Practical Solutions to Business Puzzles

Working in teams is something that many of us take for granted.  Perhaps, we have always been in roles where we had to build teams.  Maybe, we think others have done so as well.  As I have discovered over the last year of teaching a college course on team building, there are many who have not learned to build teams.  Beyond that, we often discover that some of the team building approaches that one person uses are different from what others are using. 

When starting to build a team, one of the first questions to consider is why you are doing so.  There are many reasons that we may wish to build teams.  These reasons often include:

1. Efficiency
2. Effectiveness
3. Specialization - teams can help filling in knowledge gaps
4. Scalability - teams remove bottlenecks
5. Better ideas because more people think about an issue
6. Teams allow us to build on each other’s ideas
7. Teams may help us reduce costs over other options

A common model for the stages of team building consists of forming, storming, norming, performing, and transforming.  What activities are associated with each stage of team develoment?  What are some tactical tips that we can use for each stage of the team’s development?  These are two questions that will be discussed in this article. 

As we talking about each stage, remember that we may go through the phase multiple times during the course of a project.  

Forming

Forming a team requires a lot of effort.  After deciding why we are building a team, we need to decide who to invite to join our team.  A team needs to be diverse in terms of how the members approach issues, their perspectives, and their experiences. 

Early in the development of a team, we must build trust.  There are no shortcuts to building trust.  Trust should be based on knowledge, shared understanding, and knowledge of how each team member will react in a particular situation.  This is why trust is often built over time.  We can take a variety of steps to make it easier for others to trust us by: 

1. Being honest
2. Helping others
3. Sharing information
4. Caring about others (and showing it)
5. Recognizing our strengths and weaknesses
6. Paying attention to others (no mulitasking)
7. Being trustworthy
8. Meeting deadlines and other commitments
9. Respecting others
10. Getting to know others on the team
11. Keeping an open mind
12. Trusting others

Of these steps, communication is one of the most important.  Honesty in our communication can eliminate concerns about trust, make it possible for hidden agendas to be revealed so that team members can be successful at an individual level, eliminate speculation about our motives, and reveal differences in our expectations and assumptions.  Revealing that we need help from someone else is sometimes seen as a weakness.  In a team situation, revealing that we need help from someone else is actually a strength. 

A team contract or team agreement is one of the best tactics to help people become team members.  In many organizations, team contracts and team charters are mere formality.  In other organizations, they are not even used.  A better approach is to use written team agreements to reflect how the team agrees to work together.  The agreements should reflect information like:

1. What is the agreed up on purpose of the team?
2. How and when will each member evaluate his or her success, and on what criteria?
3. How and when will the team evalute its success, and on what criteria?
4. What steps will the team take to complete the project?
5. What is an initial timeline for completing the project?
6. To meet the timeline, what steps will be needed and who will be responsible for these steps?

The team contract is intended as a roadmap to help us work through the project.  As additional information becomes available, we need to come together as a team and make modificatons.  While we use the term “team contract,” there is no particular form that the team contract “should” take.  It should be written down, however, it need not be in a signed contract.  It could be contained in a series of memos that document what was discussed in the meeting and are shared with other members of the team.  Another approach is to write up a team contract as a stand alone document, sometimes called a team charter.

One element that is always good to consider in the team contract relates to meetings.  How and when will the team meet?  Who manages the agenda?  What steps should be taken if an issue arises between meetings? 

Storming

After the team is formed, there is a “honeymoon” period in which things all function smoothly.  Then, almost invariably, something happens which causes conflict.  The factors that lead the conflict to surface are many and varied.  A team member may leave.  We may realize that some of our assumptions and expectations are different from what others are assuming and expecting.  Perhaps, the project parameters change.  Maybe, the definition of success or business objectives  change.  This conflict, regardless of the cause, is an indication that we are in the storming phase of team development.

If we have done a thorough job of working through our team, organizational, and individual expectations and aligned our interests, our team is going to be better prepared to deal with issues that may arise during the storming phase. 

Norming

In the norming stage, team members develop a better understanding of how to work together.  Their understanding of their own expectations increases.  They also learn what their teammates are expecting of them.  Roles may be refined during the norming phase.  Team expectations and methods of working together may be clarified as well.

In some cases, there may not have been an official leader, structured approach to communications, agreement about what was to be communicated, designated notetaker, or agreement on how the team would make decisions before.  In the norming phase, the team often decides issues such as these.

In strategic sourcing, supply chain management, or sales teams, the team may decide what criteria will be used to make decisions about which suppliers, customers, or opportunities will be pursued.  Perhaps, the team also decides that it needs to have an interim and a longer term solutions.

As additional information has come to light and situations have arisen with the team, it may be necessary to make adjustments to procedures. These adjustments characterize the norming phase of team development.

Peforming

By going through the forming, storming, and norming steps, people on a team begin to know what to expect from each other, and themselves.  They start to become comfortable working with others.  Perhaps, they no longer feel as much need to check up on each other.  We begin to trust our teammates to know and meet our expectations.  We also begin to trust that our teammates will bring issues to our attention, if we have set this as an expectation.

In the performing stage, we evaluate the team’s results, and our own.  Ths is something that, ideally, we should do throughout the project, rather than saving it to the end.  Periodically, it is a good idea to have checkpoints.  At a minimum, we should look at the timeline and elements that have been agreed up on in the team contract.  A better strategy is to just do what we used to call a “sanity check” during meetings.  Does each team member feel like the team is still on track?  If not, we need to address it.

Transforming

The final stage of a team is transforming.  In the transforming stage, the team has completed its activities and is able to hand the project off or the objective has been fully realized.

On many teams, the transformation is more of a transition, than a closure.  This is especially true in a procurement or sales situation.  After the contract is negotiated, for example, the project may be transitioned to the team which will actually manage the launch of the product or service that has been acquired.  In a sales situation, the sales team often hands the project off to a team that handles the fulfillment.

In the transforming stage, a best practice is for the team to identify and document lessons learned.  Perhaps, the team will want periodic updates on status from the team to whom the project has been handed off.  If so, that should be agreed on during this phase. 

Conclusion

We build teams for many different reasons.  To be successful in our team building, we should identify the reasons that we are building teams and develop a team contract. 

The team contract is a roadmap that will guide us through the project process.  It may take the form of or be integrted with a project plan.  There is no specific form that a team contract “should” take.  The form needs to be appropriate for our situation.

The stages of team building are, in many cases, forming, storming, norming, performing, and transforming.  Teams can revisit each stage at various points during the team’s life cycle.  The team may even be, simultaneously, in various stages of the team’s life cycle on different aspects of the project. 

The steps used to build teams will vary by organization, project, and preference of the team leader and members.