The Power of The Team
Why Teams Matter in Today's World of Work
Welcome. Today’s writing is a longer piece on teams. If that’s not your jam. check out my latest podcast interview with Ashley Herd on Manager’s in Today’s world of work.
Thought experiment - Think about a team that you worked on in your life that was great, and then think about a team that you worked on in life that was bad. What was happening? What were some of the pitfalls and what were some of the things that were great?
Most of us in the working world have been on teams in some capacity since we were kids. Be it a sports team, theatrical performance, group project in high school and of course, in a work context.
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about teams lately as it’s been top of mind for some of the work I’ve been doing around leadership development. Oftentimes, in some of the programs I run, topics around teams will come up in a variety of flavors, such as:
I’m leading a team, but they are all “dotted line” and don’t report into me. How do I lead when I’m not formally in charge?
I’m on many teams, and sometimes I”m leading the team, but other times, I’m not. How do I manage my time & priorities but also show up best?
We’re working with a number of other teams and it feels like nobody is on the same page. How do we work better together?
I’ve thought a lot about teams, and it’s one of the reasons I’ve chosen the professions that I’ve worked in. I started my career in management consulting, where I was constantly working on new and different project teams. I had to learn really quickly how to parachute into a team, learn the context, and learn how to get work done with people that I had often never met, and in some cases, had to work with distributedly and remotely (this was back in 2010, before Zoom! I share all of this to show you that even though I’ve worked in different environments, teams really do matter for all of us in today’s world of work, and despite this, most of us never really get the training or skills we need to be effective in team environments.
A brief history on the study of teams
One of the founding fathers of what we know about research on teams is Dr. Richard Hackman. Hackman has studied the secrets of effective teams ranging from airplane cockpit crews to musical ensembles.
Here’s a quick excerpt his research in HBR:
In more than 40 years of research, he uncovered a groundbreaking insight: What matters most to collaboration is not the personalities, attitudes, or behavioral styles of team members. Instead, what teams need to thrive are certain “enabling conditions.”
Those enabling conditions?
A real team - Everyone has a defined role with set tasks to complete.
A compelling direction - There is a clear direction or end goal to work towards.
Enabling structure - Workflows and processes support the team in achieving their goals.
A supportive context - Tools, resources, and training help the team reach their goal.
Expert coaching - Access to a coach or mentor when needed helps teams perform more effectively.
Since then, many other scholars and researchers have made contributions to the study of teams. Whether it was Bruce Tuckman’s stages of team development, Anita Wooley and her team’s work on the measurement and impact of collective intelligence, Amy Edmonson’s studies on the importance of psychological safety and learning in hospitals, or Google’s Project Aristotle, which further validated Edmsonson’s work and brought teaming into the broader work culture, the idea that teams matter in the workplace is not new nor is it going away. But what makes it more important in my mind is the mindset of teams and teaming and how important that is to being able to be effective in making an impact in the workplace today.
Why Do Teams Matter Today?
It’s part of how we work
In organizations large and small, working with others and on teams is how a good portion of our work gets done today. The researcher Rob Cross, has studied collaboration and teaming and in 2016, estimated that the amount of collaborative work has risen by over 50% in the past decade. I assume if he ran the research again today, that number would continue to rise, but it’s clear that it's just a norm of how work gets done.
Specialization and Complexity
One of the reasons why we are working more in teams and in collaborative work is due to the specialization and complexity of how work gets done today. As work has become professionalized and formalized into more functions and roles, we often need the special skills + expertise of others to be able to complete a project, initiative or set of tasks. In many organizations, it’s very hard to be in a role where you are working solely by yourself on a project. Furthermore, in many modern knowledge worker environments, its pretty hard today to work on a project without the support of others.
Distributed work
With a rise in both distributed and fully remote work, the need for teams to do many of the things that Hackman and others have espoused is still important, but also requires more intentional structuring and effort.
Complex Problems require innovative solutions
Many of us are in jobs that require a mix of static and dynamic work. Static work is anything you can do repetitively whereas dynamic is anything that requires new ideas, information, problem solving, or creativity. In a world that is becoming more complex and oftentimes, presents us with more dynamic work, this often requires people to be able to rely on others to share ideas, solve problems, or generate solutions that one person could not solve on their own. Oftentimes, this requires the collaborative effort of a cross-functional team of experts.
A glaring example of this is the responses of many companies during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most organizations facing this realized this was a dynamic problem, (despite disaster scenario planning, there really was no playbook) and brought together diverse people from across the organization to come up with solutions and responses. While not all dynamic problems are of the type of a global pandemic, many of us deal with a much smaller deviation of these on a quarterly and or monthly basis.
The Common Types of Teams at Work
While there are lots of teams, they tend to come in different varieties and forms, depending on the type of company you work for, the role, and the different types of work that you do. Here are a couple common examples
Leading a team - This one is fairly universal, but consider this your traditional team where there is a team lead/manager who has a series of direct reports in the specific role or function. A Director of Finance leads a team of accountants and financial analysts.
Cross-functional team - This is another common one especially in knowledge working environments, but this is a team of specialized experts that are assembled together for a period of time to achieve a specific outcome or goal. This could be like in my case, of being a product marketer working on a product launch with a product manager, engineer, designer, and customer success manager.
Project-based team - This is the type of team you would tend to find in professional services or other project-based working environments. This is how an account manager at a digital agency might operate, or perhaps even a lawyer or accountant. These can also be spun up for a specific project or initiative that a company is trying to run, such as a change management or transformation project, or a strategic project for a business unit.
Teams as Part of Your Role - These are more of roles, where you are constantly working on a number of different teams at any given time. As an example, as a product marketer, I had my main team, I had my go-to market team, and I had other teams I was a part of related to other parts of my role. The nature of the job is inherently cross-functional, and thus you are working on a variety of different teams. An example of this is the role of a program or project manager. In many cases, these individuals are working across a “portfolio” of teams.
All of the above - Believe it or not, in some rare instances, there are some people that have a role that requires them to be on a team in a multitude of these different flavors. A VP of Product Marketing, or a head of sales enablement could in fact be a team lead, on a team of teams, and also involved in a project based team. I’ve spoken with managers of managers who have a role that is global that requires the same kind of work but across geographies.
Common Challenges With Teams
I first heard of Patrick Lencioni in 2003 when he was a keynote speaker at a conference my Father put on. The topic of his presentation was around the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which would eventually become a best-seller, and be a fan favorite of many HR teams and consultants looking to address team based issues. The book was based on a fictional telling of some of Leconi’s own experiences observing and seeing teams, but despite the fictional narrative, part of what landed was the relatedness that all people could pull from the themes he talked about in the book. So while they were not necessarily empirically validated, they were definitely felt by many people.
In my work with leaders and managers, I see all of these, and would add a few other specific ones to the list that I think are relevant to the realities of today’s workplace
Lack of context and conditions for an effective team - Great collaboration and teaming doesn’t happen by accident. It happens through intentional teaming and setting conditions so the team can succeed and work together well. Many teams jump right into the work, or wrongly assume there is clarity on a vision when there really isn’t, which makes it hard for the team to be effective over the long run.
Lack of clarity especially during times of change - While it’s true that we all have to deal with change and uncertainty in the workplace, navigating this in team-based environments has implications and when left unchecked, can hinder the effectiveness of the team. Uncertainty breeds fear, which causes individuals to react in certain ways, and a big struggle I see teams have is that during times of change there isn’t enough clarity about what to do or how to move forward.
Lack of awareness around team members’ rewards and priorities - The value of a team is that the sum is greater than the parts. However, each of the parts also comes with its own goals, priorities, and things they are evaluated on. One of the biggest challenges for a team lead, or any team member, is being aware, and then negotiating against all of these things. What happens when Sarah has one metric, but David has another, and due to this, they are hesitant to engage? Or even at a more basic level, what are the metrics that both Sarah and David care about? These are things that oftentimes don’t get discussed, or never get brought to the surface
Lack of trust/psychological safety - When things are not going well on a team, you can often hear it in pockets and circles, but oftentimes, that never gets raised or discussed. Many teams struggle with dealing with conflict or difficult conversations because there isn’t any trust or psychological safety to speak up due to fears that hold people back.
Bad hygiene around the “how” of work - Have you ever been on a team where there were just a string of never ended meetings? Or where you felt like you were constantly just giving status updates and never doing real work? Or when you had “meetings about the meetings?” Many teams struggle with actually thinking about how to work together, and putting in place norms, and ways of working that enable people to get work done, and communicate/collaborate effectively.
Actions and Practices You Can Take
If you are someone who is leading a team or someone who in their role is on a lot of teams, hare are some actions and practices that I would recommend taking, so that you can be a better and more effective team member, or increase your chances at being on a high-performing team
Be great at identifying your role on a team - One of the reasons why teams fail is due to a lack of clarity around who is doing what. The best team leads or members are great at A) knowing the mission, B) knowing the roles that are needed, and B) knowing their specific role. The better you can get at when joining a team, figuring these things out, the more you are going to be able to be effective at helping contribute to the team
Look for ways to contribute to the collective - On a team, we all have a role, but we’re all working towards something bigger. It’s easy to get fixated on the role that we have, and easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. It’s common in an organization for everyone to be thinking about your silo. But if you want to be effective on a team, you need to have an “outside-in” mindset. You can absolutely make sure you are thinking about yourself, but try to think about the bigger picture first.
Be a facilitator - The definition of a facilitator is someone who makes a process easier. Who wouldn’t want that?! On teams, especially in times when things get stuck, it’s easy for people to go back and forth and hem and haw. But embracing facilitation can help you and help the team move forward, which your team will appreciate. Figuring out ways to help move the process forward, get unstuck, identify the next best action the team needs to take even if it’s not your role can be a huge help. You don’t always need to have the solution or the right answer, but being the facilitator of it can be immensely valuable to your team.
Learn how to be a great teammate - For as much as we work on teams in our lives, we really don’t ever get focused training and attention on being on a team. And as much emphasis as there is on leading teams, there are far fewer resources in learning how to be a good teammate. Because team-based work is so prevalent in our workplace, taking steps and actions to being a better and more effective teammate is a great way to get you more opportunities to get you on a team, and to make you more effective in your role. This is true for leaders, as it is for individual contributors
Make time to learn (and encourage others to learn!) - Learning is what helps a team improve and uplevel their impact. Play a role in this by making time to learn, and then using your learnings to share that information with others. Furthermore, encourage others to learn as well, and join you in your efforts to increase the impact of your team.
Before You Go:
I want to thank all of you who replied or wrote to me about my post from last week about finding and using your voice. I appreciate the feedback and encouragement!
As a follow up, as you may know May is National Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month in the United States, and I'd love to come speak to your organization.
I have a favor to ask: If you enjoy what I write about and share, and think your company would benefit, especially on topics related to leadership, and professional development, I’d love an introduction to your AAPI Employee Resource Group or HR team. Feel free to reply if you’d be interested directly or if you’d be open to helping with an intro. I’m grateful for your support.
Thank you!
Al