| Capability (See Chapter 4 for Details) | |
| Potential Concern | Ideas for Improvement |
| Team members need to enhance their skills or knowledge. | Determine who could benefit from additional development and be clear about the competencies they need. Provide targeted coaching and individual training to boost their capabilities. Assemble “how to” guides, checklists, and tip sheets. Use them to spread knowledge and expertise. If you have experts on the team, consider whether they can share their expertise and insights with others. For example, a “learner” may benefit from shadowing or observing the expert in action. If you do this, be sure they both know why this is happening and what the learner should be observing. It can help to provide the learner with a few targeted questions and tips, so they get the most out of the experience. If the concern is a lack of “teamwork” skills or knowledge, first clarify which competencies are needed (e.g., communication, giving and receiving feedback, teamwork savvy) and then identify individual or team training to help boost foundational teamwork skills. |
| Our team lacks an important type of expertise and won’t be able to develop current team members to fill the gap. | Consider whether a temporary solution would work, for example, by “borrowing” someone from another team to work with your team for a period of time. If you know that an important missing capability will be needed on an ongoing basis and your current team members can’t develop it, then add, move, or replace team members to fill the gap. If you won’t be able to develop or acquire additional capabilities, consider if you can modify task assignments or work procedures to better fit current capabilities. If you can’t mitigate the gap, proactively manage your customers’ and partners’ expectations because if your team lacks key capabilities it probably won’t be able to deliver as quickly or effectively as it should. |
| There aren’t enough “team players” on our team—people who think “team first.” | When there is a shortage of team players, “teamwork” might not happen naturally. You may need to establish an agreement or “ground rules” about what it means to be a good team member. For example, you could conduct an exercise where your team members review a list of behaviors that good team members exhibit (see chapter 13), identify which ones they already do, and agree which they will do more consistently (or better) going forward. Looking ahead, be sure that the next person you add to the team is a good team player. Collective orientation is a fairly stable trait, so when screening potential team members, ask them about their prior team experiences. Look for red flags, such as excessive complaining about or blaming of prior team members, and avoid people with toxic personalities. Be careful about overusing your best team players. They are often the first to “volunteer” (e.g., to help out, stay late) and the first you turn to when you need something done, and as a result they can get burned out and leave the team. In general, be willing to advocate for and promote your best team players. When they leave for a position of greater responsibility or to a big opportunity, you lose a team player for now, but other team players will want to come work for you and your team. |
| We have a team member with a toxic personality (not just an occasional bad day). | Anyone can have a bad day or two, but if someone on the team consistently says hurtful things, makes inappropriate comments, acts rudely, embarrasses teammates, withholds effort, talks badly about teammates, is continually pessimistic, and/or drones on about the things that irritate them, they are a toxic teammate. Be sure that someone demonstrating any of those behaviors is given clear expectations that they need to change, is given feedback and is held accountable. Do not tolerate them. As a leader, consider this a performance management issue, and if they don’t change their behavior, manage them out. No matter how good they are at their job, they are poisoning the team. Never attempt to deal with a toxic employee in a group setting—address the concern with them privately. |
| Cooperation (See Chapter 5 for Details) | |
| Potential Concerns | Ideas for Improvement |
| Team members are reluctant to speak up, admit concerns, ask questions, or offer suggestions (because psycho-logical safety is low). | Psychological safety is what enables team members to believe they can speak up, admit mistakes, ask questions, offer a dissenting opinion, seek feedback and be themselves—without the risk of being judged harshly. To contribute to your team’s psychological safety, admit when you don’t understand something or made a mistake, encourage team members to voice concerns, and thank them when they have the courage to offer a dissenting view. Focus more attention on what can be learned from a mistake (“Do differently next time”) and less on assigning blame (“You really messed up this time”). Don’t tolerate team members disparaging fellow team members. When a teammate is criticized behind their back, other teammates wonder, “Is anyone saying bad things about me too” and “Would my teammates stick up for me?” |
| If you are the leader, specify any nonnegotiables, where team member input isn’t valued (e.g., because it is unchangeable). Otherwise, when someone offers a suggestion about a nonnegotiable, and you shut him down, he and the rest of the team can falsely conclude that you don’t want their input on anything. Make it clear that you’re open to input in everything except the nonnegotiables. | |
| The team doesn’t believe that it can “win” (low collective efficacy). | Take time to reflect upon and discuss your team’s successes. Consider the lesson’s learned from those accomplishments—how can we build on that success? If you are always focused on finding and fixing problems, it is easy for the team to dwell on the negative and start feeling that they can’t win. Celebrate wins and accomplishments, of individuals on the team, and, equally important, of the team as a whole. What should our team be proud of? When faced with a challenge, draw a line of sight between the current challenge and a time when the team overcame a somewhat similar challenge. A failure can be a great learning opportunity for the team, but don’t dwell on it. Review what happened, figure out how it can be avoided in the future, and move on. Focus on things your team can do to win next time rather than wallowing about things that happened in the past. Don’t overpromise on what your team can deliver. If you overcommit, the team will often come up short and start to believe, not unreasonably, that they aren’t capable. This leads to a downward performance cycle of doubt, poor performance, more doubt, etc. If you are the leader, take actions to improve or remove persistently low-performing team members. When team members see poor performers on the team and no signs of improvement, collective efficacy drops precipitously. |
| The level of trust in our team is low. | Educate the team so they understand how trust works, including what influences it, the behaviors that matter, and the value of monitoring your “trust accounts.” Trust often emerges from doing other things well. You can’t make someone trust you, but you can take actions that increase the likelihood that people will see you as trustworthy. Ask yourself, “How might my teammates perceive my ability to deliver, my concern for them, and my interest in doing what’s right?” Why might a team member fail to trust you? On a personal level, be very careful about making commitments that you may not be able to keep. Living up to commitments is essential for trust. And when you make a mistake (which we all do at times), own it, apologize genuinely, and avoid making it again in the future. Get in the habit of thanking team members when they help you. It is a small gesture but contributes to trust and cohesion. Sometimes we think, “Thank you,” but we don’t say it. Make sure your teammates know that you appreciate them. Want to add points to the trust account? Taking actions that are in the best interest of another person and not necessarily best for you shows that you care about them. If you are always angling to get what’s best for you, you’ll be perceived as less trustworthy. |
| Our team may be “splintering” into subgroups or silos. | Splinters often occur along a “fault line,” an invisible dividing line that splits a group into two or more subgroups. When team members identify more closely with some members of their team due to shared characteristics—age, seniority, culture, gender, ethnicity, education, nationality, occupation, or physical location—that’s a fault line. To combat silos, establish and emphasize shared goals, priorities, needs, and/or identity that all team members can embrace. Connectors can often help. In this context, a connector is someone who shares something in common with both groups (e.g., a salesperson who is trained as an engineer). Research shows that having even one connector can help reduce the detrimental effects of a fault line. Who could be a constructive connector on your team? If the team is fairly new, start by focusing on what the team needs to do and accomplish collectively. An early focus on task requirements tends to emphasize commonalities and de-emphasize demographic differences. After task requirements and roles have been established, you can shift towards more relationship focused considerations. |
| Coordination (See Chapter 6 for Details) | |
| Potential Concerns | Ideas for Improvement |
| We aren’t filling in, helping out, and backing up one another. | Determine why this may be happening. Sometimes it is because team members don’t know that are expected to fill in and help out. In other cases, it is because they don’t know how to do so. Another potential cause is low psychological safety, which inhibits people from admitting when they need help. Be sure the solution addresses the cause. Be sure that everyone knows when they should help or step in. Clarify expectations about when backup is needed and who should provide it. While we should all “support” one another, not everyone on the team can be expected to fill in for every other team member. Who should I be ready to back up? Selectively prepare team members so they know “enough” about other people’s tasks to be able to help or fill in. What do I need to know to fill in effectively? When someone helps you, fills in, or reminds you about something you need to do, thank them. When you fail to acknowledge or you dismiss someone’s help, they are less likely to help you again. |
| We aren’t doing a great job of monitoring what’s going on outside the team. | Identify prior “surprises” and determine what your team needs to monitor more effectively to avoid future surprises (e.g., customer needs, market trends, supply chain, budgets, product changes, competitors, organizational changes). Determine what should be monitored, who should do it, and how discoveries will be shared. Consider allocating time for team members to provide situational updates—“Tell us what you have learned about X.” If there is a lot to monitor, divide up the task. Who should keep an eye on what? If you think the team could be better at interpreting the signs, engage the team in periodic, “What might that mean?” conversations to boost their collective understanding. |
| We could do a better job of coordinating with one another. | There are times when our team members need to rely on one another, for example, when working together on a task, coordinating related tasks, or completing a work product that another teammate needs to do their job. To understand more about those dependencies, conduct a coordination requirements analysis. That is simply looking ahead to anticipate where collaboration is most likely to be needed and where it is most important. Consider conducting team training to practice particularly important coordination tasks. Team training can range from a full simulation (where team members physically perform the task in a training environment) to a simple mental walk through. In the simplest version, assemble the people who need to coordinate and verbally walk through key coordination points step by step. Ask what would be happening, surface where problems have emerged in the past (and why), and confirm what we can do to coordinate smoothly in the future. After a challenging coordination point, huddle up to conduct a quick debrief. Discuss what happened, what went well, and what we could do differently next time. Try to do this while the experience is still fresh in everyone’s memory. |
| We could do a better job of learning and adapting as a team. | Schedule and conduct periodic team debriefs. These don’t need to be lengthy and you don’t need to wait until an end of a big milestone or the conclusion of a project to conduct them. Discuss how we are working together, what’s going well, and what could we do better. Establish agreements about any changes you’ll make as a team. Review the team debriefing tips in the tools section of the book. Encourage team members to be alert for new ideas and ways of doing things and to speak up about them. Ask, “Does anyone have any new ideas for the team to consider?” |
| We could do a better job of managing disagreements and conflict. | Ensure that everyone on the team understands what is meant by collaborative conflict, where the goal is to collectively seek the best solution, not to push “my” ideas. When people only argue for and hold onto their own ideas, that’s competitive conflict, which research shows isn’t as effective as collaborative conflict. If you find yourself clinging to your ideas, for example, repeating your point of view rather than looking for the potential merits of what others are saying, you are defaulting into competitive conflict. Catch yourself and try to find a way to integrate another point of view into your suggestion. Sometimes the best solution combines aspects of different ideas. If you find that team members are reluctant to disagree or offer a different perspective, you may have a psychological safety issue. Avoiding conflict is not healthy and hurts the team’s effectiveness. Make it easier for team members to speak up. Ask, “Who has a different perspective on this?” Or, “What else should we consider?” Thank people when they offer a different perspective, even if you don’t agree with them. Consider appointing a “devil’s advocate,” who is expected to offer a dissenting point of view, even if they agree. Rotate the role. This sends the message that it is healthy to disagree. |
| Our team meetings are ineffective. | An effective team meeting can help promote subsequent team coordination. But meetings need to be run properly and with the right frequency for that to happen. As a starting point, consider whether you may be meeting too often (e.g., feels like there is a lot of redundancy) or too infrequently (e.g., things that should be discussed during a meeting are happening prior to the meeting) and adjust your schedule accordingly. It is okay to experiment with this until you find the “right” timing. Be sure that your meetings are well-organized, with an agenda and meeting objectives established and, if possible, shared in advance. Seek input from participants. Ensure that key decisions and action plans (including who is responsible and when it will be done) are clearly understood by everyone. Summarize these at the end of the meeting and give people a chance to confirm or ask questions. A good practice is to capture these in writing and circulate it to team members after the meeting. Clarify how team members who couldn’t attend will be “brought up to speed.” Occasionally allocate 15 minutes to discuss what could be done to make your meetings better. Ask questions such as “Are we covering the right topics?” “Do we have the right people in the room?” “Are we meeting with the right frequency?” and “Are we spending our time wisely (e.g., should we be doing less updating and more problem-solving)?” |
| Communication (See Chapter 7 for Details) | |
| Potential Concerns | Ideas for Improvement |
| There are frequent miscommunications; for example team members are often “surprised” that they weren’t told something sooner. | If team members are often caught off guard because they weren’t told something or were unaware of an action or decision, that’s an indication of a communication problem. One common reason for this type of problem is when people falsely assume “everyone knows that.” Get in the habit of asking one another, “Who else should know about this?” Identify where communication breakdowns have happened most frequently in the past. For example, whenever a handoff needs to occur (e.g., of information, responsibilities), there is greater risk. After identifying the risk points, agree on ways to ensure effective communications, for example, by building a checklist of information that should be shared at handoff points (e.g., at a shift change). Ensure that the team knows that more communication is not always better. Simply talking more (or sending more emails) is not enough. Quality communication means team members are sharing information that others need, in a timely manner. To ensure clarity, teach and encourage everyone on the team to use “the convey” to restate what they thought they heard, allowing the other person to confirm or correct their intent. This closed-loop communication technique will greatly reduce miscommunications. |
| Our team members should be communicating a more consistent message to people outside the team. | When team members communicate divergent messages to people outside the team, it creates confusion and can lead to dysfunctional conflict. At a minimum, it can hurt your team’s reputation. Allocate a few minutes at the end of each meeting (or at the end of the week or the end of a shift) to confirm any agreements that were reached, because you can’t communicate a similar message if you don’t have a common understanding about what you agreed to do. Then, ask the question, “What should we be telling people about this, and who needs to hear it?” For very important communications, you may want to help the team prepare. For example, huddle up and ask one team member to pretend they are responding to someone outside the team who asked them, “What is going to happen?” Afterwards, point out what they said that was useful and offer suggestions about what else we might say. Then give another team member a chance to practice out loud, and so on. |
| We need to do a better job of communicating with and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders outside our team. | Conduct a stakeholder analysis. Stakeholders could include the people your team relies upon (“suppliers”) as well the people who rely on your team (“customers.”) For each stakeholder, clarify the following. What do they need from us? What do we need from them? What are their big concerns about us? What are our big concerns about them? What do we need to keep them informed about? What do we need them to keep us informed about? For important stakeholders, be sure that (a) the right people are focused on maintaining the connection (serving as “boundary spanners”) and (b) they are well prepared to do so. Be clear about who will be responsible for communicating and managing the relationship on both side of the boundary. When team members should be providing the same message to different stakeholders, be sure everyone knows the intended message. That won’t happen by chance, so discuss with them, “What will we each tell our key contacts about X?” |
| Team members work in different locations, which creates communication problems. | Communicating is particularly challenging when team members work at a distance, in part because there are typically fewer opportunities to talk informally and in part because you may not be able to see nonverbal cues. Be smart about the communication technology you decide to use. It is easy to misinterpret intent in written communications, so don’t over rely on emails or texts, particularly for “emotional” topics. When you first start to communicate with someone at a distance, set up a video conference (see and hear) or at least a phone call (hear), rather than defaulting to an email or text (neither see nor hear). Double down on the use of the “convey.” Get in the habit of summarizing what you’ve heard—and consider it a win when the person you’re talking to says, “That is not what I meant.” It is much better to discover that on the spot than to operate on an incorrect assumption. Be aware that team members who work on their own in remote locations (e.g., from home) can experience a sense of isolation. Make sure the team stays connected with them. Recognize that you may need to spend a little time engaging in “small talk” when a team member is feeling isolated. |
| Communication and trust go hand in hand. When one erodes, the other is likely to follow. Trust is trickier at a distance, so it is even more critical to do what you say you will do. Trust is based, in part, on a belief that someone is capable of doing a task. Don’t commit to doing something you know you won’t be able to complete. If you get “stuck” and can see you’ll be unable to meet a commitment that will affect a teammate at another location, communicate that as soon as possible and, if appropriate, ask for assistance. | |
| Cognitions (See Chapter 8 for Details) | |
| Potential Concerns | Ideas for Improvement |
| There appear to be disagreements or lack of clarity among team members about the team’s purpose, direction, and/or priorities. | Engage in a discussion about the team’s purpose and direction. Why does our team exist? What would success really look like for our team? Where are we headed? Allocate time to review and discuss the team’s current priorities. What are our current top priorities? Why are these a priority? Revisit the team’s priorities periodically, as they are likely to change over time. Create a team charter that summarizes your team’s mission, objectives/goals, and boundaries. If possible, engage the team in formulating the charter to promote ownership and common understanding. Once established, a team charter can also be a helpful tool for bringing a new team member up to speed. |
| Team members aren’t in full agreement about roles—there are role gaps, conflicts, and/or ambiguities. | Conduct a role clarification exercise. Generate a list of the major actions and types of decisions the team makes and, for each, establish who does it, who is accountable for it, who should be consulted in advance, and who should be notified afterwards. Document role expectations in a way that is clear and makes sense to team members. A document of this type is also quite helpful when a new person joins the team. Update role expectations, as needed, over time. When an organizational change is introduced it can disrupt existing expectations and introduce role ambiguity. Discuss, What is the impact of this change on our team, and how will that effect our work? Will we need to modify our role expectations? |
| Team members don’t share a common understanding of how to respond to certain situations. | As a team, conduct a scenario-based walk through. Identify a situation that may happen in the future and generate a scenario based on that. Assemble the team, present the start of the scenario, and ask, “At this point, who should be doing what? Why? Who should be talking with whom? What are team members thinking?” Then provide more information about how the scenario is unfolding (“Now X just happened”) and, again, ask the group to discuss what should be happening. At the end of the scenario discussion, capture lessons learned and agreements about how the team should handle that type of situation in the future. Sometimes it can be helpful to document how to handle particular tasks or situations in the form of a standard operating procedure or checklist. |
| Our membership changes regularly, so it is hard to sustain a shared perspective. | When someone new joins the team, they are unlikely to have a shared understanding with the other team members. If your team regularly brings in new members, spend some time ensuring that your onboarding process bring people up to speed quickly. Provide new team members with relevant materials such as role descriptions, standard operating procedures, checklists, team goals, scenario summaries, and the team charter. Consider assigning a buddy to a new team member to help them learn about the team and get up to speed more quickly. This isn’t just for junior hires. A very experienced hire may have deep content expertise but won’t know “how things get done on our team.” Even a seasoned hire can benefit from a buddy. |
| Team members work in different locations (or have different backgrounds), so it is hard to sustain a shared perspective. | Be sure everyone knows the team’s purpose and are generally aware of one another’s responsibilities. Clarify how decisions will be made, including the types of decisions that should involve the entire team and the type that can be made by team members at a specific location. If there are national, geographic, professional, or cultural differences across locations, remember that people may be accustomed to different norms and expectation. For example, norms about risk tolerance, speed of decision-making, or willingness to disagree openly can vary across cultures. Diversity of background can contribute to a team’s success, but they can also lead to fault lines and silos if they aren’t recognized. Establish and communicate a set of team norms about how you want to work together; for example, how quickly are we expected to reply to a message or request from a teammate? What is a reasonable amount of time? Establish agreements about how the different locations will stay on the same page. How frequently will we meet as a full team (virtually or at a single location)? How can we schedule calls to accommodate people in different time zones fairly? What should we be updating one another about on a regular basis? Find a way to intentionally share lessons learned across locations. Take advantage of naturally occurring differences in the way things are done and transport the best ideas across locations. |
| Conditions (See Chapter 9 for Details) | |
| Potential Concerns | Ideas for Improvement |
| We lack resources that may keep us from being successful (e.g., budget, equipment, access, information, visible support). | Be clear about what you are asking for and why you are requesting it. Then actively seek the resources your team needs. Tool C in the book includes a few targeted questions for diagnosing and thinking about resource availability. Differentiate between team “needs” and “wants.” A need is something that will almost certainly keep your team from being successful if you don’t get it. A want is a nice to have but the team can get by without it if necessary. Spend most of your “chips” trying to get the needs addressed. |
| Ideally, articulate your requests in a way that resonates with the person who can provide them. For example, “We’re concerned that without access to the customer data set, we won’t be able to complete the report on time, and I know how important that is to you.” If your request sounds like it is “all about you,” you are less likely to get it than if your request draws a line of sight to what is important to the person who can provide the resources. When you determine that a lack of resources is unchangeable, discuss ways to succeed given the limited resources. What are potential trade-offs? Where might we be able to renegotiate or lower our stakeholders’ expectations? | |
| An organizational policy or practice is inhibiting teamwork. | Recognize what is within your control (blue), what is outside your control but perhaps can be influenced (yellow), and what you neither can control nor influence (red). Change what is within your control. Seek to influence what is in the yellow area but recognize that the final decision isn’t yours. Do not spend too much time talking about things in the red zone. It is frustrating and fruitless. Identify how best to work around or within those things you cannot change. Use the diagnostic questions in Tool C to stimulate a conversation about how various policies and practices may be facilitating or inhibiting collaboration. |
| We are starting a project and are concerned that the conditions for success may not be in place. | Conduct a premortem exercise. Imagine that the project is over and that your team failed. Work backwards and discuss what may have derailed the project. Develop plans to try to avoid, minimize, or mitigate those problems before they arise. Flag potential obstacles and seek the sponsor’s (or another appropriate stakeholder’s) help in removing them. Don’t wait and hope for a miracle. |
| I don’t think our senior leadership supports teamwork and collaboration. | Determine if there is an opportunity to provide them with constructive feedback. If so, be prepared to share your perspective with them. As leaders move up the organizational hierarchy, they tend to get less feedback, so they may be unaware of how they are “showing up” to others. Tool C in the book contains some targeted questions for examining how senior leadership may be encouraging or discouraging teamwork in the organization. Use this to do a quick assessment and engage in a conversation about opportunities. Recognize that the actions of senior leadership are outside your control and, in many cases, may even be outside your influence. If so, focus your team’s attention on what is within your control or influence. Fortunately, your team can choose to work together collaboratively, even when senior leadership isn’t showing their support. |
| Coaching (See Chapter 10 for Details) | |
| Potential Concerns | Ideas for Improvement |
| Our team would benefit from greater guidance and support from our team leader. | Consider the seven essential leadership functions (i.e., ensuring clarity, removing obstacles, encouraging participation, promoting learning, managing team emotions, holding teammates accountable, and fostering psychological safety). Are all seven being performed adequately on our team? Which ones might merit additional attention from our leader? |
| Leaders are particularly prone to self-anchoring bias, or incorrectly believing that others think and feel the same way they do. If you are a leader, don’t fall prey to this bias. Be sure to spend time talking with team members, one on one, to learn what is really on their mind. People aren’t born team leaders; they need to learn how to be an effective team leader. Many people get promoted to team leader because of their technical competence, but that doesn’t equip them to be in the team leader seat. Many team leaders could benefit from a little training and/or coaching on team leadership—and they all should know about the science of teamwork! | |
| We aren’t holding one another accountable. | People who practice accountability do their part, are considered to be reliable and trustworthy, and are viewed as good teammates. But it is difficult to act accountably, and to hold other people accountable, without clear behavioral and performance expectations. So, one way to boost accountability to ensure that everyone knows what is expected of them. Role ambiguity can mean things “slip through the cracks.” What do you expect me to deliver and how are we all supposed to behave on this team? If you are a team leader, holding people accountable is one of your primary functions, so set aside time to check in, follow up to assess progress, and provide useful feedback. If a team member repeatedly fails to live up to their commitments and there are no consequences, not only are they unlikely to change, but it also sends a message to the rest of the team that accountability doesn’t matter. This is particularly true for team members who act in toxic ways. Toxic behavior must be dealt with or the entire team will suffer. Ideally, team members also hold one another accountable, offer encouragement to help teammates live up to their commitments, and provide constructive feedback when they aren’t. Be sure that everyone on the team knows what is acceptable when it comes to holding each other accountable. |
| We would be better if members helped out the team leader a bit more frequently, for example, to give each other feedback and advice or hold one another accountable. | Recognize that a leader can’t see everything and handle all a team’s needs, so team members also need to help ensure the team’s success. Identify how members of our team can best support any of the leadership functions (i.e., ensuring clarity, removing obstacles, encouraging participation, promoting learning, managing team emotions, holding teammates accountable, and fostering psychological safety)? Equally important, be clear about those areas that should be considered “leader-only.” For example, the team leader may be the only one who should be providing formal performance feedback. Clarify where team members are expected to contribute, where it is acceptable but not required, and where it is off limits. |
| We could probably be better at learning from our experiences as a team. | One of the essential leadership functions is promoting learning. Simply experiencing something doesn’t mean that the team will learn from it. Learning happens best when there is intentional reflection, feedback, and interpretation of experiences. In other words, what did we experience, what did we do, how did that work, and what can we learn from it? Conduct “lesson learned” debriefs after key experiences. Review what happened, what the team did well, and what it could have done differently. Summarize the lessons learned and agree how the team will work together in related situations in the future. |