It is important to understand that norms are not simply about manners. Manners are a form of social construct. They are usually cultural and are often implicit. Whenever a group of relative strangers meet for the first time you will observe a tendency for most people to hold back and observe what is happening in the group. This is a natural mechanism for self-preservation as we assess the group and work out how we are likely to fit. So new groups start off behaving in a way that might be described as polite. However, just because you observe someone being calm and polite when you first encounter them does not mean they will automatically share the same cultural norms. A common mistake made by many team leaders is to assume that the polite and attentive behaviours they observe in the group when it first meets will be sustained throughout the project. Consequently, they spend insufficient time setting the right norms only to find that difficult behaviours quickly emerge once the team moves into action. As the leader/coach you have the opportunity to establish a new set of norms that may be quite different. Each group has their own set of unwritten rules as to ‘how things are done here’. The coaching skill is to make those rules explicit rather than assumed. This leads us to the concept of team building.
BUILDING THE EMOTIONAL FOUNDATIONS
The term team building is a familiar phrase. It may conjure up a range of emotions. For some, the words may imply time spent out of the office being paid to have fun with your co-workers. For others, the image may be distinctly different, recalling memories of being coerced into carrying out irrelevant exercises whilst risking the disdain and ridicule of one’s colleagues. Building a real team has relatively little to do with outdoor pursuits or time spent eating and drinking at the firm’s expense. Whilst such activities may help teammates learn more about each other’s social existence outside of work they are a poor substitute for a structured team development process. Process can be described as ‘a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end’. Team process has two distinct strands: i. Task accomplishment processes that are used by the team to carry out their day-to-day work involving such things as the allocation of resources, programming and reporting; and ii. People engagement processes designed to create awareness, build trust and set behavioural norms.
Task accomplishment tends to be specific to the proposed objective. This is where most managers and leaders devote the majority of their energy in the early days of the team’s existence. It is vital to recognize that ‘people engagement’ requires that same level of priority as it provides the foundations for the transition from a workgroup to a real team. Spending too little time on engagement in the early phases of a team’s life will almost certainly require more energy taking remedial measures later on. In fact, the reverse is true in that time invested in setting the right behavioural norms early in the project cycle will save time later as the team build up speed. (See Technique 3 – ‘Slow down to speed up’.)
Figure 1 – The foundation layers of an effective team
Figure 1 identifies many of the features of an effective team. The people engagement processes can be grouped into metaphorical blocks which can then be used to build the team’s commitment and accountability. These blocks form the foundation stones upon which strong teamwork is built. Like the foundations of a building, they are out of sight and therefore invisible to the uneducated eye. We know that it may be possible to assemble a wooden shed upon some hardened ground, but if we want to build something bigger that needs to survive unstable ground conditions then good foundations are essential.
| Layer | Function |
| Environment | Early assessment of a range of systemic factors enabling a leader to understand the influences imposed on the team by the cultural and social conditions in which the team will operate. |
| Set-up | Setting up the team to establish the desired behavioural norms. Includes the activities and processes that have been found to be critical in building motivation, stability and interdependence. |
| Communication | Sets the mechanisms for the effective interaction between team members and with those in the team’s periphery. |
| Resilience | Activities that will support and sustain the team through periods of difficulty. Builds trust within the team and sets up the protocols needed to withstand the pressures of unplanned and adverse changes. |
| Learning and improvement | Developing the habit of periodically reviewing what the team has recently achieved, what has worked well, and what can be improved in the next iteration. |
Table 1 – The foundation layers of the team building process
The construction analogy is valid insofar as these foundations are best put in place before a team begins to focus on getting things done. In the same way that one can always go back and underpin a failing structure, it is possible to carry out remedial work on a dysfunctional team. Such work, however, tends to be messy, disruptive and can often ‘annoy the neighbours’. It is therefore worth taking time to assemble the appropriate structures at the team’s inception. As illustrated in table 1, the layers represent the different phases of a team’s progression. They are, to a certain extent, sequential in that good practice involves putting the right layers in place at the right time. The tools in this book therefore are set out to align with this structure. The structure is explained in more detail in the next chapter. This does not mean you necessarily always have to start with a new team for the toolkit to be of use. As you will see when you look through the different tools, each will work as a stand-alone exercise. The point of this structure is to encourage you to recognize how the different tools will work at different stages of the team’s life cycle.
REAL TEAMS NOT WORKGROUPS
Without trying to complicate the discussion by going into the technical detail, it is worth recognizing the practical difference between a real team and a workgroup. We often casually use the word team to include any group of people who happen to report to the same manager. If, however, the day-to-day work of the group is not generally dependent upon the success of others in that group then, from an academic perspective, this is simply a workgroup. It is easy to get lost in the semantics of nomenclature but, for the purposes of this toolkit, the definition is important. There are many possible ways to define what constitutes a real team. My personal preference comes from Katzenbach and Smith (1993) who define a team as ‘a small number of people with complimentary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and an approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable’.
There is a lot of content in this single sentence. The key words form a useful checklist as set out in the table below.
| Key words | Implication |
| Small number | Between five and nine members |
| Complimentary skills | Distinct skills needed to complete the task |
| Commitment | Emotional rather than notional |
| Common purpose | Everyone focused on the same thing |
| Performance goals | An agreed outcome |
| An approach | One agreed system |
| Mutually accountable | If one of us fails, we all fail |
Table 2 – Real team checklist
As you work your way down this table, you can start to see why genuine teams are less common than we think. Real teamwork is rarely accidental. These components are often difficult to establish and maintain. The distinction between a notional team and a real team