Why are some groups greater than the sum of their parts, while others add up to be less? Why is it that even if staff are toxic and dysfunctional the CEO will call them a ‘team’? How is it that managers have trouble defining a team?
Everyone knows it when they see a team in action. We just don’t know exactly how it works. And, what are the three skills that highly successful groups have?
Business books and the management press are filled with jargon. Everyone is searching for the next mind boggling bright business idea.
Ever sit in a meeting listening to a presentation, filled with all the right corporately correct words, nodding one’s head politely, yet it was totally incomprehensible?
One of the words that managers love to lavishly inject into conversations is the word: team.
Yet, when one asks a group of competent high flying Kenyan staff and managers what a team really is, 95 percent get it wrong. So what is team?
Real teams perform – they don’t tell sad stories how they got dealt an unfortunate set of cards. Often one has amorphous groups that we call teams because we think the label is motivating and energising.
It’s the word we use to sound good. The difference between teams that perform and groups that don’t is a subject we should all pay more attention to. Part of the problem is that “team” is a word we think we are all too familiar with.
The three ingredients
All teams skills have three specific skill sets: First, they create a safe space, with a feeling of belonging and identity; secondly, open up and people are ready to be vulnerable to build a sense of trust and thirdly, a team possess shared goals and values – according to Daniel Coyle in his fascinatating 2018 book The Culture Code.
Great majority of people will say something like: “a team is a collection of individuals committed to a common goal, or objectives”.
If this is the correct definition, then a group of 17 people in a matatu committed to reaching Buru Buru phase III by 9 pm is a team?
One can see it in the workplace, when one gets a group of 15 people together, each with their own hidden agenda, often with a lust for raw power.
One only has to watch to soon see everyone shooting off in their own directions. Result: chaos and self destruction. So called team of 15 quickly breaks into three factions each with their own view of life.
So what is the essential ingredient missing in a true team that delivers?
Real teams in business have to be able to identify roadblocks and opportunities they face, evaluate the options they have for moving forward, be able to make trade-offs and decisons about how to take the next steps.
Of course, it helps for the team to have ‘leader’ to facilitate the process. Many people we call leaders don’t really fit the job description.
Talking loudest, being charming, or having authority does not necessarily make a manager a leader. “Task of a leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have never been,” was Henry Kissinger’s thought.
Committees, task forces and councils are not necessarily teams. Groups do not become teams just because someone calls them that. You can call an old run down smoking Toyota Corolla a Lexus all you like, it won’t help.
Notice that people tend to gravitate to being like those they work with. Much like a statistical ‘regression towards the mean’. Same thing happens in groups, staff tend to perform based on what they perceive the accepted standard to be.
The ‘A’ word is the key
“A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set performance goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable,” is the working definition Jon Katzenbach and Doug Smith give.
No collection of individuals becomes a team unless it can hold itself accountable as a team. That’s a pretty tough test – and the reason why most working groups are not teams.
Think about the subtle yet powerful difference between “the boss holds me accountable” and “we hold ourselves accountable”. Accountability is at the very core of the promise we make to ourselves and others that are the foundations of effective teams: commitment and trust.
Research has shown that in both business and personal relationships, one factor determines how strong that relationship is. Trust -- is the absolute essential.
David J. Abbott is a director at aCatalyst Consulting. [email protected]
