Teamwork: Are Your Teams High-Performing or Dysfunctional?

Phone: 503-293-3557 Toll Free: 800-577-3528 Fax: 503-293-8499

Continuing Education for Technical Professionals

Teamwork: Are Your Teams High-Performing or Dysfunctional?

Gary C. Hinkle - President, Auxilium, Inc.

If you are part of a high-performing team, the correct answer is "both." All teams are somewhat dysfunctional, and when we're lucky enough or skilled enough to be associated with an outstanding team, the degree of dysfunction is minimal.

Patrick Lencioni's best-selling books on the five dysfunctions of teams explain in detail five major elements of teamwork and how to eliminate dysfunctions in each of those areas. Here, we build off of Patrick's concepts and offer seven straightforward steps to achieving consistently high team performance.

Seven Steps to Effective Teamwork

#1 - Try to build the level of trust associated with families and friendships

Trust is a function of credibility, risk, and intimacy:

Trust = ƒ{(Credibility)*(Intimacy)/Risk}

It's intuitive that when credibility is high and risk is low, that the level of trust should be high. But what's the "intimacy" factor? This is one of those soft, touchy-feely words that many of us prefer not to use, understand, or deal with.

Lack of intimacy is the number one barrier that prevents teams from reaching their full potential. Teams need to build intimacy to maximize trust. Without a high degree of trust, teams are crippled.

Project managers work on minimizing risk. Credibility is high when managers put the right people on project teams. Intimacy doesn't come so easily.

Here's a simple example of how intimacy affects trust. Would most people let a total stranger with no credentials live in their home while on vacation? No. Would they hire a house sitter with a good track record and references? Maybe. Would they let a responsible, trusted, friend or family member stay in their home? Probably.

What makes this friend or family member highly trusted? Intimacy. With friends and family, we've interacted enough to know things about them that others don't - and they know things about us. Things we don't share with strangers.

Look at each of your coworkers who are part of your project team and ask yourself if you'd let that person live in your home while you're gone. If the answer is no, what would it take to achieve that? You won't build that level of trust overnight, and you may never accomplish this (and may not want to), but taking steps in that direction is the most important thing individuals can do to help their teams become more successful.

Building trust takes commitment. Take time to get to know people on your team, and most importantly - let them know you! When people open up to others it inspires peers to reciprocate with information about themselves.

#2 - Build commitment

Commitment is possibly my favorite topic when it comes up in one of my seminars. It's amazing how many definitions of "commitment" I hear from students and read in corporate literature. In my experience, most teams within companies have a high level of commitment to achieve their goals. But when it comes to "individual commitment," there's lots of room for improvement.

What do I mean by "individual commitment"? It's clearly stating what you're going to do, and then doing it. But there's an abundance of problems that interfere with individuals successfully making and meeting commitments:

unrealistic expectations
overuse of the word "commitment"
under-use of the word "commitment"
unclear objectives
poor communication
a society that doesn't value commitment as much as tangible items

These are just a few of many obstacles that interfere with commitment.

Recently a project manager in one of my seminars mentioned that she's frustrated by the amount of time she spends managing people's commitments. Her team uses a form that people sign which formalizes commitment to complete tasks on schedule (they use the word "commitment" on the form). The business unit has a very high level of commitment from virtually every employee to execute their mission - this is certain in my mind. But when team leaders are "managing commitments" as the project manager described, how strong are these individual commitments? Not very strong.

When I suggested this to her she was at first puzzled because they are proud of their level of commitment, and she believed that the forms were effective in reinforcing personal commitment. After talking through what commitment really means, she had a different perspective. Using the form and overuse of the word "commitment" was actually creating unnecessary work, lowering morale, and demoting the meaning of commitment to a weaker definition. The intent was to execute a mini contract to get a "binding promise" but the result was more like an "arrangement."

Teams can build commitment by using the word "commitment" but not overusing it, and by allowing people to commit to achievable goals. Team leaders can reduce their project management load by getting as many solid commitments to achievable tasks as possible. When this is done correctly, only the tasks that don't have commitments need to be "managed."

#3 - Don't avoid conflict

Avoid destructive actions and words, but don't avoid conflict. Conflicting views get people thinking about alternatives, so conflict should be viewed as opportunity. Susan Gerke, co-author of two successful teamwork books said "Conflict is inevitable in a team...in fact, to achieve synergistic solutions, a variety of ideas and approaches are needed. These are the ingredients for conflict."

High performing teams debate, share constructive criticism, and communicate openly and frequently. Individuals on these teams take time to reflect when conflict slows progress, and they respond appropriately after thinking about their position vs. the conflicting views. Thinking before we speak is one of the key factors in avoiding destructive conflict.

A certain amount of discomfort with conflict can't be avoided - this is human nature - but intentionally avoiding conflict to eliminate discomfort isn't healthy for teams.

#4 - Value and achieve consensus

I've worked in companies where it seemed like everyone and their brother had to agree before a major decision was made, and in small companies, like Auxilium, where a single person or very small group makes most of the decisions. Even when only one person is the single stakeholder, it's wise to get advice from experts and get some sort of consensus before making major decisions.

Consensus, or buy-in, benefits teams and stakeholders in several ways:

decisions are based on collective wisdom
team members appreciate when their input is considered (a big morale killer when people don't feel their opinions matter!)
leaders who get buy-in build credibility
fast pace is good, but slowing down a bit to consider alternatives avoids missed opportunities

The only down side to building consensus is the time it takes to achieve it. This can be avoided by not overdoing it. It's rare to get 100% consensus, especially on large teams. Don't worry about getting full buy-in, but do make sure that those who disagree with team decisions know that their input was considered, and help them understand why the decision is best for the organization. It's important for all team members to be supportive of decisions, whether they agree or disagree.

#5 - Treat each project differently

When a new project is started, the team has an opportunity to define how they will operate. Sure there are company processes, policies and guidelines that define much of this, but all teams have some flexibility within that framework.

Many high-performing teams create a "Team Operating Agreement" (TOA). They might call it something else, but it's a set of rules or guidelines that define important operating policies for the team. For example, if showing up on time for meetings is important to a particular team, they might state in their TOA that "Everyone shall be on time for meetings, and if late for any reason you must contact another team member to let them know your situation." Another team might not care as much about being on time and might state in their TOA "We will try to be on time for meetings, but if late it's understandable and we'll begin promptly at the meeting start time."

Avoid getting caught up in how everyone else does things if there is room for improvement. Each project has unique circumstances and team dynamics. Don't let negative aspects of organizational culture interfere with your team's performance. It's usually a huge battle to improve cultural issues (and usually worth fighting), but individual projects don't need to suffer because of company-wide problems.

#6 - Enforce accountability

The number one issue I battled in 15 years of engineering management experience at various companies was resolving teamwork problems. Nearly every day I asked myself "How much time and effort should I put into helping Joe and Mary work better together?" Joe and Mary represent any two people on any given day. I'm sure most managers can relate to what I'm saying here.

My responsibility as group manager was to constantly raise the performance of the group, but this is just one of many management responsibilities. The more time a manager needs to put into helping others work together, the less time there is for other important work.

Functional managers and project/program managers share this same problem. What's needed is for individual contributors to be more accountable for their own performance, and to hold the peers on their teams accountable as well. High performing teams have a very high level of accountability for teamwork among their individual contributors. The contributors don't rely on managers to resolve their teamwork issues - they work out their conflicts on their own and avoid management intervention.

Managers need to guide their teams to a high level of accountability for teamwork. There will always be interpersonal conflicts for managers to resolve, but these can be minimized by raising accountability. One of the best ways to do this is to develop project leaders with a strong balance of technical, interpersonal, and business skills. Don't turn them into managers if they're not interested in going down that path. Help develop their skills so they're enabled to boost team performance and reduce management intervention.

#7 - Define and measure results

What defines a team's success? Completing projects on time and within budget are obvious desired results, but there's more to consider. Teamwork is one of those things that most organizations don't even try to measure because it's hard to associate directly with financial results.

Several effective methods link team performance and financial results directly. One is the cost of delay: how much does it cost the organization for each day or week a project is late? There are three major costs to consider for product development projects:

estimate of revenue lost for each day of delay
cost to employ the project team for each day of delay
cost of lost opportunities during the delay period because resources aren't available for new projects

Highly visible Cost of Delay metrics can be used to improve team performance. No team wants major delay costs associated with their project to be visible. Be careful with this type of measurement - you don't want circumstances outside of a team's control to damage their credibility by broadcasting delay costs that could be perceived incorrectly.

Measured results don't need to be tied directly to financial measures to be valuable. Teams should define important objectives related to team performance and track the results through the project lifecycle. Examples of measurable objectives:

No more than two hours average per week in meetings with entire project team
Zero occurrences of management intervention to resolve interpersonal conflicts
At least two hours per month on average in off-site activity
75% of project tasks backed by individual buy-in and personal commitment

Many objectives related to teamwork can be defined and measured. It requires significant investment of energy (not necessarily time and money) to successfully define, track, and improve results, but the return on these investments will eventually show up on the bottom line.

Implementing the Seven Steps

Improving teamwork isn't necessarily easy, but favorable results can be achieved with focus. Designate one or more team members to be the "teamwork leader" or "team builder." They don't need to be team/project leaders or managers. Any enthusiastic person who understands the concepts presented here and other aspects of good teamwork can be focused on teambuilding and lead the effort to maximize team performance.

Ideally, everyone on a project team should understand teamwork concepts and contribute to teambuilding. If this isn't practical, designating one person or a small group to focus on teamwork is a good alternative.

Teambuilding from the Inside: Leadership Skills for Team Members

1-day Workshop