Teaching Leaders How to Fish (by Training Them on How to Build Teams)

Groups and teams are basic organizing structures for getting work completed. Because they are so fundamental to task and project accomplishment, tens of thousands of teams can be found in large organizations. Yet research shows only one in five teams is high performing. What would happen to organizational performance if teams operated more effectively or efficiently or more were high performing? Most organizations treat teams as an afterthought, as team building ability is often missing from talent management systems, no one is responsible for team effectiveness, and leaders are not provided any feedback or tools to improve team performance. A few organizations are starting to take teamwork seriously, and one of the actions companies like Red Bull, Sysco, CSA Group, and others are taking is training leaders how to build teams.?

Why Aren’t Organizations Providing Team Training? Although groups and teams are pervasive, most organizations spend little time on their care and feeding. Organizations have no idea which groups and teams are high performing, which ones are solid performers, and what groups are playing Dysfunctional Family Feud. Leadership training compounds this problem by promoting a hub-and-spoke approach to leading others, as most topics focus on one-on-one interactions between leaders and employees. Examples include goal setting, listening skills, coaching, providing feedback, delegating, and managing performance. No doubt these are important skills for leaders to master, but organizations provide little training on how to manage groups and teams. What do leaders need to do to get ten direct reports working together effectively? How can leaders get their staffs aligned around a common vision, determine who should be involved with and make final decisions, run effective meetings, or promote psychological safety? This training is quite different than the standard fare offered by many organizations.

Overestimates of team building skills are another barrier to team training. Many leaders erroneously believe they lead high performing teams, yet as stated earlier most teams do not meet this criterion. If leaders don’t think they have a problem, then they are unlikely to attend a training program to learn how to improve. It is only after they receive benchmarking feedback on team performance do they see whether they are actually any good at building teams.

A pervasive myth promoted by many consulting firms is that only skilled facilitators can improve team effectiveness, and this is also a barrier to team training. No doubt good facilitators can improve team dynamics and performance, but organizations made up of hundreds to tens of thousands of teams can ill-afford the time and expense associated with facilitated team engagements. There must be an alternative if organizations want to scale effective teamwork.

Human Resources is another big barrier to training leaders how to build high performing teams. HR is usually the keeper of leadership competency models, yet most of these frameworks do not include team building skills. If this competency is missing, then companies are unlikely to select, develop, evaluate, promote, or reward leaders on their team building skills. Compounding this problem is that no one in HR is responsible for team effectiveness. HR assigns people to run talent acquisition, learning and development, succession planning, performance management, compensation and benefits, voice of the employee, labor relations, and the like, yet no one oversees team effectiveness. If someone in HR is in charge of teams, then it is often an additional duty or afterthought. The frameworks, tools, and techniques used by those in charge tend to be state of the art for the 1990-2000s (e.g., Tuckman, Lencioni, Drexler-Sibbett, or Hackman models) that neither reflect what we’ve learned about teams over the past 25 years nor scale.

?Design Considerations When Training Leaders on How to Build Teams. Training leaders how to build teams is neither particularly complicated nor difficult, but organizations must dedicate time and effort to this endeavor rather than hoping leaders organically acquire this skill. (With only 1 in 5 teams being high performing, it appears that the organic approach is not working all that well.)? We use the Development Pipeline (Peterson & Hicks, 1995) when designing development programs to improve leaders’ team building skills. The idea behind this framework is that learning is maximized when five learning components are adequately addressed. A shortfall in any of the following five components reduces the odds of learning a new skill.

Insight: Do leaders know whether the skill being trained is a strength or a development need? Leaders are more likely to learn new skills when provided feedback on the skill in question. For example, leaders are more apt to learn new speaking and listening skills when they are provided feedback on how their communication skills are being perceived by others. We use the Team Assessment Survey (Curphy & Nilsen, 2019) to provide leaders with benchmarking feedback and insights into their team building skills.?

Motivation: Have organizations made the skill a priority, and are leaders willing to put forth the time and energy needed to acquire new skills? If leaders don’t think a particular skill is important to their career success, then they are unlikely to attend a training program to improve this skill. Top leaders can communicate the importance of team building skills, and a well-designed Insight tool can help motivate leaders to learn. ?Because many leaders are ambitious and competitive, their interest in course content can be enhanced by giving them benchmarking feedback on their building team skills. ?

New Knowledge and Skills: If you ask 20 leaders how to build teams, then you are likely to get 20 different answers on how to make this happen. What is important with this component is to level set on what it takes to build effective groups and teams. There are many myths and misunderstandings about teams, so leaders need learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff, the important differences between group and teams, a robust model for building groups and teams, and become familiar with the tools and techniques needed to improve group and team performance.

Real World Application: Practice makes perfect, and the best way to hone newly learned skills is to practice them at work on a regular basis. Participants practice team building techniques during training programs and then build action plans to apply them back home.

Accountability: As Peter Drucker famously said, “What gets measured gets managed.”? Leaders tend to be more willing to learn if they know they are going to be held accountable for applying team building skills with their teams. An easy way to do this is by readministering Team Assessment Surveys 9-12 months after the completion of training programs. ?

?An Agenda for Building High Performing Teams. We’ve trained over 6,000 leaders on how to build teams, and most of the programs ranged from one to two days in length. The agenda for a one day Building High Performing Teams leadership development program based on the tenets of the Development Pipeline might look as follows:

Prework: TQ: The Elusive Factor Behind Successful Teams white paper and Team Assessment Surveys completed by participants’ teams.

?One-Day Agenda:

-Opening Comments and Program Overview

-Introduction to Groups and Teams

-Rocket Model Overview

-How to Interpret a Team Assessment Survey Feedback Report

-Individual Team Assessment Survey Feedback Report Analysis

-Peer Coaching on Team Assessment Survey Results

-Lunch

-Ignition Book and Team Leader Resources to Improve Teamwork

-Team Improvement Activity Preparation

-Team Improvement Activity Presentations

-Action Planning

-Next Steps and Closing Comments

Anywhere from 10-40 participants can attend one of these programs, and they are critical to those organizations wanting to scale effective teamwork. Rather than relying on external consultants or internal HR staff to design and facilitate team engagements, organizations can teach leaders how to build teams. Moreover, they can do so in a very cost-effective manner. Alternatively, they can go with the “one team at a time approach” and keep team building as the exclusive milieu of internal and external consultants.?Good luck with that.

What is your organization doing to improve teamwork? Is it training leaders how to build teams or using HR Business Partners and outside consultants to help teams operate more efficiently and effectively? How effective is your approach at scaling teamwork?

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 .