Want to Have a Flourishing Team? Here’s How and Why to Plan Together.

Not all teams plan together.

Some work from the learned assumption that things will go well if everyone just does their job. If things don’t go well, it’s because some people aren’t doing their job. This includes the team’s leader, who people expect to get everyone doing their job.

Even when the team leader gives the team goals, objectives, or standards, planning together might feel like another unnecessary distraction from individual performance.

Focusing on Individual Performance

This focus on individual performance is typical in languishing teams that mistakenly assume the team’s performance is the sum of the parts. They operate from this limiting belief because they have yet to learn that team performance is more than the sum of the parts.

Flourishing Teams

People in flourishing teams have learned that the capabilities of a team include the individuals on the team and the network of relationships between them.

For Example

Take a team of six. If in the team network, everyone has two or three people they most interdepend on, a dozen or more relationship constellations are composing the team. Interdepend means sharing communication, work, and learning.

This is true of every leadership, operational, project, administrative, technical, service, clinical, academic, and research team on the planet.

Languishing vs. Flourishing Teams

The core difference between languishing and flourishing teams is that flourishing teams focus as much on relationships as individuals. This enables them to access the unlimited inner resources of the relationships and those of the individuals. Inner resources include aspirations, inspirations, and abilities.

Focus on Relationships

One way they focus on relationships is by doing regular planning together. Planning could take a variety of forms. What matters is that the team plans together.

Regular Planning

In one model, regular means weekly, monthly, and quarterly cadences. In each planning conversation, the team plans out for the next two iterations. Each week, they plan out the next two weeks; each month, they plan out the next two months; each quarter, they plan out the next two quarters.

Two-Quarter Planning

The significance of two-quarter planning is that no matter how far out into the future we imagine, planning assumptions are valid for about two quarters. Refreshing our longer view every two quarters keeps the team optimally inspired because longer-term commitments are not locations in the future but lenses revealing new possibilities in the present. New possibilities are new ideas, questions, and opportunities.

This kind of planning creates an optimally proactive, aligned, and engaging team culture. It continuously taps into the infinite inner resources of the team’s individuals and relationships. 

This is why flourishing teams outperform languishing teams on every possible metric.

Our Clients and Team Planning

Our client organizations span the landscape from doing little or no team planning to staying continuously organized with planning. Even when they are adept at leading problem-solving meetings, many leaders have no training or coaching in how to lead team planning meetings. 

They quickly discover that planning is a qualitatively distinct activity compared to problem-solving.

How to Facilitate Planning

Sometimes, we teach leaders how to facilitate planning weekly, monthly, and quarterly meetings with their teams. In others, we might show leaders how to do this by leading their teams in planning meetings.

There are learning curves for leaders and teams either way. We keep the curves brief and the learning sustainable. Leaders and teams notice the differences immediately, starting with how the culture of trust and alignment leads to velocity in their performance and development.

Plan Together -> Grow Together

Flourishing teams grow together to the degree they plan together. When a flourishing team plans together, they work from two questions: What have we learned together? and What will we do together? Part of the magic of flourishing teams is how they keep things simple.

When it comes to planning together, where is your team on the flourishing and languishing continuum?

Flourishing or Languishing? 

No matter where you fall on the flourishing to languishing spectrum, we would love to talk more. Feel free to get in touch and let us know how we can help!