Little of consequence happens in the world without cooperative activity. The primary ability that enables human beings to thrive is our capacity to work together toward common goals. So, it’s no wonder that the various teams in our lives (work teams, marriages, families, parent/teacher organizations, etc.) produce both our greatest joy and our most persistent agony.

In many ways, a team is a collection of personalities held together—or torn apart—by the relationships among them. Crucial Teams® is our new course built on the Strength Deployment Inventory® that helps teammates better understand themselves and each other for improved relationships and better teamwork.

A recent survey we conducted suggests that 47% of the variation in team performance can be explained by the quality of the relationships within the team. In other words, nearly half of what makes a team perform well is linked to relationship factors like feeling understood, having a favorable opinion of others, and resolving interpersonal conflicts quickly.

In a separate survey, 86 percent of respondents said healthy workplace relationships depend more on people feeling safe to be themselves and allowing others to be who they are than on sharing common interests or traits. And 70 percent say that “personality conflicts” created a negative team culture. Sadly, two-thirds said these personality conflicts persisted for a year or more.

So, what’s the solution?

Here are three foundational ideas.

First, a team’s results are a direct function of how the team behaves. No surprise there, but please stay with me for a moment.

Second, the way a team behaves is shaped by how team members feel. If people feel mistreated, mistrustful, disrespected, and disengaged, their interactions are more likely to be ineffective.

But here’s the third idea, the real revelation: the fastest way to change how people feel and behave is to change how they see. Everything can change when people gain a new view of themselves, each other, and their interactions.

While it’s true that high-performers are important to team performance, building effective teams depend on more than a cycle of letting people go and then extending new job offers. The real work involves addressing what happens in people’s heads.

In other words, it’s not just about getting the right players; it’s also about influencing how they play. And one of the biggest predictors of cooperative performance is how teammates view themselves and each other. It’s easy to view someone positively when they are just like you – have the same preferences, same motives, same style. But most teams are made up of a diverse set of people with differences in all these areas. When different personalities and styles come together, hoped-for collaboration all too often becomes friction-filled failure. Can you relate?

Every teammate and leader can benefit from the concepts and behaviors taught in Crucial Teams. During the course, teammates draw on the Strength Deployment Inventory to explore their own and each other’s motives, the different strengths each member brings to the team, the behaviors that can trigger conflict in the team, and how each person uniquely reacts to conflict. They discuss and explore these insights with each other and learn how to apply them in their interactions.

Crucial Teams and the SDI represent a new category of solutions from Crucial Learning that emphasizes relationships. Both help foster perspectives that are important to effective relationships: a healthy view of self and of other.

We invite you to experience Crucial Teams today. Or, if you’d like to explore more, register for our upcoming free preview.