Improving Team Performance

We have already provided support for the idea that the SOQ can discriminate highly creative teams from their non-creative counterparts.  In this case, as a part of an organizational initiative to improve the performance of teams, the SOQ was applied to provide feedback to four teams that attended a two-day workshop.  The aim was for each of the actual teams to understand their results and agree on specific strategies they could implement to make a meaningful difference in their performance.  These were teams that worked together to provide a variety of services to external clients, and they had discovered that their clients were not overly impressed with how they functioned as a team.  When team members were working inside the client organization, they often asked repetitive questions and did not actively exchange information and learning.

Implications and Actions.  As a result of the workshop, the teams identified their strong points and obtained a much deeper understanding of the barriers they faced, particularly when they were “deployed” within client organizations.  They developed specific plans to stay connected during these times and established norms, or agreements about how they would work together.  They also implemented a plan to check on how well they were following these agreements. 

This section highlighted a number of different ways the SOQ can be applied.  In principle, whenever people within organizations need to understand their readiness, willingness and ability to make change happen, the SOQ can be helpful.

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