Unit 42: Dicussion

PHOTO: THINKSTOCK76 TD | May 2016

learning blueprint MANAGEMENT

M ore than 100 years ago, the French engineer Max Ringelmann con- ducted a famous experiment about teamwork. He placed two people at either end of a rope and told them to pull as hard as they could. After

measuring the force each exerted, he added two more subjects, one at each end, and once more took the same measurement of individual effort. He continued to add participants in this way and collect data. The results showed a general pat- tern: As more people became involved in the activity, each person slacked off somewhat. This phenomenon, which has been confirmed multiple times since Ringelmann’s initial study, has come to be known as “social loafing.”

Are your teammates a bunch of loafers? Not at all. But there is a good chance that counterproductive team dynamics are reproducing the phenomenon that Ringelmann observed and creating a drag on your collective output. A simple but powerful framework can neutralize the counterproductive dynamics that Rin- gelmann found and help get the most out of your team’s efforts.

What it is The 3-by-3 model consists of the three foundations of effective teaming—goals, roles, and norms—and an iterative three-step process for creating them. High- performing teams do the following: establish commitments, check alignment, and close the gap between saying and doing.

How it works The first step in creating a high-performing team is establishing its culture. In the most practical sense, culture is the set of rules—or commitments—that govern how you work together with your teammates to solve problems. A shared culture helps teams adapt and thrive in challenging environments. When a team comes together, rules will develop whether people are paying attention to them or not— rules about who speaks when, who makes the decisions, and even whether it is necessary to show up to meetings on time or at all. High-performing teams create cultures that support the work that needs to get done.

While committing to rules is an essential first step to creating a high-performing team, it is one that must be continually revisited. As a group’s stated and unstated rules accumulate over time, a culture forms in ways that can be largely invisible to team members, and individuals often begin operating by new rules that conflict with the team’s explicit rules in ways they are not aware of.

Comprehensive and often contradictory, all of these rules become—as we are all too familiar with—“the way we do things around here.” People may not even be aware of or remember why certain ways of doing things developed in the first place. For this reason, high-performing teams make time to check for alignment with commitments and work on closing the gap between their stated commit- ments (saying) and their actual behaviors (doing).

Get the Most Out of Your Team

If you want a high-performing

team, follow these principles.

BY MARIO MOUSSA,

DEREK NEWBERRY,

AND MADELINE BOYER

CHECKLIST

• Commit to goals, roles, and

norms.

• Make time to check alignment

with stated commitments.

• Build trust with each teammate.

• Give specific feedback about

closing the saying-doing gap.

• Decide how you will make

decisions.

• Discuss how your team will

resolve conflicts.

How to Create a

High-Performing Team

May 2016 | TD 77

Guidelines The following are ways to incorpo- rate the 3-by-3 model in your own organization by building on the three foundations, and continually working to enhance your team’s performance. Make rules that matter. Our research has shown that high-performing teams target rules that fall into three major buckets, each of which prompts a question, such as: How do we resolve conflicts? How do we commu- nicate? How do we decide?

Managing differences, sharing in- formation, and acting on it are the three fundamental activities in which teams engage. While you might be tempted to come up with a laundry list of rules, it is best to focus on a few that will have the greatest impact. Build in time for reflection. Yogi Berra once said, “You can observe a lot just by watching.” The best team lead- ers adopt an “observer’s mindset” by working hard to avoid two common cognitive biases: overvaluing positive outcomes, and motivated blindness.

Even when your team recently has experienced a success, take a moment to reflect on what could have gone wrong, and always seek out evidence that disconfirms your basic assump- tions about how a problem should be solved. Too often teams reserve formal reflection for annual retreats or quar- terly reviews, when in reality reflection needs to be taking place with much more frequency. Engage in give and take. Over time, mis- alignments inevitably occur among team members as they drift away from their original commitments. The reality is that personal lives change, organizational priorities shift, and competitors produce innovations that require a response.

To contend with unceasing change, high-performing teams have open and frequent conversations that en- able give and take and readjusting of

commitments. Careful, respectful con- versation is the best way for a group to maintain its peak level of performance. Be specific. After you have observed misalignments and set the stage for having productive conversations about them, you can work with your team on aligning again behind shared commit- ments. High-performing teams avoid abstract discussions about misalign- ments and focus instead on concrete behavioral changes.

Rather than telling a teammate to listen better, for example, tell him to stop interrupting you and repeat your point before responding to it. If you can observe and count how many times someone succeeds at mak- ing a desired change, you are on the right track toward good conversations about closing the saying-doing gap.

Results The world of work is becoming flatter (less top-down), looser (more reliant on temporary project-based jobs), wider (more dependent on virtual communication), and faster (driven by high-speed electronic commu- nication). Thus, teamwork skills are becoming increasingly vital. Rigid hi- erarchies and silos are giving way to flat teams in organizations as diverse as Zappos, Gore, and Basecamp. The 3-by-3 principles always have driven high-performing teamwork; in this rapidly changing environment, they are a must-have for all teams.

Mario Moussa, Derek Newberry, and

Madeline Boyer are the authors of Committed Teams: Three Steps to Inspiring Passion and Performance. Moussa teaches in the executive programs at the Wharton School of Executive

Education. Newberry and Boyer are lecturers

at the Wharton School of Business. Boyer also

is a senior consultant at Percipient Partners;

www.moussaconsulting.com, www.percipient

partners.com, @Committed_Teams.

RESOURCES Barrett, M. 2014. “24 Hours to Build-

ing a High-Performing Team.” ATD

Management Blog. August 19.

www.td.org/Publications/Blogs/

Management-Blog/2014/08/

24-Hours-to-Building-a-High-

Performing-Team.

Hedges, K. 2014. “Build a High-

Performing Team in 30 Minutes.”

Forbes. September 10. www.forbes .com/sites/work-in-progress/2014/

09/10/build-a-high-performing-

team-in-30-minutes/.

Moussa M., M. Boyer, and D. Newber-

ry. 2016. Committed Teams: Three Steps to Inspiring Passion and Per- formance. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

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