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What exactly is ‘Team Climate’?

Here at PCS, we talk about ‘climate’ a lot. It is our core focus. It’s even in our brand name. But we often find that people aren’t always entirely clear about the meaning of the term.

Let’s start at the beginning.
It is likely that you will have heard of both ‘culture’ and ‘climate’ within an organisation. There are some individuals within businesses that use these terms interchangeably, which is understandable, but they are crucially different.

What is culture?

An organisation’s culture is built around a system of shared assumptions, values and beliefs that govern how people behave in the organisation. Culture is difficult to change as it is embedded in the behaviour of individuals. Therefore, it can be seen as the personality of the organisation.

What is climate?

In contrast, climate is the way in which members of an organisation view and experience the mood or atmosphere. Put simply, if you can improve the climate – the way people work, the environment they work in, and the way they are led – you can improve performance.

How is climate linked to performance?

Team climate affects team performance in a major way. It is driven by the leader’s behaviour. Once you understand it, you can improve it.

Measuring climate leads to a better understanding of leadership effectiveness and team performance. This process will identify any gaps in perception between the leader and their team members, highlighting potential areas of conflict, disconnect, misalignment or miscommunication. Armed with this information, a leader can make the necessary changes to increase performance for individuals, and also for the business as a whole.

If you want to find out more or undertake the PCS process, please get in touch.

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Zac's Challenges:

Zac’s tech business is growing rapidly. He’s gone from being a developer with a good idea to now overseeing an ever-expanding team. Zac knows that in order for the business to grow successfully, it needs to stay true to its founding values and his staff need to feel valued and engaged. Zac wants to understand if he and his team are on the same page and he needs to do it quickly and cost effectively.

Zac's PCS Solution

Zac decides to use PCS Lite to get a quick temperature check of how his team are performing and what they think about the business. The PCS Lite report quickly surfaces the fact that his team have lost sight of the organisation’s purpose and goals. Zac realises that he needs to improve his on-boarding processes and help orientate the new team members better in the company culture and vision. 6 months later, Zac uses PCS Lite to check his new onboarding process is working; concludes that the growing team are much better aligned to his vision and are generally operating in a more positive working environment.

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Annabel's Challenges:

It’s Annabel’s job to help the Partners in the firm manage their clients and ensure they’re consistently adding value. Recently, Annabel has been asked by one of the Partners to find a tool or framework that the consultants can use to benchmark new clients looking for team and leadership improvement programmes. It needs to be cost-effective, established and reputable and able to be branded with the firm’s own logo.

Annabel's PCS Solution

Annabel recommends PCS Pro to the Senior Partners as it provides an objective measurement of team and leadership climate against which the consultants can build performance improvement programmes. PCS has a good track record, academic validation, excellent training and customer service, so she’s confident that it’s the right tool for the firm’s consultants to use.

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Sarah's Challenges:

Sarah has to keep across the multiple training and development needs in the organisation and do it within a tight budget. Recently, Sarah’s been asked to design a L&D programme that improves the staff retention rate and helps staff feel more engaged with the changes happening in the organisation, not least the shift to more flexible working.

Sarah's PCS Solution

Sarah uses PCS to measure how different teams across the organisation are performing and look at any patterns which suggest the need for organisation-wide, leader or team training. Sarah notices that all teams and leaders have a low climate score in the Processes segment. Sarah knows that allocating budget in this area will improve performance. She works with the Senior Management Team to review the organisation’s processes as they transition to more flexible working and designs a training programme to support staff in the transition. She’s helped staff to feel supported, acknowledged and engaged which ultimately drives performance. 

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Jim's Challenges:

Jim’s client has a team that’s not performing as well other teams in the organisation. The team has a high staff turnover, sickness and the lack of cohesion is impacting the team’s wellbeing and performance. Jim needs to get to the bottom of why this is happening and design effective coaching interventions which can generate tangible results for his client.

Jim's PCS Solution

Jim uses PCS Pro to measure / benchmark how the team and leader are performing across the 6 segments critical to team performance – Goals, Roles, Processes, Adaptability, Connection and Resilience. He can immediately see the disparity in Goals, Processes and Connection between the leader’s perception and those of her team. He uses this information to build a coaching programme designed align team and leader. After 6 months, the team seems to be more settled and productive. Jim remeasures using PCS Pro – the results show the client the effectiveness of his coaching intervention.

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