Working As A Team
How does working in teams differ from other types of working?
Team working is not the same as simply being organised into a group for ease of control. It means that the team takes responsibility for its collective activities. It implies a different order of performance, because of the higher level of commitment that the team brings to its work and the synergy that a group of people working together can create.
Imagine ten people in an office, or a group of people working in assembly operations, or a maintenance crew. All the members of the working group have similar skills and perform similar tasks. They are grouped together because they do the same things and it makes it easy to control their work tasks and to supervise their performance.
They may be called a team, but they don't work as a team because they or their managers don't see their collective activity as being their collective responsibility. Each person has personal responsibility for a personal workload. They may have informal mechanisms for sharing out the work and supporting each other, but that isn't a designed feature of their work.
A team has a collective workload - it is allocated to them collectively to complete. One of the key function of the team leader is to act as an intermediary between the team and those responsible for allocating work, to identify what is required and to negotiate the conditions for completion of the task. Individual activity or workloads result from the way that the team has shared out its responsibilities and the capability of each team member to complete the tasks - capability being a function of skill and current workload.
This doesn't mean that only team members can determine how work is performed - managers will have helped to define work patterns and the limits on individual roles - but within the defined parameters, the team collectively has some freedom to determine how it works. That is one of the key distinctions between teams and work groups.
What makes a good team
Teams can be of varying sizes, although once their membership gets into double figures, their ability to work collectively will be diminished. For practical reasons, effective teams are likely to have between four and ten members. They will have varying skills and skill levels, although one dominant characteristic will be a commitment to high skill levels and to multi-skilling.
High skill levels ensure that all team members are able to perform effectively - the team will be as strong as is weakest link. Team working is not a substitute for skill - the tram may support poor performers, but do so to the detriment of their own performance. One of the strongest indicators of effective team working is when individuals train and coach other team members, to help raise them up to their level of skills.
This is one of the ways that multi-skilling is developed. By sharing their skills, skilled team members can help others to be more flexible in their working by acquiring a wider range of skills. The result of this is that work can be completed more easily because individuals aren't restricted to a limited range of tasks. It also means that performance standards can be raised. Better trained people produce work of better standards.
One important characteristic of team working is the effect that relationships between team members can have on performance. Because the team depends on higher levels of co-operation and support, individuals who have poor relationships or who are unwilling to co-operate with others will restrict the ability of the team to perform - in fact, teams may be more vulnerable to the effects of disruptive individuals. This is why organisations that want to develop teams working as a strategy need to be alert to how individuals may act as a barrier to effective team working. The team cannot be expected to resolve the more serious of these problems, as the effect is to limit the development of the team so that it cannot act collectively to resolve the problem.
How do I build an effective team?
Team building exercises are insufficient. The first step is to be very clear what the team is supposed to achieve - defined primarily in terms of outcomes - and then encourage the team to identify ways of performing which will enable these outcomes to be achieved. In other words, teams have to be given some responsibility for their own work performance if they are to develop as a team.
They need to be clear about the tasks they perform, the skills needed to perform them, and their individual skill levels. From this, the development needs of individuals can be identified - using a skills matrix, for example - so that they can see what they need to do to improve their skill levels to meet the standards required. The higher the levels of skill in the team, the greater the level of synergy that will occur.
Synergy occurs when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts - in other words, when the team is able to perform at a level greater than might be expected by looking at its individual members. The support each member gives to others and the way in which tasks are shared out to maximise the quality and level of output enables people to perform closer to their peak than would be the case if thy were each working in a more fragmented way, individually responsible for their on tasks. Furthermore, they will tend to take a collective responsibility for their performance, so that individuals who under-perform will be encouraged and helped to raise their performance.
This is what team members have to be aware of their responsibility for the overall performance of the team. Team building exercises can help in building that sense of collective responsibility and a shared understanding. But unless this is underpinned by a proper definition of the tasks that need performing, of the freedom that teams have in performing those tasks, of the skills that these tasks demand from team members and the skills development opportunities that exist, then such team building exercises will be of little value.