Plateaus and leaps for your team
For humans, progress is not a linear process. Despite what we want to be true, just because we put effort into something does not mean that we will get proportionate reward or improvement - certainly not immediately. This can be seen when we look at the development of infants, adults, groups, and teams or even as a species.
The phrase that I have come to use is plateaus and leaps.
Work typically comes before the progress. It's true for our fitness as well as our team's development. Photo by Clique Images on Unsplash
What typically happens is that we work at something and don't see any significant change (i.e. a plateau). If we stick at it for long enough and do good work, we end up making a leap in progress that appears to come overnight but is more like the accumulation of the work (both quantity and quality) that we have done over an extended period of time. You can probably think about examples of this in your life either personally or professionally. A classic is dieting or an exercise routine - where the benefits require a bit of time to be seen. Often we quit before we get the leap. It's all effort and no reward!
It is no different in teams. We might change a process, our schedule or a system. We can intellectualise the benefit before we can see or experience it. Often, all that we feel is the frustration of having to change our comfortable way of working. The temptation to revert back to our old ways is strong - and often too strong. We take the path of least resistance and return to our old ways of working. One thing that we can be confident of is that doing the same as we have always done is likely to lead to more plateaus than leaps. Growth and comfort are pretty much mutually exclusive.
Here are some recommendations to help your team's development:
Be overt about plateaus and leaps
If you know that progress is unlikely to happen overnight, let people know that. A great way to disappoint your team is to promise them something that is unlikely to happen. Work with your team to manage their expectations around when they might see the benefits - and what is required in order to see the benefits (see the next three points). Ramp up your empathy and walk the road with them.
Make the new behaviour easier to engage with
I have spoken previously about behavioural inertia. Unless we have a good reason to change, we will typically want to continue with our old ways. We can help our teams to change by designing ways to make it easier to do the new behaviour. For example, if you want your team to share ideas more add this to your meeting agenda - and put it in a prominent place (not at the end when everyone is rushing out the door).
Celebrate progress on process
Given that your team is likely to experience pleasure before pain, it's important to celebrate the work that is being done rather than the results that are being achieved. There is plenty of research to suggest that tracking progress is a helpful way to keep people motivated and paying attention to doing the right work is a good way to keep your team on track while the performance is still in a plateau. This could mean that initially you focus on and praise quantity of sharing rather than quality.
Accelerate the leaps
Ultimately, we all want to get leaps as soon as we can. One thing that we need to know is that not all practice is created equal. I am a huge fan of K. Anders Ericsson's work on deliberate practice. At its core, this is about making sure that doing the right work and getting the right feedback helps to accelerate progress. This might involve getting external support, creating time in your schedule to accommodate new processes or setting up ways for your team to share their experiences more readily. The key is making sure that everyone is able to move towards better performance as quickly as possible.
Three questions for you to consider this week:
What would you like to see your team improve significantly?
Do you think that your current approach will get you there quickest?
How can you design for more leaps and less plateaus?