Team Building E-Book

William G. Dyer

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 339

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

This book is filled with the concepts, ideas, and practical suggestions that are needed for any manager to have at hand if he or she is a member or creator of a committee, team, task-force, or any other activity involving collaboration among several people. The ideas are proven by several decades of experience and well-supported in the text with numerous examples.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Foreword

Introduction

Plan of the Book

The Authors

Dedication

Part One - THE FOUR Cs OF TEAM DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1 - THE SEARCH FOR THE HIGH-PERFORMING TEAM

Determinants of High-Performing Teams: The Four Cs

Whatever Happened to John Smith?

Chapter 2 - CONTEXT

The Context Problem: Why Teamwork Doesn’t Work

The Importance of Context

Chapter 3 - COMPOSITION

Team Composition and Performance

Team Size

Effective Team Context and Composition: The Case of Bain & Company

Assessing Context and Composition

Creating the Context and Composition for Team Performance

Chapter 4 - COMPETENCIES

Developing the Competencies of High-PerformingTeams

The Shift from Management to Team Leadership

Team Leader as Educator in Developing Team Competencies

Developing Team Competencies

Team Leader as Coach

Team Leader as Facilitator

Measurement of Team Competencies

High-Performing Teams at General Growth Properties

Chapter 5 - CHANGE

Common Problems Found in Teams

Team Building as a Process

Use of an Outside Facilitator or Consultant

The Roles of the Manager and the Consultant

The Team-Building Cycle

Chapter 6 - BRINGING THE FOUR Cs TOGETHER

Preparation

Creating an Open Climate for Data Gathering

Group Data Analysis and Problem Solving

Using Feedback to Improve Team Performance

Action Planning

Follow-Up Team Sessions

Part Two - SOLVING SPECIFIC PROBLEMS THROUGH TEAM BUILDING

Chapter 7 - MANAGING CONFLICT IN THE TEAM

Expectation Theory of Conflict

Negotiating Agreements

Helping Teams in Conflict or Confusion: The Role-Clarification Exercise

The “Start-Stop-Continue” Exercise

The Manager as the Center of Conflict

Diversity as the Source of Conflict

The Problem Member

Chapter 8 - OVERCOMING UNHEALTHY AGREEMENT

Unhealthy Agreement

Symptoms of the Problem

Team Building Around the “Crisis of Agreement”

Format Possibilities for Agreement-Management Team-Building Sessions

Chapter 9 - REDUCING CONFLICT BETWEEN TEAMS

Diagnosing the Problem

Designing the Solution

Follow-Up

Choosing an Appropriate Model

Case Studies of Interteam Conflict

Part Three - TEAM BUILDING IN DIFFERENT KINDS OF TEAMS

Chapter 10 - MANAGING THE TEMPORARY TEAM

Preliminary Conditions for Temporary Teams

Design for a Temporary Team

Chapter 11 - HIGH-PERFORMING VIRTUAL TEAMS

How Virtual Teams Differ from Traditional Teams

Common Problems in Virtual Teams

Team Building in Virtual Teams

Chapter 12 - MANAGING INTERORGANIZATIONAL (ALLIANCE) TEAMS

How Alliance Teams Differ from Internal Teams

Managing Alliance Teams: Lessons from Eli Lilly and Company

Part Four - THE CHALLENGE OF TEAM BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE

Chapter 13 - CHALLENGES FOR BUILDING EFFECTIVE TEAMS

Implementing the Four Cs—The Key to Success

Challenges Facing Organizations of the Future

Conclusion

Notes

Index

William G. Dyer W. Gibb Dyer Jr. Jeffrey H. Dyer

Foreword by Edgar H. Schein

Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dyer, William G.

Team building : proven strategies for improving team performance / William G. Dyer, W. Gibb Dyer, Jeffrey H. Dyer ; foreword by Edgar H. Schein.—4th ed. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7879-8893-7

1. Teams in the workplace. 2. Organizational change. I. Dyer, W. Gibb, 1954-II. Dyer, Jeffrey H. III. Title.

HD66.D94 2007 658.4’022—dc22

2006036450

Foreword

It is with great pleasure that I introduce this fourth edition of the classic Team Building. Bill Dyer was a colleague and friend who realized from our joint experiences in the Bethel days of T-groups how important it was not only to understand what went on in groups but to build up some practical knowledge about how to improve how groups work.

In the highly individualistic society that the United States embodies, building effective teams is a practical necessity. Committees are not too popular, and teams are all too often seen as a way of diffusing responsibility, yet most managers and leaders espouse “teamwork” and then leave it to others to figure out what that might actually mean in practice. I remember very well the president of a company who told his vice presidents at a meeting, “I want you all to work as a team, but remember you are all competing for my job.” The highly touted “HP Way” is built around the notion of consensus in groups being the way to make decisions, yet all too often HP managers discovered that the real way to make decisions was to go individually to all the others on whom you were dependent and make deals with them one-on-one. Committee decisions “didn’t stick,” as they would say.

What all of this means is that group work does not come naturally in a highly individualistic society and is often not respected even though touted. And that, in turn, means that it is essential to have good training materials and concepts for improving how groups and teams can and should work. The Dyer book, now in its fourth edition, is one of the best of its kind. Bill’s children learned well.

The reader will find in this book the concepts, ideas, and practical suggestions that are necessary for any manager to have at hand if he or she is a member of or creator of a committee, team, task force, or any other activity involving collaboration among several people. The ideas are proven by several decades of experience and well supported in the text with numerous examples. I am very pleased that Bill’s pioneering work in this arena is being continued at a time when the world needs “team building” more than ever.

Edgar H. Schein Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus MIT Sloan School of Management

Introduction

This book is for anyone concerned about effective team performance. Three previous editions of Team Building have been well received by managers, team leaders, and team consultants. In fact, roughly 100,000 copies have been sold in several languages over the almost three decades since our father, William G. “Bill” Dyer, wrote the first edition, making it one of the most widely read books on the subject. Bill was the consummate social scientist, trained in sociology at the University of Wisconsin after World War II. He had grown up in a rather large family of seven children (one was his half-brother Jack Gibb, another prominent social scientist) in a rather poor section of Portland, Oregon. Bill’s father ran a small grocery store attached to their home, and it was there that Bill learned the importance of hard work, and teamwork, as he worked in the family store. From these experiences he also recognized that education was the key to his future.

After finishing his doctorate at Wisconsin, Bill and his wife, Bonnie, moved on to Iowa State University and shortly thereafter to Brigham Young University. His early research studies in the 1950s were on family dynamics and role conflict within families. In the late 1950s Bill was introduced by his brother Jack Gibb into the world of “T-groups” (the T stood for “training”), which at the time were largely sponsored by National Training Laboratories (NTL). The assumption underlying the T-group was that individuals—and particularly organizational leaders—were impaired by the authoritarian assumptions they held about those they worked with and needed to change their assumptions about people and ways of doing work. Organizations were largely seen as being oppressive—creating “organization men”—and stifling creativity and innovation. Stanley Milgram’s studies during this time period pointed out that anyone could become a victim of authoritarianism, and Douglas McGregor in The Human Side of Enterprise noted that most managers in organizations operated using Theory X assumptions (people are basically untrustworthy and lazy) but should have been basing their actions on Theory Y assumptions (people essentially are good and want responsibility).1 Other writers such as Chris Argyris and Abraham Maslow argued that organizations as human systems needed to allow people to achieve their potential and become self-actualized. It was in this context that the group dynamics and humanistic psychology movement began to flourish in the 1960s. T-groups were composed of strangers led by a “T-group trainer,” whose job it was to allow group members to explore what it meant to be part of a group that would provide them with feedback about their own behavior, require them to respond in an “open and honest” manner, and encourage group members to accept responsibility for their behavior as well as be willing to engage in relationships based on equality rather than hierarchy or status. It was in this environment that Bill, as a T-group trainer, initially learned about the dynamics of groups and the individuals who were a part of them. For several years, Bill consulted with many organizations that wanted to use the T-group to improve the performance of their employees and their teams. Those within the “T-group movement” believed that the T-group could be the vehicle to change the values of organization leaders, and that by so doing, these new values would “filter down” throughout the organization. Organizations in this way could be transformed into more humane and creative systems. Bill also was influenced at this time not only by Jack Gibb but others such as Dick Beckhard and Ed Schein, who were to become the founders of a new field of practice, organization development. Moreover, famous psychologist Abe Maslow had a significant influence on Bill, since Maslow attended a T-group sponsored by NTL in Bethel, Maine, and Bill was chosen to be Maslow’s T-group trainer.

As children growing up in the Dyer home, we would often hear our father tell stories about Maslow and his wit and wisdom. The stories about Maslow invariably had to do with the importance of being honest and being a “congruent” person—sharing openly what we think and feel—and acting in a way consistent with our values. One story that our father shared was about Maslow and his wife inviting a friend, Harry, to stay with them. The first morning at breakfast Abe’s wife Bertha burned the toast and profusely offered an apology to Harry. To which, Harry replied, “Don’t worry. I kind of like burned toast.” So every morning after that, Bertha remembered to burn the toast for Harry. Finally, one morning Harry had had enough and blurted out at the breakfast table, “What’s with the burned toast? Why are you giving me burned toast every morning?” To this the Maslows replied, “But we thought you liked burned toast—that’s what you told us.” Harry then came clean: “I don’t like burned toast. I only said that to be nice.” After that incident, when either Abe or Bertha felt they weren’t being completely honest with one another, one of them would often say, “Remember Harry’s toast.” In Bill’s office hung a sign which read, “The cruelest lies are often told in silence.” Bill often talked about the importance of being a congruent person and wanted his children to apply the ideas of personal congruence that he was taught by Maslow.

Growing up in the home of a social scientist like Bill also created some interesting opportunities for learning. For example, on one occasion Bill had a long conversation with a friend about the different dynamics that were found in their two families. The two of them decided that it would be a useful exercise for each of their families to gain some deeper insights into how families functioned (for example, rules about chores, homework, bedtime, and so on). To gain this insight, they decided to swap a child for a week, and then have each child report back on what it was like to be a member of the “new” family. Then the two families would meet together to discuss the differences between the families. Apparently Bill and Bonnie felt that Mike, the second oldest, was expendable, so Mike spent the week with the McLean family, and we received Herb McLean in return. It proved to be an insightful and memorable experience for us, and we remember it even thirty or so years later.

Bill had a unique ability to share his philosophies regarding management in a way that others—even his children—could understand. On one occasion his son Jeff commented that Bill wasn’t catching very many fish on a family fishing trip. The four Dyer boys were out-catching him—and Bill was supposed to be the expert fisherman. Bill proceeded to describe his role as “manager” of a group of Dyer children (four boys and a girl) on a fishing trip. He explained that in order for the trip to be a success, all of the members of the Dyer fishing group needed to experience success in catching fish. That meant that Bill needed to spend much of his fishing time showing each of his children how to tie on hooks and cast, and, basically, coaching us in the art of fishing. As a result, his personal production decreased, but the team production increased. Collectively we caught more fish because the manager, Bill, was less concerned with his individual achievement than with team achievement. This analogy offered a poignant lesson on the art of management—and what it takes to be an effective team manager.

Many of the ideas in this book come from Bill’s belief that groups can be used to help people learn, can bring the best out in people, and can create much of what is good in the world. Through his T-group experience, he also learned the importance of team skills such as problem solving, communication, and conflict management, and how to develop those competencies in a team. His thoughts on these topics are central to what is presented in this edition of Team Building.

The early 1960s were an exciting time for those involved with T-groups. Many felt that the T-group would be the vehicle that would help change the nature of authoritarian organizations and help unleash human potential that had been suppressed. However, a study conducted by Campbell and Dunnette in 1968 was to change most of that thinking.2 Campbell and Dunnette reviewed the major studies that had looked at the impact of T-group training on individuals and on organizations. Not surprisingly, they found that the T-group did, in fact, help individuals become more comfortable with themselves and their ability to manage interpersonal relationships. However, the study also showed that T-group training had virtually no impact (and sometimes a negative effect) on organizational or team performance. The T-group experience often helped people become more open and honest, but this sometimes led to dysfunctional confrontations in the team and didn’t necessarily translate into solving the team’s specific performance problems. Given these findings, Bill had to make a decision regarding his work as a T-group trainer. It was at this point that he decided to create a new paradigm for working with groups—the “team building” paradigm. He wrote about this change from T-groups to team building as follows:

As practitioners developed more experience in applying the T-group methods to work units, the T-group mode shifted to take into account the differences of the new setting. It became clear that the need was not just to let people get feed-back, but to help the work unit develop into a more effective, collaborative, problem-solving unit with work to get out and goals to achieve. Slowly the methodology shifted from the unstructured T-group to a more focused, defined process of training a group of interdependent people in collaborative work and problem-solving procedures.3

His experience in working with T-groups proved helpful as he worked as a consultant to many teams facing problems, and in 1977, he published the first book on team building that captured the essence of his consulting experience and his model for helping teams become more effective. The book was an instant success. Why? Because it worked! The theories, methods, and exercises described in the book proved invaluable to managers, team leaders, and consultants. Over the years, in subsequent editions, Bill added new material to keep up with the changing times and the evolution of the field.

Bill passed away in 1997, but we have, in many ways, continued in the tradition of our father. Gibb went to MIT to obtain his Ph.D. degree in management and worked closely with Ed Schein and Dick Beckhard. Jeff worked as a strategy consultant for several years at Bain & Company before completing his Ph.D. work at UCLA, where he collaborated with Bill Ouchi (who popularized Theory Z management). He then spent a number of years as a professor at the Wharton School. We both have had our own experiences in consulting with various teams that have found themselves in trouble. And Bill’s models of team building have helped us immensely as we have worked with those teams. In fact, on many occasions we would turn to this book for help and advice in working with clients or have given it to others to help them with their teams.

Recently a graduate student came to us for help. He was going to Mozambique on an internship to work for a nonprofit agency that was apparently in disarray due to a lack of clear goals and strategy and poor teamwork. After we oriented the student to team building and armed him with the team-building book, he went off to his assignment. During his stay in Mozambique he would communicate with us via e-mail about his progress. He reported that the team-building activities that he used from the book had made a significant difference in the organization’s performance. Moreover, because the agency liked his work so much, he was hired permanently as director of operations in southern Africa. Like this student, we too have found Bill’s ideas to have had a significant impact on our clients.

We decided to revise the previous edition of the book because we realized that many developments related to teams had occurred in recent years that Bill’s previous editions did not address. Furthermore, we felt that the previous editions did not cover issues such as a team’s organizational context or its composition as much as we would have liked. Thus we’ve added new material and new assessments, and have created a new framework to organize the material for the book. This framework is described in Chapter One. In the book, rather than identify Jeff, Gibb, or Bill individually about a particular consulting engagement, we decided to use plural pronouns to indicate that at least one of us was involved in that assignment. We hope you find the book as helpful as we have found it. Bill would be delighted to know that a new generation is continuing to benefit from what he started.

Plan of the Book

To help team leaders, team members, and team consultants understand what they can do to transform their teams into ones that are high-performing, this book begins by introducing the “Four Cs” of team performance in Chapter One and then explores them in greater detail in subsequent chapters. In Chapter Two, we discuss the importance of team context, and in Chapter Three the importance of team composition is reviewed. At the end of Chapter Three we describe how Bain & Company has successfully used teamwork—especially managing context and composition—to become a leading firm in the management consulting industry. Chapter Four focuses on developing the competencies needed for teams to be successful. Chapters Five and Six cover the basics of how to change a team and improve its performance through team building. These chapters offer specific methods and activities to help the team change its context, composition, or competencies when needed. Chapters Three through Six include surveys designed to diagnose the causes of team problems and suggest what might be needed for a team to engage in a successful team-building process. They also include specific activities and methods for generating solutions to team problems. Chapter Seven describes team-building strategies to help teams manage conflict—a primary barrier to effective team performance. Chapter Eight focuses on overcoming unhealthy agreement in a team, which often occurs because team members are afraid to speak up or disagree. Chapter Nine describes how managers can reduce conflict and improve cooperation between teams within a company, and Chapter Ten discusses the challenges of creating and managing ad hoc or temporary teams. Chapters Eleven and Twelve cover rather new phenomena: virtual teams and teams that span organizational boundaries. Because technology and partnerships (alliances) are now an integral part of the business landscape, managers must learn how to work with team members with whom they may only communicate electronically, and leaders may need to create a team composed of members of different organizations in order to achieve a strategic objective. We use several case studies from firms such as Eli Lilly to illustrate these new types of teams. Finally, Chapter Thirteen discusses how to implement the Four Cs effectively.

The Authors

William G. Dyer was the past dean of the Marriott School of Management and founder of the Department of Organizational Behavior at Brigham Young University (BYU). He served as a private consultant to many companies, such as Exxon, General Foods, AT&T, and Honeywell. He was the author of numerous books and articles on the topics of organizational change and team dynamics. During the last years of his life, he devoted much of his time to the plight of Native Americans and others who were in need or disadvantaged. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from BYU and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin. He passed away in 1997.

W. Gibb Dyer Jr. is the O. Leslie Stone Professor of Entrepreneurship and the academic director of the Center for Economic Self-Reliance in the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. He received his B.S. and M.B.A. degrees from BYU and his Ph.D. degree in management philosophy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has also served as a visiting professor at IESE (Instituto de Estudios Superiores de la Empresa) in Barcelona, Spain, and in 2005 was a visiting scholar at the University of Bath in England. He publishes widely on the topics of family business, entrepreneurship, organizational culture, and managing change in organizations, and his articles have appeared in many of the top journals in his field. Because of his innovative approach to teaching, Dr. Dyer was awarded the 1990 Leavy Award for Excellence in Private Enterprise Education by the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge. Dr. Dyer has consulted with numerous organizations such as General Growth Properties and NuSkin Enterprises, and is a recognized authority on organizational change, family business, and entrepreneurship. He has been quoted in publications such as Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Nation’s Business. At BYU, he has previously served as chair of the Department of Organizational Behavior, as director of the Masters Program in Organizational Behavior, and on the University Council on Faculty Rank and Status. He and his wife, Theresa, are the parents of seven children—six daughters and one son.

Jeffrey H. Dyer is the Horace Beesley Professor of Strategy at the Marriott School, Brigham Young University, where he is the chair of the business strategy group. Before joining BYU, Dr. Dyer was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, where he maintains an adjunct professor position. Dr. Dyer received his Ph.D. degree in management strategy at the UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management. His experience includes five years as a consultant and manager at Bain & Company, where he consulted with such clients as Baxter International, First National Stores, Maryland National Bank, Kraft, and Iowa Beef. Since leaving Bain & Company, Dr. Dyer has consulted with companies such as Motorola, Ford, Navistar, Bain & Company, AT Kearney, and Bang & Olufsen. He teaches regularly in executive programs in strategy and strategic alliances at the Wharton School, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School, and UCLA. Dr. Dyer has published widely in the top journals, including the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, California Management Review, and Organization Science. His research has won awards from McKinsey & Company, the Strategic Management Society, the Institute of Management Science, and the Academy of Management. His Oxford University Press book, Collaborative Advantage, won the Shingo Prize Research Award for Excellence in Manufacturing.

To our parents, Bonnie and Bill, and to our wives, Theresa and Ronalee, who have taught us the importance of our most important team: the family

Part One

THE FOUR Cs OF TEAM DEVELOPMENT

1

THE SEARCH FOR THE HIGH-PERFORMING TEAM

“Fired?” John Smith, president of DigiCorp, couldn’t believe it (all names have been disguised). He had just come from a meeting with Peter Davis, chairman of the board, who had asked for John’s resignation. A few days earlier, several members of John’s executive management team had met secretly with Davis to air their grievances about John and to demand that he be fired. The executives on John’s team reported that he was unable to create an “effective team atmosphere” for them to work in. Team meetings were unproductive and, in fact, led to confusion rather than clarity for team members, in part because consensus about decisions was rarely reached. John imposed top-down decisions when many members of the executive team felt capable of sharing the decision-making responsibility. The team was afflicted with interpersonal conflict, not only between a small subgroup of team members but also between John and a couple of key team members. No actions had been taken to address or resolve those interpersonal conflicts. Moreover, John was seen as “untrustworthy” because he often would say one thing and do another, and thus he slowly lost the support of his team. Team morale, motivation, and productivity had been dropping for several weeks. In the end, the team had had enough—either John would have to leave, or they would.

In a panicked state, John phoned us, since he knew we were “team consultants,” and explained his situation. “What should I do?” he inquired. “Can I save my job? What did I do wrong? What should I do now?” After we asked John several questions, it became clear to us that at the heart of John’s problem was his lack of knowledge regarding how to create and lead a high-performing team. Moreover, he lacked the fundamentals in diagnosing team problems as well as those team-building skills that could have been used to solve the team’s problems before they spiraled out of control.

John Smith’s case illustrates some of the more serious problems that we have seen in teams that we have worked with over the years, but his situation is, unfortunately, not all that unusual. Many, if not most, teams function far below their potential. The reasons for poor team performance are many: the team may not have clear goals or performance metrics; the team may be composed of the wrong people with the wrong set of skills for the task at hand; the team’s dynamics may not foster creativity and good decision making; or the team may not know how to solve its own problems and improve performance. Our experience is that poor team performance is largely due to a team’s inability to systematically engage in team-building activities—team processes for evaluating team performance and engaging in problem-solving activities that lead to improved team performance.

Poor team performance is a major concern in today’s economy because most of the work performed today is done in a team environment, be it in research teams, product-development teams, production teams, sales and marketing teams, cross-functional problem-solving teams, or top management teams. Why is work done more by teams today than it has been in the past? The primary reason is that products and services have become increasingly complex, utilizing a wide range of skills and technologies. No single person is capable of developing, manufacturing, and selling today’s increasingly complex products—which means that teams of individuals with complementary knowledge must coordinate effectively in order to be successful. This requires teamwork. Consequently, to be a high-performing company in today’s competitive landscape essentially requires that you have high-performing work teams—the two unavoidably go hand in hand.

High-performing teams are those with members whose skills, attitudes, and competencies enable them to achieve team goals. In high-performing teams, team members set goals, make decisions, communicate, manage conflict, and solve problems in a supportive, trusting atmosphere in order to accomplish their objectives. Moreover, members of such teams are aware of their own strengths and weaknesses and have the ability to change when needed to improve their performance.

The purpose of this book is to give managers, team leaders, team members, and team consultants specific guidance on how to improve team performance. Although the team-building activities we propose may be particularly well-suited for poor-performing or dysfunctional teams, they also can transform average or even good teams into great teams.

Determinants of High-Performing Teams: The Four Cs

Over the past several decades, as we have consulted with teams and conducted research on team performance, we have come to the conclusion that there are four factors—four “C”s—that must be understood and managed for teams to achieve superior performance. These factors, depicted in Figure 1.1, are

1. The context for the team

2. The composition of the team

3. The competencies of the team

4. The change management skills of the team

We will describe each of these factors briefly here, and will discuss them in more depth in the following chapters.

Context for the Team

Figure 1.1. The Four Cs of Team Performance.

Team context refers to the organizational environment in which the team must work. Understanding context, and how it influences team performance, requires an understanding of the answers to the following questions:

1. Is effective teamwork critical to accomplishing the goals desired by the organization? If so, are there measurable team performance goals around which we can organize a team?

2. Do my organization’s reward systems, structure, and culture support teamwork?

Experience has shown that the teamwork required to achieve high performance is much more important when the team must complete a complex task characterized by a high degree of interdependence. In addition, we have found that some organizations deploy formal organization structures or reward systems that become barriers to effective teamwork. For example, reward systems that provide strong individual incentives often create strong disincentives to engage in cooperative behavior within a work team. Unfortunately, many organizations, while paying lip service to the importance of teamwork, do little to encourage and support those who work in teams. Thus they do not foster a culture in which teams can succeed.

High-performing teams manage context effectively by (1) establishing measurable team performance goals that are clear and compelling, (2) ensuring that team members understand that effective teamwork is critical to meeting those goals, (3) establishing reward systems that reward team performance (more than individual performance), (4) eliminating roadblocks to teamwork that formal organization structures might create, and (5) establishing an organizational culture that supports teamwork-oriented processes and behaviors (for example, everyone in the organization understands that success is predicated on effective collaboration; consequently, informal norms and processes support team-oriented behavior).

Composition of the Team

The composition of the team concerns the skills and attitudes of team members. You have to have the “right people on the bus” to make things happen as a team and achieve top performance.1 To effectively manage the composition of the team, team leaders must understand that team leadership and processes differ depending on the answers to the following questions:

1. To what extent do individual team members have the technical skills required to complete the task?

2. To what extent do they have the interpersonal and communication skills required to coordinate their work with others?

3. To what extent are individual team members committed to the team and motivated to complete the task?

4. Is the team the right size to successfully complete the task?

Teams saddled with members who are not motivated to accomplish the task, or who do not have the skills to achieve team goals, are doomed to failure from the outset. Of course, “team composition” also refers to assembling a group of individuals with complementary skills. High-performing teams use the complementary skills and abilities of each team member in a synergistic way to achieve high performance. Team members of high-performing teams clearly understand their roles and assignments and carry them out with commitment. Team size also plays a significant role in team effectiveness. A team that is too large may be unwieldy and cause team members to lose interest due to a lack of individual involvement. Having too few team members may place unnecessary burdens on individual team members, and the team may not have the resources needed to accomplish its goals.

High-performing teams effectively manage team composition by (1) establishing processes to select individuals for the team who are both skilled and motivated, (2) establishing processes that develop the technical and interpersonal skills of team members as well as their commitment to achieving team goals, (3) cutting loose individuals who lack skills or motivation, (4) managing the team differently depending on the skills and motivation of team members, and (5) ensuring that the team is “right sized,” which usually means making sure the team is not too large or small to accomplish the task.

Competencies of the Team

We have found that successful teams have certain competencies that exist independent of any single member of the team but are embedded in the team’s formal and informal processes—its way of functioning. High-performing teams have developed processes that allow the team to

1. Clearly articulate their goals and the metrics for achieving those goals

2. Clearly articulate the means required to achieve the goals, ensuring that individuals understand their assignments and how their work contributes to team goals

3. Make effective decisions

4. Effectively communicate, including giving and receiving feedback

5. Build trust and commitment to the team and its goals

6. Resolve disputes or disagreements

Thus while the context and composition of the team set the stage, these competencies propel it to high performance. If the team hopes to be extraordinary it must develop competencies for goal setting, decision making, communicating, trust building, and dispute resolution. In Chapter Four, we discuss these and other key competencies in greater detail.

Change Management Skills of the Team

High-performing teams must change and adapt to new conditions to be effective over time. Factors related to team context, composition, and competencies may need to be changed for the team to succeed in reaching a new goal. A team that is able to monitor its performance and understand its strengths and weaknesses can generate insights needed to develop a plan of action to continually improve. Toyota, a company that we’ve researched extensively, uses the kaizen or continuous-improvement philosophy to help its teams identify the “bottlenecks” they are facing and then develop strategies to eliminate the bottlenecks.2 They are never fully satisfied with the team’s performance because once they’ve fixed one problem, they know that continuous improvement requires that they find, and fix, the next one. We have found that teams in most companies, unlike Toyota, are oblivious to their weaknesses, or even when they do recognize them, they do not have the ability to manage change effectively to overcome those weaknesses. It is possible to view “change management skills” as just another team competency, but this “meta-competency”—what we call “team-building skills”—is so important that it deserves special attention.

High-performing teams have developed the ability to change by (1) establishing team-building processes that result in the regular evaluation of team context, team composition, and team competencies with the explicit objective of initiating needed changes in order to better achieve the desired team goals, and (2) establishing a philosophy among team members that regular change is necessary in order to meet the demands of a constantly changing world.

Whatever Happened to John Smith?

You might be wondering what happened to John Smith, the CEO in trouble at DigiCorp. After John Smith called us, we were engaged to conduct several team-building sessions with John’s team. The board of directors agreed to suspend John’s firing until the team’s problems, and John’s role in those problems, could be more fully explored. Initially, interviews were conducted and data gathered from team members and members of the board of directors to diagnose the team’s problems. John’s team then met with us in a team-building session designed to “clear the air” and develop a plan of action to improve the team performance. The problems were serious: trust had been lost, and the team had significant philosophical differences with John regarding how team decisions should be made and what the priorities of the company should be. However, the company was facing its busiest time of the year, and to avoid a total collapse, the team members needed to figure out a way to work together effectively to serve the company’s clients—at least for the next three months, until the busy season passed. In the team-building sessions, team members agreed to set aside their differences and work cooperatively so they could function effectively in the short run. Moreover, the board of directors agreed to give John the opportunity to turn things around. After the initial data-gathering and team-building sessions, our role as consultants was to meet periodically with the team to monitor its performance. The results: the team did work together successfully during the busy season and served the company’s clients well. But at the end of the busy season, most of the team members decided to leave the organization—the damage had been done and couldn’t be fully repaired. They lacked confidence in John’s ability to develop important team competencies such as how to establish consensual decision-making processes, resolve interpersonal conflicts, and make changes in team composition and team processes when necessary.