What is Team Acceleration?

Team acceleration. You may have heard this term before, but what exactly does it mean? Why is it important to organizations? As organizations place more emphasis on leadership and team development, team acceleration is becoming more prominent.

Team acceleration focuses on designing high-impact development programs that propel teams into greater growth.

However, team acceleration takes time, commitment, and, most importantly, follow-through. It is not uncommon for team acceleration efforts to start with a bang and fizzle out quickly. A lack of consistency and persistence can actually be more harmful to your team than helpful. Be careful not to excite your team without ever ensuring results.

As a manager or team lead, how can you ensure persistence in accomplishing everything your team has in their funnel for the year, without losing momentum or excitement? Let’s take a closer look at some practical tips to help your team accelerate toward further development.

1. The “one size fits all” mentality is toxic.

As we share tips and pointers for helping your team with acceleration, we also recognize that each pointer must be adjusted to fit your team dynamic and structure. Unfortunately, organizations sometimes adopt a “blanket” development method applied to multiple team dynamics and structures, which proves ineffective as every team is different.

2. Cultivate a training program that works for you.

A training program is meant to define future development within your organization. Often training programs become outdated, generic, and stale, leaving teams feeling unmotivated, discouraged, and uninspired in their work. When your organization cultivates new training programs that are addressing today’s issues with tangible solutions, it will change your team’s acceleration path.

Begin by taking an honest look at what your team’s health. What is working for your team? What isn’t? Can you identify potential areas for growth? Once you have identified these aspects, you can begin to cultivate training specifically catered around what your team needs rather than just giving them blanketed material that isn’t applicable to what they are doing.

3. Schedule one-on-one meetings with your team.

A vital step toward progress is quantifying your issue. As a leader, the best way to do this is to gather information from your team in a safe, confidential space. Allow your team to speak out about struggles, victories, and hopes that they have as a member of your team. As a leader, if you think there are struggles within your team that may be hindering your organization, you can host one-on-ones to see if others affirm your concern.

However, you need to approach one-on-ones with care. Keep these few tips in mind:

• Keep the meeting confidential for all members of your team to foster trust.
• Ask every team member the same questions to eliminate any participation bias.
• Document the details of each meeting to avoid forgetting or overlooking vital information or issues that may arise.
• Write a meeting brief of all responses that outlines issues and possible resolutions to ensure follow-through and keep your team moving forward.

True team acceleration doesn’t happen overnight. It has to be curated and developed in order for your team to fully thrive in their roles. But, fear not! There is hope for your organization. Let us help your team not only accelerate but thrive this year.