Harvard Business Review

Team Members: Jean-Luc Landrieu Ruby Rodrigues

F10124 F10107

Jiby Jose F10084 Rohit Batta F10104 Biron D Souza F10006

Contrary to conventional wisdom teams could be the worst way to tackle a problem Due to lack of coordination, motivation and competition The best leaders may fail at making a team deliver results Likelihood of Success can be increased by Designating a deviant Avoiding double digits Keep the team together

Be ruthless about membership Embrace your own quirkiness Focus your coaching on Group processes Run a launch meeting Help the team conduct midpoint reviews Take a few minutes to reflect at the finish

Protect your deviant

Teams must be real Need compelling direction Need enabling structures Need supportive organization Need expert coaching

Many managers don t know the real meaning of teams. Often confused with Groups of individuals Mutual Accountability leads to results Teams need to respond constructively Share an essential discipline

Working Group Strong clearly focused leader Individual Accountability Purpose same as the broader organizations mission Individual work products Runs efficient meetings Discusses, decided, delegates

Team Shared leadership roles Individual & Mutual accountability Specific team purpose delivered by the team Collective work products Encourages open-ended discussion and active problem solving Discusses, decides and does real work together

1.

A meaningful common purpose the team has helped shape. Specific common goals that flow from the common purpose A mix of complementary skills A strong commitment to how the work gets done Mutual Accountability Once the team discipline is established it is free to concentrate on critical challenges.

2.

3. 4. 5.

Establish urgency, demanding performance standards and direction

Set and seize upon a few immediate performanceoriented tasks and goals

Select members for skill and potential, not personality

Challenge the group with fresh facts

Pay attention to first meetings and actions. Initial impressions matter

Spend lots of time together Exploit the power of positive feedback, reward, recognition

Set some clear rules of behavior

Executing major initiatives in an organization calls for complex teams Complex teams are generally large, virtual, diverse and specialized This may lead to non-performance Eg. Larger teams tend to collaborate lesser Eight practices can help build more collaboration by executives, HR professionals and team leaders

What executives can do: Invest in building and maintaining social relationships in the

organization Model Collaborative behavior Use coaching to reinforce a collaborative culture

What HR can do Ensuring the requisite skills Supporting a sense of community

What team leaders can do Assigning both task- and relationship-oriented leaders Build on heritage relationships Understanding role clarity and task ambiguity

Executives realize that individuals emotional intelligence is as important as their IQ Groups emotional intelligence may be even more important Groups EI is not the sum of the individual s EI It comes from norms that support awareness and regulation of emotions within and outside the team

Groups must be aware of and constructively regulate the emotions of Individual team members The whole group Other key groups with whom it interacts

Individual Team Members Norms that create awareness Interpersonal Understanding Perspective taking

Group

Cross Boundary

Team self-evaluation Seeking Feedback

Organizational Understanding

Norms that help regulate emotions Confronting Caring Creating resources for working with emotion Creating an affirmative environment Solving problems proactively Building external relationships

Companies with international operations often have teams with members from diverse backgrounds Lack of fluency in the group s dominant language leads to a notion of incompetence Briefly there are 4 barriers to a multicultural team and 4 kinds of intervention that may resolve the barriers

4 Barriers that can cause destructive conflicts in a team Direct versus Indirect communication when one

is speaking explicitly and the other as questions, differences arise Troubles with accents and fluency Different Attitudes towards hierarchy Conflicting decision making norms

4 Interventions based on the unique circumstances Adaptation acknowledging cultural differences

and working around them Structural Intervention when the team has obvious subgroups, reorganizing to reduce friction Managerial Intervention - making decisions without team involvement, used rarely Exit voluntary or involuntary removal of a member, last resort

3 rules to reverse a losing team s fortune Make it clear that your in-charge (the leader)

One to One chats with team members Confrontation is healthy putting the right

amount of pressure, not putting people down Identify small goals and hit them success breeds

success - believe in ability to succeed

Cross Functional teams blame psychological factors, mistrust for inability to make decisions This is due to the fact that each member vies for resources for his/her department To break a situation the CEO usually takes a call A majority remain unhappy and the CEO is branded a dictator

Tactics to improve the teams decision making process Specified desired outcomes if not members go

by their own assumptions Provide a range of options for achieving the desired outcome Surface preferences early Assign Devil s advocate

In a high stakes scenario (e.g. entering a untested market) groups with top experts are brought together Virtuoso Teams Superstars tend to be egocentric and highly temperamental This may lead to settling for an ordinary team But Virtuoso teams can work and should not be shunned

Principles for leading virtuoso teams Assemble the stars celebrating their individual egos Build the group ego help the stars break through

their egocentrism and morph the team into a powerful, unified team with shared identity Make work a contact sport encourage one-to-one impassioned dialogue in designated spaces Respect the customers intelligence Encourage the belief that the customer expects more, in order to raise the standard Use time management strategies to reduce the team members need for individual freedom and intellectual freedom

OrdinaryTeams 1.Choose members for availability 2. Emphasize the collective 3. Focus on tasks 4. Work individually and remotely 5. Address the average customer

Virtuoso Teams 1. Choose members for skill 2. Emphasize the individual 3. Focus on ideas 4. Work together and intensely 5. Address the sophisticated customer

Conflict has a negative connotation However it is valuable for the team to have Constructive conflict Constructive conflict helps teams make high stake decisions under considerable uncertainty and in the face of intense pressure Mitigating interpersonal conflict is the key

6 tactics to separate substantive issues from personalities Focus on facts - about your business and competitors,

encourages debates on critical issues and prevents ignorant debates Multiply the alternatives weigh 4 or 5 options even which you don t support Create common goals this rallies everyone to work on decisions as collaborations Use humour relaxes everyone , increases tactfulness, effective listening and creativity Balance the power structure Seek consensus with qualification most relevant senior manager makes a decision in the absence of a consensus, builds fairness and equity

Some projects need specialists to work on them because of diverse requirements Often the best qualified are scattered across the globe But it isn t necessary to bring them together They can in fact contribute better from their base locations However it requires shrewd management It goes beyond emails and video conferencing Ongoing threaded discussions are needed to remind the members of decisions rationales and commitments

Rule 1. Exploit Diversity: Use the best resources of each country and coordinate through conference calls Rule 2: Use of Technology to simulate reality: Conference calls, videoconferencing, Instant messenger, Virtual workspaces Rule 3. Hold the team together: try to bring in a common language of communication or improvise, daily or constant communication in order to understand ideas and thought processes.

A complete guide to handling and building stronger teams Various issues handled by the various chapters Covered almost each and every dynamic of the team scenario today Knowledge that is useful for teams across boundaries