THE CHAPTERS IN THIS PART OF THE BOOK explore the six conditions that, together, create a team-friendly work environment. It is like a garden: A plant is more likely to prosper when the seed is good, the soil is fertile, water is plentiful, and the sun shines frequently. None of those conditions, by itself, guarantees healthy development of the plant. But together they increase the chances of a favorable outcome. It is the same with teams.
Real team (Chapter 4): Real work teams are intact social systems whose members work together to achieve a common purpose. They have clear boundaries that distinguish members from nonmembers. They work interdependently to generate a product for which members have collective, rather than individual, accountability. And they have at least moderate stability, which gives members time to learn how to work well together.
Compelling purpose (Chapter 5): A compelling purpose energizes team members, orients them toward their collective objective, and fully engages their talents. Purpose has high priority when establishing a team because so many other design decisions depend on it—how the team is structured, the kinds of organizational supports that are needed, and the type of coaching by team leaders that will be most helpful.
Right people (Chapter 6): Well-composed teams have the right number and mix of members, each of whom has both task expertise and skill in working collaboratively with others. And they are as small and diverse as possible—large size and excessive homogeneity of membership can cripple even teams that otherwise are quite well designed.
Clear norms of conduct (Chapter 7): Norms of conduct specify what behaviors are, and are not, acceptable in a team. Having clear, wellenforced norms greatly reduces the amount of time a team must spend actively managing member behavior. The best norms promote continuous scanning of the performance situation and the deployment of work strategies that are well tuned to the special features of the team’s task and situation.
Supportive organizational context (Chapter 8): Even teams that are properly structured and supported sometimes founder because they cannot obtain the organizational supports they need to perform well. Having the material resources needed to carry out the work is, of course, essential. But beyond that, team performance is facilitated when (1) the reward system provides recognition and positive consequences for excellent team performance, (2) the information system provides the team with the data and the information-processing tools members need to plan and execute their work, and (3) the organization’s educational system makes available to the team any technical or educational assistance members may require.
Team-focused coaching (Chapter 9): Competent and well-timed team coaching can help a team minimize its exposure to process losses and increase the chances that it will operate in ways that generate synergistic process gains. But even highly competent coaching is likely to be futile when the other enabling conditions are not in place, or when the team is not at a stage of its life cycle when members are ready to receive it. That is why coaching, as important as it can be in fostering competent teamwork, comes last in the list of enabling conditions.