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Contrary to conventional wisdom teams could be the worst way to tackle a problem Due to lack of coordination, motivation and competition The best leaders may fail at making a team deliver results Likelihood of Success can be increased by
Designating a deviant Avoiding double digits Keep the team together
Be ruthless about membership Embrace your own quirkiness Focus your coaching on Group processes
Run a launch meeting Help the team conduct midpoint reviews Take a few minutes to reflect at the finish
Teams must be real Need compelling direction Need enabling structures Need supportive organization Need expert coaching
Many managers don t know the real meaning of teams. Often confused with Groups of individuals Mutual Accountability leads to results Teams need to respond constructively Share an essential discipline
Working Group Strong clearly focused leader Individual Accountability Purpose same as the broader organizations mission Individual work products Runs efficient meetings Discusses, decided, delegates
Team Shared leadership roles Individual & Mutual accountability Specific team purpose delivered by the team Collective work products Encourages open-ended discussion and active problem solving Discusses, decides and does real work together
1.
A meaningful common purpose the team has helped shape. Specific common goals that flow from the common purpose A mix of complementary skills A strong commitment to how the work gets done Mutual Accountability Once the team discipline is established it is free to concentrate on critical challenges.
2.
3. 4. 5.
Set and seize upon a few immediate performanceoriented tasks and goals
Spend lots of time together Exploit the power of positive feedback, reward, recognition
Executing major initiatives in an organization calls for complex teams Complex teams are generally large, virtual, diverse and specialized This may lead to non-performance Eg. Larger teams tend to collaborate lesser Eight practices can help build more collaboration by executives, HR professionals and team leaders
What HR can do
Ensuring the requisite skills Supporting a sense of community
Executives realize that individuals emotional intelligence is as important as their IQ Groups emotional intelligence may be even more important Groups EI is not the sum of the individual s EI It comes from norms that support awareness and regulation of emotions within and outside the team
Individual Team Members Norms that create awareness Interpersonal Understanding Perspective taking
Group
Cross Boundary
Organizational Understanding
Norms that help regulate emotions Confronting Caring Creating resources for working with emotion Creating an affirmative environment Solving problems proactively Building external relationships
Companies with international operations often have teams with members from diverse backgrounds Lack of fluency in the group s dominant language leads to a notion of incompetence Briefly there are 4 barriers to a multicultural team and 4 kinds of intervention that may resolve the barriers
is speaking explicitly and the other as questions, differences arise Troubles with accents and fluency Different Attitudes towards hierarchy Conflicting decision making norms
and working around them Structural Intervention when the team has obvious subgroups, reorganizing to reduce friction Managerial Intervention - making decisions without team involvement, used rarely Exit voluntary or involuntary removal of a member, last resort
Cross Functional teams blame psychological factors, mistrust for inability to make decisions This is due to the fact that each member vies for resources for his/her department To break a situation the CEO usually takes a call A majority remain unhappy and the CEO is branded a dictator
by their own assumptions Provide a range of options for achieving the desired outcome Surface preferences early Assign Devil s advocate
In a high stakes scenario (e.g. entering a untested market) groups with top experts are brought together Virtuoso Teams Superstars tend to be egocentric and highly temperamental This may lead to settling for an ordinary team But Virtuoso teams can work and should not be shunned
their egocentrism and morph the team into a powerful, unified team with shared identity Make work a contact sport encourage one-to-one impassioned dialogue in designated spaces Respect the customers intelligence Encourage the belief that the customer expects more, in order to raise the standard Use time management strategies to reduce the team members need for individual freedom and intellectual freedom
OrdinaryTeams 1.Choose members for availability 2. Emphasize the collective 3. Focus on tasks 4. Work individually and remotely 5. Address the average customer
Virtuoso Teams 1. Choose members for skill 2. Emphasize the individual 3. Focus on ideas 4. Work together and intensely 5. Address the sophisticated customer
Conflict has a negative connotation However it is valuable for the team to have Constructive conflict Constructive conflict helps teams make high stake decisions under considerable uncertainty and in the face of intense pressure Mitigating interpersonal conflict is the key
encourages debates on critical issues and prevents ignorant debates Multiply the alternatives weigh 4 or 5 options even which you don t support Create common goals this rallies everyone to work on decisions as collaborations Use humour relaxes everyone , increases tactfulness, effective listening and creativity Balance the power structure Seek consensus with qualification most relevant senior manager makes a decision in the absence of a consensus, builds fairness and equity
Some projects need specialists to work on them because of diverse requirements Often the best qualified are scattered across the globe But it isn t necessary to bring them together They can in fact contribute better from their base locations However it requires shrewd management It goes beyond emails and video conferencing Ongoing threaded discussions are needed to remind the members of decisions rationales and commitments
Rule 1. Exploit Diversity: Use the best resources of each country and coordinate through conference calls Rule 2: Use of Technology to simulate reality: Conference calls, videoconferencing, Instant messenger, Virtual workspaces Rule 3. Hold the team together: try to bring in a common language of communication or improvise, daily or constant communication in order to understand ideas and thought processes.
A complete guide to handling and building stronger teams Various issues handled by the various chapters Covered almost each and every dynamic of the team scenario today Knowledge that is useful for teams across boundaries