How do you fix a team that’s fighting each other (and get them focused on big challenges again)?

What is the FourSight method for team problem-solving (clarify, ideate, develop, implement), and how do you use it to lead better?

Good Team, Bad Team by Sarah Thurber and Blair Miller explains how leaders build unity and results by using cognitive diversity and the FourSight problem-solving process—so teams collaborate, innovate, and tackle big challenges instead of turning on each other.

Continue reading to run a fast team reset: define the challenge as a question, spot which thinking preferences are missing or clashing, and guide the group through clarify → ideate → develop → implement with “praise first” to rebuild trust.

Recommendation

Congratulations: You’re in charge of a high-profile team. Unfortunately, personnel problems hamper you and your team, so you seldom get the results you want. The main issue is a lack of unity. How can you solve this and other team-building problems? In this engaging, informative book, team-building experts Sarah Thurber and Blair Miller explain how to turn your bad team into a great one, basing much of their advice on the fascinating science of cognitive diversity. They also explain their “FourSight” problem-solving system, which has been used by Nike, NASA, and the United States Navy SEALs.

Take-Aways

• Good teams can hit big goals and save your organization substantial money.
• Focus first on your team members and then on the team’s goal.
• As you build a team, target team members’ individual “thinking preferences.”
• The “FourSight” problem-solving framework has four stages: “clarify, ideate, develop, and implement.”
• Team members with different thinking preferences may distrust each other.
• Good teams need trust.
• Team development goes through multiple, diverse phases.
• Apply two pivotal problem-solving tools: “phrase challenges as questions” and “praise first.”
• “Out of many, one” is a perfect team-building motto.

Summary

Good teams can hit big goals and save your organization substantial money.

Team-building is vital for any organization. Strong teams can make a difference for their organizations, accomplish big goals, and even save millions of dollars. However, if teams lack sound leadership, their members may end up going after one another and not addressing the challenges their company needs them to handle.

“A good team is something you can make on purpose. The ingredients are simple and if you combine them with care, authenticity, and compassion, the results are almost guaranteed.”

Leaders must support their team’s individual members and bring them together to accomplish the organization’s goals. Start with a plan. Learn everything you can about each member of your team. Figure out each team member’s individual thinking preferences. Use a shared, well-understood problem-solving strategy to nurture respectful, ambitious, determined, and effective teamwork. And, clarify your team’s purpose so that every member understands it and feels motivated to achieve it.

Focus first on your team members and then on the team’s goal.

To develop a worthy team, focus on your team members before you focus on their shared goals. Pay attention to the diverse kinds of thinkers who must come together to accomplish the team’s tasks.

“[When] people find themselves in a new context, facing new challenges as a team, they start to see each other in a new way.”

As the team leader, set out to help your team members muster their “problem-solving superpowers” to get their job done. This requires helping your team define its purpose, develop a smooth internal dynamic, and master a shared strategy for attacking problems.

As you build a team, target team members’ individual “thinking preferences.”

Team leaders must understand their members’ personal thinking preferences, which will vary as much as their knowledge, backgrounds, and individual interests. Each person sets out to solve problems in a distinctive way. Team leaders who understand each member’s thinking preferences can lead their teams effectively from solving problems to taking action.

Author Sarah Thurber first learned about the art of building a team on a blind date. Learning that her date was a team-builder by profession, she asked how he initially approached this process. He said that as a former camp counselor, teacher, and Outward Bound instructor, he often took teams outdoors to tackle physical challenges together.

“Is it the trust falls and ropes courses that actually transform teams? Or is it the simple act of solving big challenges together?”

Then he told her of his new, more developed, strategic method for team-building. He had discovered that when teams share a daunting, meaningful business problem-solving challenge, the members find it easier to bond and trust one another. In researching team motivation for his graduate degree, he had learned that physical challenges build trust among team members, while mutually solving a business problem builds cohesion and clarity.

As Thurber questioned him, he explained that he set out to create a method that harvests both benefits by combining problem-solving with engrossing group tasks. To build teams, he puts members through “experiential challenges” as they work creatively on solving a business problem. This proves consistently effective. Thurber was drawn to his team-building strategies and eager to learn more about them. She eventually decided to write this book – co-authored with her former blind date and now husband Blair Miller – to share their insights about team leadership. Today, he refers to their first date as “the interview.”

The “FourSight” problem-solving framework has four stages: “clarify, ideate, develop, and implement.”

Problem-solving calls on four different types of thinking and four action stages, as delineated in the FourSight Framework. It incorporates the “FourSight Thinking Profile,” an analysis of the way individuals approach problem-solving.

“These days, I build teams by having them solve real problems…Sometimes, I miss the outdoor ropes courses and trust falls.’ He looked a little wistful. Then he cracked a conspiratorial grin. ‘Then again, my liability insurance got a whole lot cheaper.’” (Blair Miller)

This structure helps team members determine effective ways to reach a shared strategy. These stages are its conceptual pillars:

1. Clarify – Your team must understand the problems it’s addressing. Ask targeted questions and organize information to enable your team to build a well-rounded picture of the issues involved.
2. Ideate – This is the idea-generation phase of the problem-solving process. Consider all possible approaches, including those that are not merely outside the box, but way outside the box.
3. Develop – At this stage, build the most effective solution by transforming your team’s best ideas into solid plans members can put into practice.
4. Implement – This is the action phase of solving problems and meeting goals, the point at which your team is ready to “make it, try it, sell it, do it.”

When a team comes together to solve problems, the different ways each person thinks can present these stumbling blocks to reaching a consensus.

• Clarifiers sometimes spend too much time trying to define an issue. That can lead to analysis paralysis.
• Idea generators may get swept away by their big concepts, forgetting or ignoring the pesky details. Thus, their more sweeping ideas may not be grounded in reality.
• Developers, in contrast, may spend too much time digging into the numerous details of a proposed solution, losing themselves in the intricacies as they pursue a perfect solution.
• Implementers often want to move as quickly as possible, often too quickly, to activate their solutions. Unsurprisingly, this often leads to flawed results.

The result of this internal tug-of-war can be a confusing mish-mash that solves nothing as team members become angry, frustrated, and disagreeable. Teams can devolve into arguments and internal cliques that thwart harmony and productivity. The solution to this Tower of Babel problem has to evolve over time within each team. High-level teamwork requires trust among team members, who also need to trust the team’s leader.

“Sometimes, the people we label as ‘difficult’ are the very people who might help us solve problems more effectively.”

Establishing trust among people who may initially be virtual strangers isn’t easy. Many times individual thinking preferences create roadblocks to collegial trust. People may even interpret one another’s differing ways of thinking as uncooperative behavior.

Team members with different thinking preferences may distrust each other.

Team members who harbor negative ideas about thinking styles or preferences that differ from their own often end up distrusting people who don’t think the way they do. In these cases, people may even become suspicious of how others tackle shared problems or question why they have a different approach. Be alert to these differences:

• Clarifiers usually prefer to work with other clarifiers or with developers.
• Developers usually prefer to work with other developers or with clarifiers.
• Implementers prefer to work with other implementers.
• Idea creators are happy to work with anyone, but some people may not want to work with them.

As your team develops, steer its members to view their differences as potential strengths and to act accordingly as they come to depend on one another.

Good teams need trust.

Your team needs cognitively diverse members to achieve its goals, but bringing together people with different thinking tactics has both benefits and consequences. Some people may find it hard to work with those whose thoughts take an unfamiliar path. As the team’s leader, you must be prepared to step in and smooth the way toward unity and trust. Heed these tips:

• Recognize excellence whenever it appears.
• Assign each person challenging but do-able objectives.
• Show team members how to manage their individual workloads.
• Enable team members to play to their individual strengths.
• Broadly share all important information.
• Intentionally build team relationships.
• Facilitate each member’s personal growth.
• Demonstrate your personal vulnerability.
• Pay attention to and express appreciation for each member of your team.

Solving purposeful challenges unites a team. As that happens, you can build psychological safety, which is necessary to establish trust. When team members feel safe with one another, trust can build. Google’s team study, Project Aristotle, identified psychological safety as the most essential trait in building a top team.

“Trust is a key ingredient of a healthy team dynamic. As a leader, you can earn people’s trust quickly, but you can lose it just as quickly.”

Since leaders are accountable for as much as 67% of their team’s “climate,” a team leader’s stature enables him or her to influence the team members’ relationships. Team leaders must promote a “climate of productivity,” however, a team’s climate isn’t the same as its culture. Team climate is a “snapshot of the team experience at any given time,” something a hands-on team leader can affect positively. In contrast, culture is embedded deeply within the overall organization and thus far less amenable to change.

Simply belonging to a team can help further trust among disparate members since human beings are instinctively social. At a basic level, people derive happiness from belonging to a group. Happy people are more effective, efficient, and trusting.

Team development goes through multiple, diverse phases.

Proper team development evolves through these stages:

• “Forming” – This is the “honeymoon phase” when people come together to form a team. The members of a new team are naturally anxious. They will look to the leader to set the pace and provide guidance.
• “Storming” – This is the fractious stage when members may maneuver for power and position or try to elbow other members out of the way. Conflict can cause havoc as feelings and egos arise.
• “Norming” – Members put aside their differences and begin to communicate easily and act as teammates. They negotiate instead of arguing. One way or another, troublemakers leave the team. The team gets to work.
• “Performing” – This is the magic phase when good things happen. Members readily collaborate as they become energized about achieving mutual goals.
• “Re-forming” – When old members leave the team, when new members join, or when the team’s charter changes, re-forming occurs naturally. This period is always difficult. Seasoned members can help everyone get back on track.
• “Closure” – The team achieves its goals, wraps up its joint efforts, and celebrates its accomplishments.

Apply two pivotal problem-solving tools: “phrase challenges as questions” and “praise first.”

A team can draw on many problem-solving tools. One proven tool is to state problems as questions, not facts. For example, instead of saying, “I can’t keep up with all this work,” ask, “How might I manage my growing workload?”

“To solve your people challenge…build a team that can solve any challenge.”

Offering praise before criticism is a second proven tool. This strengthens relationships and helps people refine their ideas. Instead of immediately seeking the weaknesses in new ideas, praise what you can and then raise your concerns. Remain open to the opportunities an idea may suggest.

“Out of many, one” is a perfect team-building motto.

The statement E Pluribus Unum, which means “out of many, one,” appears on US currency. It encapsulates the basic unifying principle behind every good team as individuals unite to achieve a common purpose. Leaders who know who they are and understand their own approach to solving problems are best equipped to put this principle into practice. Leaders also must know their individual team members well to help them come together. A leader who commands three levels of essential knowledge — “know yourself,” “know your team,” and “know your challenge” — is ready to lead a unified team.

“Align people with a clear purpose…and give them a common language to solve complex challenges.”

Team leaders face an additional task when some team members work remotely. They must incorporate people who work alone and make them feel at one with the team. Team leaders also face the ordinary problems that beset most modern managers, from employee churn to the impact of societal concerns. Despite these problems and limitations, smart team leaders can shepherd purposeful teams that accomplish meaningful goals. You can help your team members persevere and draw strength from their mutual purpose.

About the Authors

Sarah Thurber and Dorte Nielsen wrote The Secret of the Highly Creative Thinker, fourth on Inc.’s list of “44 Favorite Books of High Achievers.” Blair Miller, PhD, president of Blair Miller Innovation, is a co-founding partner and research coordinator at FourSight, where Thurber is managing partner.