So, what is the purpose of a team building activity?

In my opinion it is, “an activity that will both replicate, in some way, one or more of the issues hindering the team’s development, and help the team to find solutions to the issue(s)”

Team building is a fairly vague term and is often reduced to a team doing something “fun” together without any real investigation into the problems and issues the team is facing.

Personally, I prefer to talk about “team development” and how team building activities can contribute to the team’s development.

Since facilitating my first team building in 1987, I have lost count of the number of team building workshops, seminars and events that I have been involved in.

Teams have built things together (towers, bridges, rafts ………), they have gone on journeys together (through caves, over mountains, down rivers, ……), they have lived together (bivouacs, camping, mountain huts, ………), they have solved problems together (enigmas, quizzes, puzzles, …….), they have compared personality profiles together (Insights, Belbin, Social Styles, ……), they have performed together (songs, theatre, shows, ….) and they have done a whole host of other things together.

All the activities I have used were always used for a specific reason; the activity would always have a “learning” objective that in some way would contribute to the team development process.

If I put my hand on my heart, I can’t say that every activity delved deeply into the team’s key issues but, they were, even in a small way, contributing.

Much of my early work in both teambuilding and leadership was in the outdoors and early on I was inspired by the Dainty and Lucas “Outdoor Development Outcome Matrix“.

Their approach looked at activities in two dimensions

In this framework activities are classified along a continuum ranging from “loosely defined” to “tightly defined”. A loosely defined exercise being one with limited rules and imposed external constraints (except in terms of safety), such as timeframes, budgets etc. A tightly defined exercise is one which has a high degree of imposed rules and constraints.

The review processes are also classified along a continuum ranging from “low intensity” to “high intensity”. Low intensity reviews tend to be more general, concentrating on the team’s performance with the aim of developing general rules or guidelines for the team as a whole. High intensity reviews concentrate more on the impact of individual behaviours with individual feedback, concentrating on how individual behaviours effect team performance.

The combination of these two dimensions results in four types of outcomes

Loosely defined activities with a low intensity review; typically used as “icebreakers” or “energisers”, these generally fairly short activities concentrate on simply “doing something together” and “having fun while doing so”.

Loosely defined activities with a high intensity review; typically used to explore group dynamics and how individual behaviour effects the overall team performance. The review would probably delve into areas such as, who takes initiatives, who dominates, who listens, who’s ideas are retained, etc.

Tightly defined activities with a low intensity review; typically used to explore how the team approaches “getting the job done”, areas such as objectives setting, work sharing, time management, coordination, etc.

Tightly defined activities with a high intensity review; typically used to integrate the key issues the team is facing and concentrating on both group dynamics and producing results. This type of activity is often used toward the end of a seminar to allow the team to experiment the application of what they have identified as their “improvement areas”.

Many activities can be easily adapted in terms of being loosely or tightly defined.

Take a typical “raft building” activity for example

Give the team limited time and “budget” to design, “buy” (and/or locate) materials to build a raft capable of getting the team between two fixed points, carrying a minimum number of people, with no one getting wet above the ankles, in less than……. etc., and you have a fairly tightly defined activity.

Of course, take away the imposed rules and simply brief the team that they have to cross the river and that there are some materials available that may be useful, and you have a more loosely defined exercise.

The intensity of the review is down to the facilitator and what she/he wants to explore.

All of this, of course, means that a teambuilding activity doesn’t (or shouldn’t) happen in “splendid isolation”, it is part of a process that includes some kind of team audit or diagnosis prior to any programme design or choice of activities.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against team “away days” where the team will do a variety of different activities together, which, even without reviews or debriefs, will, usually be beneficial to creating a positive team atmosphere. I say “usually”, because sometimes hidden conflicts between team members can be, unintentionally, exacerbated.

An effective team development process clearly has a before, during and after and requires time.

Taking time before to understand the team’s issues and problems. Devoting the time necessary during the event to allow a real exploration of the issues and find practical solutions. Allocating time after the event to ensure the application of the solutions.

And, yes, the process is often “cyclic”, with the after becoming the new before.

I’ve been involved in the design and facilitation of team development for almost 40 years now, if you would like to talk about team development be it as a team leader or someone facilitating team development; do not hesitate to contact me.

Bob

I help people to develop their interpersonal skills, usually within a leadership or teamwork context. If you are looking to develop your leadership, I might be able to help. I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years; roughly four thousand days of seminars, workshops, conferences, coaching, offsites, webinars, etc. – put back-to-back that makes almost ten “full” years.

boblarcher.com

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I ran my first team building event in 1987 in the UK, it was for a very operational team with concrete & tangible deliverables.

In the following years I ran team building events for sports teams, design teams, project teams, delivery teams, investigation teams …. all the teams I worked with had similar characteristics; on the “operational” side they had concrete & tangible deliverables, milestones to meet, budgets to respect and specifications to satisfy, and, on the “human” side, team members had been selected and, generally, wanted to be part of the team.

In around 1996 (and now in France), I became interested with a colleague (@jean-claude merlane) in applying teambuilding to senior leadership / management teams; inspired by the work of Jon Katzenbach on “The Myth of the Top Management Team”, we created an approach called “Synergie d’équipe de direction” which included a team performance audit, a two and half day’s seminar based around the results of the audit and then follow up half-day “in-house” workshops over a twelve month period.

We worked with senior teams (CEOs and their direct reports) from the fashion Industry, aeronautics, industrial maintenance, satellite imaging, clinics, medical supplies, the food industry ……. and our approach clearly had an impact on the way the team members interacted.

However, there was always the question of “what does the team actually do?”; not “what do the team members do?”; that was clear, the Head of Production looked after production, the Head of Marketing looked after marketing, the Head of HR looked after HR, etc.

It was always difficult to find the concrete & tangible “collective” purpose and deliverables that were expected of the team; many CEOs often fell into the “all my direct reports” fallacy.

A frontline team in a production environment can relatively easily articulate a meaningful purpose, whereas team purpose at the top always seemed more abstract, “improve the company’s performance” or “implement the company’s strategy, for example.

Concrete & tangible performance goals were hard to articulate; again, teams at lower levels of the organisation had milestones to meet, tests to carry out, critical paths to respect and cost envelopes to respect. Setting longer term collective & transversal objectives for the executive teams was often difficult, and rarely created a sense of engagement and urgency.

The team composition was always an issue for us, team members were part of the team because of their “formal” and/or “functional” role within the company. Team members were not “chosen” to be part of the senior team, they became de facto members because they had attained a certain position within the company – in fact many were only interested in their functional role and sometimes lacked the ability to explore solutions to transversal issues.

These issues clearly still exist today. I was asked recently to meet with an SVP to discuss a potential teambuilding approach for him and his team; when I asked why the team existed, the answer was, “they are my direct reports and I need to know what is going on”. In another team, during the preparation phase interviews, it was clear that many of the “Heads of” were more concerned about their functional responsibilities and found it difficult to find time for the senior team meetings.

When I look further afield at senior political teams for example, it invariably seems to be a Prime Minister or President with his or her direct ministers; he or she may talk about his or her team, but it is often very difficult to identify team oriented behaviours.

So, all of these brings me back to my initial question, do teams at the top really exist, or are they groups of individuals masquerading as teams?

Bob

I help people to develop their interpersonal skills, usually within a leadership or teamwork context. If you are looking to develop your leadership, I might be able to help. I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years; roughly four thousand days of seminars, workshops, conferences, coaching, offsites, webinars, etc. – put back-to-back that makes almost ten “full” years.

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The word “team” is one of the most abused words that I hear used in corporate environments

Teams are, apparently, everywhere; the design team, the product development team, the sales team, the project team, the management team, the leadership team ….. and, unfortunately, Together Everyone Achieves More is more often than not, Together Everyone Achieves Miserably.

At best these are, “groups masquerading as teams”, and in the worse cases they are simply collections of individuals reporting to the same person; very few of them have a collective objective (or deliverable) and there is little interdependence between the team members.

Just recently I was asked by a VP if I was available for a teambuilding event for his team of senior managers; he felt that they needed to support each other more and work together more effectively.

When I asked what the team actually does together, what’s their reason for being a team; the answer was, “they are my direct reports”

The team had very few of the commonly accepted team “descriptors”; and, when it came to Vision, Mission, Purpose and Values; I realised I had gone too far.

This was my third exchange of this kind this year.

I find it hard to understand that with all that has been written about teams, with all the models of team development, with all the frameworks of team effectiveness, with all the guidelines for team efficiency; that so few leaders actually apply it to their teams.

Teams are created, at least in the corporate world, for a need, for a reason. Something has to be achieved that needs the integration of different technical & human competencies; the something can’t be achieved by simply “summing up individual contributions”.

Teams need to be both efficient & effective when working together; what I call E² teams.

Being efficient is all about organisation, structuring, objectives, planning, milestones, deadlines, deliverables, validation ……. and, being effective is all about sharing, supporting, listening, trust, understanding, cohesion, empathy ………

Some teams tend to overconcentrate on being efficient and become a kind of productive “lean & mean” team – stuff gets done but the “ambiance” often leaves a lot to be desired.

Some teams tend to overconcentrate on being effective and become a kind of social “caring & sharing” team – a good ambiance but not a lot gets done.

And, of course, some teams manage to integrate both aspects and become truly performing teams; achieving their tasks and ensuring everyone’s wellbeing.

The journey from focus on individual objectives to the integration of individual and collective objectives, is not easy.

The journey from each person doing their own thing to interdependency, is not easy.

The journey from trusting oneself to trusting the others, is not easy.

The journey from low involvement to beyond the call of duty involvement, is not easy.

The journey from “I” to “WE”, is not easy.

People are not machines; they can’t be programmed to work together; even when the team is created for a clear reason it will take time for the team dynamics to ensure minimum dysfunctionality within the team.

The journey from Groupthink to Teamthink is not easy, but it it is worth it!

I’ve been fortunate in my professional life to have been part of (and led) a number of, what I consider to be high performing teams, and, once you have been there, you don’t want to be anywhere else.

There is a wealth of extremely practical and down to earth advice out there – USE IT!

Bob

I help people to develop their interpersonal skills, usually within a leadership or teamwork context. If you are looking to develop your leadership, I might be able to help. I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years; roughly four thousand days of seminars, workshops, conferences, coaching, offsites, webinars, etc. – put back-to-back that makes almost ten “full” years.

boblarcher.com

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If you went to the emergency hospital with a broken arm and blood oozing through the sling and the consultant said, “before we look at your arm, I’d like you to watch this motivational video or play this game”, you would be surprised, I imagine.

If you asked the consultant how long it would take for the arm to mend and the consultant said, “difficult to say, I will need to X-ray it and analyse the problem”, you wouldn’t be surprised, I imagine.

Interestingly, when, as a consultant, I am asked, “what will we do in our team building session” and I reply, “you will work on the pain points that you need to cure to be more effective & efficient”, the reply is usually “can we build something together?” or “cook something together?”.

When asked, again as a consultant, “how long do you think the team building process will take?” and I reply, “difficult to say, I’ll need to talk to team members and analyse how the team is currently functioning before I can propose a course of action”, the reply is usually one of surprise.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against “activities”; I use them all the time, but I select them once I have understood the issues and I select activities that I can link to the team’s issues.

I cut my teeth on team building with senior teams in the mid-eighties, doing some very “edge of the seat” T-Group type stuff; working with teams that I had never met before and identifying & helping them to solve their issues in real-time. Although this approach was very effective and quite “exciting” as a facilitator, it cost me a lot on the energy front – I left events on an emotional high but, I also left, completely drained of energy.

My approach today is somewhat more structured & disciplined, without being rigid & dogmatic.

There is still plenty of space for the unexpected and time for some “fun activities” – although I consider that everything I do with teams is “enjoyable”.

When deciding to help a team in its development, I work “globally” through six steps:

Step 1 is an analysis of how the team is currently functioning, with the objective of finding the handful of real “pain points” that need to be cured to allow the team to move forward.

I never rely just on the team leader’s view; I interview all team members and often use some kind of “scoring” questionnaire to get a more objective view with questions like: “is there a high level of trust within the team”, “is leadership shared within the team”, “does the team have clear performance objectives” – a mix of task-oriented and process-oriented questions.

Step 2 is my analysis of step 1; finding common themes and issues that I feel that the team needs to address in order to become effective and/or efficient.

Step 3 is a validation meeting with the team to confirm, and get agreement, that these are the key issues to be solved. I require the “buy-in” of the team members that they are willing to work on and address “their” issues; my role is to help them solve their issues, not solve their issues for them – the issues are theirs, not mine.

Step 4 is the putting together of a “programme” of interventions, activities, workshops, etc., that will address the chosen issues – undoubtedly with a few “whistles and bells”.

This doesn’t mean “starting with a blank sheet”; even though every senior team is different, they all have common or similar issues and I have blocks or sessions that can be tailored to fit most teams.

Step 5 is running the programme, probably the most “visible” part of the overall process; facilitating, presenting models, debriefing, deciding what to do with the unexpected – there is always something unexpected.

Not all the pain points can necessarily be “cured”; however, the key to step 5 is ensuring that realistic & applicable actions are defined to enable the team to “treat” the issues in the short to medium term – this means some kind of roadmap or blueprint with concrete deliverables (with dates and such like) that are accepted and agreed upon by all team members

Step 6 is the periodic follow-up of the roadmap. My approach is that it is up to the team members to apply the teams’ actions; however, an “external prod” is often helpful.

I have found that this approach, delivers results and, strangely, its not the whistles and bells that are retained. I still meet with people from teams that I helped many years ago and they talk about “the feedback session” or “the discussion around trust” – not about the go-kart race or the wine tasting.

I have been passionate about helping “collections of individuals” to function as what I call E² (Effective & Efficient) teams for over 30 years now; if you would like to discuss teams and their development do not hesitate to contact me at boblarcher@boblarcher.com

Bob

I help people to develop their interpersonal skills, usually within a leadership or teamwork context. If you are looking to develop your leadership, I might be able to help. I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years; roughly four thousand days of seminars, workshops, conferences, coaching, offsites, webinars, etc. – put back-to-back that makes almost ten “full” years.

boblarcher.com

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Having competent team members is the sine qua non for any team; it’s the strict minimum.

However, we should never forget that, it is not the team with the best players that wins, but the team that plays the best.

This article will look at the holy grail of becoming a high performing senior management or leadership team.

In his 1981 book, “Management Teams – Why They Succeed or Fail”, Meredith Belbin, one of the original gurus of Team Building and creator of the “Team Roles Profile”, called this the Apollo Syndrome – teams formed of “experts” in their domains producing unexpectedly poor results.

This failure seemed to be due to certain flaws in the way teams operate:

• Spending excessive time in abortive or destructive debate, trying to persuade other team members to adopt their own view, and demonstrating a flair for spotting weaknesses in others’ arguments
• Struggling in their decision making, with little coherence in the decisions reached
• Team members tending to act along their own favourite lines without taking account of what fellow members were doing
• Recognising what is happening but over compensating – avoiding confrontation, which equally led to problems in decision making

Almost twenty years before Belbin, in 1965, Bruce Tuckman published a theory or model which has become almost the “industry standard” in terms of team building and known as “Tuckman’s stages of group development”.

Tuckman, working with small groups (not management teams) identified the Forming, Storming, and Norming journey to becoming a Performing collection of individuals. He later added a fifth stage, which he called Adjourning, which I will concentrate on less.

Becoming a performing team, let alone a high performing team, has never been easy and it seems to be even more difficult in today’s VUCA world of rapid corporate change, where joint-ventures and global mergers & de-mergers are the new norm. This leads to senior people spending less time in their position and no sooner than the team has formed, it is de-formed.

So, is there a road, or roads, to becoming a high performing team?

Clearly, high performance within in a team isn’t instantaneous; a collection of disparate individuals needs time to become a cohesive and supportive whole, heading in a common direction. The journey from “forming” to “performing” is not linear, it is not timebound and the destination is always changing.

Groups of people working together develop along two dimensions; one related to “task behaviours” (what the people have to do) and the other related to “process behaviours” (how people do what they have to do).

Task behaviours include things like:

• Clarifying the mission and objectives of the team; ensuring everyone clearly understands, & agrees, as to why the team exists and what is “globally” expected from the team.
• Creating a mode of governance for the team; ensuring everyone clearly understands, & agrees, as to how the team will function to achieve its mission and objectives
• Defining roles within the team; giving clear expectations about the roles played by each team member, without team members becoming “role bound”
• Performance measures to help the team regularly reviews its performance and objectives and alter its priorities and practice in the light of review

Well-developed task behaviours help teams function “efficiently” without becoming too “lean & mean”’

Process behaviours include areas such as:

• How the team engages in decision making; are disagreements suppressed or is constructive criticism and encouragement used by team members
• The level of trust & support within the team; is diversity of personal style respected & embraced, are each other’s’ strengths and weaknesses accepted
• The approach to conflict within the team; are disagreements considered important to team decision making and does criticism has a constructive flavour, oriented toward removing an obstacle that the team faces
• Leadership within the team; is the issue who controls or how to get the job done, do all team members use their leadership capacity

Well-developed process behaviours help teams function “effectively” without becoming too “sharing & caring”’

It is the interplay between the task and process behaviours that generate the famous Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing phases of team development. Sometimes the issue to moving forward is task related (unclear objectives, lack of performance measures, information not circulated …), sometimes it is process related (hidden personal agendas, power struggles, clashes of personal styles …) and sometimes it is a combination of both.

Teams that integrate the positive development of both task and process behaviours can become E² teams – Effective and Efficient.

As well as Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing, there are two other possible configurations.

Teams that overly concentrate on process behaviours to the detriment of task behaviours tend to become a “socialising” team; tightly knit with a feeling of trust and ”we-ness” within the team, significant interpersonal support and effective communication but with little real task accomplishment.

On the other hand, teams that sacrifice the human element in favour of getting stuff done can become a “producing” team; task oriented with little interpersonal communication and “I” predominating over “WE”.

Team development is not a linear, mono-dimensional journey. Teams can accelerate, become derailed, fall-back, get lost and, in some case, implode and disintegrate.

If you would like to discuss teams and their development do not hesitate to contact me at boblarcher@boblarcher.com

Bob

I help people to develop their interpersonal skills, usually within a leadership or teamwork context. If you are looking to develop your leadership, I might be able to help. I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years; roughly four thousand days of seminars, workshops, conferences, coaching, offsites, webinars, etc. – put back-to-back that makes almost ten “full” years.

boblarcher.com

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“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”

Steve Jobs

The first teambuilding I was involved in as a facilitator was in 1988; it was a week-long outdoor based event for the twelve-member management team of the Rolls-Royce training department.

Since then, I have lost count of the number of teambuilding’s I have been involved in; I have run them for corporate giants, SME’s, start-ups and charities, I have run them for Boards of Directors, Business Unit Management Teams, Project teams and sales teams; in Europe and North America and I have run them in both English and French.

Tuckman’s famous, “Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing” was my reference in my early years along with Cog’s Ladder (a model of team growth) and the work of people like Fisher on small team decision making. In the early nineties I discovered Jones’s Team Development Matrix, which I considered to be a two-dimensional version of Tuckman’s approach; this became “my model” for numerous teambuilding’s and is still something that I use today to help teams understand how they function – the model is an excellent example of how “an image paints a thousand words”.

So, is there a “road” that will lead to the high performing team?

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success”

Henry Ford

Clearly, high performance within in a team isn’t instantaneous; a collection of disparate individuals needs time to become a cohesive and supportive whole, heading in a common direction. The journey from “forming” to “performing” is not linear, it is not timebound and the destination is always changing.

Virtually all team development models identify four common “phases” or “configurations” that teams go through in their search for the holy grail of team performance.

An initial phase of getting to know one another and understanding what the team is about.

The starting point for new teams. Depending on the model chosen this phase goes under a variety of names, forming phase, polite phase, orientation phase, etc. Team members will be attempting to learn what the organisation expects of them as a functioning team, what their tasks are, how to do them and what the standards are. In this low level of team maturity phase, low levels of task productivity and a great deal of leader dependency can be expected.

Team members will generally be mildly to moderately eager to engage, have generally positive expectations, and show some anxiety about the task and each other.

You can expect to see a certain lack of involvement & commitment, one-way communication, hidden feelings and poor listening.

During this phase the Leader needs to be “out in front”, providing a vision for the team and clarifying expectations about how the team process will be initiated. Communication will be primarily one-way from team leader to team members.

Time needs to be allowed for team members to get to know one another, build a shared purpose/mission and continuously clarify team outcomes while working on personal commitment by linking personal goals to team roles; this will help the team to start to move forward on its journey.

Action steps for moving forward

• Build a shared purpose/mission and continuously clarify team outcomes.
• Create a sense of urgency and rationale for the purpose/mission.
• Invest time in allowing team members to share skills, experience and personal goals.
• Bring individuals together to work on common tasks.
• Define recognition and rewards, both individual and team-based.
• Work on personal commitment by linking personal goals to team roles.

A divergence phase where “like-minded” sub-teams or cliques are formed.

Storming or Bid For Power, depending on the chosen model, begins when team members begin to engage with the team and the task. Members put forward ideas about how things should be, and a kind of power struggle takes place. If there is a designated team leader, that person may be challenged. Storming may seem like an uncomfortable or unwelcome process, but it is necessary before the team can settle into a generally accepted way of doing things. Without it, members would be disengaged from the team and unclear about where they stand in relation to the team. Work or tasks during this phase are often executed by cliques or sub-teams within the team, hence the term “Fragmented Team” in the Jones Model and “Conflict” in the models of Tubb’s and Fisher.

Success is often due to the efforts of a “clique” and is not a real collective success.

You would expect to see a lack of cohesion, inconsistency, conflicts with team members appearing confused and expressing concern about the objectives or the organisation of the team.

In order to move the team forward, it is important to pull the “fragments” of the team together in order to achieve a collective rather than individual output. Team members need to be encouraged to express their differing opinions, ideas, and feelings so as to raise issues, confront deviations from commitments and make connections between divergent perspectives. Realistic targets need to be set for the team to enable them to start achieving performance goals and tasks.

The team leader needs to concentrate less on being “out in front” and become a “facilitator” helping them focus on goals & expectations, managing process and conflict, generating ideas, and explaining decisions.

Action steps for moving forward

• Build a common understanding by periodically communicating the team’s purpose/mission.
• Acknowledge times when the team is struggling and take time to discuss ways to move toward “Cohesive group.”
• Set out to achieve a few performance goals and tasks.
• Encourage members to express their differing opinions, ideas, and feelings by asking open-ended questions.
• Make connections between divergent perspectives; acknowledge where there are differences.
• Build a set of operating agreements (rules for team behaviour).
• Raise issues, confront deviations from commitments, and allow conflict to occur.

A coming together phase with a realisation that the team needs to share in order to move forward.

This, “Norming” or “Cohesive” phase is where the team begins to generate its own culture or accepted understandings about how things are done. Team norms may be overt and written, like ground rules, or unspoken, unacknowledged practices that arise. It is in this phase of the team’s development that the individuals start to feel like a “collective.” Team members share information, ideas and perceptions as they emerge and a consensus is sought as to how to become truly effective.

In this phase the leader is more “alongside”, acting primarily as a coach providing encouragement, helping to build consensus, and giving feedback.

Action steps for moving forward

• Develop shared leadership based on expertise and development needs.
• Translate common purpose and team expectations into performance goals that are specified and measurable.
• Build consensus on overarching goals and approaches.
• Formally give and receive feedback within the team.
• Maintain focus on external relationships: commitments, requirements, feedback, and competitive realities.
• Take risks by setting stretch performance goals while simultaneously encouraging the disclosure of fears.
• Celebrate successes, share rewards, recognise team and individual achievements.

A final phase where the team is able to reconcile both individual and team needs

Once the team culture is established, the team can really start to work; ‘Performing’ in the terms of Tuckman, ‘Effective Team’ for Jones and the ‘Constructive’ phase for Cog.

A team, and its members, in this phase will have incorporated not only tasks and people needs, but also individual and collective needs. Leadership is often shared in this phase with the designated leader becoming more of a participant, but ready to stand-in when necessary. It is in this phase that the synergy created brings about an excellence which goes beyond the sum of the individual contributions.

Two relatively common configurations that teams can find themselves in are “Productive Team” and “Social Team”

Teams often find themselves in the productive team configuration when they have sacrificed the human element in favour of getting stuff done. The team will probably be producing under difficult interpersonal circumstances and be dependent on the formal team leader; they will probably rely on the over application of processes and procedures.

Low morale, lack of empowerment, resentment and, in many cases, high turnover are often the tell-tale signs.

Teams often find themselves in the social team configuration because they have overly concentrated on relationships to the detriment of delivering on their objectives. Team members tend to become tightly knit with a feeling of trust and ”we-ness” within the team; there is often a lot of interpersonal support and effective communication will usually exist but with little real task accomplishment.

The tell-tale signs are conviviality, understanding, sharing, mutual helping and cohesion; a certain degree of flexibility may be apparent.

The whole team development process is not a linear, mono-dimensional journey. Teams can accelerate, become derailed, fall-back, get lost and, in some case, implode and disintegrate.

What is paramount for the team leader is to be able to fully endorse the different “roles” or “styles” of leadership depending on where the team is in its development; out in front showing the way forward in the early stages, facilitating and creating “weeness” as the team starts to move forward, coaching from the side-lines to empower the team as it starts to become cohesive and finally aligned with the team when it becomes a performing team.

“A single twig breaks, but the bundle of twigs is strong”

Tecumseh, a Shawnee Indian chief

Collections of individuals or groups masquerading as teams can be found at all levels of an organisation; from the production team to the board team and everywhere in between – sales teams, project teams, support teams ….

Measuring a team’s performance and mapping its development is clearly not an exact science, if indeed it is a science at all. However, there are ample frameworks, models and research that can be used to contribute to concrete improvements in how people work together.

These models and frameworks integrated into a coherent team development process, as opposed to a series of “stand-alone activities” can significantly accelerate team development and performance and help teams through the critical stages of their life together.

Bob

I help people to develop their interpersonal skills, usually within a leadership or teamwork context. If you are looking to develop your leadership, I might be able to help. I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years; roughly four thousand days of seminars, workshops, conferences, coaching, offsites, webinars, etc. – put back-to-back that makes almost ten “full” years.

boblarcher.com

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Having mentally tough individuals in the team is one thing, having a mentally tough team is something else.

We all bring strengths to a team, some of us are heads down and focussed on achieving the team’s objectives, some of us are questioning the team’s purpose and aligning the team in a common direction and others are trying to learn from the team’s mistakes. It’s by integrating these individual strengths that a team becomes stronger, or tougher, than the sum of its individuals; the opposite of integration is fragmentation, with individuals playing to their personal strengths and the team suffering from collective weaknesses.

Integrating strengths leads to teams that have self-belief & can-do attitudes and the stickability that leads to success.

Without this integration, teams suffer from self-doubts, avoidance & can’t do attitudes and the unwillingness that leads to failure.

Teams need to be in control of, and know, where they are going, teams need to be committed to delivering on their objectives, teams need to learn from both successes & failures and teams need to have confidence in their abilities to succeed – teams need Mental Toughness.

A mentally tough team has clear and well-defined objectives, treats conflicts and the associated emotions effectively, delivers on its commitments, continuously improves its performance and exudes confidence and alignment.

The Clough and Strycharcyk 4C’s benchmark model of Mental Toughness can be applied to both individual and teams; each of the sub factors within Control, Commitment, Challenge and Confidence contribute to effective collective team performance.

Interpersonal Confidence will contribute to both working together and communicating, Risk and Learning Orientations will contribute to continuous improvement, Goal Orientation will contribute to having a common Purpose & objectives, Achievement Orientation will contribute to delivering the objectives, etc.

Here are some things those in mentally tough teams might say:

• We make decisions based on the team’s vision, mission & values
• We do not ignore emotions but we deal with conflicts in a rational & objective manner
• We set clear concrete objectives with intermediate milestones
• We are interdependent and will do everything necessary to deliver on our promises
• We embrace risks & opportunities positively without taking hasty & reckless decisions
• We evaluate regularly our performance, looking for “best practice” & improvements
• We have a high level of trust and there is a clear feeling of “WE” within the team
• We are at the “leading edge” of our competencies and deploy them when needed

If you are interested in developing the Mental Toughness of both your team and your team members do not hesitate to contact me at boblarcher@boblarcher.com, I have been helping teams to perform more effectively for over 30 years now and I am a Master Trainer for the internationally recognised 4C’s Mental Toughness model.

Bob

I help people to develop their interpersonal skills, usually within a leadership or teamwork context. If you are looking to develop your leadership, I might be able to help. I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years; roughly four thousand days of seminars, workshops, conferences, coaching, offsites, webinars, etc. – put back-to-back that makes almost ten “full” years.

boblarcher.com

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The fifth and final post of a five-part series of posts around the subject of teams

In this part I will look at team building

Rafting down a river together, cooking dinner together or building a paper tower together do not constitute teambuilding.

It is important to distinguish between a teambuilding “activity”, a teambuilding “event” and the “process” of team development.

A teambuilding activity can be almost any activity that requires a degree of cooperation between those involved in order to succeed. An activity on its own will not create a high performing team, although it may highlight what is working well within the team and some barriers to team growth

A teambuilding event is usually a structured series of teambuilding activities, moving from relatively simple exercises and tasks (few constraints and rules) to more and more complex tasks (interlinking constraints and rules). Review sessions between the activities allow the team members to reflect on success or failure and identify team performance improvement actions to apply to subsequent activities. A teambuilding event will usually provide a team with concrete examples of what is hindering its performance and a blueprint for improved team performance.

A teambuilding process will clearly include a teambuilding event (and the associated teambuilding activities) but will look at the team in a much longer time-frame.

Most teambuilding processes have at least 4 phases

Phase 1 is the diagnostic “where are we now” phase, and usually includes interviews with team members, maybe a team performance audit and, often, some kind of personal profiling.

Phase 2 is the design “what are we going to do” phase and uses the results of the diagnostic phase to decide on the appropriate mix of exercises and activities; should the teambuilding event concentrate more on Task Behaviours or more on Process Behaviours for example.

Phase 3 is the ”teambuilding event itself” phase, generally of two or two and a half days duration with a  wide range of exercises and activities, such as theatrical improvisations and group orienteering, and, usually, a complex multi-task project requiring the need to reconcile team and individual objectives to conclude the event. Not only are debriefs programmed after each activity, but “working” sessions are included where the team will elaborate its purpose, vision, missions, etc.

Phase 4 is the “in-house follow-up” phase whereby consultants meet with the team at intervals of (at least) 3 months, 6 months and 1 year after the teambuilding event to review ongoing progress and to give continued feedback and advice on how to maintain continued team effectiveness. I consider this to be the most important phase, as it will ensure that the performance of the team is sustained, and not merely a ‘one-off’ event. In my experience many teams fail to engage in this critical investment, with the consequence of simply falling back into their old bad habits.

Conclusion

Collections of individuals or groups masquerading as teams can be found at all levels of an organisation; from the production team to the board team and everywhere in between – sales teams, project teams, support teams ….

Measuring a team’s performance and mapping its development is clearly not an exact science, if indeed it is a science at all. However, there are ample frameworks, models and research that can be used to contribute to concrete improvements in how people work together. These models and frameworks integrated into a coherent team development process, as opposed to a series of “stand-alone activities” can significantly accelerate team development and performance and help teams through the critical stages of their life together.

If you are interested in exploring the development of your team or the teams around you, do not hesitate to contact me at boblarcher@boblarcher.com

Bob

I help people to develop their interpersonal skills, usually within a leadership or teamwork context. If you are looking to develop your leadership, I might be able to help. I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years; roughly four thousand days of seminars, workshops, conferences, coaching, offsites, webinars, etc. – put back-to-back that makes almost ten “full” years.

boblarcher.com

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The fourth of a five-part series of posts around the subject of teams

In this part I will look at the team development process

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success”

Henry Ford

Clearly, high performance within in a team isn’t instantaneous; a collection of disparate individuals needs time to become a cohesive and supportive whole, heading in a common direction. The journey from “forming” to “performing” is not linear, it is not timebound and the destination is always changing

Virtually all team development models identify four common “phases” or “configurations” that teams go through in their search for the holy grail of team performance

1. An initial phase of getting to know one another and understanding what the team is about.

Depending on the model chosen this phase goes under a variety of names, forming phase, polite phase, orientation phase, etc. In this phase authors agree that team members will be hesitant about speaking their minds and mindful of how others perceive them; with members thinking of themselves, individually, in relation to the task and what they might have to contribute.

If time is allowed for team members to get to know one another, build a shared purpose/mission and continuously clarify team outcomes while working on personal commitment by linking personal goals to team roles; the team will start to move forward on its journey

2. A divergence phase where “like-minded” sub-teams or cliques are formed.

Storming or Bid For Power, depending on the chosen model, begins when team members begin to engage with the team and the task. Members put forward ideas about how things should be, and a kind of power struggle takes place. If there is a designated team leader, that person may be challenged. Storming may seem like an uncomfortable or unwelcome process, but it is necessary before the team can settle into a generally accepted way of doing things. Without it, members would be disengaged from the team and unclear about where they stand in relation to the team. Work or tasks during this phase are often executed by cliques or sub-teams within the team, hence the term “Fragmented Team” in the Jones Model and “Conflict” in the models of Tubb’s and Fisher.

In order to move the team forward, it is important to pull the “fragments” of the team together in order to achieve a collective rather than individual output. Team members need to be encouraged to express their differing opinions, ideas, and feelings so as to raise issues, confront deviations from commitments and make connections between divergent perspectives. Realistic targets need to be set for the team to enable them to start achieving performance goals and tasks.

3. A coming together phase with a realisation that the team needs to share in order to move forward.

This, “Norming” phase is where the team begins to generate its own ‘culture’ or accepted understandings about how things are done. Team norms may be overt and written, like ground rules, or unspoken, unacknowledged practices that arise. It is in this phase of the team’s development that the individuals starts to feel like a “collective.” Team members share information, ideas and perceptions as they emerge and a consensus is sought as to how to become truly effective.

4. A final phase where the team is able to reconcile both individual and team needs

Once the team culture is established, the team can really start to work; ‘Performing’ in the terms of Tuckman, ‘Effective Team’ for Jones and the ‘Constructive’ phase for Cog.

A team, and its members, in this phase will have incorporated not only tasks and people needs, but also individual and collective needs. Leadership is often shared in this phase with the designated leader becoming more of a participant, but ready to stand-in when necessary. It is in this phase that the synergy created brings about an excellence which goes beyond the sum of the individual contributions.

The whole process is not a linear, mono-dimensional journey. Teams can accelerate, become derailed, fall-back, get lost and, in some case, implode and disintegrate.

If you would like to discuss teams and their development do not hesitate to contact me at boblarcher@boblarcher.com

Bob

I help people to develop their interpersonal skills, usually within a leadership or teamwork context. If you are looking to develop your leadership, I might be able to help. I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years; roughly four thousand days of seminars, workshops, conferences, coaching, offsites, webinars, etc. – put back-to-back that makes almost ten “full” years.

boblarcher.com

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Part 3 of a five-part series of posts around the subject of teams

In this part, I will look at what I consider to be the essence of a performing team.

Albeit each framework has its specifics; however, there are clearly commonalties between the different frameworks; words such as Purpose, Trust, Talent (or resources), Performance and Leadership appear regularly.

From my analysis of a multitude of approaches, I have identified 10 factors, each with descriptors that to contribute to high team performance

Purpose – the team has a clear & unified purpose:

• Team members understand why the team exists; there is a clear “raison d’être”
• The vision, mission and objectives of the team are accepted by everyone
• The objectives are meaningful to each team member.
• There is a collective accountability to achieve the team’s objectives
• Team failure is “collective” not “individual”

Governance – a mode of governance has been defined for the team:

• The team has taken time to explicitly discuss team process, how the team will function to achieve its mission and objectives
• Team norms for working together have been established and regarded as standard for every team member
• Team members understand the team’s processes and priorities
• The team regularly reviews its governance model to ensure continued appropriateness
• The team has developed a “repeatable” way of working while remaining agile

Roles – individual’s roles within the team have been clarified:

• Team members feel free to express their feelings on the tasks as well as on the team’s operation.
• There are clear expectations about the roles played by each team member.
• Work is fairly distributed among team members.
• Team members know and carry out their own roles and support & assist to others, as required
• Team members are not “role bound”

Performance – collective team performance objectives have been established:

• The team is clear on what needs to be done next, by whom, and by when.
• Team members understand that the accumulation of completed tasks leads to the effective and successful achievement of their final objective.
• Performance objectives are cascaded into well-defined concrete milestones against which the team measures itself
• The team regularly reviews its performance and objectives and alters its priorities and practice in the light of review.
• Team performance is more than a sum of individual performances

Leadership – leadership within the team is shared:

• The issue is not who controls, but how to get the job done
• Leadership shifts depending on the circumstances, the needs of the team, and the skills of the members.
• Leadership is used for collective benefits as opposed to individual benefits
• All team members use their leadership capacity
• The formal leader models the appropriate behaviour and helps establish positive norms

Communication – team members express themselves openly and honestly while respecting others:

• Team members use effective listening techniques such as questioning, paraphrasing, and summarizing to ensure understanding
• There is much discussion and everyone is encouraged to participate.
• Team members express themselves openly and honestly
• Team members build on each other’s ideas to come to conclusions
• Communication also takes place outside of formal team meetings

Cohesion – there is a clear sense of “we” within the team:

• Team members have a collaborative and collective commitment to achieve the team’s collective objectives.
• Individuals’ abilities, knowledge and experience are pooled and used by the team
• Team members are consistently supported and encouraged as a way of maintaining high levels of motivation
• There is a clear feeling of “we” within the team
• Team decisions are actively supported by all team members

Decisions – the team engages in shared decision making:

• There is a lot of discussion in which virtually everyone participates
• Disagreements are not suppressed or overridden by premature action
• Constructive criticism and encouragement are used by team members
• There are good processes for making, communicating, implementing and reviewing decisions
• Important decisions are made by consensus

Conflict – conflict within the team is considered an asset:

• Conflicts and disagreements are considered important to team decision.
• There is a willingness to work through difficult situations or conflict constructively.
• Disagreements that cannot be resolved, resulting in the need for compromises do not block the team’s efforts.
• Criticism has a constructive flavour; oriented toward removing an obstacle that the team faces
• The team is comfortable with disagreement and shows no signs of avoiding, smoothing over or suppressing conflict

Trust – there is a high level of support & trust within the team:

• Trust is created by open & honest communication and by consistent and respectful behaviour
• The team trusts the team leader and feels that it is led in an appropriate way.
• There is acceptance of each other’s’ strengths and weaknesses.
• People help each other by listening, evaluating, encouraging experimentation & giving support.
• Diversity of personal style is respected and embraced

The descriptors shown above can easily be converted into “audit” questions with which ‘spidergrams’ and the like can be produced to identify issues and action areas within the team

In part 4 I will look at the team development process

If you would like to discuss teams and their development do not hesitate to contact me at boblarcher@boblarcher.com

Bob

I help people to develop their interpersonal skills, usually within a leadership or teamwork context. If you are looking to develop your leadership, I might be able to help. I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years; roughly four thousand days of seminars, workshops, conferences, coaching, offsites, webinars, etc. – put back-to-back that makes almost ten “full” years.

boblarcher.com

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