No trust falls
High performing teams are built on four things. Most team work is aimed at one of them, more or less at random. We find out which ones are actually missing before anybody books a room.
Good teams are built on purpose
The best leaders already know this. Team performance is not a by-product of putting capable people in a room and hoping the chemistry holds.
A group of strong individuals has a great deal to manage before it becomes a team. Who owns which decision. Whether disagreement surfaces in the meeting or in the corridor after it. Whether the goal everyone would recite is the goal everyone is actually working toward. Whether two people can be direct with each other without it costing them something.
None of that resolves on its own, and none of it resolves because the people involved are capable. It gets built, or it gets left to chance. And it is usually a change that exposes which one happened: the strategy moved and the team has not, the team itself changed, performance and engagement are sliding, or nothing is broken and it could still be better.
“Chris ran a session for our team which helped create a higher level of candor and accountability. We left the session with clear team norms, specific commitments and a stronger sense of individual and collective accountability.”
Nancee Ronning
Former COO, BNSF Logistics
Four pillars
Effective teams have all four. They are not stages and there is no order to them, which is why a team can look healthy on three and still be stuck.
- Clear goals
- The team knows what it is for, and what it owns together rather than as a set of individuals. Two members asked separately give the same answer.
- Complementary roles
- Who decides what, who has to be consulted, and where two people currently believe the same call is theirs.
- Effective problem solving
- Disagreement happens in the room rather than in the hallway afterward, and the team can get to a decision without waiting for the most senior person to signal one.
- Strong interpersonal relations
- Enough trust to be direct, and enough understanding of each other to read a difficult moment correctly rather than personally.
Most team work is aimed at one thing
14x
The effect size of team training that works several pillars at once, against training aimed at one.[1]
A theme gets picked, an afternoon gets spent on it, and the team goes back to whatever was actually holding it up. The aim is rarely wrong on purpose. It is just chosen before anybody has looked.
So we look first. The diagnosis decides what the session is about, and the session works the two or three pillars that are actually load-bearing for this team.
Data arrives before the room does: what people say when they are not sitting next to each other, where the answers disagree, and which pillar the disagreement is really about. By the time the team is together, the argument worth having is already identified, and the day is spent on it rather than on finding it.
Teams get the material afterward and run it themselves. Where an organization wants the work to keep going past the session, Spherikal carries it, because a team that was excellent for an afternoon is not what anybody is paying for.
“Chris worked with my R&D leadership team, a group of accomplished innovation leaders, and quickly took us beyond the obvious. He uncovered insights that challenged our thinking, sparked meaningful dialogue, and led to clear, actionable changes.”
Roger Nahas, PhD
EVP Global R&D and Chief Innovation Officer, Kalsec
Start with one team
Most of this work starts with a single leadership team and spreads from there, because the level below watches what the level above actually does.
“He has a unique ability to match the energy in the room, draw out key insights, keep people engaged, leave space for reflection, and navigate the team to practical, actionable takeaways.”
Jenessa Disler
Fractional CHRO, JHET Architects
