Harvard on TEAMS

1. Overview. HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Teams. The Harvard BusiessReview has gathered some of its best articles on teams into one convenient book. Authors and scholars like Hackman, Pentland and Katzenbach, Eisenhardt, and Amabile fill this volume with rich content for leaders seeking research-based guidance. For example, using high-end sensors, Sandy Pentland and his MIT colleagues describe accurately how great teams behave based on massive data tracking. Theresa Amabile uses hundreds of daily work diaries to help us understand that people just want to make progress toward a meaningful goal every day—the “progress principle.” And Kathleen Eisenhardt and colleagues teach us how to engage in constructive conflict to produce excellent results while preserving relationships. Here is a summary of several of the best articles in this volume.

2. The New Science of Building Great Teams (by Alex “Sandy” Pentland). What separates average from great teams? MIT researchers equipped over 2,500 people with sensor badges (like those ID badges people wear at work). MIT’s special high-tech badges collected copious interactive communication data, such as voice tone, position of speakers relative to each other, time spent talking and listening to each other—but not recording conversation. From this communication data, highly reliable patterns emerged that allowed researchers to make reliable predictions about effective team behavior. “Those communication patterns were as significant as all other factors—intelligence, personality, talent—combined.” The three key communication factors that impact on performance are energy, engagement, and exploration. Thus, in the best teams, members of the team: 

a. Talk about the same amount of time and in short bursts—no speeches!

b. Face each other and energetically gesture.

c. Connect with the team and each other individually. 

d. Carry on back-channel discussions within the team. 

e. Explore outside the team (conferences and meetings) and bring back new info to the team.  

3. Why Teams Don’t Work (Richard Hackman interview). Teams often underperform due to issues with coordination, competition, and motivation. Even excellent leaders often don’t produce great teams. To increase the chance of a great team:

a. Appoint and protect a deviant. A devil’s advocate (deviant) helps to keep the team from agreeing too much—becoming too homogeneous—a real danger to innovation. The deviant says what others might be thinking, but no one has the willingness to say. S/he must be protected and allowed to tell the truth to power and the team.

b. Keep the number of team members low. Hackman suggests no double digits, even no more than six members. Become ruthless about whom you allow on the team. ONLY the necessary few should be allowed. Don’t let politics or lack of courage of the leader get in the way of key selections. 

c. Set a compelling direction and purpose. People need to know the strategic direction—the why—of what they’re doing to have any chance at being aligned and successful. A compelling purpose with a single agenda needs to be the rule. 

d. Focus on group process. Forget guiding and correcting individual behavior. Rather, use a coach-approach and group process. Leaders need to know how to launch and assess team progress and outcomes.

e. Stabilize teams. Data shows that stable teams win more often—whether flying planes, conducting surgery, or running companies. Regular turnover destabilizes teams.

f. Engage a team coach. Leaders who receive executive coaching are not as effective as the entire team getting coaching—especially at the beginning, midpoint and end of a team project. 

4. The Power of Small Wins (Amabile and Kramer). When people make progress toward a meaningful goal every day, they stay engaged. These authors reviewed the daily work diaries of hundreds of knowledge workers and found that a positive inner work life made the difference between average and high-performing, engaged workers. And engaged employees and teams produce measurably more than others. The finding of this research is that when leaders help people make regular progress toward a goal, people feel empowered and motivated. The authors call this finding “the Progress Principle”—the single greatest motivator a leader can offer. In these diaries, best days were described with the word “progress” and on worst days, the word “setback” showed up.

5. How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight (Eisenhardt, Kahwajy, Bourgeois) Leaders want differences to be debated without having personal attacks. Thus, separating personalities from issues is critical. Constructive conflict in a high-speed economy will be critical in the future. So how to do it? Vigorous debate on the issues but little time name-calling and politicking. These steps will help: Focus on facts. Develop alternatives. Agree upon goals, not solutions. Inject humor. Maintain a balance of power. Resolve issues without demanding consensus.  

6. Virtuoso Teams (Fischer and Boynton). Successful virtuoso teams consist of top performers; intimate and intense relationships; strong communication systems, collaboration and conflict; assumptions that consumers are smart. The temptation is to settle for OK teams. The authors’ advice: DON’T. Ordinary teams produce ordinary results. With the right strategies, virtuoso teams produce high-end results. So, 1) Assemble stars. It’s an investment worth doing; 2) Build the group ego, not individual egos; 3) Make work a contact sport. Cause face to face contact/conflict that’s managed.;4) Respect the customer’s intelligence; 5. Herd the cats. Respect individualism and keep the team focus.  

HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Teams by Harvard Business Press, 2013, reviewed by Steve Gladis, June 2018.

Coaching Teams

High Performance Team Coaching: A Comprehensive System for Leaders and Coaches by Drs. Jacqueline Peters and Catherine Carr (FriesenPress, 2013), reviewed by Steve Gladis, April 2017. 

Overview: Only 1 of 5 teams is high performing, in part because team coaching has lacked a solid performance model—at least until now.  High-performance coaching is systematic and focused on the collective talents, strengths, and goals of the organization. First, the authors define the critical difference between a group and a team. A team is complementary, committed and, especially, interdependent. And a high-performance team hits or exceeds organizational goals they set for themselves. The authors set out several key elements. I’d call them the Key 3s. Three fundamental steps for a team: Assess stakeholder expectations; put a plan in place; measure progress and results. Three critical drivers for success: Team structure, team launch, and team coaching. Three times for best coaching impact: The beginning, middle, and end. And finally, three critical outputs: Quality results, team capabilities and relationships, and individual engagement.

1. Team Coaching: Team and individual coaching are different animals. Only in the past decade has team coaching emerged as a sub-discipline of coaching. Moreover, systemic team coaching focuses on the leader, the team processes, and the team’s impact on stakeholders to transform performance of the team and the business. Typically, an external coach works with the leader, the team and, where needed, individuals on the team. Safety and trust are critical factors for high-performance teams. There are 6 phases of High Performance Team Coaching: Assessment, Design, Launch, Individual Coaching, Team Coaching, and Review.
2. Assessment & Design: Referring to Wageman’s research (2008), the authors cite three essential conditions (a real, defined team; compelling direction; and the right people). Also there are 3 enabling conditions (solid team structure, supportive organizational context, and competent team coaching). Teams need both essential and enabling conditions to be successful. The assessment phase determines the strengths, weaknesses, and gaps between the current and desired states. In general, the essential and enabling conditions that follow provide specific guidance for the first two phases of team coaching.
   a. Essential Conditions of Teams: 1) “Real” Teams have clear boundaries, defined membership, and strong interdependent goals; 2) Compelling direction gives teams a sense of purpose about their work and its impact on their stakeholders; 3) The right people are those with the knowledge, skills and abilities to achieve the team’s goals.
   b. Enabling Conditions: 1) Solid team structure means clear roles, responsibilities, and working guidelines/agreements; 2) Supportive Organizational Context means that a team has resources to support its operation—time, talent, money; 3) Competent Team Coaching refers to coaches with experience in the discipline of team coaching.
3. Team Launch: New teams are launched, and established teams are relaunched to develop and/or refresh their mission and vision and establish a safe, cohesive unit. Led by competent team coaches, such launches are held offsite to focus teams on the purpose and the ground rules (working agreements) of the team. In essence, a team charter is formulated to keep the team on course, especially when things get rocky. If good rules aren’t established up front and adhered to, people will create them, ad hoc.  The authors provide a valuable, simple worksheet to help coaches and teams craft such a charter.
4. Individual Team Coaching: Coaching the team leader through this transitional period helps provide a valuable sounding board and guide to keep the team coaching and processes on track. In general, coaching is good both for the leader and also team members who might get stuck along the way. Coaching team members can be done by the team coach or an internal or external coach and/or, especially, peers. Peer coaching is easy to teach and implement as long as the team coach creates rules, especially around confidentiality, that lead to safety, truth telling and ultimately progress.
5. Ongoing Team Coaching: It may be best to have an external coach when launching a new team. Moreover, having that coach at least monitor the team’s progress in the middle and end of the engagement is critical. Sometimes the team leader will take over the reins after the team is up and running well. In many cases, the team coach provides regular, periodic coaching for the team and leader. Again, peer coaching is viewed as a key driver of employee engagement.  
6. Review of Learning and Successes: Reviewing a team’s progress periodically and then at its completion is a key factor for future team success. One of the coach’s jobs is to push the team to review their experiences (tasks, milestones, etc.) and reflect on their collective and personal learning during the team’s lifecycle. Worth noting—often this step is skipped by many teams, especially in the glow of completing a difficult task. Coaches and team leaders must vigilantly reflect on the team’s journey to ensure both the growth of team members and the organization. Excellent teams produce the following three outputs: Quality results, team capabilities and relationships, and individual engagement.
7. Team Coaching Activities: Chapter 5 is a goldmine for coaches. The authors provide guidance to ensure that a series of key elements of the six-step team coaching process are followed. For example, in support of the assessment step, The Team Coaching Readiness Assessment provides a list of detailed questions to ask prior to coaching to ensure a greater chance of team success. Supporting the launch step, the Team Charter Page offers a simple, effective team summary including vision, mission, values, key goals, success measures and working agreements.

Team of Teams: Post #1--Overview

Overview. General Stanley McChrystal and his author team tell us that to beat an agile foe
in an uncertain environment, an efficient team is never as effective as an adaptive one. Restructuring the Joint Special Operations Command from a classic command-and-control military management style to a more team-based, team of teams, McChrystal was far better able to fight the allusive al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) under the notorious leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Forsaking the Frederick Taylor reductionist paradigm of always being efficient and effective, at the expense of being adaptive, even entrepreneurial,  McChrystal remade his command into a team of teams—adaptive, trustful and with common purpose—one that communicated well, asked questions, and figured out how to be successful in an uncertain environment.

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, Chris Fussell (Kindle Edition, Penguin, 2015), Reviewed by Steve Gladis, August 2015).

Social Animal: #11--Limerence

Limerence: Often associated with infatuation, limerence is a deep desire for harmony—internal and external---whether such harmony is with a person, our work, or an activity. The brain sets up predictive models that when learned move us from difficulty to harmony as we conquer the difficult and make it easy. Often, the concept of “flow” is associated with this phenomenon, where we become “one” with our task and reach a kind of pleasurable state. Same is true with falling in love with another person. This harmonic status explains why effective teams of surgeons, nurses, and technicians are in sync (a kind of biologic harmony of pulse, respiration, and mindset) when working on critical problems effectively.

Tribal Leadership: Stage 2 Tribes

Stage Two Tribes: For people in this stage (25% of all groups), their language is typically “my life sucks.” While they may feel poorly about their own lives and surroundings, they see others who are seemingly well off…so there is hope. If you see clusters or tribes of these folks coming together, one of their main themes is that they are victims (of the system, the boss, the economy, etc.). Leverage a person/tribe from this stage to the next level by encouraging them to build out their networks, person by person, in a dyadic (1-1) way. Also, encourage relationships with people who are stage three types. Remember, it’s impossible to go up more than one social rung at a time. Start them working in strengths areas and celebrate early wins. A key indicator of progress with such tribes and members is they will start using I-language and will start separating from their colleagues, who are stuck at stage two.