How to Build Effective Teams
We have been working to help teams work better together for more than 30 years now. This work is borne of our passion for what we call highly effective teams, the definition of which has been, until very recently, subjective. I discovered very early in my career what many of us do as we engage with the work of any corporation—that teams are a fundamental underpinning of how work gets done, and that while teams come in many different shapes and sizes, and are put together for many different purposes, sometimes (to put it mildly) they just don’t work very well. This conundrum—some simply seem to work, while others never get there, has led to a decades-long passion for helping to build effective teams. Why do some teams “work” while others spin their wheels, meeting and discussing, but never deciding; arguing over process and never getting to purpose; focusing on minutiae and never addressing the core purpose of the team?
When we work with teams in workshops to decide how to become more effective, one of our standard opening questions is “Who here has worked on a team that they would describe as highly effective?”, followed by “And who here has worked on a team that is not so effective?”. In thirty years, the responses have been quite consistent: virtually everyone in the room has worked on both kinds of teams.
So how do some teams become highly effective while others do not? In our experience, there are two approaches to building highly effective teams.
One relies on the experience and intuition of the team leader to do what is necessary to lay the foundation for success, to coach individual team members, and to make clear how they expect the team to work. These teams are often led by a person who team members will refer to as a “natural leader” a “charismatic leader” a “servant leader” or some other descriptor—often influenced by the popular leadership model of the day.
A second approach is for the leader to convene the team to collaborate and intentionally create the foundation upon which the team will operate and hopefully, thrive.
It’s this second approach we’d like to talk about.
I recently downloaded and read a report commissioned by Novartis, the global pharmaceutical company. The report—High-performing Teams: An evidence review was published by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (the CIPD). This report and the accompanying practice summary are available at High-performing teams: An evidence review | CIPD
The focus of the review and the report was to look at scientific evidence to answer a series of questions about what influences the development of highly effective teams. Is it “team building” social activities? Trust? Selection of team members? How do teams gather and share knowledge? Expertise? The report went beyond anecdotes and observations to look at the mountains of data that have been collected about what makes teams effective.
The paper does an excellent job of summarizing the main contributing factors and several sub-factors. Here’s how they summarized what influences team effectiveness, together with a bit of commentary:
- Team Composition (Diversity, Personality): of the two factors, Personality (especially the Big Five traits of agreeableness and conscientiousness) contributes more significantly to effectiveness than Diversity (in terms of age, ethnicity and experience). But neither of them moves the dial in a big way.
- Interpersonal dynamics (Trust, Psychological Safety, and Social Cohesion): Of the three, Psychological Safety (the ability to contribute and collaborate without fear of retribution) is the most significant factor, with a high degree of impact on overall team effectiveness. The other two factors contribute, but less so.
- Organizing knowledge (Cognitive consensus, Information-sharing, and Collective Memory): the factor that influences team effectiveness most, of these three, is Cognitive consensus—the extent to which team members define and think about problems in a similar way. This has less to do with whether the teams agree on outcomes, and more to do with whether there is agreement within the team about how issues are defined and communicated. The other two factors influence effectiveness but less so—about as much as Trust, Cohesion and Personality.
So, what are the biggest takeaways for leaders?
- The biggest influencers on team effectiveness overall are Personality, Psychological Safety, and Cognitive consensus. These three have the highest levels of impact on how effectively your team will function.
- Leaders need to go beyond “team building” activities (which are often social) and engage in an intentional approach to developing collective behavioural norms, creating a safe environment for difficult discussions, and creating shared perspectives on the team’s most significant issues.
Implementing a new organization frequently requires the creation of new teams (both Collateral Teams and Cross-boundary Teams, which we have written about previously). To accelerate the process of creating highly effective teams, we have created a model for How to Build Effective Teams, together with an online tool that can be used to assess the current state of any team.
You can find them both here:
Whether teams are Collateral or Cross-boundary, they benefit from taking some time to clarify:
- what we do as a team (the work)
- how do we do it? (how our individual approach to gathering information and making decisions influences team outcomes).
The result of our approach to on how to build effective teams is a shared understanding of the individual and collective work of the team and a heightened awareness of how individual cognitive preferences shape team outcomes.
The CIPD report confirmed the advice that we have been giving to our clients for many years: if you want your team to work effectively together, then spend some time collaboratively working on how to get there. It’s the best investment in your team-building dollars.
This blog is part of our ongoing series Organizations that Work. To see all of the blogs in the series that have been posted so far, click here.
Every Tuesday over the next few months, we will be posting blogs that take you from the pain of poor organization design, to identifying the root causes, to the benefits of undertaking strategic organization review. We will discuss the steps needed to effectively align your structure and work with your strategy, and we’ll discuss the processes that take out the guess work and help you to get it done. Through it all we will discuss how to lead the change from start to finish.
If you’d like to speak with us about how we can help you on your journey to an organization that works, please follow us on LinkedIn or book a call directly with one of our partners.
This blog was written by Ed McMahon. Ed is the managing partner with Core International, and specializes in creating organization designs structured to deliver strategy and improve performance.
This article draws on the work of Barends, E., Rousseau, D., Cioca, I. and Wrietak, E. (2023) High-performing teams: An evidence review. Scientific Summary. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
Our approach draws on several bodies of work including Stratified Systems Theory, the work of Dr. Elliott Jaques. For more on Dr. Jaques and his work visit the Requisite Organization International Institute at ROII Requisite – ROII Requisite.