Articles

Tough times require a trim team. Why a team can be a competitive advantage

by Irina Ivan 

With all the economic turmoil we are going through, we have all the attention headed to what is going on on the market we operate in, to the risks and the milestones our companies are exposed to, the opportunities that may arise and we usually loose sight of what is going on inside our company, with our team and people. Economical downturn is a time when companies need high performance more than ever and that's why a deep insight on how people are performing can be like a fresh air breathe. Try to assess how vulnerable your team is by taking the following quiz:

• Have you ever run or just been in a meeting where everybody is polite one with the other and compound with what is being discussed, but you can feel the tension in the air? Or in a meeting where certain priorities were set and totally forgotten the minute the attendants went back to their desks?
• Does your company have a mission statement, but no one makes the effort to know it by heart, or if they do it's in the open that these are just „nice to have elements" and no one ever connects his work to it?
• Do you or your workmates assume a task only after questioning if it is in your/ their area of responsibility?
• Are you managing a team that does not show support to any of your ideas?
• Are you avoiding to criticize a teammate's work or professional conduct just on the ground that he/she is a nice person?
• Are you taking criticism on your work personally?
• Are people in your team blaming each other, if they fail?

If your answer was „yes" for at least one of the questions above, most probably you are in a dysfunctional team.

As badly as the word „dysfunction" may sound, it seems that dysfunctions are something normal in the dynamics of a team. It is common for a team to have its ups and downs and work out of order for some periods, while great teams that always stay on the right track are uncommon as they require a lot of effort and focus. Things become truly worrying when a team remains dysfunctional across time and disorders creep into the routine activity and become part of the organization's culture.
In an interview for Small Business Review, Patrick Lencioni, the author of „The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" book, says: "Teams are dysfunctional because human beings are inherently fallible. We come out of the womb thinking about ourselves and looking out for number one. It's just human nature to be self-oriented, not team-oriented. Because most leaders aren't schooled in the art of building teams, small problems are left untreated and often spiral into ugliness and politics. Good teams are rare, and most people don't have any experience working that way. That's why having a well-functioning team can be a real competitive advantage."

The difficulty to label a team as functional or dysfunctional often comes from making the mistake of considering the individuals' ability of performing highly as the only index. What it matters the most within the team is not each member' skills and competencies, but the way they complement each other and the way they report as a team to the success. In her article "Building great teams", Tina Erwee points out that the difference between a functional and dysfunctional team does not consist in its ability to reach success, but in the ability to repeat it: "Functional team is one that gets the job done and feels good about it. A dysfunctional team might get the job done, but there is no cohesiveness, stress levels are extremely high and "back stabbing" becomes run of the mill. A dysfunctional team cannot repeat success."

A few persons brought together, as competent, professional or brilliant as they may be, remain only a group of people if they do not manage to put aside ego, hold on to a common goal and work for achieving it as a real team. In an article published in Fortune magazine, „Why dream teams fail?", Geoffrey Colvin debates on the vulnerability of the teams thought of as great just because they were formed of individuals with astonishing results: „How could a movie starring Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Julia Roberts, directed by Steven Soderbergh, get tepid reviews and gross less worldwide than the star-free My Big Fat Greek Wedding? That movie was Ocean's Twelve. And how could a FORTUNE 500 company run by a brilliant former McKinsey consultant, paying fat salaries to graduates of America's elite business schools, dissolve into fraud and bankruptcy? It happened at Enron....If someone tells you you're being recruited onto a dream team, maybe you should run. In our team-obsessed age, the concept of the dream team has become irresistible. But it's brutally clear that they often blow up. Why? Because they're not teams. They're just bunches of people... The most important lesson about team performance is that the basic theory of the dream team is wrong. You cannot assemble a group of stars and then sit back to watch them conquer the world. You can't even count on them to avoid embarrassment."

It seems that it is in human nature to climb faster and easier if we are on our own than if we are part of a team. When they are on their own, people afford much more freedom and guts in the decisions they make. Within a team, there are lot of things to consider before saying something, making a decision and taking an action. Egos, authority, fear of being misunderstood are just a few of the inhibitive factors for a team's greatness. The show-bizz is full of examples of persons who performed averagely within a band and saw success coming only after going for a solo carrier. Moves taken in individual and team sport games were even studied by economists who came to the same conclusion: teams are much more likely to fail than individuals. Mark Walker and John Wooders studied Wimbledon games and concluded that tennis players and individual sport players in general perform very well because when they decide what move to take they only have to consider their own strengths and the ones of the rival and they allow themselves to be very unpredictable. Ignacio Palacios Huerta of the London School of Economics showed that, in football, chances to take the best strategic move raise when the team is at the penalty spot. Tim Harford pushes things further and concludes in his article „Business Life: Dysfunctional teams" published in Business Life Magazine (June 2008) that „if you want a brilliant individual to do something stupid, you should simply put him in a team". According to him, teams make bad decisions most probably because „the choice is muddied by wishing to avoid criticism, and trying to appease team-mates. Individual sportsmen focus only on winning."

We are far from pleading for a replacement of the teamwork with individual work. At the core of each organization there are the people and the way they interrelate within teams. The beauty of work is the teamwork itself as there is no greater challenge and satisfaction then being part of a team that functions properly. The way to a great team starts with identifying its dysfunctions and their roots.
The most frequent disorders that interfere in the dynamics of team are described in detail by Patrick Lencioni in his book "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" which became a work of reference when it comes to this topic.
Let's see what are the five most common dysfunctions identified by Lencioni within a team and what leaders and team members can do to turn it into growth opportunities.

1. Absence of trust is generated, according to Lencioni, by the team members' unwillingness to admit their vulnerability. That's why, in building trust among peers, it is important to create a climate where everyone, starting with the leader, is comfortable with acknowledging their weaknesses. Other factors that influence trust seem to be related to credibility, risk and intimacy. In an article about teamwork¹, Gary C. Hinkle says that trust is a function of all these variables, providing the following formula: Trust = ƒ{(Credibility)*(Intimacy)/Risk}. If credibility is given by the professional background and the authority in the field and the risk mostly by the external factors, intimacy needs to be built. One way to assess intimacy within a team is, according to Hinkle, to „look at each of your coworkers who are part of your project team and ask yourself if you'd let that person live in your home while you're gone. If the answer is no, what would it take to achieve that? You won't build that level of trust overnight, and you may never accomplish this (and may not want to), but taking steps in that direction is the most important thing individuals can do to help their teams become more successful." Exercises that can help teams build trust consist in encouraging members to reveal experiences from their personal and professional lives, give their opinions on which is the biggest asset that each person brings into the team and on which is the most significant pitfall.
2. Fear of conflict. Teams that fear conflict are those whose members are always „politically correct". Conflict always exists, no matter if it is brought to surface or not. Not acknowledged, conflict is tension generator, while if it is brought in the open, it allows the team to make moving forward decisions and grow. „Put the fish on the table" says George Kohlrieser, professor at the International Institute for Management Development in Switzerland, pointing out that in „order to have a great fish dinner at the end of the day" you need to go through the „smelly, bloody process of cleaning it"² .
3. Lack of commitment. Although debates must be encouraged within the team, once a decision is made, leaders must find ways to ensure that all team members are aligned, regardless of the initial issues and controversies.
4. Avoidance of accountability. Cases of team mates holding each other responsible are very rare due to a prejudice widely spread according to which only the boss has this right. It is important to clearly state the common objectives, and what each member is supposed to get done in order to achieve it. Also the team leader has a key role in establishing a culture of accountability by making it perfectly clear than there is nothing unusual in team members holding each other responsible an that the leader is the ultimate authority when it comes to discipline.
5. Inattention to results is a dysfunction of a team which focuses on anything else than achieving common goals. A team who is not paying attention to results usually stagnates or fails to grow, does not defeat competitors, loses achievement-oriented employees, has members who focus on their own careers and individual goals and is easily distracted. One thing that Lencioni recommends to leaders in order to increase the focus on results is to adjust rewards to the common achievements.

During a focus-group, a team leader from American President Cos. said that „a team is like having a baby tiger given to you at Christmas. It does a wonderful job of keeping the mice away for about 12 months - and then it starts to eat the kids." You may be surrounded by nice people with a head on their shoulder and with excellent professional background, but unfortunately none of these is a guarantee for the well functioning of a team. In fact, normal team mechanisms are similar to the centrifugal/centripetal forces reports from physics. People are not natural-born team players and that's why, in the context of the team dynamics, they will tend to digress from the normal behavior and it is only the intervention of the leadership (similar to a centrifugal power) that brings it back on the right track.

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¹ Teamwork: Are Your Teams High-Performing or Dysfunctional?

² Why dream teams fail, Fortune magazine (June 2006)

Resources:

Gary C. Hinkle, Teamwork: Are Your Teams High-Performing or Dysfunctional?, http://www.auxiliumtraining.com/Teamwork.htm
Geoffrey Colvin, Why dream teams fail, Fortune (June 2006)
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/06/12/8379219/index.htm
Interview with Patrick Lencioni, http://www.teachmeteamwork.com/teachmeteamwork/2005/11/five_dysfunctio.html
Michael Cardus, What is a succesful team, http://articles.directorym.co.uk/What_is_a_Successful_Team-a874767.html
Mollie Neal, Triumph over team dysfunction, interview with Patrick Lencioni, http://smallbusinessreview.com/management/overcoming_management_pitfalls_0125/
Patrick Lencioni, The five dysfunctions of a team, Book summary
Team Time - The five Dysfunctions of a team, Excerpted from Salon Today (October 2002),http://www.theteambuildingco.com/resources/Team_Time-The_Five_Dysfunctions_of_a_Team.pdf
The Paper Store, Inc., Managing Contemporary Organizations / Why Teams Don't Work, http://www.paperwriters.com/sample2.htm
Tim Harford, Business Life: Dysfunctional teams, first published in Business Line Magazine (June 200), http://timharford.com/2008/09/business-life-dysfunctional-teams
Tina Erwee, Building great teams, http://dotnet.org.za/tina/pages/4563.aspx