The importance of having high performing teams isn’t new. What has changed in just a few years’ time is the definition of a high performing team. And that’s because of what is required of teams today. They must work at the speed of change, manage frequent disruption, and try to stay ahead of the pace of advancing technology. Teams that find a way to do this make their companies competitive.
All of this is hard. Team failures are costly, and internal factors are often a big part of the problem. In a recent study (Harvard Business Review, 2016) executives estimated that their companies lost an average of over $10 million per year because teams were avoiding conflict, lacked the curiosity to learn from others, or fell victim to analysis paralysis.
That is where the Bates LTPI™ (Leadership Team Performance Index) comes in. This new model and assessment provides teams and their leaders keen insights into the behaviors essential to high performing teams.
The Bates LTPI™ Assessment doesn’t measure tendencies, but team behaviors, providing feedback to the team on 3 dimensions – Culture, Credibility, and Collaboration – 15 facets and 90 items to see if their actions help or hinder performance (as shown in Figure 1 on page 7 below). You might think of it as how the team is “showing up.” The team feedback report is delivered in a briefing where we interpret the findings with the team, facilitate discussion about the impact, and determine changes the team needs to make to achieve great outcomes.
To bring the power of the model to life, let’s examine the case of the EOS Division Leadership Team, just one real-world example of a leadership team trying to deliver on high stakes goals and navigate the complexity of working together as a team in an organization facing a massive and game-changing transformation. As you will see, despite their long-time loyalty, experience, and deep industry and functional knowledge, their team dynamics and behaviors were creating a real risk of failure to deliver on their charge. The President knew that she had to take dramatic action to turn the team around and deliver the results the enterprise was counting on.
