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Everyone loves teams

Teams, teams, teams…everyone loves teams.  Have a short conversation with any manager in almost any industry about their people and sooner, rather than later, the discussion will turn to the topic of teams and teamwork or more specifically the lack of it!  From the moment the first bunch of cave dwellers decided to have a crack at running down a Mammoth for dinner the allure of what might be possible by working together as opposed to individually has obsessed those of us tasked with the job of getting results through people.

And nothing has changed; after all, teams make sense.  As leaders of people and HR professionals, in our hearts, we have always known and believed in the potential of teams.  So why is it that the quest to create a functional high performing team seems to have become the modern day equivalent of the search for the Holy Grail?  The one constant between managers and business owners from one end of the country to the other seems to be a yearning for more effective teams.

What makes an effective team?

Let’s begin with what makes an effective team.  Of course there are many definitions, but Katzenbach and Smith’s (1993) definition is one of the more useful:

“A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.”

This definition goes some way towards highlighting how real teams operate.  The term real is used here deliberately as there is no shortage of groups of people that happen to coexist for eight hours a day Monday to Friday at the same place of work, masquerading as a ‘team’ but of course they are not!  And as we know, merely calling a group of people a team does not make it one – no matter how much we may wish it to be so!

The definition points to six factors that help differentiate a successful team from a group of people that merely work together:

1. Teams must have a small number of people.  Sure, it is possible to have a high performing team consisting of a large number of people, but obviously the more people there are in the team the more complex it becomes.  Experience would indicate that most effective teams range between 2 and 25 people. 
2. Teams must have the right mix of complementary skills.  This may seem obvious, but the key point here is that the ‘right mix’ does not just refer to the technical skills required to achieve the team’s purpose but also, and perhaps more importantly, the ‘right mix’ of problem solving and interpersonal skills.  There are many teams that have comprised of people with the right operational or technical ‘know how’ but who have failed to reach their potential due to an inability to communicate effectively with each other or deal with conflict in a constructive way.
3. Committed to a common purpose.  All effective teams have a clearly articulated purpose. This common purpose serves to both enrol and engage members of the team and ultimately provides the fundamental reason for the discretionary effort that a high performing team always seems prepared to give. 
4. Committed to a set of performance goals.  Performance goals are fundamental to creating focussed and coordinated action.  Take the time to examine any high performing team and you will find that the members of the team are able to tell you: what it is they do that contributes to the success of the team, what it is the team is currently focussing on, and where the team is at in terms of achieving its overall purpose.   Furthermore, having clear performance goals enables the team to create a culture of success through celebrating the achievement of tangible milestones.
5. Committed to a common approach.  Effective teams establish and live by a set of ground rules that guide how they work together as they strive to achieve their purpose.  Any time a group of people come to work together a number of barriers to effective performance eventuate: there are differences of opinion, conflict over roles and responsibilities, power struggles and differences in working styles to name a few.  Effective teams mitigate these issues by taking the time to create and agree the approach the team will take when they work together.
6. Mutual accountability.  Perhaps the most important factor that distinguishes groups from teams is a willingness to hold each other accountable as a team.  Mutual accountability exists in real teams because they need to rely on each other to produce results. Real teams achieve heightened levels of performance because they rely on more than the sum total of individual contributions; they rely on jointly producing results.  In doing so the contribution of real teams is more than the sum of its parts.  This of course is the concept of synergy.

Teams aren’t easy

Why then is it that attempts to create teams in the workplace often leads to frustration, heartache and disappointment? Given the potential payoff of true teamwork, why is creating an effective team so difficult to achieve?  The answer is often simple - working as a team does not come naturally to the majority of people.  Sure at an intellectual level we can all understand and buy into the benefits of teams and teamwork, but at a behavioural level, for most of us, the default setting is in fact set to ‘individual’’ and not ‘team’.

Changing the default setting to team brings us to the all important topic of leadership.  Using the metaphor of a tree is useful in describing teams.  When you come face-to-face with a massive tree like a Kauri, it is easy to get caught up in wonder at its size and be impressed by the way it dominates the landscape; but even the tallest Kauri originally came from one small seed.  Leadership is the seed required to grow an effective team.  Make no mistake; every effective team requires strong leadership.

The role of the leader is to make a determined stand for operating as a team and not as a group of individuals.  The leader must constantly focus on the six success factors and strive to create an environment that enables people to change their default setting from ‘individual’ to ‘team’.

Team building v team development

In an effort to turn groups of people into teams, at one point or another most managers turn to some sort of team building intervention to improve the performance of their team.  These interventions come in all shapes and sizes and although they are commonly all grouped under the general heading of ‘team building’, closer scrutiny reveals two distinct categories:

1. Team building activities.  When you think of team building a number of activities probably immediately spring to mind: go-karting, bungy jumping, rock climbing etc.  These activities are useful for letting off steam, celebrating success or acknowledging effort, but seldom produce any lasting behavioural change or increased performance back in the workplace.  In short, they do little to change people’s default setting.  The reality is that most team building activities are often nothing more than entertainment.
2. Team development activities.  The second category of activities can be more accurately described as team development.  These activities also come in a range of shapes and sizes, but the defining difference is that they are designed to develop skill sets that enable the participants to collaborate better and overcome barriers that have arisen in the team.  In short, they are based upon resolving identified weaknesses in the way the team is currently functioning.

Both types of interventions are useful, but obviously serve different purposes.  The first question to therefore answer when considering an activity with you team is “what exactly is it that you are trying to achieve”?  The answer to that will determine whether you need to find a team building or team development activity.

Unfortunately one of the reasons some managers choose team building over team development initiatives is that they can’t easily identify what it is that needs to be improved in the team.  They have a ‘gut feeling’ that things could be better but can’t specifically describe what or how.  The result is that the team development option goes into the ‘too hard basket’ and the team heads off for two hours of archery lessons followed by a barbeque!

The good news is it need not be that difficult.  To help businesses achieve this, simple diagnostic tools can be used to enable members of the team to provide feedback on how well they feel the team is operating and to pin point areas that are restricting the team’s performance.  This information can then easily be used to develop an intervention which will add value to the long term functioning of the team.  Make no mistake, this can still be fun!  By definition, team development activities will be linked to the needs of the business, but they don’t have to be all business.  Team development can, and should be, fun as well.

Making team development part of your business strategy

Savvy managers understand that teams need to periodically take time out for self-assessment.  Teams that don’t do this are likely to be doomed to repeat the same mistakes and will therefore fail to achieve their true potential.  Managers that are committed to creating real teams schedule team development activities as part of their overall strategy for improved business performance.

The key to the effectiveness of any team development activity is ensuring the lessons are taken back and applied in the workplace.  To that end, real team development is not an isolated event but an ongoing process and commitment.

“It took a while for us to understand that focussing on team performance is just as important as focussing on financial performance.  Including team development activities as part of our overall strategy for success is now a ‘no-brainer’.  The increased commitment and cohesion of the team have definitely made a difference to the bottom line results of my business”

Colin Wilson, Principal, Richmond First National, Nelson

7 tips for improving the effectiveness of your team development activity

1. Focus on the facilitator more than the activity – it’s the skill of the facilitator that will determine how easily participants can relate and apply the lessons back in the workplace.
2. Use feedback from the team to identify what areas need to be addressed to improve performance.
3. Ensure the activity is customised to meet the needs of the team.
4. Ensure the activity is compatible with the majority of personalities and physical abilities of the participants
5. Ensure the manager is present.  The manager needs to be with the team not off doing something else.
6. Get participants to specifically identify and commit to what they will do differently as a result of the experience.
7. Schedule a post event follow-up session with the team to discuss progress and work through barriers.

Craig Burborough, Business Navigator, Cardinal Solutions craig@cardinalsolutions.co.nz