The 5 Disciplines of High Performing Teams
Peter Hawkins, author of latest title Leadership Team Coaching in Practice: Developing High Performing Teams, discusses the key traits that teams must possess in order to be transformational.
Peter Hawkins’ Five Cs Model for High Performing Teams:
1. Commission
Are we clear about what our stakeholders are requiring from us? That may be the board, the investors, the customers, communities in which we operate – so the commission comes from a number of sources and so you have to be very careful about the stakeholder/s that you are not noticing. For example, BP didn’t realise that the fisherman of the East Coast of America were an important stakeholder before it was too late. Commission is all about understanding WHY we are here, and this is determined by the stakeholders that we work with.
2. Clarifying
Receiving a clear commission from your stakeholder/s is not enough. A great team creates its own sense of collective endeavour- what are we here to achieve that we can’t achieve by working in parallel? What are the KPI’s of the leadership team? Not just our individual KPI’s, but our collective goals and roles? How do we not only run our functions, but contribute to the whole? Clarifying is all about WHAT are we going to do.
3. Co-creating
HOW do we work together in a way that is generative? How do we have meetings where we are not just exchanging pre-cooked thoughts, but we’re generating new thinking that none of us had before we came into the room?
4. Connecting
Great teams aren’t just ones that have great meetings; great teams are as much about what we do when we’re not together as when we are together. How do I, as part of a team, carry the sense of the whole team with me and not just my function?
5. Core learning
How does the whole team develop and learn, not just the individuals within it? How does a team take time out to reflect on its development? To ask how does it grow its collective capacity? And how does it become a source of individual stretch and development for its members?
Peter Hawkins' books are all about how leaders can develop these Five Cs within their own teams and about how team coaches can be trained to facilitate the creation of a team that can help to transform its business.
