The 7 Signs of Team Health

In this episode, we discuss the seven elements of team health. We actually recorded this episode back in 2019, but the content has never been more relevant. We re-visit the episode here, and also offer an update with relevant information from 2022. After conducting a series of team engagement interviews, we have identified seven things that are consistent signs of healthy teams. In our discussion, we explore the seven elements of team health as well as multiple examples to help you begin identifying the health of your team. Enjoy!

Paying Attention to Our Health

What does it mean to be a healthy person? Consider the word health broadly; physical health, mental health, emotional health, etc. All of us have gone through seasons of life when health in some areas has been hard to come by. Now consider the health of your team. What does it mean to have a healthy team?

At Leadership Vision, our goal is to invest in leaders so that teams can align on purpose and ultimately fulfill their mission. No matter how healthy your team is, there’s always room for improvement.

The 7 Elements of Team Health

Through our work and research, we have found seven elements that are consistent in healthy teams. These are indicators or things to watch out for when you sense something might be off on your team. They are also markers you can use as growth areas to become a healthier team.

1. Shared Vision – Healthy teams share a vision of “what needs to be seen.” This isn’t for the organization as a whole, but that team specifically. This is about the specific objective of a team and the vision that one team is working towards. More importantly, each person on the team should have their own vision. It’s multi leveled and involves the team talking about what they actually “see” as a group.
   
2. Aligned Responsibilities – Part of this involves knowing what your job is, and the other part is knowing how that connects to the bigger picture. A lot of the conflict we find on teams is a misunderstanding of what individual responsibilities are. Healthy teams are aware of appropriate boundaries between different individual responsibilities and know when they need to align.
   
3. Open-Mindedness – This involves a curiosity toward decision making and set expectations. It’s being open-minded to listening and not forming an opinion, decision, or judgment too quickly. It is being open-minded to hear others out, and to assume positive intent to the end.
   
4. Being Relational Known – Something magical that happens when team relationships tip from being professionally known to relationally known. When we get to the area of relational connection, we are talking about the relationships a person has outside of the working environment. Relationally know teams have a different kind of joke set that they use. They may know someone’s favorite food, children’s names or where someone lives in the city. This relationality creates a different type of root system that helps a team endure the storms of conflict.
   
5. Professionally Trusted – Professional trust speaks to the willingness for someone to ask for help. It’s saying, “I’m going to trust you professionally because I know you can bring something to the table that I cannot.” It’s not just a focus on the individual, it’s s focus on team members working together in a collaborative way. There is a way that you develop professional trust that has an enduring affect to it as well that ultimately leads to greater team health.
   
6. Shared Accountability – The question here that team members want to know is, “How do I know if I’m doing a job well? What am I being measured on?” Shared accountability is that supervisors are actually sharing with their team what they’re being held to. No one likes surprises especially when it comes to professional surprises.
   
7. Everyone speaks – We believe that everyone has a voice and we believe that it’s important to have everyone speak. Just because you have a voice does not mean that the team is open and responsive to you actually speaking. Everyone has a chance to speak. Some voices may resonate more with the organization and they may talk more. That’s fine but there is one way to truly humanize a person and that is to give them a chance to share what it is that their thinking.

Your 2022 Team Health Check

Stop for a moment and think about the team that you’re on right now in 2022. How would you indicate the level of health on any of these different items for your team? For you personally, where is your level of health right now?

One thing to remember is that a lot of these factors for team health are out of your control. Something we can do is identify three things that make our teams healthy and continue to align ourselves to those things. We can also ask ourselves questions such as, How are we doing with this? Are we communicating well? Is our team aligned well? Are we relationally connected?

Connect with Us

We’d love to talk to you about your team and offer some additional ideas or support to improve the health of your team. If you have any questions about this episode or are looking for more resources, reach out to us at connect@leadershipvisionconsulting.com.