Getting Your Team Members on the Same Page
You may think everyone knows who is in your team, and who isn’t, but think again.
Abe,
a member of “Alpha” product development team in an established
global software firm, sat frustrated as he read the onslaught of
criticism from his teammates on a presentation he had recently made
to the board on their behalf. The board had turned down Alpha’s new
project, and his teammates were calling his presentation incomplete
and off target, claiming he had ignored some of their most important
arguments.
This
bewildered Abe as he had met with each member of the team
individually the previous week, asking for comments on his draft.
Betty explained that Abe had not included any of the arguments Chris
and Denise had made. “Why should I?” thought Abe. “Chris
and Denise are not even on the team.”
This
scenario is more commonplace than executives care to admit in today’s
workplace. And yet, it is increasingly inevitable as we put
teams in place that: a) are dispersed (crossing distance, time zones,
languages, and/or cultures), b) include members shared across
multiple teams or projects, and c) are dynamic – with members
frequently added and dropped piecemeal based on when their particular
expertise is necessary. These three trends are increasingly resulting
in teams with misaligned perceptions about who’s in the team and
who isn’t.
In my study of 38 software development teams described in my paper Constructing the Team: The Antecedents and Effects of Membership Model Divergence, I found that some form of disagreement existed (either between team members or between the team managers and team members) in 84 percent of cases about who belonged in the team. This divergence in membership models was driven by the dispersion, overlap, and fluidity noted above - all factors that are difficult to avoid in organisations nowadays. This begs the question: Should this be a cause for concern?
Esprit
de Corps
In
the past, typically teams would be assigned to work on tasks for
several weeks or months, the team’s members would be fully
dedicated to one project at a time, and they would be physically
located together. All of these made understanding the team
boundaries a relatively simple and straightforward task. In
those situations – where membership is clear – teams found it is
easy to establish a shared understanding of their task and processes,
and to form an “esprit de corps”. Such teams functioned
efficiently and effectively because team members’ understandings
were aligned.
Today,
this esprit de corps may start to falter even in cases where there
exists a clearly articulated organisational chart showing the team’s
make-up and where the project launch included clear communication
about who’s working with whom.
The
issue is that the model of the team that governs your team member’s
day to day interactions is not, in fact, that organisational chart
hanging on the wall, but rather the model of the team that person
holds between their ears. We base our actions on our mental
representations – representations that are socially constructed,
and can evolve over time. As a result, some weeks down the line you
may discover that information is being shared with people you
consider outside the team, or your team’s group-level cognition and
collective intelligence is failing to capture critical information.
These consequences and more can arise because we are unaware of the
differing models of membership held in our teams.
Clearing
the air?
While
the most straightforward and seemingly easiest solution would appear
to be hammering home the formal organisation chart into your team
members’ heads, this is not the best solution for two key reasons.
First, the type of membership model divergence described above has
the potential to yield some real benefits.
For
example, as team creativity is in large part a function of the inputs
and perspectives a team leverages, membership model divergence stands
to bring more diverse points of view into your teams. Diverging
membership models may also serve to buffer the team from exogenous
shocks by allowing shocks affecting certain members to only affect
those who view them as central to the team.
The
second reason wielding the clarity hammer is not the best approach is
quite simply that it just won’t work. No matter how large the font
on the wall-mounted org chart, your team members’ mental
representations are the result of their experiences and those
experiences evolve over time and vary from person to person. So
investing the time and effort to shout your team roster from the
rooftops won’t resolve the issue, but may leave you seriously out
of breath.
Time
for a process check
The
best course of action is to bring everyone together to acknowledge
that the team’s identity is not as clear cut as we all thought.
It’s at this point in time that an honest discussion should take
place about the diverging ideas of how the team is functioning.
It is inescapable that people will start to form their own ideas of
the team, its members, and modus operandi because these beliefs are
formed from members’ own interactions within the team and managers
must understand that this is a natural process.
Your
focus should be on helping the team to accept and leverage the
differing models of the team that its members hold and to give them
the latitude to do so. Encouraging team members to discuss why they
hold divergent membership models frequently reveals important
insights on how the team works and how its members interact. Doing so
may help explain why some members’ actions may make sense to some,
but not to others. Allow these differences to exist because
these evolving processes within the team can lead to diverse and
creative ideas.
It’s
important to understand that your world isn’t the way you thought
it was and not everyone sees the team the way that you see it.
With the knowledge that not everyone is on the same page, both
managers and team members alike can avoid the frustration that Abe
experienced after his board presentation. It could even turn out to
be a positive event in the team’s existence altogether come the
time of the next board presentation.
Mark
Mortensen is
Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD.
Read more at http://knowledge.insead.edu/organisational-behaviour/getting-your-team-members-on-the-same-page-3732#uO1UcVoTgJ4mu6fG.99
No comments:
Post a Comment