In Search of the Holy Grail
The Story Behind the TeamUp PlayBook?
We believe leaders have been following a path but for the vast majority, it is an ill-advised path. Several well-known playbooks like Lencioni’s(1) 5 Dysfunctions model or Tuckman’s(2) forming, norming, storming, performing approach, which is now 50 years old, are either contradicted by recent science, or out of date. There has never been a simple, science based team building code or playbook available to any team leader. Most of the ‘playbooks’ emphasise only parts of what’s required. Others are so complicated they’re just not practical or are not really playbooks at all; they just lay out a load of things that have to be done to build great teams. We felt team leaders need a bit more help than what was being offered. So we set about forming one.
Tuckman and Lencioni’s models were devised for more linear, stable and long lasting teams who don’t operate in agile or virtual environments. In the case of Lencioni’s model, we were aware that there was some research, for virtual teams, that clearly disagreed with his model. Researchers found that it was better to build task based trust before building interpersonal trust, which directly contradicts the writing and model that Lencioni recommends. To be precise, more recent studies do not say the best place to start to build a team, is to deal with an avoidance of conflict, as Lencioni’s model claims. They point us in a different direction. Logically the science made sense to us too. Very rarely, if at all, in today’s fast paced corporate world, do any teams have the luxury of building the psychological safety before they start making progress on their goals. Personally, I have always argued, that it’s better for a team to start the journey of improvement by galvanising around the nature of the tasks at hand than to sit in a circle navel gazing.
We wanted to explore this more and separate the truth from the fiction. So we started a 5-year deep dive exploration into what makes for the most effective teams. Five of us immersed ourselves in academic studies, to explore the conditions and behaviours that predict team success. We wanted to know the relationship between these factors so we could create a playbook for leaders to follow to help them get the best out of their teams. Despite some commentators arguing that teams are so complex and the context is so simple that using any form of playbook is unhelpful, we felt otherwise. Imperfect yes. Unhelpful – that was only a ‘maybe’ for us. Whilst every team and their context is different, could we find a code or sequence that would, for the vast majority of teams, stand up to scientific scrutiny?
We had two additional reasons for deciding to do this.
1) A Dodgy Track Record
Brutal as it might sound leaders have a distinctly dodgy track record of developing the high performing team, with 79% of top teams have been found to be mediocre at best(3) and 60% of all teams failing to achieve their goals(4). Even leaders themselves admit that only 10% of organisational teams are high performing(5). Numerous other studies have shown that only 1 in 5 teams are considered high performing(5). This poor track record also extends to how teams have failed to collaborate well with other teams. Most employees don’t cooperate or share their knowledge with other departments(6). So not only do our teams not work that well, they don’t appear to be connecting with other teams that well either.
2) A Perfect Storm of Pressure
Secondly we felt that leaders today desperately need a playbook. A number of factors conspire to make a ‘perfect storm’ of factors making team working even more challenging: the speed and impact of digitalisation, growing levels of societal individualism, worsening mental health, increasing levels of diversity, more regulatory pressures and the growing phenomena of virtual working. When we started our research we didn’t have Black Lives Matter, the Me Too movement nor COVID 19. Each of these, especially COVID 19, has simply exerted even more pressure on team leaders. We felt a playbook was required 5 years ago. Today we are even more convinced team leaders need one.
Our Research Process
We were scrupulous. We only wanted to look at the very best science available so we didn’t bother reading business magazines or research conducted by other consultancies. We felt these ‘papers’ were more often than not unreliably constructed or were too commercially self –interested. So we sought out only peer related respected academic journals studies.
We invested in work psychology search engines and employed an organisational psychology research company. We extracted data from literally hundreds of thousands of academic studies, published in respected peer related work psychology journals during the last 30 or 40 years.
We found a bunch of team behaviours that were found to predict positive performance outcomes and we found a bunch more that predicted other behaviours that in turn predicted positive performance outcomes. In other words we found the makings of some sort of code or sequence. We poured over the data and I tore much hair out of my already balding head as we tried to construct a code to meet our 3 criteria.
Simplicity
A playbook has to be simple, memorable and easy to use in the heat of the battle. The last thing a team leader needs right now is a complicated algorithm or a sequence that is too long and contains too many moving parts. It has to be short, practical and very user friendly, without losing the substance or science.
Measurability
Feeding back playbook data tells team leaders whether the behaviours that drive performance are already in place or whether they need to be attended to, and in what order of attendance. Essentially our Playbook had to be turned into a set of questions or a diagnostic.
Actionable
By definition a playbook has to contain performance enhancing actions, rather than describing a pathway (which is essentially what Tuckman did) or listing issues that have to be fixed. In the case of the latter, asking the question ‘do we trust each other?’ will not really provide an actionable data point as it does little to move the issue of trust forward. You can’t just action trust, you have to build it through other behaviours. So we needed to load the playbook with the behaviours that the data told us loaded into the non-actionable predictors, like trust, psychological safety, clarity, confidence etc.
Teams also have to be able to influence what needs to be actioned. Several other team assessments contain predictors or influences on team performance that are very real, but are simply not in the team’s gift to action. Yes the wider organizational culture is important, but is not really something a team can do much about. So we left factors like culture and sufficient resources (we wrapped the latter into stakeholder management) out of our Playbook.
Our Playbook
So we took our research review data and applied our simple, measurable and actionable criteria and set about constructing our Playbook. 14 bottles of vodka later we came out of our dark room having identified a group of 27 team behaviours, several ‘conditions’, like psychological safety or constructive tension, and a bunch of outcomes. We then allocated these behaviours and outcomes into a group of 36 spread across a 4 phase sequence.
We then allocated 9 behaviours into each of 4 phases and to help to recall these 9 behaviours, we allocated them to 3 groups of 3. Our four phase playbook now gives the team leader further sub phases in a logical order to work through (for example, start with agreeing the team purpose and most important goals before you agree on how you will set up your meetings). The Playbook has now reached its limits. Now the team leader combines the data they get back with their unique contextual information to decide what to work on next, using these subsections as merely a logical guide to help them.
Get Set – Mission, Plans, Disciplines
The team generates ‘swift trust’ by making 9 ‘task based’ agreements. The team quickly establishes proven foundations of success from many of these, whilst others may take a bit more time (like planning). Teams scoring well on the Get Set metric are clear enough on their mission, plans and responsibilities and feel confident, aligned and purposeful. When the team has agreed these or are reassured there is sufficient motion in place to achieve these, the team is set and ready to reset itself. They are in now in a great position to leverage the task based trust they accumulate to build deeper levels of interpersonal trust and higher levels of psychological safety in the next stage.
Get Safe –Vulnerability, Empathy, Learning
The team builds higher levels of psychological safety by topping up its task based trust with higher levels of interpersonal trust. This phase of the playbook has 9 behaviours that enable team members to feel more supported, more able to express themselves, make more telling contributions and to speak up if they have concerns. As a result team members share more of their knowledge and learn more rapidly. The extra safety generated is necessary for the team to then excel in the next stage.
Get Strong – accountability, constructive tension, experimentation
In the Strong phase the team combines conversations that continue to build psychological safety with conversations that utilise this psychological safety. By doing this team members are better equipped to demonstrate 9 behaviours that enable them to collaborate better, influence each other, and experiment together. By building on the shared goal clarity achieved in the Get Set stage it is able to create necessary levels of constructive tension and shared accountability. Team members are more able to work autonomously in sub-units and to interact with other teams, without unnecessary guidance or control.
Get Success – Delivers, Trusted, Adaptable
The final stage really looks after itself. Nine measures of performance in this stage demonstrate that there is sufficient clarity, agreement and alignment from the Get Set phase, as well as sufficient psychological safety generated in the Get Safe phase to enable the enable genuine proficiency in the Get Strong phase. The result is a team that is delivering consistently, is trusted by its stakeholders, and is highly adaptable and able to change. The team is now nimble, confident, cohesive and reliable as well as working exceptionally well with other teams in its ecosystem.
The TeamUp PlayBook?
So there you have it – the story behind our TeamUp Playbook?. A simple, memorable and science based playbook for the virtual or non-virtual team. We’re confident it will help any team work better. Why? Because it’s based on years of scientific study. In fact we’re so confident it will work out – we’ll put our fees(and my new toupee) on the line should you use it and not see it work.
References
- Lencioni, P. M. (2002). The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (J–B Lencioni Series). Jossey-Bass Inc.
- Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384–399. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0022100
- Wageman, R., Nunes, D. A., Burruss, J. A., & Hackman, J. R. (2008). Senior leadership teams: What it takes to make them great. Harvard Business Review Press.
- Parisi-Carew, E. (2011). Why teams fail—And what to do about it. Human Resource Executive Online. https://www.hreonline.com/HRE/view/story.jhtml?id=533342576
- Tabrizi, B. (2015, June 23). 75% of Cross-Functional Teams Are Dysfunctional. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2015/06/75-of-cross-functional-teams-are-dysfunctional
- Nink, M. (2019). Cooperation Is Key to an Agile Workplace. Gallup. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/246908/cooperation-key-agile-workplace.aspx