Thomas Kerscher Capacity Building Specialist

Definitions

A team is a group of people sharing a common purpose, tasks and objectives and connect through regular working relationships. One can distinguish several types of teams: 

• Leadership teams (e.g. executive or managing boards)
• Project teams
• Specialised working groups
• Interdisciplinary working groups
• Specialised committees
• Task Forces

Not every board or committee qualifies as a team. In many boards or committees members are connected in theory through joint tasks and objectives, but don’t meet the basic requirements of teamwork. We speak of teamwork only where members take their common objectives seriously and take individual responsibility for carrying out joint tasks.

Two or three people can already make a good team. But more complex tasks normally require the involvement of more people. Five to seven people is often quoted as an ideal group size. Groups of that size usually provide sufficient diversity of perspectives, personalities, ideas and competencies. At the same time groups of that size facilitate management and communication. Communication in larger groups requires disproportionately higher investment in communication.

Purpose of Team Building

Teams comprise individuals taking different roles. Those individuals bring to the team different biographies and realities, needs and interests. A team is thus a highly complex social system and particularly vulnerable to disruption. Team building is a learning process by which members learn to optimise their cooperation and communication. This process involves learning to detect and eliminate disturbing factors before they cause damage. Team building thus contributes significantly to the development of an organisation’s human resources.

The objectives of team building are threefold. Firstly, team building aims to improve the performance of a team in terms of the quantity and quality of output. Secondly, team building is intended to strengthen the motivation and identification of all team members. Thirdly, team building is meant to create a healthy work atmosphere as a prerequisite for input and creativity.

Typical Forms of Team Building

At least once per year the team should hold a workshop or retreat, outside of the usual work place for 1 – 1.5 days. The purpose of such events should be to review progress jointly, to assess possible interruptions and to develop and initiate measures that stimulate further development. In times of significant change, leadership as well as project teams are usually exposed to particular strain. Leaders need to decide when and in which intervals a team needs time to look at its internal condition.

At least once per month a team should take stock of where it stands (see also guiding questions below) as part of a regular meeting  for about 15 – 30 minutes, looking at the following aspects:

• What works well in terms of how we approach and meet our tasks, and the way we collaborate?
• What works less well?
• Adjustment of jointly agreed team building measures

Such joint “mid term reviews” must be programmed as standard routines and protected rigorously through appropriate time management – otherwise they will run the risk of being pushed aside by the daily operations and fire fighting.

Frequency and Moderation

Teams require regular inspection and maintenance, as well as an early warning system for functional disturbances. Where teams fail to assess their complex and interconnected work processes for a longer period of time, this will lead to friction losses and, eventually, emotional tensions. With increasing tension it will become more difficult to discuss and resolve the issues in a collegial way. Latent and manifest frustration, mistrust and accusations start to interfere with task processes. The joint ventilation on problems turns into trials instead of constructive dialogue. Regular check-ups do not mean endless change processes, but joint maintenance of achievements, and the preventive correction of unhealthy developments, before having to resort to major repairs.

There follows a description of situations in which moderation by a third person – either internally, from the organisation, or externally, should be considered:

• The team has no prior experience with team development and wants to get to know and train the various approaches to tem building;
• The team is rather large (eight members or more) and the network of relationships is not particularly stable;
• There are serious tensions and conflicts in the team;
• The team as a whole should be inspected and the team leader wants to be relieved of his or her leadership functions during the review.

Understanding Teamwork

Selection of Team Members

Team building is not the answer to all issues in an organisation. Before embarking on a team development process, the first question to be addressed is about the team composition. Fundamental mistakes in appointing members to a team cannot be ironed out with team building. When composing a team, the task should always be front and centre. Three criteria should be used when assigning staff to a team:

• The competencies and skills which need to be represented in the team in order for it to be able to address its tasks effectively;
• The readiness and ability of all members to communicate and interact with others in a cooperative way; teams should not be burdened with dealing with the behaviours deficits of some of its members;
• No large groups; it is difficult for large groups to integrate into coherent and functioning teams;

Legitimation Outside the Team

Teams never legitimate their existence by themselves. The point of reference is always situated outside of the team. A team is always integrated into an organisation and a network of relationships. There is always a superior instance, defined collaborators, as well as internal and external clients with particular needs and expectations. Goals and tasks of teams always derive from superior strategies. The question, however, is often about how those goals and tasks are interpreted. New teams often start to work without having reflected jointly of their real goals, tasks and roles. Sooner or later this lack of awareness leads to tensions and conflicts. Team development therefore starts with the clarification of goals, tasks and roles of team members, and the ground rules for communication and cooperation. When this has been achieved, team building will facilitate the clarification of relationships between members (see section on Communication and Change). Team building should also always involve the external perspective, i.e. how teams are perceived by the superior instance, co-workers and partners, internal and external customers, etc. Without external feedback there is a substantial risk that teams indulge in navel gazing. Teams will then focus mainly on solving conflicts that they have created by themselves through turning a blind eye on external expectations.

Diversity

People who have advanced their careers mainly as individualists and created a power base and privileges for themselves often denigrate or ridicule teamwork by spreading the myth that teams are about leveling the specific strengths and weaknesses of individual team members. This notion is as common as it is inaccurate. The reality is that teams benefit greatly from diversity. In good teams, members are able to exercise their individual skills and competencies to the fullest. Team members take on different roles: some may be particularly creative, others advance the team through qualified task oriented contributions. Yet others may be particularly sensitive to the team climate and may thus strengthen the internal cohesion of the team. All teams required leadership, but this leadership does not require hierarchical relationships.

The Dilemma of Teamwork

On one hand organisational success depends on good cooperation among people in the context of well functioning teams. On the other hand, most people at the top of organisations got there primarily or exclusively because of their individual efforts. This explains why most leaders nowadays use the term “team”, but in fact have not experienced team work themselves. Because of their lack of experience with team work, they are not able to promote a team culture (see the section on organisational culture in this manual), institute team oriented management tools, but prefer promoting and recruiting individualists rather than team players. As an ultimate consequence, most people still believe that leadership and teamwork are mutually exclusive, i.e. team players would operate and the lower and medium levels of an organisation, while top leadership functions would naturally need to be reserved for “alpha animals”.

Spans of Command

Fiscal constraints, subsequent discussions about leaner organisations and associated staff cuts in practice often lead to excessive spans of command and oversized teams. The question of whether the remaining managers do have the communication and cooperation skills to lead 15 or 20 people in a team oriented fashion is often suppressed. Teams of 10 – 15 members would require investment in communication which nowadays is no longer considered affordable by most organisations. The result of this development is that those “teams” are kept together only by enormous efforts of their leaders, while in fact compartmentalisation takes root and competition is given priority over cooperation.

Group Dynamics

Everything unpleasant happening in politics can occur in badly structured and managed teams through uncontrolled group dynamics: competitive rituals and power games involving several “top dogs”, animosities among sub-groups, foul compromise as a basis for decision making, exclusion or discrimination of minorities, etc. Whoever is leading, developing or advising teams should remember that majorities are not always right (see also the differentiation between politicians and managers in Chapter 1: Change in the Public Sector). Particularly common symptoms of dysfunctional developments in teams are informal hierarchies, the emergence of cliques and the prevalence of rigid norms. Where such developments occur teams always lose their most important advantage: their ability to transform diversity into productivity. Those dysfunctional developments need to be brought out and discussed openly. If this does not lead to improvements quickly, teams need to be restructured.

Immortality of Teams

Successful teams tend to keep themselves alive even when their main purpose no longer justifies their existence. In fact there are two things teams find particularly difficult to do: to expel a team member that keeps the team from functioning well, and to dissolve itself when it has outlived its original purpose. This is why teams need a superior instance which oversees their work and intervenes when necessary.

Knowledge Management and Teamwork

Specialised knowledge and strong management capacities are the key resources for organisational success. It is not sufficient to build up and develop knowledge. In needs to be retained. Like trust and other soft factors, knowledge takes a long time for an organisation to develop, but it can be lost very rapidly. While it is important to nurture the individuals carrying specialised knowledge, organisations must ensure that privileged knowledge is not accumulated in two or three individuals. Teamwork is the only really effective way to distribute knowledge among several individuals. Team-oriented leadership is therefore not only a cultural element of an organisation but necessary for its long-term success.

Team Building

Success Factors

There follows a compilation of success factors that facilitate good team work:

• Positive attitude: teams should not only analyse what has led to interruptions, but first of all review the highlights in their performance and what has made those highlights possible.
• Openness and honesty: team members don’t beat about the bush but address problems openly, as successful solutions require thorough analysis.
• Partnership: all team members and their viewpoints are to be taken seriously – there should be no hierarchical attitudes or elitist behaviour. Teams depend on the contributions from all members. Members must therefore communicate at eye level – this does not affect functional hierarchies.
• No personal offense: problems should be brought up by describing the concrete difficulty in the work process (what doesn’t work?) and one’s own emotional situation (what causes the disturbing feelings?) – but not through accusations, presumptions or other derogatory comments or observations.
• Sensitivity for emotional conditions: atmosphere, emotions, feelings are the most important indicators of whether and where disturbing factors exist. Pure rationality and task orientation usually get in the way of understanding what is really going on.
• Straightforward initiation and implementation: most teams spend too much time on analysing and too little attention on acting; teams should discuss as long as it takes for all members to understand what the problem is – and then work out solutions and initiate their implementation.
• Participation of ALL team members: in everyday work situations teams that are larger than 4-5 members usually don’t manage to meet up in full. Team building events give an opportunity for all members to attend and agree on solutions and implementation plans jointly.

 Restraining Factors

• Group size: groups of 15, 20 or more people can hardly be integrated into a real team. Groups of that size always have a “public” nature and lack spontaneity, openness, honesty and trust. Individual members have limited possibilities to influence on what is going on in the team. The results of this constellation are usually that people give individual statements (instead of engaging in real dialogue), lecturing, gossip, tactical maneouvers, and the creation of informal cliques or networks.
• Prevalence of particular interests: if people from different origins assemble, or people whose main job is somewhere else, then their commitment to a common task is often very limited. Their individual vested interest, be it open or hidden, prevails. Typical examples for this phenomenon are supervisory committees. These groups often degenerate into mere “rubber stamp” bodies but fail badly when real supervision and decisive action is required.
• Limited functions: groups that have as their main purpose the exchange of information and experience, consultation or networks, but that don’t have the authority to make decisions that have an impact on their environment, usually degenerate to talk shops or social events.
• Irregular or sporadic work rhythm: where groups meet only two or three times a year, possibly at changing intervals, it will normally be impossible to develop joint work processes.
• Individualistic culture (see also the section on organisational culture): where leadership style and institutionalised leadership and management instruments reward exclusively individual instead of team performance, culture is marked by departmental thinking and excessive competition. Such contexts hamper the development of well functioning teams.
• Damaged human relations: developing constructive relationships is impossible or requires disproportionate efforts where two or more group members share a history of bad experience with each other and no longer accept each other as serious partners.
• Disruptive team members: a single pathological team member is sufficient to block a team building process. Serious egocentrism, inability to listen, notorious unreliability or an unhealthy need for acknowledgement of a team member usually have two consequences: firstly, the group is permanently preoccupied with counter-balancing the interruptions caused by the team member. Secondly, a climate of openness will not emerge in such circumstances. The team should not be developed, but restructured.