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“We Need to Be a Better Team!”

Oh, really.  What does that mean, exactly?  Why do you need to be a better team?  Do you mean that you want more cooperation?  More internal cohesion?  Less conflict?  Is this the same as “being a team?”  And what difference does this make, anyway?

Let’s begin with two definitions: “team” and “work group”, both of which are adapted from the classic The Wisdom of Teams by Katzenbach and Smith.

Team: A group of people committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.

Work Group: A group of people with no common performance goals for which they are accountable.

TRUE teams have certain advantages:

1. Complementary experience, knowledge and skills to manage complex processes.
2. Large mass of energy focused on common goal.
3. Flexible and responsive to change.
4. Adds social dimension to work.
5. Teams have more fun!

And there is one core challenge to teams: that of focusing potentially chaotic group energy on a single point.

What does this seemingly academic discussion have to do with your original request?  Who you really are – a team or a work group – determines the approach that you will take to “fixing the issue.”   If you don’t have a team – you’re missing that “common goal for which members hold themselves mutually accountable” – then you don’t have a “team issue,” you have individual issues, whether these are performance or relationship-related.  If you are the manager, manage the problem performer’s performance system and hold him accountable; if two individuals can’t get along,  determine the behaviors that you will/won’t put up with, ask them to deal with it so that these behaviors are/aren’t displayed, then hold them accountable. If they need to learn how to resolve conflict, train them.

If, on the other hand, you have a genuine team, then the source of your team issue may be deeper, and improving the team will require team involvement to assess and identify/acknowledge the issue, “problem solving” to identify better structures and strategies, and new “run rules” to guide behaviors from this point forward.  Some version of our ”Building a Team Culture” process would be very useful.