Figure 3.1. The reliance continuum.
Let’s consider two types of teams that you are probably familiar with, a senior leadership team (SLT) and a manufacturing production team. The SLT comes together periodically to establish the direction of the company, make strategic resource allocation decisions, assess progress, and ensure adequate alignment across units. Team members do not work together or rely on one another to perform their jobs on a daily basis. In fact, each member of the SLT is not only a member of that team, but also represents, and is typically the leader of, a different function or business unit.
In contrast, the manufacturing team works together every day, in well-defined roles, to ensure adequate production, quality, and safety levels for their shift. They work shoulder to shoulder and rely on one another to perform their jobs and hit their goals.
Do the same factors drive team effectiveness in these two teams? The answer is yes and no. Yes, because the same seven key drivers impact the effectiveness of both teams. No, because they manifest themselves in different ways.
For instance, one of the drivers is communication. While both teams need to communicate to be successful, their keys to successful communication are quite different. What happens if the SLT meets, makes a collective decision, and then afterwards the chief financial and chief marketing officers communicate conflicting messages to their employees? When members of the SLT spread a message that is discordant with the agreements reached by the team, it creates confusion and intensifies factions. The resulting “us–them” problems that inevitably arise then make their way back up to the senior team, reducing trust, polarizing SLT members, and adversely affecting subsequent team decision-making. In highly effective leadership teams, team members convey a generally unified message about agreed upon priorities. Note that we say “generally” rather than “fully” unified because we’ve yet to see a SLT that didn’t slip on occasion!
In comparison, the manufacturing team has less need to communicate a unified message to people outside. Team members work together and rely on each other on a daily basis, so clear, consistent communications within the team are critical. When they do communicate with people outside their team, a primary focus is on sharing information with the next shift, for example, about equipment problems they encountered. These “external” communications are typically handled by designated members of each shift who serve as an information conduit for their team, rather than all team members being responsible for conveying a common message, as was the case for the leadership team. Communication is important for both types of teams, just in different ways. Teams are not all the same.
The research reveals some universal findings about teamwork that apply to any team, and we will share those. It would be great if that was all you needed to know. It that were true, it would certainly make it easier to be a team leader and would make this book much shorter! But unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Teams and teamwork are more complex and nuanced.
Teams can differ in countless ways, but a few of these differences are particularly important. Perhaps the most important distinction between teams is the extent to which team members must rely on one another. The research findings are different for teams whose members work fairly independently than for teams with a high degree of interdependency among team members. In the following discussion, we examine this distinction in detail and briefly describe four other ones that will help us interpret the science of teamwork throughout in the book.
It is best to think of these five distinctions as sliding scales, rather than simply “on” or “off.” As we describe the reliance, membership stability, work requirements, proximity, and similarity continua we encourage you to conduct a thought experiment. Ask yourself, “Where does my team currently fall on each continuum?”
The key question here is, “To what extent must team members rely on one another and coordinate with other team members to accomplish their work?” If there are no interdependencies, then it is not a team, simply a group of individuals. But a team can range from fairly independent to highly interdependent (Figure 3.1).
Figure 3.1. The reliance continuum.
When interdependence is low, team members can perhaps help one another prepare and “cheer” for one another, but when they perform their work, they do so independently. Other team members are generally unable to help them. Many sales teams operate toward the low end of this continuum.
A regional sales team we worked with exemplifies how low interdependency teams operate. Members of this team participate in training together. Periodically they meet to update one another and to share experiences, but most of their time is spent in the field, individually working their territory. When a salesperson is trying to make a sale, she is on her own. Ask any person on the team, “How much have you sold this period” and they can tell you, often down to the decimal point. But they probably can’t tell you the total sales for the region. The way the company evaluates the team is also quite revealing. The company determines if the regional sales team met its quota by adding up all the sales from each individual’s territory. This is a classic example of a team with low interdependence.
As we move from left to right on the continuum, we find teams in which some members must coordinate with other team members some of the time, but not everyone is required to coordinate with all other team members on a regular basis. Team members may need to rely on one another at certain points in time or in certain circumstances. In teams toward the middle of the continuum, some team members work fairly independently at least some of the time. Think of this as a medium or moderate degree of interdependence.
Finally, on the right side of the continuum are teams with high interdependencies. In these teams, most, if not all, team members work together on a consistent basis and regularly rely on each other to ensure personal and team success.
At some point in your career you’ve probably heard the expression, “Business is a team sport.” We recently had a great dinner at the Union Square Café in New York. Their feedback card states, “Hospitality is a team sport.” A bit trite perhaps, but there is a lot of truth to that statement, and their owner was among the first to do away with tipping and to raise prices so that the full restaurant team, waiters and kitchen staff, could be rewarded as a team.
In a given business setting, what type of team sport are we talking about? A useful way to illustrate the reliance continuum is by considering different types of sports teams (Figure 3.2). Which of these does your team most resemble?
Figure 3.2. Sports teams across the reliance continuum.
On the left end of the continuum are teams such as wrestling, gymnastics, and swimming teams. If we’re on a wrestling team together, you can help me during practice but when I’m “doing my job,” I’m on my own. And unless we are professional tag team wrestling partners, no one else on the wrestling team can help me while I’m on the mat, other than cheering for me. Let’s consider a collegiate wrestling match between Iowa and Penn State universities. How do they determine the winning team? First, the winner of each individual match gets three to six points, depending on whether they pinned their opponent or won by a decision. After all the individual matches are complete, simply add up each of the individual scores to yield team scores. The team with the most points wins. That sounds a lot like that regional sales team, doesn’t it?
But to be clear, a low interdependence team is still a team. Golf is an individual sport—no one can fill in for you to hit a difficult shot, there is no one to pass the ball to, and, in fact, no one even plays defense against you! But there can be some team-related elements as well. Jordan Speith is one of the world’s best golfers. He has won three of golf’s four major championships, including the 2017 British Open, and was named PGA Player of the Year in 2015. Interestingly, he talks about golf as if it more than just an individual sport. In a news conference prior to a major golf tournament, Jordan used the word “we” 29 times to refer to his actions, saying things like “We have been improving each year in the major championships.” He views others around him as part of his team, a team that shares the goal of helping him become the best player in the world. His team includes his manager, his swing coach, his caddie, and his trainer. He is the only one on the team who plays golf for a living, but his team helps prepare him, and he and his caddie interact on the course. And if his coach, his caddie, and his trainer are not on the same page, it will be reflected in his performance. The world may not view “Team Spieth” as a team, but Jordan seems to. He also recognizes that much of what he does is individual, and he takes responsibility for his performance. You’ll probably never hear him say, “We missed a putt.”
In the middle of the continuum are teams such as baseball, cricket, and relay race teams. On these teams there are times when tight coordination is needed among some, but perhaps not all, of the players. In those situations, a player can’t perform his job properly or a task may not be completed effectively unless two or more team members are truly in sync.
For example, let’s dissect a play during a baseball game—the Hanshin Tigers are playing the Yomiuri Giants. There is a runner on first base with one out in the bottom on the third inning. A ground ball is hit to the pitcher. He fields the ball and spins toward second base, where the shortstop is already moving to cover the base. The pitcher throws the ball to the shortstop who steps on second base and then fires the baseball to the first baseman to complete the double play. If the pitcher’s throw was off line, if the shortstop was late getting to second, or if the second baseman thought he was supposed to catch the throw from the pitcher rather than the shortstop, the team would not have completed the double play. Tight coordination was needed among several, but not all, of the nine players on the field. But in the top of the fourth inning, when the shortstop comes up to bat, none of his teammates can help him. He is performing a solo task. Baseball is a combination of independent performances and brief coordinated interludes.
That balance is highly visible in a 4 × 100 relay race. The team is made up of four runners; each runs a 100-meter leg and then passes a baton to the next runner on the team until the final runner crosses the finish line. It is a sport that relies on purely individual performances (no one can help you while you’re running your leg of the race) punctuated by three events requiring smooth coordination between two team members. A dropped baton or a pass that occurs outside the designated area means the team is disqualified. Historically, this has been an event in which US teams often excel. From 1912 to 2008, the US men’s teams made the finals of every Olympics except one. But in the 2008 Olympics the US team dropped the baton and was disqualified. Their response was admirable. Runners Darvis Patton and Tyson Gay both said, “I take the blame for this.” The US coach, Bubba Thornton, was also willing to accept fault, saying “You can put it right on my shoulders.” As Thornton noted, each of the athletes had practiced passing and receiving the baton “a million times” in their careers. But unfortunately, they were unable to practice handoffs in the United States prior to the 2008 Olympics because of an injury to Gay’s hamstring. Their independent individual performances were fine, but when coordination was needed between Gay and Patton, they weren’t ready, and as a result, they failed as a team.
At the right end of the continuum are sports teams such as soccer, rugby, football, basketball, and hockey (field or ice) teams. In these teams, all the players on the field need to perform in a coordinated manner on a consistent basis. Teammates need one another and rely on one another to a great extent, play after play. The degree of interdependence among the players is high.
Watch a soccer, football, or basketball game, and you’ll probably see a few great, “wow-inspiring” individual plays, performed by a single player. A basketball player will make an acrobatic move to elude his defender and then score on an off-balance, twisting shot over a seven-foot tall center. Or a soccer player will dribble past two defenders and curve an arching left-footed shot around the goaltender. On the surface, these acts are the personification of individual excellence. And it might appear that a basketball or soccer team’s performance is determined the same way as it is for a sales or wrestling team. Simply add up the points or goals that each player scored—only one player gets credit for a goal or basket—to determine the team’s overall team. But while the scoring mechanics are the same, the underlying phenomenon is quite different. A basketball or soccer player, even a great one, relies heavily on his or her teammates. In basketball, often the reason a player is able to get past his defender is because a teammate set a perfectly timed screen. And the reason another opponent couldn’t double team him is because the player he was assigned to guard required his attention. In soccer, even a great goal scorer needs her teammates to pass her the ball in a position where she can do some damage. Of course, there are instances of pure, individual excellence throughout the game, but rarely are such actions as independent as they might appear. Pele, perhaps the greatest soccer player of all time, said it quite succinctly, “No individual can win a game by himself.”
Sometimes coordination can be planned. Football teams have playbooks filled with diagrams of plays that stipulate who is supposed to go where, often specifying second and third options. Every player needs to know the play—if I think we are going to run the football and you think we are going to pass it, things will go very badly. Perhaps the ultimate example of planned coordination in sports occurs in synchronized swimming. Every team member must know, in advance, exactly where each other swimmer needs to be, as even a misdirected toe is costly. There is no room for improvisation.
In other cases, coordination occurs on a real-time basis. While skating at 20 miles per hour, a hockey player needs to read his teammates and defenders to know where to pass the puck. Defenders on a soccer team need to infer the intent of the attacking team, reaching a common conclusion so they can spontaneously coordinate their actions and set the opponent offside. Most teams must demonstrate a mix of planned and spontaneous coordination. But even spontaneous coordination is typically founded on shared mental models, which are formed from practicing and playing together. Whether planned, spontaneous, or a combination, a common attribute of teams that fall toward the right side of the continuum is that coordination requirements are continual.
We need to consider the extent to which team members must rely on one another because the research findings are different for teams that have low versus high coordination requirements. For teams that fall toward the far-left end of the continuum, sometimes all that is needed from a team perspective is for members to be civil with one another and not get in each other’s way. In the regional sales team, a few general principles help—don’t be a jerk, don’t do something that will create a problem for other salespeople in their territories, be constructive in your interactions, and occasionally share a good idea or two during our meetings. That’s enough. Perhaps all the team leader needs to do is provide individual feedback when deviant behavior emerges and occasionally host a social event, so team members see each other as real people. But for teams where team members must rely on one another a bit more, they need more than just being civil. They need to be able to pass the baton, know the planned plays, or adjust to one another on the fly. Teamwork and the seven drivers become increasingly critical as we move from left to right on the continuum.
Thought Experiment: Think about your team. To what extent can team members complete their work independently? Using the sports analogy, is your team similar to a wrestling team? Wrestling plus? A baseball team? Baseball plus? A soccer team? Where does it fall on the continuum?
Let’s look at another way teams can differ from one another. How stable is the membership of your team? Does the composition ever change and, if so, how frequently and how significantly?
Historically, psychologists and other researchers tended to study intact teams with a membership that remained constant throughout the course of the research. While those studies yielded some useful insights, team membership in organizational settings is often more dynamic. A common scenario is for a team to experience periodic changes in membership. The team is formed, and after a few months, a team member is replaced. Another team member becomes unavailable for a period of time, so the team must cover for him, working “one person down,” in his absence. Then the team leader is promoted, and a new team leader gets appointed. And when a new task is assigned to the team, an additional person is temporarily assigned to help for a few months. Over the course of a year, a significant proportion of the team’s membership has changed. That type of dynamic membership is not uncommon.
The composition of a team can change intentionally, for example, through planned movement such as a promotion, or unintentionally, for instance as the result of unexpected turnover. In some teams, membership changes are continual and can become part of the team’s natural rhythm. In other cases, a team’s composition may remain quite stable with little or no changes.
A related factor to consider is the life span of the team. Some teams are designed to be ongoing; when formed they don’t have an established “expiration date.” The senior leadership and manufacturing teams we alluded to earlier are examples of ongoing teams. Other teams are temporary. They are formed for a targeted purpose and expected to disband within a given timeframe. Most task forces and project teams are built as temporary entities, often with an expected life span of weeks or months. The Deloitte study of 7,000 leaders we alluded to in chapter 2 suggests that we can expect to see even greater use of such temporary teams in the future. And some teams are particularly fleeting, such as an airline flight crew or a hospital trauma team. A team is assembled to service passengers flying from London to Hong Kong or to treat a patient who was in a car accident, and after completing their task, they rapidly disband. Such teams are sometimes referred to as “flash teams,” given their short life cycle.
Let’s consider one of the seven drivers, cognition. Cognition refers to the extent to which team members possess a common understanding, or a shared mental model, about key factors such as roles, priorities, and individual team member’s expertise. Research has shown the importance of these. When team membership is dynamic, it is more difficult to build and sustain shared mental models. If you are leading a team with a rapidly rotating membership or one with a short life span, there are certain actions you may need to take that are different than those you would take leading a stable, ongoing team.
Thought Experiment: Where does your team fall along a continuum of membership stability? Highly stable? Fairly stable? Somewhat dynamic? Highly dynamic? What percentage of people currently on your team were on it six months ago? Will be on it six months from now?
The question here is, “How stable and predictable are the team’s work requirements?” Does the team perform the same tasks on a consistent basis? Can they establish and rely on stable routines? How frequently and dramatically do work requirements and expectations change? Can they anticipate forthcoming needs?
When work requirements are constant, a team has the chance to perform key tasks repeatedly, providing many opportunities to learn from experience. A food service crew on board a cruise ship performs a fairly consistent set of tasks. When you are on a cruise, you can probably detect how long the crew has been working together. During an initial “shake out” cruise, when the crew is just starting to work together, service is often quite spotty. But with each passing day that the team works together, if they are receiving constructive feedback, they will work through glitches and build clear and stable shared mental models about roles and “if–then” expectations, and service typically improves.
But many teams work in environments where the task requirements change, either gradually or rapidly. When task requirements evolve slowly over time, a team must make adjustments, but they can typically do so in a planned or orderly manner. In contrast, teams that work in rapidly changing environments experience constant changes to task requirements. Expectations can change unpredictably, so teams that work in a highly dynamic setting must learn to be highly adaptive and flexible.
The degree to which work requirements are consistent or unpredictable has implications for many of the key drivers, including the individual capabilities team members must possess, the extent to which coordinated planning can occur, and the ease with which shared mental models can be formed.
Thought Experiment: Would you describe the work requirements as fairly consistent? Evolving slowly over time? Shifting fairly regularly? Or highly unpredictable? Does the team tend to perform similar tasks over time, or is it more dynamic?
The primary question to consider here is, “Do team members work in a common location, or are any team members geographically dispersed?” Fifty years ago, it was common for all team members to work together in the same location (e.g., on the manufacturing floor) or down the hall from one another (the SLT), or at least be able to easily meet in the same physical place (all project team members meet in the conference room). Now, that is often not true. Team members may be located across the campus, town, country, or globe.
While many technologies can help connect team members who are physically separated, team dynamics are influenced by distance. For example, one of the key drivers is coaching, which we use to refer to leadership. In a geographically dispersed team, the leader is typically unable to see everyone on a regular basis. As a result, a different coaching or leadership approach is often needed, including, for example, a greater degree of shared leadership, a concept we’ll explore later in the book.
Thought Experiment. Where along the proximity continuum does your team fall? Are you all working in the same location? Slightly dispersed? Largely or fully dispersed?
The key question here is, “To what extent does the team consist of individuals who possess similar expertise?” A team can be “designed” with similar or complimentary roles. When all the positions on the team are quite similar, job requirements are likely to be similar, and team members are likely to share similar educational backgrounds. Some team members may have greater levels of experience and expertise, but the work they perform and the functional expertise required are quite similar. The result is a team that is relatively homogeneous. An example of this is a team of actuaries. Actuaries are involved in measuring and managing risk and uncertainty. All members of an actuarial team possess similar degrees (not likely to include any art history majors), a strong common element that they all bring to the table. That doesn’t mean that all actuaries are identical, as they may have grown up in different parts of the world, have different personal interests, etc. But relatively speaking, a team of actuaries is likely to be a fairly homogeneous group.
In contrast, some teams are specifically designed to include people with diverse expertise. In the case of a cross-functional team, team members bring different functional expertise and perspective to the work they perform. That is basically the definition of a cross-functional team. When one of the actuaries becomes a member of a cross-functional task force, she is likely to be working with people who possess competencies and perspectives that are quite different than those of her fellow actuaries.
Similarly, consider a project team we supported recently. The team was focused on developing and testing a new retail banking technology. Some team members were bank employees while others worked for the vendor developing the technology. Even if they were all “technologists,” the difference in their primary source of affiliation (customer vs. vendor) produced a fundamental disparity in perspective. The cross-functional team and the banking technology teams were far more heterogeneous in their expertise and perspective than the team of actuaries.
A team made up of people with a similar background and expertise are likely to share a common “language.” That commonality can have positive and negative implications for team dynamics. For example, coordination is one the key drivers. It refers to the teamwork behaviors teams should exhibit, such as backing up or filling in for a teammate. On a team where people occupy similar roles, have similar training, and possess similar expertise, back-up behavior is easier. When one of the actuaries is unavailable, someone else on the team can often fill in. In contrast, in a cross-functional team made up of a representative from finance, information technology, human resources, and marketing, if the finance person can’t attend a meeting, who can back them up and provide a financial perspective?
Thought Experiment: Where does your team fall along the similarity continuum? Is the team quite homogeneous? Somewhat diverse? Highly diverse?
Throughout the book, as we delve into the science of teamwork, we will offer some universally applicable, science-based recommendations. But we’ll also highlight where the trick to helping your team succeed may depend on the nature of the team, where it falls along the various continua. So, take a look at Table 3.1, consider the nature of your team, and keep your answers in mind as we proceed.
Table 3.1. Five Important Team Distinctions: How Would You Describe Your Team?
| Reliance | Most work performed independently (mostly independent) | Split of work done independently and work that relies on others (even split) | Most members must rely on or coordinate with others much of the time (mostly interdependent) | Members consistently rely on or need to coordinate with others (fully interdependent) |
| Membership Stability | Almost all team members remain the same (very stable) | People leave or join the team on occasion (fairly stable) | People tend to leave or join fairly regularly (fairly dynamic) | People constantly leave or join the team (very dynamic) |
| Task Consistency | Work requirements remain constant over time (consistent requirements) | Work requirements change slowly over time (evolving requirements) | Work requirements change fairly regularly (shifting requirements) | Work requirements change rapidly and unpredictably (unpredictable requirements) |
| Proximity | All team members work in the same or a close location (full co-location) | Most of the team work in the same or a close location (mostly co-located) | Most of the team work in different locations (mostly dispersed) | All team members work in different locations (full dispersion) |
| Similarity | All team members share an overlapping area of expertise (highly similar) | Most team members share an overlapping area of expertise (mostly similar) | Most team members have unique areas of expertise (fairly unique) | All team members have unique areas of expertise (highly unique) |