Your Path to Business Success #11: Reduce Team Friction

Imagine that it is December 31st, and you have achieved your annual goals. You have exceeded your revenue targets, attracted new customers, expanded your service offerings, and grown your bottom line earnings by 10% more than you budgeted. How great would that feel?

Reduce Team Friction

Now, take a moment to think about the biggest challenge you will need to overcome to bring this vision to life. If you have been in business for over a year and have employees, the biggest obstacle won't be your strategy or cash flow. It will not be competition or tariffs. It will be your ability to harness your team's talent and potential and get them to execute your strategy in a way that allows you to quickly learn and adjust to market conditions so you can drive profitable growth.

Understanding synergy.

Aristotle first used the word synergy to describe the soul and the body coming together to create something greater than the sum of their individual parts. Within business, synergy has become jargon for two or more people (or companies) coming together to create more value than they could individually. Your competitive advantage as a business comes from your employees' collective skills, knowledge, and ambition. To achieve your wildly important goals, you have to create an organizational culture and processes that nurture the potential of your employees and make it easy for them to work together towards a shared goal.

Pro tip: Assess the strengths of your team members. Use this information to help you identify how individual employees can provide the most value to the team.

Team friction hurts synergy.

Friction is the force between two surfaces when one tries to move against another. Think about the feeling you experience when you rub your thumb against your pointer finger. A little friction can give you a warm feeling; too much friction can cause pain and discomfort to both fingers. Work friction typically happens when someone changes something about the work environment that goes against what others expect or want. For example, if everyone communicates important information through Slack, but one employee decides they want to begin communicating important information through email, there is the potential for friction. Some friction supports traction; too much can result in irritation and wasted productivity.

Pro tip: Diagnose the sources of friction on your team. Then, identify how you can establish norms to reduce conflict.

Sources of team friction.

Team members have different work preferences, values, communication styles, and goals. Each of these is a potential source of friction. Here are some of the most common sources of friction within an organization

• Communication Breakdown: Misunderstandings due to different communication styles or lack of clear communication.

• Unmet Expectations: One person's desires are unmet, leading to disappointment and frustration.

• Financial Disagreements: Conflicts over spending habits, budgeting, or financial priorities.

• Trust Issues: Jealousy, lack of transparency, or past betrayals that hinder communication.

• Differences in Values: Conflicting beliefs or business objectives that lead to tension.

• Lack of Face Time: Feeling neglected or unimportant due to insufficient time one-on-one.

• Autonomy: Disagreements over the amount of power and decision-making power different people are given.

• Distribution of work: Unequal assignment of opportunities and responsibilities.

• Work-Life Balance: Stress and tension caused by conflicting work and personal life demands.

The more friction, the slower and less effective a team is. In extreme situations, individuals produce less by being part of a team than they could if they were working independently.

Pro tip: Work with employees to improve their capacity for friction and reduce the risk associated with workplace conflicts.

Effective leadership reduces team friction.

Two things impact friction: the amount of pressure people put on one another and how people interact. As the leader of your organization, it is your responsibility to gauge how much pressure is productive. If goals are too easy or deadlines are unclear, employees will not be motivated to do their best work. Conversely, if goals are unrealistic and deadlines are too urgent, there is a risk of unproductive stress, leading to unproductive infighting or low motivation. Effective leaders know how to apply the right amount of pressure at the right time to get the best out of their team.

Leaders are also responsible for defining what is unacceptable in the work environment. Violations of trust and incivility can negatively impact communication and collaboration, resulting in interpersonal conflicts that erode productivity. The time you spend defining your organizational culture, setting expectations around communication, and reinforcing norms primes your work efficiently.

Pro tip: Right down what your ideal work environment looks like. Describe how decisions are made and how work is done. Share this vision with your team.

Ways to reduce team friction

One of the best ways to reduce friction and create positive momentum is to focus on these 6 leadership behaviors:

1. Create a shared goal or vision

2.  Build trust among team members

3. Clearly defined measures of success

4. Provide guiding principles for decision-making

5. Assign work based on individual strengths

6. Predefine method for handling conflict

Leaders who intentionally build teamwork and establish processes position their organizations to work together, learn together, and strive.

Pro tip: Take the Power6 Leader Diagnostic Leadership Evaluation to understand your leadership strengths and opportunities.

Learn More about Power6 Leader Program

Your Path Forward

Creating a culture of teamwork and protecting team momentum are the primary responsibilities of a leader. The better you understand the impact friction and synergy have on your team, the more intentional you can be in establishing norms and processes. Norms and processes support the values and goals you have established for your organization. Over the next week, consider how you would like your team to work together and use that vision as your guide for evolving your organizational culture. 

Thank you for reading our latest article on Your Path to Business Success. This is the 11th article of a 15-installment series designed to give Small Business owners the knowledge they need to make 2025 their best year. If you have questions about this, or any of the other articles, email Executive Coach Dorian Cunion at dcunion@yourpathexecutivesolutions.com

I encourage you to go back and read earlier articles that focused on developing a vision for your business, goal setting, and utilizing data to drive decision-making.

Strong Organizations Hire for Potential

Hiring for potential can be a great way of developing a diverse and well-rounded team. Leaders tend to want to hire people based on experience. Experience-based hiring is a safe bet to make in most organizations. Few organizations will question a leader's judgment if they hire someone with previous experience doing the job, especially if that individual has worked for a prestigious company. While this approach might be safe, it has flaws. Prior experience does not equate to an individual's job mastery. It also does not predict how well an individual will perform the job they are being hired for. Relying too heavily on prior experience may also limit the size and diversity of the applicant pool. When making hiring decisions, employers should consider the employee's potential for growth in addition to their prior experience. Employers considering growth potential when making hiring decisions better position themselves for long-term growth.

Benefits of hiring for potential.

Companies broaden their application pool by shifting their primary focus from experience to a broader focus on potential and experience. Macroeconomic shifts and changes in individual employees' preference for where they work create an opportunity for employers to hire individuals who started their careers in one industry but are looking for opportunities in others. These potential employees have developed skills and knowledge within their current field that, with some training, could be easily transferred into other industries. For decades, large corporations have recruited retired military veterans to transition into corporate America. Companies have hired veterans based on their leadership potential and taught them the fundamental of their industry. Companies could do the same for teachers, retailers, artists, and other professionals who have developed management, communication, influence, creativity, and teaching skills but need training on applying those skills within a different industry.

Define the ideal candidate.

The first step to hiring for potential is to define the ideal candidate. For every role, there is a minimum level of knowledge and experience that an individual needs to succeed. For some positions, this will mean particular licenses and or certifications. In establishing your minimum, it is prudent to leave the minimum requirements low enough to include individuals that could gain the necessary knowledge and experience within six months of working with the organization.

It is also beneficial for companies to define what type of person does well within the organization. All companies have organizational cultures; some candidates will fit better than others. Organizations that are clear about their values are more likely to attract candidates that share similar values. Communicating the company values on the company's website and during the interview process will increase the likelihood of attracting candidates who will be a good fit.

Build rapport with the candidate.

At the beginning of the interview process, managers should focus on building rapport. Interviewers should use the first 10 minutes of the interview to participate in small talk and begin to learn basic information about the candidate. The goal here is to reduce the candidate's stress or anxiety and to get a baseline understanding of who the person is. Hiring for potential requires you to learn the individual's capability for growth. The interviewer can gain valuable insights by getting the interviewee to open up and share their story. Candidates will be more transparent if there is a comfort during the interview process.

Ask behavioral questions.

Hiring managers should spend most of the interview asking open-ended questions that allow the applicant to talk about the skills they have developed and how they learn. As hiring managers listen, they should look for examples of the applicant

• taking on a new task

• learning from experience

• growing from mentoring and coaching

These stories will give the hiring manager clues into the environment in which the employee thrives, their learning ability, and adaptability.

Identify the applicant's values.

During the interview process, seek to understand the applicant's values. Values play a significant role in motivation and how people engage with others. An individual's values will help to drive their behavior. In addition, employees perform best when their values align with the company. Hiring candidates whose values align with the job's needs and the organization's values is ideal.

Be unconventional.

One of the best ways to get to know someone is to see them in a different environment. Polished interviewers rehearse sitting in an office and discussing their past accomplishments. Often, hiring managers are amazed by scripted answers presented by applicants that present whom they would like to be, not who they are. One tactic for mixing the interview process up is not completing the entire interviewing process in a traditional office environment. Doing something as simple as going on a walk, standing in a conference room, or going out for lunch can shift an interviewee off script so that the interviewer can see a less rehearsed, more authentic version of the candidate.

Get a second opinion.

Hiring managers should seek out the opinions of others when making a hiring decision. Including team members in the interview process helps the company gain different perspectives on potential employees. One effective best practice is to have potential employees engage in "day in the life" activities to shadow future peers. Shadowing days accomplish two goals. First, it allows the employee to learn more about the company and the job to discover if both will fit them. Second, it allows future peers to meet the candidate and provide the hiring manager with a different perspective on the candidate. Using multiple interviewers can shed additional insights into the candidate's interests, capabilities, and potential.

Identify what makes the person unique.

Every person has something unique and special about them. Through the interview process, a hiring manager seeks to understand what makes an individual unique and how their uniqueness can help satisfy a need within the company. Employees can maximize their contribution to organizations by adding something unique and special currently missing from a team. Managers that can identify and close current gaps by adding new talent position their organizations for success.

Summary

Too often, hiring managers rely too heavily on experience to guide their hiring decisions. A focus on hiring for experience limits a company's application pool and can result in hiring individuals with limited growth opportunities. Hiring for potential requires more judgment because there are no quantifiable measures to predict how much someone will grow once they are in the role. Hiring managers must rely more on subjective analysis of candidates' ability to communicate how they take on new challenges, learn new skills, and expand their capabilities. While hiring for potential may carry some additional perceived risk for managers, it also brings the potential for many more rewards. Having a broad range of individuals with diverse talents and experience strengthens organizations. When organizations can add talented individuals with high growth potential, they expand the possibilities for their entire organization.

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Dorian Cunion is an Executive Business Coach with your Path Coaching and Consulting. He specializes in coaching services for managers, executives, and small business owners.

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If you are interested in working with me as a coach, contact me at

• Email: dcunion@yourpathexecutivesolutions.com

• Phone: 804-220-5771