Team Spirit: Deepening Team Awareness of Service to Customers

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and

St. Exupery

Dispirited Teams: The Context

Too many teams operate with vision and value structures that only faintly stir the hearts and souls of their members. When heart and soul is missing, team members may withdraw. Such teams merely keep up with current demands, provide meager service, and meet only minimal standards of performance. Team members often experience tension among themselves and are unable to foster authentic communication. They are without spirit and without joy.

All of the attention in the world on enhancing technology, heightening analytical capacities, and improving processes - i.e., focusing on form and structure doesn't intervene in this essential malaise. Too often teams are numbed-out and glazed over; they have lost touch with their spirit. These teams experience a certain emptiness. The deeper meaning of their work becomes remote and inaccessible.

Calling Forth a New Way of Fostering Teams

Research on high-performing systems identifies the spirit of the team as a key underlying consideration in great teams and organizations (Vaill, 1989). The heart of high-performing teams is work that stirs and touches the souls of those who make up the organization, generating unbounded possibility for extraordinary service. What is being called for is work that nurtures the individual within teams so that the strength of all contributes boundless possibility for service. What is being called for is individuals going beyond themselves and exceeding the sum of the individual potential of members of the team. What is being called for is relating and working together in a spirited way, where interdependent teams inspire bolder and more imaginative responses to the challenges confronting organizations.

Exponential gains in organizational effectiveness are possible at the intersection of team and spirit. Despite the potency of this synergy, the notion is still incompletely understood by modern enterprises. To realize the possibility of spirited, high-performing teams requires a shift in awareness, a shift in values, and with it a shift in the way teams work.

At the Heart of High-Performing Teams: Spirit

Just as scientists have revealed atomic particles as the unseen but essential building blocks of the physical universe, the unseen but essential qualities (or phases) of team spirit can be identified and named. The defining characteristic of the high-performing team - the trait that makes a team more than the sum of its members - is this unseen but critical "spirit."

The elusive quality of spirit is experienced when we attend to the factors that research show as key. Team members come to understand that spirit is not separate from worldly affairs, nor is spirit some ephemeral or ambiguous state. It is at the core of our humanity when we choose to notice and cultivate it. We can become more conscious of spirit in our work and can employ concrete processes to bring spirit to our work.

Spirit is the committed exploration for meaning and purpose in life and work. It inspires us. It draws us beyond ourselves. In going beyond ourselves, spirit and teams come together. Out of selflessness we give ourselves freely to important work, to the service of others, or to colleagues with whom we join in work. High-performing teams report selflessness and a sense of spirit.

In moving beyond narrow self-interest, beyond the individualism that permeates our culture, the possibility of extraordinary teams emerges. Spirit is at the core of this possibility, and team spirit is the desired end state.

While at some level spirit defies cognitive understanding, we can name qualities of spirit operating in teams. Identifying these qualities provides a common vocabulary for teams to reflect on their work together. Consider the following six qualities that we characterize as "phases" of a spiral, as shown in Figure 1:

1. Initiating Phase

The quality of spirit appears as a profound sense of relationship, wherein team members feel belonging and trust in their work together.

2. Visioning Phase

An extraordinary sense of possibility for what can be created exists - spirit that is alive and present for the team.

3. Claiming Phase

The experience of team solidarity, single-minded purpose, and assurance about what needs to be accomplished typifies the spirit.

4. Celebrating Phase

Look for the presence of awe, wonder, and an appreciation for the contribution of the team and team members.

5. Letting Go Phase

The quality of spirit is evidenced by a sense of freedom and completion that arises from being forthright and sharing with full integrity.

6. Core Integrating Phase of Service

The experience of contribution and service to customers and to the team generates the highest spirit.

All high-performing teams, whether consciously or unconsciously, move through and operate in all phases, linked by the critical sixth integrating component, service. Each phase has its own unique contribution to make in realizing spirit in a team. These phases spiral together simultaneously and interdependently. Our experience shows that ordinary work groups can become spirited, high-performing teams by consciously attending to each of these phases. Team spirit is a dynamic, evolving, organic process characterized by interdependent, nonlinear phases that spiral together.

The ultimate measure of a spirited, high-performing team is service. Spirited teams provide service to customers and to the team, and in some organizations that service extends to the community. The energy of the team exceeds the sum of individual energies, and the individuals' drive to serve shapes the service level provided by the team.

Spirited teams provide an awakening for members who have not yet discovered their inner essence and talents. The extraordinary contributions of such teams foster appreciation for the possibility of individual and team greatness and potential to serve.

Exploring Team Service to Customers - an Exercise

Given the realities and pressures of modern organizations, team members may lose sight of the customers' real needs and expectations - regardless of their proximity to the customers.

The following activity asks team members to explore the meaning of service by identifying a symbol that personalizes individual beliefs, values, and meaning of service. It can be used to re-energize team spirit and to refocus team members' attention on service. Here are the activity steps:

1. Prior to your team meeting, photocopy the handout, "Service: What is It?" which is shown on the next page.

2. During the session, briefly address the importance of service to team effectiveness. Ask participants to think about the concept of service and what it means to them with regard to serving their team, serving customers, and serving the community.

3. Distribute the handout and ask participants to record their answers to the first question. Allow approximately five minutes for this step.

4. Then ask the participants to look for an object that symbolizes the essence of service. Allow approximately 20-30 minutes for participants to go outdoors and find their service symbols in the natural environment and to bring them back to the meeting room.

5. Have participants place their symbols on the table in front of them. Request that participants quietly concentrate on their objects, considering what their symbols teach them about service. After providing a few moments for reflection, ask the participants to respond to the second question. Allow approximately five minutes for this step.

6. Ask participants to share their object and reflections with the team. It will take approximately 20 minutes for a team of 10 members to debrief.

This exercise typically enables team members to express their thoughts on service metaphorically and to experience a renewed sense of service. The reports of participants are often moving accounts of how service is present in their lives and work.