Tools for Teams Longer Version

Recruit your alter-ego

As business becomes more challenging, organisations are rediscovering
the power of effective teams. It is not possible to wave a magic wand
and create a high-performing, self-managed team overnight. A
self-managed team needs to develop a culture of lifelong, individual and
team learning. How do we best compose these hi performance teams? Henry
Ford is quoted as saying “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping
together is progress. Working together is success”.

Why teams?

Teams are often formed when individuals with a common taste,
preference, liking, and attitude come and work together for a common
goal. Teams play a very important role in organizations as well as our
personal lives.

Research supports that organizations with clearly defined teams are
more successful as compared to those with one man or individual
contributor mentality.

Teamwork is also important to improve the relations among the
employees. Empirical research shows that communication lessens conflict
and that teams communicate more often. This contributes to the fit and
flow that they experience in their work and increases their output.

Team members can also gain from each other. Every individual is
different and has some qualities that contribute to team achievement.
Each member is a critic of the other and can correct him whenever the
other person is wrong. One always has someone to fall back on at the
time of crisis.

When faced with a problem, a new project or an opportunity, it is a
good idea to focus on the nine key success factors, which make the
difference between a high-performing team and a low-performing team.
These factors are arranged in a model of team tasks, known as the Types
of Work Wheel. (Adapted from Team Management Systems Model)

The nine essential team activities as described in this model
include:

Analyse – Gathering and reporting information

Innovate – Creating and experimenting with ideas

Promote – Exploring and presenting opportunities

Develop – Assessing and testing the applicability of new
approaches

Organise – Establishing and implementing ways of making things
work

Produce – Concluding and delivering outputs

Inspect – Controlling and auditing the working of systems

Maintain – Upholding and safeguarding standards and processes

Link – Coordinating and integrating the work of others

These factors form the basis for a team based method of problem
solving.

When faced with a difficult problem, the starting point for team
discussion is Analyse. What information do we need?
Why? Where will we get it? Who will get it? When do we need it? How will
we get it? This ensures that all currently available data is gathered
for consideration.

The Innovate sector ensures that the team will spend
time discussing ideas around the problems being faced. Most successful
innovating sessions follow a procedure designed to ensure an open and
diverging discussion. Such sessions should be free from any commitment
to make a decision. That comes later.

Promote has two aspects to it. Each team member
needs to learn how to present ideas and solutions in a way that will
influence other team members. Equally important is a focus on the key
stakeholders outside the team. Who outside the team needs to be
persuaded if the idea is to proceed?

Many ideas are impracticable and can never be implemented, due to
organizational and cultural constraints. Develop
sessions focus on which ideas are likely to work and how can they be
tested for verification.

Organize is action-oriented and ensures that the
team will implement agreed solutions and assign accountabilities and
responsibilities.

Produce addresses the output aspects of any
decision. What are we producing? To what quality levels? To what
standards? When? Producing defines the bottomline on which many teams
are evaluated.

How many ideas fail because the detailed aspects were not thought
through? Inspect is always a critical aspect of this
process..

Maintain the agreed decisions and the team processes
will ensure that the team stays together and learns together.
Maintenance involves regularly reviewing mistakes in a non-recriminatory
way and establishing guidelines to prevent them from reoccurring.

Link is in the middle of the model because it is a
shared responsibility of every team member. Each person working on a
team task must undertake to link with other team members so that
everyone is fully informed.

This model can be the basis for a Team Learning processes established
in your organization. It provides a structure and a language to ensure
that the essential activities for excellence in teamwork are continually
implemented.

Team Roles

Every person approaches their work differently and there are a number
of different team roles that have been documented in relation to these
different tasks that teams do.

Reporter-Adviser – Supporter, helper, tolerant; A
collector of information; Dislikes being rushed; Knowledgeable;
Flexible

Creator-Innovator – Imaginative; Future-oriented;
Enjoys complexity; Creative; Likes research work

Explorer-Promoter – Persuader, “seller”; Likes
varied, exciting, stimulating work; Easily bored; Influential and
outgoing

Assessor-Developer – Analytical and objective;
Developer of ideas; Enjoys prototype or project work; Experimenter

Thruster-Organizer – Organizes and implements; Quick
to decide; Results-oriented; Sets up systems; Analytical

Concluder-Producer – Practical; Production-oriented;
Likes schedules and plans; Pride in reproducing goods and services;
Values effectiveness and efficiency

Controller-Inspector – Strong on control;
Detail-oriented; Low need for people contact; An inspector of standards
and procedures

Upholder-Maintainer – Conservative, loyal,
supportive; Personal values important; Strong sense of right and wrong;
Work motivation based on purpose

Once team members understand their individual work preferences, they
have a language for discussing potential problems that might occur.

To develop the team further requires then to ask some basic questions
to achieve effective performance.

• Who are we?

• Where are we now?

• Where are we going?

• How will we get there?

• What is expected of us?

• What support do we need?

• How effective are we?

• What recognition do we get?

The final step is to understand how to mentor the team.

Team mentorship

As a leader it is important to user a practical mentorship model such
as the Star Roles Model which is used by organisations to describe the
positions managers and mentors adopt when guiding direct-reports and
mentees. Similarly, the Star Roles Model follows the Mintzberg 10
management positions – drawing in the most relevant elements when
considering the mentoring relationship in detail. It is also directly
supportive of situational leadership theory as promoted by
Blanchard.

‘Inner’ Roles

The inner roles focus on ‘closed’ management and mentoring, where the
mentor is using personal knowledge, insight and input to steer the
individual. Whilst not solidly linked to Introversion, the notion of
self-interest, focus and bias aptly describes the drivers around guiding
through this position.

Whilst the dialogue is driven through the inner aspects of the role,
the focus from the mentor is not on the ‘I’ – and can be a third person
approach. Positives for this role are found in the depth of individual
approach, the supportive and individual nature of the mentoring
relationship and the value such an approach draws from the time being
given over by the manager.

The Inner approach does tend towards an ‘opt out’ from the mentor, in
that they bring little of themselves to the conversation, and can work
‘at a distance’ to the challenge.

The Roles

• Greater Expert – bringing in own knowledge and
  sharing this with the person being guided/mentored – having the comfort
  and knowledge to advise technically, procedurally and personally – based
  on experience and sourced knowledge

• Critical Partner – brings personal challenge and
  structured dialogue to the interaction relies on Socratic questioning to
  help the other person realise the truth of the situation and challenge
  their thinking with the aim of expanding the dialogue and their sphere
  of consideration.

• Sympathetic Ear – provides a non-judgmental
  sounding board for the mentee to discuss issues and challenges –
  establishes a secure conversational environment and falls into the
  ‘friend/confidant role

‘Outer’ Roles

In comparison, the outer roles are driven more by a sense of ‘open’
input, that seeks to bring in contextual experimentation, relational
aspects, and wider links to the outside world. This ‘extroverted’
approach relies more on the mentor bringing in the ‘I’ and making
value-based judgments on what is and isn’t required.

Positively, these roles are highly effective at supporting others
through cultural and behavioral challenges, and giving a valid platform
for personal input and demonstration from the mentor. When adopting
these roles, managers have to be observant against a tendency to place
too much emphasis on self-opinion rather than fact, and for them to take
ownership of the problem/challenge being discussed, rather than coach
the person through the issue.

The Roles

• Background Champion – works within the
  organisation to secure wider support, input or change to assist the
  mentee in achieving their aims – lends their name and weight to the
  issue and is happy to be quoted as support for the work

• Role Model – bases conversations around
  challenge on their own direct experience and personal approach to
  problems – gives mentees steer through “I would…” conversations that
  educate through replication of their own success rather than self
  exploration and learning

• Cultural Navigator – imparts detailed, personal
  knowledge of the cultural flows and key figures within the organisation
  – uses personal experience and opinion of individuals, teams and
  departments to shape a route through the challenge for the
  individual

These ideas have formed an inside – out view of team leadership.

Applying these idea practically

If everyone were the same we would get nothing done. This has
practical implications for the way we recruit. An old management maxim
is not to recruit in your own image or as someone put it – recruit your
alter ego. A team needs to be composed to achieve all of the team
functions and as it grows it may be better to look first at the elements
that it is lacking – rather than getting “more of the same”.

David G Thompson in Blueprint to a Billion comments on the inside-out
leadership pairs that focused the growth of companies such as Microsoft,
eBay, Starbucks and Broadcom. In these high growth companies a
leadership pair focused on augmenting each other’s weaknesses and one
focusing internally and another externally in relation to the growth of
the company.

Conclusion

This article presents some practical tools for teams to focus on
balancing the team roles, with an operational process that supports
problem solving. It also looks at how people can best contribute to
different aspects of a team. Finally it looks at how leaders can coach
teams using inside-out focus areas.