4 Steps to Reset Your Team This Year

Wish you could start over with your team in the New Year? Start fresh this year by using these four steps. 

The New Year brings with it the opportunity for change, growth, and renewal. We commit to accomplish new goals or resolve to finally complete old ambitions. Most of us feel more optimistic at the beginning of the year. New Year’s resolutions are expected. Gym memberships go through the roof in January. The “fresh start” feel of each new year is infectious.

What if we could start over with our teams, as well? What if we could take the old patterns of dysfunction, gossip and infighting, cliques, and politics of last year and turn them into high-performing team behaviors this year? Toxic team behaviors destroy employee morale and engagement, stifle creativity, and put personal agendas above team or company goals.

So, how do you reset with your team?  Follow these four steps:

Understanding the Need for a Team Reset

A team reset is a crucial process that helps teams refresh, renew, and realign themselves with the company’s goals and objectives. Recognizing when a team needs a reset can significantly impact its performance, productivity, and overall well-being. Some telltale signs that indicate a team might need a reset include low morale and motivation, poor communication and collaboration, lack of clear goals and objectives, inefficient processes and workflows, and high turnover rates.

By acknowledging these signs and taking proactive steps to address them, teams can benefit from a reset and emerge stronger, more focused, and more productive. A team reset can transform a struggling team into a cohesive unit that works together towards common goals, ultimately enhancing the overall success of the organization.

1. Diagnose the current state of your team.

Before you do a full reset, you need to know what’s working and what’s not on your team. Start your diagnosis by identifying the type of team you currently have. From our research, we know all teams can be categorized into one of the following four types.

• Saboteur Teams: The worst of the worst — team Hell. Distrust, politics, infighting, and gossip are hallmarks of Saboteur Teams. Win-lose thinking and survival tactics take precedence over shared goals.
• Benign Saboteur Teams: What team? These risk-averse groups are characterized by lack of interaction, support, and alignment. Typical characteristics include a “you stay in your lane while I stay in mine” mentality. While team members don’t actively hurt one another, they don’t do much to help, either.
• Situational Loyalist Teams: These are good but not great teams. Pockets of trust, collaboration, and support exist, but not with all team members. There is more focus on keeping the peace than speaking up, mining for conflict, or driving peer-to-peer accountability.
• Loyalist Teams: Extraordinary teams. On these highest-performing teams, all members feel accountable to shared and aligned goals and provide honest, candid feedback. They actively work to make others better, trust one another unconditionally, and are loyal to each other, the team, and the organization.

How would you characterize your team? Do you need to move from good to great? Is your biggest issue trust? Are you missing shared goals? Reflect on your team leadership practices and talk with your team to analyze the current state. You can also take a simple and free online team assessment or download a Loyalist Team checklist for a more accurate view.

Recognizing when a team needs a reset can significantly impact its performance, productivity, and overall well-being. A healthy company culture is essential for driving these outcomes.

By acknowledging these signs and taking proactive steps to address them, teams can benefit from a reset and emerge stronger, more focused, and more productive. This requires a comprehensive strategy to address these issues effectively.

2. Set your intention and own your role.

As a team leader, you have an exponential impact on the state of your team. If you want a team reset, announce your intention to the team. Take ownership of your role in allowing or not adequately dealing with the dysfunction. Involve many team members in the process to ensure diverse perspectives and buy-in. Create a compelling view of a better work life with a stronger team. Demonstrate commitment by setting up time and resources to develop the team. Loyalist Teams are built over time and with great intention.

Redefine your team culture

Redefining your team culture is a critical step in the team reset process. It involves re-examining the team’s values, beliefs, and behaviors to help ensure they align with the company’s overall culture and goals. This process helps to identify and address cultural gaps and inconsistencies, develop a clear and compelling team vision and mission, and establish a set of core values and behaviors that guide team interactions.

Fostering a supportive work environment that encourages collaboration and innovation is essential. By redefining your team culture, you can create a positive and productive work environment that supports the well-being and success of all team members. This renewed focus on team culture can lead to improved morale, increased engagement, and a stronger sense of community within the team.

3. Create team culture norms.

Toxic teams have learned bad habits. Without a focused effort to transform this destructive behavior into new, more productive practices, the lingering resentment and negative patterns will reemerge, even with good intentions. Work with your team to identify 5 to 7 new norms of behavior.  If you have a Saboteur Team, you might want to start with the basics, such as:

We will:

• Extend trust and assume positive intent with each other.
• Talk to each other, not about each other.
• Respect each other and listen openly to others’ views.

If you have a good team you’re trying to make great, you may be ready for more advanced norms around candor, feedback, and accountability, such as:

We will:

• Provide candid feedback to each other.
• Put the toughest issues on the table and talk honestly about them.
• We will hold each other accountable for achieving our goals and living our team norms.

Once you agree to team norms, set up check-ins, reminders, and accountability to make norms real and meaningful for the team. Establish metrics to measure success and regularly review these metrics to help ensure the norms are effective.

4. Set team goals and measure success.

On Loyalist Teams, all team members have skin in the game. They’re committed to shared goals – not just their own objectives and agendas. They work hard to balance ego and personal ambition with team or company needs. Aligning the goals of the sales team with the overall team objectives is crucial to ensure cohesive performance. You can build this type of joint commitment by developing shared team goals.

Help team members see the bigger picture by exploring how work intersects and aligns. Share each team member’s goals with the whole team to look for gaps, overlaps, and commonalities. Enlist your team members in setting two or three team-level goals they can all support. When team members engage in planning and problem-solving work together, they practice being a Loyalist Team. They learn the mindset and skills they need to sustain teamwork. They learn the power of joint accountability and commitment.

Re-engage and re-energize your team

Re-engaging and re-energizing your team is essential to maintaining a positive and productive team culture. This involves recognizing and rewarding team members’ contributions and achievements, providing opportunities for growth and development, and encouraging open communication and feedback. Fostering a sense of community and teamwork is also crucial.

By re-engaging and re-energizing your team, you can boost morale, motivation, and productivity, leading to improved overall performance and success. When team members feel valued and supported, they are more likely to be committed to the team’s goals and work collaboratively toward achieving them.

Sustaining a Positive Team Culture

Sustaining a positive team culture requires ongoing effort and commitment. It involves regularly assessing and addressing cultural gaps and inconsistencies, continuously communicating and reinforcing the team’s vision, mission, and values, and providing ongoing training and development opportunities. Encouraging and recognizing team members’ contributions and achievements is also vital.

By sustaining a positive team culture, you can create a stable and supportive work environment that supports the well-being and success of all team members. This long-term commitment to a positive team culture can lead to sustained success and growth for the team and the organization as a whole.

The New Year is the perfect time to reset your team. Once you start, you’re likely to see improvements immediately. Be intentional in your efforts — and persistent — and you’ll reap the rewards.

Audrey Epstein is a partner at The Trispective Group and the co-author with Linda Adams, Abby Curnow-Chavez, and Rebecca Teasdale of The Loyalist Team: How Trust, Candor, and Authenticity Create Great Organizations.