How Anyone Can Develop Effective Work Teams

Now many more employers are realising that:

• Teams and teamwork are essential for the achievement of organisational performance goals
  
  
• That team development is a mainstream initiative across the entire organisation
  
  
• That any workgroup can improve its effectiveness by aligning its members behind a common purpose, goals and approach
  
  
• That organisational alignment is the key to the effective implementation of organisational strategies
  
  
• That you cannot manage what you cannot measure
  
  

"Teams" is a much-overused word.  Some seem to think that referring to a workgroup as a team and appointing a team leader, will lead to a magical transformation from a group of individuals to a unit that displays all the attributes of the Australian Cricket Team. 

In contrast, I look upon "Teams" as the ultimate workgroup.  They are on the far right of the workgroup continuum that starts with groups of individuals and progresses through four standards of workgroups - embryonic, developing, established and high performance - before attaining "team" status.  The essential difference between a team and a high performance workgroup - the next level down - is that the team displays the interpersonal characteristics and culture that we associate with teams to a greater extent than its workgroup counterpart.

Bearing in mind the advantages of workgroups over individuals, it makes sense to focus on the workgroup rather than the individual members.

Start with the basics of workgroup development that will have the biggest impact on workgroup performance and that of your organisation as a whole.  

• Each workgroup must define its purpose in the context of the overall purpose of the organisation. Here is an example of a common purpose statement.
  
  This is one for a cross-functional workgroup in an insurance company. "Our workgroup processes insurance claims from the time of first contact to the time that the repaired vehicle is returned to its owner. Our workgroup plays a fundamental role in achieving our organisational goal of providing an efficient, personal and stress free service to our clients."
  
  
• Simply defining the purpose of the workgroup has one major deficiency. Being an activity, it is incapable of precise measurement. Hence, there is a need to take the workshop purpose and express that purpose as a goal.
  
  The goal should be SMART - that is - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, a Result (not an activity) and Time related.
  
  So our cross-functional workgroup in the insurance company might have the following goal. "By the end of the current calendar year, we will achieve and thereafter maintain an average client satisfaction rating of 8 (out of 10). Any individual rating of 7 or lower will be investigated to establish the reason(s) for the rating and agreement on the steps to be taken to prevent its reoccurrence. Similarly, ratings above 9 will be recognised and celebrated." Thus the goal is consistent with the workgroup purpose and that of the organisation as a whole. Furthermore, every member has a specific role to play in its achievement.
  
  
• Workgroups need structure. Ground rules need to be established, members' roles defined, boundaries set, accountabilities agreed, meetings scheduled and leaders appointed.
  
  
• Workgroups need to understand what other workgroups do and the relationship between them. Who are their internal customers? Who are their internal suppliers? Do we understand their needs? Do they understand ours?
  
  

These are the fundamentals for workgroup performance and company performance. 

The other point to note is that in this listing of the basics of teams and teamwork there is no mention of the attributes that we traditionally associate with teams.  Team agenda, trust, respect, openness, communication, listening skills - just some team attributes - can be accelerated through training but will develop naturally as these basics of workgroup effectiveness are put into effect. 

Don't kid yourself - the present and future work environment does not lend itself to the development of high performance teams.  But there is no reason why any workgroup cannot develop into a high performance workgroup.

And the great thing is - you don't have to engage consultants; you don't have to run discrete team development programs; you don't have to invest heavily in time, money and human resources.

You just need a well-crafted business plan and the ability to disseminate that plan to the individual workgroups so that they clearly recognise their role in the plan's implementation.  At the workgroup level, members need to appreciate and play their part in the achievement of the workgroup's goal.

If you can achieve this state of affairs, not only will your organisation be successful but employee engagement will benefit as well.

It's management's responsibility to engage its employees.  It's not the employee's responsibility to engage with his or her employer.

In recent years, the issue of employee engagement has moved centre stage as management comes to the realisation that the old saying  "our people are our greatest asset" is more than just a cliché to be scripted into the Annual Report and the CEO's address at the AGM. 

Like many a cliché, it's true.

There are at least three factors that are driving this realisation.

• For most companies, competition continues to intensify.
  
  
• The issue of how to differentiate oneself from the competition is a critical one. If your customers view you as "just another supplier" you are forever condemned to competing on price and there is always someone, somewhere that's cheaper than you.
  
  
• Recent surveys, notably one by the Gallup Organisation, reported that less than 20% of employees were emotionally and intellectually engaged with their employer. Such a low percentage would suggest that the rewards for employers who foster engagement should be very significant.
  
  The Gallup study also concluded that engaged employees were more innovative and far more likely to provide high standards of customer service.
  
  

I think that "engagement" can best be illustrated by the following story of a church dignitary visiting a quarry where stones were being fashioned for the construction of a near-by cathedral.  He approached one stone mason and asked him what he did.  "I just shape blocks of stone all day" was the resigned response.  The dignitary asked another the same question.  He replied with enthusiasm: "I'm on the team that's building the cathedral and this stone is for the West buttress".

Engagement is usually spoken of in terms of the individual but the one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that people working effectively together can achieve more than a group of individuals who only work for themselves. 

Like workgroups, engagement is also measured on a continuum that runs from "actively disengaged" to "barely engaged" to "moderately engaged" to "highly engaged".  It is not a question of some employees are engaged and some are not.

In terms of engagement therefore, your staff resembles the traditional bell shaped distribution curve.  At the far end of the curve there are the high fliers.  It's a waste of effort trying to improve their engagement still further.  They are already highly engaged and self-motivated.  On the far left are the poor performers - the actively disengaged - they are not worth expending effort on either. 

Instead your effort should go into trying to move the engagement of the vast majority in the centre of the bell curve.  This applies both to individuals and workgroups.       

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