Contact: Jennifer Lyons
Herrmann International
828-348-6363
[email protected]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Why So Many Team Performance Strategies Fail: Getting results is about more than getting along. Herrmann International looks at team thinking in a new light
Lake Lure, NC, June 3, 2013 – Organizations are increasingly relying on the collective power of teams to meet today’s business demands, but many teams aren’t living up to their full potential. While teambuilding and sensitivity training workshops abound, they typically deliver little in the way of long-term impact, often because they overlook an essential factor driving team performance: thinking.
“With knowledge workers, you can’t develop and maintain an exceptional, consistently high-performing team without focusing first on what drives the team’s behaviors and actions at the root level,” says Ann Herrmann-Nehdi, CEO of Herrmann International. “From our more than 30 years of research on the brain and business performance, we’ve found that when people come together, their ability to communicate, problem solve, and get the most from their diverse experience and perspectives starts with understanding how they prefer to think, both as individuals and as a group.”
Thinking style data, which reveals a number of important clues about how a team works, can be assessed and used as a starting point for discussions and activities, she says. Once team members understand the importance of a breadth of thinking and how each person’s thinking adds value, they are able to view differences in a nonjudgmental way, and they have new context for how to tackle the challenges that inevitably arise.
To make sure the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts, Herrmann-Nehdi says teams need to consider:
• To what degree does the team prefer analytical, structured, interpersonal or conceptual styles of thinking?
• How do these different modes of thinking affect team dynamics, process flows, idea generation and problem-solving approaches?
• How do they contribute to desired outcomes, and where are there gaps in our thinking?
• How can we use diverse thinking to move from conflict to creative contention?
In addition, leaders, OD professionals and others can apply the data to strategically align thinking resources with business objectives and challenges.
“When managed well, cognitive diversity has been proven to pay off,” Herrmann-Nehdi says. “A six-year study with the USDA Forest Service using the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument® (HBDI®) assessment and Whole Brain® framework found that teams with a balance in terms of thinking preferences are more effective—they consider more options and make better decisions—and they’re more efficient than homogenous teams.”
The new white paper, Are Teams Broken? Or Just Not Using Their Heads? Team Thinking in a New Light, (athttp://www.hbdi.com/Resources/WhitePapers/index.php) discusses how to apply the latest research on thinking and team effectiveness to achieve specific business objectives. The free download also provides tips for using a thinking-based framework to overcome common team challenges.
About Herrmann International:
The originator of the Whole Brain® system and the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument® (HBDI®) thinking styles assessment, Herrmann International works with organizations around the world to help them put their full brainpower to work to outthink, outpace and outperform the competition. The company’s Whole Brain® Thinking framework, which includes a variety of learning solutions, facilitation resources, job aids and business tools, has helped 9 out of 10 of the Fortune 100 harness their collective intelligence to sell more, spend less, innovate faster, and develop and retain the best talent.
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