Achieve Your Business Goals with Fewer Distractions

I coach soccer for 7-year olds, and it’s quite a hoot.  You typically see five or six kids around the ball at all times, but let’s cut them some slack – the ball is where the fun is. 

One of the first things you discover coaching kids at this age is their attention span can seem as brief as summertime in Minnesota.  They’ll stop practicing and point out airplanes taking off from the nearby airfield, big rainclouds rolling through the sky, friends on the next field over – unfortunately, it all adds up to distraction. 

And the problem is, once you’re distracted, you’re no longer able to concentrate on building soccer skills and scoring goals.  At this age, every kid has some work to do.

One of the first things I do at the beginning of each season is set out some guidelines, or “norms.”  So, no matter what’s going on around them, we all agree to things like:  We’re here to learn soccer, not hang on the crossbar; we pass the ball to our teammate’s feet, not shoot at their head for fun; we tie our shoes before practice begins.  Most of the kids can handle these, though a few have difficulty, and they periodically need a brief chat with me as a reminder.

I work with many small businesses that could use a chat – not with me, but with their own employees about what’s acceptable and what’s not. 

Too many clients allow subtle to extreme negative behavior to run rampant in their organizations, and when you talk with their employees, most tell you it’s distracting and prevents them from being as efficient and effective as they could be.

What’s needed in these work environments are guidelines that everyone agrees to and is willing to abide by.  They’re not rules or policies, but rather ways employees treat each other.  Think of them as boundaries for team behavior.   

Norms provide the glue to hold teams together during crisis and stress.  They help the team work through conflict and make it easier for employees to approach, and communicate with, each other.  And, the norms are not negotiable unless the whole group agrees to change them.

Teams without norms typically exhibit the following characteristics:

• guarded about expressing thoughts and feelings
• avoiding conflict
• reluctance to give sincere feedback
• demonstrating low trust, superficial consensus, and low commitment

Instead, by establishing principles for how employees treat each other, teams can build a strong, behavioral foundation to get them through both the good times and the inevitable rough patches. 

Some examples of useful norms include: “We start on time and end on time”; “We challenge the idea, not attack the person;” “We resolve issues within the team, not in front of clients.”

Here’s how you can create norms with your team:

1.       Get the team to brainstorm potentials norms in small groups

2.       Share and determine best choices

3.       Gain agreement from the team and ensure everyone can live with the norms

4.       Write them down and provide a copy to each team member

5.       Make them available at every team meeting

6.       Call out situations where someone has inadvertently violated a norm (you can come up with friendly ways to do this, such as by using a kooshball to toss at the “perpetrator”.)

7.       Address chronic violators with negative consequences

8.       Modify the norms over time, as necessary

Just as kids need to know the boundaries of appropriate and inappropriate behavior, adults in the workplace can also benefit from solid parameters for team behavior.  Help remove fear, confusion, and distractions with norms, and your team just might score a few more goals.

Establishing team "norms" helps employees focus on business goals