Too Important to Ignore: Team Effectiveness

Too Important to Ignore: Team Effectiveness

Dear Colleagues,

It’s hard to know how to respond to events of the magnitude of those that have been in the headlines, except to acknowledge that the quest for social justice feels really, really, enormous.

As readers will know, I have been arguing for some time that the allocation of corporate profits away from shared prosperity and toward the executive-and-investor group has destroyed good jobs in the United States and decimated the middle class. That perspective will clearly have to expand in light of a system that is also systematically prejudiced.

With the hope of adding a little actionable positivity, I thought it would be useful this month to explore the question of what makes some teams effective, inclusive, and, as Amy Edmondson would say, fearless.

Great Teams Can Accomplish Extraordinary Things

One of my favorite leadership examples is that of the extraordinary Alan Mulally. He was the CEO who joined Ford Motor Company when it was in deep, dark trouble in 2006. During his eight-year tenure there, he is credited with reviving the company’s fortunes in a legendary turnaround whose story became the basis for a best-selling business book. While there were many elements that led to Mulally’s success, he would say that at the core was the dismantling of Ford’s “Game of Thrones” culture which he replaced with a practice he called “working together,” with an emphasis on inclusive, high-trust teamwork among his senior leadership team members.

Slices of Genius

A similar set of leadership and teamwork ideas informed my recent Friday Fireside Chat conversation with Harvard Professor Linda Hill. In her co-authored book Collective Genius, she draws a distinction between the kind of leadership that might be suitable when a task is largely well understood and that which is necessary for unearthing creative solutions to new problems. When you need a truly original response, she argues, the job of the leader is creating an environment in which separate slices of genius are woven into a solution that reflects collective genius. The role of the leader is not so much to encourage people to adopt their vision as it is to create the context in which innovative problem solving can take place.

How Thinking About Teams Has Evolved

Like so many other things, teams at work are not what they once were. Teams form and disband at an unprecedented pace. And we’re beginning to understand the effects of newer constructs around what makes a team effective—such as Amy Edmondson’s discovery of psychological safety—that don’t have a place in that model. Edmondson found that an environment in which people are afraid to speak up with divergent data or a disconfirming point of view is an environment in which mistakes are more common and opportunities are overlooked.

Team effectiveness is even harder to create if team members are on opposite ends of deeply polarizing issues, as those that are boiling up in workplaces and communities worldwide. We urgently need to get better at creating effective teams. Click "read more" below to find a few ideas to get you started.

In next month's newsletter, I’ll be sharing a research-based, well-vetted diagnostic that you can use with your team to assess its effectiveness and get to the bottom of any issues that people aren’t talking about. Want to learn more? Contact [email protected] to schedule a presentation.

+ READ MORE


Reading List

A curated roundup of interesting articles and books to get you thinking:

  • Black Lives Matter Is About Both Race and Class. Could protests over racial justice also have the potential to spur a new labor movement in the US and bring forth a new era for economic inclusiveness? (Financial Times)
  • Acting With Power. Leading social psychologist Deborah Gruenfeld offers a fascinating look at who truly holds power. (Penguin Random House
  • Stay Motivated When Feedback Is Scarce. This thoughtful article by
  • Columbia Business School Executive Education Women in Leadership instructor Deborah Grayson Riegel is a great reminder that all of us need feedback. (Harvard Business Review)


?Read the Full Newsletter: https://www.ritamcgrath.com/2020/06/too-important-to-ignore-team-effectiveness/?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=90374501&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--0QMzUT9eTRFk1eQps3eHeKaDL-G12bh1CvIR7IsWvNu93pFe-QKHyYgidRYGUILlglLVhd2UDYpGp8NydZtYEG96LAoAZFHNzG4gaNLSmLbM47CA&utm_content=90374501&utm_source=hs_email

Richard Collins

Managing Director at Ravensburger UK

4 年

Leaderships is about creating an environment where everyone can thrive. No one can be an expert at everything so bring a team together that can collectively achieve more than you though possible.

回复
Wendy Miller

Energy System Transformation | Customer Strategist

4 年

Anil Kumar

回复
Ursuline (Urs) Foley

Independent Non-Executive Director | Board Member | Qualified Risk Director | Strategic Advisor | Former CIO & Operations Leader | Digital | Data | Strategy | Transformation | Cyber | Risk Management

4 年

So very true!

回复
Er. Salman Qureshi

Quality Engineering

4 年

True

回复
Brian Hackett

Connecting leaders who want to learn with their peers.

4 年

Can't wait to see the assessment tool.

回复

要查看或添加评论,请登录

社区洞察

其他会员也浏览了