Best-selling author Andy Fieldhouse shares his tips on effective teamwork

In an exclusive interview with Arabian Business, the bestselling author of Getting Teamwork Right – The Key to Happy, Successful and Resilient Teams argues that the emotional factors of a team, such as morale and relationships, are equally important to its success as are its targets and work goals.

In his book, Fieldhouse, who is a guest speaker at this year’s Emirates Festival of Literature to be held from January 29 to February 13, draws from his 12 years’ experience in team development to help work teams create the culture and practices necessary for them to achieve success.

What do you mean by happy, resilient teams and what is the role of that in a team’s success?

There are two measures that I think teams work on.

One is the success factor which is what they’re there to do: their KPIs (key performance indicators), numbers, or targets. I think that’s where most teams spend their effort, time and mental energy. That’s more the head or the practical side.

The other scale, which I believe is as important if not more important, is more the heart or the emotional side, the happiness factor. This part speaks about the behaviour, ethos, culture, morale and relationships that the team members have which influence their success factor.

This is what teamwork is. I always talk about a book called The Score Takes Care of Itself, its concept being that if you actually work on the other scale, in terms of the happiness factor of your team, then you will have a chance of really achieving the score that you want to go for.

Whereas if you’re constantly chasing the score, and you forget about the gel that sticks the team together, then you’re less likely to really achieve the great success that you want. That’s why the subtitle of my book is creating happy, successful teams.

The book aims to help work teams create the culture and practices necessary for them to achieve success

How do the remote team meetings we’ve all been having a lot of during the pandemic impact team dynamics?

The first thing is I don’t think people are finding the time to go back to the heart of the team. Everyone is just banging away, trying to swim and get through it all and only a few people are taking just the necessary few minutes to ask how everyone’s doing.

Also, very few are looking at the protocols of meeting remotely and agreeing on what’s okay and what’s not. For example, should cameras be on or off, what is acceptable as background etc.

Without having those conversations, you’re creating these kinds of opportunities for people to be upset when maybe all it needs is just to clear the air and have that conscious conversation.

Then you also need to look after the health of the team. When you’re together and you’ve got the luxury of time, like in an office or meeting, you arrive a little early or you see somebody over the lunch break or a cup of coffee and you can have those sort of non-essential really effective conversations just to build and reinforce relationships within the team.

Nowadays, you’re missing those opportunities because you just jump on the call, do the work and get off the call. So my advice is to create those opportunities where you keep ten minutes just to check in on team members, separately or within the group, with no agenda other than to inquire about their wellbeing.

A lot of these issues around meetings would happen if we were face-to-face or online, in terms of the quality of meetings. Think of the meetings where you sit through hours of data-presentation knowing that people absorb information at different speeds and so the ones that absorb faster end up frustrated at the slower ones.

With that example, why not share that information beforehand, let people absorb it at their own speed in their own time so that they are equipped to come to the meeting to make a decision. You could then perhaps have a ten-minute meeting rather than an hour-long Zoom one.

Very few are looking at the protocols of meeting remotely and agreeing on what’s okay and what’s not

Do you think teams will go back to the office once vaccines become more widely spread? And what do you think the impact on teamwork will be if work remains remote?

I think it’s going be really interesting to see what teams choose to do. I know teams that have said they aren’t going to go back to fully being what they used to. They’ve worked out that actually they can be really effective working remotely and do the work without having to sit next to each other.

But we’re social animals and I still think we get so much more by being in a room with people in terms of being able to read the room and feel the energy. You can’t put your finger on it, but there’s an energy that happens between people who are working together. We all missed that energy and connection by not being in the same boat.

I think we’ll see a hybrid where people work at home but connect physically once a week, or whatever it might be. Rather than have the full-time office, maybe there’s a flex-office thing or you’re meeting in cafes for your weekly meeting. So at least you’ve got a regular opportunity to be face to face and do things together.

I definitely would advise against going absolutely cold turkey online and I would still look for opportunities to bring the team together to feed into that energy.

How should conflict or tension among team members be handled?

With the teams I coach, I have a five-step guide to resolving conflict within the team which I call my 5 As.

The main thing is that you recognise and become aware of the issue. Once you become aware of things, then you can do something about it. Quite often in teams, when people are not getting along, everyone’s aware of it but no one’s talking about it or doing anything about it.

We will see a hybrid where people work at home but connect physically once a week

The brave decision is to face up to the challenges and be honest about what is going on. Sometimes that comes from within the team, other times HR or the team leader recognises it, but whichever way that awareness comes, it’s the first step.

The second step is that you consciously address and talk about it the issues that are holding you back, whatever they may be, as the brave thing to do. Sometimes you do need mediation and help to have those quite triggered conversations, but you have to have them to move forward.

Then you can create alignment on a forward path, knowing that alignment doesn’t necessarily mean agreement. Fourth, you need to create an action plan for what you are going to do differently. Finally, creating accountability for those actions that will move your team from A to B.

But I think the most important thing is if you’re aware, it’s just getting to a stage where you can address it and talk about it openly.