Parent Post
When building extraordinary workplaces
When building extraordinary workplaces and high-performing teams, three psychological needs are essential: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
When people feel psychologically fulfilled, they tend to be healthier, happier, and more productive.
The desire to feel connected to others has always been the trickiest for organizations to cultivate. It’s one thing to attract talented employees.
Creating a high-performing workplace
Creating a high-performing workplace takes more than simply hiring the right people and arming them with the right tools to do their work.
It requires creating opportunities for genuine, authentic relationships to develop.
By incorporating simple, evidence-based practices that yield better communication, more productive meetings, and deeper friendships, every workplace can fuel people’s basic psychological need for relatedness and lift team performance.
The highest-performing teams have
The highest-performing teams have found subtle ways of leveraging social connections during the pandemic to fuel their success.
So, what do they do differently?
Here are five key differences, highlighting the vital role of close connection among colleagues as a driver of team performance.
Give and receive appreciation
Give and receive appreciation more frequently.
Relatedness contributes to better performance at work because it makes us feel valued, appreciated, and respected by those whose opinions we prize.
Recognition is often a more powerful motivating force than monetary incentives.
Members of high-performing teams receive more frequent appreciation at work.
They also express appreciation to their colleagues more frequently, suggesting that appreciation doesn’t flow from the top down.
It’s a cultural norm that’s observable in peer-to-peer interactions.
Aren’t afraid to pick
Aren’t afraid to pick up the phone.
While telephone calls are becoming less common in workplaces, that’s not the case among high-performing teams.
They communicate frequently and are more likely to communicate with colleagues using the telephone than their less successful peers.
Phone calls strengthen relationships and prevent misunderstandings.
Are more authentic at
Are more authentic at work.
Members of high-performing teams are more likely to express positive emotions towards their colleagues.
They were also more likely to express negative emotions, curse, complain, and express sarcasm with their teammates.
Expressing negative emotions is easier than suppressing them, and suppression is cognitively expensive, leaving less mental firepower for doing the work.
Are more strategic with
Are more strategic with their meetings.
Poorly run meetings contribute to employee dissatisfaction, drain cognitive bandwidth, and cost organizations billions.
High-performing teams incorporate practices fostering more productive gatherings. They require pre-work from participants, introduce an agenda, and begin with a check-in that keeps team members apprised of one another’s progress.
To ensure that time together is efficient and collaborative, high-performing teams set the stage for more fruitful interactions, contributing to better relationships.
Invest time bonding over
Invest time bonding over non-work topics.
From a managerial standpoint, it’s easy to frown upon workplace conversations that have nothing to do with work.
But discussing non-work topics offers major advantages because we identify shared interests, fostering authentic connections through personal conversations.
The best teams aren’t more effective because they work all the time, but because they invest time connecting in genuine ways, which yields closer friendships and better teamwork.
