Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

People at work seem to abandon their innate teamwork skills

Evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson suggests that mastery of teamwork is a significant advantage that human beings have over other species. People work together in many different ways, including interaction within families or in social settings. However, people seem to abandon their innate teamwork skills once they get to work. In addition, most leaders seem to think that teamwork should occur naturally and without much effort. This may help explain why organizations often don’t pay sufficient attention to their teams.

“It is natural for us to collaborate and, in many aspects of our lives, we do it very well – one might think instinctively.”

Companies that institute effective plans for teamwork increase their efficiency and improve their results. When diverse members of a team focus together on a problem, they can resolve it much faster than any single person could. Teams boost creativity and, unlike most individuals, they don’t restrict themselves to the safest solutions.

Organizations must re-evaluate teams to incorporate gig employees

The growth of the gig economy provides an important reason for companies to re-evaluate teams. As of 2018, gig workers accounted for 16% of the workforce in the United Kingdom – a doubling in 40 years – while the number of full-time workers hasn’t increased. Data from the United States indicate that 33% of workers are freelancers, a tally that could rise to 50% by the early 2020s. Employers should consider gig workers as being as important to them as their full-time employees. Firms need a coherent strategy for using gig-based workers and ought to use teaming and teamwork to integrate them into the organizational workflow.

Corporate strategy should use teams to meet the needs of millennial workers

Millennials – those born from 1981 to 2000 – now constitute 40% of the workforce. By 2025, organizations will classify 75% of the workforce as millennials. To attract millennials and make the best use of their talent, firms must use teaming. Millennials think differently than baby boomers, and they don’t like hierarchical structures. Millennials prefer a culture that utilizes teams. That calls for organizations to adopt a team-focused approach company-wide, not only in a few select departments. Without a team orientation, their attempts to integrate millennials are likely to fail.

As companies reorganize, they should move away from hierarchies and rely on teams as the basis of corporate culture

Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends surveys in 2016 and 2017 suggested that corporations see organizational redesign as their most important imperative, but these findings call for more than instituting new technology. They say organizations must abandon hierarchical structures and rely on teams as the foundation of their corporate culture.

“Organization should never be imposed but should be arrived at through consensus. This requires an ongoing consultative and engagement process with the team led by the leader.”

Organizations can use teams to address external challenges and to meet the needs of millennial and gig workers. A corporate team strategy (CTS) can set forth the rationale for how and why an organization can use teams to its best advantage. This strategy differentiates among four different kinds of teams: traditional teams, project-based teams, teamed working groups and virtual teams.

“Team members who have to carry poorer performers and observe the team leader not dealing with this issue develop a number of emotional responses in terms of both the leader and other team members.”

A CTS includes ways to evaluate teamwork’s effectiveness by defining reference points and benchmarks that teams can use to assess their work. A CTS gauges team effectiveness in terms of how teams help the company meet its overall goals. This enables you to identify successful or unsuccessful teams, so you can step in early to address any team problems.

Don’t fall for the myths that often surround teamwork

A number of myths surround teamwork, including the idea that teams should be designed for having fun. Work teams aren’t sports teams. Effective teamwork requires steady, regular effort spent addressing projects and issues that matter. Working with and within a well-functioning team can bring great satisfaction.

“Teamwork is not fun. Effective teamwork requires sustained and continual effort and can be enjoyable when effective and successful, but this should not be confused with fun.”

Off-site events used for team development often provide fallacious information. Typically, participating in games and similar physical activities at such gatherings doesn’t provide insight into the teams’ real work, and many employees are reluctant to participate for various personal reasons. Teams that take the time for introspection often generate more productive insight into how they could work better together than teams that participate in off-site games.

“Effective teamwork requires empowered teams.”

Some leaders believe they need to organize team development activities only if a team has a problem. In fact, every team – including those made up of senior executives – can improve its performance. Many executives believe that teams should reinforce their leaders. Instead, senior executives should support their teams. Most senior executives say they believe in teamwork. However, some leaders fear that a strong team could show them up; such anxiety may impel them to undermine teams’ functionality. The best leaders see themselves as looking up to support their teams. If you lead a team, its success will validate your performance.

“Critical to the success of all project teams is mission clarity: Why does this team exist?”

The idea that conflict shouldn’t exist in a smoothly functioning workplace or within a team-based workforce is another myth. Discord often serves an essential function. How managers supervise conflict makes the difference in whether the results of a dispute are positive or negative.

Larger teams make communication difficult and add complexity to decision making

The size of a team can influence its success. Larger teams must maintain a greater number of communication channels. The complexity of decision making increases with more participants. Psychological safety plays an important role in team effectiveness, so a team leader with a progressive outlook can make substantial difference. Many discussions about teams include the word “reflexivity,” which means taking time to examine not only what your team does – but also how it works.

Issues in team building include employee assessment, diversity and inclusion

Businesses have begun to put diversity and inclusion at the top of their list of concerns. Organizations tend to treat both issues as part of the same puzzle – even though they pose different challenges – and to focus on diversity rather than inclusion. Inclusion involves nurturing a mix of cultures and ethnic groups in a way that strengthens the organization and the people working within it.

“Teams that are reflective and commit regular time to [the reflexivity] process have better coordination, clearer communication, better understanding of each other and better shared meanings.”

Inclusion fortifies diversity and involvement. It gives credence to the importance of honoring employees without regard to their personal backgrounds or seniority. Teams that draw on diversity, varied points of view and a strong blend of competencies will outperform other teams. All team members must work together even if they argue about the best way to reach a common goal.

“Millennials reject the traditional hierarchy and crave flexibility and collaboration.”

The increasing importance of part-time workers, the greater proportion of millennials and a tendency to question the relevance of traditional performance appraisals have led corporations to reconsider employee evaluation. Most senior executives haven’t clarified how they will replace traditional appraisal strategies. Organizations benefit when they introduce a well-structured team assessment tool. It can provide specific information about their company and help boost team performance. Proper assessment helps a firm determine the right size for its teams and the effectiveness of its training programs. It can also help identify superior leaders.

“Virtual teams need to recruit people with different or additional attributes that are critical to the long-term success of the team.”

Most corporate discussions about teams come around to the question of morale and motivation. Unfortunately, few people agree on the meaning of those terms. As a result, an organization’s decision to “do something” about morale and motivation leaves people with different expectations.

“Team development is for all teams, all the time. If this approach is adopted, then there will be far fewer teams in trouble.”

Before your team embarks on morale- or motivation-boosting initiatives, its members must collectively agree on what each term means and which goals to pursue. You can have morale in the absence of motivation, but you can’t have motivation without good morale. You can’t inject morale and motivation into other people. Both morale and motivation are highly individual.

“Individuals and organizations [often] seem to think that by simply putting together a group of people and calling them a ‘team,’ they will perform as a team.”

And if defining “morale” is hard, defining “motivation” is even more challenging. In the 1950s and 1960s, scholars such as Abraham Maslow, Frederick Hertzberg, David McClelland and Douglas McGregor have come up with more than 100 theories of motivation. As a team leader, you should address issues that have a negative cultural impact on the group and create an environment in which team members draw on their personal morale and act based on their personal motivation.

Teams need clear goals to operate successfully

People commonly believe teams should find it easy to set goals. Yet many teams fail to do so, even though they absolutely need codified objectives to move forward. Goals enable a team to select the right roles, structure, skills, leadership philosophy, communication strategy, decision-making approaches, and planning and evaluation techniques.

Setting and clarifying goals isn’t a one-time activity. Even if a team establishes shared goals, individual members could still have varying and conflicting objectives. The process of setting goals requires debating and evaluating alternatives, comprehending what each objective involves and making decisions about the team’s future direction. Teams must periodically re-evaluate their goals. The team and its leaders must bring individual work into alignment with team goals. A member who isn’t in accord with the team could cause the group to set the wrong priorities and fail to achieve its desired outcomes.

Team members sometimes struggle with defining their roles even when they agree about their goals. This, too, can be a potent source of discord. A survey of 25,000 managers and supervisors suggests that people often don’t do what they should do because they don’t know or understand their duties. A capable team leader explains the details of their roles and responsibilities to his or her team members. Team members who understand their tasks and obligations have a greater chance of success.

Most management authorities suggest that team leaders must be flexible

Management thinkers have proposed a number of leadership and team models. They call on managers to discuss strategies with their team members to define which leadership style will work best. Some models suggest that instead of sticking with one management approach throughout a project, as a team evolves its leader should move from a “directing style” of management to a “delegating style.” Other experts suggest that team leaders should adapt their management style to their team, depending on members’ experience and willingness to undertake new projects or tasks.

A team leader who adopts a directive style throughout a project cycle can discourage team members and hamper the team’s development. Team leaders must ensure that nothing gets in the way of the team’s overall performance. A team leader must be willing to delegate both power and responsibility, though this can lead to a common problem in that team members often end up with responsibilities – but no power to fulfill the goals that come with the assignment. Leaders must meet with team members to be certain that their assignments, authority and resources align and to discuss what works and what needs to change.

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About the Author

Team development specialist Simon Mac Rory, PhD, consults with leading private and public sector organizations. In 2011, he established The Odd Company, which offers cloud-based team development tools and methods.