Enlarge image
Photo: JGI / Jamie Grill / Blend Images / Getty Images / Tetra images RF
When it comes to creating great jobs and high performing teams, researchers have long recognized that three psychological needs are essential: autonomy, competence, and connectedness.
Decades of research shows that people are healthier, happier, and more productive when those needs are met.
Ron Friedman
is an award-winning psychologist and the founder of ignite80, a consulting firm that teaches executives science-based strategies for building high-performing teams.
His books include
The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace
and, most recently,
Decoding Greatness: How the Best in the World Reverse Engineer Success
.
Of these three basic needs, connectedness, i.e. the desire to develop relationships with other people, is the most difficult for companies to cultivate.
Getting talented people in is one thing - but how exactly do you get them to like each other?
The corona pandemic has made maintaining relationships even more difficult.
Working from home is a blessing for autonomy, as many can decide for themselves when and where to work.
But the lack of physical proximity to colleagues has made it exponentially more difficult to forge close personal bonds.
New research suggests that the top performing teams have found subtle ways to leverage social bonds during the pandemic and thereby increase their success.
The results provide important clues as to how any organization can foster greater connectedness - even in a digital or hybrid work environment - to develop better performing teams.
In the summer, my team at ignite80 (a consultancy for executives,
editor's note
) carried out a survey of 1106 office workers in the USA in collaboration with the communication software company Front.
We wanted to find out what particularly high-performing teams do differently.
To identify members of high-performing teams, we asked respondents to first rate the effectiveness of their team and second to compare their team's performance with that of other teams in the industry.
Workers who rated their team 10 out of 10 on both scales were rated as members of high performing teams so we could compare their behavior with everyone else's.
So what do high-performing teams do differently?
Our study found five key differences, all of which build on the close connection between colleagues as a driver of team performance.
Pick up the phone
While phone calls are generally becoming rarer in the workplace, high-performing teams do not.
Our study has shown that members of high-performance teams generally communicate more frequently and call colleagues significantly more often than their less successful colleagues (an average of 10.1 versus 6.1 calls per day).
Recent studies have shown that most people shy away from phone calls because they fear that they will be uncomfortable with the situation.
In practice, however, most of the time they are not.
On the contrary, they strengthen relationships and prevent misunderstandings, which in turn contributes to a good exchange between teammates.
Plan meetings strategically
It's no secret that bad meetings add to employee dissatisfaction, exhaust us, and cost businesses billions.
Our results show that high-performing teams avoid the common pitfalls of poorly managed meetings by adopting practices that have been shown to promote more productive meetings.
In particular, they are significantly more likely to ask attendees to prepare (39 percent more likely), introduce an agenda (26 percent more likely), and begin a check-in that keeps team members updated on each other's progress (55 percent more likely).
By making time together both efficient and collaborative, high performing teams not only make better use of their meetings, but also create the conditions for successful interactions that contribute to better relationships.
Exchange on topics outside of work
From a manager's point of view, it's easy to disapprove of non-work-related conversations.
After all, what good can come of it when employees spend valuable working time chatting about a big sporting event or a movie?
However, research has shown that there are great benefits in talking about topics outside of work.
In personal conversations, we recognize common interests, which in turn promote deeper sympathy and more authentic bonds.
As part of our study, we found that high-performing team members spend significantly more time in the office talking to their colleagues about non-work-related topics (25 percent more) - topics that can extend to sports, books, and family.
In addition, they have met their colleagues for coffee, tea or an alcoholic drink significantly more often in the past six months.
In other words, the best teams aren't more effective because they're always working.
On the contrary: you invest time in making real contacts, which later leads to closer friendships and better teamwork.
Show appreciation for one another
A big reason the need for connectedness contributes to better job performance is because we feel valued, recognized, and respected - especially by those whose opinions are important to us. For this reason, recognition is often a stronger motivational force than financial incentives.
In our study, members of high-performing teams said they were more likely to receive appreciation at work - both from their colleagues (72 percent more) and from their managers (79 percent more).
It is crucial that they also expressed appreciation for their colleagues more often (44 percent more), which suggests that in the best teams, appreciation does not flow from top to bottom.
It is a cultural norm that can be observed in the interactions between colleagues.
Be authentic
In our study, the members of high-performing teams were significantly more likely to express positive feelings towards their colleagues.
They said they were more likely to compliment their teammates, tell jokes, and tease each other in jokes.
They used exclamation marks, emojis, and GIFs more often in emails.
Interestingly, however, they also expressed more negative feelings at work.
We found that they were more likely to curse, complain, and use sarcasm to their teammates.
Why should expressing negative emotions at work lead to more positive performance?
Because the alternative to expressing negative emotions is to suppress them, and that suppression is cognitively expensive.
Valuable cognitive resources are expended in trying to hide emotions from others.
This leaves less mental firepower for work.
Previous studies have shown that authenticity contributes to workplace wellbeing and individual performance.
Our research suggests that it also increases team performance.
Of course, there are times when expressing negative emotions in the office is not helpful or appropriate.
This suggests that the overall performance of the team tends to benefit from the full range of colleagues' emotions, as long as all team members are in the realm of psychological safety.
In summary, the results of our study suggest that creating a high performing team requires more than just hiring the right people and equipping them with the right tools.
Opportunities need to be created for real, authentic relationships to develop.
Fostering close relationships among team members doesn't have to be expensive or time-consuming.
By adopting simple, evidence-based practices that result in better communication, more productive meetings, and deeper friendships, any workplace can nurture people's basic psychological need for connectedness and increase team performance.
