SOCIAL ANIMALS
The subject of teams and teamwork has engaged the minds of a wide range of scholars and practitioners and has generated a vast amount of literature over the last 50 years. The field incorporates thinking from such diverse disciplines as psychology, organizational behaviour, sociology and education. Humans as a species are generally social animals. We find both safety and comfort, as well as creativity and energy, by working with others and have been doing so for many thousands of years. It is perhaps a little surprising then that so much thought and attention has been put into studying what is surely just a natural phenomenon.
If all groups functioned effectively in the same way, or alternatively, every attempt by people to collaborate ended in failure, we would perhaps be less interested. The peculiar thing is that in some circumstances groups and teams achieve great things and other times they do not. Sometimes teams have been found to be better at task completion, decision-making, learning and problem-solving. Other studies find that groups are less adept at these processes. Why is that? Surely we have been practising teamwork for long enough as a species to have worked out the processes by now.
The problem of course is that people are messy. We are not consistent. Our behaviour towards other humans is governed as much by emotion as it is by rational thought. Emotions are difficult things to work with. They are generated by minds that are rarely in full control, and can change unpredictably. And yet this emotional component of team behaviour is the one area that has had relatively limited study, largely I suspect, because the complexity of human emotions makes scientific examination rather difficult.
So whilst there are no clear rules for regulating behaviour in groups, there has been enough research, observation and analysis to arrive at a set of guidelines, which might be considered to be best practice. Many of these common success factors are presented as standard instructions in a range of managerial textbooks. However, despite all of the advice on leadership, team development, and people motivation that is available to us, most of our team experiences fail to reach that golden moment of team synergy where the collective output of the team exceeds the sum of its parts.
It is easy to be cynical. Human beings are often unreliable, unpredictable and selfish. Ideas about teamwork and collaboration can sometimes be dismissed as simply wishful thinking. And yet most people have experienced working in at least one great team, where the group worked together with energy and commitment. When people tell me their stories of great teams I ask them to try and describe what made the difference. Often they’re not really sure and rationalize the outcome as the fortunate combination of naturally collaborative individuals. As I dig down into their story, however, it becomes clear that whilst luck may be playing a part, the basic elements of successful teams are revealed time and time again.
As we will discuss later, however, in many ways the odds are stacked against the creation of an effective team. The dark side of human nature does not cope well with the challenges of ambiguity and uncertainty that are a common feature of today’s workplace. I have collected other less inspiring tales of poor leadership, internal conflict and failed outcomes. The memories of frustration, stress and anger are often painful to recall and yet they continue to occur without us seeming to be able to learn to find an alternative.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Bad team experiences should not be the default expectation. There are enough studies on team performance to identify a strategy and then implement a plan to consistently build and maintain energetic, creative and strongly bonded teams. I believe therefore that great team experiences can be replicated. The key is to understand the different success factors and learn to apply them. Some of these factors are a simple matter of good organization and planning. Others, however, are less obvious and consequently need deeper consideration. It is this opaque aspect of team development that we will focus on though the book.
JUST ANOTHER BOOK ON TEAMS?
This book began life as a hobby. I have been collecting tools and techniques for working with teams for a number of years in my work as a team coach, facilitator, trainer and consultant. One day I decided, on impulse, to build a website called the Team Coaching Toolkit. (If you have not already visited the site check out www.teamcoachingtoolkit.com) The site is designed specifically to provide team leaders and project managers with a place to find new ideas and tools to develop their teams, and contains some of the tools and techniques set out in this book. I had recently been introduced to the concept of ‘working out loud’, in an article by Harold Jarche (2015), and was intrigued by the idea that instead of hoarding your own ideas as some form of intellectual property you should share them, to see how other people might make them bloom.
The internet has radically changed how one person’s thinking can be disseminated and adapted. We are able to quickly build networks of contacts and collaborators working in a diverse range of sectors and industries. This sharing philosophy is based on a recognition that, as a single human, my ability to have an influence on the thinking and mindset of others is inevitably limited to those with whom I work face to face. My ambition is to have a greater impact. By publishing these tools, techniques and other information on team development, either in print or online, I hope to stimulate you and others to try them and build your own capability in creating effective, cohesive teams.
I believe that team building skills are really important. The scale and complexity of the world’s challenges are simply too great for individuals to tackle alone. The caricature of the heroic leader who will bravely step up and save the day is increasingly defunct. Most successful leaders are clear that their accomplishments are primarily the result of the efforts of a group of people working together as a unit. Teamwork is often extolled in books and articles on improving organizational performance. I have found, however, that for all that leaders talk about building a great team, most have little idea around the execution of a team development plan. Many managers would like to create a strong and vibrant team environment, but few know how to go about it.
The problem is that team building is often a slow process. As we will see, it takes time and energy both of which are in short supply in a culture when ‘urgency’ tends to override the ‘important’. In my research I have found that too many managers rely on a strategy of hope, and assume that as long as everyone does their job, an effective team will suddenly emerge. This complacent view will not be enough for the teams of the future. We live in changing times. The certainties that we used to be able to rely on are slowly disappearing. Writing in 2017, the political structures that sustained us through a period of growth and prosperity appear to be falling apart, leaving us in a highly uncertain environment where decisions must be made with no clear sense as to how the ‘law of unintended consequences’ will affect our future.
Economic cycles in which activity speeds up and slows down are becoming shorter. We can no longer rely on steady periods of growth upon which to make long-term investment decisions. Most organizations around the world are struggling to cope with the disruption created by the emergence of new technology. The potential efficiencies offered by the digital revolution are creating new winners, whose business models will start to dominate different economies around the world. The disruption is, however, causing significant stress in many established institutions. Recent advances in computing power are set to create even more turmoil as innovators find new and increasingly powerful ways of using data and developing artificial intelligence.
All of this change requires teams to find ways of adapting and then implementing programmes to whatever turns out to be the new normal. No one individual has the knowledge or experience to know how to adjust to this new reality. Organizations small, medium and large are all being forced to implement projects and change initiatives to work out how they can adapt. Many talk about the need for transformation but that is potentially misleading as it implies the shift from one steady state to another. In the immediate future it is difficult to identify what a steady state would look like.
There is an increasing sense that the old hierarchal structure which was used to manage ‘business-as-usual’ is becoming increasingly out of date. Many people now spend their working life engaged in projects rather than running