Four patterns of extraordinary teams:
- Energized
- Connected
- Hopeful
- Changed
I asked author Geoff Bellman that question in a past podcast. I also added, does a group have to have all of them to be extraordinary?
Related Podcast and Transcription: Making Teams Extraordinary
Geoff Bellman: No, let me say a couple of things about them first. Energized, connected, hopeful, changed are feelings that people have during or as a result of being engaged with an extraordinary group.
You can have some of those feelings occasionally, in a group that’s less than extraordinary. In a really great group, it is likely, we believe, it’s likely that you’d have all four of those. Especially the first three, energize, connected, and hopeful.
When we did our interviews with people from these 60 groups, a concluding question we had been kind of in summary, how did you feel being part of this really great group experience? They responded readily. That was an easy question for people to answer.
Back to your point about touchy?feely, when you ask them the touchy?feely questions, how did you feel about it? People just pour out feelings that they had great feelings that they had about being in a group.
We had over 400 words and phrases that came out of these interviews. Then Kathleen and I said, “Well, what feelings do they have in common? If we had to boil it down to a handful, about, what feelings would we boil it down to based on what we heard from them?”
We came up with we think that people in the extraordinary groups we talked to would respond with a strong affirmative to the questions, did this experience energize you and your group? Yes, they would say yes.
- Did you feel more connected to your group, to yourself, to your purpose, to the world around you as a result of this? Yes.
- Did you feel more hopeful about yourself, about the world, about the purpose your group was pursuing as a result of this? Yes.
- Did you feel changed by this group experience? Yes, a little weaker yes there.
Yes, for people who were experiencing the first extraordinary group they’d experienced in a long time. They would say strongly yes.
People that are used to being in great groups, they’d say, “Well, I wasn’t changed so much this time, but I can remember when I was.”
We see those four feelings as outputs to, outputs from an extraordinary group experience. They are indicative that something important went on. The more of those you’ve got going, the more likely it is an extraordinary group experience. But, they are outputs.
If I were trying to make a group extraordinary, I wouldn’t focus first of all on the feelings, outputs. I’d be more likely to focus on what they can do before and during the group experience to make it likely that those feelings were an output.
Related Podcast and Transcription: Making Teams Extraordinary
