Leaders, how can you build and maintain a healthy team?

I want leaders to flourish in terms of healthy relationships. My deep hope is that leaders are consistently experiencing… 1. A leadership team that exhibits transparency, vulnerability, healthy conflict, commitment, accountability, and a focus on team results. 2. A trustworthy, supportive, respectful, empowering Christ-centered board. 3. Respectful appreciation of others’ cultural backgrounds. This blog post addresses #1 above.

Imagine. Imagine being on a team actually known for dysfunctional, unhealthy relationships:

• Ambiguous communication and a lack of sharing. 
• No apologies. No admissions of weakness or need for help. 
• Lots of politicking and hidden agendas, complete with a good dose of superficial harmony. 
• No willingness to commit and no one sticking to team decisions.
• Insufficient accountability, due to a significant desire to avoid discomfort.
• And consistent focus on self-preservation and individual goals.

I don’t even want to imagine this, much less experience this. When imagining being on such a dysfunctional team, words that come to mind include painful, toxic, debilitating, deflating, stagnant, unproductive, and underperforming. I mean, who wants to be on a team that is famous for its lack of transparency, trust, healthy conflict, commitment, accountability, and focus on team results? Not me. Not you. Not any leader I know. And certainly no leader who wants to flourish.

Now imagine. Imagine being on a team actually known for functional, healthy relationships:

• Clear, candid, comprehensive communication.
• Heartfelt apologies and ready requests for help.
• Healthy conflict in pursuit of the best idea.
• Full commitment to team goals.
• Peer accountability for accomplishing the goals.
• Full focus on team results.

Like you, I want to be on such a team. I want to consistently experience healthy relationships that will help me and my teammates flourish. 

Photo by fauxels

So, how can we build and maintain healthy teams? Teams that help team members flourish? For me, I’ve found it helpful to start with myself, provide training, emphasize that healthy conflict is good, and continuously cultivate healthy relationships. Let me explain:

(1) Start with myself: I want to be a teammate who is healthy, who is flourishing, who is improving, who is:

• Bearing the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23, NIV).
• Self-aware (knowing strengths/cultural tendencies and when to use them), not unaware (not knowing strengths/cultural tendencies or when to use them).
• Aware of teammates’ strengths/cultural tendencies and how to encourage their effective use.
• Collaborative when it comes to conflict, not avoidant or competitive.
• Radically candid, not ruinously empathetic, manipulatively insincere, or obnoxiously aggressive.
• Humble and vulnerable (not proud and invulnerable), hungry (not lazy), and people smart (not people awkward).

(2) Encourage training in the 5 dysfunctions of a team: Have the team discuss the book, study the model, and take and discuss an assessment. Discuss the results of a personality inventory and do the personal histories exercise.

(3) Emphasize that healthy conflict is good: Repeatedly. Until everyone really believes and feels that healthy conflict is good.  Remember, “[Conflict] can transform contention into collaboration. It can balance justice and mercy. It can unlock creativity…. It can strengthen our personal and professional relationships. It can solve deep-rooted problems that need to be solved within communities or organizations. And actually conflict can create peace” (Summiting Insurmountable Conflict).

(4) Continuously cultivate healthy relationships: Healthy relationships require continuous attention, or else they can decline. Ways to do this include:

• Having fun together.
• Appointing someone to mine for conflict during a meeting, documenting the commitments the team has made in a given meeting, and closing each meeting with a debrief that includes questions (What went well? What do you want to keep in mind for next time?)
• Having the team retake the assessment and compare the results to the initial results.

Photo by Ann H

What about you? How would you feel about being on a team known for its dysfunctional, unhealthy relationships? How would you feel about being on a team known for its functional, healthy relationships? How can you build and maintain a healthy team? 

Here are some posts related to flourishing in terms of healthy relationships:

• What’s the cost of not having difficult conversations?
• How do you maintain unity when you are frustrated with someone?
• What’s the difference between being nice and being kind?
• Healthy Relationships: What comes to mind when you think about flourishing?
• To what extent are you experiencing the 5 elements of flourishing?
  

Get flourishing!

Michael

P.S. Bonus! Here’s a list of 10 quotations from things I’ve read or listened to that contain a form of the word health:

1. “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light” (Matthew 6:22, NIV).
2. “Fantastic teams require healthy communication” (Road to Flourishing: Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being, loc 548). 
3. “…through relational practices, leaders promote healthy relationships not only with and among teachers, staff, and students, but also with the local community at large” (Leadership for Flourishing Schools, p. 4).
4. “Christian schools that create and nurture a healthy professional culture based on biblical principles will encourage longevity and passion for educating the next generation“ (ACSI Inspire Standards, p. 8).
5. “In reality, all good relationships are really just a series of healthy conversations. The more meaningful, trusting, and open the conversation, the more rewarding the relationship” (Talent Unleashed, loc 180).
6. “…no one but the head of an organization can make it healthy” (The 4 Obsessions of an Extraordinary CEO, loc 242).
7. “…managers can—and really should—view their work as a ministry. A service to others. By helping people find engagement in their work, and helping them succeed in whatever they’re doing, a manager can have a profound impact on the emotional, financial, physical, and spiritual health of workers and their families. They can also create an environment where employees do the same for their peers, giving them a sort of ministry of their own. All of which is nothing short of a gift from God” (The Truth About Employee Engagement: A Fable About Addressing the Three Root Causes of Job Misery, loc 3517).
8. “The vast majority of organizations today have more than enough intelligence, expertise, and knowledge to be successful. What they lack is organizational health. This point is worth restating” (The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business, p. 8).
9. “The difference between a good day and a bad day is often a few productive and healthy choices made at decisive moments. Each one is like a fork in the road, and these choices stack up throughout the day and can ultimately lead to very different outcomes” (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, loc 1944).
10. “Beliefs come before behaviors. Our inner thinking drives our outer actions—both in business and life. Just as healthy thinking can help you make disciplined and positive choices, faulty thinking can cause an emotional and physical response that differs from how you really want to be living” (Building Champions: 3.1: Beliefs Before Behaviors).