Building a Better Team by Looking Under the Hood

I’m about to slay a sacred cow here.  That “cow” is this:  if you want to build a successful team, then you must first have the team members attend training in interpersonal communication skills, otherwise known as team building. 

Nothing is further from the truth.  Do adults really need training in how to be nice to each other? In my experience from working with teams, it is apparent that the issue is NOT the interpersonal skills of the team members, but rather the inherent structure of the team that predicts success. By structure, I mean the following:

• Values and Vision (What is important to us)

• Mission (What is the purpose of our team/organization)

• Decision Processes (How we make decisions)

• Norms & Ground Rules (How we work together)

• Boundary Management (How we coordinate with others outside of the team)

• Roles & Responsibilities (Who does what)

• Goals, Milestones & Action Plans (How we accomplish our mission)

You can send team members to team building seminars to learn how to work better together, but if you don’t change the structure of the team, the interpersonal communication processes will essentially remain the same. This may be one reason why team-building training gets a bad rap, i.e., “touchy-feely” training.  Adults feel condescended when their training focuses on how to talk with each other.  After all, they are adults, operating a successful business and probably have some inkling of how to communicate to get the job done.  A business team that is successful is not that way because the members are nice to each other.  The team is successful because it has an underlying structure which permits the team members to interact effectively to get the job done.

When I am asked to help a team increase its effectiveness, I do observe the interpersonal processes.  However, I view these processes not as the cause of the problem, but rather as a symptom of underlying factors.  Therefore, when I help the team improve its effectiveness, I don’t start with the interpersonal processes, but rather help the team uncover the structure that lead to such processes.

For example, a business team I had the honor of working with was charged with developing a new product. The team members had very long meetings. Discussions seemed to go on forever.  No work was getting done.  Things were stalled.  When goals were not met, there was not much consequence.   Whenever there was any sense of disappointment with a team member dropping the ball, there was no confrontation.  During one meeting I observed two members upset with each other about an important issue facing the team.  No one said anything about the issue.  Indeed, they acted as if it never happened!  When they broke for lunch, I drew pictures of elephants on the walls.  Upon return, they asked why all the elephants?  “What elephants?” I replied.  They looked at me as if I had really lost my marbles.  After continuing this ruse for a bit I made my point, “Earlier I observed an elephant in the middle of the table that everybody pretended wasn’t there.”  They realized that I was speaking of the preceding argument.  I probed a bit more, “Why is it when an argument breaks out regarding an issue that involves the team’s effectiveness, you act as if it didn’t occur?”  Their response?  “We see conflict as a bad thing.  It’s really between two people and none of our business.”  This resulted in the discovery of a norm operating in the group which said that conflict was to be buried, no matter what the content.  I spent time exploring how that norm (and others) was hindering the team.  In essence, I spent time discussing how conflict can help a team.  I did not do training on how to be “nice” to each other, but I did examine the underlying structure of the team.

The next time you observe something occurring in your team or group that isn’t quite right, try observing a bit more rather than jumping in.  Or immediately making a decision to send them to training.  You may learn something about the underlying dynamics that led to the incident, and if you address it at that level, you have a greater chance of developing an enduring solution based on the root cause.

The next several articles in this bi-weekly series will present and discuss the building blocks of team structure, mentioned earlier in this article, for developing and maintaining a successful team.