Want to Make Your Business ‘Super Fit’?
OK, so you trust your people enough to keep your business ticking over every day. But is there enough trust between you and your employees and between them, for you to be a super fit enterprise? Consider the benefits of having the right kind of trust: WORKING TRUST based on vulnerability, across your organization. And imagine the downside of not having that trust.
Vulnerability based trust, as Patrick Lencioni calls it, can transform your enterprise into a healthy place, where people feel safe admitting mistakes, sharing their feelings, and are having the real conversations that solve problems, serve the Customer, and take advantage of every opportunity, to create even more wealth for everybody.
5 Behaviors For Business Health!
Objectively look at your business and ask yourself these questions: Is there too much politics between departments, functions, and shifts? Is quality really our goal? Are there mistakes happening because people are confused and lack clarity about our purpose and strategy? Could morale be better? Is our productivity better than our competitors? Is employee turnover a cause for concern?
You could be doing better…
Take a course of PBC therapy to get the following 5 behaviors embedded in your business. Multiply the smart things you already have going for you, to become a super fit organization. As Patrick Lencioni explains in his book The Advantage, the Health of an organization, which can be measured through these 5 Behaviors, is the ultimate source of competitive advantage.
1. Build working trust: We are not talking abo
ut honesty here, nor about ‘predictive’ trust, where you know what people will say or do next. Rather we mean ‘working trust’. This is where you can rely on everybody to deliver their work commitments. To make only promises they can keep. To be open enough to admit when they are confused or make a mistake, and to share what they genuinely think and feel.
When you next get your team together, ask each person in turn to describe the most challenging aspect of their upbringing, as a way to open up to one another. Then implement a behavioral profiling tool such as DiSC.
2. Master conflict: It’s the conflict you can’t see or hear that is unhealthy for your business. Politics, back-stabbing, and wasteful inter-departmental competition can hold your enterprise back. Thoughtful dissent and the open exchange of even opposing ideas, make for a healthy dynamic creative tension. Healthy conflict can only take place in a culture of working trust. It needs to be openly promoted, recognized and encouraged.
3. Achieve commitment: You will never 
gain any real commitment to any proposed course of action without good conflict. People will never put all their energies into making something come about if they do not, at the very least, feel that their point of view has been aired and listened to. There is also low commitment if people do not fully understand the rationale behind decisions that affect them. It is vital that you end every meeting with a summary and a testing of understanding of the agenda.
4. Embrace accountability: Peer to peer accountability is the best sign of a super fit organization. It is the opposite of a blame culture and is only possible because you have built working trust, encouraged good conflict, and achieved commitment. When one colleague points out how another colleague is off message or failing to deliver, they are doing them a favor with good feedback in order to get back on track. The ‘offender’ is also ready to admit mistakes and / or confusion because they are in a high performance team.
5. Focus on results: Next time you get your leadership team 
together, ask them which team is their priority; the one they are in now or the team they lead? A truly cohesive high performing team will always prioritize the goals of the top team ahead of departmental considerations or their own personal gain. They are doing whatever they can to achieve the leadership goals. This includes asking the hard questions about other departments and providing support wherever they can to ensure organizational success.
Implementing these 5 behaviors to make your business super fit, can be one of the best investments you will ever make. The 5 Behaviors of a Cohesive Team assessment tool is a great way to implement these concepts if you want to get started now. For more information on any of the issues raised in this newsletter or just to get started, call PBC for a free consultation.
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