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SessId006

Good, Bad and Astonishing Teams

When teams are good they are very very good and when they are bad they are horrid. Typically organizations chalk up the success or failure to several individuals. Sue's a team player. Jan's not a team player. This is not only too simplistic -- it is often wrong.

Teams are complex structures. When a group comes together what makes them a team? What affects the team dynamics? What makes individuals want to join a team? What hinders? How do those outside the team impact the team? Through discussion and stories, this session we will explore ways to be most effective and happy, both as team members and as teams.

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Teams are by their nature organized around an activity. A good team often has an esprit (yes, Becky, we're using your company name) de corps that follows from a noble purpose. But that's not the only way to build the desire.

Anyway, from Sharon and Ken comes the observation that something "real" is always easier to encourage than something imagined or intended. Going from hut to hut, we had a team that was composed of varied skill levels. Our "best" was the wild man, Gi (Gieselher), from Germany, who finished 29th out of hundreds in the Western States 100 mile race. Our other team members were experienced mountaineers as well. I, Sharon, consider myself to have been "along for the ride", though I hiked/skied the whole way. I didn't do every side trip, but I did go between huts with the rest. All completed the trip successfully and had a good time.

All of that could be used in an analogy to our business projects. - SharonMarshRoberts

• Some teams aren't
• Some people are teams and don't use that term
• It's easy to attribute the term team according to what's visible as opposed to the invisible glue that binds as strongly.
• Teams are mostly ephemeral. Even the ones that remember the experience -- such as WWII vets or Vietnam -- meet again with their comrades as life long friends, but never again as a team.
• The formation of a team ultimately always seem to emerge from the team itself, not form the circumstance that dictates the individuals working together.

Oh, by the way, I've watched off and on some of the Survivor series. What a great metaphor for teams working in a business environment! Competition for the "gold", shifting alliances, ousting someone who is "competition". I have a whole collection of notes about this. I am equally curious about it as a "phenomenon". - BeckyWinant

I worked on a very successful team for 6 years. It was without question the best work experience I've ever had. The manager who selected the members did a marvelous job of finding people who were smart, who shared a similar vision, and who knew how to play well with other people. Once she had the core group, she added people who had the first two ingredients, but needed to learn about playing well with other people. The new people became members of the group but weren't initially members of the team. That transition took time.

For me, the distinction between a mob, group and team is the degree of shared mission. With a mob, mission isn't even a topic of discussion. With a group, there is perhaps an idea that there might be a mission. With a team, everything is about mission. --SteveSmith

I've been on teams that formed reasonably quickly, teams that formed slowly and teams --- er, mobs that never did.

The stability of a team is fragile. In situations where a person enters, acceptance is not a given. Sometimes a member leaves. Or life events create stress. Sometimes members maintain the appearance of the team they were when change causes a disruption.

Yes, there is a relationship between this session and SessId040 (inclusion and exclusion). - BeckyWinant

I wonder whether a good team is like a good marriage. Sound marriage emerge from good selection, courtship, and continuous remmariage. I've talked about selection in my earlier post. Courtship is an odd word to associate with team building, but I think there is something analaguous to it that must happen to build the appropriate relationships. Teaming seems to me as a sharing of relationships that link to a mission. --SteveSmith

Today Ken and I were discussing different types of teams - some long term, like those in business (potentially) and some short term, like a crisis help team. While the selection and forming process can determine the path of a working group, the subsequent steps say how or whether the group will be able to work through conflicts, perform the work at hand and become a productive team. None of this is given. Once the job is done, does the team stay together or not? If it does, with what further purpose?

I'd guess the focus of a team and its perceived charter has a lot to do with the answers to these questions.Each of us can also have a different model of what a team is.

Ken and I wondered how many people experienced a true high performance team. Is this common or uncommon? How big have these teams been? How long were they together? -- BeckyWinant

In the first, I was an employee of an 8-person multimedia firm. The energy, creativity, excitement, and productivity positively exuded from this group. We loved each other, loved working together, and loved our products. I was part of the team for nearly two years, across six products (usually 2-3 happening at one time). Revelations about some questionnable business practices by the president led to the break-up of the team, but I'm close friends with many of them still (and married to one of them!).

In the second, I was a member of a four-person team responsible for product integration and architectural integrity of a client-server product. This team lasted about 6 months, with long hours, lots of crises overcome, but continuous energy and enjoyment of the work. Team was dismembered by cancellation of the product, and redirection of the development group. I'm still close friends with two of the others in that team.

In the third, I was a member of a 6 member architecture team, with 4 or 5 adjunct lead engineers (including a manager or two) who were responsible for product planning, product architecture, requirements development, and overall architectural integrity for a large product group (which I'm still a part of). This team functioned for 2-3 years before 1) a shift in project management and 2) a dose of distrust for the power of the team injected during a large retrospective. All of us are still on the project, all of us still support each other, some of us still do some of the things the architecture team did at its high point. Again, two of these people are among my closest friends.

As I testify about these here, I'm struck by a few insights:

1. Being on these teams are my fondest work memories. My other work is pale and limp in comparison, including what I'm doing now. I find myself comparing everthing else I do with these experiences, and striving to find the next one.
   
2. I am self-assessing that these were high-performance teams. I could justify that assessment with external data, but I don't feel arrogant or unjustly proud in describing these teams and my role on them. This is singularly odd, since I usually feel very uncomfortable about tooting my own horn.
   
3. I would work with any or all of these people on anything again. I believe we would be high-performance all over again. And I believe that the people from these different teams would work well together. Are high-performance teams self-selecting? Are there commonalities between high-performance teams that let them coalesce? Or are these commonalities only between the teams that I happen to be most effective in? Or am I ascribing abilities to these teams that aren't really there?
   
4. In each case, the dissolution of the team upset me greatly. Anger, frustration, fear, sadness, etc. In each case, I left my job shortly after the break-up (although I came back to this one eventually). In each case, I lost loyalty to the company, but never to these people.

- JimJarrett