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Behavioural Measurement Systems

(This is one of a series of articles explaining a Team Performance Management System)

Performance Management System Part 2

There are three primary methods of measuring team behaviours in a way that supports performance management:

A team competency framework
A Team BARS (Behaviourally Anchored Rating Scale)
A team-role based behavioural model

Team Competencies

Team competencies are a generic set of competencies that apply to collective team activities (not individual actions). They are usually appropriate to use with a team if:

organisational-wide standards for team competencies have been defined
they form part of an initiative to change the organisational culture
the aim is to enhance the performance of a team that is already operating well.
the team is a relatively new team, wishing to establish good methods of working from the outset.

Team competencies may not be appropriate for use (at this stage) if:

there are other priorities - eg: short term issues that need to be addressed
the team is dysfunctional, in which case the cause of the dysfunction needs to be addressed first
time is limited, and you believe that other forms of team performance management will yield greater benefits

Team BARS

A Team BARS provides a means of measuring behaviours of a team using a table, with each cell in the table containing examples of counter-productive, minimum, good, or excellent behaviours (some organisations like to substitute other terms for 'excellent', such as 'world class').

The advantage of a Team BARS is that it can be produced specifically for a team. Rather than measuring generic team behaviours, it relates to the unique sets of professional behaviours that will make a team successful. For example, the following team behaviours are very specific to particular teams:

Maintaining a positive team spirit whilst making cold sales calls (sales team)
Keeping a straight defensive line (sports team)
Keeping the ward looking clean and tidy (health team)

Producing a Team BARS affords the team the opportunity to identify the types of behaviours that hinder their performance, make them successful, and ways of further improvement. This can also be useful when establishing a performance management framework for a series of teams undertaking the same function - eg: area sales teams.

Team Roles

The ITPQ and MTR-i questionnaires are based on a popular model of 8 personality styles. The questionnaires indicate

the ideal behaviours that various groups believe will lead to team success in their particular context, and
the behavioural styles that are being engaged in at the moment.

Knowing the difference between the two enables the team to plan changes to their behaviour that will lead directly to improved performance.

These questionnaires can also be used alongside a personality type indicator to examine team dynamics. They help identify the tensions that exist between the demands of their job and their own preferences, and how that influences job performance.

Create log of team measures

It can be helpful for the team to create a visible method of logging or recording team measures, which should include:

the agreed standards to which the team is working to
how frequently each of the measures will normally be repeated
who should receive feedback on the results (this would normally be the team, but can include people outside the team if it is appropriate)
who is responsible for initiating the re-measurement process

The remainder of these articles will describe in detail the process for creating and using the Team BARS.

The next article in this online course is:

Performance Management System:
Part 3: Creating a Team BARS