Team Builders: Helpful or A Waste of Time?

Samuel R. James, Ed.D.

The phone rang early one Monday morning.
“Hello.”
“Sam, this is David; I need your help.”
“What’s up, Dave?”
Dave sighed and continued, “I just received an e-mail from my boss; he wants to schedule an offsite teambuilding meeting because he is not pleased with our results. I cannot do it!”
“Dave why are you so distraught?” I asked.
“Team builders do not work. We simply suffer Michael’s (his boss) offsites and wait for them to be over. Please you have got to help me come up with another plan that I can show Michael before we languish in another two-day offsite. I know you agree with me”

In fact I do agree with Dave. A team is a by-product of a process, not an objective. Teams are tough! Everyone has been part of a dysfunctional one. Valuable time and resources are consumed by a poorly defined direction led by an unskilled leader. Most people are trained in some professional capacity but have little knowledge of successful strategies for working with others. They rely on social skills developed with family and friends to inform them about ways to interact with others. Then, they are expected to function well and get their job done in the context of working with others.

Yet not all teams are dysfunctional; some are amazing. Are there some givens that we can use to guide our efforts? Are we at the mercy of chance? There are a few steps that can improve the chance that the team will be effective. They are not easy, however, and require a courageous leader.

The best professional sports teams typically have the best owners. From the top down the team is effective. The same is true with corporate teams: from the beginning, the leader makes or breaks the team. The team’s members know immediately if they are going to achieve results or if they are going to “paint by the numbers,” as one former client said about her team. The leader has to earn the right to influence the team. If he or she has not earned that right, then the members are going to pull out the paint brushes and get to work painting, quietly developing their own path. Earning the right to influence others begins with the following: getting the right people on the team; identifying a compelling challenge; providing time for the team to mature; ensuring protection from the outside; and finding a third-party to help guide the process.

Jim Collins of Good to Great states: “begin with the ‘who’ rather than the ‘what.’ ” A great strategic plan with the wrong people will not ensure success. Dave was distressed because he did not believe that Michael had the ability to get the right people onto the team. If Michael was going to earn the right to influence his team, he had to begin by assigning people into positions with the right skills, who were self-motivated, who had decision making ability, and had a track record of achieving results. The leader cannot waver getting the right people into the right positions. Simultaneously, he or she must gain the team members’ respect by selecting members for the right reasons.

The second way that the leader earns the right to influence the team is by creating a compelling challenge and developing a mandate that all are expected to perform. A compelling challenge makes clear the team’s purpose and provides the strategy for realizing its goals. Really effective leaders know that this step is best achieved by working with the team. The discovery process, however, is frequently frustrating, even messy, because of the competing agendas and biases that the members embrace. The members’ competing agendas are individual attempts to find a way to understand the challenge, own it, and commit to a collective course of action. The swirl of creating an agreed-upon purpose and specific objectives results in settling the team down; each understands the challenge and how to contribute to their success. Out of the cacophony of the discovery, detailed objectives lead to the ability to define their direction, deal with conflicts and competing agendas, and clearly communicate thoughts, ideas, and feelings about the project.

Once the team has begun and they are gaining traction, they often face the greatest threat of all—their own organization. Team members are suddenly needed on other projects. Other groups are concerned about the team’s impact on their turf. Competing projects wrangle for limited resources. The team is working, but is under siege from its own organization. Successful teams are an organic entity; they need time to congeal, trust one another, and build commitment to their objectives. Allowing a team to ferment, like the sugar in a good wine, creates the glue that holds them together. The leader must have the courage to protect the team from threats and infringements. Protecting the team does not begin at the point of challenge; at that point it is often too late. Protection is an ongoing process where the leader ensures that superiors and peers alike understand the team’s purpose, its importance to the organization, and remain committed to its success.

Is there any wonder that teams so often do not succeed. Assigning the best people to each role, clarifying the opportunity, and mapping the political terrain is enough to dismay the best senior leader. Consequently, a third-party, a coach or advisor, can be a neutral sounding board, collaborate with the team’s architecture, and a guide in effectively using group process skills. A coach that helps them navigate their route—as opposed to telling them what to do—is more successful. Group dynamics are a paradox; they are remarkably predictive and elusive at the same time. The coach presents a methodology but the team has to decide how to use it in order to define their compelling challenge, determine how they are going to work together, commit to each other, deal with their conflicts, and promote individual learning.

The route from the collection of individuals to a dynamic team is a challenge, but when a team works, it is a magical; a highlight of a senior leader’s career.