The Performance Factor Quotes

“Solid team relationships (trust, respect, acceptance, courtesy, and mutual accountability) are the glue that holds the team together.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“Groupthink stifles the possibility of suspending one's assumptions. In fact, its whole purpose is to elevate and protect those assumptions from any assault by logic. Creative and synergistic communication is doomed within groups infected with the symptoms of groupthink. Any new or unusual notions quickly fall victim to the group's terminal sense of certainty.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“Further, we often make the mistake of treating listening as merely waiting for our turn to talk. While other team members are making their points, we're preparing our rebuttal. It takes practice and discipline to withhold the urge to jump in with our opinion and really concentrate on what the other person is saying.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“No team can communicate successfully without highly developed listening skills among team members. Most experts would agree that listening is the most overlooked and underused component of communication. Although listening comprises about 45 percent of the communication process, we have little or no formal training in this important skill.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“The biggest problem with communication is the assumption that it has taken place.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“High performance teams have six characteristics that allow them to consistently achieve exceptional levels of results: Common Purpose Crystal Clear Roles Accepted Leadership Effective Processes Solid Relationships Excellent Communication”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“It's virtually impossible to build a team-based organization without the necessary levels of trust, acceptance, and respect among co-workers that will allow them to be open to interdependent relationships.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“Conflict resolution. The team discovers the principles and process of managing conflict in a healthy, productive manner. In organizational settings, we tend to live on one of two ends of a continuum. We either have mismanaged agreement (conflict avoidance), or we tear the relational fabric between people to shreds. Conflict is the door to creativity, consensus, and commitment. If the team doesn't learn how to talk straight and be tough on issues without blowing one another out of the water, they will probably never experience the creative synergy needed to achieve exceptional results.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“You don't form teams; you build them.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“High performance teams master the art of straight talk. They have learned how to confront issues and address behaviors without attacking or provoking one another.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“If the organization doesn't invest resources in the development of the team, it will be more difficult to convince the team that their task really is relevant.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“We see similar thinking in managers who feel you can just throw a group of people together and hope that a team will form. If the right people luckily end up in the group, if the chemistry is just right, and if the situation is perfect, a team might develop.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“Because many barriers are organizational in nature, team leaders as the boundary managers can play a major role in dampening their effects. In some respects team leaders can play the role of team diplomat and ambassador to other components in the organization.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“Teams need a sense of identity and esprit de corps, but not so much that they cut themselves off from those they serve or need to accomplish their mission. That's the key: the mission. When clearly defined it should be the gravitational force that holds the team together, not merely the camaraderie. It takes a balance of both, and when team leaders sense that the team is becoming more important to team members than the task for which the team was formed, he or she must bring the needs and nature of their mission back to the forefront of team thinking.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“However, we can have too much of any good thing, and team spirit is no exception. Teams can sometimes draw the lines of team inclusion too tight and too thick. The team becomes an entity in itself, often losing its sense of connection to the larger organizational entity as well as to other groups within it. When this happens, our team comes first, no matter what. Even if this means that by placing our team needs or goals first, other teams or even the larger organization may fall short of their goals. Management experts call this sub-optimization, a group optimizing its sub goals at the expense of the goals of the larger organization.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“The Bible reminds us that a little leaven leavens the whole loaf of bread. If one insists on maintaining a competitive spirit in the face of the above behaviors, it may be a strong indicator of a lack of value alignment. Such individuals may need to find an organization that is more in tune with their approach to organizational life.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“Jack Welch of GE introduced many to his description of four types of employees based on their contribution to organizational goals and their alignment to corporate values:12 Delivers on commitments/shares our values—upward and onward Misses commitments/shares our values—second chance Does not meet commitments/does not share our values—out Delivers on commitments/does not share our values—this call demands managerial courage and for Welch, that answer is out!”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“Discipline. All is for naught if the organization, specifically leadership, doesn't enforce the values. It may be a subtle reminder, a rebuke, even a warning that includes clear consequences if behavior is not changed.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“When all is said and done, when it comes to organizational barriers, teams and team leaders must learn to cope—to change what can be changed and do the best they can in those situations that can't be changed. Realistic expectations, positive attitudes, and creativity at the team level can ameliorate the effects of significant organizational barriers to high performance teamwork. There are plenty of examples of the highest levels of team performance occurring in tough organizational environments.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“Jack Welch, the architect of GE's turnaround, said it this way: “The world is moving at such a pace that control has become a limitation. It slows you down.”6 Welch's aim is not to find better ways to control workers but rather to liberate them.7 Welch's concept of a boundaryless organization is his way to liberate GE workers from the “chains” of command.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“Even in organizations that, on the whole, are toxic to teams, exceptional teams can still be found. There is consistent evidence that adversity sometimes creates an esprit de corps within the team that is difficult to summon in times of prosperity. In such situations the team must pragmatically evaluate the situation and develop adaptive strategies to the furthest extent possible. The more challenging task will be to maintain a positive attitude and sense of humor about things they cannot change and yet not become cynical.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“Leadership plays a significant role in creating culture.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“Alignment cannot be achieved with one good speech from the bridge of the ship—it is established one person at a time. Even though everyone is in the same boat, heading in the same direction, it's quite likely they are going there for different reasons. Yes, working through these issues one person at a time is time consuming, but not as time consuming and frustrating as dealing with lack of alignment when the boat is in the middle of a storm, part way to its destination.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“Effective team leaders work creatively with each team member to ensure they understand the following issues: Why this task is important to the organization. Why this team task is important to them personally. Why they (their role) are important to the team. Who the other team members are and why they are important to the mission of the team.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“Peter Senge shares a similar illustration about a jazz ensemble. “There is a phrase in jazz, “being in the groove,” that suggests the state when the ensemble “plays as one.” These experiences are very difficult to put into words—jazz musicians talk about them in almost mystical terms. The music flows through you rather than from you.”2”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“Excellent communication doesn't just happen naturally. It is a product of process, skill, climate, relationship, and hard work. One of the most important roles of leadership is to cultivate these variables with a determined intentionality motivated by the understanding that a team can move no faster than the speed of its communication. In the same respect, the limits of team work products will be defined by the quality of communication among team members and between the team and the larger organization.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“If a person does not trust another, they will not be vulnerable and transparent and the possibility of misunderstanding and misinterpretation increases. Low trust situations weaken the connection between what we feel and what we say. Other team members pick up on this lack of trust on their intuitive radar screens, raise their defensive shields, and respond in kind. Trust and communication spiral down together.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“George Bernard Shaw summed it up well when he observed that the biggest problem with communication is the assumption that it has taken place.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“Confused communication and unity of purpose cannot live together.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

“If the group has an unhealthy view of conflict or doesn't have the skills or process by which to manage it constructively, they will never attain the realm of synergistic communication and the exceptional levels of performance it supports.”
― Pat MacMillan, The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork