Teams That Work

Conditions for Team Effectiveness: Diagnostic Questions

Organizational conditions set the stage for team effectiveness, either facilitating or inhibiting teamwork. For example, company or business-unit wide policies and practices (e.g., about rewards) and senior leadership behaviors and communications (e.g., do senior leaders work well with one another) send widespread signals that can confirm or refute the importance of teamwork. These conditions influence many teams simultaneously, so it makes sense to review these periodically at the organization or business unit level.

Each team also operates within their own set of local conditions, experiencing differing degrees of resource availability, time availability, authority levels, and their own assigned mission. These conditions are best reviewed at the team level.

Next are three sets of diagnostic questions you can use to assess current conditions and stimulate a conversation about how to improve them. The first two sets focus on organizational conditions, and the third focuses on team-specific conditions.

Policies and Practices

Use the following questions to review your company’s policies and practices. To what extent are these contributing to or inhibiting teamwork? Which policies or practices may need to be modified?

Key Questions: Organizational Conditions— Policies and Practices

• Are candidates’ teamwork skills and attitudes assessed systematically? Do interview protocols and other tools examine teamwork?

• Realistically, how much do teamwork and collaboration skills weigh into the hiring decision?

• To what extent are team members typically involved in the hiring process (or is the team leader usually the only person involved)?

2. Onboarding

• What messages are communicated (intentionally or unintentionally) to new employees about teamwork and collaboration during formal and informal onboarding?

• What messages should we be emphasizing to new employees about teamwork/collaboration? What are the expectations we want to convey?

• What is done to help prepare team leaders to onboard new team members effectively? Are they given any tools, tips, or talking points?

3. Promotions and Opportunities

• Who tends to gets promoted and has access to favorable opportunities? Strong team players? Individual stars? Selfish, “me first,” people?”

• What happens to people who are good team players? Are they taken care of or overlooked? Do people get “credit” for being a strong collaborator?

• Do difficult people who are hard to work with but who produce good individual results get ahead despite their toxicity?

4. Performance Management

• To what extent are teamwork and collaboration assessed and discussed as part of the performance review process? What, if anything, do we do to encourage that focus?

• How much of the focus is on individual goals and accomplishments? Are any team or collaborative goals established?

• To what extent is team member input sought when assessing performance? For example, do we inquire about who is making contributions to the team and who is helping their teammates be successful?

5. Rewards and Recognition

• Who typically gets recognized and rewarded? How often do individuals who are great at teamwork get rewarded? Do teams that succeed get recognized?

• What types of people are publicly thanked and talked about as “successes?”

• Which, if any, reward and recognition practices may be inadvertently inhibiting teamwork and collaboration? How might they be getting in the way?

6. Leadership Development

• How do we prepare people to lead teams?

• What training do we provide to teach people how to lead a team? Or does leadership training focus mainly on managing individuals and making business decisions?

• Where do managers and project leaders learn how to be an effective team leader? Do we emphasize this enough?

Senior Leadership

Although most employees may not see or interact with senior leaders very often, senior leadership behaviors and communications can be surprisingly influential in establishing whether teamwork becomes an organizational norm. Use the following questions to identify potential opportunities for senior leaders to send a clearer signal about the value of collaboration.

Key Questions: Organizational Conditions—Senior Leadership

1. Modeling of Behaviors

• How well does the senior leadership team work together? Do they collaborate effectively? Are they able to disagree effectively?

• How do senior leaders typically behave? Do they model collaboration? Do they talk badly about one another or other departments? Are they “civil”?

• Do they make decisions that help break down silos or reinforce them?

2. Communications

• What do senior leader communications reveal regarding their beliefs about teamwork?

• Does senior leadership ever emphasize the importance of teamwork? Do they tell stories that feature successful collaboration or primarily individual accomplishments?

• When different senior leaders communicate, do they provide a similar message to the organization?

3. Creating Psychological Safety

• What has senior leadership done to build or reduce psychological safety? For example, how do they respond to well-intended dissent or to someone who provides them with “bad news”?

• What happens when they find out that someone has made an honest mistake?

• To what extent are they willing to acknowledge when they made a mistake, misunderstood something, or need to improve?

Team-Specific Conditions

Each team also operates within their own set of local conditions that can exert a powerful influence on their ability to succeed. These conditions can help or hinder the team, and in some instances, they can make it almost impossible for the team to achieve its mission. Use the following questions to keep an eye on four of the most salient team-specific conditions.

Key Questions: Team-Specific Conditions

1. Resources

• Does the team have the necessary resources to accomplish its mission? If not, what do they need?

• How might the team attempt to garner additional resources?

• What resources are unchangeable? How can the team best work around or within those constraints?

• Do team members have adequate time to complete their “own” work? Any cushion?

• Is there time for team members to back up and help one another and still get their own assignments done?

• Is any time allocated for the team to work, learn, or innovate collaboratively? Are they ever given time to reflect on how they are working together?

3. Autonomy/Decision Making Authority

• Is the team clear about where it needs the authority to make its own decisions? Does it have that authority?

• Is the team able to work autonomously, when necessary, or do they spend too much time “managing up?”

• How can they negotiate for greater autonomy, if needed?

4. Team Mission/Purpose

• Is the team’s purpose clear and compelling?

• Do team members need to work together to accomplish the team’s mission?

• If the mission isn’t naturally compelling, what can the team rally around to create a sense of identity?

© The Group for Organizational Effectiveness, Inc. From gOEbase (www.gOEbase.com). Permission granted.