I was working with a team who had lost its synergy (and harmony!) together. The leader asked for my help in developing that team synergy. This work always starts with crystalizing what the team expects from each other.
I believe in a "grow the positive" model where we slow down and talk about those positive behaviors we want in each other. Of course in true human nature form, the group talked about those behaviors they wanted to stop. For example, they said, "Not hiding." We broke that down to really look at what that means, then flipped it to talk about what the opposite, positive behavior is to "not hiding", which was "working hard." We took that one grueling step further to figure out what "working hard"
looks like;
sounds like; and,
feels like.
We pushed through several behaviors this way, and sure enough, the team started to only identify positive behaviors. They were already leaving the negative complaints in the past.
The real work comes after this kind of activity for the leader, who has an important job of reinforcing this sense of belonging. The outcome, after weeks of diligently reinforcing the positive behaviors? The leader's patient experience scores hit the high 93 percentile.
Check out this video to explore the important role you play as leaders in reinforcing the behaviors you want to see: