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When you think of your team, words like unity, togetherness, connection and coherence should all come to mind. Just like a jigsaw puzzle, when you take them out of the box, they don’t come pieced together. It’s up to you to work out how each of the pieces fit until you can see that picturesque landscape. A team that is not cohesive ends up with each member thinking only about their own piece of the puzzle, seeing the success of others as a roadblock to their own, with people only in it for themselves. A cohesive team not only believes in each individual; it wants each individual to be great and celebrates their successes. They have respect for each member of the team and assume they all have good motives. This means that when individuals ‘fail’ it is a reflection on the whole group and everyone’s there to pick up the pieces. By the end of this chapter you will be able to: Implement strategies to involve team members in planning and decision makingCreate and implement policies and procedures that drive team member accountabilityProvide feedback that recognises and rewards team effortsDevelop processes to ensure that problems or issues identified by team members are recognised and addressed

Chapter #4 | Connecting the puzzle pieces. Creating team cohesion.

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Congrats on getting through your unit to this point! So what have you done in this chapter? Well, you’ve:Looked at strategies to involve team members in planning and decision making Identified policies and procedures that drive team member accountability Looked at how to provide feedback that recognises and rewards team efforts Looked at how to develop processes to ensure that problems or issues identified by team members are recognised and addressedSo what now? We recommend you put into practice some of the new skills, techniques and principles you’ve just learned. This is the best way we know, to ensure you know what you need to be successful on your journey – know what we mean? Now, let’s get into the next chapter!

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A team, can be defined as several individuals who come together to accomplish a particular task or goal. Team dynamics refers to the behavioural characteristics of the team. Team dynamics are concerned with how the team is formed, their structure, process, and how they function. Kurt Lewin, a social psychologist and change management expert, noted that, “People often take on distinct roles and behaviours when they work in a group. Group Dynamics describes the effects of these roles and behaviours on other members and on the group as a whole.” A team with a positive dynamic is easy to spot. Team members work towards a collective decision, they trust one another, and they hold one another accountable for making things happen.

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To create a positive team dynamic, it’s important to understand how the team interacts with each other and how individuals react within the team. Positive relationships are important and understanding them is equally important. To develop positive team dynamics you must first develop good relationships. Good relationships must be constructive, productive, have mutual understanding and be self-corrective. To have a constructive relationship, there must be trust and respect. Neither happen overnight – they take time to develop. A productive relationship allows you and your team to focus on real issues – the ones that matter – and in a way that makes a difference. Good relationships also creates a culture of positivity and productivity. Let’s take a look at what others say about the impact of team dynamics on culture and how you can influence it.

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We’ve talked a bit about establishing a positive team dynamic but you may not always be in a position to set your team up from scratch. If you’ve just stepped into lead an already established team, or you’re not too sure of the existing dynamic, assessing where things are currently at is pretty important. You need to know what the dynamic looks like now and then take action to improve it accordingly. Team dynamics surveys are questionnaires your team members fill out individually, often anonymously, to provide the business with an understanding of how they feel working within the team. The results are then analysed and an action plan formed to improve the team dynamic. The great thing about assessing the team dynamic through this method is that you get a relatively honest and accurate reflection of how people are feeling. Think about the impact of asking people the same questions face to face in a group meeting. You’re likely to find that people will filter their responses or sit back and not speak up. Let’s take a closer look at the process of assessing your team dynamics.

A great way to assess your team dynamics is through surveys. Your team dynamics survey should be built mostly around multiple choice questions. This will ensure that the data you gain from your team is easy to analyse and a strong action plan can be formed based on the results. The easiest way to do this is to provide statements where the individual answers on a scale, for example from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’. Once the survey has been completed by all team members, focus your attention on statements that were commonly answered ‘strongly disagree’ and ‘disagree’. These are your areas for improvement in which you develop your action plan around. Likewise, any statements that were commonly answered ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ are areas that your team are excelling in. Whilst you don’t need to develop your action plan around these areas, it is worth celebrating that the team are cohesive in those areas. Moving forward, ensure you still make an effort to maintain the result.

Team members are able to provide constructive feedback to one another

Team meetings are productive and end with clear action plans

Strongly disagree

Team members communicate openly and effectively

Disagree

Team members listen to each other and seek to understand others’ viewpoints

Agree

Team members support and uphold decisions that are made by the team

The team has clear methods for solving problems and making decisions

Strongly Agree

Team members believe that their individual success is enhanced by the success of other team members

All team members willingly share responsibility for the success of the team

All team members participate fully in and make contributions to team meetings

Team members are willing to take risks and share new ideas with other team members

A team can either have a great dynamic, or be dynamite, and not in the good ‘far out man’ kind of way but the ‘kaboom’ ‘pow’ ‘crunch’ kind of way. Creating a team means bringing together people with different skillsets and varied personalities to work towards a common goal. But these differences can sometimes cause dysfunction. By understanding the source of any team dysfunctions and the strategies that can be implemented, you can reduce the risk of an explosion. Five Dysfunctions Model Building a cohesive team can be difficult. The ‘Five Dysfunctions Model’ by Patrick Lencioni, is designed to provide a clear, concise and practical guide to improve your team. Let’s take a look at the 5 dysfunctions and ways you can overcome them.

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Symptoms of an absence of trust include: Hesitant or vulnerable with one anotherReluctant to admit mistakesNot seeking helpAfraid of being seen as weakNo comfort or safety with each otherOvercoming the obstacles: Building trust requires vulnerability and the courage to take risks. This can only happen when there is mutual understanding and an appreciation of team members’ differences. You can create this through: Team meetings and eventsWorking alongside team membersWorking harmoniously with each otherCan be vulnerable with each other and acknowledge weakness (leader goes first).

Strategies to overcome absence of trust:

Symptoms of a fear of conflict include: Incapable of engaging about key issuesVeiled discussionsBack channel commentsAfraid of being seen as weakOpt to say nothing in favour of talking behind closed doorsTo combat this, you need to outline expectations and create open lines of communication. Healthy conflict is actually about candid debate. To achieve it, the team need to be able to trust that they can speak their opinion without fear of retribution. You can drive this healthy discussion though: Develop trustOutlining expectationsCreate open lines of communicationFacilitate discussionsUse conflict as the pursuit of truth

Strategies to overcome fear of conflict:

Symptoms of a lack of commitment include: Find it difficult to commit to decisionsAmbiguity prevailsTop talent disgruntledIf people haven’t given their opinions because they’re scared of conflict, then they may never truly commit. You need to be able to hear from everyone, disagree, agree, gain buy-in and then decide with one voice. Create this commitment by: Create healthy conflictClear understanding of roles and responsibilitiesClear understanding of what drives decisions, for example company visionEnsuring people feel heard and have the opportunity to weigh in before the commitment is made

Strategies to overcome lack of commitment:

Symptoms of an avoidance of accountability include: Lack of real commitment and buy-inHesitate to call their peers on behavioursFailure to hold team members accountableAccountability comes when everyone is 100% committed. Accountabilities need to be expressed to all team members on performance plans together with clear consequences on not delivering desired performance levels. Seek accountability through: Gain commitmentPerformance plansClear consequences on non-performanceFollow through on accountabilities

Strategies to overcome avoidance of accountability:

Symptoms of a team that is inattentive to results include: Put their own needs (ego, career development, recognition) before collective goalsOrganisation not achieving targetsIndividuals need to understand how their role meets and contributes to the overall goals of the team. You need to ensure each team member is putting the team’s goals before their own. If one link in the chain is broken, the chain is useless. Create a focus on results by: Create measurable resultsFacilitate collective and individual accountabilityHelp them understand how their role meets and contributes to overall goalEncourage team members to put team goals before their own

Strategies to overcome inattention to results:

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Building trust and ultimately collaboration allows us to be smarter together. We can move quicker and our competitive point of difference becomes the opinions, diversity and collective intelligence of the group. To collaborate is to lead well. Trust based collaboration: Creates momentumDrives new thinkingBuilds resilience and determination to succeedEnables individuals and businesses to explore possibilities and develop strategies to future-proof successYour role in leading collaboration: It can be challenging to steer groups to work collaboratively when team members have different priorities and agendas. Here are three ways to improve the process.

Identify how collaborative your work environment really is using this questionnaire.

Craft a central unifying goal – something which is, in equal parts, easy to describe and compelling. What you’re trying to do here is get people to commit to a common cause which is greater than their own individual goals. The goal must articulate a common outcome, it must be simple and concrete, it must stir passion, and it must inspire people to ‘lose track of time’ every day. Create and demonstrate a core value of teamwork – everyone should be willing to collaborate with others to do great things. Make sure your team knows the importance of working cross-functionally with other departments across the organisation. Lead from the front and be sure to demonstrate these behaviours. You also have to be careful that teamwork doesn’t become the point of what you’re trying to do. Remember, teamwork is a tool, not a destination. You want to make use of teams to achieve your business goals. You need to establish clear links between teamwork and results. Create and use language which encourages collaboration – the language you use sends a powerful signal. If you talk about collaborating in one breath but then use the aggressive language of intense competition in the following breath, individuals will get confused about the value of teamwork. To achieve greater collaboration, talk about it. Emphasise the need to collaborate for results, and those results will come. In meetings, talk explicitly about and encourage collaboration. Be relentless – they will get the message.

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These psychological traps can undermine business decisions – be careful not to fall into them! The anchoring trap – Anchors establish the terms on which a decision will be made. This can come from information you’ve seen or heard prior to the decision you’re now making. In business, choices can become misguided when using past information to predict the answers to new questions. For example, forecasting sales based on a previous year’s sales. The status quo trap – The first automobile was called a “horseless carriage”. Whether we realise it or not, even when we’re innovating, we tend to steer towards the status quo. Outside of that would mean taking action and responsibility which might leave us open to judgment from others; a much bigger psychological risk. The sunk-cost trap – We tend to make choices now that justify our choices of the past, even when they’re no longer relevant or even justifiable. Imagine you made a poor recruitment decision in the past – you might decide now to continue to invest time, energy and money into what is (or who is) actually a sinking ship. Our rational mind tells us to let these sunk-costs go but they work their way in and lead us to make inappropriate decisions. The confirming evidence trap – Driven by our tendency to know what we want to do before we know why, we seek out evidence to support our preferred viewpoint. As a consequence, we devalue (and possibly don’t see) anything that’s contradictory. This bias towards confirmation of our instincts over information can impact the way we collect and analyse our information – weighing it too heavily on supporting our own ideas. The overconfidence trap – Being overconfident, especially when making forecasting decisions, may lead to overestimation or underestimation. Both of these come with challenges such as missing out on great opportunities or over exposure to risk. Often this overconfidence comes out of ignorance – we think we know more than we do but are unaware of the field and its challenges.

How many decisions do you make in a day? Google it and you’ll find that it’s likely anywhere from 200 to 35,000 – that’s if someone can decide on the number! As a leader it can feel as though you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. I mean you manage people, make decisions and are accountable for the results produced. And here’s where you fall into your first decision making trap – trying to do it all yourself. Taking on the burden of every decision is not only tiring, it doesn’t guarantee the best decision has been made. With only one perspective to draw from how do you know there wasn’t a better way? Or that the team are going to be on board with it? Not only does this make decision making itself harder, it also makes implementation later a whole lot harder than it needs to be. Involving your team in the decision making process has benefits to both the decisions made and the team as a whole. From a team perspective it will see them more engaged and invested in committing to actions that drive their decisions. They’ll take more responsibility in working towards the outcome and when things don’t go right, they’ll be more open to learning from their mistakes. And for the decisions themselves? Well, with some diversity of thinking that comes from involving a team, you might just avoid some of these common decision making traps...

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Even with all the benefits, there are some challenges, when collaborating with a group to make decisions. You’ll need to be more prepared, so that you can prepare them, and this in itself can take extra time. Therein lies the next challenge – time. That thing that we all wish we had more of. Be prepared to expect any sort of collaboration to take longer. You will also need to prepare yourself and the group for the process. Remember, you’ll all come at it differently and this can cause conflict. Set some ground rules and keep the goal in sight. Group decision making processes:

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Voting is when a decision is made based on majority rules, or in some cases, an agreed minimum number of votes to get an idea across the line. The options are presented and each individual votes on which one they support. Voting is a great approach when the options are all good ones regardless of their popularity.The challenge with voting is that that those who voted for the unsuccessful option may not be invested in upholding the decision that was made and feel frustrated by being in the ‘minority’. Follow up with these team members after any decisions to support them in accepting the decisions made. When using voting as a means of making decisions the team must be clear on how many votes will get the decision across the line for example, is half of the team enough people for the decision to be made?

Gaining consensus is all about reaching a decision that everybody agrees too. Everybody has the chance to have their proposed solution explored thoroughly by the group. Although the end result may not be each individual's favourite option, consensus means each must all agree that it will benefit the business and there are minimal negative impacts. The danger with gaining consensus is that it can be a lengthy process and has the potential for groupthink to come into play. Groupthink is where people who are opposed to the decisions or overriding opinion of the group as a whole remain quiet, preferring to keep the peace rather than disrupt the uniformity of the crowd. This will only result in passive sabotage later by the same members of the group, who still have not had (or taken) the opportunity to express an opinion. It can also lead to poor decision making, as the ‘louder’ members of the group become the decision makers, without necessarily the best approach to their decision making.

Where the decision isn’t required to be made on the spot, a group brainstorming session is a good method to use. You can throw the topic out for team members to brainstorm possible solutions together. As the leader you can then take a shortlist of options away to make a decision on at a later time. Your team will appreciate the chance to have their opinion considered and you get the benefit of hearing a range of solutions you might not have thought of on your own. Just make sure you communicate the final decision to the team otherwise they might feel like their involvement was a waste of time.

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Provide a brief. Give your team time to prepare themselves by providing them with a brief prior to the meeting. They’ll walk in familiar with the topic and with time to have developed an opinion. Your group decision making meeting will be more efficient if no time needs to be wasted ‘setting the scene’. Explore alternate opinions. Involving the team allows you to explore a range of solutions you potentially wouldn’t have come up with if you just made the decision all on your own. Ensure that you plan enough time to explore a range of opinions in the meeting. Decide on the method you’ll use to make the decision early on. Once the topic has been presented to the group decide on the method you’ll use to make the decision. Voting is great for smaller decisions, consensus is beneficial for the complicated ones and group brainstorming to get the ideas flowing. You don’t want to waste time trying to gain consensus on an issue of little importance. Decide early on how the decision will be made to avoid time wasting later on.

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An effective team is one that takes ownership over their work and knows they will be held accountable for the results. When you bring a team together it’s important to establish the ground rules from the get-go. It’s not about dictating, but inspiring the team to want to do the work. We can set up policies and procedures to encourage team members to take responsibility for their own work and assist others with their work too. The words ‘policies and procedures’ sound very formal but they don’t have to be. Policies are expectations for employee actions and procedures are the way in which the actions are to be carried out. Some policies and procedures that relate to the whole organisation will already be created and implemented by the business, like the employee code of conduct. Often, a policy or procedure supports both a business, team and legal need. For example, anti-discrimination policies will align to legislative guidelines, but be contextualised to the business and the team, so that everyone understands how, in their business model or structure, they can be compliant in such important issues. There are some policies and procedures outside of those driven by legislations,that you can set up within your own team to drive accountability, create efficiencies and set the culture. For example, you might set up a list of team behavioural commitments, these are guidelines that set the standard for how the team is expected to conduct themselves whilst working within the team.

Flexible working hours policy When you provide people with the option to work when and where they feel most creative or productive, you’ll probably find they’re more likely to take ownership over their work. This is based on the principle of reciprocity – you give somebody something and they feel obliged to provide you with something in return. In this case, by providing the team with freedom around when and where they work, they’re likely to be more productive as they feel obliged to provide you with something back. While not possible in some work environments, for example a retail outlet, you can still use the principle in support of, for example, shift swapping capabilities amongst the team. Results only work environment procedure Creating a results driven environment where team members are measured based on the results they achieve and not the time in which they ‘clock in’, will encourage team members to take ownership of their work. This procedure works hand in hand with the flexible working hours policy. You give people the freedom to complete their work in a way that supports their individual needs, but set clear measurements and accountabilities for the delivery of the results. This doesn’t mean you’ll never see them; there will likely also be some expectation of availability and flexibility for work-related activities such as attending meetings, and shifting project demands and deadlines. Behavioural commitments policy Get the team together to come up with a list of behavioural commitments that set the standard for the type of culture and relationships they have with each other. This is one activity where you might aim to seek group consensus from the start. This will many any early challenges can be drawn out when developing the standards, rather than when implementing and maintaining them. You might need to remind the team of these commitments every now and then in situations where conflict or poor performance occurs.

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What not even a thank you? I’m not sure why I bother, it’s not like my work is appreciated.

It’s fine. After all, it is actually my job to complete the work and deliver results. I’ll just keep on pushing through.

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You’ve just delivered a project that you’ve worked on for the last few months. Knowing how important this was to the business, you really worked hard. You hit the deadline and the objective – even though it meant many hours of overtime (and challenges to overcome) to get it done. You know that your manager has reviewed the results, but so far nothing has been said to you about them and now you’ve received an email with the brief for your next project. How do you feel?

It’s great that you’re really self motivated! But imagine how much more motivated you’d be if your success was celebrated by your manager and shared with the team. You’d probably be fired up to get cracking on your new project and deliver something even better.

Having your manager celebrate your success would make your work feel appreciated and provide you with some extra motivation. But it sounds like you need to look at your own source of motivation too.

Now take a minute and think about whether or not you’re team have been in a similar situation. Do you celebrate the success of your team, with your team? Whilst encouragement from their leader shouldn’t be their only source of motivation, you can see how it plays a large part. Everybody likes to feel as though their work is important and appreciated. I’m not talking about rewarding the team extrinsically like we talked about earlier, just acknowledging and celebrating their achievements.

Providing individual positive feedback. Make sure it’s specific to the event and given in a timely manner. Acknowledging an individual’s achievement to the team. This could be through email or in a team meeting. Catching up each week to set goals and discuss the team’s achievements. Head out of the office to celebrate over a meal or activity. Organise a team building day to focus on previous success and how this will be carried forward.

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