Figure 1.1. How the seven drivers of team effectiveness relate to one another.
You are a member of small team working on an important, challenging mission. Your assignment is dangerous, and there’s a nontrivial chance that you or your team members won’t survive. You’ll be working and living together in a small, confined space for several years. You’ll be isolated from your family and friends, and even from “headquarters” (HQ). When you want to talk with the folks at HQ, it will take 20 minutes for your message to reach them and 20 additional minutes for their response to get back to you, so you won’t be able to get any real-time guidance from them. Having a bad day? You can’t call in sick or go for a walk. You and your team members will be working and living together shoulder to shoulder, every day, for years. How would you feel about being on this team?
Those are the challenges that a long-duration space exploration crew will face in a future mission. You can readily see the teamwork challenges associated with such a mission, and that’s why we and others have been conducting research for NASA that will help them choose astronauts who will be good teammates, form a crew with the right mix of capabilities, and prepare the team to withstand and hopefully thrive in adverse conditions.
A trip to outer space presents an extreme teamwork challenge, perhaps a 98 on a 100-point scale of difficulty. We doubt your team faces such an extreme challenge. Most teams don’t. But that doesn’t mean being on a team is easy. All teams face challenges—even a “simple” project team. Teamwork and collaboration are hard.1 If you’ve been working for a while, you’ve almost certainly experienced a struggling team first-hand. Despite what they sing in the Lego movie, everything isn’t always “cool when you’re part of a team.” Being on a bad team can be a painful experience.
1. Technically, teamwork is a specific form of collaboration but throughout the book we use the terms “teamwork” and “collaboration” interchangeably.
We’ve written this book to help you and your colleagues make informed, evidence-based decisions that enable your teams to work well together and produce great results. You’ll learn about the science of teamwork and tangible ways to apply that science to be an effective team leader, a great team member, a supportive senior leader, or an impactful consultant.
We’re industrial/organizational psychologists (Eduardo is also a human factors psychologist), and for the last 30 years or so we’ve worked with, provided advice to, and studied teams in a myriad of settings. Some of these teams operate in dangerous settings, such as astronauts, oil rig crews in the North Sea, smoke jumpers (they parachute into fires), and combat teams. Some perform in settings where mistakes can cost people lives, such as medical teams and teams of military aviators. Others do their work in corporate environments, including boards of directors; leadership teams; and sales, manufacturing, finance, and project teams. You’ll read about some of our experiences with these teams.
While we’ve been working with and studying teams, other researchers have been busy as well. There is now a large, growing body of interesting empirical research, much of it conducted by behavioral scientists. We carefully reviewed the research literature and reflected on our experiences, looking for consistent patterns that reveal what truly drives team effectiveness. We discovered seven consistent drivers of team effectiveness. In this chapter, you’ll get a high-level preview of the drivers. Subsequent chapters contain a detailed look at each followed by practical tips and tools. But first, let’s clarify what we mean by a “highly effective team.”
A highly effective team is, first of all, a “team.” We define a team as:
• Who interact with one another,
• In situations where at least some members need to rely on other team members at least some of the time,
• Sharing a common (or at least somewhat overlapping) sense of purpose or goals, and
• Are viewed as a unit by others and/or themselves (i.e., some of what they do could be legitimately attributed to them as a unit).
A group of people who work together in the same room is not necessarily a team. Simply sharing workspace or performing similar tasks doesn’t constitute being a team. But a team need not be a neatly defined entity with clearly assigned roles, stable membership, and a singular goal fully shared by all team members. Most “teams” in organizational settings are a good bit messier but still meet our definition of a team.
A highly effective team is one that demonstrates sustained performance, team resilience, and ongoing vitality. If a team frivolously expends resources and spends all its “chips” to hit a short-term goal and, in so doing, degrades its future capabilities and performance, we would not consider it highly effective. If a team produces positive results when conditions are favorable but crumbles when things get tough or takes an extremely long time to rebound from negative events, we would not consider it to be highly effective. And, if a team burns out its team members and therefore lacks the vitality needed to adapt, persevere, and innovate going forward, we would not consider it a highly effective team. Short-term results are an imperfect indicator of team effectiveness.
Our focus is on identifying what enables teams to be highly effective and not simply capable of short-term success or performing well only when conditions are favorable.
Team effectiveness, as we define it, has three components:
What really creates team effectiveness? Seven drivers consistently make a difference. At times, one may be more important than another, but all play a role in the success of almost any team. Table 1.1 lists these drivers along with a fundamental question for each.
Table 1.1. Key Questions about the Seven Drivers
| Driver | Fundamental Question |
| 1. Capability | Do we have the right people with the right mix of knowledge, skills, and other attributes? |
| 2. Cooperation | Do team members possess the right beliefs and attitudes about their team? |
| 3. Coordination | Are team members exhibiting the necessary teamwork behaviors for team success? |
| 4. Communication | Do team members communicate effectively with each other and with people outside the team? |
| 5. Cognition | Do team members possess a shared understanding about key factors such as priorities, roles, and vision? |
| 6. Coaching | Does the leader and/or team members demonstrate the necessary leadership behaviors? |
| 7. Conditions | Is the context in which the team operates favorable for performing effectively (e.g., ample resources, supportive culture)? |
Capability refers to the individual and collective competencies that a team possesses. Does the team have the knowledge, skills, personality, and other personal attributes needed to complete assignments, overcome challenges, and adapt as needed to sustain performance? Sometimes we can anticipate how well a team will perform by examining the team’s average capability on a key attribute. Other times the best indicator might be the capability of the strongest or weakest team member or if the team has two people with the capability to perform a critical task.
In chapter 4, you’ll learn what the research tells us about capabilities, including five fundamental skills and four personal attributes that contribute to teamwork, along with three toxic traits you’ll want to avoid.
Capability is about having ample horsepower. If your team lacks critical competencies, it will be difficult to succeed.
Cooperation refers to the attitudes and beliefs that individuals bring to the team each day. What do they think about this team and the people on it? Do they think the team can succeed? Do they trust one another? Do they believe they can be “genuine” with other members on the team? Are they committed to the team and the work they do?
People join a team with general beliefs about working on a team, shaped in part by past experiences and in part by their own personalities and propensities. Over time, they learn about their new team and develop attitudes about that team and specific team members. Together these influence their willingness to engage in teamwork behaviors. As we’ll see, research shows that mindset matters. For example, when team members collectively believe that their team is likely to succeed, it boosts the team’s effectiveness.
In some cases, all that is needed is for team members to be civil with one another and not get in each other’s way—yet even that requires a certain mindset. In other instances, far more teamwork is needed, and team members must be willing to step up and work as a team.
In chapter 5, you’ll learn what the research tells us about four distinct cooperative beliefs and how you can help them emerge—trust, psychological safety, collective efficacy, and cohesion.
Cooperation is about mindset—beliefs and attitudes about my teammates and my team.
Coordination is at the heart of teamwork; it refers to the teamwork behaviors that a team needs to demonstrate to be highly effective. The exact behaviors can vary from team to team or even across situations, but almost all teams need to maintain situation awareness, back up or fill in for one another, adapt, and manage team emotions.
Some teams struggle because they don’t know the teamwork behaviors they need to exhibit. As a simple example, on a senior leadership team, when someone is unable to attend a meeting, who will provide that person with a briefing of what transpired? Is there an awareness that someone needs to fill in for that person and provide a form of backup? Knowing the necessary behaviors is part of the equation, but then the real question is whether team members take those actions on a consistent basis.
In chapter 6, you’ll learn what the research tells us about the four most important coordination behaviors and the three things that effective teams tend to monitor.
Coordination is about behavior, teammates demonstrating the right teamwork behaviors. It is about actions not attitudes.
Communication refers to information exchange within a team as well as with individuals and groups outside the team. It is not simply talking to one another; more communication isn’t always better. But the way a team communicates drives its effectiveness; poor communications can doom a team. Communications are needed to ensure team members have the information they need and that they maintain proper awareness. Moreover, the way in which a team communicates with outsiders—for example, with its partners, sponsors, and customers—greatly influences relationship quality, so we discuss “boundary spanning” or sustaining relations with key stakeholders in the chapter on communications.
In chapter 7, you’ll learn what the research tells us about the importance of communicating unique information, the value of closed-loop communications, and how to be alert for the biggest communication obstacles.
Communication is about information exchange—to accomplish work, maintain awareness, and foster positive relationships both within and outside the team.
Cognition refers to the extent to which team members possess a shared or at least a complementary understanding about key factors. Cognition as described in this book isn’t about an individual’s attitudes or mindset but instead refers to the overall team. If we were to interview each person on your team separately, what would they say about the team’s priorities? About who is responsible for certain tasks or who gets to make certain decisions?
When a team has conflicting or unreconciled points of view on priorities, roles, or how to handle certain situations, it can adversely affect its ability to coordinate and perform effectively. In contrast, when a team possesses what psychologists call “shared mental models,” it often results in better performance. Another way to think about cognition is whether your team members are all “on the same page.”
In chapter 8, you’ll learn what the research tells us about the eight types of shared cognitions and the questions you should want all your team members to be able to answer in a similar way.
Cognition is about shared awareness and understanding—for example, about priorities, roles, the situation, and expectations.
Conditions refers to the context in which the team operates. No team operates in a vacuum, and the environment can be an enabler and/or an inhibitor of team effectiveness. Local conditions such as resource availability, degree of autonomy, work environment, and time availability can influence team performance. And broader conditions can help promote and sustain teamwork or they can inhibit and constrain it. For example, organizational policies and practices, including performance management and compensation practices, create expectations about teamwork. The climate in which the team is embedded also matters. Is the organization one where people typically feel safe speaking up? Is the team being supported by the leadership above them?
Sometimes the cues are obvious. For example, insufficient resources is a powerful signal to a project team that their project isn’t very important. Other cues are more subtle. Who gets promoted in the organization? Team players? Selfish people, as long as they produce results? Collectively, the conditions surrounding a team send signals about whether coordination is encouraged, accepted, or discouraged in the organization. It is critical to monitor conditions and, where possible, take actions to ensure they support team success—or at least try to remove obvious impediments.
In chapter 9, you’ll learn what the research tells us about six key organizational conditions, three key senior leadership conditions, and four team-specific local conditions that greatly influence team effectiveness.
Conditions are about the environment in which the team is embedded—they send signals that either support or inhibit teamwork and performance.
Coaching refers to leadership. Without question, leadership matters. A good leader can help a team be more successful, and as anyone who ever worked for a poor leader can attest, bad leadership can not only create a huge performance obstacle; it can also make being on a team quite unpleasant (which affects future beliefs about working in a team!). So there is value in understanding the behaviors effective leaders exhibit and the functions they perform, for example, how they provide advice and promote ongoing team learning.
But leadership isn’t just for leaders. More and more frequently we see the need for team members to step up and perform some leadership functions, what researchers refer to as “shared leadership.” Shared leadership doesn’t involve appointing an additional leader but is more about informal behaviors. As organizational structures get flatter and managers oversee larger groups of individuals, a leader can’t see everything and won’t always be available to give feedback or help her team members—that’s why some degree of shared leadership is often needed.
In chapter 10, you’ll learn what the research tells us about the seven essential leadership functions that must be fulfilled on a team, along with practical insights from three empirically tested leadership approaches (and one derived from our experiences).
Coaching is about leadership—the leader as well as team members demonstrating effective leadership behaviors.
How do the drivers relate to one another? As shown in Figure 1.1, they are not independent. For example, information sharing (communications) facilitates the development of shared understanding (cognitions), which in turn makes it easier to back up one another when needed (coordination). Research shows that all of the drivers can influence team effectiveness.
Figure 1.1. How the seven drivers of team effectiveness relate to one another.
We want to emphasize three key points. First, cooperation or mindset tends to emerge from the other six drivers. As a team member, do I think my team can succeed? Do I trust my team members? The emergence of those beliefs depends on the talent on the team, the extent to which we coordinate our work and communicate effectively, the degree to which we have a shared understanding of roles and priorities, our access to resources, and various leadership behaviors. Attitudes such as trust and collective efficacy emerge from doing the other things well. And, in turn, those cooperative attitudes can influence the other drivers. For example, when we trust one another, it becomes easier for me to take the time to help you out—and you are more likely to accept my help.
Second, coaching plays a central role in team effectiveness. A key focus for any team leader should be to ensure their team has enough of the other six drivers to be able to sustain effective performance.
Third, the research shows that each of the drivers can directly influence important outcomes such as performance, quality, and innovation. And success begets positive attitudes. When a team is performing effectively and accomplishing its goals, it tends to reinforce positive attitudes. We’ll allude to these relationships throughout the book.
The book is divided into three parts. Of course, we’d like you to read the book cover to cover, but you don’t have to.
The first part provides the context for the rest of the book. If you read the next two chapters you’ll find evidence with which to make a compelling case that teamwork is a business imperative, be better prepared to avoid five common teamwork myths that can lead to bad decisions, learn how teams differ and why that’s important, and be better equipped to understand the research described throughout the book.
The middle part of the book, chapters 4 through 10, describes the science of teamwork. Each chapter highlights one of the seven drivers and is full of research findings and insights, along with examples from teams in action. This section is evidence-based but easy to read—not too geeky but not oversimplified either.
We believe anyone who leads a team, works on a team, or supports a team in any way should know what really drives team performance. That knowledge can keep you from being unduly influenced by what sounds logical (but is wrong), is easy to understand (but is too simplistic), or is consistent with what you have been led to believe (but is actually a myth). So, we hope you’ll read the middle part of the book, but if you want to get immediately to the punchline to learn “What I should do?” you can jump directly to the third part of the book. Chapter 11 summarizes key points about the science of teamwork. Chapters 12 through 15 contain role-specific advice for team leaders, team members, internal or external consultants, and senior leaders, respectively. If you choose to jump ahead, we won’t judge you! But you’ll miss out on learning some really useful things about the nature of teams in Part I and about the science of teamwork in Part II.
If after reading the book you want to share what you’ve learned with a leader who has a limited amount of time, guide them to read chapter 11 and then either chapter 12 (if they are a team leader) or chapter 14 (if they are a senior leader). At the end of the book you’ll also find a set of tools, including a list of desirable team member competencies, tips for conducting a team debrief, questions for reviewing the conditions that foster or inhibit teamwork (e.g., policies, senior leader behaviors, and resources), a quick diagnostic tool, and a matrix with practical ideas for addressing a broad array of teamwork challenges.
One final thought for getting the most out of this book: we encourage you to identify a team you can think about as you read the book. It could be a team you are a member of or one you lead, but having a specific team in mind will be helpful when we guide you to think about key findings throughout the book.