HAVE YOUR TEAM COMMITTED

 

Because of the competitive and stressful atmosphere in which most corporate teams function, it can be a challenge to maintain unity and cooperation in a way that keeps commitment high. However, it is certainly possible, if you take the time to pursue a simple strategy called by-in. Exceptional teams have discovered how to implement this concept. Buy-In means taking enough time and care to help every one on the team to feel included, so that they will give the process full and honest emotional support (not just lip service).

The Power of Buy-In

Commitment is not the same thing as consensus.

Study the sentence above and repeat it to yourself several times. This may seem contradictory to some people, because most of us assume that in order to be committed to something you must achieve consensus; i.e., you must intellectually accept and support the idea in conjunction with everyone else. This is not always true. What is more important: teams often waste valuable time haggling over conflicting opinions, hoping to find a decision that everyone can agree on, only to discover that they have spent precious time generating a mediocre outcome. Sometimes a plan that attempts to satisfy everyone ends up so watered down that it achieves nothing of value.

Here is a new thought: What if commitment really describes the way team members get behind a decision and pursue it with purposeful enthusiasm, even when they feel some level of disagreement regarding the "correctness" of the outcome? (After all, it doesn’t necessarily require much in the way of "commitment" to pursue a plan that you already love, fully support, and may have advocated for in the first place, does it?)

In truth, this is the highest and best version of commitment, and it is the only thing that will hold a team together as they deal with the everyday challenges of accomplishing their stated goals. However, generating commitment at this level relies heavily on the group’s ability to maintain trust and implement a culture of constructive disagreement to help them identify and fully support the group’s decision, even if it wasn’t the first choice of each member of the group.

The buy-in process can be explained in this way:

IF:

Team members have a solid relationship of trust,

AND:

Everyone is comfortable with the give and take of a constructive dialogue where all ideas are welcomed, discussed openly and honestly, and weighed intelligently,

THEN:

The final decision of the team will have value for every member of the team ? even the ones who advocated for another perspective ? because they attacked the problem together, reasoned fairly (and sometimes very passionately) together, and adopted a plan that, collectively, the team embraced as the most appropriate under the circumstances. When this process plays out successfully, then everyone on the team can take emotional ownership of the decision? called Buy-In? commit to it, and see it through.

When team members are convinced that others can enter into the process of problem solving and conflict respectfully and professionally, so that every available opinion and perspective can be freely shared, they are very likely to embrace and support the final decision even if it is not their first choice. This places a significant responsibility on whoever is leading the meeting or managing the group.

It is up to the team’s leader to pave the way toward commitment among the team by first extracting every possible idea, opinion, and perspective from team members. Only when the leader is satisfied that all ideas have been honestly shared will it be time to synthesize the feedback from the group and define the best alternative from all the options on the table, even if it won’t make everyone happy.

In the vast majority of cases, applying the Buy-In principle is all it takes to maintain a high level of commitment within the team. Why is this? How can anyone shift from opposition to commitment so easily? Because commitment within a team is more about being heard and treated with respect than it is about being right. Once people see that their values and vision will be treated with respect, they will trust the group ? and the final decision ? and give their best effort to the final result.

 

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August Management Quick Tip of the Month: Make Everything Perfectly Clear

The one factor that can cause a team’s commitment to go down in flames, even though the whole team signed off on a decision, is a lack of clarity about exactly what is going to happen next and why. Too often, teams successfully navigate the "constructive conflict" process, but — perhaps due to a sense of relief or satisfaction about finally reaching the decision — fail to clearly define all the ensuing steps. Agreeing on a general strategy is not the same as providing the rationale, timeline, deliverables and accountability chain for each step going forward. Unless the group follows through by defining issues, a vacuum is created regarding everyone’s expectations, and people will inevitably lapse into relying on their own assumptions about what they think they heard or what makes sense to them going forward. It is only a matter of time before these assumptions create conflict, sowing confusion and frustration among team members who thought they had agreed to a process that is now "not working." Remember: commitment has not really occurred until people are absolutely clear about what they have committed to!