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White Papers & Articles::  Corporate Governance | OECD Principles of Corporate Governance
Chief Executive Role | Teams and Teamwork | Performance Appraisal Systems

Teams and Teamwork

From a book by Peter Wildblood

Building and maintaining effective teams is a time consuming and sensitive process particularly in businesses where the pressures of the moment are often intense.

Most attempts at team building don't work well, simply because managers and staff fail to appreciate the effort that has to be invested in time and attention to detail. There is little doubt, however, that when done well teamwork contributes considerably to greatly improved productivity and reduced costs.

Research shows there are a number of key reasons why teams fail. They include the inability of the team or the organisation to establish clear goals everyone can relate to, an inability by the team to clearly define its own roles within the team, and poor leadership of the team or the organisation.

More important is the failure by the team to handle its own interpersonal relationships.

Characteristics of effective teams:

Effective teams operate in an environment in which two way trust and open, honest communication exist. This way team members are "real people" with personal feelings, emotions and values, which are taken into account in the daily work of the team.

Effective teams communicate easily and openly. Feedback on "performance" is two-way and constant, providing information to all members of the team on how their work supports the specific and overall effort of the team and the practice. Listening is a feature of their communication. There is minimum direction and a high level of open ended questioning upon which full understanding is based.

Effective teams accept team responsibility and do not "blame" one another for team mistakes, nor do they spend useless time in personal justifications. They celebrate their successes together, just as they identify the special performances and contributions of each individual. Good team work is based on prideful humility: pride in the outcomes of the team and a humility that assumes that other team members may well have an "angle", or a level of expertise that can add value to the outcome.

Good teams look upon first-up mistakes as opportunities for learning, rather than criticism and punishment. They are, however, tough on repetitive errors, just as they encourage appropriate risk and innovation.

Good teams honour the contribution each makes to the total work of the team. For example, you as the leader are the team's expert in a particular area of responsibility (leadership): your secretary is the expert at word processing and office procedures, and your receptionist the expert in client relations. Each is as important as the other in the application of their expertise!

Good teams share information about the overall revenue and profit objectives of the team. Effective teams are always informative and consultative and they are fully participative on those issues on which team members are competent.

Yet the paradox is that when teams are at their most effective at building and sustaining relationships, they are at their greatest risk.

Maintaining effective teams:

One of the key points about lasting, effective team relationships is their inclusiveness. When a team is "running on all four cylinders", there is a grave danger that the team will become exclusive. Relationships are so strong within the team and communication so effective, that the loss of a member, or the replacement of a member, can severely disrupt the team.

How then, can the inclusiveness of an effective team be established and maintained to ensure its long term survival and success?

The first thing to remember is that a team is a living organism, rather than some form of machine. Even without a change in membership, the values, emotions and behaviours of team members will change from moment to moment. A truly effective team needs regular time to examine the processes of being a team: how members relate to one another, how the team relates as a whole, and how it relates to the practice.

When a change in membership occurs, special care needs to be given to the dynamics of the change. Even a highly functional team may face redundancy flowing from various relevant considerations within the organisation. A resignation may occur for a number of reasons, each of which needs to be understood and dealt with by the team and this may reflect adversely on team spirit. Team members may well say: "If our team is truly as good as we think it is, why would anyone want to leave, even if it is for more money or a more prominent position?"

Similarly, a promotion within an organisation may be celebrated by some and mourned by others.

The point is that processes should be in place which take account of any such change in team dynamics.

Similarly a strong, exclusive team ethos reacts poorly to the induction of a newcomer, although the processes to include them in the team are closely analogous to the internal dynamics which occur when change results from the efflux of time, or the loss of a team member.

In a World Waiting to be Born, (Bantam Books NY 1993), M Scott Peck describes the application of his community building process first introduced in The Different Drum, (Ryder Paperbacks NY 1987), to formal business organisations. He describes the creation of community within an organisation or team as a fluid state in which the differences which exist between individuals are "transcended". A team in true community, is one in which differences are accepted (a neutral phase and not meant to imply any form of approbation), honoured and used constructively for the team's advantage in decision making and in the pursuit of the team's individual and collective tasks.

A major characteristic of Scott Peck's community is its inclusiveness. The dynamics of inter-relationships demands this whether or not there is actual change in personnel.

I remember a television interview with Australia's netball coach just before her retirement after eleven years without a loss in a test series. Asked the secret of her success, she replied: "We have a lot of different people in our team and we spend a lot of time working on the differences".

There is no magic formula for bringing "community" to your team other than a sensitive leader who spends quality time developing relationships based on a full understanding of the uniqueness of the constituent members of the team.

The need to build strong productive work teams has been an acknowledged part of corporate life at the "big end" of town for many years. It has only been in the eighties and the nineties that so much conscious effort has been placed on building strong, cooperative and collaborative relationships between people more generally.

Like so many "instant solutions" to the problems of modern management and leadership, it is easy to "mistake the destination for the journey".

Unfortunately, managers seem to have a penchant for viewing team building as the equivalent of building a new product or service. They place considerable emphasis on creating the team and fail to recognise that it requires constant maintenance.

Flexible, highly developed teams are the essence of top performance and change management. They are also the (unspoken) core building blocks of many of the so called "fads" of modern management (empowerment, business process re-engineering, quality service and management, and the learning organisation).

They cannot work without processes to support the informal networks and the personal interrelationships which underpin them!

Team building and team maintenance only survives as an effective management practice if it is supported by strong relationships between the people of the teams and the practice.

Until the human needs of all members of the team (yours too) are upheld in direct ways, there can be no expectation of long term improvement in productivity or client service.

The irony is that attention to these areas of activity is far less expensive than the average marketing campaign - and far more effective!

"Leading from Within" was first published by Allen & Unwin in April 1995 and re-published by the Write-On Group in 2001.