Let’s accomplish amazing things together
Operating in a post-pandemic world, progressive HR functions play a strategic role in driving collaboration, adaptability, and innovation across organizations. The shift to more fluid operating models will inescapably lead to adaptive work structures and self-organizing teams. How might HR empower project teams to collaborate and perform dramatically better than today?
It takes hard work to work well together, especially in hybrid work environments. High-performing teams are equipped and enabled to lead with clarity, embody a growth mindset, forge healthy relationships, embrace cultural differences, and achieve outstanding results. And high-performing teams are equipped and enabled to stage equitable, engaging, and effective collaborative experiences regardless of where, when, and how team members choose to work.
Based on my experience of directing and leading North Star EX projects for large organizations since 2018, I have written an article in Touchpoint about how HR can help people accomplish amazing things together in project-based knowledge work (Bau, 2023). Please find below an overview of nine services that HR could deliver to improve collaboration and boost performance in project teams.
Nine HR services to boost team performance
As an internal service provider, HR could deliver nine types of coaching services that empower project teams to build collective intelligence, improve collaboration, and boost performance. These enabling, team-level services can be divided into three overlapping categories (Bau, 2023):
(A) Building and maintaining healthy, well-balanced teams
(B) Embracing continuous feedback, learning, and adaptation
(C) Supercharging people and teams for success
- A1. Coaching for Team Recruitment. HR service that helps leaders form well-balanced and dynamic teams in terms of aptitude, personality, diversity, size, and governance (in the context of project requirements). This service is not only offered in the project initiation phase but also in the project execution phase (as teams grow or shrink due to changing project requirements).
- A2. Coaching for Team Onboarding & Offboarding. HR service that empowers newly formed (or reconfigured) teams to lead with clarity, foster sense of belonging, build mutual trust and respect, and forge healthy relationships. Important themes include clarity of purpose, plan, and reponsibility (Rosenstein, n.d.) as well as emotional and cultural intelligence on a team level (see, e.g., Center for Creative Leadership, 2020). This service is offered in the project initiation, project execution, and project closure phases (as teams grow or shrink due to changing project requirements).
- A3. Coaching for Team Health & Wellbeing. HR service that empowers project teams to take joint responsibility for their physical, social, and mental health and wellbeing. Important themes include: healthy work/life balance; workplace health & safety; team motivation & engagement; team adaptability & resilience; team diversity, equity & inclusion; and proactive conflict management.
Bau (2023)
- B1. Coaching for Team Leadership & Appraisal. HR services that (a) equip and empower leaders to foster team growth and empowerment through servant leadership, and (b) equip and empower autonomous teams to become truly self-managing, self-designing, and self-governing. This includes new ways of recognising and rewarding performance – shifting the focus from infrequent, top-down assessments of individuals to continuous, multi-directional assessments of teams.
- B2. Coaching for Team Learning & Development. HR service that empowers teams to embark on learning journeys, foster a learning/growth mindset, and boost their learning power. Important themes include: T-shaped team members; in-project upskilling & x-skilling; ongoing, situational, and multi-directional feedback; continuous reflection, learning, and adaptation; post-project debriefing; and knowledge management.
- B3. Lean Coaching for Teams. HR service that empowers teams to make continuous improvements in projects based on uncovering, analysing, and resolving process inefficiencies, quality gaps, project impediments, performance blockers, conflict triggers, blind spots, sustainability issues, etc.
Bau (2023)
- C1. Hybrid Work Coaching for Teams. Joint HR+IT service that helps project teams stage hyper-personalised, hyper-immersive collaborative experiences regardless of where, when, and how team members choose to work (based on Gartner’s four collaboration modes in hybrid work environments (Baker, 2021)). This includes leveraging enabling technologies such as intelligent/smart spaces, intelligent automation, adaptive AI, cloud-based ‘superapps,’ VR/XR, spatial audio, and decentralised infrastructure. Holistic B2B solutions (hardware, software, services) for inclusive meeting experiences for people and teams exist already in the marketplace (see, for example, Microsoft Teams Rooms with Logitech products such as Rally Bar, Sight, and Scribe).
- C2. Performance Coaching for Teams. HR service that proactively guides teams in moments that matter in the project lifecycle to unleash human potential, foster creativity, and boost performance based on thinking modes, collective intelligence, best practices, ideal workflows, and continuous feedback. This service is important for moments in the project lifecycle that have an oversized impact on team performance and value co-creation, such as data collection & sensemaking, ideation & concepting, and participatory decision-making.
- C3. Coaching for Team Augmentation. Joint HR+IT service that empowers teams to work seamlessly with the emerging capabilities of machine learning, adaptive AI, intelligent automation, and cobots (collaborative robots). This includes crafting ethical guidelines, redesigning workflows, introducing tools, and building capabilities that help teams evolve into ‘superteams,’ where human and non-human team members work effortlessly and effectively side by side. (Adapted from Schwartz, Mallon & Van Durme, 2020) This service is important for moments in the project lifecycle that would benefit from increased firepower and alternative points of view, such as data collection & sensemaking, ideation & concepting, continuous feedback & improvement, and participatory decision-making.
Bau (2023)
Core and supplementary touchpoints
All nine services would be delivered primarily through on-site or remote in-person coaching. Supplementary touchpoints range from customisable how-to guides and playbooks to AI-assisted chatbots and team simulations (Bau, 2023). See the HR engagement matrix, figure 1.
Figure 1. The HR engagement matrix: Four types of touchpoints in team coaching services (Bau, 2023)
To learn more about the ins and outs of collaboration, high-performing teams, and the strategic roles HR can play to boost team performance, please check out my article ‘Empowering people to accomplish amazing things together’ in Touchpoint Vol. 14 No. 1 (Bau, 2023). (Touchpoint is the journal of service design published by SDN; in this issue, you will find plenty of interesting articles about the intersection of service design and employee experience.)
References
Baker, M. (June 14, 2021). 4 modes of collaboration are key to success in hybrid work. Gartner.
Bau, R. (2023). Empowering people to accomplish amazing things together. Nine HR services to dramatically boost team performance. Touchpoint, 14(1), 72–77.
Center for Creative Leadership. (2020, September 9). Leading a multicultural team. www.ccl.org.
Rosenstein, J. (n.d.). How to lead with clarity of purpose, plan, and responsibility. Wavelength. Asana.
Schwartz, J., Mallon, D., & Van Durme, Y. (2020, May 15). Superteams: Putting AI in the group. Deloitte.
