The Five Behaviours® Model

To gain this advantage, teams must:

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Trust One Another

The foundational behaviour of a cohesive team is trust. Although many people think of trust as the ability to predict a person’s behaviour based on experience, that’s not what we’re talking about here. Rather, in the context of a cohesive team, trust means a willingness to be completely vulnerable with one another—to let down our guard, admit our flaws, and ask for help.

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Engage in Conflict Around Ideas

Conflict is often considered taboo, especially at work, and people may spend inordinate amounts of time and energy trying to avoid the kind of passionate debates that are essential to any great team. But teams that are willing to engage in productive conflict tend to resolve issues and create the best possible solutions in the shortest period of time. By productive conflict, we mean debate that’s focused on concepts and ideas but avoids mean-spirited, personal attacks.

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Commit to Decisions

If team members don’t commit, they’re just half-heartedly going along with decisions, which means they’re unlikely to have the kind of alignment necessary to reach their goals. In the context of a cohesive team, commitment means having clarity around decisions and moving forward with complete buy-in from every member of the team, even those who initially disagreed with the decision.

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Hold One Another Accountable

Once everyone on a team is committed to a clear plan of action, they will be more willing to hold one another accountable. In the context of teamwork, accountability is the willingness of team members to call their peers on performance or behaviours that might hurt the team. Accountability can be one of the toughest behaviors to implement on a team because it means overcoming the interpersonal discomfort that accompanies confronting peers about their behavior. However, with practice and a foundation of trust, having accountability becomes easier and helps teams grow.

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Focus on Achieving Collective Results

The ultimate goal of encouraging trust, conflict, commitment, and accountability is to achieve results. And yet, as it turns out, one of the greatest challenges to team success is inattention to results. In the context of a cohesive team, results refer to the collective goals of the team; they are not limited to financial measures but are more broadly related to expectations and outcome-based performance.