How to build good teams

Winner-take-all reality TV series suggest teams and teamwork are inevitably a dysfunctional mix of high-maintenance drama queens and kings, borderline personality disorder types, graspers, and backstabbers.

It's enough to make you swear allegiance to the adage that the best committee is a committee of one.

Fortunately, for an increasingly complex world, the group dynamics featured on TV shows such as The Apprentice and Survivor are about ratings not function.

Edward Wertheim, associate professor of human resources management, at the College of Business Administration at Boston's Northeastern University, said a well functioning group (be it a work or sports team, a friendship, religious or voluntary group) fosters a sense of belonging and acceptance that can bring out the best in people.

"Groups can enhance problem solving and creativity; generate understanding, acceptance, support, and commitment. In addition groups can enhance morale, provide an outlet for affiliation, enhance self esteem, and help create consensus and security. We have all had at least a few experiences where participation in an effective group or team has helped us to achieve at levels we never thought possible."

Six years ago, Wertheim noted the worldwide trend for organisations to increasingly emphasise the group or team. The shift had important implications for the skills critical to the success of organisations, their managers and leaders, he said.

Drivers included technology that had grown too complex for people to use and competitive forces that compelled organisations to flatten their management structure and reduce the number of its middle managers.

"Shifting authority and responsibility down to the bottom level allows teams to take over functions that used to be done by management. On a more macro scale, as organisations involve multiple businesses, multiple industries and multiple countries, new and complex tasks are evolving that rely on numerous interdependent groups with decisions made by teams consisting of members of these various groups," Wertheim said.

"Even without these forces, others have found simply that harnessing the potential power of the group can have a dramatic effect on productivity and job satisfaction."

In New Zealand, Landcare researchers Margaret Kilvington and Will Allen studied Wertheim's work when advising Christchurch City Council on ways to build effective teams for its industry waste reduction programme, Target Zero.

Teams might be a necessary part of successful organisational change but their presence certainly didn't guarantee success, Kilvington and Allen said.

"For team initiatives to be successful there must be a unified effort by company executives, adequate direction and support for the team initiative itself, and ongoing measurement and adjustment of progress towards the desired change."

Despite an obvious difference between many groups (a consequence of the variation in participants and the dynamics between them) there were several stages of group development that appeared common to all, Kilvington and Allen found.

The developmental stages, dubbed forming, storming, norming/performing and dorming, followed a well trodden track of "getting started" and "getting to work" through to "maturity" and "ending", where the group had completed its objectives.

US research group, The Gallup Organisation, identified four main types of teams by the way they functioned, and the key to their success or failure. They are:

* The Good - a team that scores highly in both customer and employee engagement

* The Bad (type one) - a team scoring highly in customer engagement but low on workplace engagement

* The Bad (type two) - teams that show a pattern of great workplace scores accompanied by poor productivity and quality

* The Ugly, a team that performs poorly on both employee and customer engagement skills.

Reported in The Gallup Management Journal (GMJ), Good teams were built on close relationships. "The bonds that develop among team members drive performance levels - the more effectively team members interact, the better the team performs," the GMJ said.

"Every member of the team knows what everyone else is doing and why. There are no hidden agendas. The teams also have no artificial hierarchies; no job is deemed more important to the team than any other. Every contribution to the team is recognized and rewarded in accordance with its role in value creation. In fact, on these teams, managers often earn less than their top performers - and that's how it should be. The front-line employees are the revenue generators, and managers perform a support role."

A manager's role of primary support required a deep involvement with his or her employees, said the GMJ.

"It is hard work to support the relationships that exceptional performance relies on, but without this support, performance quickly degrades. Capable employees have a drive to execute at the highest levels, but they need relationships of mutual trust and support with their co-workers and managers to sustain performance. Creating dynamic workplaces that inspire outstanding team performances provides benefits to both the teams and the company."

At the other end of the spectrum, the Ugly team exhibited poor productivity, unacceptable quality, negative effects on customers, and a miserable workplace. While The Bad teams could be saved with better management there was only one answer for the Ugly team, the GMJ said.

"Disband it. By trying to develop a team that will never reach corporate goals, you'll waste time and resources that are best allocated to better performing groups."

Gallup concluded that great managers built great teams and there were two irrefutable principles of team dynamics.

* You cannot overestimate a manager's influence on team performance. As one executive who oversees a successful performance management system says, 'Over time, a team becomes a reflection of the manager'. Managers with a weak performance orientation produce teams with lacklustre performance. Managers who care little for their team member's engender conflict between employees and the organisation.

* Companies must invest the time and resources necessary to get the right person in the manager's position. Having no manager at all is a better choice than saddling a team with a bad manager.

"For better or worse, teams and organisations will succeed or fail based on the quality of their managers. Lousy managers drain productivity and morale. Great managers drive maximum performance. The principle is simple and straightforward. The hard work is finding and developing great managers to lead your teams."

In New Zealand, Kilvington and Allen developed a checklist of the factors important to the effective management and growth of teams. The factors requiring examination to gauge team effectiveness included results and productivity (for example, whether the team monitored progress by concrete milestones); team structure; team operation; and team skills.

The self-help checklist could be used to guide the team's thinking about the key things that made the team work, whether or not they were doing them, and whether what they were doing could be improved, the researchers said.

Creating effective teams
* Members need to know what they expect to accomplish, and understand how they will work together to achieve goals.

* Building effective teams takes time - aim for small victories before the big ones.

* Create a climate of openness where people feel free to discuss problems.

* Ensure mutual accountability and a sense of common purpose: For a team to be a real team, all members must feel accountability.

* Provide the necessary external support: if success is dependent on resources then make sure they are available.

* Team members may need to build skills such as communication, problem solving and negotiating skills, so put necessary training programmes in place.

* It may be necessary to change the composition of a group to keep it functioning well.