WORKSHOPS >> business teamwork

Only 2% of teams in corporate America qualify as great performers. Now the questions come. What makes them great? Is my team one of them? What does building teamwork to get there look like?

The only reason anyone would care about those 2% teams is if they get dramatically better results, and what they do to get those results is sustainable and achievable. Let's look at a few of their results:

• people are fully engaged; research shows high engagement leads to a 19% increase in operating income and nearly 28% growth in earnings per share
• retained top talent and lower overall turnover, by up to 63% better than industry average
• productivity-per-employee measures that nearly double the average company
• less status-quo thinking, more breakthrough innovation

The key metrics-sales growth, profit margin, speed to market, new product development, market share-vary depending on your team's job, but the performance gap between the 2% and everyone else, over decades, has never closed.

So whether your team is a 2-percenter or not, it's true that everybody wants those results. Our business Team Dynamics workshops teach you how to get there based on 10 years of research and client work with organizations of every size and industry, including Fortune's Most Admired and 100 Best Companies to Work For.

3 uncommon traits to reach great

What do the 2% teams actually do that make them great? Three clear-cut, uncommon traits:

The first trait is humility, what we call healthy egonomics. Humility may come as a surprise when talking about business performance. Here's how we uncovered humility and why it matters in business team building. In 2001, research expert Jim Collins revealed eye-opening, new science for the business world.

In 1996, Collins began a quest to uncover why some companies make the leap to great performance, and others don't. Of the 1,435 companies he studied, only 11 made the cut.

Those 11 outperformed their competitors by an average of 688% over a 15 year period in key measures like revenue growth, market share, profitability and stock price. One of the most startling discoveries of Collins' work was about the leaders of those 11 organizations, who exhibited two, rare traits that allowed them to transform their organizations:

1. Fierce professional resolve
2. Extreme personal humility

He labeled that recipe of traits "Level 5" leadership. Even with equal ambition, talent and resources, those missing "Level 5" couldn't make the cut.

But the unanswered question of Collins' landmark work also happened to be about "Level 5"; can you learn Level 5 leadership if it's vital to every other requirement to break through from good to great?

Our latest book, egonomics from Simon & Schuster, is our direct aim at answering that one question. As part of our research for egonomics, we explored how top team players and leaders work differently, or what we call business "Team Dynamics." Teams with "Level 5" humility get great results precisely because they:

• Listen with open-minds and open the minds of others to different ideas
• Relentlessly look for ways to make things better
• Confidently and constructively speak their mind
• Passionately debate ideas without getting defensive
• Don't hoard knowledge and business expertise.

While humility is the most crucial difference in team dynamics between the 2% and everyone else, it doesn't explain everything. Our investigation uncovered two other critical components of 2% teams.

The second trait is intense curiosity. 2% teams:

• debate with a higher level of intensity and diversity of thought
• structure discussions that lead to action, not endless meetings and conversation
• adapt effectively and creatively to corporate and economic change
• balance free-thinking and creativity with business discipline.

The third unique trait of top business teamwork is "water-cooler honesty." There is a difference in the ability of 2% teams to:

• say what's really on their mind at crucial points during important meetings, rather than later at the water cooler
• freely speak their mind without fear listen to feedback without hesitation
• remove politics from conversations

Without those three traits, every team falls short of the 2%. That doesn't mean everyone else gets poor results... just not great results. The business teamwork performance report card on teams isn't straight "A's" or "F's"

But in pursuit of "A's", every team is at a level of business team dynamics that either push them back, keep them locked where they are, or move them ahead. Two-percent teams deliver brilliant results precisely because the right team dynamics are the engine behind traditional team focus on vision, superb strategy, streamlined structure, fluid process and execution excellence.

5 levels of teamwork

In any organization, there are 5 Levels of business teamwork dynamics that drive performance:

Level 1 dynamics are isolated; people and their ideas stay isolated while team performance declines.

Level 2 business team dynamics are characterized by indifference - people don't really care about performance. Individuals may collaborate with one or two people, but it ends there.

Team dynamics at Level 3 are independent - people work on a team, but not very effectively as a team. People at Level 3 recognize the need for collaboration, but it's often clumsy and difficult to sustain because of competing agendas and personal territories. About half of all teams operate at Level 3.

The label for Level 4 business teamwork might be "doesn't play well with other teams." Level 4 Teams work well within their own team, but that's where it stops. Level 4 teams are famous for silos and territories. Sometimes that behavior carries over to their team dynamics, and drives them back to Level 3.

And finally there are team dynamics at Level 5 - interdependent. According to research by Logan, King and Fischer-Wright of USC, Level 5 represents 2% of teams in business.

Based on the original, eye-opening work of David Marcum and Steven Smith, our Team Dynamics workshop teaches how to build business teamwork that leads to Level 5 results.

You can register for one of our LiveWeb workshops, or call us at 801.492.9009 to schedule an onsite workshop or keynote. You can also download one of our latest whitepapers, The Ultimate Team Dynamics, above or take our Team Dynamics survey to find out how close your team communication report card is to Level 5 performance.

If you would like to watch archived webcasts and webinars, download our latest whitepapers and articles, or get free tools for your team, visit our All Access page. You can watch a short Flash presentation of our Team Dynamics work and research here.