The seven prerequisites for TeamFlow

In the first article of this three-part series I discussed what individual flow is and how the theory of TeamFlow grew out of it. TeamFlow is a shared experience in which team members become completely absorbed in their interdependent tasks.

The team experiences the following four characteristics:

• holistic focus
• mutual trust
• a sense of joint progress
• a sense of unity

That in itself is worth pursuing, but for organisations teams in flow bring major advantages. They know how to:

• make more focused use of each other’s qualities
• deal better with complex challenges
• achieve visible joint progress

The pity is: you cannot order that experience on demand.

“Good morning everyone. As of today we will trust each other completely and function as one.”

Fortunately, you are not entirely at the mercy of the gods. You can definitely influence the shared experience of flow. These four characteristics are the result of the prerequisites that have been put in place. And those prerequisites can be influenced, you can work on them. They are, as it were, the dials you can turn within a team.

These seven prerequisites are not a checklist where seven ticks automatically earn you TeamFlow. They are organically interrelated. A clear goal, for example, only really works when team members know how and what they personally contribute. Open communication struggles to get going when people do not feel safe. And clear agreements have little value when the commitment to honour them is missing.

Because a team in flow brings so many benefits, both for the individual team members and for the organisation as a whole, it is wise to do everything you can to get teams into flow. The prerequisites are the key. That is what you can work on. So let us take a closer look at each of them.

1. Collective ambition: why do we do this together?

Collective ambition forms the heart of the TeamFlow model. It is the shared desire to contribute to something. Not just because it is in the annual plan, but because team members find the work important, interesting or meaningful.

Collective ambition answers a simple but often difficult question:

Why are we a team in the first place?

Most readers will be familiar with Simon Sinek. He formulated three golden circles, in which the first, innermost circle represents the why question.

Collective ambition works the same way. It is different from asking what a team produces.

A customer service team answers questions. A care team provides care. A teaching team delivers education. That describes the work, but not yet what the people want to mean together.

The collective ambition of a care team could be: “We want vulnerable older people to be able to live safely and independently at home for as long as possible.” That is different from: “We have to carry out 1,200 care visits this quarter.”

Those visits may be necessary, but they are not the reason people feel connected to the team.

A well-known example: Solar Team Eindhoven

At Solar Team Eindhoven, students work together on a solar car. Their concrete goal is to take part in and win a race. The underlying ambition is bigger: contributing to sustainable mobility and showing that solar-powered passenger transport is possible.

It is precisely that combination that is powerful. The race gives direction and urgency. The bigger ambition gives meaning.

“We strive to create sustainable value for all our stakeholders.”

In organisations this regularly goes wrong. The mission hangs on a poster in the hallway, but hardly lives in the daily collaboration.

“Becoming the best service provider in the Netherlands” sounds ambitious, but evokes little as long as nobody knows what it means for customers, employees or society.

By the way, a collective ambition does not always have to change the world. A hospitality team can share the ambition to give guests an evening they are still talking about the next day. An IT team can make complex technology as simple as possible for users. A maintenance team can make sure colleagues can work safely and without disruptions.

What matters is that the team finds something important together. Something they want to do their best for every day.

2. A common goal: what are we working towards right now?

A beautiful ambition without a concrete goal quickly remains an inspiring cloud.

• We want to provide excellent care.
• We want to put the customer first.
• We want to be innovative.

Fine for a coffee mug. Less useful on a busy Monday afternoon.

A common goal translates the collective ambition into a concrete and nearby result. What are we all working on right now? The answer to that question is your team goal!

In TeamFlow theory such a goal is clear, challenging and achievable. The goal must demand enough of the team to provoke attention and collaboration, but not be so unrealistic that people give up in advance.

If the Curaçao national football team had set itself the goal of becoming world champions, the players would probably have been completely demotivated from the start. An unattainable, surreal goal. The players would have walked onto the pitch with lead in their boots.

Their goal, however, was to enjoy their historic first participation, to pull off surprises against big nations and to put the island on the map. That gave the players motivation and the team wings. The goal against Germany was celebrated across the island as if the World Cup had been won!

From big ambition to concrete milestones

Suppose a multidisciplinary care network wants to improve the quality of life of vulnerable older people. That is a collective ambition. A concrete team goal could then be:

Within six weeks we develop and test one shared format for intake conversations, so that home care workers and social workers record relevant information in the same way.

That is clearer.

The team knows what needs to be delivered, when it must be ready and why collaboration is needed. A similar approach was described in a professional learning network in which staff from home care and the social domain jointly developed formats for case discussions and intake conversations.

A team goal also helps in making choices. When five new requests come in, the team can assess which of them contribute to the agreed result.

Without such a goal, everything becomes important. And when everything is important, there is usually mostly a lot of busyness.

3. Aligned personal goals: what is my contribution?

A team goal only becomes workable when every team member knows what his or her contribution is. That sounds obvious, but it is far from always the case.

People have job descriptions, individual performance targets, projects and ad hoc requests. In practice these really do not always fit together, and are sometimes even contradictory.

The classic example is the sales employee who is rewarded for bringing in as many customers as possible. Offering customised solutions with plenty of bells and whistles helps with that. The operations department, on the other hand, benefits from standardisation. Both departments pursue their own goals, which leads to an increasingly tense internal collaboration.

Or take a project team in which everyone is responsible for “a successful implementation”. That sounds collective, but nobody knows who prepares the users, who monitors technical risks and who ultimately decides whether the system is ready for use.

Aligned personal goals connect the individual work to the joint result.

The goalkeeper stops the balls, the striker tries to score and the midfielder closes the gaps. Each has a specific task, aligned so that the common goal is achieved: winning the match.

It is the same in organisations. Every team member should be able to explain:

• This is what I contribute.
• This is how my work connects to the work of others.
• This is when I have to deliver something.
• This is who I depend on.
• This is who depends on me.

In TeamFlow theory, personal goals must not only connect to the team goal, but also offer the individual team member enough meaning, challenge and room to grow. Remember, that comes from the flow theory of our Hungarian-American friend Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (see article 1).

The aim is not for everyone to do the same thing. The aim is for everyone to know how the different contributions together form the result. And that brings us to the next prerequisite.

4. High skill integration: having talent is not enough

A football club can buy eleven excellent players and still have a mediocre team. Eleven Messis in one team would be fun, but I doubt that team would do well in the league.

An organisation can hire the best specialists and still get stuck in handovers, silos and mutual irritation.

That is because the presence of talent is not the same as the integration of talent.

The original TeamFlow model speaks of high skill integration. In plain language: combining each other’s strengths. This involves three things:

1. Team members know each other’s qualities.
2. The division of tasks matches those qualities.
3. The contributions are brought together at the right moment.

A technician who gets excited about complex designs but is only allowed to keep the time records will probably experience little flow. At the same time, the team misses the chance to use his technical qualities. Van den Hout uses exactly this example to show that TeamFlow starts with tasks that match the capabilities of the individual team members.

“Surely we know what everyone does?”

Teams often think they know each other’s qualities. In reality they mostly know each other’s job titles. A communications adviser can be exceptionally strong at guiding sensitive conversations. A nurse can be remarkably good at improving processes. A software developer can be excellent at explaining complex topics to customers.

Those qualities are rarely fully captured in a job profile.

When talent remains invisible, the same colleague is asked for help every time and other skills go unused.

A team functions well when professionals can act independently and at the same time coordinate enough to make their contributions fit together.

Speaking of coordination...

5. Open communication: knowing what is really going on

Almost every team considers open communication important. Until someone says something difficult.

“This schedule is not feasible.”

“I still do not understand why we are doing this.”

“It seems to me that one person keeps making the decisions.”

“I made a mistake.”

“You may think things are going well, but I am completely stuck.”

Open communication means that relevant information is shared directly, transparently and constructively. Team members need to know who does what, how everyone is doing and how the team as a whole is progressing.

That is necessary because no plan ever unfolds exactly as designed. A team must be able to adapt along the way. Without open communication, the team only notices problems once deadlines have been missed, customers complain or people drop out. In short, when it is already too late.

The meeting and the corridor

Many people will recognise this. During the meeting the chair asks:

“Any objections?”

Silence...

Ten minutes later three people are standing in the corridor discussing why the plan will never work.

The problem then is not that people have no opinion. The problem is that the relevant information does not end up where the team can do something with it.

Note: open communication is not endless talking!

A team that talks about everything does not automatically communicate well. Open communication also has to be usable. That means feedback is aimed at the work, the behaviour or the result. Not at someone’s personality.

“You are always so sloppy” is hardly constructive. How would you feel if someone said that to you? I bet quite a bit of resistance would bubble up.

“The data in the last two handovers was not quite complete, so a colleague had to get in touch again” makes clear what is going on. Not pleasant to hear either, but it feels less like an attack on you as a person.

On the other hand, teams also need direct feedback to experience joint progress. In a game of football a goal is direct feedback and gets celebrated, sometimes rather excessively!

In the open-plan office it is just as pleasant when someone says that real progress is being made. Share your successes and do not wait for the next evaluation!

6. Safety: being able to say what is needed

Open communication and safety are close to each other, but they are not the same.

Open communication is about what people actually share with each other. Safety is about whether people feel free enough to do so.

So you can have good meeting structures, fixed feedback moments and clear agreements about sharing information, and still people can keep important things to themselves. Then the communication is organised, but the safety is missing.

During a project meeting everyone neatly shares their progress. Tasks, deadlines and bottlenecks are discussed. At first sight there is open communication. One employee, however, suspects that the chosen approach carries major risks. The project leader has previously reacted irritably to criticism and is known as someone who likes to push ahead quickly. The employee therefore decides not to voice his doubt.

Ever heard of the elephant in the room? That is exactly what is going on then. When people do not feel safe enough, that elephant can simply stay put where it is!

Within the TeamFlow model, safety has several sides. Team members must feel physically, socially and psychologically safe while carrying out their tasks. That does not mean nothing may go wrong. A challenging goal simply carries risks.

Safety shows in small moments

Suppose a young nurse doubts a dosage mentioned by an experienced doctor. Does she dare to say so immediately?

Suppose a project team member discovers he has made a wrong estimate. Does he report it right away, so the team can adjust? Or does he quietly try to solve the problem himself?

Suppose a colleague holds a different opinion during a meeting. Is that met with curiosity? Or with sighs, jokes and irritated looks?

Safety is not determined by what the HR policy says. It arises from the reactions people give each other every day.

Safety is not the same as softness

A safe team does not have to tiptoe around every problem, quite the opposite. In a safe team people can address each other clearly. After all, they know that criticism of an action is not immediately taken as an attack on the person. And that flagging a problem has no adverse consequences. It is precisely in a safe team that sparks can sometimes fly!

7. Mutual commitment: doing what you agreed together

The last prerequisite is mutual commitment. Does everyone do what they say they will do? Many teams are good at making agreements. Following through on them sometimes proves more complicated. After a team session a fine flip chart hangs on the wall:

• We hold each other accountable.
• We communicate openly.
• We take ownership.

Three weeks later the flip chart has disappeared and everyone works the way they did before.

Mutual commitment is about the shared willingness to take on the assignment with dedication and to live up to the agreed goals, values and ways of working.

It is more than motivation. Motivation can vary from day to day. Commitment shows precisely when the work gets difficult, the calendar fills up or an agreement is inconvenient for a moment.

Mutual really means mutual

Commitment is not an order from the manager to the team. Team members may expect each other to contribute. That means they ask for help when needed, address each other when agreements are not kept and discuss changes openly. But also: simply going through fire for each other.

That was great to experience at my former employer, Rotterdam Business School. If a lecturer dropped out, there was always someone ready to take over the class. No manager needed to get involved.

Note: too many agreements backfire

You can only commit to a limited number of agreements. So the solution is not to add a new procedure after every setback. Too many rules, checkpoints and formats can actually make the work heavier and limit professional autonomy.

So keep the collaboration agreements small and simple. Only agreements that genuinely help to do the joint work better deserve a place. Those are the ones the team can commit to.

Wrapping up: the prerequisites work as a system

The seven prerequisites do not stand side by side in isolation.

Collective ambition forms the breeding ground. The common goal gives direction. Personal goals and skill integration determine how everyone contributes. Open communication and safety help the team learn and adjust along the way. Mutual commitment ensures that intentions are turned into action.

TeamFlow theory describes some strong connections:

• Collective ambition, a common goal and aligned personal goals contribute strongly to a sense of unity.
• Collective ambition, high skill integration and open communication support joint progress.
• Collective ambition, open communication and safety feed mutual trust.
• Collective ambition, the common goal and mutual commitment help the team keep its attention on the shared task.

That explains why one weak prerequisite can slow a team down considerably. A team can have a clear goal but make little progress because qualities are deployed in the wrong way.

A team can communicate excellently about planning and tasks, but avoid important doubts because safety is missing.

A team can start highly motivated, but fall back when agreements are not kept.

And a team can work hard on personal goals that hardly contribute to the joint result.

So the question is not only whether all prerequisites are present. The question is above all how they strengthen or weaken each other within this specific team.

Now that we know which prerequisites there are and how they contribute to a well-functioning team, the final step is the how question. How do you make sure a team meets all the prerequisites? How do you even know where the team stands? That is what the final part of this series is about.

Respect for reading this all the way to the end! And thank you. In the final part we go deeper into measuring TeamFlow and improving it.

To be continued!

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