Teamwork checklists
From PLN
Teamwork checklists
A variety of checklists and notes on teams and teamwork, gathered by Leslie Dillon in Leader's Digest.
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Six factors for successful teams
The key to successful teams is how they’re managed and whether an organization really supports teamwork. These 6 ingredients are essential for success:
- Clear, unambiguous objectives established by management.
- Metrics that allow the team to assess its performance.
- Ongoing training in communication, group leadership, and other skills
- Decision-making authority.
- Team-based rewards and evaluations.
- Easy access to information and to senior management.
(“Why Some Teams Succeed (and So Many Don’t)”, Harvard Management Update, October, 2006. Vol. 11 No. 10. Available on EBSCOhost.)
How to get the best solutions from your team
Leader's Digest June 2007 Research shows that the results obtained by a cooperating group are not just better than those of any single group member; in fact, they’re “better than even the group’s best problem solver functioning alone.”
Frequently, however, proven leaders don’t solicit input from others. And often, team members may relinquish responsibility to senior leaders, without providing important input. “Don’t go it alone!” urges the author of this article, first because one problem solver can’t match the diversity of a team, and second because the single solution seeker loses “the power of parallel processing.”
“If you’re the brightest person in the room, you’re in trouble.” James Watson and Francis Crick believed they cracked the DNA code precisely because they weren’t the smartest scientists pursuing the elusive DNA code. The brightest among them, Rosalind Franklin, “rarely sought advice” and didn’t crack the code. Another type of error, captainitis, stems from the passivity exhibited by flight crew members who won’t take responsibility, even when the captain has made a decision that’s clearly wrong. This problem isn’t limited solely to air travel.
“Leaders attacking a knotty problem must collaborate unfailingly with team members toward its resolution--even when they are the best informed or most experienced or ablest of the group.” That doesn’t mean leaders should engage in joint decision making. The final decision is the leader’s, but the key to the success of the decision is that the leader not engage alone in the decision-making process. “By assuring team members that their contribution will inform the final decision, leaders communicate the value they place on each member’s effort.” And when they do that, leaders can gain the full benefit of group problem solving.
(Robert B. Cialdini, “How to get the best solutions from your team,” Harvard Management Update, May 2007, repurposed from “Perils of being the best and the brightest,” Reprint # C0404A, Harvard Management Communication Letter. Available on EBSCOhost's Business Source Premier.)
Building a successful change agent team
The key to successful operational transformation is a “carefully constructed change agent program.” You need to designate specific employees as change agents to lead your organization through its journey. Whom to designate? Appoint leaders from across the organization “without regard to traditional hierarchy.” Free them from some daily tasks so they can concentrate on “leading and driving change”--implementing new processes, training staff in new procedures and serving as role models.
Change agent programs require thoughtful design, careful recruitment and development of staff and close integration between the change agent team and the units targeted for transformation.
- Design the program. Define the roles of the team members and establish a reporting structure.
- Recruit and develop the team. Spell out the benefits and opportunities team members will receive. Identify the best candidates; these are high-performing staff, who are respected by their peers and have strong interpersonal skills, perseverance, tolerance for ambiguity and the ability to deal well with conflict. The team as a whole also needs an appropriate mix of skills.
- Integrate the team. The team needs active support from management and buy-in from the entire organization. Team members should spend at least half their time working with their peers.
(Philippe Arrata, Arnaud Despierre, and Gautam Kumra, "Building an effective change agent team," The McKinsey Quarterly, 2007 No. 4.)
Eight ways to build collaborative teams
When tackling a major initiative, organizations typically “rely on large, diverse teams of highly educated specialists to get the job done.” The authors of this article “found that the greater the proportion of experts a team had, the more likely it was to disintegrate into nonproductive conflict or stalemate.” Unfortunately, “the qualities required for success are the same qualities that undermine success.” Members of such teams don’t share knowledge freely, learn from each other, help one another meet deadlines or share resources. In short, they don’t collaborate.
Subsequent research into 55 large teams that “demonstrated high levels of collaborative behavior” revealed “eight practices that corresponded with success”:
- Investing in signature relationship practices. Executives can encourage collaborative behavior by visibly demonstrating their commitment to it.
- Modeling collaborative behavior. When executives demonstrate collaborative behavior, teams collaborate well.
- Creating a “gift culture.” Mentoring and coaching help staff build cross-boundary networks.
- Ensuring the requisite skills. Human resources departments that train staff in building relationships, communicating well, and resolving conflicts can have a “major impact on team collaboration.”
- Supporting a strong sense of community. People who feel a sense of community “are more comfortable reaching out to others and more likely to share knowledge.”
- Assigning team leaders that are both task- and relationship-oriented. Both “are key to successfully leading a team.”
- Building on heritage relationships. Best practices suggest putting “at least a few people who know one another on the team.”
- Understanding role clarity and task ambiguity. Roles of individual team members need to be sharply defined, while the team as a whole needs to be “given latitude on how to achieve the task.”
“Strengthening your organization’s capacity for collaboration requires a combination of long-term investments--in building relationships and trust, in developing a culture in which senior leaders are role models of cooperation--and smart near-term decisions about the ways teams are formed, roles are defined, and challenges and tasks are articulated.”
(Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson, “Eight ways to build collaborative teams,” Harvard Business Review, Nov. 2007. Available from Harvard Business Online for $6.50 or on EBSCOhost’s Business Source Premier.)
Give your team a challenge they can’t resist
“Team challenges can fulfill the deep need that most people have to be part of something larger than themselves.”
The best way to overcome barriers to teamwork is to present team members with “an irresistible challenge”, according to management consultants Patrick J. McKenna and David H. Maister, authors of First Among Equals: How to Manage a Group of Professionals (Free Press, 2002). There are lots of ways to do this, including “pressure to complete a daunting task in a tight time frame” (like launching an ILS system), but none of them are easy.
First you have to define the challenge; then you need to inspire your team. Managers need to be “genuinely interested in helping people excel [and they need] to understand that shifting from individual work to teamwork isn’t an intellectual process; it’s an emotional one. You have to seduce people step by step into collaborating as a team.”
Effective managers use these five tactics:
- Share information. Once people fully understand the challenges, they’re more likely to help solve them.
- Balance freedom and guidance. Ask for input. Give your teams the freedom to solve problems and “enough guidance to keep them on track.”
- Give people room to stretch. When you free people from their everyday responsibilities, their creativity will surface.
- Have some fun! Teams function best with a sense of camaraderie. “A few laughs can go a long way toward building it.”
- Help people feel the challenge. Once you and your team feel an issue, “it takes on a whole new meaning.”
(Lauren Keller Johnson, “Give your team a challenge they can’t resist,” Harvard Management Update, Nov. 2007. Available on EBSCOhost’s Business Source premier or from Harvard Business for $4.50.)
Four ways to encourage more productive teamwork
Four crucial practices are needed to foster a culture of cooperation in an organization:
- Hire for cooperation. Organizations with cooperative mindsets take particular care in hiring. The list of required skills for a position should include demonstrated ability to work in teams, deal with conflict, and share knowledge. Be sure that those involved in hiring are collaborative themselves. In interviews ask candidates to respond to real-life scenarios.
- Institute orientation practices that encourage teamwork. Introduce new staff to colleagues both within and outside their teams. Charge the new staff member’s supervisor with helping him or her establish relationships with the key people they’ll be collaborating with. Make sure that those responsible for new staff members’ orientation demonstrate cooperativeness themselves.
- Support mentoring. Being mentored is the human resources practice most strongly associated with highly cooperative people and teams. Train people to be good mentors, but make mentoring voluntary. Encourage senior managers to mentor newer staff on their and other teams.
- Ensure that performance evaluation rewards collaboration. A review “process that recognizes and rewards collaboration can powerfully reinforce a culture of cooperation.” In fact, the process should be collaborative itself and should measure collaborative behavior. What proportion of recognition in your organization is devoted to rewarding team effort?
(Lynda Gratton, “Four ways to encourage more productive teamwork," Harvard Management Update, Nov. 2007. Available on EBSCOhost’s Business Source Premier, or from Harvard Business for $4.50.)
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