Six Approaches to Scaling Teamwork: Lessons Learned

In this last post we’ll be covering some of the lessons learned from organizations scaling teamwork. These include: (a) the multiple ways to scale teamwork; (b) intentionality; (c) the locus of team building responsibility; (d) the levels and types of team services provided; and (e) the importance of team benchmarking data. Some will seem obvious and others less so.?

There are Multiple Ways to Scale Teamwork. Dennis Adsit is a brilliant organizational psychologist we’ve known for 30+ years. Dennis’ first comment when shown the six approaches was that they represented a grand experiment; only time will tell which is the most impactful. Each has advantages and disadvantages, and the best approach may depend on what organizations are trying to accomplish with teams.?

Intentionality and Creating a Critical Mass. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton popularized the Knowing-Doing gap: Wanting something to happen versus doing something about it. Teams are ideal examples of the Knowing-Doing gap: All organizations want collaboration and teamwork, yet in reality do little to make it happen. Most organizations dedicate budget and headcount to talent acquisition, learning and development, performance management, employee engagement, performance management, succession planning, and HRIS administration but only provide lip service to team effectiveness. Companies can be made up of tens of thousands of teams, but often no one is responsible for team effectiveness. What is currently in place is not working, as organizations have no idea how well their teams are performing or how they stack up against others. Nor do they have robust processes in place to improve team performance. It should be no surprise that only a minority of teams are high performing.

Organizations need to be intentional if they want to teamwork to happen at scale. Two important first steps are putting someone formally in charge and creating a critical mass of trained team consultants. These individuals can then build the team scaling strategy, facilitation materials, engagement protocols, leadership and high-potential programs, leadership assessments, on-boarding and succession planning processes, and eLearning modules needed to scale teamwork.

Who is Responsible for Building Teams? In addition to putting someone in charge of a scaling teamwork initiative, a related point is clarifying who is ultimately responsible for team effectiveness. Should it be team leaders, members, facilitators, HR Business Partners, or the person running a team effectiveness Center of Excellence? Of the six approaches to scaling teamwork, leadership development and high-potential programs put more of the onus on leaders. The CHRO of one of these organizations went so far as to tell program graduates that they were expected to use what they learned and could not bring in internal or external consultants to help with their teams. The Starting at the Top, HR Business Partners, and Field of Dreams approaches places more of the team effectiveness responsibility on HR, as internal staff deliver team engagements, leadership assessments, and leadership development programs. Leaders have key roles to play, but HR is largely driving the ship. Leaders and HR appear to be jointly accountable for team effectiveness using The Full Monty.?

What Level and Types of Team Services will be Provided? The six approaches to scaling teamwork included eLearning modules, off-the-shelf and customized team building tools, the Team Assessment Survey, leadership and high-potential development programs, on-boarding, succession planning, comprehensive leadership assessments, team engagements, and certification workshops. These products and services can be made available to all employees and geographies or only to leaders and teams in certain locations or organizational levels. The staffing and budget requirements vary depending on the breadth and depth of team services offered and how aggressively organizations pursue their scaling teamwork initiatives.

Leverage Team Benchmarking Data. A subtle lesson learned from the six approaches concerns team benchmarking data. When providing leaders with personality or 360-degree feedback, we are constantly amazed at their capacity to be infinitely interested in themselves. Organizations are no different. Organizations are keenly interested in knowing which teams are high performing, which one are not hitting on all cylinders, the common strengths and weaknesses across teams, how their teams compare to each other and those from other organizations, and the extent to which leaders can build teams. But organizations rarely collect the data needed to make these comparisons. The Team Assessment Survey Group Reports seen in earlier LinkedIn posts can stimulate important discussions with top leaders. They can also help HR be seen as valuable business partner. Systematically collecting and leveraging team performance data should be an objective for any organization scaling teamwork.

Curphy Leadership Solutions offers workshops that train internal and external consultants on how to help organizations scale teamwork. Highly interactive, practical, and useful, Rocket Model Certification Workshops provide participants with all the tools they need to market, price, sell, design, and deliver team engagements, leadership development and high-potential programs, on-boarding plans, leadership assessments, and eLearning modules that enable organizations to scale teamwork. Contact Gordy Curphy ([email protected] ) for details about the public workshop taking place in November-December.

Gordon Curphy is an Industrial & Organizational psychologist specializing in C-suite succession planning, executive coaching, top team facilitation, scaling effective teamwork, and leadership development. He has developed several successful commercially published leadership and team assessments; coached 200 C-suite executives; worked with over 600 top teams; collected data on 3,500 teams, trained 20,000 leaders; and sold over 100,000 books, chapters, and articles on leadership and teams. You can find more about Gordon’s leadership books and consulting services at: www.curphyleadershipsolutions.com and www.rocketmodelforteams.com .

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