How To Create Commitment On Your Team

When teams engage in healthy conflict, they have the opportunity to voice their ideas and opinions.

When people feel heard, they are more likely to commit to team decisions, even those which they initially disagreed with.

We need to take our teams through conflict and get to commitment. Our teams must commit to decisions without reservation.

Two key factors of commitment are buy-in and clarity.

Let’s talk about buy-in.

And the only way to arrive at buy-in is if everyone gets to weigh in.

When people have the chance to weigh in on a decision, they are more likely to buy-in to it. So, it’s important to create an open culture where everyone feels not only safe to share their ideas or concerns, they know it’s imperative.

Now, please don’t confuse this with consensus. When teams wait for everyone to agree, decisions are made too slowly, opportunities are missed and the decision itself is probably dissatisfying for everyone.

Team members must all be willing to support the team’s decisions, and everyone must be on the same page as to what those decisions and plans are.

Which brings us to clarity.

Think of the last time you were in a meeting with your team and left wondering what – if anything – got decided. Frustrating, right?

Or maybe you’ve experienced the embarrassment of sending out a company-wide announcement that you had to retract later because there wasn’t a clear direction decided upon in the meeting where this decision was made. Not only did your team look dysfunctional, it sent the message to the rest of the organization that you aren’t sure of the direction you’re headed. Not a good feeling.

In my group coaching programs, I guide teams to identify where they are falling short in getting buy-in and creating clarity in their decision-making process. This team analysis and understanding of how consensus can be damaging to team success is crucial to making the necessary changes to your teams’ collective behavior.

Here are a couple of questions to ask yourself about your team:

• How does clarity – or the lack of it – affect our team?
• How effective is this team at gaining buy-in for decisions?
• How strongly does the team value achieving consensus? (this is very telling)

You may want to conduct an anonymous survey of your team to get their input on what’s really going on, so you can make the necessary changes.

Commitment is a crucial component to leading a successful team and there is so much more to share about this topic – like the Top 5 reasons people don’t buy-in to team decisions. And one of them might surprise you.

If this is something that your team is suffering from, please do yourself a favor and schedule a call with me today so we can discuss your situation

You can turn this ship around and make the changes necessary to create a fully-functioning healthy and successful team.  

You can have productive meetings where everyone weighs in, buys in and is clear on next steps.

Imagine how amazing that would feel!

Schedule a call with me today and learn how team coaching could be the solution you’ve been looking for.

Thanks so much for watching. I look forward to talking with you soon!