Rating

7

Qualities
Applicable
Well Structured
Concrete Examples

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

The Imperative of Teams

Simon Mac Rory | LID Business Media © 2018

Team development specialist Simon Mac Rory offers a comprehensive guide to strengthening
teams. The ability to work in teams is a significant human advantage, yet some people seem to
abandon their innate teamwork skills at work, and firms often fail to pay attention to how their
teams are working. However, companies with a proper plan for improving team effectiveness can
boost their productivity and profitability. The author argues that the gig economy and the advent
of millennial employees makes it imperative to position teams as central to your strategy. He
enriches his argument by drawing on related academic findings.

Take-Aways

• People at work seem to abandon their innate teamwork skills.
• Organizations must re-evaluate teams to incorporate gig employees.
• Corporate strategy should use teams to meet the needs of millennial workers.
• As companies reorganize, they should move away from hierarchies and rely on teams as the

basis of corporate culture.

• Don’t fall for the myths that often surround teamwork.
• Larger teams make communication difficult and add complexity to decision making.
• Issues in team building include employee assessment, diversity and inclusion.
• Teams need clear goals to operate successfully.
• Most management authorities suggest that team leaders must be flexible.

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Summary

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.

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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.”

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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.”

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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.

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.

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

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.

“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.”

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

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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.

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.

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