Interpreting Your Team's TEAMscan Results
Updated
by
Amy Thomas
The goal of reviewing TEAMscan results is to learn. Teams do this by consistently reflecting on teamwork, focusing on working through simple group experiments and a specific commitment from the team leader to enable this.
We recommend you review the TEAMscan sections and content in the following sequence to have high-quality conversations. This can also highlight some effective experiments that the group will feel committed to:
Overall TEAM results
- How did your team score overall?
- Does this score reflect how you feel the team is doing overall? Does it feel “too high” or “too low” to you? - What area did the team score itself highest and lowest in? Do you agree?
- Clicking into dimensions:
- Look at your team’s highest scoring dimension and think of 1-2 examples of your team demonstrating this well. What exactly has been done to make this so effective? If you could do this more often, what would change or improve for either you or the team overall?
- Look at your team’s lowest scoring dimension. Does this feel like something that might be limiting your team or team members from either performing at their best or enjoying working together as a team?
Review the Comments
- Take some time to go through any comments from team members on what the team is doing well and areas where you can improve.
- Is there any thing here that stands out and you want to explore more?
- Any ideas you have related to these that you might want to try?
Agreement Report
- This can be found in the “How Do You Compare With Your Teammates” module by clicking the “See agreement report” button. From here:
- Click into the 3 dimensions where you have relatively lower agreement with your teammates.
- What are 2-3 potential reasons that you and your teammates may have different views on this dimension?
- In what ways is this agreement healthy for the team?
- In what ways does it hurt team performance or team member engagement?
Explore the “What Else Did Your Team Say” module
- In particular, look at the questions related to:
- How would you rate the overall performance of this team?
- How many teammates rated the team as good or very good vs. The number of people rating the team as poor or very poor?
- Does anything here surprise you? - How likely are you to look for chances to leave this team in the next 6-12 months?
- Does anything here surprise you?
Review the “skill suggestions” in the “What Can You Do Next” section, in particular the “What Can Your Team Do Next?”
- Keep in mind you’re not trying to work on everything. The goal of this process is to come up with one very clear action item — one very specific skill, habit, or behavior change that you want to focus on for the next 2-8 weeks.
- Make sure to think about both your team strengths (what would happen if you did them more or used them in higher impact ways) as well as your team’s growth areas.
- See if any skills jump out at you.
- Do any of these skills resonate?
Building an Action Plan
- You’re now ready to focus on picking a skill (or dimension) or central idea to focus on.
- Your committed action should include:
- A very specific dimension or skill (or comment) you want to focus on improving.
- A specific experiment you want to commit to trying.
- A clear meeting that exists and lives on people’s calendars that you will integrate this into with clarity on how specifically you’ll fit your experiment into this.
- A fixed “date” and time to check in on progress and take a new TEAMscan and evaluate what you’ve learned.
The “Right Mindset”
- The goal is continual monitoring, reflection, communication, and feedback. It’s about growth experiments and seeing what works best for the team. It's normal for TEAMscan scores to fluctuate over time, the key will be to remain consistent to see positive improvements in teamwork over time. Trust the process!
Concluding thoughts
This TEAM survey is a tool for managing a “continual improvement” process built around a clear model of the dimensions of high-performing teams. It is not intended to be used for ranking teams or firing or promoting leaders for a “good” or “bad” score.
Team scores will often vary over time. A team that is taking on something very challenging or being pushed by a manager to meet higher standards may actually feel more stressed than a team that is less ambitious. This could show up in the form of lower scores on certain dimensions, however it is not a standalone indicator of overall team output or performance. Instead, it reveals the shared perceptions of the team members at a given time.
Regularly checking in and reviewing your TEAMscan results is the foundation of building self-awareness and familiarity with the TEAM model.
Remember: Once the team has results, it’s important to give people a little bit of time to self-reflect on these results in a structured way (even if it’s just 10 minutes during the meeting). Once people have self-reflected, they will be ready to have a more productive group discussion.
