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Creating Powerful Teams
Teams are becoming the most common business unit for high performance
. Although the word gets used loosely and not always appropriately,
there is universal acceptance that teams create opportunities for
high performance results. A team's performance includes both individual
results and collective work products, which yield sums greater
than its parts.
True teamwork promotes individual and collective performance. Effective
teams value listening and communicating, sharing work responsibilities,
provide support and can even make work more social and enjoyable.
Members are supportive of one another and recognize the interests
and achievements of each other. When they are working the way they
should, they are incredibly effective in achieving high performance
results.
This article examines the elements of effective teams, what makes
them work well, and presents team building steps that will increase
team performance through the use of focused feedback and follow-up.
Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith ( The Wisdom of Teams;
Teams at the Top) provide this definition of teams:
A team is a small number of people with complimentary skills who
are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and an approach
for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.
The Evolution of Group to Team
The essence of a team is common commitment. Without it, groups
are just collections of individuals working together but separately.
A working group's performance is a function of what its members
do as individuals. Such groups are prevalent in large organizations
where individual accountability is most important. They may come
together to share information, perspectives and to make decisions,
but the focus is always on the individual's performance.
Teams evolve over time and have a pattern
of development. During the forming stage, groups attempt to define
their tasks and decide how to accomplish them. They sort out how
the members will relate to each other. During the storming stage,
members establish a pecking order within the group. Then in the
norming stage, members accept the ground rules and norms by which
the members will cooperate. In the performing stage, the group
has settled relationships and validated expectations and can turn
to work for which they are mutually responsible. At this stage
the team is capable of more work in concert that the sum of the
individual efforts would have produced.
Teams differ from working groups because
they require both individual and mutual accountability. While they
also rely on sharing information, perspectives, and joint decisions,
teams produce results through the joint contributions of its members.
They are committed to mutual goals, as well as individual goals,
and they share a common purpose. Teams develop direction and momentum
as they work together to achieve a shared goal. Thus they commit
together to work together towards the same ends, even though each
member may participate in different ways.
Working together towards a shared goal can
create social ties and enjoyment. This is also an important factor
that contributes to high achievement.
A famous study of work behaviors known as
the Hawthorne studies revealed that people work better together
when they are allowed to socially interact with one another and
are given supportive attention. While this study initially set
out to determine whether lighting in a factory affected performance,
the results revealed that just the fact that people were being
observed and had people interested in them was the determining
factor that increased performance.
The Hawthorne Effect has importance for executives interested
in increasing results without command and control tactics: pay
attention to people and their teams, express genuine interest in
them, give them opportunities for social interaction, frequent
feedback, and stand back and let them perform.
Management should not leave teams alone. Teams left on their own
can be confused. Most successful teams shape their purpose in response
to a demand or opportunity put in their path by higher management.
This helps teams get started by broadly framing the organization's
performance expectations in alignment with the organization's mission
and purpose. Management is responsible for clarifying the team's
challenges. It should let the team develop a shared commitment
to purpose, set specific goals, and detrmine its timing and work
approach.
Defining Common Purpose
The best teams spend a significant amount of time and effort exploring,
shaping and agreeing on a mutually defined purpose. This activity
continues throughout the life of the team. Research on failed teams
shows that they rarely develop a common purpose.
The best teams also take their common purpose
and translate it into specific performance goals. These goals relate
to the common purpose and build on each another, moving the team
forward towards achievement and creating powerfully motivating
and energizing steps to success. The achievement of goals along
the way builds momentum, fosters trust among members and helps
build continued commitment
Specific performance goals may be such things as bringing a product
to market in record time, a 50% decrease in customer complaints,
or achieving a zero-defect rate while cutting costs by 40%. Transforming
broad directives into specific goals provide first steps for forming
the identity and purpose of the team. As the team progresses with
small wins, they reaffirm their shared commitment.
Specific Goals Provide Clarity and Focus
The combination of purpose and specific goals
is essential to performance. Each depends on the other. Clarity
of goals helps keep a team on track, focused and accountable. The
broader, overlying aspirations of a team's purpose can provide
meaning and emotional energy.
When people are working together toward a
common objective, trust and commitment follow. Members hold themselves
responsible both as individuals and as a team for the team's performance.
This sense of mutual accountability produces alignment towards
achieving a common goal. All members share in the rewards. People
who participate in effective teams find the experience energizing
and motivating in ways that their usual jobs could never match.
On the other hand, groups that are
established as a “team” but
that do not have a clear common purpose rarely become effective
teams. Only when appropriate performance goals are set does the
process of discussing the goals and the approaches to them give
team members a clear choice: they can disagree with a goal and
opt out, or they can pitch in and become accountable with and to
their teammates.
Mutual Accountability
Though it may not seem like anything special,
mutual accountability can lead to astonishing results . It enables
a team to achieve performance levels that are far greater than
the individual bests of the team's members. To achieve these benefits,
team members must do more than just listen, respond constructively,
and provide support to one another. In addition to sharing these
team-building values, they must share an essential discipline.
Katzenbach and Smith in their books about
teams ( The Wisdom of Teams ; Teams at the Top ) talk about five
essential disciplines of effective teams:
1. A meaningful common purpose that the team has helped shape.
2. Specific performance goals that flow from the common purpose.
3. A mix of complementary skills.
4. A strong commitment to how the work gets done.
5. Mutual accountability.
The challenge for top management is how to
build effective teams without falling into the trap of appearing
to promote teams for their own sake. There should be relentless
focus on performance . If management does not put the focus on
the link between teams and performance, then there is the risk
of teams becoming another management fad. Paying constant attention
to specific teams and their progress on specific performance goals
is the key.
Eight Keys to Team Performance
Here are eight key approaches for building team performance that
Katzenbach and Smith found in their research of high performing
teams.
1. Establish urgency, demanding performance standards and direction.
2. Select members for skill and skill potential, not personality.
3. Pay particular attention to first meetings and actions.
4. Set some clear rules of behavior.
5. Set and seize upon a few immediate performance-oriented tasks
and goals.
6. Challenge the group regularly with fresh facts and information.
7. Spend lots of time together.
8. Exploit the power of positive feedback, recognition and reward.
Building the Emotional Intelligence of Teams
Some successful companies have consistently produced the most
innovative products under intense deadline and budget pressures
by focusing on team emotional intelligence. Many executives realize
that EQ, or EI, is as critical as IQ to an individual's effectiveness.
But team emotional intelligence may be even more important, since
most work gets done in teams.
A group's EI isn't simply the sum of its
members' individual competencies. Instead, it comes from the synergism
of members' capacities for awareness and regulation of emotions
within and outside the team. These competencies build trust, group
identity and a sense of group efficacy. Members feel that they
work better together than individually.
To build a foundation for emotional intelligence, a group must
be aware of and constructively regulate the emotions of individual
team members,the whole team, and other key groups with whom it
interacts.
Working with Virual Teams
An obvious case for paying attention to team
emotional intelligence is with virtual teams. Deprived of most
non-verbal and visual cues, communications can be a challenge.
This often results in interpersonal relationships that are more
problematic. Exacerbating the problems inherent in any team is
the fact that virtual team members are often from different parts
of the company, different cultures and even different countries.
The challenges of working with diverse team members in virtual
environments places even more importance on communication skills
and emotional intelligence competencies. There is a great need
for building cohesiveness and commitment to a shared purpose. Using
the services of a team coach can help define the team's purpose,
set specific goals, develop mutual accountability and facilitate
communication that leads to high performance results.
Every company faces specific performance challenges for which
teams are the most practical and powerful vehicle at top management's
disposal. The critical challenge for senior managers is how to
obtain maximum performance and in developing the kinds of teams
that can deliver it. Teams have a unique potential to deliver results,
and executives have to know when to deploy teams strategically,
when they are the best tool for the job, and how to foster the
basic discipline of teams that will make them effective. By doing
so, top management creates the kind of environment that enables
team as well as individual and organizational performance.
Using Feedback to Build Teams Quickly
Everyone extols the value of teamwork. The
need to build effective teams is increasing and the available time
to do is decreasing. How do you increase team effectiveness in
a climate of rapid change with limited resources? Here is an excellent
team-building exercise developed by Marshall Goldsmith ( Team Building
without Time Wasting, Keilty, Goldsmith & Company,
1998.)
Research with thousands of participants
has shown that focused feedback and follow-up can increase leadership
and customer service effectiveness. A
parallel approach has been shown to help leaders build teamwork
without wasting time. It requires that team members courageously
ask for feedback, have the discipline to develop a behavioral
change strategy, to follow-up and to “stick with
it.”
To implement this process, the leader will
have to coach or facilitate rather than be the boss of the project.
Members should develop their own behavioral changes, rather than
have them imposed upon them.
1. Begin by asking each member of the team to confidentially answer
two questions:
A. On a scale of 1 to 10, how well are we working together as
a team?
B. On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do we need to be working together
as a team?
Calculate and discuss the results.
Research involving several hundred
teams in multinational corporations showed that the “average” team
member believed that his/her team was currently at a “5.8" level
of effectiveness but needed to be at a “8.7.”
2 . Ask the team, “If every team member could change two
key behaviors which would help us close the gap between where we
are and where we want to be, which two behaviors should we all
try to change?” Prioritize the behaviors and determine the
two most important behaviors to change for all team members.
3. The team members also choose two behaviors
for personal change that will help close the gap. Then they ask
for brief progress reports from each other monthly.
Progress can be charted. Results
have clearly shown that if team members have regularly followed
up with their colleagues, they will invariably be seen as increasing
their effectiveness in their selected individual “areas
for improvement.” The
process works because it encourages team members to primarily
focus on changing their own behaviors.
Working
Resources is a Leadership Consulting, Training and Executive Coaching
Firm Helping Companies Assess, Select, Coach and Retain Emotionally
Intelligent People; Emotional Intelligence-Based Interviewing and
Selection; Multi-Rater 360-Degree Feedback; Career Coaching; Change
Management; Corporate Culture Surveys and Executive Coaching.
Dr. Maynard Brusman
Consulting Psychologist and Executive Coach
Trusted Advisor to Senior Leadership Teams
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