Teamwork in Your Agency: Lip Service or Reality?

Now’s the Time to Gauge the Health and Effectiveness of Your Agency Team

It was a simple question that New York City Mayor Ed Koch made famous 30 years ago: “How am I doing?”

With 2008 nearly over, it’s a great time for you, the agency principal, to ask, “How are we doing?”

How are you doing on your 2008 plans? It’s time to review your goals, for example, covering revenue growth, new customer count, cross-sale success, revenue per employee, and account retention.

If you’re in the average-size agency, you’ll want to gather all the troops in a meeting and ask: “Are we moving in the right direction? Are we on target for meeting our goals? And are we paying attention to the things we need to in order to ensure that we don’t lose sight of what’s important?”

Patrick Lencioni’s “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable” is a great read about a fictional CEO who faces the ultimate leadership crisis. Throughout the story, Lencioni weaves the five dysfunctions that make even the very best of teams struggle. While the word “dysfunctional” seems harsh, your employees may have lost sight of working as a team. And if they’ve lost sight of working as a team, are they then dysfunctional?

One way to assess a team’s functionality is to check against Lencioni’s five dysfunctions of a team. To do that, answer these questions:

1. Do the members of the team trust one another?
2. Do they engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas?
3. Do they commit to the decisions made and plans of action?
4. Do they hold one another accountable for delivering against those plans?
5. Do they focus on the achievement of collective results?

One lightning rod for teamwork discussion is the conflict often existing between sales and service. Producers want new business processed immediately so they can get paid; CSRs want complete applications so they can handle the transaction with the carrier one time. And so the blame game ensues.

In your firm, is this stress point related to underutilized technology, inefficient workflow, personality issues — or all of the above? Can the team come up with its own solutions to these issues? Or will you, the owner, ultimately have to make a tough call — possibly termination?

Not surprisingly, many agency principals say they are too busy selling accounts to lead a team, or teams. Indeed, great producers don’t always translate to great leaders. That’s why you may have to delegate. In order to create an effective and productive team, you need a team leader. This individual will create a dynamic momentum that will propel the group forward as they begin to solve problems and leverage small successes. Team leaders are always good coaches.

The prolonged soft market is putting pressure on agency staff to deliver. Whether success means increasing sales or implementing a new program, your team needs to be fiercely committed and highly motivated to combine its energy toward the common goal and end result. It’s important to use resources as efficiently as possible. But it’s also important that your specific human resources make sense in the first place. For example, relegating an employee to the position of receptionist because he or she didn’t work out in service might not be your answer to improving teamwork. The front desk is an incredibly important position in an independent agency.

Teamwork has proven to be an exceptional means to get things done. The key for owners, managers and supervisors in developing, motivating and leading teams is to continually reinforce what it is they’re working toward. That’s why you need to set goals and hold the team accountable to those goals. You have to be able to communicate the vision and the desired results. And most of all, you have to reward success.

As an agency principal, this is an excellent time of the year to gauge the health of your team, or teams, in your firm. Do it today.