Effective Teamwork

Practical Lessons from Organizational Research

Michael A. West

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781444355345
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Industrial & Organizational Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Updated to reflect the latest research evidence, the third edition of Effective Teamwork provides business managers with the necessary guidance and tools to build and maintain effective teamwork strategies.

• A new edition of a bestselling book on teamwork from an acknowledged leader in the field
• Offers a unique integration of rigorous research with practical guidance to develop effective leadership teams
• Features new chapters on virtual teams and top management teams, plus contemporary themes of ethics and values
• Utilizes research based on positive psychology techniques

Part 1

Team Effectiveness

In this first section of the book, we examine what effective teamwork means. The first chapter looks at what is required for effective teamwork, identifying two themes that run through the book. These are team task functioning and team socio-emotional climate. The chapter explains how effective teams take time to review their performance in these areas and to adapt accordingly. Ensuring the team is functioning well both as a task group and as a social group is vital to ensuring team effectiveness. Reflecting on these areas of teamwork regularly and making changes in objectives, strategies and team processes as necessary are vital for the long-term effectiveness of the team.

The second chapter focuses on the research evidence about whether teams work or not. Are teams effective in getting work done and does teamwork in organizations lead to improved organizational performance? Effectiveness includes the well-being and development of team members as well as the level of innovation in the team. The chapter reviews the research on the problems of team working to show the circumstances in which teams perform badly. However, the chapter also shows that teams outperform the aggregate of individuals working alone and are essential for the performance of many tasks in organizations. The key is knowing how to create the conditions for teams to work effectively – the subject of this book.

1

Creating Effective Teams

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. (Margaret Mead)

Key Learning Points

• The basic conditions for effective teamwork
• The conditions for outstanding teamwork
• Team reflexivity and its importance in team functioning
• The two dimensions of team functioning – task and social reflexivity
• The five elements of team effectiveness
• The relationship of team reflexivity to team effectiveness
• The application of the reflexivity questionnaire to real teams

Our societies and communities face the fundamental challenge of how to enable people to combine their efforts and imaginations to work in ways that enhance quality of life through the achievement of our shared goals. The major challenges that face our species today require us to cooperate effectively in order to maximize the quality of life for all people while, at the same time, sustaining the resources offered by the planet? For thousands of years the most potent solution we have found has been teamwork. So why the need for a book on teamwork if we have been working in teams successfully for so long? Because the landscape of teamwork has changed fundamentally in the last 200 years. The growth of modern organizations has created a context in which teams no longer work in isolation. Teams must work together with other teams and with organizational systems and processes to achieve the goals we aspire to and overcome the challenges we face. This book offers guidelines for this new context, largely based on research evidence, for how to ensure effective teamwork and how to enable multi-team systems to operate in an integrated and effective way. More than that what the book offers is insights into how to create outstandingly effective teams – dream teams – teams that achieve more than their members imagined possible and which enable and inspire the success of other teams within their organizations. The book describes both the basic conditions for effective team working and the conditions that will produce dream teams.

The basic conditions for effective teamwork include having a real team whose membership is clear, which is of the right size, relatively stable in membership and working on a task that requires teamwork. The team must have an overall purpose that adds value and which is translated into clear, challenging team objectives. And the team needs the right people as team members with the required skills in the right roles. They must be enablers not derailers – people who support effective team working through their behaviours, not people who sabotage, undermine or obstruct team functioning.

In addition to these basic conditions, dream teams are characterized by transformational leadership that reinforces an inspiring and motivating team purpose focused sharply on the needs of the team’s stakeholders (clients, customers, patients); that encourages all team members to value the diversity of its membership. Members have opportunities to grow and learn in their roles and there is a strong sense of continuous growth and development as a team. Dream teams have a high level of positivity, characterized by optimism and a healthy balance of positive and negative interactions. Members are open, appreciative, kind and genuine in their interactions with each other and eager to learn from each other. Team members believe in the team’s ability to be successful and effective in their work (team potency). They are secure in their team membership and attached to the team because of the level of trust and support they encounter – and the fact that members appropriately back each other up in crises. And the team’s relationship with the wider organization is engaged and supportive. The team actively builds effective inter-team relationships and members identify enthusiastically, not just with their team, but with the wider organization of which they are a part. Such dream teams, and teams of dream teams, enable effective communication and fruitful collaborations in which new ideas are shared and integrated, work load is shared, mutual support is provided and opportunities are exploited to their full potential. Later in the book, the reader will discover how to create these conditions.

Creating and sustaining effective teams requires persistent renewal and discovery of good practice. Moreover, teams vary in the tasks they undertake, the contexts they work in and their membership. And change is a constant: so teams must adapt to the changes that confront them within and outside their organizations. Both the variation between teams and the changing context of all teams requires flexible team members, flexible team processes and flexible organizations. And we have a wondrous capacity to encourage such flexibility. What we are able to do – and no other animal can – is to reflect upon our experiences and consciously adapt what we do to adjust to changing circumstances. And we can use this ability to learn to dance the dance of teamwork ever more effectively. Applied at team level, this is termed team reflexivity.

Team reflexivity involves:

• regular team reviews of the team’s objectives including an assessment of their continuing relevance and appropriateness, as well as progress towards their fulfilment;
• team member vigilance for external changes that could affect the team’s work;
• awareness, review and discussion of the team’s functioning with a view to improving performance;
• creativity, flexibility and adaptability;
• tolerance of uncertainty;
• team members valuing the different perspectives, knowledge bases, skills and experience of team members.

Teams operate in varied organizational settings – as diverse as multinational oil companies, voluntary organizations, healthcare organizations and the military – so we need to be cautious about offering one-size-fits-all prescriptions for effective teamwork. Within organizations too, teams differ markedly. Teams are often composed of people with very different cultural backgrounds, ages, functional expertise and personalities. Teams may span national boundaries, including members located in several countries. Differences in work patterns such as part-time, flexitime, contract working and home working all add further mixes to the heterogeneity of teams. As teams become more diverse in their constitution and functioning, team members must learn to reflect upon, and intelligently adapt to the constantly changing circumstances in order to be effective. In this book, it is proposed that, to the extent that team members collectively reflect on the team’s objectives, strategies, processes and performance and make changes accordingly (team reflexivity) (West, 2000; Widmer, Schippers, and West, 2009), teams will be more productive, effective and innovative.

Task and Social Elements of Team Functioning

There are two fundamental dimensions of team functioning: the task the team is required to carry out, and the social factors that influence how members work together as a social unit. The basic reason for the creation of teams in work organizations is the expectation that they will carry out some tasks more effectively than individuals and so further organizational objectives overall. In fact, some tasks can only be undertaken by teams of people working together rather than individuals working alone – think of open-heart surgery, the construction of a car, catching an antelope on the savannah without the benefit of modern technology or weapons. Consideration of the content of the task, and the strategies and processes employed by team members to carry out that task, is therefore important for understanding how to work in teams. At the same time, teams are composed of people who have a variety of emotional, social and other human needs that the team as a whole can either help to meet or frustrate. Feeling valued, respected and supported by other team members will be a prerequisite for people offering their ideas for new and improved ways of ensuring team effectiveness. If we ignore either dimension in trying to achieve team effectiveness, we will fail to achieve the potential of team performance.

Research evidence now shows convincingly how important positive emotions, such as hope, pleasure, happiness, humour, excitement, joy, pride and involvement, are as a source of human strength (Fredrickson, 2009). When we feel positive emotions we think in a more flexible, open-minded way, and consider a much wider range of possibilities than if we feel anxious, depressed or angry. This enables us to accomplish tasks and make the most of the situations we find ourselves in. We are also more likely to see challenges as opportunities rather than threats. When we feel positive we exercise greater self-control, cope more effectively and are less likely to react defensively in workplace situations. The litany of benefits does not stop there. It spills over too into what is called ‘pro-social behaviour’ – cooperation and altruism. When we feel positive emotion we are more likely to be helpful, generous and to exercise a sense of social responsibility (for a review, see Fredrickson, 2009). The implications for teams are that by developing a team environment where people feel positive, we can encourage organizational citizenship – in other words the tendency of people at work to help each other and those in other departments; to do that bit extra which is not part of their job. And such citizenship makes a major difference between the most effective teams and the rest. The idea that we can create effective teams by focusing simply on performance and ignoring the role of our emotions is based on the false premise that emotions can be ignored at work. Positive relationships and a sense of community are the product and cause of positive emotions. We must work with human needs and capacities and potentials rather than against them if we are to create positive teams that succeed and at the same time, foster the health and well-being of those who work within them.

In order to function effectively, team members must actively focus upon their objectives, regularly reviewing ways of achieving them and the team’s methods of working – ‘task reflexivity’. At the same time, in order to promote the well-being of its members, the team must reflect upon the ways in which it provides support to members, how conflicts are resolved and what is the overall social and emotional climate of the team – or its ‘social reflexivity’. The purpose of these reviews should be to inform the next steps by changing as appropriate the team’s objectives, ways of working or social functioning, in order to promote effectiveness.

Team Effectiveness

So what does ‘team effectiveness’ mean? Team effectiveness can be seen as constituting five main components:

1 Task effectiveness is the extent to which the team is successful in achieving its task-related objectives.

2 Team member well-being refers to factors such as the well-being or mental health (e.g., stress), growth and development of team members.

3 Team viability is the likelihood that a team will continue to work together and function effectively.

4 Team innovation is the extent to which the...