CAQ: How do I keep team spirit high during tough times?

Your Commonly Asked Questions answered by Dominic CostaBir, Director, Woosh Biz by HTI

“How do you stop a ship from sinking after it has hit an iceberg?” Simply put: you can’t. When the ship’s sinking, you get into your lifeboat(s). Lifeboats that were built while the ship was being commissioned. The lifeboats were equipped with flares and rations, and maintained even while the ship was in good service. Even the crew was trained to handle emergency evacuation, and drills were run for passengers. So, is this pessimistic thinking or a bad omen to plan what you will do when the ship begins to sink? Or is this a pragmatic approach? You take steps to ensure you’ll never have to use the lifeboats. However, if you do hit an iceberg, you set off sirens to alert everyone on board and you broadcast SOS messages asking for help.

We have organizations that don’t build lifeboats as they feel it is time consuming, a waste of money and other resources. Or they don’t like to discuss – “what if things don’t go as planned?” as it’s a bad omen. When they have a leak, they keep it a secret and rather than plugging it, announce it as a swimming pool – marketing. When they hit an iceberg, sirens don’t go off, they just shoot people (sack them due to non-performance or claim restructuring) – so the statistics change. SOS messages are not broadcasted as the ‘market’ shouldn’t know the predicament.

What if organizations applied the ship-lifeboat thought process? Building lifeboats means you build in systems and train your team for the emergency – keep them mentally prepared. You engage in strategic team building exercises to boost team morale and spirit – while the company sales (product and services) are in demand. If there are issues within the team or attrition is high (akin to having a leak in the ship), you identify the real cause and address it. You don’t cover up the real issue by paying higher compensation and rolling out better facilities – literally bribing staff to stay.

Building lifeboats means you build in systems and train your team for the emergency – keep them mentally prepared. You engage in strategic team building exercises to boost team morale and spirit

So, the question that should be asked is:

How do we build team morale and spirit in good times?

1. Candidness & Transparency: Allow people to openly voice their concerns, complaints, compliments…  Without making them feel like they’re negative or too vocal. If a senior finds a teammate performing below par, he/she transparently broaches the subject with them. The team constantly explores processes, systems, and itself for strengths to leverage growth and find areas of improvement.

2. Mutual Trust & Respect: Trust and respect are natural partners of candidness and transparency. They are the glue that holds teams together and allows an organization to take calculated risks. To build it, the team needs to work together… but just working together builds barriers due to the stress, demands and expectations – we forget people are human (read that again). We need to play together – indoor and especially outdoor. We must also have real conversations about family, childhood, dreams, ambitions, fears… Don’t mix up having a ‘booze-up in a noisy pub’ with bonding – that doesn’t allow for real conversation and back home, probably creates issues/conflict.

3. Focus on Growth: Just an increase in salaries and promotion is not growth. The individual’s skills and abilities need enhancement – both in their current domain and moving forward to some emerging skillset that interests them. This increases their value, contribution to the organization, and demand in the job universe – thus providing them job security within the organization and outside. We should push our teams outside their comfort zones – make them take up assignments that make them stretch. Complacency is an enemy for individuals and organizations.

4. Habit of Thinking Fast & Acting Faster: At times there are problems (read: opportunities) that crop up; this could be a last minute request from a client, or a change in the market due to a player entering or exiting, or an act of God. Ignoring the opportunity may not kill or damage the organization, so the thought then is, ‘why bother?’ – especially since we don’t have the luxury of time to plan and execute. However, the idea is to treat this like a fire-drill. Lean teams with agile thinking must be put together, handed over the task (challenge), and challenged to come up with solutions that they build along the way. This attitude of thinking and acting keeps the organization agile, lean and crisis-ready.

So, in a crisis, we don’t spend time motivating the team – they are already mentally and emotionally tough; lifeboats are in place with rations. We don’t worry about training the team to respond to the crisis; they are already crisis-ready. We don’t have to be too concerned about breaking the news to them; they already know the score.

During the pandemic enforced downturn, I never had to worry about speaking to Team HTI – because of our well-entrenched transparent ways, teammates anyway knew the financial position. We openly discussed options. That helped us tide over the situation with about half the team voluntarily opting for long leave without pay. Now, when the crisis has passed, they are getting back on board with us and raring to go!

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