Supercharged Teams

30 Tools of Great Teamwork

Pamela Hamilton

• Publisher: Pearson Business
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781292334660

Great teamwork is crucial for any high performing team, but being in a team is harder than ever before. Work is faster, leaner and more digital, and teamwork can be last on our list of priorities. Supercharged Teams will boost the way your team works together, whether you lead a team or belong to one. With 30 powerful tools for teamwork, supercharge your team to: Reset your team to work better together Adapt your team to new challenges, whether they are in the same office, working remotely or collaborating across different departments, organisations and locations Learn from high performing teams across the world with case studies and examples Develop the skills and approaches that work effectively in today's working environment Supercharged Teams gives you the power to supercharge your team, today

chapter 1

Why supercharge your team?

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.

Helen Keller (1880–1968)

Once there was a group of people who had a unique opportunity to change how the world worked together, for the better. That time is now, and we are those people. We are living in a time of unprecedented change, when all teams have to perform at the very edge of their capabilities. Teams and teamwork are being tested and challenged at every level. Today ‘good enough’ is no longer enough. We have a rare chance to use this period of disruption and innovation to evolve how we work. For every single team in the world, now is the time to supercharge. If not now, when?

Over the last two decades, I’ve worked with thousands of teams around the world, from small local charities to huge global corporations. I’ve experienced a range of team dynamics, from the truly excellent to the very dysfunctional. As a team member I’ve been inspired by the clever, creative people I’ve worked with, and I’ve been disillusioned by the bullies and bad behaviour that inevitably emerge in any human situation.

As a lifetime psychology student and a committed people watcher, I have always been fascinated by how people behave in groups. In my work as a consultant, I am invited into teams as an independent facilitator, and can observe with an outsider’s perspective. I’ve seen similar patterns of behaviours across all the teams I’ve met, no matter what the culture, company or size, and if you have ever worked in a team, I suspect we share similar experiences.

Supercharged teams operate on a different level, way above average. They are driven by the energy of a powerful vision, an urgent sense of purpose, and the motivation to work well together because they know that is the only way they will achieve, even exceed, their goals. Today, every team in the world has to solve complex problems and create new opportunities to do their best work, whether for clients, customers, consumers or each other. The difference between going through the motions and truly performing with momentum is making a deliberate choice to supercharge.

Teams solve more problems and create more opportunities than any one person could achieve alone. High-performing teams can overcome challenges and achieve real impact together. Being part of a brilliant team can be an overwhelmingly positive experience and great teams don’t only feel good, they also achieve more. On the complex issues we need to solve, like the environment, social inequality, economic disruption, immigration and refugees, we need true collaboration and incredible teamwork more than ever.

However, good teamwork doesn’t come naturally. Because of different priorities and personality types, people don’t automatically manage to work well together. True collaboration is always difficult because we all carry our own working styles, preconceptions and expectations into any team. Poor-performing teams aren’t just inefficient, they stifle the intelligence and purpose of the people in them, leaving them less capable and unmotivated.

Teams are like families. We share a common experience and build relationships, habits and behaviours together over time, but even if we love and trust each other, we don’t give the same amount of respect or effort to each other that we would to strangers. In pressured situations, or when things change, we fall back on old ways of doing things, some of which may not be effective in the new situation. The better a team knows each other and the longer they have worked together, the worse the potential for dysfunction is.

I believe we assign people to teams far too readily and we need to work in fewer teams for more effective work. I need to confess that I sometimes wish I didn’t have to work in teams. It is sometimes easier to avoid all the difficulty of collaborating. However, there’s no escaping it, and the research proves time and again that teams achieve more than individuals working alone, particularly in today’s rapidly evolving world. The problem is that the way we work today has changed, but the way we work in teams has not, and it needs to.

Great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people.

Steve Jobs (1955–2011)

Why do we need supercharged teams?

Being in a team used to be a lot simpler. Team meetings were an efficient use of time because they allowed for quality thinking and considered decision-making. A regular meeting helped teams to stay aligned and protected our time outside of the meeting for actions. Between meetings, we had one-to-one conversations and shared this information with the whole team when we got together. It’s no surprise that work felt less pressured, as our working patterns were more predictable, communication was at a manageable pace, information was limited, and the time between working and meetings was distinct.

How the world has changed. Markets are being disrupted by technology and innovation, and the way we serve our consumers, customers and clients has shifted remarkably. What we are working on has changed – we have more information for decision-making than ever before. Our work is more complex, across different platforms and via new channels. It is almost impossible to be an expert on everything, so knowledge needs to be shared between different specialists.

How we work has also changed. Technology has helped us to collaborate faster, but it has also reduced our attention, time and focus on our work. We are less likely to work face to face, and remote and flexible working are already both commonplace and causing huge challenges to the way we work in teams.

Definitions

• • Remote working: People working from different locations, not in the same office.
• • Flexible working: People working specific hours, times of day, days of the week or months of the year, not 9 am–5 pm.
• • Gig-style jobs: People contracted temporarily to complete a specific task, either as a contractor or as an employee.

Around the world, even before COVID-19, 70% of full-time professionals worked remotely at least one day a week. In the UK, the gig economy has more than doubled in the last three years and now accounts for more than 4.7 million workers.¹ Between 2008 and 2016 the number of freelancers in the UK increased by 36%,² and in the coming years, 79% of executives expect that contingent and freelance workers will substantially replace full-time employees.³ A 2019 study commissioned by Timewise found that the number of highly paid jobs offered part-time or with flexible hours has trebled in the past four years, as workers turn their back on the nine-to-five.⁴

Against this background of change, isn’t it crazy that we are all trying to work in the same way that we always did, only faster? We continue to create and join teams blindly, using inherited team cultures and processes, without considering how teams need to work to perform well today. We don’t invest in teamwork or nurture our teams, and we are less likely to see examples of great teamwork to inspire us. We are at risk today of doing worse teamwork than ever before.

Research consistently shows that teams underperform, despite all the extra resources they have.

J Richard Hackman⁵

It is no longer enough to join a team and assume it will achieve something. Whether you belong to a team or lead one, you can be the catalyst that resets your team to high performance, with the right tools.

What is a team?

A team is a group of people who work together to achieve a common goal, and it consists of more than one person. Teamwork is the ability of a group of people to work together effectively to achieve that goal. Team members:

• • each have relevant expertise
• • work effectively together
• • achieve more than they would working separately
• • work towards an agreed goal
• • have a defined deadline
• • are accountable for the decisions they make
• • have the influence to deliver the team objective

Over the last decade, scientists at MIT have worked to understand and measure ‘collective intelligence’.⁶ Similar to an IQ test, it determines how well groups solve problems together. Their research has proved time and again that teams can create more successful results than the most intelligent person in that team could create alone.

Businesses have recognised this – the amount of teamwork we do is definitely increasing. The Harvard Business Review found that in the last two decades, time spent in collaboration activities has increased by 50%.⁷ This is because collaboration is the only way to solve the complex business problems we now face, but it has also led to ‘collaborative overload’. We are called on to join more and more teams and our time and attention, and therefore our effectiveness, are diluted.

How do supercharged teams do it?

When we join a team it’s tempting to focus on how often we’ll meet and what the meeting agenda will be, without considering who is on the team with us: are they the right people; d...