The power of closure experiences in building high performance team

Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In the world where "hustle" is valued, and reflection is not, our teams go from working on

Product 1 to Product 2, Project 1 to Project 2, Task 1 to Task 2 without any reflection in-between. There is no definite, memorable sign to denote 'ending' of something old and 'beginning' of something new.

What happens due to this is:

• the team members struggle to remember their accomplishments because they know they did a lot, but can't recollect anything significant over a period of time.

• They appear as always busy but can't really show an outcome to back the time spend.

• They convince themselves this is how they need to be. Always "ON" and "Ready".

• Some team members who value "closure" feel dissatisfied as they feel they are always on the treadmill.

• It creates sympathetic nervous system overload that may create over thinking and insomnia.

A team's performance can be enhanced by the leader when they help the team members feel significant enough in who they are and what they do.

Let's look at some insights (Joe Macleod) that a leader can understand the importance of closure.

• People judge experiences based on their peak (an intense moment of the experience) and at their end, rather than a total flat average of the experience. This is often called the Peak End rule (Daniel Kahneman, Think Fast & Slow).

• Many of us have a Need For Cognitive Closure" (NFCC) that refers to a psychological concept describing an individual's strong desire to have clear, definitive answers to questions and avoid ambiguity.

This implies that

1. Since your team members will remember experiences that are Peaks & End, it is important to focus on how you end a major milestone or deliverable. A leader's communication at the time of "peaks" and " ends" can help create remembering experiences in the team's mind and can improve self esteem and confidence.

2. When your team brings up something they need your support on, it's important to close the loop with them whether they got it or not.

3. Setting direction if not a destination is very important.

4. Taking a few moments to signify the ending, reflecting on the lessons learnt can moving on to the next thing on the table, improves satisfaction & significance levels in your team.

How would you like to improve the satisfaction & significance levels of your teams?

#coaching #executivecoaching #closure