Making us laugh with his ‘Pollyannaism‘ (people who only look on the brightside) and ‘Eyorism‘ (people who only see obstacles), Dr Dick McCann gave a very insightful keynote session on the Dynamics of High Performing Teams at the Conference on High Performing Global Teams.  Bringing into focus the recent financial crisis, he compared the failure of many teams that, until recently, would have been thought of as high performing…

What Dick was at pains to explain was that people’s approach to risk, combined with a value-set based on individualism, featured as major players in the crisis. Unchecked, they can lead to group-think, Pollyannaism and greed. He argued this can be seen in the runaway creation of financially engineered vehicles which provided substantial commissions and bonuses for those involved. The unsustainable bubble was created – it was only a matter of when it would burst.

His session emphasised that teams are comprised of people who are hugely complex and frequently irrational. If teams are to succeed and maintain high-performance, they must understand as much as possible about each team member and the dynamics that result from the characteristics that define their different approaches to work. 

We were introduced to Dr Dick McCann’s model of the Pyramid of Workplace Behaviour and the three levels that describe team behaviour: work preferences; approach to risk; and values. These give an accurate picture of how an individual is likely to react to the variety of circumstances impacting teams. He left us in no doubt that, as he expalined, “There is a new international culture developing which is shaping the new global working world.”

Tags: Dick McCann, dynamics high performing teams

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 8:50 am and is filed under General, other interesting stuff . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.