Building a Winning Team
2 December 2008
Read by 1839 persons
How can we build a team that will achieve and exceed its goals?
We all know companies that encourage teamwork and have been rewarded with a substantial improvement in their results. However, this type of experience is not always conclusive: either, victims of parasitic behaviors, we had to do all the work ourselves, or, worse still, the team members were so poorly matched that the team had to be dissolved.
Teams are nevertheless often a winning formula. Thus, Black & Decker's Dustbuster, Corning's optical fibers, and IBM's PC owe their creation to very high-performing teams which, not content with distinguishing themselves for the products developed, also increased productivity and profits. More and more organizations are choosing this path, but the results obtained are not always those expected. When teams are not formed properly, they can harm the company; employee morale, productivity, and even profits suffer. Thus, the failure to market the Xerox computer (developed before Apple) or the losses of more than a billion incurred by both Ford and Dupont for projects that did not succeed are attributed to poorly functioning teams. To increase your organization's chances of forming a winning team, you can take action.
Understanding what a team is and knowing how to distinguish it from a work group allows you to assess whether or not it is appropriate to use it. According to Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, consultants and authors, a team consists of a few people whose skills are complementary and who adhere to a common goal, performance objectives, and means, each being responsible to their teammates.
Team members have personal and collective responsibilities and objectives, and group members only need to focus on their personal responsibilities and objectives. Thus, managers who meet regularly to review their work only constitute a team if they have interdepartmental responsibilities and objectives. Otherwise, they simply form a group. The group presents less risk than the team, because its members only have to focus on individual objectives and results without worrying about collective results.
Marilyn Laiken, professor at the University of Toronto and president of Laiken Associates, an organizational development consulting firm, agrees that it is now common to refer to any group of people as a "team," even if it is not characterized by the interdependence or sharing of responsibilities that are characteristic of real teams.
According to her, to effectively use teamwork, you must understand its essence. A team is better suited when you want to improve the efficiency of human resources to increase productivity. On the other hand, it is poorly suited to projects that do not fall into this category, particularly those for which only one basic skill is required or which require extremely specialized skills. Richard Hackman, professor of social and organizational psychology at Harvard, cites, for example, creative and leadership tasks. Few great epic poems, novels, or symphonies, he argues, would have been written by teams. This kind of work would bring to the surface things deeply buried in the subconscious. It would be the same for the leadership of executives. Despite all the attention currently paid to management teams, it seems that the vast majority of successful start-up and growth companies are run by a single bold and inspired person.
A team is not a panacea and is not suitable for all situations. Before assigning a team to a project, you must assess whether it is justified to do so and answer certain questions, including: Should a team be formed or should the project be entrusted to a single person? Is shared responsibility necessary to achieve results? Will all team members have a common goal?
Subsequently, it is necessary to select the people who will make up the team. You may not be free to choose whomever you want, but you must not lose sight of the fact that teamwork is not suitable for everyone.
In a 2001 study of 15,000 evaluations, which showed that the effectiveness of team members is a function of aptitudes, skills, attitudes, and behaviors, Frank LaFasto and Carl Larson found that to be effective in a team, a person must: put their experience, including their specialized knowledge and skills, at the service of the team; dynamically and not passively approach the tasks to be accomplished; be able to accept the success of others without being resentful; be flexible towards others and avoid criticizing or belittling them; know how to accept the opinions of others and adapt their behavior accordingly. The study concludes that a good team player must be able to face problems, establish a climate of trust and healthy collaboration, show leadership, and encourage emulation among colleagues. It is difficult, if not impossible, to bring together in the same team people who possess all these qualities. It is therefore necessary to be aware that not everyone will have the same aptitude for work and that, in order to integrate, some members will need to be supervised or advised.
A winning team needs time to build. Marilyn Laiken indicates that companies do not provide sufficient training on the stages of a team's life. And, without this training, teams are doomed to fail, for two reasons: employees remain under the impression that they are unable to work in a team because they do not understand how they should behave; and employers are unhappy because they do not see immediate results, their expectations often being unrealistic. Training should at least provide an overview of the team creation process so that team members understand where they are going and the behaviors expected of them at each stage.
The team creation model developed in 1965 by Professor Bruce Tuckman remains the most widespread. It includes five stages: team formation, conflict, standard setting, performance, and dissolution. According to this model, a team must go through each of the stages successively to develop adequately and be effective.
In the formation stage, team members must learn to know and understand each other. For a short-term team, this stage may consist of briefly introducing members to each other and defining their roles. When the team's lifespan is long, this stage also aims to allow them to build relationships and find affinities. Rather than demanding immediate results, the company must allow team members time to get to know each other, as it will benefit in the long term.
In the conflict stage, team members bring to light their differences and find mechanisms to solve problems of power and control. Marilyn Laiken attributes the failure of teams that seemed perfectly functional to unresolved conflicts. She observes that most teams avoid confrontation and build walls so as not to have to face problems. You should therefore invite the team to approach conflict management as a problem-solving exercise. According to Marilyn Laiken, the resulting dialogue is often a guarantee of performance.
In the next stage, the team sets the ground rules based on the lessons learned from the conflict stage and often draws up a formal or informal contract that binds the team members. This stage is usually the "honeymoon" stage. However, the company must evaluate the work done and, if necessary, require the establishment of a formal contract for the team.
In the fourth stage, the team has in principle become very effective. Its members are able to work effectively towards achieving common objectives and, in particular, solving problems and making decisions.
In the last stage, the work is finished, the team anticipates separation and often regresses to previous stages of the process. You may then have to intervene and facilitate farewells, and you will need to highlight the team's achievements.
To benefit from the increased productivity and profitability of teamwork, you must first ensure that the teams are suitable for the project to which you want to assign them, and advise members on the stages of team creation and the behavior to adopt.
Posted on December 1, 2008
camagazine.com
We all know companies that encourage teamwork and have been rewarded with a substantial improvement in their results. However, this type of experience is not always conclusive: either, victims of parasitic behaviors, we had to do all the work ourselves, or, worse still, the team members were so poorly matched that the team had to be dissolved.
Teams are nevertheless often a winning formula. Thus, Black & Decker's Dustbuster, Corning's optical fibers, and IBM's PC owe their creation to very high-performing teams which, not content with distinguishing themselves for the products developed, also increased productivity and profits. More and more organizations are choosing this path, but the results obtained are not always those expected. When teams are not formed properly, they can harm the company; employee morale, productivity, and even profits suffer. Thus, the failure to market the Xerox computer (developed before Apple) or the losses of more than a billion incurred by both Ford and Dupont for projects that did not succeed are attributed to poorly functioning teams. To increase your organization's chances of forming a winning team, you can take action.
Understanding what a team is and knowing how to distinguish it from a work group allows you to assess whether or not it is appropriate to use it. According to Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, consultants and authors, a team consists of a few people whose skills are complementary and who adhere to a common goal, performance objectives, and means, each being responsible to their teammates.
Team members have personal and collective responsibilities and objectives, and group members only need to focus on their personal responsibilities and objectives. Thus, managers who meet regularly to review their work only constitute a team if they have interdepartmental responsibilities and objectives. Otherwise, they simply form a group. The group presents less risk than the team, because its members only have to focus on individual objectives and results without worrying about collective results.
Marilyn Laiken, professor at the University of Toronto and president of Laiken Associates, an organizational development consulting firm, agrees that it is now common to refer to any group of people as a "team," even if it is not characterized by the interdependence or sharing of responsibilities that are characteristic of real teams.
According to her, to effectively use teamwork, you must understand its essence. A team is better suited when you want to improve the efficiency of human resources to increase productivity. On the other hand, it is poorly suited to projects that do not fall into this category, particularly those for which only one basic skill is required or which require extremely specialized skills. Richard Hackman, professor of social and organizational psychology at Harvard, cites, for example, creative and leadership tasks. Few great epic poems, novels, or symphonies, he argues, would have been written by teams. This kind of work would bring to the surface things deeply buried in the subconscious. It would be the same for the leadership of executives. Despite all the attention currently paid to management teams, it seems that the vast majority of successful start-up and growth companies are run by a single bold and inspired person.
A team is not a panacea and is not suitable for all situations. Before assigning a team to a project, you must assess whether it is justified to do so and answer certain questions, including: Should a team be formed or should the project be entrusted to a single person? Is shared responsibility necessary to achieve results? Will all team members have a common goal?
Subsequently, it is necessary to select the people who will make up the team. You may not be free to choose whomever you want, but you must not lose sight of the fact that teamwork is not suitable for everyone.
In a 2001 study of 15,000 evaluations, which showed that the effectiveness of team members is a function of aptitudes, skills, attitudes, and behaviors, Frank LaFasto and Carl Larson found that to be effective in a team, a person must: put their experience, including their specialized knowledge and skills, at the service of the team; dynamically and not passively approach the tasks to be accomplished; be able to accept the success of others without being resentful; be flexible towards others and avoid criticizing or belittling them; know how to accept the opinions of others and adapt their behavior accordingly. The study concludes that a good team player must be able to face problems, establish a climate of trust and healthy collaboration, show leadership, and encourage emulation among colleagues. It is difficult, if not impossible, to bring together in the same team people who possess all these qualities. It is therefore necessary to be aware that not everyone will have the same aptitude for work and that, in order to integrate, some members will need to be supervised or advised.
A winning team needs time to build. Marilyn Laiken indicates that companies do not provide sufficient training on the stages of a team's life. And, without this training, teams are doomed to fail, for two reasons: employees remain under the impression that they are unable to work in a team because they do not understand how they should behave; and employers are unhappy because they do not see immediate results, their expectations often being unrealistic. Training should at least provide an overview of the team creation process so that team members understand where they are going and the behaviors expected of them at each stage.
The team creation model developed in 1965 by Professor Bruce Tuckman remains the most widespread. It includes five stages: team formation, conflict, standard setting, performance, and dissolution. According to this model, a team must go through each of the stages successively to develop adequately and be effective.
In the formation stage, team members must learn to know and understand each other. For a short-term team, this stage may consist of briefly introducing members to each other and defining their roles. When the team's lifespan is long, this stage also aims to allow them to build relationships and find affinities. Rather than demanding immediate results, the company must allow team members time to get to know each other, as it will benefit in the long term.
In the conflict stage, team members bring to light their differences and find mechanisms to solve problems of power and control. Marilyn Laiken attributes the failure of teams that seemed perfectly functional to unresolved conflicts. She observes that most teams avoid confrontation and build walls so as not to have to face problems. You should therefore invite the team to approach conflict management as a problem-solving exercise. According to Marilyn Laiken, the resulting dialogue is often a guarantee of performance.
In the next stage, the team sets the ground rules based on the lessons learned from the conflict stage and often draws up a formal or informal contract that binds the team members. This stage is usually the "honeymoon" stage. However, the company must evaluate the work done and, if necessary, require the establishment of a formal contract for the team.
In the fourth stage, the team has in principle become very effective. Its members are able to work effectively towards achieving common objectives and, in particular, solving problems and making decisions.
In the last stage, the work is finished, the team anticipates separation and often regresses to previous stages of the process. You may then have to intervene and facilitate farewells, and you will need to highlight the team's achievements.
To benefit from the increased productivity and profitability of teamwork, you must first ensure that the teams are suitable for the project to which you want to assign them, and advise members on the stages of team creation and the behavior to adopt.
Posted on December 1, 2008
camagazine.com
