Why you need an honest view of your business

Do you know why you need an honest view of your business?

This team does! Meet Alyssa and her amazing leadership team, who run the North Americas Sales organisation of a large social media company.

In this post I will share with you an inspiring team who have proven to use effective methods with open and honest views of their current business. Something that started with the leaders. Now, with other areas worked on, they have a highly effective team. Find out why a clear and authentic view is essential to turn your team around.

You may also find this video blog post helpful: 5 Questions To Inspire Your Authentic Leadership. (Opens in a new tab for your convenience).

 

This team have managed to find the ‘holy grail’ of group psychological safety and it feels bloody good!

Psychological safety is in our experience the cornerstone of team effectiveness and it creates powerful team opportunities and profound lasting relationships.

This team were well mentored by their Executives to: set clear goals for their business, build a very honest view of where they were and agree some focussed next steps that would take their business to the next level.

However, we were very pleased to hear that they had already secured the toughest of the 3, which was to gain that honest view of their business.

These girls and guys have invested the last 14 months together to build a high performing team that can inspire their business to that next level.

So how have they achieved this rare level of openness in such a short period of time?

It starts with the leader!

Alyssa came into this business with a very different style of business focus and execution than what existed previously. Some even said that “she came in hot”!

However, she has an amazing ability to park her ego and pride and show real vulnerability as a leader.

See Alyssa’s post here. How to fast track trust.

Within the first 2 months of being in the seat she took her team aside to deeply get to know each other and to see what type of team they aspired to be? They shared personal stories, they put themselves through stretch team exercises, they shared their personal preferences and ambitions and they gave first impressions feedback to each other.

This resulted in the creation of a team common purpose to take control of their business together. #TTO (Together, Take Ownership).

See post. Does your team have a common purpose?

Since then they have twice travelled on road shows around the country together to be with their people and have implemented a cascaded program of sales transformation, by building high performing sales teams across their business and by helping every individual manage their own change journey.

Alyssa is passionately committed to helping others and to building a high-performance sales culture that celebrates success and provides opportunity for those that want it.

During a recent summit this team took the initiative to take a close look at progress and to take stock of their business.

In order to encourage the right environment for openness, Alyssa tested her team with a surprise high impact team activity, which helped to display strengths and weaknesses within their team execution.

This group then dove straight into a 3 hour debrief that quickly got to core areas of success and areas of failure. They were so open that they even gave each other a score out of 10 for each business in an open forum.

They gave open constructive feedback to each other without any defensiveness and without anyone taking offense. They immediately assume good intent as they know each other so well and have built incredible trust, fast!

We were so impressed and so proud to see this team in action.

They have immediately created a new program of change to ‘Ignite’ growth and send these businesses to a 10 out of 10 in each case.

This team take personal risks, they park their ego’s, they support each other for the betterment of everyone and their customers.

If you are very lucky you will work in a team like this maybe a couple of times in your career. It feels great and not like work! People have trust and mutual accountability and are fully supported.

Maybe if we could follow their example, we could make this type of teamwork become more common place?

Andy

CEO Sundial Consulting