Every group at work these days is called a team. So the first step in leading one is to recognize that most of the teams around us are actually not ones.
Jon Katzenbach, a consultant who specializes in teamwork and organizational culture, defines a real team as a small group of people with complementary skills who are committed to a shared purpose, who succeed or fail together, and who hold one another accountable.
The executive team in your organization might fit into that category if they truly share a purpose, but often the members are primarily concerned with their own fiefdom. The sales team is a bunch of people who do similar work, but their goals are individual rather than collective: “Even if they pursue a district goal, the way they achieve that goal is every person for themselves,” consultant Susan Fowler said on SmartBrief.
Most people actually spend most of their productive time in working groups: They “are often best suited to the tasks at hand,” PWC consultants Benjamin Tarshis and Jonathan Roberts wrote in Strategy+business. They still collaborate – managers working to make that more efficient – but they essentially complete tasks independently. Individual accountability is thus high, while emotional commitment to others and sense of shared purpose are relatively low.
This seems a silly distinction – the kind of idle speculation consultants might do to pass a hot summer day. Working together is helpful and helps us to feel connected to others. And that’s teamwork.
But Ms. Fowler argues this difference is critical because you may otherwise be wasting team-building efforts on a group that doesn’t need them. Effort to promote common goals and interdependent actions and shared knowledge may be superfluous if you are leading a working group. On the other hand, if you assume you are leading a group and fail to provide the team leadership needed, you almost guarantee failure.
“A group of individuals coming together in meetings to share and receive information does not make them a team. If you think you’re leading a team, but it’s a group of individuals, you could be neglecting the one-to-one leadership individuals in the group need from you,” she said.
Teams often focus on projects. They excel when there is alignment, everybody rowing together rather than in different rhythms or, worse, different directions. Consultant David Burkus recommends asking four questions to build that alignment. First, what do we intend to achieve? Second, who will do what? (If it’s a more senior team, that might be modified to: What team/department will do what?)
“When it comes to team alignment, ambiguity is the enemy. Just assuming that a person or department will pick up certain tasks because it’s in their job description or department name can lead to a major disaster,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
Third, what resources do we need? That usually revolves around money but could also be about time and access to equipment or technology. The last question is a bit unusual: What could prevent us from succeeding? Before even beginning to work on the project, it’s worth thinking about what could derail you. There’s probably more than one answer, Mr. Burkus suggests, and each will inspire other tasks and commitments.
Psychologist Ron Friedman partnered with the communication software company, Front, about a year ago when remote work was prevalent to survey 1,106 U.S.-based office workers and determine what high-performing teams do differently. The respondents evaluated the effectiveness of their teams, and five factors emerged from that to distinguish high-performing ones:
- The members are not afraid to pick up the phone to communicate more fully with each other. That means getting beyond the belief that calling somebody will be interrupting them and otherwise awkward. It’s not, and tends to strengthen relationships and prevent misunderstanding.
- They are more strategic with their meetings, ensuring time together is efficient and collaborative. “Specifically, they are significantly more likely to require pre-work from participants (39 per cent more likely), introduce an agenda (26 per cent more likely), and begin with a check-in that keeps team members apprised of one another’s progress (55 per cent more likely),” he wrote in Harvard Business Review.
- They invest time bonding over non-work topics. Managers often fume over excessively long chats on non-work topics, but those build important bonds.
- They give and receive appreciation more frequently. That appreciation came from colleagues or managers, helping members feel valued and respected.
- They are more authentic at work. They were significantly more likely to express positive emotions with their colleagues. They were more likely to compliment, joke with and tease their teammates and in e-mails more likely to use exclamation points, emojis, and GIFs. Interestingly, they were also more likely to express negative emotions at work. They were a team, willing to share.
Some of that, of course, would help working groups as well in their collaboration. But if you have a team, where working together is a dominating factor, keep those five findings in mind.
Cannonballs
- Eric J. McNulty, associate director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative in the U.S., says a cross-functional team needs three attributes: a charge, precisely defining the challenge it will tackle; a charter, outlining membership, expected duration, time commitments and decision-making authority; and a champion, someone with sufficient positional power to do something with the team’s work product.
- Author James Clear warns not to confuse things that are hard with things that are valuable. Giving something a great deal of effort does not mean you are working toward a great result.
- Pressure to increase gender diversity is leading to higher salary offers to women. Research by Harvard Business School professor Paul Healy shows a woman in a senior leadership role in the U.S. who switches to a new firm gets a salary bump of 25 per cent on average, compared to 9 per cent for a man.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston, Ont.-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.
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