657: How to Increase Team Performance Through Clarity, with David Burkus
Dec 4, 2023
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In this engaging conversation, bestselling author and leadership expert David Burkus shares his insights on enhancing team performance through clarity. He emphasizes the importance of clearly defined roles and responsibilities for maximizing team efficiency. Burkus advocates for structured 'huddles' where team members share what they've completed, what they're focusing on next, and any obstacles they're facing. He draws on examples from various industries, including a fast food chain and the International Space Station, showcasing how clarity fosters empathy and effective communication.
Clarity is essential for successful team performance, as it provides clear roles, responsibilities, and objectives.
High-performing teams understand the importance of bursty communication, balancing collaboration and deep work for optimal productivity.
Deep dives
Importance of Clarity for Effective Teamwork
Clarity is a crucial factor in fostering successful teamwork. It ensures that team members know their roles, responsibilities, and objectives, ultimately leading to improved performance. Successful team leadership involves building common understanding and fostering empathy. A prime example is Chris Hatfield, an astronaut who led a team of five individuals from different countries and cultural backgrounds during a mission in space. By prioritizing clarity and empathy, Hatfield created a shared understanding among team members, enabling effective collaboration without any heated arguments. The Canadian Space Agency exemplifies the role of clarity in team success, with years of training and role clarity establishing a solid foundation. However, empathy is equally important, as understanding team members' emotions, thoughts, and behaviors enables better communication and collaboration.
The Role of Clarity in Creating High-Performing Teams
Pals Sudden Service, a fast-food restaurant with a strong emphasis on clarity, serves as an exceptional example of how role clarity drives collaboration and excellence. Their average error rate in orders is remarkably low, due to their rigorous training and strong learning culture. They invest significant time in training their employees, ensuring that each team member is skilled in multiple stations, allowing for flexibility and optimal team composition. Additionally, Pals implements regular calibration quizzes, encouraging employees to seek help from their peers to enhance learning. Their emphasis on clarity and teamwork results in high performance, low turnover rates, and exceptional profitability.
Creating Bursty Communication and Deep Work Opportunities
High-performing teams understand the importance of bursty communication, which involves intermittent periods of team-wide collaboration followed by uninterrupted deep work. While constant communication can hinder productivity, providing clear communication boundaries and allocating specific time slots for meetings allows team members to focus on important tasks that require deep concentration. By synchronizing work and minimizing distractions during designated deep work periods, teams can enhance productivity, engage in meaningful collaboration during sync-ups, and achieve better overall results.
Making Priorities Clear for Team Alignment
The importance of clearly communicating priorities cannot be overstated. Research shows a significant gap between senior leaders' estimation of employees' knowledge about top organization priorities and the employees' actual understanding. To avoid ambiguity, leaders must reduce the number of priorities to a manageable amount, ideally three to five. Additionally, leaders need to regularly communicate changes in priorities to keep the team aligned with shifting demands. By maintaining clarity and ensuring the team understands and focuses on the most important objectives, leaders can maximize performance and foster a sense of shared purpose among team members.
David Burkus: Best Team Ever!
David Burkus is the bestselling author of four books about business and leadership which have won multiple awards and been translated into dozens of languages. His insights on leadership and teamwork have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, USAToday, Fast Company, the Financial Times, and many other media outlets.
Since 2017, David has been ranked multiple times as one of the world’s top business thought leaders. As a sought-after international speaker, his TED Talk has been viewed over two million times. He has worked with leaders from organizations across all industries, including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Clorox, Adobe, and NASA. He's the author of Best Team Ever!: The Surprising Science of High-Performing Teams*.
There are many things that help teams work well together, but perhaps you haven’t thought of this one: clarity. Knowing what is being done and who’s doing it often helps a team achieve more. In this conversation, David and I discuss the practical steps to surface more clarity and drive better performance.
Key Points
Casting a leadership vision is important, but insufficient. It’s not helpful to expect a team to figure out roles and responsibilities on their own.
Teams work best when they understand how each individual works best. Clarity increased performance.
Hold huddles using these three questions: (1) What did I just complete? (2) What am I focused on next? and (3) What is blocking my progress?
Consider communicating in bursts to allow for people to retreat into less interrupted time for deeper work.
Establish priorities and consistently make those priorities clear so they are obvious and apparent to the team.
Resources Mentioned
Best Team Ever!: The Surprising Science of High-Performing Teams* by David Burkus
Interview Notes
Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).
Related Episodes
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life On Earth, with Chris Hadfield (episode 149)
How to Make Deep Work Happen, with Cal Newport (episode 233)
How Great Teams Find Purpose, with David Burkus (episode 481)
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