea that what we're talking about within your professional environment Can be seen as personal development for your personal lives. So when we talk about how you prefer to communicate or solve problems, or how you choose to get some tasks done, those same principles can be applied on a personal level To relationships in places outside the professional context.

Speaker 1: 25:48

Can it go the other way as well?

Speaker 2: 25:50

Absolutely Okay, and here's one of the ways that we do that. One of the things that we introduced in our team sessions is this question when do your preferences come from? And what we do in that is we're asking an individual to like look back to their family of origin, look back to the culture within which they were raised, that unique Environment that they were brought up in, and also to consider elements of like what time and history Were you raised? Because each of those three elements your family of origin, the culture or environment that you were raised in, and the period of History that you were in they're all going to shape your preferences and how you show up. So that personal formation, that the very elements that went into who you are as a person today that will influence how you show up as a professional and Maybe what you may need in professional development that's best fit for you.

Speaker 2: 26:42

Can you give me an example or two of that? One example is an individual who was the son of immigrants, and so he talked about what it was like to be raised in an immigrant family. That's his family of origin. So he's a first-generation American living in a large urban center, so that was his context, so the culture that he was raised in was an immigrant culture of an urban Environment. So those two things certainly shaped who he was at a time in history when there was a great migration of immigrants coming to the United States. Now, if you look at that just in of itself, that period of time in American history, that has a strong shaping influence on what that person may bring to a professional context and what they may need for professional development within that context.

Speaker 1: 27:38

Thank you for listening to the leadership vision podcast Sharing our expertise in the discovery practice and implementation of StrengthsFinder. I really hope that you have a heightened awareness of your responsibility on a team and how who you are and the way you engage Contributes to the health of that team. How do you show up? Pay attention to that, because we believe that you and every person on your team has a massive role in influencing that team in positive or negative ways.

Speaker 2: 28:06

It's the health of a team and the well-being of the person. Those two things go together. You can't separate those two as we spend so much time focusing on teams, because we know that a team is comprised of people and that a person's health is going to contribute to the health of the team.

Speaker 1: 28:24

We'd love it if you would subscribe to the leadership vision podcast on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen For more resources about developing your strengths, the strengths of your team or the strengths of your organization. Visit us on the web at leadershipvisionconsultingcom. I'm Nathan Freeberg. Thanks for listening.