Be careful applying the ‘team’ label. You mostly have groups.
We overuse the word ‘team’ in the workplace. While I usually don’t get hung up on semantics, I encourage leaders at all levels to reserve the ‘team’ concept for those occasions when a loose confederation of functional experts won’t cut it. Building a true team takes deliberate effort in the right areas.
You need a true team for:
- Strategic projects
- Innovation activities
- Strategy execution
- Change and transformation initiatives
A true team reflects a level of unity, focus, support, and coordination that is challenging to create but almost magical when it works.
True teams can create unique value. In the words of the foremost researcher on teams and teaming, the late J. Richard Hackman “I have no question that when you have a team, the possibility exists that it will generate magic, producing something extraordinary…but don’t count on it.”
The operative part of that quote is “…but don’t count on it.”
Start by getting the basic building blocks of a true team in place
Anyone can stand up a team in name. The challenge is to create the blueprint and then build the environment that enables a group of individuals, often overloaded with other commitments, to coalesce into a greater-than-the-sum-of-the-parts team that delivers the intended results. To get started, you need to bring Hackman’s conditions (what I call the building blocks) to life. (Interesting article explaining Hackman’s conditions. See also his books on Amazon.) These are:
- A real team (clear boundaries, stable membership, and strong interdependence)
- A compelling direction (defines purpose, is challenging, and specific)
- An enabling structure (right mix of skills, clearly defined roles, clear task design/norms)
- A supportive organization (adequate resources, information, and data, proper rewards)
- Expert coaching (capability development, how work happens, motivation)
In my experience, most groups labeled as teams fail with several of the five conditions.
I rarely encounter organizations enlightened enough to ensure their teams are coached.
Teams are often too fluid in membership and participation to be a true or real team.
The purpose is ambiguous, insignificant, or wholly lacking.
The team’s supporting structure is determined more by politics than by true needs.
And finally, in many instances, I find that the same organization identifying the need for a team is the biggest blocker of all, throwing up bureaucracy, limiting required staffing and spreading resources too thin.
The absence of one or more of these five building blocks ensures that the potential for magic disappears.
Is someone coaching the team for success?
Leigh Thompson at Kellogg aligns with Hackman through her research and writing and extends the conditions to help us identify how to run teams right. (Her text: Making the Team is priceless…and pricey.)
Drawing upon behavioral science, Thompson shares guidance for psychological safety, decision quality, and intra-team member task conflict and negotiation; all essential factors for productive collaboration. Here’s my drill-down into these areas, highlighting specific activities every successful team must strengthen.
5 areas managers and team leads should focus on when building a team
1. Create the Rules for Success (together).
Get proactive in working with your team to define the norms expected in the teaming environment. I call these The Rules for Success.
- How will you collaborate, problem-solve, disagree, and resolve?
- What are the expectations for accountability and communication on tough topics?
- How do we ideate and decide?
Run this as one of the team’s first activities. Importantly, codify the expectations and reinforce them constantly through coaching as teams navigate the forming and storming stages. One of the most frequently observed outcomes of this process is self-coaching among team members when norms are violated.
2. Ensure role clarity
The lack of team-wide role clarity leads to task conflict and inefficient performance. Use Angela’s Question (a client of mine) to solve this problem. At the end of our time working together on this project, when we’re and you’re successful, what will you say I did?
The question frames the situation for success and opens a rich vein of discussion about the respective roles of all members. Document the output and share it.
3. Teach teams how to talk to connect.
The leadership author John Maxwell titled one of his books, Everyone Communicates, Few Connect. He’s right. From reinforcing the importance of listening to understand to corralling runaway debates at team meetings, it’s imperative to get people engaging with each other and focused on the right issues.
My favorite tool for ending the debating-style approach in meetings is an adaptation of Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats. I don’t use the hats, but the six discussion themes are sacred, as are the processes for parallel talking outlined by de Bono. Executed properly, you capture the gray matter of everyone, one topic at a time, and systematically evaluate emotions, processes, data/data needs, risks, and ideas, and views to great outcomes.
Buy the book, learn the facilitation technique, and put it to work, and you’ll be amazed at the improvement in group discussion quality.
4. Teach your team how to decide.
Decisions, of course, drive actions, and good decisions feed great outcomes. It’s too bad that few groups have a handle on making efficient, effective decisions, particularly in the face of ambiguity. (Beware the myth of over-relying on the data-driven decision. The biggest decisions about the future lack adequate data.)
A team that understands how to talk as described above needs to know how to use framing and reframing, challenge assumptions, and mitigate the very real potential for cognitive and group biases.
As part of your Rules for Success, define how decisions will be made. And pay attention to decision rights. Clarity about who makes decisions on various issues accelerates progress.
5. Teach and coach your team to be creative.
Most teams need coaching on ideation. Leigh Thompson, referenced above, offers one of the most practical, research-backed treatments for strengthening group idea-generation practices in her short book, Creative Conspiracy. The adoption of timed sprints, reiterating and adding to the rules of brainstorming, and focusing on quantity over quality are all great starting points.
The Bottom Line
The work of creation in our organizations takes place in teams. Yet it’s the organization’s environment, including too many initiatives chasing too few resources, unclear goals, a sense of overwhelm, and a lack of attention to what it takes to field a true team that imperils performance. Slow down to move faster when forming your team and team environment. To ensure a true team emerges, focus on the building blocks, then on the How of daily performance.
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Art Petty customizes and delivers unique professional development programs for emerging executives and new managers. Check out the Emerging Executive Accelerator or New Manager Momentum options and reach out to Art to discuss a program for your organization.