Listen in as I chat with George Karseras, Executive Team Development Coach & founder of TeamUp, and a specialist in building team excellence. We talk about how George researched and created TeamUp, including how teams can build effectiveness and also using 360 Feedback for team effectiveness.

Research findings
George describes his deep research into the topic of effective teams and teams working in extreme environments. We then discuss how this became the TeamUp Playbook, and how the Playbook provides a guide for team leaders and organisations to build great team performance, step by step.
We also touch on the importance of 360 Feedback for team effectiveness, one to one and also 360 Degree Feedback, and how the team leader can use these together to get a full picture of how the team is operating.

Key team skills

George developed the TeamUp Playbook and model after 5 years of research into predictors of team performance. This is a highly complex area and he discovered that
there is a code of skills, that is, the order that, if you are team leader, you would be advised to develop in your team. Therefore this code applies whether your team is a new or already existing team.

The TeamUp model consists of:
1. Get set – goal setting
2. Get safe – creating psychological safety for robust conversations, autonomy and feedback
3. Get strong – learning to work together
4. Get success – the outcome of the above.
Each stage predicts the next stage of the model.

Here’s how it works: in the same way that 360 is important for an individual, so this is a credible assessment based on the team’s own feedback. It’s like an MOT for a team.
The team then receive a report with the rolled up team feedback which they share and discuss in a facilitated session.

Essentially the concept of team feedback is on three levels
1. Feedback report, and therefore how are we doing as a team
2. The best teams do feedback descriptively and without judgement and this is
an important skill
3. Then there is the idea of retroflection as a skill in itself: one of the most
compelling findings is that teams who reflect on themselves and how they’re working together outperform those who don’t.

Often teams don’t get a chance to have those discussions, but those discussions are really important. Because so many of us work in teams, this is really
critical for all team leaders. In a working world dominated by lots of team, together with collaborative working and cross functional working – this is the future!