For all the emphasis placed on teams and the importance of teamwork, you’d think managers and CEOs would have it down to a science by now.
On the contrary, it’s surprising how little we truly know about what makes some teams work better than others.
This isn’t to say that we’re entirely clueless. Companies like Google have by now put in decades of effort into researching what makes successful teams tick, and it seems it all boils down to the intangibles, such as a sense of psychological safety, rather than the day-to-day work itself.
There’s also the well worn list of corporate platitudes about teamwork that covers everything from clear communications, shared purpose, to trust. The list most managers learn at the eMBA stage at the latest is by no means wrong. In fact, it has everything in it except the one ingredient which the vast majority of leaders overlook entirely: mutual dependence.
Individuals Collaborate, Teams Depend on Each Other To Reach Their Goal
If there’s one cardinal sin of team building, it’s conflating communities with teams.
Anyone who’s served time in the military knows from experience what most others must learn from example.
Effective teams don’t just have established roles, clear channels of communication and a shared mission; their lives quite literally depend on everyone in the team performing as and when expected.
Although companies thankfully don’t get as serious about their competition as G.Is do, the lessons about mutual trust and dependence extrapolate to corporations just as well.
“Many leaders use the word team interchangeably with group. That’s a nice sentiment because the word team sounds powerful and energetic, while group sounds boring and passive. Most meetings, for example, are attended by people who have something in common, like being a member of a department or being one of a group of colleagues,” Barry Rosen, CEO of Interaction Associates, explained in a recent discussion about what makes teams work.
“What transforms a group of people into a team is when group members have a stated and shared purpose, a common goal, and an appreciation of everyone’s interdependence in achieving that goal. A great team has several other qualities like being adaptive to new circumstances, considerate of each member’s needs as well as the needs of key stakeholders, and trustworthy is keeping promises and confidentiality,” Barry continued.
Where it all so often goes wrong is approaching building teams as a matter of organizational structuring.
The teams that we are so very proud of are often nothing more than loosely connected groups of individuals that happen to share an office and a first reporting officer; individuals, who could just as well work on the other side of the moon without any contact to the rest of them when it comes to delivering their work.
Start By Knowing What You Need Your Teams For and Scaling Them Right
The logical consequence of the above is simple.
Teams need to be appropriately scoped in both size and duration if we are to expect them to be effective. When teams grow beyond a natural balance of mutual dependence, they cease to be teams in every way except what we call them.
Organizations that are perennially struggling to tease out peak performance from their teams are most likely trying to manage communities instead. It’s no surprise that e.g. Atlassian has recently found collaboration, culture and efficiency being among the highest ranked priorities for CEOs.
Thankfully the cure to the above isn’t rocket science.
In fact, all managers need is to get serious about knowing what they need their teams for.
“An experienced leader understands what their teams are working on without looking at an org chart for guidance,” Luck Dookchitra, VP of People and Culture of Leapsome, mentioned during a chat about the importance of HR in making organizations run smoothly.
“Mutual dependencies is something all hiring managers should be mindful of. HR’s role is pivotal here in helping leaders in building teams that do more than report upwards together. Effective teams need to need each other, and HR is often in the best position to help put it all together,” Luck added.
The platonic ideal of a team is one that is purpose-built for a specific goal; one where each team member can articulate their role in delivering results as clearly as the CEO.
The reason why most teams fall short of this ideal is that leaders often have neither the time nor the opportunity to be deliberate about how their organization sub-divides into divisions, departments, sections and teams.
“Being deliberate is everything when it comes to building teams and organizations,” Brian Smith, co-author of the “I” in Team Series of books and Managing Partner at IA Business Advisors, stated in our recent conversation about how leaders can do better when building their teams.
“The number one takeaway I leave my clients with is that everybody matters, and everybody in your organization needs to feel like they matter to those around them,” Brian continued.
That’s why having tight, purpose-built teams is so important.
Without them, employees become nothing more than a row of records on Workday, cast adrift with little to moor them down to the corporate fabric.
To Build Better Teams, Start By Knowing How They Are Working Today
The first step in doing better is figuring out what’s going wrong.
Diagnosing teams can be trickier than working with individuals, as one can’t exactly put them on a PIP and see if the result is worth keeping around.
Instead, leaders need to get serious about knowing how their teams work and what’s keeping them from reaching excellence.
Begin by examining how your teams are set up both in terms of scale and roles. Do the individuals truly need each other to succeed, or are they just lumped together out of administrative convenience?
You can address much of what ails corporate teams by scaling them down to the point where only mutual dependence is a fact, not a narrative by management. This doesn’t mean that you need to reduce headcounts or divide your departments; all you need is a more deliberate approach to collaboration, with more ‘fireteam leads’ reporting to your middle managers.
For more in depth diagnostics, consider empowering your teams with insights into high-quality assessments such as MBTIs among many others.
You can also consider assessing the teams themselves.
Frameworks such as TeamDynamics team types, DiSC profiles, CliftonStrengths Assessments and Enneagram can be helpful for your managers in particular.
“Most managers can’t define or describe their team dynamics in an objective or analytical way,” Christopher Morrison, CEO of TeamDynamics, noted in our recent chat on organizational psychology applied at the level of teams.
“Teams have emergent properties that are different from the preferences and properties of the individuals that they consist of. Based on our research only 9% of employers find that their team’s preferences align with theirs,” Christopher explained. “And only 1 in 3 managers can accurately describe all of their team’s core behaviors. If you don’t know how your team works, how effectively can you manage it?”
Investing in understanding and profiling your teams today can pave the way for more cohesive, efficient, and high-performing teams in the future.
And that’s a step every forward-thinking leader should at least consider.