What makes teams successful in the long term? What makes a great leader of teams? These questions fascinate me. Teams are a complex business - take the recent case of Jose Mourinho, who went from winning the premier league in England with Chelsea FC in May last year, to his dismissal in December after lackluster results with a largely unchanged squad.
It´s very difficult in the workplace, as well as in the realm of sport, for even the best leader in the world to be able to influence how successful a team is. As the late Professor J. Richard Hackman* has previously said: “no leader can make a team perform well. But all can create conditions that increase the likelihood that it will.” So what conditions can you control?
1. Create a real team. Often, what is called a team in the workplace is just a collection of people doing similar jobs who are placed under the team leader. A real team means members are fairly inter-dependent on each other to complete their task. There must also be a certain sense of clarity and stability of who is and is not part of the team.
2. Have a clear direction. Make sure you articulate a compelling vision: it is important that all members feel they are working towards a clear, common goal.
3. Establish an enabling structure. It is important to define early on:
- Each member´s roles, activities and responsibilities within the team.
- What are the rules of combat: what is allowed and not allowed?
- What type of people should be in the team? What skills and personalities are needed?
4. Provide contextual support for team. Make sure you have systems in place to provide the right kind of support for members. This includes:
- Ensuring all have the information they need to do their job properly.
- Having a rewards system in line with your goals. If you value teamwork, but reward your team members for individual work, this sends mixed messages that can hamper performance.
5. Have expert team coaching. Help the team manage their group processes (inter-personal relationships etc.), through providing coaching. This does not necessarily need to be delivered by an external expert (the team leader or another member can provide this coaching as well.)
6. Give proper thought to team diversity. There are two forces at work when it comes to diversity. As a leader you need to understand which one is more likely to be at play for your team:
- On the positive side, more diverse perspectives is better for problem solving, creativity and for customer service (i.e. if cover diverse sections of market) and can increase empathy & understanding. However we tend to get on and work better with people similar to ourselves. It can be harder to connect with members very dissimilar to ourselves, leading to communication issues which can equal less productivity and the creation of subgroups.
- Have a clear idea of what you want your team to do. If you need to solve something very complex, a large amount of diversity may be good. However, if your team has a very focused task that is not too complex, a team that has more points of connection in common with each other could perform better.
- Also analyze what you mean by diversity for your team: Age diversity? Gender diversity? Nationality? Educational background? Carefully analyses on which dimensions you want diversity and which you may want more homogeneity.
- Finally, if you as a leader believe diversity is positive, chances are you will make and inspire rest of the team to believe in it too, and this will lead to the positive side of diversity being emphasized.
While nothing is guaranteed, following the tips above should give your team the best chance of success.
By Anneloes Raes, assistant professor of managing people in Organizations at IESE.
*For more of J. Richard Hackman´s insights, read his book Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances.
